next »

[eyeliner]

Single screen compo. NOW!

[Graham.]

There are a lot of ways to stimulate collaboration.

Devlogs are a mess. If they were cleaner people could rally around each other's games. ... This is true in general.

We don't seem to evolve as "people who discuss ideas."

[disparat]

...I also think the lack of compos has kept new blood from jumping in on a regular basis and staying here. There's no staying power because there's no community connection. Let's be honest, we only really connect with each other when we are yelling in General.

It's all well and good to jokingly demand compos from Derek and such, but it's getting to be a pretty serious issue. We need a competition. Competitions bring in new members, foster community love, and, most importantly, force productivity. We need to elect a Competition Advisor to coordinate them in the stead of the other admins or something, because the compo dearth is draining the life out of the community.

By the way, does Derek have a particular reason to not rehash ideas? I think a sequel to something like B-games or Adult/Educational might go over well. Or, hey, Assemblee 2 - maybe we'll get another Oryx tileset that lives beyond the competition to be used in multiple successful games.

Not Procedural Generation 2, though, because it would lead to ten billion moribund "DIS MY GAME LIKE MINECRAFT" projects clogging up the competition board, guaranteed.

[Graham.]

Well anyone can start it. Get 3 guys together, do something small, post your results in a clear and formatted way. Do it again. Each time the number of participants will grow.

Also, it is a great way to learn the best ways to run these things.

[eyeliner]

I would run a compo, but I don't think I'm up to the task.

Heck, I'd create a theme, set up a schedule and then everybody would win as long as they'd participate.

[moi]

It'd be easier if we had an extra admin who was available more often.

@OP: Most people have left because of either Phubans or Eres. You two kinda dominate the discussion around here, both by turning the thread into threads about yourselves (directly in Phubans case, indirectly in Eres' case). I personally don't care, but a fair number of people do apparently.

I also think the lack of compos has kept new blood from jumping in on a regular basis and staying here. There's no staying power because there's no community connection. Let's be honest, we only really connect with each other when we are yelling in General. Compos fostered a sense of community involvement. We haven't had a serious, high-profile compo since... Assemblee, I think? That's like two years of no big compo to broaden the userbase. No collection of collaborative games and ideas to further developers.

I don't think that "people leave because of eres and phubs", they are more like a distraction. Much like the cosmological radiation background, eres is everywhere but easy to ignore.

It is true that competitions were at the core of the old-school TIGS and were the real blood of these forums, attracting both devellopers and players, and creating a sense of excitation,and everyone misses them. I remember when TIGS compo were a big deal and the best games were literally making the news on the internet.
That said I don't know if we can have the same compos that we had before.
Both the developers and the players will not feel the same attraction.
Nowadays, everybody who can actually achieve a game is busy working on a cashgrab game for IOS or sthg (those who can't realistically finish a game are busy working on the prototype they want to submit to the IGF)

Back in 2007 there weren't many good indie games except cave story. Back then if you wanted to play a game it was either a AAA game or some casual crap from Bigfishgame or cave story. That's why the Tigsource compos were awesome for the players too.
But nowadays there are many good 'core' games available easily practically everywhere.

But we should try to have a compo anyway, it would be worth it.
Let's just make sure that we pick a theme that doesn't suck.

[Paul Eres]

i agree with ortoslon, i'd rather have one thread just for feedback to a build, and another for extended updates on the design and development of a game (art, screenshots, design issues, etc.). i know some people like to keep everything about a game in one thread, but some people like to be organized by having two different threads for two distinct things

as a dev, i'd rather not have to search through my updates about a game to find the feedback reports about a game, just like i wouldn't want to have to sift through the outline and screenplay and character design and casting announcements and trailer of a movie to find reviews of that movie

If you don't want feedback why are you even posting it on a forum? Put that crap in a blog and link to it from your game's topic, blogs are a much better medium for that stuff. I imagine the vast majority are happy for feedback in their dev topic and I'd rather the forum be designed for those than a tiny niche. Alternatively I guess you could add a sub-forum especially for unplayables and hardcore dev diaries, so would be something like this:

i don't think you properly understood the context of my post -- i was saying that i wouldn't want to merge the feedback and devlog sections because they fulfill different roles (even if there's a little overlap too). how does that have anything to do with me not wanting feedback? especially considering i just wrote a few paragraphs the previous page about how important feedback is that like four people quoted to agree with

there also seems to be some confusion in your post about what i meant by feedback -- by feedback i meant specifically feedback to the game's demo. in the devlog there would instead be "feedback" (reactions, really) to the design decisions, screenshots, art, and so on. that's a different kind of feedback resulting from playtesting / bug reports due to testing a game

basically what i meant was: there's no reason to have one giant thread for a game with everything about that game in it (especially since it becomes almost impossible to navigate and find anything in it after it reaches 20 or so pages). i don't understand why someone would want to crunch everything about their game into a single thread, it makes more sense to me to have one thread for the devlog, another for build/demo feedback, another for the announcement when it's released, and perhaps a thread even about its marketing efforts in business (etc.) -- as long as each thread links to the other ones i don't see any disadvantage of that system, it's not like threads are a limited resource

[Dragonmaw]

I don't think that "people leave because of eres and phubs", they are more like a distraction. Much like the cosmological radiation background, eres is everywhere but easy to ignore.

I'm basing that statement based on people telling me that Eres and Phubs drag down threads with their egos. I personally don't care (It's hard for me to take either of them seriously) but others do, I guess.

While you are probably right re: compos not being quite as exciting, I think there's at least a chance that we can foster the old community spirit. And even if there are people making cash grabs or whatever, there's still developers that are a part of TIGS that can produce some really stellar games. I think a new, fresh compo is exactly what we need.

[thatshelby]

I agree with Dragonmaw, we need a compo and bad

[moi]

So let's make one ourselves. Let's pick a theme

[Shackhal]

If I want to get feedback about my game in development I prefer to be in all places, interconnected. A devlog thread about my advances, a feedback thread with my last playable version of my game, a blog with more detailed info on everything and even a thread on a different forum. That's because I want to get more people who can read and try my game and tell me what I do right and wrong. In that sense, i agreed with Eres. Of course, that method, poorly done, will be chaotic.

Also, I want compos. I didn't participate in one of those in here and everyone want it bad. New blood could appear, old blood will revive with excitement and everyone will be more active as before. @Derek, could you give that responsibility to anyone deserved? That could lighten your work.

[moi]

every time we talk about a compo, the official word from the bigwigs is to wait later to avoid bothering the IGF schedule. At this rate there will never be a compo because there is the IGF each year!

[Blademasterbobo]

that might be true right now, but pretty sure the main response was that derek has been too busy to do it, and he doesn't want to let someone else set up the first major compo we've had in x years

[Tanner]

Has there actually been a response? I'm pretty sure that someone just suggested that that was the reason there hasn't been a compo and it took off from there.

[Perrin]

I joined this forum a few years ago when I decided I would start taking game development more seriously.  This place was pretty much a godsend at the time. I made a game for Assemblee, hung out in the IRC, made contact with a lot of other developers and found out about jams and meetups here in the UK. TIGSource definitely played a big part in me reaching the wider world of indie games.

However since then I've not only left this forum but I was part of a group of people who setup a different developer forum (Super Friendship Club) which at this point in time is just about ready to give up and shut down. The other people involved in SFC had their own reasons so I can't speak for them but for me personally I wanted somewhere that embodied the best of TIGSource and explicitly prohibited the worst.

When I've given talks to people interested in makings I've described this place as the 4chan of indie games, which might not be completely fair but it's how it seems to me. Threads always seem like utter chaos, filled with large egos either trying to win a war of semantics or to be the person who posted the funniest image or most damningly sarcastic comment. I'm sure the people involved in those thread see them as really fascinating arguments on all aspects of game design theory but to me it always came across as bullshit posturing divorced from any actual productivity. When I left I just decided that TIGSource seemed to be a place to go to argue about games instead of actually making them.

I'm sure many people will disagree, but I wanted to explain how I personally felt about this place. And yes I know I could have tried to ignore the more "social"  aspects of the board and just read the feedback section where people are actually making stuff but I don't have the self restraint not to peek at whatever pointless drama is brewing this week and let it frustrate me. It was much easier for me to just cut this forum out of my life and focus on communities where people were primarily interested in making things.