Train2Game students – at least a few of them are – are likely to involved with the current Battlefield 3 beta, which a runs through to 10^th October.

And while Train2Game students – especially the QA Testers – will understand that beta tests are an important part of game development, there filtering out bugs and tweaking gameplay, it seems gamers in general are less aware of this!

Some have criticised the bugs that have appeared while playing Battlefield, or the fact that’s only one map, but according DICE’s Patrick Liu, it’s because these people don’t get the reasons for an open beta.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding of the term ‘beta test’!” the Battlefield 3 producer told The Guardian.

“We ran the alpha tests with a rush map and we wanted to have some sort of reference so we could compare results – so we needed to have more-or-less the same map.”

“But we do understand the concerns that we didn’t show a conquest map, but we have demoed Caspian Border, and we did run a conquest map as a limited PC-only test.

According to Liu, one of the main reasons for the Battlefield 3 beta test is to make sure the backend systems work when the game is release.

“He just wanted to know it wouldn’t crash and burn at launch” he said.

“It was horrible with Battlefield 1943 – it sold ten times the numbers we thought it would, and it was down for three or four days which is really bad. We don’t want to go through that again.”

As reported by the Train2Game blog, DICE have stated that positive feedback from the open beta is helping them tweak the multiplayer aspect of Battlefield 3.

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on Liu’s comments? Do gamers misunderstand the meaning of a beta test? And have you been testing Battlefield 3?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: The Guardian]