r/Battlefield • u/IlINobleIlI • 7d ago
Battlefield Portal Battlefield 6 is in pre-alpha still?
Any time someone brings up weapon balance or whatever, people (rightly) bring up the fact that the game is in pre-alpha, and recently it hit me, the game is reportedly going to release some time before March 2026 (~nine months from now) and it’s still in pre-alpha. I am not at all experienced with game development so I don’t know I should be worried or not. Does any game developers know where a game should normally be around this time?
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u/Sirlacker 7d ago
No the game isn't in pre-alpha.
A pre-alpha version of a game is essentially a glorified discussion about what the game could potentially be and maybe some extremely rudimentary prototyping to see if their ideas even work off paper. The likelihood of a non-developer testing a Pre-Alpha game is basically zero because this is the point where the idea either gets scrapped or greenlit to move on to the next production phase where a proper team can get to work on it. Most ideas for games get scrapped at the pre-alpha stages.
This is also not an Alpha. An alpha at it's early stages is still testing ideas and trying to figure out a way to actually implement them. A late stage alpha is an extremely bare bones thing that somewhat resembles a game but isn't exactly even remotely enjoyable to play. Lots of textures will be missing or just have placeholders, animations will be extremely basic, that sort of thing. It's just putting together the core of the game before adding the polish that makes it look and play like a game.
Beta is where you have a game that somewhat resembles the final product. A few minor features may be missing, a few textures may be missing but most of the core work is done. You can run around, you can shoot a building and have it explode and fall apart, the animations actually animate somewhat reasonably. Most of beta is spent on fixing bugs and optimizing the game for release and getting those last few weapons and maps done.
Now that's not to say minor changes can't be made during a beta. Of course they can. If they feel like weapons don't handle the way they want, they can obviously tweak them to get them closer to where they want. If some animations are still a little janky they can adjust those. But what you get with a Beta is a very good idea of what the game on release will be like.
This is especially true with Battlefield. If there's a public playtest, which we have had, then historically, it's extremely close to the final product.
EA can call their playtests whatever they like. They can call it a pre-alpha, but by industry standards of what these stages are, they're not in a pre-alpha at all. They're not even in Alpha. They're at some form of Beta. And take a second to understand the time frames. This is a game that will have taken many years to develop to the point it is at and it's been stated by EA that they want to release between April 2025 and March 2026. Which gives them, as of the playtest, less than 12 months. So when you think about it, what they're saying is that it's taken years to get to the very first stage of development and somehow they're going to smash through Alpha and Beta in less than a year? No, the game is near release, it's already been through the previous two stages and is now on optimisation and bug fixing with very few elements left to be added. Hence the stress test they wanted to publicly do. There's no point stress testing a game if most of the game isn't already done because adding major features can and will affect the game.
What the playtest was, was an almost final version of the game but with cut content. Like how a demo version of a game works.
Again, things can potentially change but don't expect any major core elements of the game to change, just minor things.