Perpetual beta, it changes almost everything
we know about the web. It changes the way we view about software and services,
where development doesn’t stop anymore, it continues following the changes of
times. By ending the release cycle and taking the user input making them a
co-developer in a sense enable the software or service to be updated and
changed to suit the user. This is prevalent everywhere, from our email service
(Google, Yahoo, Hotmail/Microsoft), social networking (Google+, Facebook,
LinkedIn), even video and entertainment (YouTube, Steam, Vimeo). For me the
term itself is strange, because the main part of this isn’t the beta but the
development, changes, update that will span in an indefinite time span. The easier
example of this is Google mail. The way I see it that it will never shed change
its development cycle, the development will continue the way it is. It will
keep changing it will keep evolving, following better design (hopefully) and
trends.
On the other hand in the gaming industry this
concept is taken for several kinds of games, for this post I like to talk about
DOTA 2. Dota 2 or
Defence of the Ancient 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game and it’s highly
popular, but the interesting part of it is the development cycle. It’s never
stop updating the game. Following the change log it dated back to 24 May 2013, this is because the game needs
to balance the characters in the game and fixed the bug on the game. These
changes also take the user input, balancing the variables of the player for
everyone. This show that the game never stop the development cycle it keeps on
changing, fine tuning in the game. This show the usage for perpetual beta,
changing the cycle, not stopping the development prolonging the live of the game.
This show that perpetual beta applies to a
wider range of services and the beta tag does not mean much anymore. It enables
the game to listen to the user base more creating a more immersive and
fine-tuned game.
Sources :
End of the Software Release Cycle
http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4
No comments:
Post a Comment