Oswald Rant: Are Beta Releases Overrated?

Going back to last year I composed a rant titled, “The Buzz over Beta” which debuted on July 25, 2000 after Silicon Ice Development had released its first public version of Urban Terror, Beta 1.

What got me thinking about beta releases, release dates and a community yearning for every little bit of inside information it could snatch up? It has been my recent visits to the Navy Seals Messageboard and seeing it from a gamer’s point of view [as I am now a community guy, not the developer] waiting for a mod which has been in development over a year. A development team which was less than supportive of our setbacks and release of Urban Terror. I only bring this up, because now they are the ones behind the eight ball and their community is beginning to question the mod and its continuing delays and now unscheduled release date.

Are beta releases overrated? Possibly? By releasing a beta version which you know is not complete or void of some of the features initially intended, will the community be forgiving and continue to support your mod? These are all questions that vary, depending on who you ask. In my experience with Urban Terror over the course the past year, gamers feel no remorse. If a beta version does not live up to their expectations or the billing a mod has been given, chances are they will delete it from their hard drive and move onto another mod. That was the case with Beta 1 for Urban Terror. Looking back, we were not 100% ready for a public release. The anticipation had built to unbelievable proportions, culminating with our release at QuakeCon 2000 [thanks to id Software].

While there was a fair amount of positive feedback, we had overlooked many small things that should have been taken care of before the release, which kept multiplying and causing many problems and complaints. While our download numbers were solid for Beta 1, our fan base wasn’t. We had missed one previous release date, which pushed our release back an additional few weeks. Now that Team Mirage has missed a few Beta 1 release dates, their community is beginning to question the integrity of the mod. Looking back on our development, we are learning from our mistakes. But we have had to bust our asses to win back the trust and faith of those who wrote off Urban Terror after Beta 1, and continue to keep the support of its current fans in the community.

With any sort of development there are bound to be delays and shifting of tentative release dates to fulfill design requests which you want to see make it into the mod. What sort of responsibility do developers have to keep their community up to date on the behind the scenes happenings? id Software does it through their .plan files, so do many other large developers. Silicon Ice Development does it through their forums and web site. SID takes an active roll in their community, in an attempt to keep the gamers updated, which is where the forums come into play. At times there is more information disseminated through the forums than on the web site.

Back to the beta release? Is it a big deal? Yes, it is for both the community and the development team. But what gamers need to remember is every realism mod that is released is 1) not going to be the quality of Counter-Strike and 2) is going to be compared to Counter-Strike. It sucks, but it’s the truth. We were. Navy Seals will be. In the end, it is the development team who will make or break their mod. If they keep their community happy and informed, along with developing a good product gamers will usually hang around to see what is going to happen next. SID is thankful for the strong community which has rallied around Urban Terror. Hopefully this is reflected in our future releases of Urban Terror, as we are working for you.