Live-Service Mindset Distracts from the Essentials

In order to build context for my perspective, I need to paint a picture of modern day expectation and addiction. We live in an era of live-service mentality (if you’re a gamer, you’re probably quite aware of this trend). In order for people to stay engaged and ‘happy’ with the game they are playing (mostly online multiplayer, but single player games aren’t fully omitted), they need an infusion of new content to keep them hooked.

Hell, look at Call of Duty — Not only do they have season passes going pretty much the whole cycle of a game, but the past few years they have had ‘season x re-loaded’, adding even more ‘fresh’ content to the season that is already a timed value-add to the base game. The base game (ideally complete and feature-full) isn’t enough. A brand new game could be considered dead or dying because it isn’t receiving updates and new content.

I could dive deeper into the video game analogy, but that is a tangent all on its own. Bringing this back to Arc, I keep seeing people saying RIP to the browser when it is still feature-rich, optimized and very much online. When I first heard the news of TBC’s new browser they’re building called Dia, my thoughts were not dissimilar to what I’ve been seeing said online. They never said support for Arc is ending or that it was being shut down completely. Rather, what they did was focus on introducing Dia — the internet did the rest.

Jumping on a Lame Bandwagon (and Quickly Hopping Off)

I initially had that pang of fear and disappointment as I was swept up in the sensationalism of it all. I love Arc and it’s been my main browser for almost two years now. I’d hate to see it go after taking the time to transfer over from being a Chrome user. Would they really just drop it for a fresh new idea because they got bored of Arc or it wasn’t as user friendly for the masses?

Here’s a quick pause to remind you that the company that built Arc and now building Dia is called The Browser Company… so maybe, just maybe, them having two browsers isn’t such an outlandish idea?!

In a tweet from Josh Miller, TBC’s CEO, he clearly stated,
“Arc isn’t going anywhere.”

Now if that isn’t confirmation that Arc isn’t dead, then what is? Well, it’s less about if it’s actually still up and operating and more about its development — many are under the impression that if Arc isn’t receiving somewhat consistent feature drops then it’s as good as dead. Ugh.

Here’s the live-service mentality at play. I’ll say it right now; this mentality is destructive and does not aid in creating the optimal piece of software. There’s something to be said about “completed software” and the functionality in familiarity. This consideration was inspired by this post from @entrpswn on Twitter on this topic — we’ll come back to this in a later post to go more in-depth (or else this blog might turn into a novel 😆).

Understanding What Arc Is

Why do people constantly want new features? Is Arc really still lacking in so many ways that they feel it needs more, more, more? In the almost two years of using the browser, I’ve seen some great features added to Arc. Page summary upon link hover? Neat! Arc on Windows natively built in Swift? Whoa. Cross-platform sync? That was a big win. But to be honest, outside of bigger milestones and some key feature-adds, I don’t remember what else was added to the browser.

My initial experience with Arc was solid, and I was most interested in trying it because of the picture-in-picture playback feature. After further optimization and a couple new features, my core experience became so intuitive and streamlined that I didn’t have any pressing desire for new features or major changes. My needs for a smooth browser experience were all met.

Not only did the Arc team listen closely to community feedback for building new features, they also identified some features that were out of scope or under-utilized on the platform and retired them. It’s quite rare to hear about a company removing features, so seeing this truly showed how laser focused TBC has been on crafting Arc to be the best it can be. And to that point, maybe there is an end destination, at least for the time being. And that is something I am ok with.

The Future isn’t Exciting (for now), but it’s Stable

I’m deciding to wind down this post instead of running on forever (maybe next month’s post about completed softwares will be lengthy). But I feel like I’ve made my point well enough for now. Arc might not be getting any shiny new bells or whistles any time soon, but that is perfectly fine. It’s getting it’s Chromium and security updates to keep it working well — Arc is still my daily driver so I’m happy to see it “keeping on keeping”.

Another aspect of why I think this time away from “evolving” Arc is a good thing is for the team to have space from the product. Even with the incredible ingenuity and passion the team at The Browser Company has shown, constantly iterating on the same thing for so long has potential to develop a sense of tunnel vision, hindering them from thinking bigger, wider, differently about Arc. I know if I’m working on a project too long, I start to lose focus of the big picture or lose focus or understanding of what I’m looking at to an extent — I need to walk away, take a break, work on something else before I’m able to return to the project with fresh eyes.

That’s what Dia is for TBC: something different where they can cook up new ideas and dream big in a way that isn’t tied to the architecture of what Arc is. Even from the bit they teased with the functionality of the cursor — that’s some pretty innovative thinking there! I’m excited to see what else they come up with as they develop Dia.

And maybe, just maybe, down the road when Dia is released and adopted by the masses like TBC wants, maybe some of those cool new features will find their way back to Arc to give us hardcore fans something to be excited about.