@jetah said in Open Beta:
@fibs @Nightcoder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Open_and_closed_beta
open beta is when they allow everyone in to 'test/play' the game to see if they want to buy it (unless it's a f2p game then it's more advertisement). closed beta is when you are selected from a pool or pay to enter it.
it's like having an open bar at a wedding or a pay for drinks.
From the wiki page:
Examples of a major public beta test include the following:
Early customers purchased a "pioneer edition" of the WordVision word processor for the IBM PC for $49.95. In 1984, Stephen Manes wrote that "in a brilliant marketing coup, Bruce and James Program Publishers managed to get people to pay for the privilege of testing the product."[9]
So according to this, open beta does not have to be free at all.
I think that there's no absolute truth here and that different people may have different definitions of "open" vs "closed" beta. I actually also define a third "semi-open" kind. The way I see it -
- As far as free to play games are considered, it's only considered open beta if it's free. For paid games (especially pay once) I consider it to be open beta if the beta access is already included in the retail game price, i.e. everyone who pre-orders the final game also gets beta access and does not have to pay extra.
- Semi-open is (in my opinion) when you need to pay extra to join the beta, but other than that there's nothing that keeps you from joining.
- Closed is when the testers are a closed group, i.e. a random person cannot join no matter how much s/he wants or when the extra price is high enough for most people to pass, therefore limiting the number of beta testers to a relatively few.
So according to these definitions I'd consider the pre-alpha and alpha 1 to be "closed", because pre-alpha is a closed group decided by the devs and alpha 1 costs €200, more than most people are willing to pay. Alpha 2 may also fall into that category (costs €100).
Beta 1 would be "semi-open", since it costs €60. It's not incredibly steep but still twice the price of the retail game (€30).
Beta 2 according to this definition is open because it comes at no extra charge (right now it's actually €5 cheaper) and that includes the retail copy so you don't pay anything for the beta itself and most importantly - everyone who pre-orders the game has access to beta 2, there's no way of pre-ordering the retail game without being able to join the beta.
Of course, I will say that it can change, e.g. if the devs decide that beta access is only sold until a certain point in time or if the price climbs so it's not possible to join the currently-running beta without paying extra (over the retail price).