My Goodness

I’ve been traveling, doing work, and (of course) playing World Of Warcraft almost non-stop these past few weeks. I see that Jonathan has been busy keeping the site updated with fresh content. Things must be settling down for him in the new house.

One of my internet buddies pointed me to the latest blog where Marc Duffy of SI Games mentions our humble little site. This means that we just might get more than 6 hits this month, so thanks Mr. Duffy! A couple of my OOTP buddies also asked if I was part of the beta team. The answer is no. A great big N-O. I will never beta test another product for anybody, not even for the crown prince of career baseball games, Markus Heinsohn.

I’ve done quite a bit of beta testing over the years and it really is a thankless job. But nothing upsets me more than beta testing processes. Very few developers care what you think during beta tests. They are more interested in making sure that the product works on different types of machines/configurations and/or testing various multiplayer components of the game. And for those of the testers who want a few minutes to actually take a detailed look at the beta product, new versions are released so quickly that keeping up becomes a full time job.

An unpaid full time job.

I think the Kohan 2 beta test ended any possible enjoyment I could get from beta testing. It was evident to me that the game wasn’t very good from the first minute I played it and nothing that happened during the beta made me feel that the developers were listening to folks who were saying, “You know, this game just isn’t fun.” Zero sales later (or close to it), I’m sure the developers were wondering why the game failed so badly. You really didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

Now I don’t know what it’s like to beta test for SI Games and I don’t want to know. So don’t take these comments as an indictment against SI’s beta testing. All I do know is that Chris Johnson will not be beta testing for anyone. Ever. I don’t care who the developer is.

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