Battlefield 3s Executive Producer Talks Beta Reactions and More
From Kotaku.com:
Last week, I attended an all-day Battlefield 3 event in San Francisco. Over the course of the day, I had a chance to try out the game's multiplayer, single-player, and co-op sections. Multiplayer impressions are here, and my take on the single-player missions I played is here.
In addition to playing the game, I had a chance to talk with Battlefield 3's executive producer, Patrick Bach. He was a pleasure to speak with, refreshingly frank about the game's development process, the challenges faced in making an ambitious multiplayer game like Battlefield 3, and even the technical difficulties they were having with the PC version that day. We talked for a while about the public reaction to the beta, which has been mixed.
Kotaku: So, how has it been, hearing some of the negative feedback from the Beta?It's a double-edged sword.How long is that?
Around a month and a half. Which means that when we're done with that beta, we say "Okay, this is it. Now let's go back and finish the game." When we got to the point [six weeks later] that we actually released the beta, the game was in completely different shape. We couldn't really tell people because then we'd have to go through the process again.
It sounds like certification hobbles the beta process somewhat.
Yes.
What's a way to make that better in the future?And just do closed testing.
But that's hard as well. We had an alpha as well, that was much worse.
Did any of that leak to the public?
Yes, it always does. And people complain about that as well, but it wasn't as many people. It wasn't such a big hassle. Now, it's a big thing, people make videos of it and we say, "yeah, thank you; we know, we know."
And what you're playing today [at this media event], except for the stability issues, the game doesn't have those issues anymore. It should be more or less 99% mitigated.
Yeah, other than the stability it runs fine. I'm not seeing too many in-game bugs.
But then of course, we do have those stability issues. And other frustrations.
You can read the rest of the interview from the source link below. Some pretty good questions and a little bit of insight as to a beta. Rather you agree with what is being said or think this is an excuse for the problems of the beta, it was very clear in the Battlelog forums that people seemed to have expected a very close to finished product. What are your thoughts on the beta? Hindsight is always great, right?
Source
Last week, I attended an all-day Battlefield 3 event in San Francisco. Over the course of the day, I had a chance to try out the game's multiplayer, single-player, and co-op sections. Multiplayer impressions are here, and my take on the single-player missions I played is here.
In addition to playing the game, I had a chance to talk with Battlefield 3's executive producer, Patrick Bach. He was a pleasure to speak with, refreshingly frank about the game's development process, the challenges faced in making an ambitious multiplayer game like Battlefield 3, and even the technical difficulties they were having with the PC version that day. We talked for a while about the public reaction to the beta, which has been mixed.
Kotaku: So, how has it been, hearing some of the negative feedback from the Beta?It's a double-edged sword.How long is that?
Around a month and a half. Which means that when we're done with that beta, we say "Okay, this is it. Now let's go back and finish the game." When we got to the point [six weeks later] that we actually released the beta, the game was in completely different shape. We couldn't really tell people because then we'd have to go through the process again.
It sounds like certification hobbles the beta process somewhat.
Yes.
What's a way to make that better in the future?And just do closed testing.
But that's hard as well. We had an alpha as well, that was much worse.
Did any of that leak to the public?
Yes, it always does. And people complain about that as well, but it wasn't as many people. It wasn't such a big hassle. Now, it's a big thing, people make videos of it and we say, "yeah, thank you; we know, we know."
And what you're playing today [at this media event], except for the stability issues, the game doesn't have those issues anymore. It should be more or less 99% mitigated.
Yeah, other than the stability it runs fine. I'm not seeing too many in-game bugs.
But then of course, we do have those stability issues. And other frustrations.
You can read the rest of the interview from the source link below. Some pretty good questions and a little bit of insight as to a beta. Rather you agree with what is being said or think this is an excuse for the problems of the beta, it was very clear in the Battlelog forums that people seemed to have expected a very close to finished product. What are your thoughts on the beta? Hindsight is always great, right?
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