Beta Testing Causes Murder

It was something I’d talked about, complained about, bitched about many times in the past. “How the Hell did this game get released in this state?! Were the Beta Testers blind chimps?!” Beta testers were the bane of my gaming existence…they were always the reason for faults in a program, their sheer incompetence behind every flaw and mistake.

So, of course, when Matrix Games announced they had 3 upcoming titles that needed testing, what did I do? I pounced. It’s pretty much nothing like I expected.

First off, I can’t get in to a whole lot of detail simply because to enter the Beta in the first place I had to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement which promises my soul to The Ravager of Alpha Prime if I am to utter anything directly relating to the detail of the game I’m testing (or something like that. I did what most people do when it comes time to deal with a legally binding agreement…skimmed the text and signed the damn thing. I may very well have agreed to spend a million dollars on a bridge in central Cameroon and the game thing is just a clever ruse). I CAN say that it’s called Distant Worlds and it’s a Space 4X game (think Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations 1 & 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, etc.). What I CAN talk about is the process of Beta testing itself.

Now, there isn’t a whole lot of bug finding or anything along those lines…there  have been some tech quibbles that have arisen from time to time, but generally those are the kinds of issues that have already been squashed. No, this is more about playing the game and finding problems with it or unclear portions or anything that will potentially cause a purchaser to throw their hands up in the air, shout “No mas!” and curse the developer to a lifetime of pain and a television showing nothing but the screaming harpies of The View 24/7.

“Wow, that sounds AWESOME!” many of you are no doubt thinking. You get to play a game, find problems with it, help the game get better, and play the game some more. Hell, I do that for fun ANYWAY so why not maybe help something improve itself, right?

You’re right…sort of…sometimes.

First of all, when you first start along the whole Beta process, chances are you’re fairly early on in development. That means the manual hasn’t been written yet. There are no instructions. There are no tutorials yet. Nope, there’s just the game itself…staring at you and laughing at your moronic lack of comprehension as you spend a bunch of time following that most technical of testing methods, ‘pushing buttons to see what happens’. Yes, you’re basically reduced to poking shit to see if it does stuff. Welcome to the cro-magnon days! Space 4X games are big, they’re complicated, THERE ARE A LOT OF FUCKING BUTTONS YOU CAN PUSH. And menus, OH the MENUS, many with submenus of their own (it’s like you’re looking at the family trees of detail-oriented text). So a few days (at least) are spent trying stuff and feeling like a societal reject.

Now, there IS a ‘Galactic Encyclopedia’ kind of thing that explains everything in there…which is handy if you know what the thing is that you’re looking at/trying to find. Otherwise, you may as well be illiterate and waiting on the corner for the short bus to pick you up.

Okay, some time passes, you figure out some stuff, you start playing. And…WOW, is THAT unbalanced! Yes indeed, while the major tech glitches have been dealt with, you quickly realize that nobody has done anything about game balance…cause, you know, that’s sort of YOUR job and all. The wackiness that will occur in your first few weeks of playing! Oh look, it’s a space pirate faction that is literally indestructible…and they seem to know it as well as you do! And that neighboring civilization is getting to buy everything in the game for half price for no reason whatsoever, so they’re fielding a fleet of 16 battle cruisers to meet your mighty flotilla consisting of Space rubber ducky and two fighter ships piloted by the mongoloid versions of Maverick and Iceman (I call them Follows Rules and Meltboy). Isn’t this fun? What’s that, you want to put your face through your monitor? Okay, maybe we’ll mention some of this in the forum.

That’s right, you can speak directly to the developers of the game. That part of it is actually pretty neat…aside from the fact that you are constantly terrified that you’ll be mocked and hounded for gross ineptitude. This isn’t LIKELY to happen, of course (not every game dev is Derek Smart), but you can’t help it. It’s like you’re back in high school and feel like every single moment of time you spend doing ANYTHING is being harshly judged. Maybe the game ISN’T horribly unbalanced. Maybe I am simply the WORST galactic overlord in the history of trying to rule the universe with an iron fist! Maybe in reality I am more of a Galactic Jester with a fist wrapped in a gauntlet of soft pillows. Eventually, you swallow your pride, steel your quavering nerves, and leave a post asking if the pirates are supposed to be able to attack my home world with a skiff and end up pillaging my finely stocked wine cellar (mmmm…space grape) and brutally and needlessly sexually abusing my dog (Space Rex).

HUZZAH! It IS an error! It IS unbalanced! I’m not an incompetent boob…well, at playing this game, anyway. So, it gets added to the things that are updated in the next release version. Oh, this is great, this is stupendous, I’ll just update this and I’ll get back to my domination of my corner of the…wait, what’s this? This update is not compatible with my save game data.

Yes, because so many large changes are being made to the way the game functions, your saved games are about as valuable as that Director’s Cut of Norbit. If you want to appreciate how mind-meltingly furious this eventually makes you, try this. Pick the biggest, longest, most complicated game from your collection. Spend a week playing it. Now erase your saved games and start over. Repeat that cycle for months. Let the rage build, only to start ALL OVER AGAIN ONCE MORE (if the rage grows a bit TOO strong, perhaps go out and kill an Olsen twin or something to take the edge off. Do we NEED two of them???).

It’s a big, detailed game…of which I have seen a portion, but never more than that. It’s like some sick joke version of that line from Godfather 3 “Every time I’m out, they pull me back in!”, only this time EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE is portrayed by the execrable Sofia Coppola.

So, to recap…you bumble through it for a few days, then you get a new version to bumble through for a few more days, before receiving ANOTHER version through which to bumble until you start questioning your very sanity. And what do you get at the end of this long road to Hell? Well, the thanks of the developer and publisher, several ulcers that weren’t there when you started, a divine hatred of space itself…and a free copy of the game. Yes, you get a free copy of the final version of a game that you wish was a living thing just so that you could torture it to hear it scream.

Having dived in to the Beta Pool (you know, I think the pool should maybe have 4 sides…yeah…let’s try that again) I don’t know whether to have a new found respect for those who regularly put themselves through this, or stay as far away from anyone batshit crazy enough to do this on a regular basis as possible. As for my own sanity, that was taken from me by the Immortal Space Monster of Rygar 7 a LONG time ago (I leave it to you to decide if I’m kidding or not…I truly don’t even recognize the line between reality and game anymore).