It’s a serious question. What do you think? Seems the custom for the last few years has been to open beta this and that, but I’m old enough to remember it didn’t always use to be like this, and open betas were very, very rare.
The question is twofold; there’s the technical angle and the promotional angle. So, on the technical side, are open betas “better” than closed ones? Do you get better results? I know you naturally get more results, but are they better? Do open betas improve or polish the product better than closed ones?
Then publicity, of course. Yes it’s nice to get many people interested in the game before it starts selling, but do they achieve anything that good marketing (or, hell, even a short demo) can’t do?
Maybe it’s just me and I’m nostalgic like that, but it seems to me in the times of closed betas it wasn’t that we were churning out clunkers (or, rather, we didn’t churn out any more clunkers than we’re churning out now), and people heard about games, got in contact with games and played these games just fine without the need for early access to anything, really.
P.S.: Am I the only human being left that doesn’t give a damn about early open betas, lifetime subs, microtransactions, pay for zone, F2P, refer a friend deals, exclusive items, pre-ordering, collector editions and other aberrations? I can’t be.