Raising cash idea !!!

[Daffyflyer]

Another way of doing things would be to release few milestones along the way, where each one of them has undergone real beta testing prior to its release. In that way people that have preordered can take a look already, at a rather polished part of the product they will get once it's completed.

Yes, THAT is what we're planning but I possibly didn't explain very well!

[Punkal]

I understand why you would do that, you will scare off some people with a buggy game and have them saying the game is no good potentially scaring off other potential buyers even though they have been playing a beta and it's written in bold for everyone to see "THIS IS A BETA RELEASE THERE WILL BE BUGS PLEASE REPORT BUGS SO WE CAN FIX THEM", people are stupid and a stupid will find it's way into pre-order...

Giving the pre-orders a polished portion of the games is a very good idea

[Leafy]

Nah, beta testing will go on like ever, its not like we're going to make people pay for the privilege of playing a buggy game and helping us fix it!

Why? Thats what minecraft did and it worked out alright for them, heck I payed for minecraft back when it was still in alpha, because everyone else as school was. You get that out like that and get it going with some seed people (for free maybe) at some engineering schools (like mine maybe) and it'll take off like wild wire at 10 USD a pop.

[PhillipM]

Yup, worked for Minecraft, and as above, I payed for it in alpha and am quite happy.
However, you do need to got to the point where there's a specific set of goals and timescales for the finished release I suppose.

[Daffyflyer]

Why? Thats what minecraft did and it worked out alright for them, heck I payed for minecraft back when it was still in alpha, because everyone else as school was.

The idea is more that we'll make part of the game, give it to the beta testers to test, once we know it all works how it should and doesn't crash or anything, we then release it to the pre-order guys.

Whilst we may release some stuff that still needs a bit of adjustment to the preorder guys, we want to use the beta testers to make sure its not actually broken before we let them have it.

[Killrob]

Hrmm hrmm... this is a topic that seems to suffer from misconceptions.

Many people mistake "the beta phase" (or alpha for that matter) for some kind of demo of a game which may not be exactly perfect and/or completed just yet... but otherwise fully playable and thus: Fun. This is just not the case: a real beta is NO FUN, at all. And why would you want to give your paying customers something that is NOT FUN? With this statement put out here, let's look at where this general misconception comes from.

The Minecraft terminology it is very misleading! I've also played it from back when it still sold for 5€ or something and I've never ever seen any obvious bug in this still incomplete game... this has nothing to do with a "beta" at all: A beta is a feature complete (!) but buggy/imbalanced version of whatever is currently beta-tested. What Minecraft really went for is already beta-tested and polished milestones that are released along the road of development, technically this has nothing to do with a "beta". What Daffy and Zeussy want to do is very similar: release building-stones of the final game that have undergone some polish and testing already, something you can give to your customers without having them vomit all over the keyboard after the 5th exception crashing the game within 30 minutes.

Automation's structure is much different than that of Minecraft too: while Minecraft has a big foundation in it's 3D world, and all other game elements neatly fit into the already existing world, Automation seems much more modular. The engine designer is almost a stand-alone program that interfaces with the other parts of the game, the same thing is true for the platform designer and the car designer. This is comparable with the world-simulator, and the world-generator, respectively in Minecraft - two more or less unrelated things that interface with each other.

The milestones that are supposed to be released along the road of development of Automation may have imbalances and minor bugs. Also parts of these milestones may undergo changes later on once new building blocks are added on top or fill the missing gaps, some interface polish or reworking is common in these phases too. This is something customers can and will accept... a program that just oozes bugs (a real beta) will never be accepted, no matter how large your disclaimer on the splash-screen might be.

Technically Automation is not in beta phase right now, and not even in alpha phase (Zeussy and Daffy misuse this terminology the same way everyone seems to do these days). On the other hand what is in alpha phase is the engine designer (missing the aspiration tab to actually enter a real beta phase), the platform designer, as well as the car designer.

I hope this gives a different perspective on things and clears up stuff

[Daffyflyer]

^ Exactly what Killrob says above

[nortala]

I'll also second (or third) what Killrob said. We use the term "beta test" because most people understand the term the way we mean it, even though that's not technically correct.

I work in games development professionally, and a sure way to make game devs facepalm is to start talking about how awesome a job games testing would be. Because people who say that think games testing is like using "beta" products like minecraft, or Google+, or the public betas you see for other games. It really isn't. All the really horrible stuff has already been weeded out by the actual testers at that point.

The people testing Automation are actual testers, doing the job that the QA department would do at a bigger game studio, not the one that participants of an open beta do. The day the first Automation build was given to the testers, everyone running XP with an NVidia card got a blue screen of death. That can ruin your day, depending what else you had running, and is NOT something you want going to paying customers, no matter how incomplete your disclaimer says the game is.

The testers we have right now are doing us a favour, not just getting the game early. It would be dangerous to confuse that with any kind of pre-order arrangement.

I hope that all made sense

[Killrob]

It does indeed make sense and adds some more Automation specific examples to what I said - thanks for that!

[machalel]

you can't trick me! you guys just want to keep all that automation goodness to yourself!

Just kidding... yeah, I understand it's not exactly the same as Minecraft etc, i've had some good & bad experiences with Betas as well