Sweet mother of... argh, whatever. Why am I keying in on the whole alpha mess here, beyond to get it out of my head and to the people involved in the conversation? The big thing going on seems to just be that whole 'english language' problem we're all sharing here. There's not terribly many words in that particular language that have anything approaching a concrete, singular definition, that isn't used somewhere else to mean something entirely different.
Anyway, I'm just a nobody, really. Not in the game development world. Never will be, especially for anything resembling money. The word alpha has absolutely nothing to do with anything, at all, even remotely concrete to me, a general putzing about game player. If we're getting down to brass tacks, the only solid definition I could give to you would be "more or less means first," possibly followed by "first letter in the greek alphabet," if I dredged my mind a bit. A specific portion of the commercial game development cycle doesn't even appear on the radar.
In as a general game player, completely divorced from the technical aspects of the development process, alpha generally just means
something along the lines* of 'earliest released version of in-development game' -- the concept of big-p Production, as an industry technical term, doesn't even enter the conversation. Development means 'not-finished' mixed with 'still being worked on'. Beta just kinda' means 'mostly done, but still getting there'... providing the game's producer doesn't label it something else entirely.
DF's an alpha for the primary reason the boss Toad calls it an alpha and secondary reason that it's roughly analogous to that state in non-professional game development
as seen by the outsider. Random joe player isn't
wrong to call DF an alpha -- and there's going to be quite a few other joes that would agree with Joe1 when he says that in general conversation. Now, if Joe1 walked up to someone in the industry and starting talking about it, Joe1'd be wrong to use alpha like that,
but in general conversation, the fellow's not. It's a buzzword to label a general concept, not a specific definition, and the big thrust of the argument, that I'm seeing, at least, is just a matter of context.
Appolloin's right, Alpha means what he says it does, in the context he's familiar with it -- and he's not out of bounds, per se, for trying to push for a more stringent definition outside of that context. The folks disagreeing with him are pretty much just
as correct, though, just in a sightly different way, and aren't without commendation for trying to uphold the word's status as a more general use term. It certainly makes it easier to discuss stuff like DF without having to invent new vocabulary every time something outside of the definitional norms shows up, and 'alpha' is general-use enough these days that most people that see it are going to have a rough idea of what the implications are, which is bloody helpful getting everyone on the same boat and working toward a common goal.
There are cases in the english language when both sides can be right and still be wrong, or something like that.
tl;dr version: Apolloin's right when he defines Alpha, and says DF isn't that. The other folks are
also right when they use the word alpha and refer to DF by the term. Lawlenglish, lawlcontext, lawltechnical!terminology.
Finally, just for fun...
No. No. No. If you want to redefine your agreements, then you'd be best labeling them differently. Why cause confusion? You're not working in a completely different farmland, after all. You're also not defining a nation that is even physically near to the first definition. First averages functionality complete, but not vaguely happy complete. Your definition of First Self-sufficient means functionality not complete, content not complete. That's a cold place opposite!
Consider the tone here completely in jest and humor, heh. I'm not poking fun at
you, Apolloin, so much as the English language. I love it, but it can be a bit of a fickle mistress.
The big thing to note with that, though, is that, to the best of my knowledge, most of people you're talking to here
are working in a completely different field, namely game
player, as opposed to developer. The language and both skill and personality sets that implies can be, as we can see in this discussion, rather different.
*The big thing to notice here is that it's not really a solid definition; a vast majority of the english speaking population
doesn't use precise definitions when speaking about bloody close to anything. You only get down to that level within technical fields, 99% (to pull a number out of my ass) of the time, which the DF forums really, really are
not. It's one of the reasons it's really bloody easy to misunderstand things in the language and one of the myriad reasons English gives non-native speaks fits.
Author
Topic: Not Exactly a Loveletter to Fans (Read 15989 times)