Time for change? (players+devs)
 

While reading through the Official Graal Forums I came across this post.

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums/blog.php?b=330

A lot of the thoughts in the blog post have been thought by both players and developers alike, but we still have not improved as much as we would like to have.



What is possible but would need encouragement:

I think the best thing we could do at the moment is to really press for better tools (as mentioned in the post). A lot of tools used for Graal development (gani, world editor etc.) have become outdated or are missing features or assets that could really improve and speed up development on servers.
Are these tools currently being worked on? (I don't know they may be) but if we wish to grow, our tools need to grow with us.

As stated in the article as well, the Graal community has really separated into two parts. Mobile and PC. (which most likely has to do with the subscription fee for PC) I would really like to see both sides interact more.



What would be awesome but unlikely:

The article mentions having all of the most talented developers come together to work on a server. (this sounds almost impossible with how things currently are). The only way to accomplish this would be by paying the staff. I think it would be amazing if staff were paid (even minimum wage) to think of ideas and produce a server for all platforms. With multiple dedicated coders things would get done in a timely manner. GFX artist could all agree on a certain style and work to produce graphics to fit those standards. If this was done properly and executed in a fairly timely manner this server would get lots of players (pc and mobile) and definitely could earn back what it took to pay the staff members. Like I said this is just a dream but something I would love to see happen.

What do you think? Are these goals unable to be accomplished with how Graal is ran?

Would it be possible to accomplish them and if so how could it be done?


(posted at 3:00 A.M. please forgive if I sound like I am drunk. :D )

Someone posted on the main forums the idea of getting a few dedicated developers together and starting a kickstarter to pay them to make a server. For whatever reason Darlene decided she needed to delete that thread, but I still think it could be a pretty good idea.

I think that the other forums would have a lot more backers, (considering we have a lot of younger players here). How could we get it to appeal to Graalians and people who have never played graal?

I like this idea. :)

So take all of graal's high potential developers and make a collaborative project for the ultimate server on graal? That's extremely ambitious, but I like it!

If this idea was implemented, I'm sure the server would be developed well.
My only issue is that would this be a main server, and there be no others? Multiple different servers is what defines Graal as Graal for me.

So basically rather than split up and most likely fail to make servers, join together to make one amazing server? Please do it.

Because you'd get shut down for that. Draenin's post was cute but the real problem really is unixmad + Stefan and how hard you're willing to work so that only they can benefit. Very little are willing to go all out and a lot of people only dev for fun. Working on a complex full scale project is a complete waste of time. If people wanna dev for Graal, go ahead, but don't expect high quality work.

One problem that I see time and again with working on a unified project is that people on Graal often try to usurp each other because they want a server to only be full of their own ideas and no one else's, or they think they can run a server better even though they took no part in actually creating it or working on any of the content. There are also frequently problems with players asking for rights and then disappearing a week later, in hopes that they can show up again later with those rights and just start doing whatever they want without other developers noticing. (Which never works.)

Strong development teams only come as a result of getting people together who are motivated enough to act upon their ideas and get things done. But now we mostly have a community of well-wishers, and unfortunately that does not lend itself to progress. Nor do managers who do not actually take part in the work themselves, and simply expect others to complete things for them. It's kind of a miracle when good teams come together, and as a result we get newer, better servers that often trump the old ones.

I don't really agree with this point of view. There have been lots of developers out there who are not in it purely to make money for the company, even though that's ultimately what each server is for. Basically, as long as you're not a complete douche to players and possibly make some concessions to earn money for the game as a whole, Graal administration typically does not interfere with your business. The only servers that have been required to do it so far are the ones that are basically done now, and I think it's reasonable if you're not being asked to pay for renting the server anymore.

There have been plenty of projects in the past that have been made by artists who are very devoted to their work, and they never expected pay because it wasn't even offered at the time. They did it for the sake of completing a major collaborative project with others. While one might argue it's futile and useless because you won't be making a lot of money with it, you have to stop and take a look at what has been accomplished in the past by people who were never concerned with it in the first place. They did their work because they were proud to have it as part of the game. And really, they still do.



That said, I think the Kickstarter thread was closed mostly because Moonie is old and doesn't entirely understand what people are asking about. She just looks at the rules and interprets them as best she can. Sometimes she's wrong, but you just have to accept that and move on. That's partly why this forum excludes her as a moderator.

The only way I could see people getting paid for their work is through crowdfunding, but I think it would eventually lead to a lot of unnecessary drama in the future as well. (Like people claiming they were never paid, demanding pay for unsatisfactory work, etc.) When you start offering players pay for their work, they may come to expect it every time they do something, even if their contributions are not on time, need improvements, or otherwise.

However, a problem that I see going on is that new content almost always goes to old servers anyway, even if their player count has been dropping substantially. Or else it goes to new servers, but in a scattered fashion instead of being concentrated. People sooner fill staff positions for a longer amount of time on servers that are already well-established than they do on new ones, because it's easier to work on top of something they feel is already done.

Straight from the gun, I see three huge problems with this idea. These ideas are written on top of the problems already presented by Draenin. ( Thanks for such a long and thought-out post :) )

Commitment
Due to the core nature of Graal and the fact that people have been able to settle in to bad habits, people may seem committed and driven for the first couple of days, possibly even weeks, and maybe a few for months, however after that duration many people will become uninterested in the project. Bad habits allow for an intuition that will last for a short duration of time, but if promising amounts of progress have not been made (commonly a release), interest is lost. This happens not only in the staff but also the community. Players see that developers are losing interest and they realize something: Why should they remain interested if the people creating the product cannot even remain intrigued?

This idea may come with a great start and have wonderful progress made, but it likely will not take long for interest in the project to die down.


Compensation

It is highly unlikely that the staff team as a whole will be compensated. In Graal's current structure, the managers of renown servers are offered a routine salary and certain staff are paid in compensation for their contributions but are not offered a salary.

Without routine compensation to the whole of the developers, many of its members and parties will become uninterested and see it as only a lost cause. This idea is moving from the hobbyist type of development more into a commercial environment, and Graal does not have the resources or the intuitive to do something like that. New developers that are introduced into the community are generally quite young and will lose interest automatically and gradually over time, with or without compensation.

So, we know that Eurocenter/Toonslab/Cyberjourners wouldn't fund a whole team, but what about a crowdfunding source?

I feel that most of us already know how this would go over, but the bottom line is that the server would probably be shut down in the end. A crowd-funding source may be good to get the server off of the ground, but what about sustainability? After a while, the resource pool would become depleted and it would need to be refilled. The likely option would be an external shop to exchange in-game items distributed by staff for legitimate currency. All of those reading this post can probably tell that this is already a bad idea. It would more than likely be seen by Eurocenter as large-scale USDing by server owners and would have the server shut down. Eurocenter would be losing the profit from the server, so why wouldn't they shut the server down? Circumventing profit from Eurocenter won't go anywhere positive.

With the initial crowd-funding source, it could also be seen as USDing on a more odd, bizarre scale. In essence, it could be seen as paying for a return in-game. This is stupid, but it kind of makes sense and I'm sure Stephane would love to play it as a card.


Legality

For the majority of the developer population, it can be found true that they are still a minor. In the states, minors cannot be compensated for a job without a permit under the age of 16. Under the age of 18, I believe there are still heavy restrictions. This is likely to be true in other areas of the world, but I have not researched there so I cannot declare one way or another. A few of the more renown developers could be compensated (fp4, Dusty, snk, etc) could be compensated without restriction, but what about the rest? There would likely be legal problems to venture through, and I highly doubt that anyone on Graal would be willing to get all of that sorted out.

Although most of my post is poorly composed, I hope you can see why I stated these three as major blocking points. This is a great idea, but I see it as more theoretical and not practical. It just doesn't fit the nature of Graal or its community.

Anyone who actually wants to work together is probably already doing so.

Wow, these are all great and very thought provoking answers!

One more question, do you think it is possible to improve Graal as a game? (increase player count, acquire new tools, improve server standards.) If so how could this be accomplished?

If you do not think it is possible, why do you feel this way?

Go ask Ducati what happened to N-Pulse. If they got their server taken for such a stupid reason, imagine how the higher ups would react to Kickstarter.

This

The dev community for graal is pretty small nowadays, at least on PC.

Sadly.

Yeah. And those who aren't typically face a much tougher challenge. That article I wrote a while ago on my blog was mostly encouraging people to come together more often, instead of always splitting apart to try and do their own thing by themselves.
I think they mostly dislike it because it's a less direct source of income than normal server rentals, which are done within Graal's payment system itself.

Technically, you could crowdsource funds for renting a server for a number of years anyway and still possibly go beyond that to raise money that developers could be paid with. But, there's very little that Cyberjoueurs could do to make sure that money is being handled ethically, and could potentially find themselves in a lawsuit if some of the funds come from fraudulent sources. Within their payment system, they have more control over the whole thing, which is probably why they handle smaller transactions on each server using Gelats instead of having players make purchases with a credit or debit card every time.

I wouldn't say it's small. Just really spread out. And let's not forget that it's still pretty much the only dev community.
(I know there are iPhone dev servers, but most of the work is still done from the PC side, from what I understand.)

Absolutely. But it will take a lot of hard work and persistence.

A lot of stuff has been changing with the introduction of mobile and facebook servers, but bringing it all together will most definitely be a challenge. I personally believe that the player count would be greatly improved by increasing Graal's exposure to the world, but CJ seems reluctant to pool much money into advertising, despite the fact that it's easier than ever to accomplish.