[PittPanther]

Gal Civ orignated from a very small developer, it didn't get picked up by Strategy First until it gathered steam as I recall.

Plus if you had read any of the other posts, Nervous Nelly, you would see that in an open beta, you, the customer, pay up front, wiping out your first point, your second point, and your third point.

I agree with the guy in front of me, the one big disadvantage would be word of mouth. Hey this game sucks, don't buy it! Well, that would definately hamper things.

As far as pirating goes, what's the difference? You will have already paid your money. If you were going to pirate during an "open beta" then you would pirate after as well, it's really all the same to me.

Sure there are some negatives here, but I don't see any of the ones I'm thinking about in most of the posts here.

If Jim and crew don't want to do it, it's fine, and if you think it's a bad idea, well that's fine too. But please don't tell me how an open beta test would delay anything (at least not in the sence of the open beta of Gal Civ was handled), it only helped development, and that game evolved into one of the better space sims out there because of player input.