RE: RFOR: Is LGDC really crap?

["Green, Aaron" <JAGREEN@GAPAC.com>]

I can't seem to find these gamedev mailing lists.  Can someone point me in 
the right direction?

> ----------
> From: 	Green, Aaron
> Reply To: 	linuxgames@sunsite.dk
> Sent: 	Thursday, January 03, 2002 4:06 PM
> To: 	'linuxgames@sunsite.dk'
> Subject: 	RE: RFOR: Is LGDC really crap?
> 
> there is definitely an audience for this.  And linux gaming is definitely picking up.
>  SDL, OpenAL, OpenGL, and general Linux development articles would be great
> Alot of people just come from a Win32/VC6 environment and don't know where 
> to start.  Let's establish some posting rules on news, and at least this part of the 
> improvement will be out of the way.  Another good affiliation would be with Loki.  I'm
> sure they have an interest in seeing the Linux development community grow.
> 
> 
> > ----------
> > From: 	Christian Reiniger[SMTP:creinig@mayn.de]
> > Reply To: 	linuxgames@sunsite.dk
> > Sent: 	Thursday, January 03, 2002 6:20 AM
> > To: 	linuxgames@sunsite.dk
> > Subject: 	Re: RFOR: Is LGDC really crap?
> > 
> > On Thursday 03 January 2002 01:51, Steve Baker wrote:
> > 
> > > Christian Reiniger wrote:
> > > > So - is it really that bad? What is missing, what needs to be
> > > > improved, what would be nice to have?
> > >
> > > I don't think it's bad - there just isn't much happening to make it
> > > good.
> > >
> > > There is an issue with "know your audience".  Much of the content seems
> > > directed towards games *players* rather than *developers*.  I don't
> > 
> > Do you really have that impression?
> > 
> > > think you should aim at the players - HappyPenguin already has that
> > > covered IMHO.
> > 
> > I really try to *avoid* player-specific content. Of course there are some 
> > links to and news about games X and Y, but that's simply because that's 
> > what most submissions are about. People who've written (or are about to 
> > write) their first game are eager to get much publicity. Of course they 
> > don't get it via lgdc, but try explaining them that :)
> > 
> > > What we don't know (and this is a major flaw of the survey) is whether
> > > the people who were dissatisfied with LGDC were game developers, game
> > > players or some other audience group.  If games players visiting the
> > > site are dissatisfied with it, you may not care - so long as your core
> > > audience of designers are ecstatic about it.
> > 
> > Sure. I'm taking these numbers with a big load of salt. The main point is 
> > that I simply don't know what people expect from lgdc - poll or not.
> > 
> > > I'd like to see news about tools that games developers are interested
> > > in ("New release of GDB - Has these great features" - for example).  I
> > > don't have the time to look at Freshmeat and 99% of the things it
> > > covers are useless to me.  When a bug is discovered in something that I
> > > care about (Mesa for example) - it would be great to see a report of it
> > > and it's eventual resolution or work-around.
> > 
> > No comment. Well perhaps a little one :)
> > I know that kind of stuff is very important - in fact some (longer) time 
> > ago I posted ~2-5 news items a day. The problem is that (1) I find this 
> > posting work quite annoying and (2) it's hard to e.g. pick the important 
> > new features in Mesa or comment on an advanved 3D Gfx tutorial if one has 
> > never written a single line of OpenGL code.
> > 
> > > I like to read game design post-mortems (of the kind posted on
> > > OpenGL-Gamedev recently about how we think HALO does some of it's
> > > tricks - or the kind of thing you see in the Game Developer magazine
> > > "We wrote it like this - but we would have written it like that if
> > > we'd had the time").
> > 
> > > > * The site content is almost static currently - no new news items, no
> > > > new articles, no new/updated links. I know that's my duty but, well,
> > > > I simply won't ever do this as much as I should. By a far shot. These> 
> > > > tasks simply aren't something I enjoy, and since I work on lgdc in my
> > > > spare time I'll concentrate on the "fun" stuff. And of course there's
> > > > the thing that I never ever developed a game :)
> > >
> > > I think you should go the slashdot route and have a number (say three
> > > or four) people whom you get on with and trust who can each contribute
> > > items - then put up a mailing list where anyone can send ideas and news> 
> > > snippets to those people for posting.  This divides the workload of
> > > posting items by a factor of four or five - and increases the volume of
> > > news by some larger factor.
> > 
> > *g*
> > Exactly that would be great, yeah.
> > The problem is finding these people. lgdc had *many* "maintainers" over 
> > the years, but all of them became quiet or disappeared after some 
> > (typically short) time. Finding good and dedicated people is extremely 
> > difficult in OSS land (especially when the work to be done is *not* 
> > coding) :(
> > 
> > > If you manage to put up enough interesting items that don't duplicate
> > > other news sources (or at least scoop them so you tend to be first with
> > > the news) then your readership (and hence contributors) will grow. 
> > > However, without readership you won't get contributors and hence you
> > > won't get readers.
> > >
> > > To get past the initial 'bootstrap' period, you and your trusted
> > > co-editors may have to hunt for news yourselves.
> > 
> > That's what experience dictates, yes.
> > But I'm not sure if I want that, if all this really is worth the effort 
> > for me. I mean, spending all that time on (for me) boring / annoying work 
> > so that others have a great site (as I said I'm not a game developer), 
> > only getting the occasional (1-2/year) "Hey, nice site, dude" mail for it.
> > 
> > > > * The poll clearly lists the mailing list as the least valuable part
> > > > of lgdc (14 votes, with the others at 35, 38, 39 and 41), and the
> > > > mailing list traffic also indicates that.
> > >
> > > When you need it - it's there for you.  My thread about keyboard
> > > problems for example - was promptly and accurately answered by people
> > > who knew what they were talking about.  I don't know where else I could
> > > have asked that.
> > >
> > > However, one doesn't have questions like that on a daily basis.
> > >
> > > Mailing lists don't have to be high traffic to be utterly invaluable.
> > > Quite the reverse in fact.
> > 
> > Of course you're right. But seeing that ~90% of the traffic somes from 
> > the same ~5 people still indicates that it's only useful for a tiny 
> > fraction of the "community"...
> > 
> > > > There's a group of 10-15 people who
> > > > know each other (partly got to know each other via lgdc, granted) and
> > > > post to the list from time to time, but that's about it. So lgdc's
> > > > original goal of building a (and serving as common "communication
> > > > platform" for) a Linux game development community has not been
> > > > reached.
> > >
> > > Just how many active game developers do you think there are?
> > 
> > I don't know, but surely quite a bit more. Just think of freecraft, 
> > worldforge, freeciv etc - I don't think I've seen anyone from these 
> > projects here yet. Probably it's because these "big" projects already 
> > have their own communities..
> > 
> > > It would be interesting to do some kind of a search on the named
> > > authors in the HappyPenguin database to get some kind of an idea.
> > 
> > Hmmm. "some kind"... :)
> > 
> > > Once again though, content is king.  More people would subscribe if
> > > there was more good stuff on the list - if more people subscribed there
> > > would be more good stuff (unfortunately, there would probably also be
> > > MUCH more junk - but that's life).
> > >
> > > > Not even remotely.
> > > > I don't think I can do much about that. As I said before I'm no game> 
> > > > deve> loper...
> > >
> > > Perhaps a mailshot to every author in the HappyPenguin database asking
> > > if they'd like to join in?  That's perilously close to SPAMming them
> > > though.
> > 
> > Much too close IMHO.
> > 
> > > > * I have some plans to allow everyone (well, everyone with a valid
> > > > site account) to post, edit and delete news and resources. Of course
> > > > all changes only take effect after someone trusted has reviewed them,
> > > > but it allows everyone spotting an error, a missing thing etc to
> > > > simply "fix it on the spot" (using the nice web forms that are
> > > > currently reserved for maintainers) and it simplifies the> 
> > > > maintainer(s'|'s) job of handling such changes.
> > >
> > > You risk lowering the quality by doing that.  I think that would
> > > perhaps be worse than having too little content.
> > 
> > I don't think so. After all the maintainer(s) still has to approve each 
> > post, and that all posts can (and should) be edited before approving 
> > them. It's basically the same as a mail-based submission system, with the 
> > only difference being that with mailed submissions I typically get some 
> > text targeted at *me* ("You might want to tell your readers that I just 
> > released GameLib 0.3.1. Changelog is at ..."), and I then need to compose 
> > the "real" newsitem from that. With web-based submissions posters are 
> > "forced" to immediately target the site visitors, so I can more or less 
> > directly use the post => even less work for me
> > 
> > Note that everyone still is / will be free to submit stuff via mail.
> > 
> > BTW: Everyone and their dog already *can* "directly" submit newsitems. 
> > The thing is: (1) nobody makes use of this so far (only exception: Jorrit 
> > & his CS announcements) and (2) I'm the only one approving and editing 
> > the submissions, and I'm (a) not at the computer 24/7 and (b) currently 
> > stuck with a pay-per-minute net connection. => "Old News" are generated
> > 
> > > > Side note: The poll lists the resources section *after* articles.
> > > > IMHO resources are *more* important than local articles, simply
> > > > because it's much easier to link to many good articles than to write
> > > > many good articles anew (and the ones we have are a bit dated..).
> > >
> > > Yes - the articles section seems a little redundant.  Anyone who is
> > > writing games will almost certainly have a place to post articles of
> > > that sort (mine is at http://www.sjbaker.org/steve/omniv BTW).  I don't
> > > see the point in placing the actual text into the LGDC site - although
> > 
> > Amen
> > 
> > > it might be good to mention the arrival of a new article there,
> > > maintain a link to it, and give people a place to comment on it.
> > 
> > No problem. The mechanism for that already exists. And it just occurred 
> > to me that the article itself could be displayed in an <iframe>. Hmmmm
> > 
> > > > Perhaps the
> > > > situation would be a bit different if there were a big community with
> > > > several good writer-gamedevelopers around lgdc - and even then it's
> > > > much easier (and better) to link to e.g. Steve Baker's ramblings
> > > > (http://www.sjbaker.org/steve/omniv/index.html) than to convince him
> > > > to write them on lgdc ;)
> > >
> > > Er - yes - it is. ("ramblings"? **RAMBLINGS**!! Humph! :-)
> > 
> > Hehe.
> > Hmm, Interesting - I didn't actually think about that word. It just was 
> > so *natural* to use it in this context ;-)
> > 
> > -- 
> > Christian Reiniger
> > LGDC Webmaster (http://lgdc.sunsite.dk/)
> > 
> > ...to paraphrase Churchill, while representative  democracy may be
> > terrible, it's still the best system that large corporations can buy.
> > 
> > - David Weinberger JOHO January 25, 2000
> > 
>