163 - Alphas And Betas

[matt]

Now that we've launched our beta, I talk about what the terms actually mean and how we (and most early access titles) are abusing them.

[ranger_lennier]

The video doesn't have any sound. Youtube commenters confirm it's not just me. I did like one's suggestion that it was an alpha version of the dev diary.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Stretch goal: audio for dev diaries

[matt]

D'oh. I'm not sure what happened there. I don't have the source file handy, but I will try to fix it on Friday. :-/

[matt]

*Bump* It's fixed now! So sorry for the trouble.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Thanks for the explanation!

See, I've been so conditioned by early access games on Steam and stuff that I didn't think an Alpha was even supposed to be feature complete. I just assumed it meant missing chunks of game were to be expected. That's why I was always so surprised with the Neverending Nightmares alpha builds, even without complete artwork or audio, they were always entire playable levels, and I didn't expect that much. Early Access games have really done you a service here I think, NN looks so good already, especially when you compare it to some of the big early access titles

[JPrice]

Nice view point on the concept of Alpha's and Beta's you have there Matt!
I'm glad that you treat them more as what they are intended to be, rather than use it to skirt around issues. With the advent of Early Access, I've slowly become more and more hesitant to the idea of releasing games within a public manner under these systems. Given that there's been quite a few unfinished products that are on that platform (For example: The game "Towns" ceased development) it seems like there's quite a lot that could go wrong. Also it could be a lot of trouble from a developmental standpoint, given that most people will only play your game for a short period before moving on. So releasing an unfinished, still in development game is the first experience that those people will have. What are the odds that most of them will stick around when you actually finish? I know that there are Early Access games that I've bought that I haven't gone back to in a while sadly, so it's a rather risky move that can payoff but there are a lot of things that could go wrong I feel.

I think the way that you're doing it though Matt is the best way, limiting it to a set number of people who actively wanted to be part of the "testing" process. Having this freedom of choice is probably the best avenue as it allows people to contribute without having to play an unfinished version of the game, assuming they would prefer to wait for the full release. I can say as an Alpha Backer myself that I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience Sure I might not be as pumped when the full game comes out as I would have seen most of it by then but it's still been a cool experience and I'll still play the full release when it's out!

[matt]

Yeah, alpha is supposed to be much more complete than most Early Access games are. We could probably call the version of our next level "alpha" quality, but even if we were still in the alpha phase, we wouldn't release it because we don't think it is good enough. If it's not good enough, then we'll get a bunch of data like, "this level is not very good", which won't be that helpful.

We are hoping to make it good enough to show next week, but we'll probably keep working on it from an art perspective because it'll still be a bit lacking.

In general, we try to do some decent testing before we release a bug, so there are 0 known issues. We slacked off a little for testing the Beta build, and there was a clearly missing sound effect. D'oh!

I think Early Access can be cool if you are releasing a game that has a lot of replayability and plan on patching it frequently, but that doesn't really work for Neverending Nightmares, so we don't want to call our game "Early Access" on Steam because I don't think we would line up to the expectations of the market. I am happy to have a small community helping me make the game. I was hoping to get more backers soon to get some more feedback on gameplay issues, but it seems like beta access still isn't working...

[gagaplex]

Aw, no mention of Brave New World yet?

[matt]

Brave New World? The Aldous Huxley novel? It's been a long time since I read it, so I'm missing the connection. Sorry!