The release of Alpha 24 and the recent announcements about AOE 4.

[Lion.Kanzen]

8 hours ago, Stan` said:

Short Rant :

Yes, the PR could have been better. And yes from an external point of view, it looked like a rush. Internally though it was a three months agony. Anyway I am responsible for PR so I am the one to blame here. Sundiata tried to help, but it’s difficult for a non dev with a pay per MB internet to be active enough to catch up.

Anyway it’s nice to dwell on past failures, but what I believe now is for people to step up. You’re unhappy about the PR ? Suggest things, ask for permission to do things. The more we stay on dev’s and community’s shortcomings, the less it is likely to change.

The key word there is step up. Wanna change stuff? Go all the way, because as much as we would like to we don't always have the resource to make it halfway. Sometimes even less than a quarter.

We can take time and patience to give you the knowledge we accumulated over the years, but we need to kill that idea that we are some kind of elitist people who look down on everyone. If your patch/idea is rejected, it's not that we don't care, is that we don't have the (pick multiple) time, motivation, skills to get things right.

Long rant, this is my attempt at some transparency, and may not reflect how other members of WFG see things. So take it with a grain of salt.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

> hastily cut trailer.

I am Hurt cause I made that trailer, and while it’s nowhere close to AAA trailers, I think it was pretty good and it matched the previous releases. It’s about 48hours of work recording, cutting, putting together and trying to make something somewhat coherent of two years of complete madness with me having very little experience about making videos. I'm no youtuber.

> Lack of communication

It’s also hurtful cause I tried to reach out as much as I could for help. With documentation, with Sound, with balancing, with programming, even with videos, interviews hoping someone would step up. Some did. But I made it a priority to be available to discuss it on Discord, Mastodon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, What’s app Reddit, Facebook, IndieDB, IRC so people could reach me.

But it’s funny because I used to think the same about organisation. A few strategic people here and there and boom ! Everything works fine now. The truth is it doesn’t here. It does for a company, where if the goals aren’t the same they are reunited by money.

Here it’s a free for all where planets sometimes align. Which is why I find a PR strategy funny, because there is no way to know what will get done in the next few months. I planned June for the next feature freeze, but maybe we will not have much to show then and A25 will be an insignificant release. Maybe no artists will show up, cause of life issues. Maybe we will lose developers like between A23 and A24 where we lost 6-7 (I don’t want to count, it’s hurtful enough as is) people and a lot of them irreplaceable. Life got in the way, stuff went down (leper was banned creating a split in the developpers aka the ForkAD), there were unrecoverable disagrements, insults and low blows were made. And here we are. And the only thing that matters now is what we do to keep this project alive.

If tomorrow @wraitii has to go for any reason, including him wanting to leave, that means no pathfinder threading, no unit behaviour improvements, rough macOS support, and a lot of things you don’t usually see but improve the game as well or other stuff he has planned.

If  @vladislavbelov goes, that means no graphics optimizations, no improved performance / quality and probably a decrease in C++ quality as well.

Every time someone goes it’s a blow to morale, and time & motivation are everything.

We had to get it out. If we had waited 6 more months, it would have been a complete disaster, there were about 50 bugfixes so close to the release. 6 more months meant probably hundreds of others.

Another funny thing is Linux support. Windows and Mac it’s easy you set a date you provide and exe / dmg, and voilà. Linux / BSD ? Well Ubuntu still doesn’t have a working build of 0 A.D. and we had to patch things for Debian, Fedora, OpenSuse, Slackware, Gentoo. It can take months for the release to get out there.

> And the approach I advocated could have been done on a zero budget.

This… is wrong. There is no such thing as a zero budget. Time, is a budget. Motivation is a budget, Give someone unlimited resources and no time and it’s unlikely he’ll get anything done. Give people limited time, money, and motivation, and they might get farther. Give 0 A.D. millions, 40 full time developers, and a deadline, and maybe we’ll be able to match an age of empires.

But this isn’t the goal we aren’t making a competitor to age of empires. The pressure is too high. It’s like Dave Mustaine comparing his success to Metallica’s the guy sold 25 million albums, but Metallica 140. Is he a failure ? If we do that we will always be frustrated, and we will likely burnout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's not your fault, you do a lot sometimes, more than we ask of you, you give the best of you.

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, Alar1k said:

one must ask himself a question "is it morally right to tease people who like this project with something that they know is not a polished product and is still in development?" - after you ask yourself such a question then you might be more sympathetic with the developers choice of just putting it out - less build-up of expectations = less false promises and less overall unhappiness with the next stage of the game - because it is not a finished product you cannot expect it to be represented as such and build hype around something that will be changed/fixed in a few months or a year

Yep, this is exactly how every other alpha's release was handled as well. The only reason this one felt different or "unexpected" was the unusually long development cycle. Players were treating the gameplay as a "done deal."

Edited March 24, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[hyperion]

28 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Yes, the PR could have been better. And yes from an external point of view, it looked like a rush. Internally though it was a three months agony. Anyway I am responsible for PR so I am the one to blame here. Sundiata tried to help, but it’s difficult for a non dev with a pay per MB internet to be active enough to catch up.

Seriously, anyone with just a tad of experience of how the development process / open source works had a relatively easy time to follow. As one of the external viewers myself, the release felt like there was a lack of experience with the process which isn't surprising given the circumstances, nonetheless there were no real blunders.

As for PR / communication, there is a certain obligation. The easiest way to take care of that would be a mailing list wfg-releases. Besides the canonical release announcements there is a need to properly communicate the end of merge window as early as possible. Everything else is extra and you guys did clearly more than required.

@mysticjim , portraying your enthusiasm longterm as you currently do I think is worth more than hyping a release. If you want there is https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha25 which shows roughly the release date (start of July) and what is already confirmed to be part of the changes.

About the claim that "social media work" would reduce complaints, well most of what I saw was healthy and what went beyond you won't be able to curb anyway and there is no need either.

[mysticjim]

3 hours ago, hyperion said:

Seriously, anyone with just a tad of experience of how the development process / open source works had a relatively easy time to follow.

 

Because everyone who might ever want to play 0AD is a developer, right? Because there isn't a whole world of people with perfectly valid lives who have absolutely zero interest in development? I'm reading your words and all I'm hearing is 'it's okay that we don't know how to effectively communicate and what's more, it doesn't really matter.' You must know I'm never going to agree with that?

@Stan` - I do like the Dave Mustane/Metallica reference, and as always - you balance yours words very eloquently. 

The hastily cut trailer thing, apologies, that's not a slight on you or it. We actually spoke right before you made the trailer, and it was clear that A24 would be dropping 'soon.' We did indeed talk at some length, certainly about what I could personally do to help things regarding the community of content creators around 0AD.  It was clear at that time that you had a million pressures bearing down on all directions and it was clear that it was an an almost impossible and often thankless task. And you do deserve all the credit and appreciation for your work. Many could not get close to the effort you put in.

What I did not expect, was to wake up one morning shortly after and find A24 had suddenly dropped in the way it did. And if anyone else suggests I should have been looking at this thread, or that channel, or this specific mailing list, lets break it down to the simplest bare fact. Was there a clear official announcement, in advance, to the wider 0AD audience and the wider world, not just a small number of minority comms channels, that 0AD 24 would be released on that day? I have to ask, with all the talk about time and motivation being a resource, compared to all the hard work that went into making the game, how much additional time and motivation would it have taken to let the people who play the game, and those just beyond who might be about to discover the game for the first time, know that this thing was going to drop on this given day? And this is on the back of 0AD's commitment to community engagement and communication being questioned throughout the development period numerous times. As @wowgetoffyourcellphonehas pointed out - you went and did the exact same thing again! 

And @Alar1k - 

Quote

First of all I don't see any reason to compare a free and open source project with a corporate, big-budget product. Second - one needs to look at 0ad not just as a game but as an interdisciplinary art project that is a collaboration between different artists (IT, historians, graphic designers, translators, writers and so on and so on...) 

I've already explained the use of AOE4 as an example. To think I'm comparing them on a level playing field is false, all I pointed out was that the largest spiritual ancestor of 0AD has a major new release coming out, after quite a few years of delay, and that the launch of A24 could have been a major PR opportunity to pick up a wealth of new players looking for something in the interim with a tiny amount of co-ordination. Who knows, they might actually appreciate that it's a good game and stick around! Audiences crossover, in fact that is how I discovered 0AD. They may not be looking in the places you want, but new players are always looking. 

And yes, 0AD is an interdisciplinary art project that is a collaboration between different artists (IT, historians, graphic designers, translators, writers and so on and so on...) - this additional depth is great and is a key to the uniqueness of the project - and it should be celebrated - but does that mean you should discriminate against the people who want to treat it just as a game? I've got a feeling they lie in the vast majority, and probably feel somewhat marginalized and probably a bit put out by that comment. 

Quote

If somebody is unhappy with how the PR is being managed and wants to push more capitalistic, neo-liberal path of teasing and waiting to build hype for a few months before a game is released -  one should not criticize but make constructive suggestions with some objective examples of similar types of projects - and that is for sure not age of empires 4

There's nothing capitalistic in the approach I advocated. Nailing your message to the freely available and most publicly viewed walls in advance of something happening is the oldest, proven strategy for gaining attention known to humanity. Do you really need examples to understand that releasing a trailer and announcing a launch date BEFORE the actual release date in a co-ordinated fashion is good strategic sense? Yes, a AAA studio will have a whole team dedicated to blanket advertising. The small scale open source equivalent is one person, armed with a small amount of said time and motivation, a computer, an internet connection, the keys to the official social media and the understanding that this process actually matters and that no project is above it if they want new people to discover them. If you really want to see an example, check out out every thriving open source project you've ever heard of with a large user base. Which bits of this explanation are not constructive? (and don't just say, 'that last bit!')  

I do think 0AD needs that dedicated person - a volunteer, or small committee of volunteers, to give 0AD an effective PR mouthpiece that it has been lacking. Those people can't be too entrenched in the dev side of things because they can't have the justification of having too many technical 0AD commitments for not doing the role properly. I think finding those people would be a hell of a lot easier than finding replacement coders, artists, designers, historians, et al, within the community. 

[nwtour]

35 minutes ago, mysticjim said:

You must know I'm never going to agree with that?

So no one forbids you to show a master class on effective communication.

Here is a constantly updated list of changes in the game - study and become the main point where users receive information about the game. There you can register and ask the developers directly what the new function does.

You propose to create a kind of oversight committee. This is not a working strategy. This will only work if you pay developers to implement your own ideas. Open source development is a sporadic process of implementing ideas. The idea is guaranteed to appear in the game in a fixed time - only if a certain developer is interested in implementing it himself.

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, mysticjim said:

I have to ask, with all the talk about time and motivation being a resource, compared to all the hard work that went into making the game, how much additional time and motivation would it have taken to let the people who play the game, and those just beyond who might be about to discover the game for the first time, know that this thing was going to drop on this given day?

There is a bias, in that just because _you_ didn't see announcements doesn't mean there weren't. We posted some things on Facebook and Instagram - admittedly, if I recall, quite shortly before the release. The 'name thread' was closed a couple weeks earlier. On the forums there were also posts about 'release candidates', quite regularly. We didn't share those on social media, I believe, because we feared users might think they are the actual alpha, and then run into bugs, and drop off the map.

So there were a few things. There wasn't an "announcement", so to speak, but we can't possibly reach everyone - even with the official announcement.

Consider also that we pushed the release a lot in the latest days, because we discovered new bugs. Any date we picked might be pushed back. To feel safe about the release, we could only announce it at _most_ 3-4 days in advance, which just isn't enough time. If we announced a date 15 days in the future, we'd have to stall development even further, after already a solid month where not much happened. It gets annoying.

1 hour ago, nwtour said:

Here is a constantly updated list of changes in the game

For A25, we strive to maintain Alpha25 on the wiki up to date, too, which is probably more relevant.

[Lion.Kanzen]

11 minutes ago, wraitii said:

There is a bias, in that just because _you_ didn't see announcements doesn't mean there weren't. We posted some things on Facebook and Instagram - admittedly, if I recall, quite shortly before the release. The 'name thread' was closed a couple weeks earlier. On the forums there were also posts about 'release candidates', quite regularly. We didn't share those on social media, I believe, because we feared users might think they are the actual alpha, and then run into bugs, and drop off the map.

So there were a few things. There wasn't an "announcement", so to speak, but we can't possibly reach everyone - even with the official announcement.

we have to launch more announcements.

Even for the pre-testing of the alpha which takes weeks, This means that it must be announced before under the heading: "soon".

 

 Every major update, the first big companies, months before leave rumors on unofficial channels.

So they release trailers about of beta-testing,then keep feeding the information with the number of changes to be made, even 3 months before.

[hyperion]

3 hours ago, mysticjim said:

Because everyone who might ever want to play 0AD is a developer, right?

Well, most users are happy if they see the message when the join the lobby and see there is a new version or simply get a new version through their package manager. I'm not sure there is a check for updates function in the windows version though. with that you cover 99% of users.

Anyway what I meant is, for any power user interested in doing hyping all the info is readily available.

[nwtour]

1 hour ago, wraitii said:

For A25, we strive to maintain Alpha25 on the wiki up to date, too, which is probably more relevant.

As I understand it, he is talking about regular content (aka Devblog or similar SMM activity) which he will be able to discuss with his viewers in the weekly reviews. Wiki article are enough for about 2 minute video once a year

Edited March 27, 2021 by nwtour

[Grapjas]

1 hour ago, wraitii said:

For A25, we strive to maintain Alpha25 on the wiki up to date, too, which is probably more relevant.

Could pin this on the homepage of the forum and also in a message of the day window ingame on game startup, for more visibility. Just a suggestion.

[mysticjim]

Hello all,

Okay, I'm struggling a little here - I don't want to come across as argumentative, or belittle anyones efforts in the project - but reading through the replies - I think we're talking in really crossed purposes here and could end up going around in circles.

In general, I've held the belief that 0AD as a project does not communicate effectively with it's wider audience or wider potential audience. I'm not talking technical, not in any way. I'm talking about the weekly/monthly type of comms and announcements that a project could be expected to put out in short, understandable, digestible form, across the mainstream social platforms - if for no other reason than to make it clear that the project still has a pulse. I'm talking about engaging with people you wouldn't otherwise engage with, maximising your reach - getting fresh eyeballs on the game. People who may not actually care one jot about the finer technical detail. What is it, what does it do, why should I play it, is the project heading in an upward trajectory, whats the latest? And quite importantly, the next iteration of the game is scheduled at this time, and these are some of the new things you'll be able to do. Maybe you'd class it as 'filler?' Just noise to throw out into the echo chamber the fill the gaps when otherwise there isn't much to report?. Well, like it or loathe it - it works, it reaches people and they engage back.

I keep seeing the same comments - either 'why have I never heard of this game before' or 'I used to play this a while back, but I thought the project was long dead, not heard anything about it in years.' Usually after they've accidentally discovered a random piece of third party content for the game. 

No amount of claiming that those people weren't looking in the places that suit you will change the fact you aren't reaching a huge swath of your potential target audience. You are not putting information in the right form, in the right places in the right way, at the right time, with the correct frequency. Your forum posts, wikis, lists and announcements do not and will never reach them using that approach. You're persisting with a 1990's approach to communication! And the bits of social media that do happen are so rare, there are endangered species of animals with greater presence and visibility!

In response to the claim that PR isn't a priority because the game isn't finished. It's a bit late for that, you're 24 alphas into the project, the genie is out of the bottle and you can't tell me that as a project you don't want as many people playing the game as possible? I'm assuming returning it to a closed alpha comprising of nothing but 'power users' is firmly not in the future plans? (or have I missed an 'announcement' about it!)  

With regards to the actual launch of A24 - okay, I get that after the difficult dev cycle, I can understand you were nervous that you might launch it and then suddenly discover a game-killing bug and have to backtrack. That would have looked a bit bad, but with hindsight, look - the game still works, testimony to the devs and their skills - would it have been as much of a mess and PR disaster as something like Cyberpunk 2077? A free, niche open source game - come off it! It would have had as much detrimental impact as a fart in deep space and you'd have patched it within a week. Would it really have hurt to announce it properly? 

And on a more general basis - would it really hurt to talk to people on a more ongoing, general basis? I think one person could do that for you giving up on average a couple of hours a week. How much more dev time happens per week? It's a drop in the ocean in comparison and should be a no brainer for the potential benefits it could bring. I'm at a loss as to how you can't see that. I spend more time editing my videos than that (cue someone shouting that I should spend longer doing that and less time writing this!) 

Cards on the table then - would you like me to do it in an official capacity? Do you want me to prove to you by a clear discernible set of metrics that developing a proper communication strategy and putting it into action to engage your community in a modern, professional and inclusive way works? I'd love to give it a go.

[maroder]

First of all, thanks @wraitiiand @Stan`for your explanations, as someone who is relatively new to the forum I had no idea how difficult the release process was. Which is part of the problem. Forums are great to exchange opinions and discuss stuff, but they are very inefficient in transporting information, as all important stuff gets inevitably buried under other posts. Therefore there is no way for someone who is new, as to ask again.

I second @mysticjimopinion and would like to illustrate it by using myself as an example: I first discovered 0ad maybe three years ago because it was listed on some website as "cool free game". I tried it out and lost to the easy AI, then put it aside for a few weeks, tried it again and got crushed again. This continued for a year until I finally googled "how to play 0ad" and found one of Tom0ad's videos where he explains basic strategy. This video has done an incredible job at making the game more interesting for me (I never played other RTS before). And the only reason I am now here on the forums, is that I wanted to know when a new alpha would come out and after checking the homepage for several months and there were no updates, I finally began to read in the forum.

It is hard to keep people engaged, but the only way to keep them interested in the game is to reach out to them, again and again and again. 0ad is certainly not missing people who work hard on it, but the communication how hard the work is and what progress is done.

From my understanding open source lives from the people who want to contribute to it, but why should they, if they don't know how great the game is or if they never heard about it. It not about "hyping" and making false claims, its about communicating the actual progress and catching peoples attention. I want my comments here not to bee seen as "attacks" on the communication strategy the team had so far, I mean the project is still around and people are playing it, therefore it is not a failed strategy, but I do believe the engagement of new and old audiences should have a higher priority when we want more people to play it.

Edited March 28, 2021 by maroder
typo

[mysticjim]

@maroder - Nicely put, very diplomatic

I'd also like to re-iterate, again, this isn't an attack on the devs or trying to put anyones nose out of joint. Evidently there are some strong opinions, and maybe some misunderstandings or clashing philosophies on the subject. 

And I agree with @maroder- people are playing, so it you're right, the existing approach - it's not a failed strategy. I'm just not sure it's enough anymore or a modern enough approach for contemporary digital landscape we find ourselves in.

More than anything, I worry 0AD will fall victim of it and gradually become less relevant and ultimately never achieve the visibility or get the level of recognition it deserves as a project. That would be a bit, well, heart breaking, really. 

[Freagarach]

Reading all this, it seems we're quite on the same page. The devs are in for some fair (as in honest) attention on other platforms and you have had the courage to stand up and say "Okay, I want to give it a shot."; to me that sounds like a match.

I'd suggest you get in touch with @Sundiata to see what has been done/can be done, wait for @Stan` to come back to discuss any implemtation and (very important) join #0ad-dev once in a while (preferably during the CET zone) to get yourself updated on the status of development. There is indeed a list on trac, but nothing beats some good old contact with some real dev

I am by no means trying nor willing to replace @Sundiata, but riding a tandem just makes the ride easier, as long as you want the same direction (and to me it seems you want).

PS
Disclaimer: I'm in no means high enough in the hierarchy to make speak on behalf of the entire team, I've joined it merely a year ago ^^ So take this as a personal suggestion.

[wraitii]

6 hours ago, mysticjim said:

I'd also like to re-iterate, again, this isn't an attack on the devs or trying to put anyones nose out of joint. Evidently there are some strong opinions, and maybe some misunderstandings or clashing philosophies on the subject.

I imagine you invest a lot of your time in 0 A.D. content, and likewise we invest a lot of our time in 0 A.D.. it's easy to let things get a bit personal in these cases  

I think this thread has been quite productive overall.

----

I would second Freagarach - reach out to Sundiata (who I believe is quite busy lately) & see.

[mysticjim]

@Freagarach& @wraitiithat is really encouraging to hear, thank you.  

[happyconcepts]

I have been available to contribute for over a year yet have been generally ignored,  discounted, LOL'ed and on top of that in the face of all the breaking changes in a24 specificly shat on by the geoup as a 0AD modder.

Even if I wanted to upgrade 18.04 to A24 (like earlier today) the PPA is still A23.

 

But somehow this was productive until I showed up.

 

 

[happyconcepts]

Just now, happyconcepts said:

I have been available to contribute for over a year yet have been generally ignored,  discounted, LOL'ed and on top of that in the face of all the breaking changes in a24 specificly shat on by the geoup as a 0AD modder.

Even if I wanted to upgrade 18.04 to A24 (like earlier today) the PPA is still A23.

 

But somehow this was productive until I showed up.

 

 

And @mysticjim with your anti attitude against "lone indie devs" etc on top of a fairly poor job marketing your youtube from a traffic perspective...I am afraid I dont see how you are the solution.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Waaaat 

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Waaaat 

X2

[Silier]

what do you mean you have been ignored? so far I see one differential by you and that have been included into the game.

[smiley]

7 hours ago, happyconcepts said:

have been generally ignored,  discounted, LOL'ed and on top of that in the face of all the breaking changes in a24 specificly shat on by the geoup as a 0AD modder.

I looked through your posts here and on phabricator and found nothing of the sort. Who here would do something as low as PM harassment? Either that or the full story and context is missing.

No one has the energy to figure out vague posting.

Edited April 10, 2021 by smiley

[mysticjim]

7 hours ago, happyconcepts said:

And @mysticjim with your anti attitude against "lone indie devs" etc on top of a fairly poor job marketing your youtube from a traffic perspective...I am afraid I dont see how you are the solution.

Hi @happyconcepts - I'm sorry you feel you've had a bad time of it. I don't know the circumstances, possibly a little elaboration would help in understanding? 

Regarding your comments directly towards me, I don't understand your comment about my 'anti attitude against lone developers.' I'm not clear precisely what you mean, and apologies if I've misunderstood. I'm certainly not anti or against lone developers and don't think I've ever expressed any such opinion. 

And my personal marketing of my Youtube channel has been fairly standard - I post regularly on the 0AD forum, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and few discords, with varying levels of engagement. 0AD is a niche game, and commentary on matches is 'more niche.' It's not something that is going to blow up and go viral in a couple of months. My channels growth in terms of views, watch time and subs is roughly in line with how the Tom0AD channel (the biggest 0AD youtube themed channel and far more established than mine) grew in it's first year, fairly slow but steady. Month on month there has been a proportional increase on all metrics, and I can accurately measure what kind of impact my marketing efforts have had. On balance, while I'd love to have a bigger audience instantly, getting an extra 30 odd subs each month (44 last month, hoping for 50 in April) is sustainable growth. I believe the strategy I've employed would scale up proportionally for an appropriate game with a much more vast audience, but I like 0AD  

[happyconcepts]

On 21/03/2021 at 4:55 PM, mysticjim said:

@wraitii - I totally hear what you're saying. No, I don't believe 0AD with it's limited resources can compete on an even level with a commercial juggernaut that is any iteration of AOE, and for sure, I can see that the dev cycle of A24 was cruel on it's devs. And as I said at the start of this thread, this ain't an A24 bashing. 

But 0AD does have a long pedigree, you only have to Google it to see it's not some lone indie dev working on a vanity project

It is not my duty to hold you accountable @mysticjim to your own words but here is a friendly reminder quote.

When you write so many words that you ignore or "dont remember" what you've said.

 

[happyconcepts]

5 hours ago, Angen said:

what do you mean you have been ignored? so far I see one differential by you and that have been included into the game.

And I respect you  @Angen thank you for the data. Yes one diff. Two years ago. And the experience was so bad for me because of the, as @Stan` has stated, elitism.

Please do not ignore like the others. i posted here twice last night. My other post, about the lack of WFG providing a Linux build of A24 for Ubuntu 18.04, is being ignored, for example, in favor of everyone chiming in here.