Rod Fergusson: Players see multiplayer betas as highly polished demos

The studio head of Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition has criticised the industry for ‘twisting’ how players percieve multiplayer betas.

Speaking to Develop’s sister publication MCV, Rod Fergusson said that thanks to the industry’s misuse of the word, when consumers see ‘beta’, they think it means ‘demo’.

He added The Coalition nearly called its multiplayer beta for Gears 4 an alpha to drive home the point that it is not a finished product.

“The industry has taken the word beta and twisted it to mean ‘pre-release demo’,” he said. “The community thinks they should be a highly polished demo. We are really focused on saying we’re pre-alpha right now.

“I even joked that we should call our beta an alpha just so people understand where we are and that we are actually looking for feedback and we’re actually testing systems.”