I’m just going to come out and say it right now. Every single game under development needs to have a beta program. Heck, every game should probably have an alpha program. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which says that players will be less likely to buy a game if they participate in a beta or alpha, as they won’t want to spend money on a game that was, at one point, free. However, the benefits of having such a program largely outweigh the drawbacks.
Street Fighter V was the latest game to announce that it will have a beta program, which will be the first time that the Street Fighter series has ever let the general public play with the game prior to an official release outside of location tests.
While some people have looked at this as weird, fighting game betas have had a proven track record of success. Just look at Skullgirls and its Endless Beta program. The development team is able to make changes to the game on the fly and upload them to Steam on a pretty much daily basis. If a player finds something that is problematic, the development team can alter it with very little problem. Similarly, if a character is falling behind in the tier list, the development team can tweak their moves around, giving them damage and speed, and even giving them entirely new moves to play around with, until they find a move set that works. For example, just recently their newest character Robo Fortune had an air dash replaced with a double jump.
Now this same level of balancing will be added to Street Fighter V . As players try the game out, Capcom can tweak anything they find to be problematic, and heck, players are already finding things! Recently, in an exhibition match featuring Gamerbee and Daigo Umehara, two of the best Street Fighter players in the world, Bee decided to sit back and throw double fireballs with Chun-Li over and over and over again, and sure enough, Ryu was not able to close the distance. It looked like something more out of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 than Street Fighter .
The Street Fighter community went absolutely nuts after seeing this. They started flying off the handle saying that the game would be too wacky for their tastes. They said that it would come down to a slow projectile war rather than a technical in your face battle. Heck, some people were saying that the game was dead to them, and we haven’t even seen it hit consoles yet.
That’s why beta programs are the saving grace for fighting games and for Street Fighter V . Right now, Chun-Li’s fireball spam probably won’t stay in the game. Why? Because some beta tester will look at it, go “nope,” and send in a complaint to Capcom. Heck, if the response from this one video means anything, multiple people will send complaints to Capcom. Then Capcom will change the game so that the projectile spam won’t be in it anymore.
So cool your jets, and if you plan on picking up Street Fighter V , you might as well pre-order it so you can be part of the beta and tell Capcom about all the things you don’t like.