I remember the days of demos on the speccy – I must have spent hours playing the Back to the Future III and switchblade demos that came with Your Sinclair (ah the memories). These days I don’t d/l a huge number of demos – Arkham asylum was one that convinced me to buy the game, whereas the Ghostbusters demo put me off what was until that point a sure fire purchase. The problem is that a demo seldom gives a real idea of the finished product – fo example, the demo of Burnout Paradise was awful, but the game is pretty good. Similarly, I am told that the online demo of Bad Company was pants on toast, yet I couldn’t even begin to count the hours of life that me and my online gaming buddies have lost to that game.

Fab Article tho dood – very thought provoking

Settlers was one of my all time favourite games for the Amiga. I absolutely adored the opening sequence and the music still makes me mist up with nostalgia

I think the worst beta I was ever involved in was The Matrix Online. It was also one of the best Beta’s I was ever involved in too. I may just save that story for a rainy day though

I also remember the wily newsagents keeping the disks behind the counter on their VIP shelf of doom…many a time I have come out of the shop with a bag of Space Raiders and my precious (and expensive – yeah you Amiga Format/Amiga Power/PC Gamer/etc. ad nauseum) magazine, only to realise that I hadn’t asked the dood for the disks and was either too shy or too sure he would tell me to pull the other one if I went back in to request my rightful property once I had left the shop.

I used to play demos a lot, falling in love with games such as Worms and Commandos from their demos. I have never been involved with Betas, but it sounds like just one more marketing gimmick now which is a shame. The ones that aren’t will always be bogged down (if they are too public) with a lot of demanding freeloading whiners wanting the earth for precisely nothing while contributing nothing constructive. it is a wonder that any game makes it through the process now.

Nice stuff.

It’s really something that’s starting to bug me in the industry. I don’t mind developers outsourcing testing to a dedicated following, but the Mass Beta really is nothing more than a buggy demo that just encourages the worst out of the demanding gamer.

(@justbiglee -Yes you did and the FFVII Platinum Version came with a FFVIII preview disc with a few cut scenes and concept art)

(@Kat -I very rarely play them, I rarely buy a magazine that still runs demoes either. GamesTM often points out something to keep an eye on, but even then I wait till I’ve heard back from trusted friends as to wether or not its something I’d enjoy. I don’t find that Demo’s represent games too well though and for the PC Gamer, they just become a drain on your WoW Ping )

(@Ben -ST:O has a good feel to it when your playing with friends, it’s a tad too hand holding for me though and doesn’t really let you just take off and do as you please. The whole ‘Press F to..’ feature is good in places, but it takes alot of the control out of your hands and I think thats a bit of a killjoy.)

@Mark -I’m the opposite, can’t stay away from new software but don’t go anywhere near the hardware till I’m confident it’s not going to blow up on me )

I’m the same with operating systems though – I used Win 95 right up until Win 98 SE came out and only then did I upgrade to Win 98 SE. I avoided all other operating systems in between until Win XP Pro was stable enough for me to take the leap. I’ve only just upgraded to Win 7 and am loving it… although I’m not sure I’d be able to say that if I’d been an early adopter.

Funny though, because I’m only that way with software. With hardware, I’m very much the early adopter and want to get in there as soon as possible so I can astound myself with whatever new fangled magic things the electronics companies choose to entice us with. The biggest mistake, however, was jumping on board with a very early Philips DVD+R set top box which would have write (and read!) failures quite regularly. I had so many replacement units, I wouldn’t even guess at the number, but eventually Comet refused to replace it again and gave me £500 of vouchers instead so I bought my first XBox, extra controllers, loads of games… and became a console gamer for the first time since my old Colecovision got trampled on by Donkey Kong. Bastard.

So no… I don’t envy you beta folks. I’ll wait until the game is classed as “retro” so I know it won’t break on me

I’ve taken part in so many beta tests I dare not list it.

Recently tried the Star Trek beta myself and quite enjoyed it, there are a few things lacking (which will no doubt be patched in later on) but I really do like the sci-fi setting and the space combat is good fun.

My very first beta test involved downloading a 2.4Gb file on my 56kb/s modem, it took days to do and even corrupted the first time round, today I moan if my connection drops below 7mb/s.