Monetization

[Sundiata]

@itrelles, also to clarify, I don't really mean to attack you personally. Just that there has been a negative trend in some of the discussions recently initiated by a mysterious split in the programming team and by some dissatisfied players/contributors. They're a minority but some seem to be passive aggressively trying to disrupt development/forum discussions because of personal issues. Your latest comments seemed to be inadvertently feeding in to this, which is why I felt the need to respond.  

 

11 minutes ago, itrelles said:

if im allowed

Open Source. You do with it what you want. If you want to promote 0AD, who is stopping you? 

 

[camel]

3 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Honestly, a lot of you talk about 0AD like it's a commercial project (somebody had the nerve to suggest adds in the game and forum). Like we have anxious investors that need to be appeased by rushing development to release an unfinished bug-ridden game full of broken features and broken promises. A lot of us are here because we are tired and disillusioned by the dishonest and predatory money grab schemes the big developers are currently specializing in.    

Even high quality indie games can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and AAA can cost tens of millions, even more. And 0AD is routinely compared to the best!! RTS games are incredibly complex to make, especially if they're fully 3D, which is one of the reasons you don't see so many of them being made. With all the doubt and sometimes even negativity from a handful of "fans" these days, I have to ask, which recent Historical RTS are you all playing that's so much greater than 0AD that you're all "threatening" to jump ship? Empires Apart??? lol! 

0AD has never been greater! Or as popular... Just because there are snags in the development today (as there have always been, by the way), doesn't mean anything about the future of this gargantuan project. It's just part of the development cycle. There's always ups and downs. But I honestly don't get it. It's like you prefer fairytales, and sweet lullabies of all the things money will do for this game, forgetting how much money has been thrown at far lesser games...

The volunteering aspect of development is both it's greatest strength, as well as one of its weaknesses. Patience is a requirement. In everything. Money can't buy love. Money can't make a game like 0AD. Only the love, dedication, passion and tenacity of its developers can. So please stop antagonizing the developers and let them work! Give them words of encouragement, not these belligerent and uncalled for reproaches because things aren't going as fast as you'd like them to go. You are causing harm by seeding unnecessary doubt, and it's unpleasant for developers to keep hearing their unpaid work isn't good enough for you. If anything, see what you yourself can add to the development. Just throwing money at things is a lazy and unwholesome way of doing things.        

The one thing I do agree with is that some of the social media accounts, especially the facebook page, as well as the main 0AD website should be updated with regular screenshots, either of development or just fan made, and some small update lists of interesting commits, to show of the development of the game, because currently there are way too many 6+ year old promo shots floating around the net, and doubting Tom's who think the project is dead while so many people are actually working on it day and night. 

Isn't this something for you @asterix? Collecting all the pretty screenshot and other media produced and shared on the forums, and making a small selection of the best pieces, to post anywhere from 1-5 images per week on facebook, with a 1 liner (What is it? who made it? Can we expect to see it in vanilla or is it for a mod?). And then secondarily, look at the weekly commits and see if there's anything you think people might find interesting. Either a short list of the most interesting commits, or a small written piece (just a paragraph or so) of a more intricate commit, just once a week or so? It would do wonders to let people know how much is actually being done (outside of the pathfinder or AI department). 

Very beautiful to read, but in general terms everything needs money, even for servers. So why not use for merchandising purposes? Mb u can afford more expenses if u get from cups, clothes, poster extra money. Its not only about love, u can keep loving a free open source company and make those things.

[Sundiata]

5 minutes ago, camel said:

Very beautiful to read, but in general terms everything needs money, even for servers. So why not use for merchandising purposes? Mb u can afford more expenses if u get from cups, clothes, poster extra money. Its not only about love, u can keep loving a free open source company and make those things.

Sure, but the main developers aren't business men to my knowledge, and these things take time, effort and investment, that you're not even sure you'll get a return on. As I said in the previous comment, the project is Open Source, CC0 license, which means you can do with it pretty much what you like. If you want to spend time, money and effort into creating merchandize, I'm sure it will be positively received, and if you decide to donate the proceeds back to Wildfire Games, that would be amazing! but someone needs to do it, and the most capable contributors are already being pulled left and right by everyone who thinks they should be doing what they want them to do, without actually offering to pay them a salary, since everyone is complaining about money, except for the people who are actually making this game.... 

[itrelles]

On 3/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, Sundiata said:

I don't really mean to attack you personally.

i dont know xD 

On 3/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, Sundiata said:

Just that there has been a negative trend in some of the discussions recently initiated by a mysterious split in the programming team and by some dissatisfied players/contributors.

i can feel it inside the game,

if game depends on contributors, contributors are the real owners of the game

and if some of them are diatisfied u shuld listen to them

change is the only unevitable law of the universe

i guess working or playing or both with the same people all the time tired someones,  maybe they are the ones who need changes...

On 3/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, Sundiata said:

passive aggressively trying to disrupt development/forum discussions because of personal issues.

team personal issues should very important, u cant help or work if some bad thoughts invade your brains, u must help people in need, more when they are asking u indirectly, some people don know how to ask help.

On 3/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, Sundiata said:

Your latest comments seemed to be inadvertently feeding in to this

sry

On 3/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, Sundiata said:

which is why I felt the need to respond. 

i thought u just loved my mayo picture and wanted to talk =O 

 

On 3/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, Sundiata said:

who is stopping you? 

my tendon!!!!! i lived 3 month inside 0AD, saved my summer from my raping depression, now 8 days till tendon day, i could be able to walk and drive and be really free again

your inspiratinal frase is like: 

Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime

Edited March 15, 2019 by Itms
toned down the style of the inspiratinal frase

[Sundiata]

39 minutes ago, itrelles said:

if game depends on contributors, contributors are the real owners of the game

Welcome to the future!  

 

39 minutes ago, itrelles said:

 and if some of them are diatisfied u shuld listen to them

Yes, but the deliberate and unnecessary vagueness and doublespeak of a small handful of individuals, obviously stemming from personal issues spilling into public discussions is really not something that should be entertained in my opinion. Some developers left. Some are still here. Development in some departments is going to be slow for a while. That's how it is. It's not the end of the world (aka, 0AD). It's not the first time it's happened. And it's not going to discourage the dozens of other developers in other departments from continuing their work. We're here because we think it's fun to work on one of the greatest RTS games ever. If someone doesn't enjoy it anymore, that's a pity. But some people seem to want to stop other people from enjoying the development of the game, souring the forums for nothing. Whether they do it consciously or not is a different discussion. 

I'd just like people to be a little more mature, and put their personal feelings aside to work for the greatness of 0AD. It's not a personal project. It belongs to all of us. Even if some people contribute so much, and some so little, and some only play the game, we are all part of this community. An online family. And there are always bound to be disagreements and even fights in the family. But at the end of the day, we are all one blood. Classic RTS blooded to be precise. Also, just because someone shouts louder than the others, doesn't make them more right, or their desires trump the desires of the many. There is compromise in everything, especially if so many people are involved, changes are bound to be slow, but indeed inevitable. It's just important not to force it, and not let the few hijack the show. 

 

39 minutes ago, itrelles said:

sry

I humbly forgive you. May you live long and prosper, my child.

 

39 minutes ago, itrelles said:

i thought u just loved my mayo picture and wanted to talk =O 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, yes, I thought it was an intriguing picture. Tell me more about mayonnaise. I never eat it. Am I missing out?

 

Good luck with your tendon man! I ripped the tendons in one of my feet playing paintball a few years ago (also broke it a bit). I thought I f'd up my foot for life. It took months to walk normally again, but now I don't feel a thing anymore.  

 

 

 

 

Edited March 14, 2019 by Sundiata

[elexis]

Response to the first three posts after my last post:

5 hours ago, (-_-) said:

Doesn't make it any less of a problem. You would still need to do something about it. Things do not fix themselves. Therefore, a better question to ask is what is being done to fix it this time? 

What is being done to fix this is a subset of what can be done to fix this. We can remain in the historic inspection and can do some case studies what has been attempted to fix this and how much that has yielded, followed by an evaluation. Secondly one can look at what has actually brought the project the most success and consider where influencing that is in our capacity, and whether doing so would come with other disadvantages (dilemma, trilemma, or mexican standoffs). (Also offtopic unless a considerable answer is monetization)

15 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

a lot of companies who'd be happy to handle all that

Considerable. Just always keep the non-profit state in mind when looking for for-profit interaction. We don't want companies taking 5% or 10% of the revenue if we don't need their services to accomplish the same in non-profit mode.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

profitable magical future

You mean a magical non-profit future with reasonable compensation.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

its time to get and retain gamers inside 0 ad 

My genes determine it is time to take shelter and create backups of the genes instead of perpetuating martyrdom.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

why should be difficult to fraction donation in a profitable magical future to each memeber iof the team

No, it's hard with the current approach, because one can't determine who should get how much for what purpose. For example everyone getting the same amount per hour is unfeasible because we don't know how productive people were during that hour. And then one still didn't factor in the difficulty, importance or qualitative worth of the task that was compensated for. One can only change the premises to become unable to determine who get's what for what purpose, but that doesn't necessarily make it 'fair'. Usually non-profit organizations determine the income by comparing with average wage, which is astronomical in comparison to what we have in terms of funding. So it's a dilemma, the compensation will always be uneven in selectable ways.

19 hours ago, itrelles said:

1000 different players per month

0.001 retaining gamers %

I guess one can leverage more there, yes. There are presumably more than the 0.1% "retained" players, people just play other games after they played 0 A.D.. In theory one could do surveys to figure out what people would want best. But when I think about what I read on the forums and lobby, it's terribly hard to figure out a coherent and widely shared ideas. Creative works, from my limited experience, are usually best when they are done by a sole visionary or group of visionaries who figured out the entire createive work already and able to implement it or able to persuade others to implement it (as opposed to trying to survey ideas from people who only consume the game but don't envision a future game).

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

if this game reach 100.000 different players per month

This 100k download / account number is certainly a thing, imagine everyone donating $1 per year to further the tax-exempt purposes.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

u want more (software quality) cause u are all beatifull perfectionist,  but its nt time to be that

On the one hand, closed source and obfuscated source allow getting away with all kinds of crimes against software quality, while free software provides source code as the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it and can't hide or obfuscate their skeletons in the closet.

On the other hand, regardless of the licensing framework of the work, quality does pay off. If one actively choses negligence over verification, one will never reduce the number of bugs, just changes from one bug to the next. The systematic defects, antipatterns, that are the result of spaghetti code and implementing without designing mean that one either will give up a lot of artistic freedom or have to rewrite the same piece of code many times until one figured out what one wanted to achieve to begin with. If one doesn't prioritize quality but just cares about satisfying the  formal conditions to a goal superficially, one will ultimately pass on the bad quality work to users who will notice the bad quality too. (Not to the extent that readers of the code see the mess, but still.) When I think back about every commit that I ever read, I don't regret anyone chosing quality. Only regretting the time spent trying to determine what the best quality change is without actually achieving that.

I can sing so many tales of spaghetti code that went unreadable, unmaintainable and just reached a dead end because of that, and for-profit corporations really like to do such stuff. The website has to look funky, no matter what happens with the machine. The code has to be done tomorrow, therefore the bugs can be fixed, like, not.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

i think sometimes u just have to act, but u op iq math guys overthink a lot

Hard to determine a priori where thinking something through ends and overthinking begins.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

it is normal in southamerica for people to use and charge free linux software, even our president son made that w venezuela goverment,  u are not sellmans

If it's free software in the GPL sense, then noone can stop people from distributing the software gratis. Only a proprietary copyrighted work with licensing fees, or proprietary online service with usage fees can charge people.

Wildfire Games can't charge anything, because Wildfire Games is not a legal entity. Software in the Public Interest (SPI) can't charge anything, because they are a non-profit organization. But the for-profit people that work for Wildfire Games or SPI can charge SPI something for furthering the tax-exempt purposes, such as developing free software or bookkeeping free software projects.

I didn't read about Venezuela, but free software means they will find someone offering it without charge. They might either support free software creation with donations, or by purchasing copies they can get for free elsewhere, or they hire for-profit developers through a non-profit organization.

Non-profit organizations can use salesmen, as long as it serves the charitable purposes (don't ask me how).

16 hours ago, elexis said:

14 hours ago, itrelles said:

18 hours ago, elexis said:

The third problem is finding someone who can actually accomplish the decided purposes

money do that 

16 hours ago, elexis said:

Doesn't

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

yes it does

Didn't, at least.
Merely continuously increasing the offered wage means that not (only) the most qualified person to accomplish that will offer their service, but mostly any person who is interest in that amount of money, not in the product or the idealism.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

why random (person)?

Quote

what if paid could never run out 

At least predicting whether a candidate (be it a known person or not) can succeed in writing a new pathfinder seems impossible. Even judging what the requirements of the task (pathfinder) is, whether the possible developer is qualified to accomplish the task, and whether the developer ultimately succeeded to satisfy the tak goals requires a team member who is qualified to understand the task, the work and compare the work with the ideal solution. For the pathfinder there may be a bunch of obvious and easy performance improvements. But if the task is to use a new algorithm, then the ones deciding on the funding and on the approval of the work would either have to have knowledge about pathfinding algorithms or rely on luck and the assumption of unlimited funding.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

u can make it free later

That would make SPI have to double check or reconsider Wildfire Games as a free software project. I think I have a much better idea to fix everything, but I'm not done yet "overthinking" it. For once one needs to know what non-profit status forbids and enables, secondly what SPI offers and how WFG relates to SPI,  third, one needs to know what the (charitable?) purpose of Wildfire Games was to f'ing  begin (and end) with, fourth, one needs to find software that "breaks the paradigm" or write it oneself, fifth, convince everyone else that it's a good idea (sixth notice that this will already require months of unpaid work with limited prospect). So lots of material to "overthink". But dedicating an extra amount of time to think about these questions will allow furthering of more purposes than funding itself. For example answering the third question (what is the official purpose of Wildfire Games?") non-superficially will enable us to develop a vision of these purposes, leading to an implementation of the vision if we can succeed (as opposed to just exploring ways to getting money without thinking about a mission statement).

Increasing the efficiancy and effectiveness of non-profit funding seems very well possible to me without involving for-profit changes to the project. I'd like to finish my "overthinking" however before claiming a solution and I spent several weeks already on legalese and €3,80 defeatism.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

but if for you freedm its beeing 12 hours in front a pc workinf for 1 dollar an hour,,, we thin very different

Programming smartphone spyware operating systems, remote control and trolley-problem-decision software for cars, building hardware to break and become irreperable (planned obsolescence), smart homes where every ravioli is connected to the internet, monopolizing social media for the purpose of gaining spying and political censorship means are examples of what international megacorporations do to maximize profit, and they have no worries outcompeting and lobbying against middle class companies.

Even the middle class companies are guilty of creating empty product for the purpose of maximizing profit, opposing theinterest of the user, keeping their code a secret to increase the cost of using it.

If that is the alternative (to free of compensation development), then at least one didn't further such preposterous causes for the given time of involvement, as opposed to these actors...

Now imagine a world where 0 A.D. developers can have the freedom to eat ravioli every day AND further 0 A.D. as free software.

Non-profit funding "just" has to become sufficiently effective.

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

he was willing to donate 200 dollars

Great! Remember to inform donors that they can (depending on country) write off the donations from the income tax!

15 hours ago, itrelles said:

i thought u where here from start =O

So I only missed 15 years of 0 A.D. development.

[elexis]

15 hours ago, ffffffff said:

So the only open bug is how to decide what the money is spend for?

That's one of the most critical open bugs.

Also, that involves some legal aspects. For example what about the donor intent - did people in the 2013 indiegogo campaign donate with the intend that this donation is used for pathfinding and a singleplayer campaign? Depending on whether that counts as a purpose restricted donation, the money wouldn't even be allowed to be used for anything else. But practically the campaign was considered failed and now it seems we don't restrict the funding to the explicit campaign goals but used it as a general purpose fund. It's a bit contradictory, we fund IT and travel cost because the funding is general purpose, but we fund no or only exceptionally development or art creation because the donations were intended to be used for pathfinding. (At least I don't recall that campaign speaking about IT & travel cost, opposed to the play0ad.com donate page).

It's not only the purpose question ("How to decide what the money is spent for"), but also the amount question ("how much to spend on the purpose").

For example, imagine people donated because they really liked Kushites, we have no means to tell, or whether donors still hunt the purposes of the 2013 campaign.

If the idea is that developers should be compensated for their contributions because there are donations and they did some worthy work, how do you tell how much each of the active developers receive individually? Are Kushites more worth to the project than diplomacy colors? How much work was involved? How could one justify deciding to give one contributor 10cent per hour and the other one 30 cent per hour...

That's why developer compensation is difficult with current premises.

15 hours ago, ffffffff said:

Maybe for new coaching to players becoming developers? 

Good item on the list of charitable purposes! The question is only whether it's also a purpose that donors want to support when they read it.

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

you always find the same questions, "When will you go out" "when to see the next monetization campaign". 

I admit I didn't go out as much as I used to. Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume that most people who ask "when will the game be released?" didn't play it yet and noticed that it's already providing a "complete skirmish match experience". (As mentioned I uninstalled in 2014 after seeing a discouraging hint that the game was incomplete and apparently not really playable).

People ask for new funding campaigns? I've never seen people on the lobby or forums who were eager to donate but didn't know that they can do so on play0ad.com. Mostly assuming that people propose specific funding campaign platforms without having the capacity to donate themselves. Since I almost never hear about donors (that's a key aspect), that might be brutally false. We will see.

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

But once again what you see externally in the forums (because I know you have another forum inside where you are going to have a lot of things that must be very cloudy) never comes out of all that is discussed externally (forum) even though it is a small group of trees like the Lordgood has climbed on the Trac.

I understand, you're missing out on the staff forums stories. But it's almost only formal and administrative stuff on the staff forums. Almost all of the source and art development is done in the public, with the help of the general public, for the general public. Not only for noble reasons but also because the platforms (#0ad-dev on irc on quakenet, code.wildfiregames.com, trac.wildfiregames.com) are the most suitable ones for discussing the code.

In fact current Wildfire Games has the same problem. There were 4 or 5 previous Wildfire Games that had internal staff forums that are now lost or only accessible with archeology. The less information relating to the project is private, the easier it is for the general public to participate, migrate, fork, or whatever.

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

They are never shared on the official website and this is a big waste.

Not on play0ad.com, that website needs to become much more informative, agreed. But many stories that start on the staff forums are later posted on the forums (even on play0ad.com). Also many stories on the staff forums continue stories from public places on IRC and Phabricator. The people who post in the private places are the same ones that post in the public place, they show the same behavior in all places. So you don't really miss much. If there is any conspiracy from the public, it will be in private mesages I guess. For example Kushites were kept in a conspiracy PM for some reason, perhaps we should read that again and check whether we can share it. Another example was the mod.io page, the patch was set to private until after it was committed. I think that was the only time something was invisible on code.wildfire.com. Anyway, you don't miss much that you can't already get on the forums, IRC and phabricator, and we definitely need to uncover more of WFG history (but more the old closed source development that isn't published at all currently).

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

public relations department as "small" errors in a chain of communication that highlights how bad you are doing in this area

If we don't show great success, it's either because we are bad at presenting it, or it's because we currently don't have it. You liked the a23 trailer and release announcements though? It's hard to do trailers and announcements better every time (the trailer and announcement took 2 weeks or so to create, 24h to render, killed one graphics card). Doing it even better next time and considering how nerve wracking all of that was, I'm skeptical whether we can achieve that. But I do think that we need a software to automatically report on developer progress on the different platforms in a central place. Trac has the RSS API, Phabricator has a REST API, IRC logs have a fixed format, we can parse that and post automated stories of who did what and when. With such a tool one can then explore what other folks did with less effort and write better posts for play0ad.com. I guess that's offtopic too unless we consider better WFG-historywriting and play0ad.com / facebook / twitter PR as a primary means to gain more financial backers.

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

for example there is no development in terms of "what is being done in art"

I rarely followed art development, as far as I know it's on the public forums in almost any case. Stan could tell you more. I don't know if there are many private threads where art is created, would be better to have it in public if there is no real reason for it to be private.

The forum format is also machine-readable, it could be integrated into such a "WFG history tool".

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

or what is needed as volunteers and what departments, have not asked if they need volunteers on social networks, it seems to me that it is not as if they do not need help more than in programming and art.
 because it seems to me that the documents you handle also need some kind of curator, or some expert to fix what it is without updating within the Wiki

I didn't understand these words, but experts are what we need. The walls to hell are painted with good intent. Experts in the field they are working on - and everyone can become an expert if they have enough interest and willpower to overcome any technical hurdle, missing knowledge, or communication issue, enough self-doubt to be their own greatest critic and enough time to gain the experience and knowledge of how experts in their field operate. Guess I'm only spilling empty phrases, but it's true.

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

"why is it not in Steam?"

The last decision was not going on Steam because the user ratings would reflect the current state of the game, not the more finished state of the project. So 0 A.D. might be underrated on Steam in the future.  I haven't seen indication for that to be true though.

The other (legal) aspect about Steam is that we can probably offer it as a download on steam, but we can't use the Steam features that would require 0 A.D. to be compiled against a proprietary Steam API.

There is also the ethical aspect if one disregards the free software license. Do we want to administrate the online service that we provide (for example multiplayer lobby, or hosting games) or do we want to put that into the hands of one corporation that gives a (swearword) about 0 A.D. and free software?

11 hours ago, Diatryma said:

many ignore this kind of projects or their nature

I would guess that's because they didn't see how great it looks and because they either have a favorite other game, or too much money, or download illegally.

6 hours ago, Sundiata said:

 

Agree with everything that you said! Except that donations or even reasonable compensation (average wage!) wouldn't hurt.

5 hours ago, (-_-) said:

Well, seeing it as "only temporary" is much better than seeing it as "the project is doomed". (The latter was something a staff member said on multiple occasions after 23 was released, maybe he changed his mind now, don't know). 

One could wonder how much he contributed to get to that state.

5 hours ago, itrelles said:

why bad rts games are more known than 0 ad? why did i just met 0AD in 2017?

You should know - how did you know about the other games? I guess because you didn't know that free software games exist at all. And the ones that know that free software games exist have only seen the games that look like the best games of 1994.

5 hours ago, itrelles said:

modern digital slavery

That's what I see when I look into the mirror, so @#$% this. People equate unpaid acts with recreation. So if working for 0 A.D. is hedonism, I might just as well watch youtube videos instead and spare myself from the shitshow if one actually does try to help. But legalese considers us voluntarists, philanthropists. In fact the IRS says "the law places no duty on individuals operating charitable organizations to donate their services; they are entitled to reasonable compensation for their efforts.", to share only one of the interesting things in the IRS documents.

5 hours ago, itrelles said:

game is fine for me, it just need more players 

So rare to hear that. To me too btw, except for few big things, otherwise I hadn't wasted so much time playing that.

 

[Stan`]

26 minutes ago, elexis said:

Not on play0ad.com, that website needs to become much more informative, agreed. But many stories that start on the staff forums are later posted on the forums (even on play0ad.com). Also many stories on the staff forums continue stories from public places on IRC and Phabricator. The people who post in the private places are the same ones that post in the public place, they show the same behavior in all places. So you don't really miss much. If there is any conspiracy from the public, it will be in private mesages I guess. For example Kushites were kept in a conspiracy PM for some reason, perhaps we should read that again and check whether we can share it. Another example was the mod.io page, the patch was set to private until after it was committed. I think that was the only time something was invisible on code.wildfire.com. Anyway, you don't miss much that you can't already get on the forums, IRC and phabricator, and we definitely need to uncover more of WFG history (but more the old closed source development that isn't published at all currently).

I think he meant sharing all the screenshots Lordgood, Alexandermb, Wackyserious post on the forums on social media. We communicate very little on stuff we do which gives the impression that we are doing nothing. (Which is wrong of course) 

30 minutes ago, elexis said:

I rarely followed art development, as far as I know it's on the public forums in almost any case. Stan could tell you more. I don't know if there are many private threads where art is created, would be better to have it in public if there is no real reason for it to be private.

The forum format is also machine-readable, it could be integrated into such a "WFG history tool".

I think the problem with the art department is we are not going in one specific direction so it's hard to say what's being worked on. Most of the stuff is on on the public forums. I just use PMs to be on track with anyone else. If I had to give the current status Id say Wackyserious is at school for now Lordgood is killing trees, and Alexandermb is giving polish to art units. I am not doing much art wise. I'm cleaning stuff a bit and preparing the boring tasks that needs to be done. I also need to keep learning so I don't throw 20 bucks away each month. 

 

[Guest]

Not posting news on social media often is understandable. It may seem like no big deal for the reader, but it is actually a very time consuming task for whoever does it.

[Diatryma]

12 hours ago, Sundiata said:

The volunteering aspect of development is both it's greatest strength, as well as one of its weaknesses. Patience is a requirement. In everything. Money can't buy love. Money can't make a game like 0AD. Only the love, dedication, passion and tenacity of its developers can. So please stop antagonizing the developers and let them work! Give them words of encouragement, not these belligerent and uncalled for reproaches because things aren't going as fast as you'd like them to go. You are causing harm by seeding unnecessary doubt, and it's unpleasant for developers to keep hearing their unpaid work isn't good enough for you. If anything, see what you yourself can add to the development. Just throwing money at things is a lazy and unwholesome way of doing things.        

thats my point. we need more volunteers, but I think we need to specify other areas, in addition to the Art and programming area, the strongest areas.

The social media is an example, we need youtuber not salaried or seek that dual intention.

Decent streamers, are popular among the youngest, sometimes certain small ads are given in these streams.

we have to be feeding the public with small novelties and announcing surprises to generate spectacle, not false spectacle as Microsoft sometimes does.

That is one of my points, which was linked to the announcement campaigns both release and activities.

also the official or semi-official mods, many people don't see them as linked to many of them, they even ignore the participation of the WFG developers. not that it's important, but some people always ask if they are safe.

 

[Gurken Khan]

7 hours ago, elexis said:

Considerable. Just always keep the non-profit state in mind when looking for for-profit interaction. We don't want companies taking 5% or 10% of the revenue if we don't need their services to accomplish the same in non-profit mode.

If the proceedings are handled correctly (through SPI?) I don't think there would be a risk for WFG's status. I know some ~projects (small businesses, youtubers) make some money extra by setting up a merch shop with one of those services. I believe it's actually pretty much as easy as '1. upload some graphics 3. profit'.

And while I totally dig the non-profit mode, I can't really see a volunteer making t-shirts in the living room then packaging and mailing them, thus 'accomplishing the same' as those services in regard to range and quality of the products, and don't know if it actually would be cheaper.

Anyway, all I'm saying is I believe it's worth looking into, also in the interest of the 0AD fans; and since money doesn't seem to be of urgent concern and people also have other stuff to do, I don't expect the team to jump hectically to this.

[itrelles]

Korn, life is peachy full album

19 hours ago, elexis said:

companies

eurocentrics companys are the real enemy

19 hours ago, elexis said:

You mean a magical non-profit future with reasonable compensation.

yes! like bread to keep people happy, bread and 0ad CIRCUS

 

19 hours ago, elexis said:

My genes determine it is time to take shelter and create backups of the genes instead of perpetuating martyrdom.

standing ovation, welcome to the 30 to 40 age lololololol, it is nice, old ladys want to have sex w us

 

19 hours ago, elexis said:

it's hard with the current approach, because one can't determine who should get how much for what purpose. For example everyone getting the same amount per hour is unfeasible because we don't know how productive people were during that hour. And then one still didn't factor in the difficulty, importance or qualitative worth of the task that was compensated for. One can only change the premises to become unable to determine who get's what for what purpose, but that doesn't necessarily make it 'fair'. Usually non-profit organizations determine the income by comparing with average wage, which is astronomical in comparison to what we have in terms of funding. So it's a dilemma, the compensation will always be uneven in selectable ways.

change again is the only unevitable law

yes u can determine who gets more and who gets less, thats why people got XP, earned comparing jobs, attitudes and works done

u learn how productive people is after 3 month working toughether, thats basic i think

if everyone earn the same why the most intellignet and hardworking person have to be even to the one who makes the more doll and unusefull work?

copy nintendo, they know how to share and use profit for more games, should be study deeply

"fair" it isnt a fair world, DAWNS are very nice, but the got horrible adaptations problems and they dont reach far 40 years old...

not even air is fair when in some polluted countrys kids are born with lung cancer

non profit organizations have to earn money so they are not accused of mone laundry lolol

this is not a normal game for normal people, so dont compare to normal salaries on normal jobs

world is uneven, get it and ADAPT!

19 hours ago, elexis said:

people just play other games after they played 0 A.D.

not me, why? are there more persons like me? lets find them! 

 

19 hours ago, elexis said:

Creative works

 

19 hours ago, elexis said:

Creative works, from my limited experience, are usually best when they are done by a sole visionary or group of visionaries who figured out the entire createive work already and able to implement it or able to persuade others to implement it

yes! only one imagine, and the others follow! uruguay had 7 president at the same time in the 60

nothin was done, they never reach agreements trolololollolo EGO is a op problem

 

20 hours ago, elexis said:

This 100k download / account number is certainly a thing, imagine everyone donating $1 per year to further the tax-exempt purposes.

imagine vintage players teaching new ones, and getting some in exchange, the 0AD snowball could get bigger and bigger

20 hours ago, elexis said:

spaghetti code

u mean ravioli code?

 

20 hours ago, elexis said:

Hard to determine a priori where thinking something through ends and overthinking begins

when the headache starts ALEXANDER!!!! xD

 

20 hours ago, elexis said:

I didn't read about Venezuela

he was silenced, he apperead floating on the water, son of our president grab free software and sell it to stupido chaves stealer for 30 millions

therefore, yes u can seel something its free, u high iq dont understand, 80% of mens are idiotsand 0AD get u with how its looks, not its AI

maybe some dont like the lag, i just dont care, w lag i can think better 

20 hours ago, elexis said:

Merely continuously increasing the offered wage means that not (only) the most qualified person to accomplish that will offer their service, but mostly any person who is interest in that amount of money, not in the product or the idealism.

it works trust me, but you are right, scammers everywhere 

u can allways make 7 interviews like google and tryto get the op intelligent and idealistic programmer ever 

there are people specialized in finding the right one, it cost money ofcourse 

20 hours ago, elexis said:

I think I have a much better idea to fix everything

I WILL FOLLOW U EVEN IN HELL

20 hours ago, elexis said:

I'd like to finish my "overthinking" however before claiming a solution

STANDING OVATION

 

20 hours ago, elexis said:

Programming smartphone spyware operating systems, remote control and trolley-problem-decision software for cars, building hardware to break and become irreperable (planned obsolescence), smart homes where every ravioli is connected to the internet, monopolizing social media for the purpose of gaining spying and political censorship means are examples of what international megacorporations do to maximize profit, and they have no worries outcompeting and lobbying against middle class companies.

who cares? i wont change my raviolis no matter how many new raviolis add i watch,

social media? u mean 0 ad and green places? lolol ooo they are spying on us, who gives a F

most people want to be stupid and they want to tell them what to do or buy, the rest,

ARE THE ONES WHO MAKES THE CHANGES

20 hours ago, elexis said:

Non-profit funding "just" has to become sufficiently effective.

w more people inside 0ad, lot more, more more more,

and in weekends, lot of moderators helping new ones minimum

planned obsolence, imagine that there is a huge company that makes oven for the people to cook theyr raviolis, 

it has 50.000 employees, every one and each of them has 2 kids and 4 elders to sustain

now those kitchen are undestructible,

so in 20 years the company is closed and all thats thousand of people have to GTF, lot of companys struglling all time, the bad ones fire people and give raises to theyr managers, MEMES will DESTROY THEM, whats what happened to EA,,,

planned obsolence was invented by mistake, now it reached it pick, 

people are getting aware of that, and will fight those companys

in a world w less and less jobs

the paradigm change and 3d printer era is right round the corner

20 hours ago, elexis said:

martyrdom

moral and ethics change all the time, it a matter more of DATES (dmy)

GREEKs filosofers helped us? 

i dont believe in religion or even culture, and internet will destroy both! just give time to time

18 hours ago, elexis said:

You should know - how did you know about the other games

games list, google, youtube i have been watching games list since i met gamespy in 2001

i stopped now that i ve found my mistress lololollolololol I ated raviolis yesterday, i got 100 more muajajajjaj muajajajjajaj

 

OBEY AND CONSUME RAVIOLI

NEVER SURRENDER!!!

[elexis]

12 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

If the proceedings are handled correctly (through SPI?) I don't think there would be a risk for WFG's status. I know some ~projects (small businesses, youtubers) make some money extra by setting up a merch shop with one of those services. I believe it's actually pretty much as easy as '1. upload some graphics 3. profit'. 

Wildfire Games has no legal status, thus also no PayPal account or anything else. SPI has the legal status, and all the financial accounts Wildfire Games can use, restricted to non-profit purpose. A for-profit WFG action could risk the membership status to SPI, and it could even risk SPIs non-profit status if for-profit funds go through their non-profit system. So "3. profit" is in contradiction to non-profit orientation, but revenue for charitable purposes isn't. Non-profits can interact with for-profit entities to further the exempt purposes. Some kind of online merchandise system to support donations is certainly possible and we did so before with the indiegogo campaign. SPI doesn't have much manpower, most probably not enough to coordinate individual transactions. So it depends a lot on the service. Got an example?

13 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

And while I totally dig the non-profit mode, I can't really see a volunteer making t-shirts in the living room then packaging and mailing them, thus 'accomplishing the same' as those services in regard to range and quality of the products, and don't know if it actually would be cheaper. 

As mentioned, non-profit does not mandate voluntarism.

[elexis]

On 3/14/2019 at 1:22 PM, (-_-) said:

Well, seeing it as "only temporary" is much better than seeing it as "the project is doomed".

There is an important case distinction to make between the project 0 A.D. and the SPI member project Wildfire Games. The software is free, a public good, by design free software is supposed to be "continuable" by everyone. If Wildfire Games servers are offline from tomorrow on, alpha 23b is widely available on the internet and not unlikely being picked up by future freesoftware RTS enthusiasts.

I think the point isn't that the stalling is considered temporary (i.e. with an expected arrival of a new era of development), but development stalling is not a unique event in history, but a repetition of history.

From 2001 https://web.archive.org/web/20080711014849/http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/page.php?p=1492:

Quote

"We were about to disband the project and the mod team when a new door was opened to us."

From 2009 https://play0ad.com/about/the-story-of-0-a-d/:

Quote

"Over time, programmers for 0 A.D. were becoming hard to find as well, stalling development of the game"

From 2016:

Quote

2016-12/2016-12-04-QuakeNet-#0ad-dev.log:16:15 < Philip> The game has gone through periods before where there weren't really any active core developers, but I think it just took one or two people to step up and start making substantial progress again

16:16 < Philip> but after a year or two it tended to die down again when those people got tired/bored/distracted/etc

It's a mathmatical inevitability that the project is stalled every few years if the project takes more decades to implement than desirable and developers can only work to such an extent for few years. The thread topic "monetization" would also impact project stalling. There are probably many more examples, I don't have the time to go through all sources right now.

Edited March 15, 2019 by elexis
added quote

[Guest]

I was quite interested in the history of 0ad. And I did read a lot of the old posts from the archive. Even some posts from the tonto clan. (including all the links you just posted)

The answer is quite clear. At least to me. "just took one or two people to step up and start making substantial progress again". The ends being clear does not mean the means are too.

Edited March 15, 2019 by Guest

[Gurken Khan]

6 hours ago, elexis said:

Wildfire Games has no legal status, thus also no PayPal account or anything else. SPI has the legal status, and all the financial accounts Wildfire Games can use, restricted to non-profit purpose. A for-profit WFG action could risk the membership status to SPI, and it could even risk SPIs non-profit status if for-profit funds go through their non-profit system. So "3. profit" is in contradiction to non-profit orientation, but revenue for charitable purposes isn't. Non-profits can interact with for-profit entities to further the exempt purposes. Some kind of online merchandise system to support donations is certainly possible and we did so before with the indiegogo campaign. SPI doesn't have much manpower, most probably not enough to coordinate individual transactions. So it depends a lot on the service. Got an example?

I guess 'profit' in '3. profit' was wrong.

If the service handles the sales etc and the money for the merchandise would just go into some specific account at SPI, would that be ok?

 

Here are some examples:

I think probably the best known is spreadshirt/spreadshop

https://www.spreadshop.com/sell-shirts-without-inventory

 

https://www.merchify.com/  is another

Just for reference: I found the American Apparel 2001 Fine Jersey Unisex T-Shirt (White) they charge at 18$ listed on cheapestees.com with a regular price of 15$. (Even if we find a non-commercial way, we'd have to get the T-shirts somewhere...)

 

http://www.galloree.com/ is yet another one

I thought they look promising, but they appear to only have white mugs...

 

https://www.mylocker.net/ also mentions the possibility to 'set up a custom apparel shop in our site' (for fundraising), but I haven't found any further information on their site...

 

hth

[elexis]

I can't really answer to the merchandise shop idea until I have checked the legalities. The links will be helpful for comparison.

[JamesWright]

I think wfg has built an amazing game, but adding monetization where will it end I'd probably stop playing cause well you would see ads all the time and I don't think that monetized game are played as often and then there are those of us who have no money to buy these things and would be jealous of those who had them and would most likely stop playing.

So I say leave it alone.

[elexis]

33 minutes ago, JamesWright said:

I think wfg has built an amazing game, but adding monetization where will it end I'd probably stop playing cause well you would see ads all the time and I don't think that monetized game are played as often and then there are those of us who have no money to buy these things and would be jealous of those who had them and would most likely stop playing. 

So I say leave it alone.

Wildfire Games is a member project of the non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest because we create free software, not only gratis, but also free to modify and redistribute under the same terms. Donations to Wildfire Games are tax-exempt and allow Wildfire Games to continue developing the game without such practices. Wildfire Games can involve donors a bit more than a hidden Donate button on play0ad.com however.

About the T-Shirt shop proposal, that actually seems to be possible, given that Blender Foundation also has one. Not sure if it will be possible with the mentioned services (or whether it would be worth the effort). We should reward donors with free code first. If we get that going, we can look into TShirts for secondary project funding next.

[Gurken Khan]

29 minutes ago, JamesWright said:

I'd probably stop playing cause well you would see ads all the time and I don't think that monetized game are played as often and then there are those of us who have no money to buy these things and would be jealous of those who had them and would most likely stop playing.

If we were to have a merch shop like I proposed, I guess we'd have a button/link somewhere. I think using ads was only suggested once by one person and no one else seemed to support it.

And even if you knew that someone else had a 0AD mug or shirt, I really hope that wouldn't take away too much from the game for you.

 

5 minutes ago, elexis said:

We should reward donors with free code first. If we get that going, we can look into TShirts for secondary project funding next.

What kind of 'free code' do you mean? Not the already free game code?

[elexis]

3 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

11 minutes ago, elexis said:

We should reward donors with free code first. If we get that going, we can look into TShirts for secondary project funding next.

What kind of 'free code' do you mean? Not the already free game code?

Funding developers to write new or improve existing code, or do reviews, or artwork, presenting the game software conventions, or whatever else Wildfire Games needs to accomplish the objectives of Software in the Public Interest. There is still a lot to do until this game is finished, and a successor to this game was planned too.

[JamesWright]

4 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

If we were to have a merch shop like I proposed, I guess we'd have a button/link somewhere. I think using ads was only suggested once by one person and no one else seemed to support it.

And even if you knew that someone else had a 0AD mug or shirt, I really hope that wouldn't take away too much from the game for you.

I'm fine with a mug or shirt we can't see that but it's things like upgrades like what @thankforpie had said that I believe is not good but I still think we should just leave it alone, ever heard of if ain't broke don't fix it?

Edited April 9, 2019 by JamesWright