0 A.D. in-game interface w/social media

[Pedro Falcão]

Should visibility be a goal in itself? Granted, Facebook may attract a lot of "newbie" players, but is that desirable if it scares off potential contributors?

I don't get why newbie players would scare potential contributors, zoot. After all you only play with whom you want to, isn't it true?

[zoot]

Do potential contributors really get scared off by little buttons that say "Share"?

It's not so much what the buttons say, but rather the function they have - which is to increase Facebook's revenue. Admittedly, I do not have any scientific study proving that most volunteer contributors would be opposed to such a thing - it's just that I have never met one who wasn't.

[FeXoR]

An option to *completely remove* the feature from the build, even if an option to turn it off is included? Your dislike sounds like irrational hatred. No offense. Like it or not, social media is how are game is going to get exposure. In my opinion, including social media into the game is just simple prudence.

True, the option to turn it on/off could only effect what you see and what is loaded, not the installed code. But it's not that unlikely to not install specific features of software at all. It can/should be enabled by default. But the option to turn it off is a must-have IMO.

Edited October 17, 2012 by FeXoR

[Pedro Falcão]

It's not so much what the buttons say, but rather the function they have - which is to increase Facebook's revenue. Admittedly, I do not have any scientific study proving that most volunteer contributors would be opposed to such a thing - it's just that I have never met one who wasn't.

True, it's not good to see your free work contributing to others' bank acc, but if you have facebook, you are already contributing and if you don't, why care if people want to share their scores with friends?

[zoot]

if you don't, why care if people want to share their scores with friends?

Because:

it's not good to see your free work contributing to others' bank acc

[zoot]

By the way, I completely sympathize with the desire to share scores with your social network. I've often wanted to brag with my pwnage of qBot myself. But not if the cost is that Facebook's advertisers get to leech off every such post from every player of the game.

[Pedro Falcão]

in what commercial game (rts) the players can share theirs scores with the Commmnunity, blizzard do that?

No, 0 A.D. would be pioneer, i think.

[zoot]

No, 0 A.D. would be pioneer, i think.

I think not. Endless amounts of cheap "freemium" games does this since they can't afford real advertising.

[Pedro Falcão]

I think not. Endless amounts of cheap "freemium" games does this since they can't afford real advertising.

Some facebook games do have the option to publish the scores, but i don't think any stand-alone game publishes the scores, at least i've not seen any. And those freemium games have their advertises on the right side of your feeds or above (and under) the facebook games.

[feneur]

By the way, I completely sympathize with the desire to share scores with your social network. I've often wanted to brag with my pwnage of qBot myself. But not if the cost is that Facebook's advertisers get to leech off every such post from every player of the game.

If that's the argument, well, then we shouldn't work on the game because it's something that someone might want to write about on a news site or in a news paper or something, and then they might get some money from advertising. And we certainly shouldn't be working on a game (especially not over the internet as that increases the value of the service ISPs offer) because that might make someone buy a new computer and then a hardware manufacturer might benefit from it. I really don't see how whether or not FB might make some minuscule amount of money from a few advertisements should influence our decisions in any way. Especially since we would get something in return in the form of the advertisement the game would get.

(I'm not saying there can't be other reasons why to think about if/how/why, just that I fail to see how money should affect our decisions in any kind of way.)

[zoot]

If that's the argument, well, then we shouldn't work on the game because it's something that someone might want to write about on a news site or in a news paper or something, and then they might get some money from advertising. And we certainly shouldn't be working on a game (especially not over the internet as that increases the value of the service ISPs offer) because that might make someone buy a new computer and then a hardware manufacturer might benefit from it. I really don't see how whether or not FB might make some minuscule amount of money from a few advertisements should influence our decisions in any way. Especially since we would get something in return in the form of the advertisement the game would get.

(I'm not saying there can't be other reasons why to think about if/how/why, just that I fail to see how money should affect our decisions in any kind of way.)

That's not what I said. I said I would be opposed to it if support for Facebook specifically is hardcoded into the game.

Which I why I suggested supporting it server-side. That way, the user could choose which social network they want to support by switching servers. Instead of being given a "it's Facebook's way or the highway" kind of deal.

[feneur]

That's not what I said. I said I would be opposed to it if support for Facebook specifically is hardcoded into the game.

Which I why I suggested supporting it server-side. That way, the user could choose which social network they want to support by switching servers. Instead of being given a "it's Facebook's way or the highway" kind of deal.

My argument was not specifically against you, but rather against the money point, so perhaps I shouldn't have quoted you.

If we include something I think we should include something generic, not "just Facebook" or "just Twitter" etc, but some generic solution that allows you to interact with more than one social network. I don't know how much is possible to do with the different APIs though, and perhaps the best solution is to have an optional online 0 A.D. profile on servers of our control from which you can e.g. post the results of your latest game or whatever you want. That should be a lot easier to implement and would lower the risk that people would be annoyed at seeing "social media in the game". Also, I don't know about the different licences for the different APIs, but it could be problematic to include anything using them in an open source game, so it would be a way to avoid any possible such issues as well.

[zoot]

My argument was not specifically against you, but rather against the money point, so perhaps I shouldn't have quoted you.

Well, sure, but no one suggested that we shouldn't work on the game because it might benefit hardware manufacturers and all that ... stuff

I did, though, suggest a line of reasoning which would imply that I am also opposed to only supporting Dell computers, for instance. I hope you will agree that would be a bad idea.

In other words: It's not "it might benefit someone" that is the issue. It's creating a lock-in to one vendor (or a fixed set of vendors) who then benefits exclusively from it that is the issue.

Edited October 18, 2012 by zoot

[Jeru]

In that case, of course we would never limit the sharing to Facebook-only.

[Yves]

An option to *completely remove* the feature from the build, even if an option to turn it off is included? Your dislike sounds like irrational hatred. No offense. Like it or not, social media is how are game is going to get exposure. In my opinion, including social media into the game is just simple prudence.

It's not about liking it or not. It's about making 0 A.D. as visible as possible.

Today there are a lot of services on the internet that are designed to follow every step we take and document it in databases for companies to make money with. Google's add-sense is an example. They can track you on every website that uses it and that's a lot. I supspect it works the same way with facebook, twitter and G+ buttons. And this is just what happens if you are not even participating in any of these networks.

That's the reason I prefer if it's completely removed from my build rather than just disabled. If it's not very well implemented, "disabled" could mean that the buttons are just invisible but everything else still works.

Also I like software that is modular and has some optinal parts that can be disabled.

Some other arguments against this feature have been identified earlier in this thread.

[FeXoR]

I think I heard that http://www.bing.com provides a cross social media API. Couldn't find it at first glance though.

Concerning the button to turn on/off social network support: As I said before it should disable loading the code for it as well as removing the buttons from the GUI. That's the least. And I agree with Yves that code not used anyway does not need to/should not be installed. This doesn't only apply to social media support. This could include e.g. the high quality graphics actually not delivered with the prebuild Alphas or even Atlas for people that only want to play because it's quite of some size (Indeed for me it would be formations, too ^^).

Edited October 18, 2012 by FeXoR

[Pedro Falcão]

Well, we could disable it as default.

What about the idea for this forum to hold the statistics?

[feneur]

Well, sure, but no one suggested that we shouldn't work on the game because it might benefit hardware manufacturers and all that ... stuff

I did, though, suggest a line of reasoning which would imply that I am also opposed to only supporting Dell computers, for instance. I hope you will agree that would be a bad idea.

In other words: It's not "it might benefit someone" that is the issue. It's creating a lock-in to one vendor (or a fixed set of vendors) who then benefits exclusively from it that is the issue.

Ok, I thought you were just using Facebook as an example since I can't recall anyone mentioning just using one social media provider Either way, that's not going to happen, if we do something like this we're definitely going to make it possible to use whichever you want (unless it's too obscure, then it depends on how easy it is to add of course ).

[zoot]

Ok, I thought you were just using Facebook as an example since I can't recall anyone mentioning just using one social media provider Either way, that's not going to happen, if we do something like this we're definitely going to make it possible to use whichever you want (unless it's too obscure, then it depends on how easy it is to add of course ).

If no one thinks there should be a fixed set of social networks, what is the disagreement about? I suggested a way to allow the user to have a say in which social networks to support - by doing it over an intermediary server. I'm interested to see if there are any better suggestions.

[FeXoR]

If no one thinks there should be a fixed set of social networks, what is the disagreement about? I suggested a way to allow the user to have a say in which social networks to support - by doing it over an intermediary server. I'm interested to see if there are any better suggestions.

For statistics (which are helpful for development e.g. for balancing which civ is played how often and which units are used most) there should be a server to gather them anonymously. I don't know if an agreement of the user is needed there. This server should belong to wildfire games or the community if possible IMO. I don't know if that's realistic due to the costs.

Non-anonymous data linked/easy to post to social networks for sure has to be accepted by the user. If the user don't want to use it he/she should not be bothered with the buttons neither and the social network should have no access/connection to that users computer.

So I think the disagreement is about if social media support is present all the time or if it can be turned off and who/which social network/server gets access to which kind of data by default (or at all).

[feneur]

For statistics (which are helpful for development e.g. for balancing which civ is played how often and which units are used most) there should be a server to gather them anonymously. I don't know if an agreement of the user is needed there. This server should belong to wildfire games or the community if possible IMO. I don't know if that's realistic due to the costs.

Statistics are already collected for technical information (and opt-in, so only those who agree to submit the information have their information submitted), so it should just be to add more things you want to track to include more information.

[FeXoR]

Statistics are already collected for technical information (and opt-in, so only those who agree to submit the information have their information submitted), so it should just be to add more things you want to track to include more information.

Oh, true! I checked it when I installed Alpha 9 but for some reason it failed.

Enabled it in SVN now. Sorry for not enabling it before x).

[feneur]

No worries, the more information the better, so there's no reason to scold people for not doing it earlier

[zoot]

So I think the disagreement is about if social media support is present all the time or if it can be turned off and who/which social network/server gets access to which kind of data by default (or at all).

I don't see anyone disagreeing that it should be possible to turn it off. I don't see anyone disagreeing about the default social network either, as long as 1) it is possible to turn it off completely and 2) its possible to switch to any other social network.

[FeXoR]

Well, perhaps Yves has to add something but if otherwise all agree we just "live" in a wonderful peaceful thread