Roll Out

Roll out is the most critical phase of development, when all the technologies and assets created are brought together to form a virtual world experience. It formally begins with the open beta (test), but has its roots much earlier in the development process.

Testing takes place all the way through development, of course. Programmers will test individual pieces of code, animators will test animations, even designers will run data through models to ensure that what they think will happen has a good chance of being what will happen after players are let loose in their handsome creation.

When enough of a virtual world is available as an integral environment, a test server can be set up and alpha testing can begin. This is undertaken by the designers, programmers, and artists themselves, looking for bugs mainly in their own areas of responsibility but also reporting anything else they discover that seems Somehow Wrong. Around now, enlightened developers might invite independent design consultants to take a look, but most aren’t enlightened and don’t. Folks, the opinions of knowledgeable people from outside the team who haven’t been living and breathing it for two years are worth having, and worth paying to have. Of course, this does also assume that you’ll listen to what they say rather than simply check the “hire consultant” box on the production schedule then move on.

Alpha testing is also the stage at which trained customer support staff can begin its learning process, subjecting the virtual world to the kind of punishment that real players are likely to mete out as they do so.

QA specialists may be brought in (externally or from elsewhere in the company) to perform platform testing—seeing whether the client runs on a representative variety of home computer configurations—but they won’t hang around afterward as virtual worlds are typically much greater in scope than regular computer games and take longer to play through. Given that customer service representatives need to have an in-depth knowledge of the virtual world anyway, it makes sense to provide them with enough QA training that they can perform this task instead, while building their playing skills.

During alpha testing, anything and everything goes as bugs are found, fixed, and their solutions reintegrated into the whole. Eventually, however (hopefully at a point previously scheduled by the producer), the world is stable enough to allow people into it who are not directly involved in the development process. In other words, players.

Initially, only a few outsiders are allowed into the virtual world. The first ones will be those the developers specifically ask to play, either because they are friends ¹ or because they are influential yet responsible (or sounded that way on the community message boards). A few others will be signed up from a general call for play-testers, so as to disguise the fact that most of their peers get in through the back door. Thus begins beta testing.

At this stage, it’s a closed beta, because the world is invitation-only. As stability increases, player numbers can be gradually increased by letting in more wannabes from the general call (a technique known as ramping). When the barriers are lifted high enough that the testers begin acting like real players, the world is said to be in live beta; this may or may not coincide with the moment the world is officially opened up to all-comers for stress-testing—that is, when it enters open beta. Because this final stage of testing marks the point of no return, this is when the roll out truly begins.

Usually, computer games go into beta testing as late as possible. Virtual worlds, not really being computer games (despite what many of their developers seem to think), go into beta testing as early as possible. This allows for bugs and exploits to be discovered well before paying customers can leave over them, all the while forging strong community bonds between the beta testers. Some of these people may even come up with decent ideas for improvements ².

Roll out ends after the launch, when its legacy is passed to the marketing department (which will have had considerable involvement in it already). Later expansion modules may have their own rollouts, of course, as they do the other phases of development.

To summarize, the aim of the roll out period is to launch a virtual world with:

• A seeded community

• A primed market

• Balance

• No bugs

All but the last of these are possible.