No ambulance blogpost today as I indulge in writing about one of the other pleasures in my life on my Mental Kipple blog. Mainly as prevarication against giving my flat a nice tidy up.
An excerpt,
…Traditionally beta-testing has been to release a piece of software to a group of users in order to bash the code around in real situations and to report bugs to the development team. This is done so that the final product is as bug free as possible….
So if the initial few months of a game release are the ‘real’ beta, why have a ‘beta’ phase at all?
Publicity…
If you interested in more serious writing about PC gaming then I suggest you give Rock, Paper, Shotgun a look – superb writing from some of the best in the game, where in a recent post Gillen writes,
Basically, playing a Medic rapidly turns me (and probably you) into a curmudgeonly surgeon who’ll make House look like Bertie Wooster. Because, you get to see people f**k up, just to annoy you.
Which speaks deeply to me.
(Even five years ago it would have been inconceivable to me that I would be writing 1,500 words for *pleasure*)
Just as I commit myself to actually doing something with my evening, Tom strikes again. Damn my weak and feeble mind 🙂
Isn't that “2nd beta” also because real users are often capable of screwing things up in ways that even the most auxilliary member of staff at any IT company would be incapable of doing, though?And/or through ignorance be capable of reporting “errors” that are no such thing, but which actually stem from lack of understanding – which can be remedied by changing the design to make it more idiot-proof?
(I will never forget the day someone called me complaining a site I'm involved with “doesn't work” – the person actually did not know how to vertical scroll with their browser….)
Erm, House is Bertie Wooster
Yep – that's the point, two different characters played by the same actor.
Macbeth meets Captain Picard. I'm a geek.