“Of Bears, Bull and Beagles!”

Beta Testing

I am a bit of an avid gamer and love to beta test upcoming games. For anyone who doesn't know Beta Testers work for the game developers testing games before they are launched and mostly whilst the game is in development. Our job is to find all those pesky bugs that neither developer nor gamer want to find in the final product, and also to offer feedback in the form of both praise and criticism to the developers. This process affords the makers the opportunity to fix any issues.

Bill Slease, a Cyan Worlds developer summed it up when he said.....

Quote:-
Beta testing an online adventure game has got to be one of the most masochistic experiences anyone could call down upon themselves. Testers are having to deal with a sevenfold frustration:
1) genuine bugs
2) incomplete areas/puzzles/features
3) non-tuned puzzle difficulty
4) normal adventure-game puzzle frustration
5) hardware issues
6) internet lag/instability
7) unfinished story elements
- End Quote

He is spot on with this statement, but he left out one very important thing.... It's also great fun and immensely satisfying knowing that in your own small way you are helping making a great game better, it's also nice seeing your name in the game credits ;)