Hi all, I'm looking to get the community's opinion on how you feel that the beta process for a game should be handled. I have several different concepts, and I'd like to figure out which the community prefers and why. Below, I'll detail the different strategies I'm thinking of. If you could, please choose the one (or top couple) that appeal to you, and explain why you feel this way. If you have your own thoughts on how betas should be done, I'd love to get more input.
The first strategy I'm considering is a public beta. Basically this means that once there's a playable game, it would be released to the public, just as if it were finished, with the caveat that there are probably going to be less features and more bugs than a released game would have. Secondly is a private beta process. Once a beta version of the game is finished, a team of testers would be selected, and would be able to test out and help debug/enhance the game prior to release. Third is a private alpha/public beta process. This would basically mean that an even earlier version of the game would be released for private testing, and once most of the issues are ironed out, released as if it were a public beta. Fourth is simply not doing a beta process at all, and only releasing the game in any form when its ready and fully playable. In addition to all this, if you're a developer whose experienced beta processes before, would you be willing to share some of your thoughts/experiences/words of wisdom with me? If you've done beta testing, is there anything that should never be done, or something the game dev can do that makes testing easier on you? Thanks, John P. S: Over the past several months I've been sending a lot of messages to audyssey asking for help with programming and concepts, and I think I'm finally at the point where I can start to offer up some details on the project I've been working on. Most of my reason for being so secretive up to this point is simply that I wasn't (and still aren't completely) sure that I was actually going to be able to finish off the game. The basic idea is a combination of aspects of the smugglers series and time of conflict. Inspired in part by all the news about U.S. cyber security and some particularly interesting articles I read about a year ago, I came up with the idea for this game. The (incredibly creative) storyline is basically that government and corporate types managed to develop a chip that allows a remote user to control a person's actions and/or emotions remotely, and then marketed it as a way of advanced crime protection and mental health management. Of course, remote meant via computer, which was hackable, and that's exactly what happened. You will play the part of the leader of a small fringe group who managed to escape the clutches of the people that now control nearly all of the planet's population, and have to defend your base against their attacks until the scientists and programmers you have with you manage to crack the signal being used to access the chip, and return free will to the citizens of earth. The game is primarily going to be menu based, though I'm still tossing around some ideas for areas where text input would be more useful than scrolling through massive menus. There are a lot of aspects of the game that are still incomplete, and most everything is somewhat malleable at this point, but I'm pretty confident with the overall storyline/game concept. I'm writing this in bgt, which means only windows xp and later will be supported. The game is going to be completely freeware, and I'm currently planning to be hosting it on dropbox. I'm not going to offer a release date, but I will say that I'm at a (extremely) tentative alpha stage right now. Happy gaming. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
