Confessions of a Beta Testing Addict

Commenter gametr4x loves hunting for bugs in PC games so much, he’s got multiple email accounts set up so he can apply to beta tests to his heart’s content, but it only took one account to be featured in today’s Speak Up on Kotaku.

Does anybody else here apply to beta programs a lot?

I think I’ve applied to the beta of every single MMO-like game that’s been announced in the past 3 years, but I haven’t been very lucky in getting into any of them until open beta (when everybody gets in pretty much)

I’ve even got several e-mail accounts setup, specifically for these kinds of things. Sometimes I think companies pull what I now call a “Jumpgate Evolution“.

What they basically did was show a bunch of gameplay at a convention, announce beta signups, and…. yeh. Nothing much so far. Been a long time since anything came out of that, but they did get a huge amount of e-mail addresses to spam.

It’s like the term “sign up for beta” has become some kind of free PR-mechanism. I can’t really blame them, but sometimes I think they announce these things just a little too far ahead (as is the case with Jumpgate Evolution, IMHO)

The reason I have several of these e-mail addresses is so I can sign up more than once for each beta. That’s because I have several computers with varying specifications to play on, but in general they are not slow. That’s also a reason I think I might be a little challenged on the accepted side, since I’m not in a risk category hardware-wise.

And of course, I always lie when asked “Are you a member of the game-development community.” But then, who in their right mind, that works in the community, would answer that truthfully?

About Speak Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That’s why we have a forum on Kotaku called Speak Up. That’s the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Every weekday we’ll pull one of the best Speak Up posts we can find and highlight it here.