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[ikachan]

I was just interested to know what game has currently been in or is still in alpha for the longest amount of time. However to classify it must be still in development or have reached beta, so basically it can't be an abandoned game.

Does anyone have any incite on the current world record holder for longest time to be in alpha?

[Mesa]

We (almost) definitely hold a record for the most "complete" alpha.
And funnily enough I don't see people refer to DF as alpha. (not as much as they should, anyway)

[Bandreus]

Well, this is very very hard to answer, mainly because game developers (especially the big corps) don't usually share specifics about when exactly development on a specific game begun.

Also, keep in mind games might be in development for a significant time (years even) well before the alpha stage is hit. Pre-production can last a lot (I'm not considering the usual concept prototypes as a form of alpha here).

As far as world record for longest alpha, I'm clueless. It might very well be DF has it as far as available to the public alphas go. The real problem is alpha versions generally aren't made available to the public at all. There's a trend among indies these days to let people pre-order and hence be able to play alpha versions, but even then that's a very strict minority of the games out there.

In short, chances are we can't really know if DF indeed is the record holder right now, nor will we be able to determine when will it take the record (if it didn't already).

I'm pretty sure DF might be the world record holder as long as publicly available alpha versions go tough. I'm also pretty sure DF won't ever hit the beta stage so I would assume sooner or later DF will break every kind of time-related record about videogame development.

But leaving all of the aforementioned aside (good gamedev practices these days assume you should have the game in a playable form since as soon as possible in the process), if we consider development time instead, we do have some rough lower-bound for how long some of the longest-in-development-history games to date have been.

In that regard, Duke Nukem Forever still is king to the best of my knowledge. Roughly 15 years from when the game's existence was first revealed up to when it was finally released. Keep in mind the game probably was in development well before they first revealed it (hence me calling it a lower-bound).

IIRC, proper development on DF started in 2004. That makes 6 more years for DF to match DNF's development cycle. After that, sky's the limit I suppose?

If you're willing to consider development past alpha/beta stage and want to count variants of Roguelikes as continued development on the original game, things get way messier.

For instance, the original Hack (a Rogue clone) was created in 1982 and a final version was released in 1985 for unix systems. Obviously, development continued, the game was ported all over the place and additions were made. NetHack (which condensed several Hack variants in a unified experience) was released in 1987. The last updated version of NetHack has been released in December 2003. Many NetHack forks are still in active development to these days, with regular updates being released. UnNetHack would be one of those.

TL;DR; we don't know if DF is the record older for longest alpha stage. Chances are it will eventually take the record, although determining when exactly that happens is unlikely.

[Greiger]

Calling something an alpha or a beta or what have you are pretty arbitrary.  Beta implies a more complete game, but I've played alphas that seemed more complete than betas, and even a couple release titles.

So I pretty much think the idea of an alpha or a beta is too arbitrary to be used as any kind of a record. 

Hell, DF feels more like a beta than an alpha to me, but I may just be influenced by all the additional features introduced since I started playing, and not current state of the game.

[falconne]

"Unreal World" (an excellent roguelike iron age survival simulation) was first made publicly available in 1992 and is still in active development (also done by one guy). It's considered as "beta" right now, though such labels don't really mean much. The developer behind it seems to have a similar philosophy to Tarn which probably explains why it's lasted so long.

[postal83]

Duke Nukem Forever?

[Mesa]

Duke Nukem Forever?

An apt subtitle indeed.

[brucemo]

There was a chess program called Pioneer, written by Mikhail Botvinnik, that was under development for at least 25 years, and is not known to have played a complete game, or in fact accomplished anything whatsoever of note. The reason it's worth considering is that its author was world chess champion, and he published several papers on the program and what it was going to be able to do.

I don't think that qualifies as alpha-software, but it was definitely the most amazing piece of vaporware I know of.

After Botvinnik died, his son tried to raise money to continue the project, which would have made it dynastic vaporware.

[fricy]

We (almost) definitely hold a record for the most "complete" alpha.
And funnily enough I don't see people refer to DF as alpha. (not as much as they should, anyway)

I don't consider DF an alpha, not even a beta. The next release (when done) will be an alpha for the duration of the bugfix cycle. When the bugfixes are done and we have a stable version for a year or more I'll call that DF2013 RC. Not a final version of course, but not an alpha either.

Just my 2c.

[Bandreus]

I thought I might as well clarify how to simply distinguish Alpha from Beta development stages.

Alpha: major, planned features are still to be implemented. Focus is definitely not on tweaking, bug fixing, balancing, polishing or UI, although work in these areas can obviously happen if need be.
The game, both in gameplay and codebase, can easily undergo very radical changes multiple times during this stage. This is definitely where DF is at.

Beta: all planned major features all already implemented. Planned minor features might still be missing, but all core systems are pretty much set in stone at this point, only requiring more fine-tuning at worst. Focus is heavy on bug fixing, balancing the game systems, usability testing, core testing, big emphasis on polishing the game up for release, etc. This is where DF will never get to 

I'll also note this distinction rapidly losing meaningfulness under current game-dev standards. Agile development and iterative approaches are the norm today, and games typically undergo several implement-stuff-then-test-and-polish-things-up cycles right from the very first stages in the process.

The whole Alpha/Beta distinction is mainly an heritage of the holder approach which is common in other engineering fields, where you usually do all the big-ass design work first, then go implement stuff and changing things as you go is not really a viable option.

This is also why the standard for numbering in-development versions of a game with the build number is way more common today then the more traditional xx.yy.zz one, although you'll still see a sub-version digit appended to the build number to track bug-fixes and the like.

It's funny because the an increasing number of developers are using Alpha/Beta labels to name their products for marketing reasons.

I.e. you'll come across 'Alpha' version of games which look a whole lot like finished products which only lack content, but are otherwise pretty much complete, implementation-wise (people love getting access to in-development builds and will gladly pay good money for it, usually in the form of a pre-order).

While other times games are labeled as 'Beta', but it's immediately obvious tons of work still needs to be done and the game would likely turn in a completely different beast in due time (this especially seen in browser-based, free to play, pay to win games, as people don't really like spending money on virtual goods if they feel like the game is not mature enough).

When developers these days talk in-development games which are not going to be publicly available, they usually refer to the playable form as 'internal build', 'experimental version' or something along those lines instead.

[fricy]

I thought I might as well clarify how to simply distinguish Alpha from Beta development stages.

Alpha: major, planned features are still to be implemented. Focus is definitely not on tweaking, bug fixing, balancing, polishing or UI, although work in these areas can obviously happen if need be.
The game, both in gameplay and codebase, can easily undergo very radical changes multiple times during this stage. This is definitely where DF is at.

Beta: all planned major features all already implemented. Planned minor features might still be missing, but all core systems are pretty much set in stone at this point, only requiring more fine-tuning at worst. Focus is heavy on bug fixing, balancing the game systems, usability testing, core testing, big emphasis on polishing the game up for release, etc. This is where DF will never get to 

Ok, I get your logic, but how would you categorize the development of Windows NT 3.51 - » XP. Or Photoshop? Or whatever. If we compare the final product to the first stable release we can see that core features are missing, and each new version underwent a radical code change. I'd even risk saying, that the developers had a vision where they wanted to continue development from the very beginning. Sure, a lot of things changed in the process, but the broad direction must have been set. And we don't call NT 3.51 an alpha release, and Win2000 a beta... Ok, we can call Vista an alpha, I don't care.

I see DF development the same way: each development arc produces a new "stable" version. The only difference is that Toady likes to do things his way, and instead of following a strict roadmap he develops parts of the game that grabs his attention. But the process and a final product follows the same logic.
The rest of your post I agree with.

[Spinning Welshman]

I think if we were to try to fit DF into standard game dev logic, we would almost certainly have to regard each major release (and subsequent bug-fixing releases) as separate iterations. As sequels, perhaps, or expansions. Each and every major release has all of the hallmarks of a complete alpha>beta>full release cycle.

[Bandreus]

I think if we were to try to fit DF into standard game dev logic, we would almost certainly have to regard each major release (and subsequent bug-fixing releases) as separate iterations. As sequels, perhaps, or expansions. Each and every major release has all of the hallmarks of a complete alpha>beta>full release cycle.

Well, Tarn himself regards DF as being in its alpha stage still.

I'm not trying to impromptu my own view on things into you, just sharing my take on stuff. Feel free to make your own mind, you're a free being!

Anything regarding DF is certainly going to be hardly defined via usual software/game development standards anyways.

[SirPenguin]

Regardless of the definition of alpha, I'd say DF is at least one of the longest running "incomplete" games that is also available to the public. I think that last part is the most important distinction, given that there could be games kicking around for decades that no non-developer has actually played.