lately there have been an increased quantity of games being made available for purchase during their beta version, or donations via kickstarters and the like. It could be said that this trend is attributed to the success of minecraft but that is not entirely certain, there seems to be more developing studios are using this avenue of funding with success.

However today i was thinking about the possibility if this were to become mainstream,

what if AAA game developers were to adopt this strategy and popular franchises like grand theft auto, The Elder Scrolls, Halo?

My opinion is that in the case of story oriented games like TES and halo would end in disaster simply because either one would not be very entertaining to play with a large lack of content that is still yet to be added.

I think that the main reason why alpha and beta launches have worked for games like minecraft and terraria were do to the fact that they left a great deal up to the player, especially with astetics such as being able to build structures out of blocks. Leaving the gate way open to imagination, and giving the developers time to add content that gives the game more focus. A game like Skyrim, with out quests or story lines and even NPC's, would really only leave a gamer with the option to walk around and look at things.

We gotten more and more betas over the years, especially after Google started all their stuff. Gmail was in beta how long? And even Origin, the EA service to buy games online is in beta, and been in beta for years now.

I agree that it would be a very bad move if the same happened with AAA games, although some would argue it already happened with Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and some other games

AAA game developers probably wouldn't ever go along with something like that, because being AAA developers people are going to buy the game no matter what, and if they release it early for some people (if that's what you're saying) they risk people finding out the game isn't as good as they say it is before it comes out.

What do you mean, "what if"?

I'd been in extended beta for Skyrim for three months after 11/11/11.

Isn't there that patch that cost $19.99 coming out next week?

Really? I thought it was a prank made by an intern to be honest...

hyperbole aside, to be clear i do mean games in which the majority of the intended content is not present, and the selling of beta copies for the purpose of raising funding.

obviously AAA developers do not have this kind of funding problem, which is most likely this is currently being done mainly by indie developers, but i was wondering about a possible future in which AAA developers adopt this funding method as a way to either:

A: increase their profit margin
B: allow for extended development in which they would continue to release updates and content for the game, before and after the games "final release"

Selling betas for the purpose of raising funding for the game's development isn't logical. If you're at the point you have a "beta" product, then you're past the "feature freeze" point in your coding -- for the most part at least. You've got the majority of your costs already sunk. You're bugtesting and code tweaking in beta.

If the majority of the content intended isn't present, then it's prealpha, shipping this out to people would be a horrible idea.

That said, selling beta access to increase profit margins isn't something I'd put past most companies. Betas should be free, though, as other people are doing the bug report generation for you, saving you money. A logical system that isn't greedy nor evil is to give beta access to preorder purchasers.

well it seems what i meant when using Beta wasn't the literal term, but it should be obvious that what i meant was in the context of how the developers of Terraria and Minecraft marketed their "beta"

although i disagree about the part in which most of the costs should have been covered, unless your selling the beta, developers still have to pay their employees until they have released the game and they are no longer working on that project.

so it isn't really a case of the costs being covered by time the developer reaches the beta point in the development, but how deep their pockets are.

Result of a small team. AAA games have large teams, each with their own tasks and code simultaneously. The result is that once something gets to a usable state, all the features are already done.

That's my assumption anyway, not knowing much about Terraria or Minecraft. If they've just been adding maps and whatnot, then it's not new features, just additional data.


I didn't say anything about costs being covered, I said costs already sunk. As in they already spent the money they need to spend and the company didn't go bankrupt and can make it to the final product. Most of the temporary workers hired on specifically for the project have finished their work and are no longer on payroll. Everyone else is a long-standing employee so aren't any new costs to the business.

in the case of minecraft they continue to add completely new content that requires code after what they've called a complete game, which in most companies case they would be selling that content separately as DLC, but they do it for free at their own cost.

Which is what i would like to see AAA developers do, not give their "DLC" away for free but spend more developing time to effectively double the content that gets put into the game. Selling "beta" copies to cover the cost of extended development. I don't really know how that would benefit a development studio, or its publisher, but it benefits me the consumer. Which is why I was willing to pay for an incomplete game such as Minecraft.

EDIT: im not sure what the difference is between cost covered and cost sunk. Until people are buying the game they still have to pay their employees, so cost is not done sinking until they are done developing.

So what you want is for companies to purposefully gimp their games and then constantly hit you up for micropayments to add features to it through a ton of DLCs which they already developed?

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b195/DEFRON/horonowant.jpg


Also, like I said, this doesn't work for the way most large-company backed games are developed. The various aspects of the games are developed simultaneously to cut down development time. Sure, some features fall on the cutting room floor, but they already charge us for those in the form of DLCs. Last thing we need is for them to do this more often and ship the likes of Skyrim with only a few weapons and a single dragon shout and charge us for the "magic pack" "horse pack" "archery pack" etc.


Employees are considered already paid costs by virtually all businesses as they are a necessity to function, and so are factored into the costs of running a business, not into a product's budget (except temporary project employees)