New community venture announced - discussion

[sbsmac 0]

Back on topic....

Jennik,

I welcome anything that brings greater community involvement from the BIS team. I have to wonder though whether this particular use of your effort is really that valuable. After all, what is it going to do that www.armaholic.com or http://www.armedassault.info/ don't already provide very well ?

I assume that the BIS team have only a limited amount of time for 'community service' - maybe that time would be better spent on some of the other activities that have been mentioned ?

* Greater presence on the forums (to be fair, this seems to have picked up a lot with the beta program)

* More activity on BIKI.

* More articles such as this one from Jezuro:- http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=91875

* More of an effort to keep to a regular blog schedule (people love to know what's going on inside BIS even if it all seems very mundane and boring to you!).

* Developer's answering a 'question of the week'

* "Focus on an ArmA2 feature" videos as Jan Prazak started.

* Feedback on the CIT list.

I'd really encourage BIS to put some thought into a real 'community-relations' plan which you then stick to rather than kicking off another well-intentioned initiative which is likely to be abandoned after 6 months.

Slightly off-topic...

I also tend to agree it would be nice to see BIS adopt some of the community work into the core distribution though I understand that would be a lot more work than you are proposing here. There's a strong argument IMHO for BIS concentrating on the core engine and using the community to build content.

[instagoat 133]

Back on topic....

I have to wonder though whether this particular use of your effort is really that valuable. After all, what is it going to do that www.armaholic.com or http://www.armedassault.info/ don't already provide very well ?

I think what it does is make people aware that a very involved community exists. Especially people who haven´t been with BIS´s games for a long time and are completely new to the experience might not even begin to scan the forums or google for community websites.

Having some sort of database on the Company website shows dedication to the community, which is a good argument for the game, isn´t it?

As far as advertising goes, this is a nice Idea. Getting more people to play the game, in the long run, can only be good for the game and the community in general. :P

My two cents

[11aTony 0]

If you really want to support the community, you should select the most exquisite, well produced mods (single or multiplayer missions, new vehicle/weapons, etc, game changing mods like ACE or SLX are too much) and integrate it in the game in a future patch, with author's permission of course. There are a lot of people who aren't "in the community" who doesn't know what to download from the hundreds of addons, or from where.

Not going to happen, simply because not all mods are for everyone. I wouldn't be happy if patches kept getting bloated up with custom content I might not want. Better to let people download and install what they like, instead of forcing stuff down their throats.

I think it would be better if BIS included a "News & Updates" screen directly in the game, which could basically get all the info from the new community portal. That way peeps who aren't active in the community could still see what's going on, what mods are getting released etc.

Well some mods like CBA and maybe rksl flares could be integrated into game later on. Anyway, "Guerrilla" sounds cool.

[Jennik 0]

I think what it does is make people aware that a very involved community exists. Especially people who haven´t been with BIS´s games for a long time and are completely new to the experience might not even begin to scan the forums or google for community websites.

Having some sort of database on the Company website shows dedication to the community, which is a good argument for the game, isn´t it?

As far as advertising goes, this is a nice Idea. Getting more people to play the game, in the long run, can only be good for the game and the community in general. :P

My two cents

Thank you for saying that, it is the very point of the intention of having the community dedicated section on the official website.

Also thanks to sbsmac for his suggestions, some of them are really the strike home.

For all who are asking for including the community content into the game more or less directly, we already do that! There is a number of people working both externally or interanally who participated on ARMA2 project - for example Mike Malvin and his great CTI introduced as Warfare at ARMA1, Mapfact members working on terrain for the datadisk and many, many more...

But I say again, putting every great project into the game is almost impossible because of many reasons:

• Copyrights
  
• Simply the size of the data which might grow significantly
  
• Difficult management of such number of projects
  
• And many, many more...
  

Also, what I feel is that most of the community authors would prefer the absolut freedom in comparison to the conditions and requirments which would have to be accepted in case of the closer cooperation with BI.

Regarding to "focus on game engine, let the community make the content" . I think this happens already since the original OFP. We consider our game engine to be rather a "platform" then "just another milsim game". But we must bring some playable content too :)

Edited December 17, 2009 by Jennik

[Alex72 1]

Kju: To make addons more useful to the casual player, way more important is

technical improvements to simplify the addon use.

This is definatelly the thing that would make it more popular for sure. Like Yoma said and many others - an official and central place where mods could be downloaded through a mod loader program shipped with the game would be the best ever.

However i like the idea of showing mods from the main site as i think it will lead to more awareness about mods. First it will reach people that havent got the game yet but is browsing the official ARMA2 site, and secondly it will enlighten other players that diesnt lurk the community sites but only check the official one for updates. I know, the latter sounds strange, but im sure there are some. :)

Alex

[Synide 0]

Hi all,

I had a speed read of this thread so I'm hoping I've sorta got the gist, but please bare with me if I haven't.

Jennik, the way I'm reading your blurbs is that BIS want to create a website highlighting 'best-of-breed' community content or at least provide a BIS managed 'portal' allowing the broadcast of information relating to community content.

So as to facilitate a single point to which potential new clients and existing customers can 'subscribe'.

Thus enabling yourselves to 'showcase' what your community builds on your platform and of course allowing the individuals or groups of individuals to 'showcase' their 'work'.

What your talking is something that is essentially a news service that you indicate may evolve into something more substantial down the track?

Currently, community content makers have a number of 'outlets' for 'news' related to their wares. Primarily it's through community run websites that specialize in 'news' and often through your own forums. Some of the community websites also provide a delivery mechanism for the 'content'.

There doesn't seem to be much of a 'point-of-difference' in what your indicating you want to provide to the community and what the community is getting through it's own initiative.

The only points-of-difference I can see are perhaps these...

A 'portal' CCM related service highligting content through your website would form the basis of potentially allowing your company to better 'quantify' or gain a better metric understanding of the size, nature, complexity of your community made content.

Understandably this would aide your business in decision making relating to a whole raft of things.

Also, this sort of initiative allows for you to market & mould and brand in more efficient, meaningful and hopefully more successful ways.

Lets face it having a 'community' that utilizes your product (even if it is possibly/probably smaller in monetary terms than your Mil version) should be viewed as an 'asset' having a 'strong vibrant, innovating, expanding' community would, I'm sure be a goal for your business (obviously I'm stating the obvious, lol).

So, to that end I can see the benefits to yourselves in your initiative and also to the community (ultimately).

But, hehe, you knew I was going to say a 'but' didn't you... :)

What Q touches on is of significance and highlights what I personally see as the underlying problem.

- The DH crowd is trying to bring 'order' to 'chaos'. (Well, not un-adultered chaos but a little bit of chaos).

- Yoma is trying to bring 'ease' to content delivery and management.

- Armaholic (and others) is trying to 'tell everyone about it' and facilitate a distribution medium. ('it' being ArmA)

- BIS is trying to build it and grow it all.

There are also numerous other players all trying their darndest to 'help' a little bit. Things like endless community hours on testing & documenting 'features' of the 'platform' and 'environment'. And all sorts of other community initiatives.

This is the problem, they are all 'portions' of a larger 'pie'. There is an 'adhoc' nature to all the 'efforts'.

The is no 'synergy'.

To your credit, perhaps this initiative of yours is laying a foundation stone for the future I dunno.

Although, all the above mentioned parties have done stupendous jobs and should all take a bow. Yoma, shouldn't have to be 'easing' the burden (although he's probably quite enjoyed the exercise). Armaholic, shouldn't be 'expected' to store Terabytes of data (although it's probably suited them to do so). DH shouldn't have to expend vast hours in trying to 'glean' how things should & shouldn't be done so as to provide some 'guidance' and facilitate some 'structure'.

And, of course... BIS shouldn't be expected to 'grow the community' entirely on it's own or provide all the answers. However, only your organization can and should set in place the infrastructure.

Only, when this is achieved will your company be able to utilize, promote, brand, market and grow your community. And, by virtue the community and individuals therein will benefit from a substantive, robust base.

Some of the architecture/system fleshed out in my minds eye, how the community & BIS could all have the ‘whole’ pie stems from reading Q’s thread the other day about addon signing and my own past ramblings and thoughts but I’m not sure whether I’ve spammed off-topic too much already and the ‘picture’ maybe unpalatable as previous ramblings of mine have often been.

I’ve always been of the opinion that there needs to be some fundamental changes in people’s views with regard to the management and dissemination of community & BIS content and this can only be done by physically making a standalone application (possibly explorer shell integrated, possibly ending up down the track integrated into the game) with a centralized remote RDB that stores records indexed on the unique qualities of a .pbo.

There is much more I'd like to add on this topic of managing content and distribution but too much for this thread me thinks.

To summarize, while I think your initiative (that, by the wording in your first post indicates you guys are going to do anyway whether anyone thinks it’s a good idea or not) bares some merit I don’t see it’s vastly different than what the community is providing for itself already and, imo as above why don’t you try going for the pie instead of another slice?

Anyhoo, it’s late. I’ve blathered too much... hopefully, some of you will not take offence to this post it certainly is not meant to be.

Edited December 17, 2009 by Synide

[TRexian 0]

*bow* @ Synide. :D