When Betas Go Commercial

16 Dec 2009 at 00:00:00 by Tim McDonald

Like it or not, marketing ends up pervading everything, and in a medium like ours which takes advantage of the newest technology, this means that there are marketing tools in use that you won't see anywhere else. The one that's been getting to me, lately, has been the notion of public betas.

Assuming you buy games and aren't just reading this because I'm witty and erudite, you'll have seen these. Where beta versions were once almost kept away from the public, with testing generally taking place either internally or outsourced to companies, public beta releases are becoming more and more common.

I don't have a problem with the companies that genuinely need public feedback, or that genuinely use beta information. MMO betas, for instance, are pretty understandable; it's content designed for thousands of players at the same time and a lot of work needs to go into it to make sure that things are balanced, fun, and well-paced - and that they can actually support high player loads. Likewise, a few companies are doing reasonably clever things. The current Elemental beta, I'm told, pretty much strips out the graphics entirely. The idea there seems to be that users won't be distracted by graphics, be they incredibly pretty or incredibly unfinished, and that they'll focus entirely on the things that matter, like whether or not the game is actually, y'know, fun. Important, that.

The problem I have is when betas appear to be used as little more than cynical marketing tools. I've no doubt that developers get some technical use out of this type of beta, but even so, I feel slightly sickened when they're used primarily in this way.

Possibly the worst offender in recent memory was the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. Packed in with Crackdown, there is little doubt in my mind that it was pushed in both to boost the sales of a game that, until then, had little hype, and to promote Halo 3. We were fortunate: Crackdown turned out to be a bloody good game, and once the demo came out, I suspect the full version would've sold bucketloads anyway.

I'm sure the beta held some use - most likely as a stress test of sorts for the server load and various bug fixes – but I find it very, very hard to believe that it wasn't a cynical marketing move, particularly with people like the global group product manager Jerret West saying of the beta  “We wanted to drive preorders. For Halo, it's all about day one.” It was a cynical marketing move that worked, apparently.

It's a marketing technique that has since caught on: one of the more common questions asked of developers by the public, these days, is “Will there be an open beta?” For anything multiplayer, the answer is often “Yes.” I reiterate that I have no doubt many of these serve a useful or even necessary purpose for developers, but the more I see them, the more I wonder if behind it all is a marketing man watching the preorder figures go up. At this stage, we're even seeing what appears to be a battle between console manufacturers to get betas on their systems. Check out Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which is getting betas on PS3 and PC, but not on 360, for instance. Is there a viable reason for this? Possibly. Perhaps the 360 really doesn't need a beta. Perhaps, for whatever reason, they only have time and money to run a beta test on one system. Perhaps Sony just wanted it on the PSN, much in the same way as the manufacturers fight over DLC exclusives. I can't say for sure, but it's enough to make me even more suspicious.

Part of me reckons that it's fair enough: if there's a marketing tool available, then it's going to be used, and why not? It's all about the sales, after all, and there are plenty of games that need to catch the public eye in some way. Part of me, though, feels dirty when something traditionally used to find flaws and improve games is used simply to drive up consumer anticipation; a limited-edition multiplayer demo only available to the special few hundred thousand who get there first. A multiplayer demo that the company can make available for only a few days or weeks, which is a practice that would be scorned if it was actually called a demo but is perfectly acceptable here because, hey, it's not a demo. It's a beta.

No, it's not some sort of gaming apocalypse, and I'm not trying to pretend it is. We'll always see betas, and we have for years – Quake and Quake 3, famously, both had test releases (both of which can, as far as I know, still be played today if you can find them.) MMOs will always have them, and they'll no doubt prove useful. Plenty of games will open things up to players for comments and bug-finding. No, the “beta as mislabelled demo” is simply something that bothers me, but every time I see incredibly polished betas only a little way before release, I'm going to get a little bit more suspicious. I imagine plenty of consumers are more than happy to just get their hands on a section of a game a little early, but hopefully I'm not alone in being slightly disturbed by this turn of events.

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