The title is from my press release announcing that Spandex Force is officially in beta stage now. It’s been noted that this press release seems slightly confused. “Okay, the game is in beta and they [that is, I] would like to hear comments and suggestions what to do before the final release… But the game itself doesn’t mention much about being in beta state, and you can buy the game! What’s up with this?”

Well… I think the terminology has gotten a bit confused, and I’ve been forced to apply the beta label without much thought. First of all, I was only releasing test builds up to 0.4; people tested it and gave feedback. Not much more to that. But after 0.4 I decided to set up the order page, since a few people had expressed interest in purchasing the game. But lo and behold! It appears that when I accepted affiliates for Sheeplings I’d unthinkingly allowed some people to be affiliates for all my games – which meant that Spandex Force became available for them to sell as well!

One thing led to another, and before I knew it I was receiving traffic from a few sites; quite a few downloads in fact. That’s when I decided to release 0.5 – an in-between release that’s fully playable and corrects most issues - and decided to call it the official beta. I didn’t want people to believe that 0.4 or 0.5 was the final version of the game, so I decided to make a press release to state that there will come a newer version later. But of course, the game itself doesn’t care much about what label I’ve put on it – it just happily states its version number.

So I guess people who expected the game to be more opaque about being in “alpha,” “beta” or “final” are a tad confused.

Either way, the game is both in beta and for sale; I don’t see a conflict there. It’s playable and enjoyable to the end as it is, and those who buy the game now get the current full version as well as the final release once it’s done!

Tags: adventure, Games, Indie Games, match-3, puzzle, rpg, Spandex Force, superheroes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Games, Indie Games, Spandex Force. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.