14 DAY TRIAL // Bungie, the developer of the Halo franchise which is now working with publisher Activision Blizzard, has announced that it is recruiting alpha and beta testers from the community to work with the company on the creation of its new gaming project.
The announcement from Bungie says that all fans of its earlier work are encouraged to sign up although not all of them will be chosen for actual alpha and beta work.
The company says that “hundreds of thousands” of players will be assisting the company in the development of its next video game, which is quite a lot even if they plan to have an extended beta phase for their product.
Here are the possible tasks that those sign up might be saddled with: “- Playtests and Usability Testing at Bungie; - Surveys on game playing habits; - Alpha and Beta Testing for our next game.”
Here is the official page which talks about how to get into the alpha and the beta project.
The weird thing is that Bungie has not officially announced what it plans to create next, only saying that it is working on a totally new game engine for it and that it will be released on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the PC.
If an alpha stage really gets going soon with a significant number of gamers from outside the company testing the new engine it means that Bungie is also preparing to make an official announcement about its game, possibly coming in late 2011 or early next year.
If the alpha stage debuts without an announcement expect a lot of leaks and rumors to come out of it.
The Halo universe which Bungie has created has been very successful but it's not clear what the company can do different for its next title in order to recapture its audience and deliver a hit for Activision.