Red 5 Studios recently revealed that Firefall--the dev's upcoming multiplayer, persistent-world shooter--will extend its beta phase to include members of the Firefall community following PAX Prime 2011. For those interested in participating, Red 5 has outlined a few different ways to get into the beta.

According to a blog post on the game's official site, the most obvious way to throw your name into the hat is to head over to the official website, click the "SIGN UP" button at the top of the page, and plug the appropriate information into the screens that follow. Signing up for the beta in this way also automatically creates your Firefall account and adds you to the game's community. Once registered, all you need to do is patiently await your possible invite.

Over the next few months, we will be selecting users from the community to participate in the Firefall beta. To start with, these numbers will be small, but will grow more and more as we seek additional feedback, different computer configurations, and increased load on our game servers.

Red 5 also tells folks to "expect to see Firefall on your favorite gaming websites soon," promising additional contests and giveaways for more beta keys.

Due to the nature of the game's "massive co-operative gameplay" design, the developer has also decided to periodically dole out more beta codes to those already participating so that those players can invite and team up with their friends. The testing and issuing of invites will continue leading up to the game's launch, which Red 5 explains in a bit more detail.

Firefall is a free online service that has already 'launched' and has active users. As such, we don't have an official launch date as you would see with other games or products. In December of this year, we plan to open up the Firefall virtual item store and begin taking micro-transaction payments that will fund the game. This is also the point in time when we would perform our final character wipe to reset all players for the last time.