The almighty Beta

 

It's such an enfranchised aspect of the video game release timeline to drop a Beta that gets players in early for some free feedback that I can't actually ascertain what the term 'beta' even means anymore. I mean sure, once upon a time it referred to a late-project state of the game where polish and tuning are the core-most requirements to cross that finish-line, but often times it's subbed in to mean games that are literally a spit-shine away from being ready to games that feel like they're one bad slip away from a popped artery. But still the 'Beta' is an almost expected part of certain kinds of games marketing cycle, to a point where some of the time these 'Betas' clearly aren't even for the benefit of the game and serve simply as marketing tools. And in fact, I know just one such time where such marketing blew the game to the moon and back. Wizard. Moon. I'm talking about Destiny.

Destiny was a title that was on the radar of every Halo fan in existence of course, but I wouldn't discover Halo for several more years thus the effect was largely lost on my oblivious ass. The game looked pretty, sure, but there was no wider understanding of what a 'Live Service' was or would become. A shooter/MMO seemed like a strange concept that only appealed to small niches and without getting the thing in your hands there wasn't even any telling if this would be a good feeling shooter at all- remember we were in the age of the every-game-shooter, so everyone and their mothers was cobbling together pretenders to the Call of Duty throne and missing all the points along the way. Destiny was, however, much better than all those pretenders, and all it had to prove that fact was get in the hands of potential buyers.

I honestly do not believe that the Destiny Beta was truly established in order to test the game before launch. Maybe they were kind of iffy about how their servers would hold up but that game was straight done before by the time everyone got it dropped upon them for free. And I was absolutely smitten with the game. It's visuals, it's controls, it's character, it's enemy design (343 really could learn something about character design from Destiny! Even now!) The game sparkled with potential and everyone who was anyone could pick up the game and enjoy that without spending a single dime. It was a AAA gleam that swept the world and, I imagine, played no small part in the industry realising just how easier it is to get online games off the ground by making them free-to-play. Fortnite probably sealed that into fact, but I think Destiny's over-night fame might have had something to say there too!

But nowadays Beta's can even serve as the launching point for some games when developers simply can't get their game to the finish line without support or simply want players hand in guiding that. This movement has given birth to a whole separate breed of game releases- the 'early access' world where you'll view games without complete narratives, fully realised gameplay routines and sometimes even design directions. (This movement owes more to Minecraft, in my opinion.) It is often a mire for missed shots and half-ideas; few of which make it to the limelight whilst most stumble and die along the path. And recent events certainly have highlighted just how contentious this route can be.

Life by You may not have been on my personal radar for games that were going to change my view of the world in any substantive way, but I do think the Sim genre would have been in for a bit of a shakeup had it made it to the beta it was building towards. That's right, the game wasn't even releasing in the full sense, it was just going to soft-launch into a beta that was supposed to build up and up into a grand title that would have shaken the deeply monetised core of The Sims. Or at least that was the dream before Paradox decided to pull the plug early. Could that Beta alone have proven such a drain on resources/good will that they were justified pulling it so early? The team don't seem to think so, neither do the fans. But I guess it's one of those mysteries we'll carry to the grave, isn't it?

And what about 'The Division: Heartland'? Set to be another spin-off of 'The Division' brand, Heartland was going to move the action from the squad-based shooter paradigm into survivalist rough-living where you have to hunt for clean water and manage your resources. Personally I find such a style of game to be largely overdone, but considering the recent survival revival I would certainly be in the minority for that assertion. Heartland actually made a couple of betas, coming out to the audience and gauging that response. And then it was killed off just a few weeks back. Totally cancelled through earnings call.  Was the beta truly that bad? What does this mean for what a Beta even is anymore?

Presumably when a game hits the Beta stage it has already gone through all the preliminary trials and tribulations to prove it deserves in some abstract way to exist in the world. Systems have been built, functionality has been confirmed, the team are headed towards some rough sense of a finish line- pulling the plug at this point is a genuine flushing of time and resources- and yet it's still happening more often lately. Have the parameters changed, then? Maybe the modern day realisation of the sheer damage that a bad launch can wrought on one's reputation, and thus future profitability, has levied unrealistic expectations upon the performance of Betas- or maybe the term has lost any and all meaning altogether.

To be fair, I think most everyone is better off when games are dropped at the finish line-  not a few milestones beforehand. Of course there are exceptions- Larian seem to really think that Baldur's Gate 3's time in early access was totally invaluable to help shaping the game into as fine a point as it ended up striking withy. But how many other titles have used that designation as a shield? Some games, that might be called Fallout 76, even launched their games without such a label but relied on the 'culture' established by beta's and early access games to insist there's nothing wrong with unfinished deliveries. Maybe the status quo shift is for the best in that case...