[bf1942] v.103 Announcement

[ScratchMonkey]

--On Saturday, July 23, 2005 2:33 PM +0200 Mikael Bååth 
<mikaelbaath at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe we should try to get Ben Smith to join this mailinglist. That
> would be good for EA and good for us.
>
> I have him on MSN.. propably alot of people on this list do too. If he
> could listen to the things said here, he'd propably get pissed about
> some things said, but we could hope he listens easier when he sees how
> many that feels the same about the way patches dont go beta before
> release etc.

Page 5 of the latest announcement has this to say about a closed beta for 
the mod editor:

<http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefield/battlefield2/us/editorial.jsp?src=communityupdate_072105_05>

> We felt the best way to do this was by giving it to some of the actual
> mod teams so they could put it through its paces. The problem was that if
> we released it to all the mod teams, it would be a nightmare trying to
> organize all the data we would get back, so we decided on a very limited
> “Closed Beta” release.
>
> This was done in order to get the editor to the public faster. If you’re
> on a mod team that didn’t get the beta, don't worry, you'll get it soon.
> The selection was intentionally kept very small so we could stay
> organized and focused. Barring a major issue being discovered, the editor
> is now mere days from being released. Not weeks, days!

Gee, I wonder how all those open source projects with a public anonymous 
CVS server do it? The only thing I can think of is that the OSS guys *like* 
what they're working on, while the EA drones won't "stay organized and 
focused" unless you lock them in a basement and keep them starved of any 
possible distractions (like knowledge of the bugs that are making the 
community crazy).

Of course, the small devs handle this by having an army of volunteers 
answering the recurring moronic questions, and selecting the closed beta 
testers from those volunteers who demonstrate the best communication and 
debugging skills.