Is this game really beta?

[TechSY730]

According to the definitions on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle (which I have seen similar definitions in other literature too), beta is when the software is feature complete (or very close too it).
By your own admission, there are still major features and stuff planned for AVWW. Borrowing Armanant's wording from the bug tracker, it seems a disservice the reputation of AVWW to call this beta, as it gives an impression that you are further along than you are, and thus people are disappointed with how relatively lacking in "polish" and "features" (enough to keep things interesting) this game has compared to what most people expect from a beta.

The current state of the game is much better described as a public alpha, an admittedly mid to late alpha, but alpha nonetheless. (The private testing phase from several months past would be the pre-alpha)

[@B0FH]

I would still call it an early beta than an alpha build personally, as the game is in a playable state as-is. And indeed has more in it now than a few comparable titles/genres. Just because it is a long way off what Arcen foresee shouldn't detract from that fact... or that's my 2c anyways :p

[x4000]

It's a beta.  The core feature set is complete and pretty highly polished, even though the extended feature set and content is embryonic.  You can debate semantics all day, but everybody has a different definition and the words have lost a strict sense of meaning in common parlance (to my unhappiness).

[x4000]

To add to that, if we went by just "having every feature we ever planned" as the guideline, then none of our products would ever leave alpha.  AI War is still feature incomplete compared to what we'd want to do ultimately, and so will AVWW be two years from now.  When something is literally feature complete, for me that's when it's dead, not non-alpha. 

We don't use a traditional release cycle, nor do we use the terminology.  We use the term beta because there is an experience here that is feature complete in and of itself, and the game can be played and enjoyed for dozens of hours on its current merits, depending on the tastes of the player.  The fact that it's not yet having every feature we plan for 1.0 is somewhat irrelevant.  If that were the measure, then we'd wind up having it be in alpha for the entire life of the product until a week before 1.0 or something along those lines, which would not be helpful.

And in terms of "giving the impression that we're further along than we are," I really rather take offense at that, I have to say.  This game is missing a ton of content, sure, but the actual core gameplay is extremely far along and getting quite polished at this stage.  Any game where you have players willingly sink dozens of hours into it and then ask for more is not something that I'd consider misleadingly labeled if you call it beta. 

Your post has a very accusatory wording, with "by your own admission" and so forth.  We're not "admitting" anything.  We've been super upfront and transparent from the start about where things are and where they are headed, and we've made a public demo of the beta available for free for anyone to try.  If there's one way to really piss me off quick, it's to call me dishonest, which is what you're borderline doing.  Calling this beta wasn't some marketing stunt or whatever else -- but a generalized software release cycle like you linked to above has... how much similarity to what we do at Arcen?   I'd say very, very little.

Anyway, it's water under the bridge.  techsy730, we go back a long way on these forums, so it's not like there are hard feelings on this end.

[TechSY730]

To add to that, if we went by just "having every feature we ever planned" as the guideline, then none of our products would ever leave alpha.  AI War is still feature incomplete compared to what we'd want to do ultimately, and so will AVWW be two years from now.  When something is literally feature complete, for me that's when it's dead, not non-alpha. 

We don't use a traditional release cycle, nor do we use the terminology.  We use the term beta because there is an experience here that is feature complete in and of itself, and the game can be played and enjoyed for dozens of hours on its current merits, depending on the tastes of the player.  The fact that it's not yet having every feature we plan for 1.0 is somewhat irrelevant.  If that were the measure, then we'd wind up having it be in alpha for the entire life of the product until a week before 1.0 or something along those lines, which would not be helpful.

And in terms of "giving the impression that we're further along than we are," I really rather take offense at that, I have to say.  This game is missing a ton of content, sure, but the actual core gameplay is extremely far along and getting quite polished at this stage.  Any game where you have players willingly sink dozens of hours into it and then ask for more is not something that I'd consider misleadingly labeled if you call it beta. 

Your post has a very accusatory wording, with "by your own admission" and so forth.  We're not "admitting" anything.  We've been super upfront and transparent from the start about where things are and where they are headed, and we've made a public demo of the beta available for free for anyone to try.  If there's one way to really piss me off quick, it's to call me dishonest, which is what you're borderline doing.  Calling this beta wasn't some marketing stunt or whatever else -- but a generalized software release cycle like you linked to above has... how much similarity to what we do at Arcen?   I'd say very, very little.

Anyway, it's water under the bridge.  techsy730, we go back a long way on these forums, so it's not like there are hard feelings on this end.

Oops, sorry about how I worded that. I tend to forgot about connotations when I use common figures of speech. And as you correctly pointed out, I didn't mean anything bad by it.

And in any case, I didn't mean to say that the game is not good, it's great. It just didn't seem to meet beta by AAA software publisher standards. But as you pointed out, beta has become such a muddled word, that its hard to really nail down what is considered beta. There are other ways to define beta than the standard AAA software release cycles do. In the sense that it is very usable, gives the overall feeling of the finished product, and the most important stuff implemented, then yes, AVWW is in beta. Thanks for your response.

And yea, strictly following the "official" definition of beta of most "industry standard" release cycles, then almost everything but abandoned projects would be in perpetual beta. Just look at Google.

[x4000]

All good, no worries.  And yeah, Google really leans on the beta moniker way too much, I agree.

In terms of AVWW it's always tough because we talked about a lot of cool things that we plan to do but which are not yet in place, and some people are most interested in the game because of those features which don't yet exist.  But that's likely still going to be the case even at 1.0, I suspect, if AI War's lifespan is any indication -- the game it was at 1.0 is nothing like what it was at 5.0, and those who wanted the 5.0 experience back at 1.0 would have been really disappointed.  This is part of why we always do a big demo, is so that people can judge for themselves rather than having to guess.

[Aeronic]

This is part of why we always do a big demo, is so that people can judge for themselves rather than having to guess.

Indeed, this was the reason I decided to buy a key. The demo was enough to let me try out the game and a few features, but limited enough to keep me wanting more. Plus, letting demo users get the beta updates was what made me think "Arcen is a really awesome company, I must throw my money at them."

[Rekka]

This is part of why we always do a big demo, is so that people can judge for themselves rather than having to guess.

And I really thank you for that. Nowadays, we rarely have a good demo to see if the game suits us which is a shame. It's because of the demos (and some nice comments I saw on the net ) that I bought AI War and AVWW so please continue.