More Work at TimeFire VR

Welcome to another week of my Senior Research Project's blog!

This week I did less independent work and more concentrated projects for TimeFireVR.

Firstly, my company has released their first trailer. I know I did not do the best at explaining what my companies game is, to be honest the entire idea is rather vague to me. But I believe this game will open the door for a new wave of socially interactive games in virtual reality. And doing something this ambitious is a huge risk; however, I appreciate the time and hard work they are putting in to create a polished product. Anyway, here is the link to the trailer, enjoy!

If you are familiar with the game second life, it is similar to that. But the focus seems to be more centered around education.

Coming with the first trailer, typical in the meta of game development, especially with multiplayer games, includes an alpha or beta test for the game to soon follow. This is where my projects became necessary.

But firstly let me explain what an alpha/beta test is. First of an alpha build of a game refers to the earliest playable stage of development for a game. Intuitively, beta is further along the Greek alphabet  and therefore further along the development process, but not quite the final build of the game.

Now that you know what a alpha/beta test is, you would wonder to yourself who would participate in this alpha or beta test. More often than not it is open to consumers for free! So it is a win-win situation. The developers record important information given to them by hopefully thousands of people testing their game. Typically the developers monitor bug crashes, glitches, and whatever flaws in their game that they are looking to correct. All this occurs while your testers get to freely enjoy your game.

However this development scheme is a huge plight to the world of gaming. As I mentioned, most studios allow players to participate in the testing for free. Lately this trend as diverted from its original plan, to provide devs with information. Now studios will charge you a reduced price for the game at an uncompleted state and you have unlimited access to the game. This differs from the previous model, because it would be at no cost but would typically last a a couple weeks. Then it becomes closed, no longer to be accessed until the final build is ready for sale.

This becomes a problem because smaller studios tend to sell their game at a discounted price, and promise to continue development. But a lot of games, for example: DayZ: Standalone earned millions of sales within days of opening the alpha. But the game's lead developer has since left and the games development has run off course. Studios tend to "hype" up their game in hope to attain even more sales, this studio was also of guilty of that. My friends and I were victims of this ploy unfortunately.

Sorry for that brief intermission of my ranting at independent game studios. This blog has become horribly off-topic; however, back to selecting individuals for alpha/beta testing.

My job was to research how to create surveys to determine who should and who should not be participating in the beta. It is determined by a lot of different criteria: technical, gender, age, motivation, individual preferences etc. All in order to find the best possible testers for your game.

On top of this my company was interested in creating a news letter for their game. So they asked me to do some research and give my input on how a newsletter should be formatted and distributed. But most importantly what kind of information is being provided when creating a newsletter. The conclusion of what I learned was that useful information should be presented in the most concise way possible. It is also imperative to remain as friendly and natural when presenting the information.

This week did not have as much to do with my project but I don't mind a change of pace. Plus the research of writing a survey should come in handy. Speaking of surveys...

My on site mentor has been extremely busy this week, considering a recently released first trailer. But hopefully he can get back to me by this weekend.

Thanks for tuning in!

Griffin