Over the past few years, online betas have become almost an essential part of the game development process. Interestingly enough, Epic Games decided to forgo a public beta, in favor hitting an earlier release date. GamePro had the chance to sit down with The Artist Formerly Known as Cliffy B, and discussed the reasons behind this decision.
“A beta is like hooking up with a girl just to say, ‘yeah, I f*cked her.’ I know that sounds crude, but it’s the honest-to-God truth. Once you play a beta, you can check it off your list — you can say, ‘yeah, I played it.’ Then you might not feel motivated to get that initial cherry popping from the proper, final game.
Honestly, we could make a demo, but Gears of War 2 wouldn’t be out until February of 2009 [if we did]. That stuff takes times to put together.
Granted, we may need to tweak a few things in multiplayer after release through an update. People are going to find exploits we didn’t anticipate. That’s the reality of making a game — look at MMOs. We’re prepared for that, but we think we’re shipping a pretty great game out of the box here.” — Cliff Blezinski via GamePro
Ahh, Cliff… You are such a wordsmith. Only you could make a metaphor comparing a beta to losing your virginity, and have it all make perfect sense. That is why we all like you so much!
In my humble opinion, I believe that this is absolutely the correct decision to make. The main argument for having a beta is to prevent glitches, but everyone knows that there will always be something that slips through the cracks. As long as developers are on top of the situation, and Epic normally is, this should not be an issue at all.
