What Is Alpha Anyway?

[Pavel]

I think the difference between an alpha version and an open game in our little community is that in alpha, things can dramatically change with little notice. It’s a chance to see if your theme, policies, or code needs to be rewritten or if things need to be added or changed.

To that end, at least a skeleton of such things should be written out and available for people to play with and test. If you feel the desire or need to develop them in concert with others, have a closed alpha with people whose input you trust rather than a bunch of random schmucks from the internet.

[Roadspike]

I feel like we as a community could use the terms Alpha, Beta, and Gold much more precisely for games, and that it would help people with their expectations quite a bit. My opinions:

Alpha
Core functionality (policies, theme, code) is present, and the purpose of this round of testing is to hammer on that core functionality, discover what’s been missed, and polish it up so that it’s ready for people who aren’t necessarily friends of the game runners. As @Pavel said, this is a time when dramatic changes to core functionality can be expected. I don’t believe that alpha should be focused on RP, unless RP-adjacent systems need testing (story actions, particular parts of theme, etc). There can be RP, because most MU*ers aren’t going to alpha-test a game without RP, but I don’t think it should be the focus. I would prefer to focus testers’ attention on one section of the game at a time, get focused feedback, make changes, and move on.

Beta
This can be opened or closed, but in my opinion, the game should effectively be ready for play. There can still be significant changes, but everything should be in place and ready to be tested. RP should be happening, because Beta should approximate Gold as closely as possible to ensure that everything is tested. I would prefer that while some Beta testers keep focusing on commonly-used functionality, others poke around the corners of code/theme and try to find areas that still need love and attention.

When Staff is happy with the game, either all beta characters should be retired, or any XP/gear/etc gained should be reset. Coming out of Beta (or out of closed Beta and into open Beta at the very least), I believe that no one should have any benefits gained before any player is welcome to join the game and all code is “locked down” in its “final” form.

Gold
I strongly believe that games should actually Go Gold at some point in their lifespan. So many games go into Open Beta and never go beyond that, and I believe that that’s disingenuous. Once Staff is generally happy with the theme files, code, policies, grid, and everything else that goes with a game, they should move out of Beta and into Gold. Does this mean that nothing should change? Certainly not. But it should be the equivalent of patches – little tweaks to make the game play better. But it’s a clear change from “testing functionality” to “playing the game” that’s important, in my mind.

[Pavel]

@Roadspike said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

But it should be the equivalent of patches – little tweaks to make the game play better.

Patches + Expansion Packs, for lack of a better term. Sometimes you’re going to have big changes even once a game goes Gold, because someone brings up something you haven’t thought of and it gains popularity or a need appears where one wasn’t expected before.

But ultimately, yes, once the game is Gold all the stuff that exists is in its expected final form.

[hellfrog]

@Roadspike said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

Gold
I strongly believe that games should actually Go Gold at some point in their lifespan. So many games go into Open Beta and never go beyond that, and I believe that that’s disingenuous.

I mean, what if they don’t get to that point? Should they instead not open? I don’t get this - or specifically, I guess I don’t get the strength of this opinion.

[Third Eye]

@hellfrog
I get it to a degree. I’m not sure I wholly agree with it, but plenty of games open in beta, find out down the line they have fundamentally unbalanced mechanics, and it’s very hard to change things midstream because ‘people will be mad’/reluctance to do things that will fundamentally break established builds or make past RP weird, even if they are ultimately necessary things. Spirit Lake definitely got to a point of this by the end of its life, which existed in permanent beta, though I think we covered over the more stretched elements of the magic system well enough that only staff, not players, knew what its big problems were.

ETA: That said, I think ‘what needs to be done in beta and what should come after beta’ is a harder conversation, because you are dealing with a live game at that point. The nice thing about alpha, whatever it is, is that you can rip it up and throw away elements of it.

[Pavel]

@hellfrog said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

@Roadspike said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

Gold
I strongly believe that games should actually Go Gold at some point in their lifespan. So many games go into Open Beta and never go beyond that, and I believe that that’s disingenuous.

I mean, what if they don’t get to that point? Should they instead not open? I don’t get this - or specifically, I guess I don’t get the strength of this opinion.

I agree that many games don’t get to that point, and I’d change the ‘strongly believe they should Go Gold’ to something more like 'strongly believe they should aim to Go Gold - or otherwise meeting the conditions of having their theme, code, policies, etc set if not in stone then at least something more solid than the ether.

[Faraday]

@Third-Eye Even in the software industry, you’re not going to find a solid consensus on exactly what the difference between Alpha and Beta is, and when Beta should end. Gmail was in “beta” long after it became the de-facto webmail app.

Both mean the thing is “not done”, but even that definition is almost meaningless if you don’t know what the creators think “done” means.

So I think it’s less about the labels themselves and more about each game making it clear what they mean by each label.

[Pavel]

@Faraday Agreed. I think that having these imported labels can border on being unhelpful since they come with a set of expectations - both from staff and players, often expectations that don’t match. So the better choice is opting to explain the situation rather than using a label.

[Faraday]

@Pavel Well you can do both - have the label as a general “game not fully baked” warning and then prominently in the introduction explain what YOU mean by that label.

[Pavel]

@Faraday said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

@Pavel Well you can do both - have the label as a general “game not fully baked” warning and then prominently in the introduction explain what YOU mean by that label.

True, I meant it as a sort of self-check when making a game, more than any policy that must be implemented in all discussions. Start with the description first, then pick the label that fits best. So that way you remember to actually figure out the description, I know I can’t be the only one who sticks with simple labels without taking the time to explain what they actually mean in my context.

[mietze]

As a prospective player I tend to assume the following:

If a game is advertising /here/ or somewhere for alpha, they maybe don’t have enough personal friends and contacts to fill it out with their musher roladex for the testing things out/ finding their pace.

So I’m gentle with my expectations ecause it possibly means they don’t have as much experience or they are dipping back in for awhile. Which might be great or a little rough so I just try to have relatively open ended expectations.

I do not expect fully formed wiki writeups. I dont even expect it from beta considering how many games I have played medium to long term NEVER get their full documentation up in an accessible way.

If a game advertises itself as ready to launch (not alpha/beta) i do expect more documentation, staff planning, ect but again I’ve seen successful (providing regular rp for many people) for long periods of time and never get out of beta probably because people forgot to announce or coding isn’t were runners want it to be, staff had to take time off, ect).

[Third Eye]

@mietze said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

If a game is advertising /here/ or somewhere for alpha, they maybe don’t have enough personal friends and contacts to fill it out with their musher roladex for the testing things out/ finding their pace.

Yeah, I’ll admit, I prefer a pretty ‘closed garden’ for alpha, of hand-picked people who you want to bash against mostly mechanical issues and give feedback on more-or-less written theme/policies that is both relatively open but also…you think they will vibe with the thing you are trying to do, people who don’t vibe with it or have more questionable vibes kind of aren’t the point of it at that level, for me. I think it’s very important in any kind of ‘baby’ testing stage to know who you’re making a game for and tailor it to that audience. If it hits wider, great! Wonderful! That’s for beta! But I don’t want to deal with a lot of ‘this isn’t made for me’ feedback during alpha testing. I probably wouldn’t do a purely public alpha, honestly, tho if it’s worked for people, great.

[KarmaBum]

I really don’t have a horse in this race except to say…

Keep making games.

Open them in alpha. In beta. In gold purple yellow upsidedown whatever makes you feel better, but keep doing it.

Some with amazing fully-fleshed wikis and grids will flop. Some with four rooms and an ugly-ass splash-page will soar.

Make it till you think it’s playable and go from there.

[Roadspike]

@hellfrog I don’t have a problem if there are games that never make it out of Beta (or Alpha). I just think that if your game is in a state where you think it’s more or less ready and no major changes are going to be made, you should acknowledge that. It would be nice to know that I’m playing a game that’s in its “final form” and that my focus should be on playing, not testing.

[Third Eye]

@Roadspike I DEFINITELY think the ‘beta’ tag is something we over-used in SL (and are avoiding over-using in the same way in Shattered in terms of having a hard ‘final form’ date). I AM curious if there are games that have achieved a better emergence from it than ‘we had a whole other previous-gen game we learned from’ lol.

[Pavel]

@Third-Eye said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

@Roadspike I DEFINITELY think the ‘beta’ tag is something we over-used in SL (and are avoiding over-using in the same way in Shattered in terms of having a hard ‘final form’ date). I AM curious if there are games that have achieved a better emergence from it than ‘we had a whole other previous-gen game we learned from’ lol.

I’m more curious if any game has ever actually considered itself “feature complete.” Most games I’ve played on in the last… five years or so are constant works in progress. Which is fine, I’m just wondering if we should discard the idea of a “final version” entirely.

[mietze]

@Third-Eye I think though that not everyone has a wide network of people. Not just friends and people you like, but enough people who are also willing to proofread, or try out the theme in the genre that they like and say “hmm, i think maybe this and this is confusing”. Or people who you trust who have no familiar with the theme at all and who either can give you the big thumbs up because of that, or the WTF is this even if everything is confusing.

I think especially with Ares, the circle of people who can run games has expanded. I’m so grateful for that. I didn’t see everything that transpired on the thread that inspired this conversation (just saw the first few posts, and looked at the link!). I’ll be honest, to me, the site seemed fine. On par with a lot of other games I’ve seen do a soft open. I don’t know the source material at all since I don’t watch TV or movies much these days, so maybe that’s why I think some of the criticism I did see briefly (I was running out the door for RL shortly after opening their link) seemed a little…unnecessary to me, especially in the ad section.

It’s hard. As a community our habits are what they are. And jumping in to critique ideas for new games is a very big habit. As is, sometimes the destructive rush to a new game and the fallout from that. It doesn’t always happen but it’s a pattern. I wish we had a little more grace to new things. I hope the answer isn’t “nobody should post here about seeking people to come check things out and play in alpha.”

[Pavel]

@mietze said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

especially in the ad section.

Yeah, that was definitely a fail on the admin end. The critique was a little barbed for the ad section, but it was on us to ensure the discussion was split.

[Faraday]

@Pavel said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

Which is fine, I’m just wondering if we should discard the idea of a “final version” entirely.

Most software changes over time. “Beta” traditionally hasn’t reflected finality so much as stability. There can always be a new patch, upgrade, or DLC, but at least the features you’ve got now can be expected to work.

How that translates to non-software things like story and rules is interesting though.

[Pavel]

@Faraday said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

Most software changes over time. “Beta” traditionally hasn’t reflected finality so much as stability.

I know that. You know that. But in general parlance, an alpha or beta build is ‘not finished yet’, and a release is ‘finished.’ Accurate or not, that’s where many folk will come from with the labels.