What if beta was released too soon?

not as many though

 

I hope they leave the naked npcs for beta. And make them just twitch in place.

 

It's a beta. They are unfinished products by definition.
Whenever they make a beta, it will always be too soon because betas can only come before the actual game release.

LE REACTION IMAGE FTW LEL EX DEE

 

We'd all be doomed!

 

It won't be too soon unless there are crash bugs and such making it unplayable.

 

Filthy casual Reddit user, don't touch me, I come from the mighty and superior 4chan!

 

the world would end obviously everyone panic

 

Well I find this refreshing seeing as usually it's the opposite topic. Honestly I doubt the starbound team would release it to early and even then it's beta not a full release demo.

 

The real trouble with releasing the beta too soon is a matter of first impressions. The game needs to "wow" people when the beta comes out or it won't do as well as it should. Even though people shouldn't treat the beta as a finished product, to a great extent most will.

 

I find it disturbing that people would not understand beta is not a full product.

 

Lets Ask The What If Machine!

 

Further, that they will probably lose their beta characters and gear.

 

play it all day and night

 

no we get it you do not the alpha is not a full game the beta is almost full if you have been here for the past week or 2 you would see there is not enough for a beta only an alpha the beta is not almost nothing is it almost finished if it was released now it would be an alpha there is a requirement of content for it to be considered an beta and right now it does not meet that at all (do not ask me the specific amount of content required) however if you said alpha is not a full product i would agree with you

 

The fact is there is no real industry standard for what qualifies the difference between alpha and beta. It's a thin line and I honestly would not care if it's not fully ready I would not mind getting a hang of the controls and the feel of it.

 

you can only make a first impression ONCE... so when they release a beta is better be good if you want word to word spread out that the game is good.. so dont release to soon

 

you do not get what i just said i just said the line between beta and alpha is a brick wall behind a brick wall what you want is the alpha it is not close to the beta stage at all and i think if people understood that it is an alpha they would not get mad where as a beta they would think its almost completed and get really mad and think it was a waste of money to pre order it

 

Games like Terraria and Minecraft were total unknowns when they were in their early stages. Making those games open to the public during their early development stages only increased hype that wasn't there before.

Starbound is an altogether different sort of beast. The fact that Terraria is famous is making Starbound famous. Tiy announced the game the moment he left the Terraria team. I understand that popular YouTube people are already expecting to do videos on it. How hyped are you for this game? Yet none of us know exactly what we'll experience when we finally play it. Those expectations, my oh my.

Think about other games that had high degrees of expectation surrounding them, yet they were released before they were truly feature complete. Almost every time, it ended in disaster. Duke Nukem Forever, Omerta, the list goes on. Disappointment with incomplete features or incomplete game mechanics led to bad reviews, bad word-of-mouth talk passing around among customers. Disaster.

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. That's a very old saying. The video game industry is a great example. People know games can be patched, yet it doesn't stop them from burying a game and it's developer if a pre-hyped game fails to meet expectations on the exact day that it's released.

None of this is new, nor is it a mystery. Look up Atari and the Pac-Man disaster if the 80s. Yet, here we sit in 2013, and I'm sure most of us can name at least one game that was rushed out too early. That's humanity for you, though. Learn, yet not learn.

I do not pre-order games. Yet, here I sit, having pre-ordered Starbound. The fact that the dev team is showing some common sense in areas that even AAA companies tend to fail at is what finally persuaded me. Sure, I'd like the game now if it were possible. But, I can understand why they want to make sure Starbound delivers a good experience before anyone touches it.

 

A beta isn't a finished game anyway, so I don't see how it can be released too soon.

If the full game was released too soon though, I'd blame the community.
Because most of this place has grossly unrealistic expectations.