Gamers "misunderstanding the term 'beta test'": DICE

DICE's Patrick Liu has come back at those criticising the open beta of Battlefield 3, saying it's "misunderstanding" the meaning of the concept of a beta test.

EA opened up the Battlefield 3 beta last week to PS3, 360 and PC, but has been criticised from some corners because of it coming with some bugs.

"Yeah, I think there's been a misunderstanding of the term 'beta test'," Liu told The Guardian.

"We ran the alpha tests with a rush map and we wanted to have some sort of reference so we could compare results – so we needed to have more-or-less the same map. But we do understand the concerns that we didn't show a conquest map, but we have demoed Caspian Border, and we did run a conquest map as a limited PC-only test."

The beta, according to the game's producer, is more aimed at having the online backend ready and able for the end of the month, having seen heavy launches with the releases of Battlefield 1943 in 2009 and Bad Company 2 last year.

"Yeah, we just wanted to know it wouldn't crash and burn at launch," he said.

"It was horrible with Battlefield 1943 – it sold ten times the numbers we thought it would, and it was down for three or four days which is really bad. We don't want to go through that again."

As for the future of spin-off series Bad Company, Liu played coy.

"Well, we haven't killed Bad Company! But we can only make so many games. Be patient – there might be something else coming up…"

Battlefield 3 launches on October 25 in the US and October 28 in the uK for PS3, 360 and PC.