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Would you help out to earn agents?   
Amaikokonut

Amaikokonut
United States  

 visit Amaikokonut's website: Naturing :: Nurturing
  1/21/2013  1

I know my contributions to the community have been pretty non-existent these past months, but I have been contemplating the idea of creating agents to use as metaphorical carrots to encourage more activity in the community.

It would work as such: I would post some information about an agent I had completed and was ready for release (could be anything, a plant, a critter, a C3>GB conversion, a GB update, some new magic-words tool, etc), explaining what it was and what it did and then present a community activity challenge, like, "ten different creatures-related blogs must make a post within the span of a week" or "three new plant agents must be released" or "the Development forum on Creatures Caves must reach 5000 total posts" or "the Creatures Wiki must have 10/50/100/some number of new pages added to it," or other such things. Then when the challenge was successfully completed, I would release the agent for everyone to enjoy.

Any member of the community could help to complete these challenges. The challenges would always be something that would enrich the community in some way, and they would always be all-or-nothing; either the agent is released to the entire public or not at all; obviously beta-testers would be an exception, but in general agents would not be restricted to contributors only (I'm not trying to pull a NG4 here). Even if you did nothing to help complete the challenge, you would be able to enjoy the release once the challenge was completed.

I hope this doesn't come off as trying to... control or extort something from the community by withholding agent releases, but I think this might be a nice way to spark a little more activity in the community (and there's no reason other developers can't hold their own challenges too). It would have the added bonus of giving me a better idea of the kind of agents people actually want and are thus willing to put in a little effort for.

The bottom line is... when the community is active, I get inspired, and when I'm inspired, I develop more. If I could help tug along a little more activity from the community by developing, I think that might motivate me, and maybe others, to produce more content. In the end, I believe the situation would be rather win-win.

So I ask you:

- Would you be willing to put in a little effort to help earn an agent release for the community? If so, what would you be willing to do? Make a few extra forum posts? Blog posts? Upload a creatures-related video? Help out with the wiki? Create your own agents? Draw creatures-art or write stories? Any other ideas?

- Would you be inspired to help meet the challenge for the benefit of the rest of the community (others who might want the agent, even if you don't personally care for it), or would you only be interested in putting forth effort toward releases of agents you were personally interested in? How big or complex would an agent have to be to be worth working for? Would an interesting toy or plant catch your interest? A more complex critter or tool? Or would it take an entire metaroom or greater to motivate you?

- Do you think it's fair for developers to ask consumers to give something to the rest of the community in exchange for releases? If not, why?

- If you are a developer, would you consider asking for community activity in exchange for releasing your own creations? Might the idea of motivating more activity in the community spark you to develop more?

I don't want you guys to feel like I suddenly want you to "earn" what you would normally get for no effort-- I believe the relationship would be rather symbiotic and result in more content for everyone, and hopefully be a lot of fun and bring us together a bit more. But I'm open and interested to hear what you guys think.



[Naturing :: Nurturing]
 
Bifrost

Bifrost



  1/21/2013

Brilliant!
 
Rascii
Caves Dweller

Rascii

Administrator


 visit Rascii's website: Creatures Caves
  1/21/2013

I think it's a great idea. Grendel Man did something similar by witholding the Chione 1.1 release until 10 people signed up for Survivor: Arctic.

I think I'd be willing to put forth extra effort to help the community, even though the games don't work on my MacBook anymore and I wouldn't really benefit personally from an agent release. I'd be happy for it to be released for other people's enjoyment, however. :)


- Rascii
 
Laura
Tea Queen

Laura

Administrator


 visit Laura's website: CC Chat
  1/21/2013

Count me in. This is one of the best ideas I've heard in a while! I've always enjoyed helping the community to thrive and attract new members anyway.

Somewhat related: We now have the new Staff Member user level which could tie-in well to this drive. I hope we'll see people apply soon. :)

 
Jessica

Jessica


 visit Jessica's website: Discover Albia
  1/21/2013

Awesome idea! I think this is a great way to spark some activity within the community, especially since there will be some wonderful rewards involved!

- Would you be willing to put in a little effort to help earn an agent release for the community?
Definitely! I'm up for just about anything, though I'm partial to blog posts and videos. The only ideas listed that I might not be able to help out much with are new agents and pictures... Though I'm sure there are others out there with those strengths!

- Would you be inspired to help meet the challenge for the benefit of the rest of the community (others who might want the agent, even if you don't personally care for it), or would you only be interested in putting forth effort toward releases of agents you were personally interested in?
Although I'll probably be more motivated to help out with releases that will be personally useful to me, I'm still happy to chip in for other releases. Simple things usually interest me: Remember my excitement over the marks and indicator arrow hider via magic words? Ha ha!

- Do you think it's fair for developers to ask consumers to give something to the rest of the community in exchange for releases? If not, why?
I think it's fair, so long as developers don't ask for too much (which I doubt would ever happen). It might be best to keep the requirements open to many: For example, requiring ten new plant agents for C3/DS would only encompass a small group of agent makers. Challenges might make more sense to have a theme, and participants could end up choosing among a couple of options to lend support.

- If you are a developer, would you consider asking for community activity in exchange for releasing your own creations? Might the idea of motivating more activity in the community spark you to develop more?
I suppose I sort of fall into this group with my C1 sprite project. It might be fun to try to reach a goal before releasing something: It adds to the excitement, and should a challenge ever seem to be going slowly, perhaps a preview or quick screenshot could create more interest! I also think this could spark me to develop some more things, though I'll honestly say that I'm more a fan of sticking with my original blogging.

I really hope this idea gets implemented! Your releases are worth working for, Amai, as are about 99% of the others out there. Can't wait to see some challenges!


Discover Albia

 
weeneybomber

weeneybomber



  1/21/2013

I really like this idea, maybe members could ask for certain agents. That way a developer knows what consumers are looking for.
 
Ghosthande
Prodigal Sock

Ghosthande


 visit Ghosthande's website: Breeders Beware
  1/21/2013

I think it's a great idea.

As for doing it myself... though most of the "challenges" I've done so far have been aspects within the game, eg. the scavenger hunt in Devil's Reef, finding a way to link that to challenges outside of the game seems like it would be a blast. Hmm... :)



 
RisenAngel
Sanely Insane

RisenAngel

Manager


 visit RisenAngel's website: The Realm
  1/21/2013


-Would you be willing to put in a little effort to help earn an agent release for the community?
Yes, indeed. I've a blog, and I can make agents and breeds and whatnot. Can't draw much, though, and I still lack proper video-editing software on my new computer.

-Would you be inspired to help meet the challenge for the benefit of the rest of the community (others who might want the agent, even if you don't personally care for it), or would you only be interested in putting forth effort toward releases of agents you were personally interested in?
For me, the biggest motivator would be aquatic agents/metarooms/breeds since that's probably the area that needs the most expansion. That said, seeing some normally inactive sites become active is a reward in and of itself, so I'd help meet release quotas regardless of what it was.

-Do you think it's fair for developers to ask consumers to give something to the rest of the community in exchange for releases?
I second Jessica as far as this is concerned - it is fair provided the developers don't ask for craziness on behalf of the consumers (e.g. make 10 breeds within a certain timespan).

-If you are a developer, would you consider asking for community activity in exchange for releasing your own creations?
As Rascii mentioned, I already did something similar to this by holding off on relasing Chione V1.1 until Survivor filled up (even though I cracked and released it a couple of days early). As a result, yes. As previously mentioned, though, most of my requests wouldn't be crazy - something along the lines of "submit 10 creatures to TCR."

All in all, I like this idea and would love to see people get in on it.


~ The Realm ~
Risen Angel's Creatures Blog


 
Trell
Wee Scrivener

Trell


 visit Trell's website: TrellyOllyOxenFree
  1/21/2013

I am intrigued... This certainly sparked my curiosity. I think it would be fun. Very much fun! [ngrin]

Trell
"Holy crap in a casket!"

 
Pann
Small Birb

Pann


 visit Pann's website: Heck Yeah, Creatures!
  1/21/2013

Sure! I'd love to help! I run a Creatures Tumblr and I could always get a kick in the butt to update that more, and any other way I could help!

Small bird who lives here sometimes, and wanders other times.

Got Creatures related content to share? Submit to Heck Yeah, Creatures!

Icon by gettehld on twitter!


 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  1/21/2013

What kinds of goals does everyone think would be fair/interesting to set?

My TCR Norns
 
Amaikokonut

Amaikokonut


 visit Amaikokonut's website: Naturing :: Nurturing
  1/22/2013

Aww, thanks for all the replies guys <: (Extra thanks to Jessica and Grendel Man for the super-thorough replies!)
I'm kind of sad I don't have a finished agent already to start with! I'll have to get moving on that :P

Regarding keeping the requirements open to many; for the most part, the challenges will revolve around a specific area of the CC that needs some love, whether that's more active blogging or a more robust wiki or whatnot; just asking for more of what people do already. Occasionally I might do something totally silly, like asking people to draw/describe what they would look like as a norn or something, hah.

But occasionally I might consider posing some agent-related challenges; for example, I might write several tutorials and guides to making, say, aquatic agents, and then, with all the how-to's at your disposal, pose an aquatic-agent-related challenge.

I'm not going to tell you to "go do xyz" without providing all the guidance I can give. The point of those sorts of challenges is to put the ability of creation into as many hands as possible, not just to achieve an end result. It's a sort of "teach a man to fish" type of logic. Only if you do actually learn to fish, you and all your friends get free fish as a bonus, or something, and this analogy doesn't even make sense anymore but moving on.

Anyway, I don't think those sorts of challenges would happen very often, but I'm throwing the idea out there for discussion. Do you guys think asking the members of community to learn/try something new falls under "too much to ask"? Even if not everyone would be willing/able to participate, might the community as a whole still benefit from nurturing and encouraging the growth of beginning developers?

Regarding impossible-to-reach goals: I'm not planning on giving any of the challenges hard time-limits like "X number of posts must be made by March 21." I might do something like "x number of posts must be made within the same week" but it doesn't have to be that specific week, it could be within any span of 7 days in the future.
So there will be no such thing as "failing" a challenge; it will always be there, so even if I did pose something totally ridiculous like "create 50 breeds" and it wasn't until two years later that the 50th breed was released, well, the challenge would still be complete and the agent would finally be released.

The challenges probably won't be very painful though; if for no other reason than the fact that once I finish an agent I am usually far too anxious to get it out there to wait too long, hah. I hope to never have to hold a single agent in challenge-limbo for more than a month. If there ever were huge-mega-challenges like "create a metaroom", it would have to be broken down into tons of parts with several "rewards" along the way.

I'll wrap this up by seconding Malkin: What sorts of activities might help to benefit the CC as a whole? What might you like to see the community come together to work on? Posting in general? Blogging? Organizing the wiki? Promoting the game?

Tiny communities like these are the sorts that have to be fed to grow. The more we put in, I think, the more we will ultimately get out of it.


[Naturing :: Nurturing]
 
RisenAngel
Sanely Insane

RisenAngel

Manager


 visit RisenAngel's website: The Realm
  1/22/2013

As I mentioned in my earlier reply, I'd focus on getting places like the CWiki and TCR some more activity.

Organizing the Wiki is a big one; there's a bunch of junk pages that for all intents and purposes shouldn't be there, and there's a bunch of stuff that needs documenting.


~ The Realm ~
Risen Angel's Creatures Blog


 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  1/22/2013

If you'd like to propose a Cwiki or a TCR challenge, as the main active mod on both, I can help with those. [ngrin]

I do think, though, that the challenge for the Cwiki is more keeping it up to date than it having pages that 'shouldn't be there' (minus spambot pages).


My TCR Norns
 
Don

Don


 visit Don's website: AmberCreatures
  1/24/2013

I love the idea. It would also encourage people to check in more often to see if a new challenge had been released! :D

Don
AmberCreatures


 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  2/8/2013

Would it be bad to have as a prize/incentive an addon which is potentially creature-life-saving?

My TCR Norns
 
Ettina

Ettina



  3/15/2013

"Would you be willing to put in a little effort to help earn an agent release for the community?"

I could probably pop out a new genome.


By the way, I don't care if anyone steals my ideas for their own work, as long as you don't try to stop me from making my own stuff. Many ideas I mention are things I don't have the time or skill to actually do.
 
Missmysterics

Missmysterics



  8/24/2013

I'm, trying to make an effort to get more involved anyway,but I think this would be great, what I'd really like to see is competitions.
A part of the problem with TCR is that it seems even it's owner has lost interest, news isn't being posted and creatures that are sent are being uploaded really slow.
If they're busy with something else I suppose that's reasonable. With the Creatures wikis rather less so,considering anyone can sign up and is given full editing capability.

 
magpie-angel

magpie-angel


 visit magpie-angel's website: lillium white norns
  8/24/2013

i definitely want to give it a go but i would need so much help when it came to developing so if someone was willing to guide me step by step and have the patience then i'd love to do a project or even if i join on a project
 
LoverIan

LoverIan



  8/24/2013

This sounds like a really great idea!

Honestly, I would do anything within my abilities to cause new content to be released, even try my hand at making an agent. I think we could use more art and also more vehicle agents. Or trying to get people to convert agents to new or older formats!

I personally feel as long as things are within reason, its alright. If I can learn to do scripting, I think it'd be fair to ask for community interaction.

It would be awesome if we could do something for survivor, such as all contestants must have participated in the current contest, or there must be a certain number of journal entries that week.

I would also love the wiki to be refined, such as making articles less of stubs, providing more images for breeds, or images for image-less breeds.
Does the Creatures Caves have a facebook? If we had something like that, or even a facebook outlet for challenges like this, we could probably expand the realm of options (same goes for Tumblr)


beep
 
youkaihybrid26

youkaihybrid26



  8/24/2013

OoO I am very willing!!!! I can't make much but I can post a lot. =)

Just your neighborhood Youkai dropping by =)


 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  8/24/2013

Missmysterics wrote:
I'm, trying to make an effort to get more involved anyway,but I think this would be great, what I'd really like to see is competitions.
A part of the problem with TCR is that it seems even it's owner has lost interest, news isn't being posted and creatures that are sent are being uploaded really slow.
If they're busy with something else I suppose that's reasonable. With the Creatures wikis rather less so,considering anyone can sign up and is given full editing capability.



I try to check the TCR queue once a week, as it's all too often empty - please feel free to PM me if you've got a lot of creatures in the queue. :)

LoverIan wrote:

Does the Creatures Caves have a facebook? If we had something like that, or even a facebook outlet for challenges like this, we could probably expand the realm of options (same goes for Tumblr)



C-Rex manages the Creatures Caves facebook page, so he'd be the one to contact. :)


My TCR Norns
 
InsanityPrelude
For Science!

InsanityPrelude



  8/27/2013  1

The wiki certainly needs more love. I'd probably contribute to a challenge involving that.
 
LoverIan

LoverIan



  9/9/2013

InsanityPrelude wrote:
The wiki certainly needs more love. I'd probably contribute to a challenge involving that.



I'm personally planning on upgrading the Plant Norn's page, that way the different types can be identified from each other :D

I honestly wouldn't mind, as I've said, challenges
I don't think there are too many of us that really disagree much with the principle


beep
 
clohse
Mad Scientist

clohse


 visit clohse's website: Clohse's page at the CWiki
  9/9/2013

I'm in. I'd be willing to help out with the wiki, or whatever non-artsy challenge. (As long as it is understood up front that I have no artistic ability at all!)

CLohse's Norns at the Creatures Repository
 


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