I love getting in beta tests for games. Certainly a lot of the appeal is just playing a game for free before anyone else (although I do try to be diligent about bug reporting), but it also inflames my blogger senses. A good or bad beta has me itching to share my thoughts, post screenshot galleries, and make walkthrough videos.
Itching to do so, that is, before I read the NDA. Oh cruel non-disclosure agreement, why do you thwart me so? It makes me crazy sometimes that I have all this neat game information and I just have to sit on it.
I understand why beta tests come with NDAs of course, although I think companies can be a bit overprotective. You don’t want half-formed features getting out into public knowledge and causing undue anxiety with potential players, or bad reviews to hit before you’ve even finished the game, or maybe you just want to closely control the Public Relations process.
And some agreements are of course better than others. I still am not legally allowed to publish screenshots from the press beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 even though the game is out now and there really haven’t been any dramatic changes to the look of the game since beta. A few months ago I was in The Secret World closed beta under the NDA stipulation that I tell no one that there even was such a thing going on (now I’ve told you all! gasp!), and yet they occasionally sent me extra keys to pass on to friends. That lead to imagining some amusing conversations: “Here, take this key.” “Oh. What’s it for?” “… I can’t say and the beta may not even exist.”
And of course last weekend I had my first look at Storm Legion, RIFT’s upcoming beta, and with the release date just slightly over a month away it’s so sad that I am legally obligated to not tell you all how awesome it was. Well, okay.. I can tell you that it was awesome, but not WHY.
In fact I spent six hours yesterday going from absolutely no knowledge of video editing to turning my 22 minutes of meandering Storm Legion footage into 10 minutes of focused commentary on the new zones and questing mechanics. Six hours (I do so love a good make-work project) and I can’t show anyone yet! Arrgh, NDA!
Like I said, I understand why beta test NDAs exist, but it would be nice to have a little more wiggle room for smaller market bloggers, podcasters, and video makers particularly when a game is six weeks away or less. Help us help you, game industry. Also, send me more beta invites. *cough*
Herding Cats is the blog of Liore, known in the real world as Jessica Cook. She writes mostly about MMOs and RPGs, and believes in 
So much this. I decided to no longer participate in any beta tests because of my experience in a closed test. For me, it’s not fun if I don’t even get to talk about it. I was in the beta of a game where I can’t even tell you that it existed, and I still want to talk about that so badly. Hint hint, it’s a game I decided not to play. Alas.
If I wasn’t playing WoW so much these days, I would be seriously tempted by Storm Legion.
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A common joke goes, “NDAs are how the game industry says ‘hello’.”
NDAs absolutely have their place. I’m working on a project right now that’s under heavy NDA. This makes sense, because it’s still many months from release and they’re trying to keep the info very secret, even from other people within the same company. An NDA keeps their secrets safe.
But, I think NDAs are bullshit for beta testers. With a month left to go, they aren’t going to majorly change how the game plays in a fundamental way. In the case of RIFT Storm Legions, they’ve announced several major features. Yeah, there are a few things that outsiders probably don’t know, but they’re few and far between.
Honestly? The real reason why you’re under NDA is because this is the best way to ensure exclusives to the big news sites. If a game wants to announce some big new feature, it’s better to give an “exclusive” to a large site who will get big hits when the news spreads. (Of course, there’s a wink and a nod that the exclusive will be effusively positive, and the formal preview will be glowing as well in order to ensure that future exclusives keep flowing to the site. Games “journalism” is pretty horrifically dysfunctional.) A small site posting unannounced info would potentially get a LOT of attention, and better to give that attention to a large site that can pay back that favor later.
More recently it seems that companies are enforcing NDAs far past when it makes sense. To me, this shows a lack of faith in their product, or a lack of faith in the community. Even half-formed opinions would be glowing if there were enough potential in the beta for the fans (and most people in a beta for an expansion will be fans) to be excited.
So, yeah, as a developer I know why there are NDAs for beta testers. And it’s more than just the game company wanting to prevent half-formed opinions. I don’t like it as it perpetuates a broken system.
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“To me, this shows a lack of faith in their product, or a lack of faith in the community.” This is exactly what it seems like to me. Look, I get that exclusive releases in not-quite-spoken return for good reviews is something that companies live and die by, but the fact that it appears to be the default for every game is completely ridiculous. I can’t imagine that there would be any better advertising than the word-of-mouth explosion of praise that can come out of your community once they see what are awesome new features in a game. And if they aren’t awesome new features? Then maybe they ought to be.
Bad word of mouth is going to spread anyway, and stop people from picking up games or expansions or whatever. But having “Live Reveals” [i]after[/i] a large portion of the interested community has had a chance to play with those changes seems… counterproductive.
So does a restrictive NDA on a game like Hawken or Forge, which were both doing live public playtests at PAX – only to go back behind the NDA wall and kill any momentum that they could have possibly generated. It just seems like a better plan is to wait for your wide-ranging betas until such a point where you are ready to talk about them. Nominally, the purpose is to address feedback and issues, isn’t it?
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I absolutely agree. The restrictive NDA for something like, say, SWTOR made sense, because “spoilers” for such a story-based game *could* actually ruin things. (Although it was extremely annoying that they then lifted the NDA for big sites while explicitly still enforcing it for the blogging masses — but then, Bioware mishandled the SWTOR community from day one, and that’s a different issue.)
But the RIFT Storm Legion beta? The confidentiality clauses in the NDA defined the existence and terms of the NDA itself as being confidential information. That’s just ridiculously overprotective, especially for a game that’s due to come out in a month. At this point, blogger buzz would be doing them favours, not harm.
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Oh, are we not even supposed to admit to a beta for Storm Legion? a) Ooops and b) Whatever.
And yeah, I’m certainly not against companies keeping some surprises in their work for the players or really many of the reasons people have NDAs, but I think we’re getting a little excessive now and I don’t like seeing companies play favorites to the detriment of the little guys.