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[policedanceclub]

rapidshare and megaupload

Im not shure why, but I laughed.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Funnier is how they try to discourage people from doing that. They have notices like FALSELY REPORTING COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT WHEN IT HAS NOT TAKEN PLACE IS A FEDERAL CRIME AND WILL BE PROSECUTED.

[Derek]

My intent is not to promote them exactly, because I have no problem with obscure games remaining obscure. It'd be nice if everyone could enjoy them, but it's not possible for everyone to enjoy every game, by necessity there have to be less-known and more-known games. My intent is just to document them. That documentation itself will probably remain obscure, but at least it'd exist, and at least the knowledge that those games existed would not totally vanish from the face of the internet.

Paul, I'll be honest - it's a nice thought, but unless you start the wiki yourself, it's not going to happen.  Again, there are plenty of places you could put this information.  My suggestion is to at least start a thread on TIGForums where you collect your thoughts about these games.  Get the ball rolling.

I'm not going to start a TIGWiki or anything because I have enough stuff to worry about already! Also, I'm not interested.

And, even if I did still have them all, I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to upload them without the original creator's permission. I'm sure 99% of them wouldn't mind and would be thankful for it, but there are a few people I knew who I'm sure would hate to see their games revived, some people are just like Kafka, and want all their works burned, no matter how good they are.

They probably wouldn't want to see their games described in a wiki, either.

I guess my point is that if you want to accurately document the history of indie gaming, then you'll have to stop worrying about whether the people involved wish to have their history shared or not.  What's more important to you?  Respecting the wishes of each individual developer or educating the people who think indie gaming began with Cave Story?  You have two goals that completely conflict with one another!

Sorry if I sound harsh, it's just starting to feel like we're getting on a "treadmill" here:

A: "I want X."
B: "Why don't you do X?"
A: "I can't do X because of Y."
B: "Why don't you do Y, then?"
A: "I can't do Y because of X."
B:

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I don't think I suggested that you start it -- you certainly have enough to do already.

I'm not sure it's not going to happen without me, though: typically if there's enough people interested in a subject, some form of information hub usually develops. Maybe there aren't enough people who care yet about independent gaming for that to happen, but I think it will eventually if interest continues to grow.

And, it's true that some also wouldn't want to see their games described, that's not something they have the moral right to demand others not do, since it constitutes censorship of what others say. So, I don't really see a contradiction between wanting to have a sort of encyclopedia for indie games that lists more than the most famous ones, and not wanting to post others' games without asking them first.

And I don't mind starting it myself, it's just that if I do it nobody will know about it, so it won't really get filled in with thousands of indie games unless people know about it. I still recognize that it'd be a massive undertaking to get it off the ground, and probably something that'd take several years before it has enough articles to be useful. My comments in this thread amount to: yes, this is a good idea and a wiki would be useful, and that a wiki would fulfill a different purpose than the game databases that exist.

As for making threads on old games, as I said, I don't really have the desire to promote them, it'd just be nice if there were a place to look up information on indie games and to contribute what information I know. It'd be nice to, say, be able to look up the ZZT article and see a list of all known ZZT games, and then randomly browse them for fun, and then come across Rhygar's entry (a game by a friend of mine who used the ZZT) and fill in some information about it that isn't there.

[progrium]

Btw, I recommend PBwiki for all your wiki needs.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I have bad experiences using third-party wiki hosting. Once I created a design document wiki on one of those hosting services (I think it may have even been that one). I didn't touch it for a few months, and then it was deleted automatically, without informing me or giving me time to back it up, so I lost a lot of design work.

[progrium]

Maybe. That company was started at an SHDH. But since then, $2 million funding and hella hires. I know most of the people there. One of their sys admins is crazy about long term (hundreds of years) storage. I'm sure they're better now if that was them.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Huh, exactly how can you be sure? More money doesn't automatically equal better service. YoYo Games (the owners of Game Maker) bought it from Overmars and put 10 million into it, yet it's worse than before.

[Corpus]

But I mentioned it on 4cr a few years ago

As in 4 color rebellion? I wear a 4cr t-shirt on a regular basis!

Not all the time. I mean, that would be weird. It's one of my favourite tees, though.

[postlogic]

I wasn't suggesting a wiki to list games.. I was suggesting a wiki to hold tutorials, development resources, art tools and so on. Game mechanics, tips, tricks, links, whatever.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I wasn't suggesting a wiki to list games.. I was suggesting a wiki to hold tutorials, development resources, art tools and so on. Game mechanics, tips, tricks, links, whatever.

Isn't this kind of covered on the gamedev.net wiki? I mean, it's not like indie development is technically very different from game development in general, and a game development in general wiki does exist.

[qubodup]

I once started making a list of all the game development wikis I could find.

[Don Andy]

I summon thee from the dead.

So, yeah, I figured instead of making a new topic I'd revive this one instead. I too had the idea for a wiki, but a bit different than what was discussed in this topic.

Instead of a Wiki for listing games and game development info and stuff like that however, I thought it'd be a good idea to have a game design document wiki.

You know, basically a place where the entire community can freely collaborate on game ideas. Somebody puts up an article and writes down his first idea draft. Everybody else can then freely add to and modify the idea. You just don't have to be fricky about intellectual property.

Of course this requires a certain maturity by the community. It wouldn't make much sense if every character would be renamed to "Dickward McDickpenis" by people or if somebody just wouldn't accept changes to his draft. Basically, once somebody submits a document, it becomes the community's idea, not his own anymore.

But I could see some interesting game documents coming out of this. Just imagine the creative energy of the entire community cumulating into one game.