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My Early Rift Beta Application; Your Thoughts?
VanadromArda
Member Posts: 445
Originally published early last year, I submitted this docement to developers of RIFT in hopes of taking part of their Beta Test phase. To save you the trouble, no it did not get me into the test. I put a lot of thought into the document, and I eventually posted it on the RIFT forums as well; which at the time recieved a great deal of flame from the community. So now that the game is released, and the hype dead - I want to post this document again to see what everyone else thinks about it. Are my words just an idiot's shallow prospective of reality - or is there some words of wisdom that should have been heeded?
I will let you, the reader decide. What feedback I get will shape future documents I send to future games, in hopes I can actually sway some minds.
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The following Document was submiited in early 2010, as an Application for the Closed Beta. It failed, and I recieved no official reply.
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Since the early days of MMORPGs, Text-RPs, TellNet Applications, and Dial-Up Modem Games – I've been a participant in the world of internet gaming. Does this alone make me qualified to take part in Rift's Beta Test? - No. That alone doesn't much have merit, but what does qualify me is my reputation for supplying rich, detailed documents which critique and observe the quality of the game at its current progress. Many of these documents still remain, but many of the games they have been drafted for are no longer in existence.
This does not mean that my abilities as a Beta Tester failed; on the contrary I've fulfilled my role dozens of times in creating very organized non-biased projections and suggestions towards the overall success and development of a product. Each document has been grounded in realism and reality, allowing for a prospective that is both professional and personal all at the same time. My current status as working for the gaming industry is sadly non-existent. The current economy has left me out of the industry I enjoy, but I do try to take part in whatever development I can.
Since the very beginning of my MMO experience, I've never been a big fan of companies hand picking their testers from their community – mainly through the single source of Poster Participation or Post Counts. As it stands I have only one post on this forum, and that it will remain until I have something important to say. Largely, there is nothing I can or want to say right now as I know nothing about this title. I've not taken the time to do any research, attend any conventions, buy any comic books, or dive deep into the forums to converse about my wishes. Why? Because I've done this in the past, and having devoted my time to one failure after another has only left me to see the futility of it.
By mainly hand picking from a loyal fan base, you have difficulties shaping out the core of the game. Instead, the developers will mainly hear the sort of feedback they want to hear and not hear the feedback they need to hear. MMORPGs in this day and age are in more serious waters than they were five, or even ten years ago. Now, everything rides upon things going perfect from the start and having people who can help to offer a point of view that isn't from within the fan base of the company should be highly sought after.
Development of games within a vacuum where the fans will be pleased with everything regardless, and developers often blinded by their own creativity provide the ideal conditions for a short lived game. The market now is completely saturated, and it's time that development take notice that there are people who do really wish to help. I am one of those people, and it is that ignorance I have about this game which will allow me to come in and see for what it is – not for what it 'will' be. MMORPGs these days never live up to what that 'can be' or 'will be' at launch, and need to be grounded for what they are in their current state.
So often do detailed warnings of development mistakes go unheard. I'm not alone, there are many like me who drift from one Beta Test to another and pretty much make it our goal to help. Not to shape the game into how we feel it should be, but to help the developers shape the game into the way it needs to be. Ultimately, the MMORPG is a game made vastly for and by the public. Developers who have forgotten this extremely simple fact and remained sternly devoted to their title, either had a lot of cash to fall back on after a choppy release – or went bankrupt.
People's lives depend upon the success of a title, and these extremely weighted choices of design need to be more than just tests of ego and creativity. People who have families work for these companies, and currently are employed to create Rift – it is in the best interest of those who desire this game to truly be a success to find people who want to make it work. I've seen success and I've seen failure, I know what does work and what doesn't and how new ideas will be taken in the eyes of the public. As a professional Technical Writer I also put together detailed guides and tutorials. So it is my duty to understand how people think and what they need to hear and see.
One of my greatest fears is that this will just be another game bent on being the next World of Warcraft, and will devote itself towards that theme as a basis of its release. If that is the case, then this game may just be another tragedy just waiting to unfold. I'd very much like to provide my services to this game to help pinpoint the areas which are remarkably like World of Warcraft and pinpoint them as red flags. While it is logical on paper to be another WoW; it is impossible to usurp a powerful king who is still living and breathing.
All I ask is that during these critical steps, make the right choices and listen to the community. This is what the Beta Test is all about. By using this time to only weed out bugs and create a more stable gaming world, then the whole thing will be wasted and years of work will be tossed aside like dust in the wind. If my opinions and prospective will remain unheard, and this game desires to be another World of Warcraft, then I respectfully decline any invite into the Beta Phase.
P.S: I won't be utilizing any other pools to get a Beta Invite. Be weary of the people who make a living off of Beta Keys. Several people invest time into getting as many keys as they can, and selling them off for a good profit.
Comments
Sometimes applicants are randomly selected and sometimes it's they are selected based on criteria such as your system specs (they want the game to be tested on a wide variety of systems).
Considering Rift probably received well over 100,000 applications I seriously doubt that they had someone reading each individual additional comments on that application, and a wall of text of that magnitude certainly wouldn't want to be something I would want to read through if I had to sort through thousands of other applicants.
Typically what you write in the additional comments section or why you want to beta test this game section won't matter too much, so in the future don't spend too much thought into those sections. Keep it fairly brief. Chances are that section won't even get read when they are deciding applicants. Testing experience (especially where they provide checkbox lists) and system specs hold more weight.
Did you submit your application directly to the developers or was it through some standard beta application? If you submitted directly through to the developers which channel did you use? If you are going off e-mails off their website, typically that's customer service related and they won't be deciding testers anyway.
Going to various media events such as PAX helps too. For Rift I had a PAX VIP key, so I was gaurenteed a spot into Closed Beta. Connecting with the developers directly or being part of a major guild for testing purposes helps a lot more than submitting a random application.
John: Ruppert we need beta testers about five hunderd
Ruppert: Alright John gona check some aps now.
Lets see... aprove,aprove,aprove.. wall of text,deny, aprove aprove..Yawn..and clicks 494 more random people whitout reading.
The aplication is long,full of your own opinions, its anti wow, its basicly a aplication that screams NO. all you need in a aplication for a beta test is no less then 50 no more then ..300? words of suckup I like your game, it looks to be awsome and I hope to find many bugs, I have tested XX XX and XX before so im known how to find bugs and would love to test the game for you.
lets be clear, a developer has a game design paper, they will follow it true no mather what, the only thing a beta tester has to do (or must do) is test the game, find the bugs, give feedback about the quest adn systems themselfs and how to improve them whitout changing the design of the game itself. its not your choise to make or not make a game that would be a wow copy or not thats thiers, you have no voice in that,no choice in that and are not expected to talk about that.
once a game design ocument is made a company has nearly no choise but to go true whit it, any walk of the design path will cost huge loads of delay and money and can only be done in the most critical situations.
Just to add to what some others are saying...
When looking for beta testers they are looking for 'just the facts' :
- can your rig handle the game?
- they are looking for a variety of rigs to test the range of machines that can play it
- they are looking for someone who will use the tools they have in place to report
- how many mmo's do you have experience with? And they may be looking at newbs to 90's vets - to test how they all do with the game.
Sometimes they don't care about reporting- sometimes they are doing load tests and other things which look objectively at 'how many machines' type of info.
They never want your opinion. At beta testing all the discussions are over - they've debated back and forth and decided, 'this is what we will launch with' - and I can almost gaurentee that someone's foot had to be put down and the issues put lower on the priority list.
That doesn't necessarily mean they will or will not be responsive to their customer opinions after launch, but rarely when casting off before a launch do sailors start switching out oars or motors or seats or whatever. Just wouldn't be a smart way to focus your businesses energy at such a critical time.
But lastly, they certainly don't care about your 'gaming philosophy. They aren't hiring you for the team, they are labelling you as 'generic customer x'. Here's a secret.......developers don't just want an exclusive club of like-minded players. They want all players. They wan't WoW lovers and WoW haters, they want hardcore and they want casual, they want soloer's and they want groupers and raiders - they want people who share their opinion and people who never hit the space bar once to chat. They want crafters and people who loathe crafting. They want customers, and if they are customers, they are not going to try to pit customers competing opinions against each other. Yes, they want to know what you think, yes, that should guide their development after launch, but after receiving that info, the decision they make, only in very rare cases, intitionally alienates paying customers.
And of course yes, sometimes they have alienated customers with their development direction, but if they are smart, before a decision is made, right or wrong, they have scrutinized how they can maximize customer satisfaction and minimize disatisfaction. Sometimes they f it up, sometimes not .....
I'm way off topic-
In short, keep it brief and factual when applying for betas.
You see, what a I didn't mention before is that these statements I've written before have actually succeeded in getting me into Beta Tests up to a certain point. I would always toss my lots into applications certainly, but on top of those I would always seek out the Community Manager and try to write them a more personalized letter of purpose. My desire to post this topic is not because it's a fools venture to supple a "wall of text" to the developement - but to point out that there has been a vast change in how Beta Testing is done these days.
As the previous responses are noting, that these days the developers don't really want people to help them. They just want certain specs, and to be a number in a crowd to ensure a certain stability. There was once a time when the Beta Test was more than just Stability Tests, and that the game was further shaped by the feedback of those chosen to take part in Beta. As the MMO has been popularized, the Beta Test as I've known it has become a thing of a the past - replaced with this sort of bastardized echo of a Stability Test baring the name 'Beta Phase'.
There was a time when the game would actually change, and change drastically, during the Beta Phase due to player Feedback. I think the last game I recall this happening with was Dark Age of Camelot. You know, ever since World of Warcraft when into a "Beta" nothing has been the same.
Yeah but unfortunately those days are over; you can do that with an audience in the thousands, but it is very hard to get a representative group with an audience of millions.
I think that aspect of betas has been moved into the alpha phase forever.