Concerned

edited in General
I am quite sure that this post will be deleted or locked before I have a chance to respond.

However, I have noticed that many members are still unhappy with the way that this community forum is run.

While, my posts and advertisements of my community have been blocked or locked or deleted, MGSA members have been allowed to post freely in my community and have been allowed to promote themselves as they wish... We even featured MGSA links on our ticker feed and allowed MGSA leaders & IESA leaders to sign up to our website...

Furthermore, just to create peace, we even finally gave in and allowed political discussions in our community because we have been seeking to promote a South African Community, made up of dozens of smaller and equal sized communities.

While many of the rules are very strict on this forum, on our forum we have only but 2 rules:

1) Post about SA game development topics.
2) Do not degrade the integrity of any individual, business or game.

Unlike many organizations we seek to leverage of social networking and promote complete freedom of the genre.

For example, recruiters are welcome on our forums and within our social groups.

Users are rewarded for contribution through a achievements point system that can earn them many beneficial privileges within our community.

We have encrypted our databases so that we cannot programmatically query the comments and private messages between members.

We listen to our members, the website, rules and community design was created by running many different voting polls. ie our community designed the website, not the developers or admins as we seek to represent the community, not to lead it.

We want the community to be free and for it's leaders to emerge due to personal engagement and respect and not out of an authoritarian 'I got there first' attitude.

We also welcome internationals who wish to engage in business within our national community and as long as they abide by our two rules, anything goes.

We have found that collaboration and social focus is just as important as technical focus and we have encouraged members to collaborate with each-other on a personal level and not just on a professional level.

In fact cross promotion is a focal point among-st members...

Our website has a detailed profile section specifically designed for your personal promotion of your company or individual profiles.

Friend requests, live chat, private messaging & a desktop notification system that runs natively on your device allows u to always keep up to date with live notifications instead of using email messages which may come across as Spam.

Our forums even allow you to upload media and embed HTML content.

Our admins engage with the community on a personal level, not just as moderators as again, we do not see ourselves as leaders but rather representatives of the community..equals, if that is not clear enough as we believe in situational leadership and not hierarchical importance.

So, again, please do not lock this thread, we allow your leaders to post freely in our community and market your events. South Africa is big enough for both of our organizations and the other emerging communities.

http://southafricangamedevelopers.com/achievement-system/

Comments

  • Can you please for the love of gaming please stop being so immature. There are plenty of us that enjoy MGSA and maybe even ZAGD but we don't see why there has to be any competition between the two.

    Next time please just post a simple message stating that ZAGD has launched an achievement system and invite us to come have a look at it.

    It is very immature to bash at another organization that has for a fact been running longer than your group and has organized better than I have seen your group has.

    If you wish for me to tell you all the things that I personally have seen your group do wrong then please send me a private message and I will be more than willing to give positive feedback on how you can improve it.
  • This is exactly what I am talking about, every time I post something here an admin goes at me... As I said before, on my very first post ever I received my first response as negative. Then leaders of your organization come into my group and have a go at me... How did I offend you in this above post for you to come at me with such a hostile response?
  • edited
    I am not an admin. I have been active in both MGSA and ZAGD so far so I know exactly how both sides are.
    I am quite sure that this post will be deleted or locked before I have a chance to respond.
    First problem is you open your post with this assuming it would be bad. Maybe you had bad intentions from the start?
    However, I have noticed that many members are still unhappy with the way that this community forum is run.
    Who is the members that are still unhappy? Have you seen there are discussions trying to resolve a lot of problems lately?
    While, my posts and advertisements of my community have been blocked or locked or deleted, MGSA members have been allowed to post freely in my community and have been allowed to promote themselves as they wish... We even featured MGSA links on our ticker feed and allowed MGSA leaders & IESA leaders to sign up to our website...
    I was first banned without warning from your group before I got invited to join it again. The problem isn't really that you advertise your group but how you do it.


    All I am saying is that next time avoid talking about MGSA in the same context as ZAGD if you want to compare them because not everyone has had the same experiences. I have personally had great experiences engaging on the MGSA forums where my experience with ZAGD was VERY bad from the start.

    If you want your group to grow then promote it without trying to compare it to how bad others are.

  • Hi Julian

    As you have seen there is a ton of changes happening on this forum. Firstly the previous admin has stepped down and we are looking to work with the community to sort out the problems.

    I have to agree with Zaphire that its not very constructive to be negative about this community and then promote your own as a superior brand. We are all just looking for a common place for all people who love game development in all its varieties to come and interact.

    My personal view is that if you were serious about community you would work with the community and help us address the issues we are facing instead of fracturing off.

    In future please ensure that if your posts have constructive criticism also attempt to provide some possible solutions.
    Thanked by 2Zaphire mattbenic
  • "IESA wants to make announcements about things that affects the entire game dev industry here"

    and

    "This website now has achievement systems yay come look at my site"

    Are materially VERY different, and I'm so sorry that you:
    1. Can't see the difference between the two
    2. Think Zaphire is a) An admin and b) "having a go at you", because I don't see it at all.

    IESA is not and was never "promoting themselves" when they ask to make announcements. They were hoping to disseminate information that would be of use to people in the industry. That you were trying to exclude that from happening boggles my mind.

    I'll let Zaphire speak for himself if he so wishes.

    --------------------------

    For myself, this "we have an achievement system yay" means absolutely nothing to me whatsoever. It doesn't help me:
    1. make better games.
    2. grow potential client/markets.
    3. make connections in gamedev industry.
    4. anything I care about.

    Therefore I consider it purely self-interest and self-promotion.

    "But ZAGD is a community for the gamedevs and its success will mean success for gamedevs!"

    I haven't seen anyone achieve any of the following by being part of ZAGD yet:
    1. make better games
    2. sell more games
    3. make connections in game dev

    When you have examples of actual material difference in gamedev lives, you can use that argument of "But ZAGD matters so you should be part of it". Right now, you're putting the carriage (self promotion) WAY before the horse (making an actual difference)

    Not cool man.
  • edited
    If you want your group to grow then promote it without trying to compare it to how bad others are.
    This pretty much says it all.

    [edit]
    Oh, and please recategorize this to "General", it's not really about an event :)
    [/edit]
    Thanked by 1DaveRussellSA
  • Hi Julian,

    I still don't know why there had to be a split in terms of scattering a body of enthusiasts and professionals that is MGSA into even smaller groups/communities where the local industry is so small anyway and we should rather be aiming at growing as a whole and showing the world that we are a strong, unified group of passionate game makers.

    I would much rather see us facing the problem and working on a compromise that suits everybody - this is possible, we just need to set aside our big egos and work things out.
    Users are rewarded for contribution through a achievements point system that can urn them many beneficial privileges within our community.
    Would you please explain what you aim to achieve with this currency system and what are some of these "beneficial privileges"? Do you want to incentivize game development? This might completely change the way that people look at game development - I don't necessarily know if this is good or bad here but it will certainly promote developers to make games/write posts/like threads not only because they want to do it but because doing certain things on the forum will earn you extra points. Are the rewards really promoting useful ways of learning and different approaches to game development or will they essentially limit our imagination and freedom?

    From your website:
    The point system will earn you contributors badges or achievements…This will elevate your status as emerging community leaders
    In any reward system you will encounter rivalry and seeing that "any activity" on the forum is rewarded with points/badges, this will essentially lead people to create superfluous posts that is only there to get extra points which will end up with a forum that will be more competitive and flooded with too much content.

    I would just like to say that I appreciate initiative and that growing communities is a good thing!
    But what @dislekcia has built up in the last 10 years is essentially what you are trying to do right now, all over again. Why do we need to start over when we spent so long to build up something that has allowed so many people to learn, get jobs and connect with other passionate game developers not just HERE but internationally!

    I sincerely hope that we can align our communities and passionate interactive designers to reconcile and merge into a unified body again (IESA)
    Thanked by 2petrc DaveRussellSA
  • I sincerely hope that we can align our communities and passionate interactive designers to reconcile and merge into a unified body again (IESA)
    Actually IESA is nothing like MGSA, it's not going for an active forum or community events, it's purely a government-facing body that will try and get "the bigger issues" working for game devs in SA, and that's regardless of MGSA, ZAGD, whatever the hell acronym anyone wants to associate with.

    For example:

    - They'll fight legislation that makes it hell for gamedevs to be paid from overseas (where 150% of most gamedevs income come from) (yes 150% is a hyperbole)
    - They'll lobby for government funding so gamedevs could have a chance of attending international events without incurring too much own cost.
    - They'll do this without needing or wanting an active forum such as MGSA's.

    Right, @LexAquillia?
  • edited
    @julian

    Honestly, this is just coming across as is a giant whinge-fest on your part because you have put in a whole heap of your personal time building The Greatest Game Development Website Known To Man and you are butthurt that after all that work, people aren't flocking to it to bow and pay homage at its greatness.

    I'm sorry, but that's not how things work.

    MGSA, for whatever flaws it may have (and will continue to have), has a rock solid foundation of members and active contributers who have been here for years and years. And before MGSA, we were at Game.Dev. And before Game.Dev we were at SAGD. We fight. We bicker. We get angry at one another. But at the heart of it all, we are kept together by our love of game development and our desire to grow this industry in South Africa.

    We often disagree on what that may entail, but those disagreements lead to learning and to growth, and that isn't something that some arbitrary URL with ZOMGFEATURESANDMULTIPLEFORUMSECTIONS! can achieve in manner of weeks, especially when it appears to be driven by people who are frankly, coming across as incredibly immature, not to mention ignorant of what is actually important to South African game developers and the growth of the game development industry here.

    I can't even wish you the best of luck because everything that I have seen come out of ZAGD, most notably the attacks against IESA, presents a terrible face towards people (both local and international) who are new to the South African game development industry, and that it not something that I can support.
  • Tuism said:
    It's purely a government-facing body
    This isn't exactly true.

    Government interaction is only one of the many tasks that IESA has taken on. IESA is about representing and growing the interactive entertainment industry in South Africa through a myriad of ways; not only by approaching government. A better summary of this comes directly from the IESA website:
    In real terms this means we draft responses to legislation, advise on policy, conduct research and meet with government, foreign bodies and investors to ensure that the legal, economic, social and political environments are the best they can possibly be to ensure that the industry thrives.
    Thanked by 3Tuism mattbenic garethf
  • Tuism said:
    It's purely a government-facing body
    This isn't exactly true.

    Government interaction is only one of the many tasks that IESA has taken on. IESA is about representing and growing the interactive entertainment industry in South Africa through a myriad of ways; not only by approaching government. A better summary of this comes directly from the IESA website:
    In real terms this means we draft responses to legislation, advise on policy, conduct research and meet with government, foreign bodies and investors to ensure that the legal, economic, social and political environments are the best they can possibly be to ensure that the industry thrives.
    Rad :D Thanks for clearing that up, basically it's outward-facing for the gamedev community instead of inward-facing AS a community :)
    Thanked by 2mattbenic AngryMoose
  • @Tuism that's about the jist of it.
  • @julian

    I fully understand that you're doing what you think is "best for everyone". You think that getting ZAGD to become a super active forum and having a bunch of traffic there will benefit everyone who makes games. You think that extra features like achievements will get more people to interact on that forum and therefore make things better for everyone.

    However I hope you can listen to what the people at MGSA are saying, really listen to the content of what they're saying, as opposed to just blanket what everyone says as "having a go at you". That is absolutely not what anyone WANTS to do here, it's not about YOU, it's about the things that are being done on the site not aligning with the values of this community which has been around for a long, long time.

    Values like:
    - We want to make better games, which means crit and feedback and all those things. Which we don't see yet from ZAGD.
    - We don't care about achievements and point systems because it doesn't contribute to 1. And a system where people are incentivised to post more and engage more results in poor quality posts. We don't want that.
    - We don't need "Friend requests, live chat, private messaging & a desktop notification system that runs natively on your device allows u to always keep up to date with live notifications". Or at least, we don't want features before content. We want content.
    - Content, for the sake of this discussion, are: people with experience who choose to hang out here, people who crit and feedback on each other's creations, occasional discussions on stuff around gamedev, that we either find interesting, or we can learn from. No amount of cool features can draw more than actual the actual meat.

    So I appreciate that it's hard to create a community, which is what you're trying to do. But it being hard and your putting in a bunch of work doesn't automatically entitle you to it being successful, unfortunately. We all have to listen to what people want. And if THESE people here at MGSA don't want what you're advertising, then it is spam.

    If the people who do already hang out at ZAGD find those "features" awesome, more power to them, we have no qualms against people who enjoy the different approach. But the people *here* don't, and you should learn to accept that, and recognise that.
    Thanked by 1mattbenic
  • Looks like a Meta Discussion to me. :P
  • edited
    Julian said:

    We have encrypted our databases so that we cannot programmatically query the comments and private messages between members.
    I'm interested how this works technically. I mean, even if it is encrypted in the DB, your code still reads it and returns it to the users as plain-text. So if your code is doing the decrypting, then you can too. Hell, if you're using any type of stock page caching you probably have unencrypted pages with users messages sitting in temp right now.
    Unless it is end-to-end encryption, which I very _very_ much doubt it.

    Anyway, I don't think it actually matters. No one cares enough to read anyone's private messages. And anyone planning a kidnapping/heist/naughty thing is not doing it over a games forums PM's.
  • Ok I think we have gotten the point across on this thread and I am reaching out to Julian to discuss the issues further offline.
This discussion has been closed.