I wanna play Spore. I don't want to wait.

May 17, 2006 1:53 PM

How can I get a chance to become a free beta tester for Spore? And how much time would I have to commit to it?

I'd rather do this than waste my time on playing Babble or Wikipedia's exceptionally annoying editing politics. I'm an insomniac anyway, I might as well do something interesting.

posted by Kickstart70 to computers & internet (9 comments total)

It's being made by EA, who probably have their own inhouse professional beta-testing squad. You're best bet is to apply to EA. Hope you like long hours!
posted by Mach5 at 2:29 PM on May 17, 2006

the first thing you should know is the following:

companies generally have paid beta testers, and don't always open beta tests to the public unless they have particular community/multiplayer issues they need identified on a large scale quickly. (the exception to this rule is when they want massive word-of-mouth publicity for a soon-to-be-released project.) Spore does not need that kind of publicity just yet, but if they sought it, they would do so only shortly before release, to ensure the best possible product was being played. Spore MAY just need that kind of massive community feedback, but if so it will again be shortly before release, because their issues will likely be technical (how do machines running processor [x] under service patch [y] do with the game?) and/or interface related (how do people feel about the menu interface?) and will ONLY be for pc and possibly mac. no console free beta tests.

IF spore gets a free beta test, and it may not, it will be for an exceptionally short period of time (2 weeks, in all likelihood) and will probably be offered through a service like fileplanet, which has the bandwidth to shrug off 4000 1gig downloads in a day. Fileplanet mostly opens beta tests to subscribers, which involves paying a yearly fee to them for the privilege of access to these tests and also access to their unlimited bandwidth, no-wait file servers.

If it isn't offered through fileplanet, then they will likely offer the test to newsletter subscribers, which you can sign up for on the spore website.

In my opinion, neither of these options is likely. I don't see Spore being publicly tested, frankly. But, you lost nothing but the occasional email annoyance by signing up for the newsletter. I don't know if I'd sign up for fileplanet in anticipation of the possibility of a spore beta test, but if you check the site periodically and see that there's a spore test, you can sign up for fileplanet then and there (a $50 cost, iirc) and test to your heart's content. but again, you'd be paying a rather hefty sum for what will probably be 2 weeks of playing a game you'd have to then go and fully purchase after release. beta tests expire, and your access to the game will evaporate when the testing period is over.

good luck, and I hope it works out for you one way or another.
posted by shmegegge at 2:33 PM on May 17, 2006

oh, and in terms of hour requirements? public beta tests make virtually no demands on the tester, and rely wholly on the goodwill of the occasional tester for feedback. they'd love it if everyone gave quality feedback, but they know that a lot of people simply won't give that much feedback, if any at all, and they account for that when they arrange these things. I've engaged in public beta tests which I never even got to play because of situational nonsense, and nothing bad ever happened to me because of it. these things happen.

if you're asking for a way to work for Will Wright for free at his studio? the only thing I can think of is contacting the company somehow and saying "hi, I'd like to test your games for free for you. how do we get the ball rolling on that?" the likelihood of this working, as near as I can tell, is 0%.
posted by shmegegge at 2:37 PM on May 17, 2006

I am a former betatest administrator for a large game publisher. As such, I am glad shmeggage answered your question accurately so that I don't have to.

Spore is a game that could really use beta testing, since it's extremely dynamic and relies on user content interaction. Chances are they'll probably just work their paid in-house testers to exhaustion rather than take the effort to host a public beta test, though.
posted by Durhey at 2:43 PM on May 17, 2006

My friend and old roommate is a designer at EA-Emeryville. In addition to her primary projects, she's also putting her biology degree to good use coming up with naming nomenclature for Spore body parts. I just IM'ed her about testing positions. Will post here when I get a reply.

Expect a comment similar to those of the above posters. EA-Emeryville will be drawing from their huge internal QA team first.
posted by junesix at 3:02 PM on May 17, 2006

she's also putting her biology degree to good use coming up with naming nomenclature for Spore body parts

I have no idea of Spore-the-game will be a whole lot of fun or not, but I am increasingly excited about Spore-the-thing-to-fiddle-with.
posted by cortex at 3:31 PM on May 17, 2006

Thanks all...since I don't want to switch employment at the moment, it sounds like I'll have to wait just like every other schmoe :-/

Ah well, it was worth a shot. Cheers.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:36 PM on May 17, 2006

Kickstart: Sims 2 publicly beta'd the character creation tool (I think this was to help populate thesims.com or something). It's possible - although extremely unlikely - that the character creation tool for Spore might be publicly released a few weeks prior to the launch in order to help fill up the fauna database that the game will make use of. Other than the release of said tool prior to the game launch in April '07, I'd say there's almost nil chance of an open anything for Spore. Nearly all primarily single-player games are tested in-house with a few family members/close-friends being roped in if they're willing to sign an NDA.

And speaking as someone who has done testing for games professionally - it's really not all that fun. You always end up hating the game by the time it's released because rather than playing it through start to finish 50 times (although you do that too) what you'll mostly be doing is checking out functions X, Y, and Z in about 100 different situations in hopes of finding a bug, which then leads to hours spent trying to replicate said bug. Also you're privy to all the proposed ZOMGSOCOOL features that could have made it in but didn't due to time constraints, so there's always a sense of letdown.

The race for fun in testing a game always finishes this way:

1. Closed beta testing: tight intelligent community.
2. Public release: Hey! All my friends are here!
3. Closed alpha testing: Why in the FUCK is X broken?
4. Inhouse testing: Grueling deathmarch but with people who can at least tell you why X is broken.
5. Open beta testing for an MMO: Slathering idiotic fanboi hordes jizzing themselves and spraying all communication channels with newbie questions Dear God Rotting In Hell let me kill them all.

. . . You're better off where you are (#2), trust me. MMOs are the exception because they need several hundred testers between pre-alpha and public beta, so the trick is to make at least one good friend at every major MMO dev house in order to weasel your way into closed betas and late alphas. You have to spend time cultivating the right friends but the payoff is sweet.
posted by Ryvar at 4:27 PM on May 17, 2006

While there is no listing for Spore, Beta Watcher, gives you an idea of other games you might test.
posted by haqspan at 2:05 PM on May 18, 2006