BI provided CaMSO - Cultivate The-Next-Big-Thing

[[aps]gnat 28]

Idea:

A CaMSO assigned to the ArmA3 mod'ing community - Community and Mod Support Officer from BI themselves

(Yes, odd name, but call it whatever you like :D )

Opportunity:

Cultivate the community and directly support promising Mod teams with human and documentation resources from the BI team, dedicated to accelerating learning and problem solving of Mod'ers.

BI has proven it has a unique formula. Along with benefiting gamers, BI's pockets did well from the free DayZ mod explosion.

To name but a few of the mod's, addons, tools or mission packs that keep gamers paying and glad they made that purchase, and the next.... ;

Invasion44, Project Reality, ACE, CSLA, Hell in the Pacific, City Life, PwS, JSRS, Blastcore, ACRE, Mando Missile, CWR2, Domination, WarfareBE, crCTI, Wasteland

Detail:

On the back of Marek Spanel news around releasing tools for ArmA3 and ArmA2 content.

1 or more BI employees or contractors assigned to directly support the Mod'ing community.

- Via supporting the Editing Forums

- Via Skype channels or similar

- Via Biki improvements

- Via support to knowledge centres like ArmaStack

- Via direct support into the large or promising Mod teams

- Via technical blogs

Why:

Marek Spanel on DayZ in May 2012

The uplift is very significant on Steam, if things continue going in this current direction we may be looking at a tenfold increase in Arma 2 sales there over the previous month.

Our Arma series has grown up around the user modding community since the very first PC demo version was released 11 years ago, Modding is and always was, essential to Bohemia Interactive's work, sometimes even more important than completely polishing the built-in content in our titles. Without our users Arma would never be what it is now.

Improve ArmA3 (and other) sales along with capturing and delighting gamers world round.

The opportunity to grow better, faster, a major community around the BI games, accelerate mod development & releases, inspire innovation.

The community is hungry, full of ideas and eager to make ArmA3 the core behind The-Next-Big-Thing (after ArmA3 :D )

(Note: "Mod'ing" has been used here to cover all content development, including scenarios, missions, script packs, addons, terrains, tools etc etc)

Edited September 15, 2013 by Dwarden
BIS is now BI ;)

[nodunit 397]

Thats a pretty good idea. I remember when I was doing a bit of modwork for Crysis we were able to speak to several employees and could see dozens more wandering the forums to help people or assigning themselves to a mod by their own desire to help it grow and as a result created a very friendly atmosphere along with a great deal of knowledge being passed.

[suprememodder 11]

or they could just release the arma 2 p3ds to the community

[bad benson 1733]

or they could just release the arma 2 p3ds to the community

what are you even talking about?

they WILL release those mlods and that will certainly not solve all mod related problems.

that sounds like a great idea Gnat. exactly what is needed. a lot of the "work" part with arma modding is struggling with tools and missing documentation.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Bad Benson

[noubernou 77]

I'd do it. Give me engine access and a little money and I'd be everyones tech jockey... :p

Nothing self-serving at all about that... :d:

[PuFu 4600]

Great idea gnat

[columdrum 11]

The lack of documentation have been always the problem on Arma series in general, and usually was the userbase who needed to create it, sometimes by reverse engineering.

So yes, +1 to the idea

[ceeeb 147]

Such an employee could also help find and assess suitability of candidates for available positions for both BI and BISim.

I think part of the problem would that even within BI, there are few people who have good understanding of all the different aspects of modding the game. Most employees would be specialised.

Edit: Lack of internal documentation has been an issue for BI since the beginning. I'd hope they have that sorted out by now.

Edited September 14, 2013 by ceeeb

[Ezcoo 47]

I agree with you Gnat, have had the same idea over a year at least.

I'd suggest that the "CaMSO" could be rather a link between the developers, advanced community modders and mission creators and the rest of the community than a person who'd have to know everything about everything (which would be too much for one person, I guess). CaMSO could have a little power inside the house to order developers to eg. produce documentation about general topics that are estimated to be the most necessary. The focus should be on general support instead of forwarding very specific answers from developers as response to specific questions from community members to optimize the effectiveness. Of course, the specific questions should be answered as well, but they should have rather instrumental value as collecting information about in which areas the community needs guidance of professionals the most, and the actual effort should be put then to production of general guides related to those subjects of modding and mission creation. I believe that this would be the best way to optimize the workflow and to increase the quality of content of community content creators.

I believe Bohemia would benefit from it with multiple ways (in addition to increased sales), for example like what ceeeb mentioned above.

[cifordayzserver 119]

As someone who comes from the DayZ Community, and waded my way into this one, and then really figured out what this whole world was about, I have to say I'm astounded this wasn't done in January of this year. I have been recommended something similar since April

I think for companies it's just more difficult to make bold decisions, and especially to do so in a rapid manor. Would they have benefited from doing so? Yes, I think so, however when there is a lot at stake, you owe it to yourself and your customers to take all decisions seriously.

Obviously I think this would be an amazing idea. One of my fears though is loss of community members through becoming full time employees and then tasked with internal goals, instead of focusing on the amazing work they've been doing from the outside.

@Nou, IMO, you would not be ideal for this task at all. You should be one of the consultant/contractors that they pay to continue your work, licenses assets for their internal use in A3, AND you should be allowed to monetize your mod...

I think that realistically ACE needs to exist on it's own, but obviously also feel parts of it should be built into both A3 AND DayZ Standalone... Frankly I think you should be getting 2-3 salaries and different but equally impressive checks from BI to license your work, AND be allowed to monetize ACE3 on steam for example....

For you to take focus off the amazing WORK you do in order to coordinate a task I think would be a waste of amazing technical prowess, and I think you working "in house" for BI would be like Steve Jobs working at Microsoft....

Bill and Steve talked, and took cue's from each other's work, but could you imagine how boring the world would be without BOTH?

*Edit

Oh and for the record my #1 pick "has left the building" but should still get a reparations check lol.

Edited September 14, 2013 by CiforDayZServer

[gammadust 12]

I think the community is moving with ideas, i have just read Unified Addon Standards and a bit less recently A solution to the A2/BI content in A3 and your thoughts, DevHeaven Improvement Project (and shameless plug "Opening up Arma 3 to paid user-made content" - How?), such a CaMSO would assist so much in reaching for these goals, that extra bit of involvement from Bohemia would be key... i welcome the idea very much.

I have more permanent tabs in this forum, but these are in my main firefox window, right next to the gmail login lol.

[Dwarden 1125]

noted,signed,tracking this ...

[noubernou 77]

Seriously though, whoever does it probably should have code experience and access to the engine. Being able to say definitively "yes this is the expected behavior" is important.

[[aps]gnat 28]

a lot of the "work" part with arma modding is struggling with tools and missing documentation.

The lack of documentation have been always the problem on Arma series in general, and usually was the userbase who needed to create it, sometimes by reverse engineering.

True. Maybe the support need wouldn't be as great if they just fixed those 2 things.

I think part of the problem would that even within BI, there are few people who have good understanding of all the different aspects of modding the game. Most employees would be specialised.

that the "CaMSO" could be rather a link between the developers, advanced community modders and mission creators and the rest of the community than a person who'd have to know everything about everything

Yes, no 1 BIS person does it all. Same as there are very few experienced Addon makers here that can "know it all".

The CaMSO's would just act as in-house conduits for the stuff they can't answer/provide themselves.

Selecting the right 2 or 3 CaMSO's could create that spread of knowledge.

Maybe select members of the BIS dev team should be asked to devote 1 day a month to build documentation, relieving some of the strain on CaMSO's

I have to say I'm astounded this wasn't done in January of this year.

They decided on a different route (sort of stage 2 of this idea), pulled The-Next-Big-Thing internal and started building a Stand-Alone DayZ.

One of my fears though is loss of community members through becoming full time employees and then tasked with internal goals, instead of focusing on the amazing work they've been doing from the outside.

haha, nar, I wouldn't worry, theres 100's of addon makers here :D We're only asking for BIS to supply a couple.

noted,signed,tracking this ...

Cool

Seriously though, whoever does it probably should have code experience and access to the engine. Being able to say definitively "yes this is the expected behavior" is important.

Sure, the CaMSO or 1 of them would need to be able to quickly say yes/no/maybe, or to my earlier point, be one of the internal chosen, having quick direct access to BIS dev team who can provide advice/direction.

So in part I think any experienced Addon makers external to BIS at the moment won't easily slip into this role. I think it has to be someone whos worked with the BIS team for a while, is known to them and will be supported whole-heartily from the other BIS members.

At least to kick-start this idea.

Edited September 15, 2013 by [APS]Gnat

[soul_assassin 1750]

Big +1 for this one. Great idea Gnat!

[sbsmac 0]

Personally I'd like to see BI go a bit further and embrace the platform concept a bit more fully by acting as custodians for a QA-approved set of 'core' content developed (at least partly) by the community according to set of interoperability standards. The model I'm thinking of is RedHat who distribute a QA-approved build of Linux which of course has contributors from both RedHat and the general development community.

Now I know that some people will point out problems with this - IP 'provenance' is a risk, some mod makers might not wish to contribute their efforts for 'free' when BI are ending up making money, some developers might not want to adhere to standards and BI themselves probably have no experience in (or spare resources for) running this kind of open-source project but I think that despite all of the problems, this is worth exploring as a way to build up a consistent content library for the sandbox.

[Sealife 22]

They already have one , he posted in the Editing threads and dissapeared to make some tutes and videos ,

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?161164-geometry-LOD-and-AI&p=2481097#post2481097

hopefully he will be back soon with friends from the scripting and animation department :)

Edited September 15, 2013 by Sealife

[[aps]gnat 28]

They already have one ...... hopefully he will be back soon

Yes, well, early indication are that if thats what he's meant to be doing, he's not doing it .... :)

[[aps]gnat 28]

Well BI, if you want some momentum to the MAKE ARMA NOT WAR CONTEST then more than ever you should be providing CaMSO's

And with prize money that big, surely you can be paying a few people/CaMSO's to help build this bright new future.

The competition is after all aimed at creating The-Next-Big-Thing ......

.... and congrats on the whole DayZ thing BTW.

[progamer 14]

Mods like Invasion44, Project Reality, ACE, CSLA, FFAA6, A-10c, Hell in the Pacific, PwS, JSRS, Blastcore, ACRE, Mando Missile, CWR2 could easily be the next Dayz with more support from the game engine.

BI missed out on Project Reality, and even with the contest I would like to see BI actively adding engine features, scripting commands and other features/support for skilled modders. The more popular the mod, the more active BI would be in adding engine support for various things for the mod that could be used by anyone.

Or you could outsource work by providing trusted community members with the ability to code features for the game engine which would then be checked over by a developer before being added into the vanilla game. If the community can do better, let them!

Edited December 26, 2013 by ProGamer

[windies 11]

Speaking as someone who is somewhat of a beginner when it comes to scripting and editing, I know it's already been said many times but the biggest thing for me is lack of documentation and proper examples of syntax and code structure in a more common use. One of the things is simply that you have to know what you want before you can start looking on the wiki for something. It's one of the things that has turned me off to mission making in general because in all honesty to make good missions you really need to be well versed in the scripting language and without some sort of primer or good example guide or good documentation, you're basically just diving into the deep end when you don't know how to swim.

[kremator 1065]

Yes, but WHAT a swim !

[cri74 10]

I wish Bohemia Interactive paid Benny to come back and make WarfareBE for ArmA 3. It was one of the very best ways to play ArmA and to get into the game and learn how it works, hugely inviting and entertaining way to play ArmA. I've been waiting and waiting for it to appear in ArmA 3.

[L3TUC3 32]

I wish Bohemia Interactive paid Benny to come back and make WarfareBE for ArmA 3. It was one of the very best ways to play ArmA and to get into the game and learn how it works, hugely inviting and entertaining way to play ArmA. I've been waiting and waiting for it to appear in ArmA 3.

But it's already here?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?166433-SP-MP-BeCTI

[.kju 3244]

did anything came out of this? maybe some time to pick this idea up again