The Purpose of Make Games SA

edited in General
Hi Guys,

I'm glad to announce that the much talked about revamp of the site and forums is going to finally happen. A big thank you to Free Lives who will be contributing some financial assistance so we can get some professional help doing the web development and migration. We will start the process formally next year.

In the mean time I want to use this opportunity for us to reflect on what the purpose of Make Games actually is. The end result will be that we want the functionality of the new site to reflect our "why".

So I ask you to please list what you think the purpose of Make Games is, and more importantly what functionality would be needed on the website to enable this purpose.

Comments

  • I see MGSA's purpose as:
    -To provide a community and (safe) space for South African game developers of all persuasions, from all backgrounds, and of all levels (from curious potential gamedevs and absolute beginners, through hobbyists to professional developers) to commune both online and IRL.
    -Within that community/space to provide help and learning opportunities, constructive feedback on projects and opportunities to compete and collaborate in competitions and jams.
    -To grow this community by reaching out to those new to game development or currently working in isolation from the larger community and industry.

    And to help achieve this the website should:
    -Communicate the above purpose
    -On first arrival provide useful information on where to start with both the community and game development itself, the latter through direct links to existing forum content
    -Have clear, prominent links to the forum itself, as well as to whatever social media spaces (probably an FB group and the MGSA Twitter account) determined to be most useful in achieving the above purpose
    -Have concise information on the date and location of upcoming MGSA meetups
    -Still be focused strongly on the forum and interacting on it
    -Facilitate easy sharing of forum content to the above social media spaces

    When it comes to the Facebook group:
    In addition for the ability of any member to share any thread or post on the site
    -Regular sharing of selected, possibly curated threads
    -A means for facebook users to easily join the forum with minimal signup friction
  • To me the purpose of MGSA could best be summed up as A place and resource for the sharing and communication of game development in South Africa this is not really complete, and does exclude perhaps quite a few things.

    I'd like to take a quite historical look at things. MGSA arrived from both Game.Dev and SAGD being shutdown and the need for a place for the local community to congregate. The first important note was the choice of name: Make Games. This was to communicate that the primary focus of the community was to be about the direct creation of games. The second point is the sustainability of resources. There was a lot of effort made on some posts that were lost on old forums, so part of the philosophy was to have a place that would allow for a long term gathering of knowledge.

    This leads me to believe that there are three core functions to MGSA:

    1. The creation and propagation of game dev in SA.
    2. Communication of people in the local community; to remove isolation and facilitate growth.
    3. Preservation of knowledge of past challenges.

    While these are the core function they are not the only functions, and I do believe that there is great use in secondary functions. Though at this point I would like to stress that we should be focusing our efforts on things that are more unique to the South African sphere. There is little purpose in propping us up to be a knowledge sharing sphere when places like Gamasutra exist.

    There have been many discussions and resources over the years of how to improve and what we can do better. I think the current direction of improving the forums via server and software is a good course of action. Though there might be the question of wether a community wiki or a curated blog would be better, I think the answer is not really important so long as there is an easily accessible well curated set of resources that people have access to. While we have a wealth of knowledge on the forums it is often a pain to find exactly what is needed.

    I think that MGSA has recently shown positive growth in its cultural, I believe that the number of diverse voices in our community have somewhat diminished in our most recent change of leadership. The current passive approach to community guidance does seem to favour those already active, and I believe those most active to be of a very specific demographic endemic to the tech culture. I would like to see MGSA be a diverse play, and indeed we need to focus efforts on this given the growth and culture of the country for which it serves.

    There has, and continues to be, great potential for MGSA. And I believe we have lived up to it quite well: we have seen great games grown out of the community. The split of MGSA and IESA has been excellent as it allows both to focus on what they are truly good at, and the focus has allowed for much growth in the local industry. There is much we can do to grow, and I am definitely glad to see it happening. I know I don't post as much as I used to, but I still normally check the forums a couple of times a day, and am always willing to help if needed :)
  • edited
    These are great points. I just wanted to add to what's already been said,.

    Firstly, Like @Karuji suggests, it'd be great to have the resource pages be more formalized with permanent links, more like a wiki, and @Elyaradine has suggested that if we use threads to store information it would be ideal if we could make some threads collaborative so that groups of people could edit and add knowledge (again, like a wiki).
    mattbenic said:
    -A means for facebook users to easily join the forum with minimal signup friction
    Would it be possible for people to sign in with their Facebook accounts? (I think this is what @Mattbenic is suggesting, and I think it's a great idea).

    If I were to sum up the purpose of Make Games myself it'd be:

    Firstly to get advice and feedback towards making games (this is where the forum format shines afterall)
    Secondly to connect people making games so that we're not all alone and we all know what potential resources are available to us (Facebook is better here?)
    Thirdly, to get people to meet in real life and collaborate on making games together (This is why we have meetups and in-real-life jams).
    Fourthly, to encourage investment in the South African games industry (from local and foreign investors, or foreign game developers relocating here) through promoting the successes of South African game developers as well as showing a vibrant and welcoming community (a well organized website front-end is best here?).
    Fifthly, to provide motivation to make games and motivation to interact with other game makers (through jams and competitions and other designed rewards?).
    Sixthly, as a knowledge database (and forums aren't great at this, though it's more motivating to share information on a forum than on a wiki).
    Seventhly, to advocate for making games, and converting game development curious people into full time developers (Facebook has better reach, but a website can do a better presentation?).

    (Which is pretty close to the points @Matbenic and @Karuji made. It's a lot of different functions, but it's become a big and complex community with a lot of different needs).
  • Karuji said:
    There have been many discussions and resources over the years of how to improve and what we can do better. I think the current direction of improving the forums via server and software is a good course of action. Though there might be the question of wether a community wiki or a curated blog would be better, I think the answer is not really important so long as there is an easily accessible well curated set of resources that people have access to. While we have a wealth of knowledge on the forums it is often a pain to find exactly what is needed.
    Personally, I've always found it cumbersome sifting through forum threads (not just on our forum), looking for a solution to a problem I might have. Of course the search feature is there, but you still end up having to sift through tens of results or more. I want to propose a feature where users can "vote" on a thread which contains useful (and generalised) design/audio/art/code information, in order to have that thread either linked to a wiki topic as related discussion, or (in the case of code examples) have a smaller snippet from a thread written into the wiki, as part of a topic.

    This might not be something to implement in the immediate future, but I feel it might add value to us having the discussions we have, in that they don't just become lost in a haystack of forum threads.
    Thanked by 2mattbenic watson
  • Krummelz said:

    Personally, I've always found it cumbersome sifting through forum threads (not just on our forum), looking for a solution to a problem I might have. Of course the search feature is there, but you still end up having to sift through tens of results or more. I want to propose a feature where users can "vote" on a thread which contains useful (and generalised) design/audio/art/code information, in order to have that thread either linked to a wiki topic as related discussion, or (in the case of code examples) have a smaller snippet from a thread written into the wiki, as part of a topic.

    This might not be something to implement in the immediate future, but I feel it might add value to us having the discussions we have, in that they don't just become lost in a haystack of forum threads.
    What we can have to add to that is a "wiki" area where members cam vote on threads good to add to the wiki. But yes adding this is to share how we should do this as our changes. An example: In a thread where it says "ask and we answer any XNA questions" - we can make a wiki page called "QnA: XNA" where any questions they can search for there and find the answers (if they don't find what they are questioning it can be eventually added). That is a good way to take clutter out of the forums - since it gives tons of help. To give a few of all the ways as an example: Platformer, racing game, puzzels, C#, Unity, App stores, pc systems, touch screens. We can make tons of categories - then the forum can be for big public discussions like: I made a new game, competition this weekend, meet up this week, etc. Just wanted to add to this in a larger way.
    Thanked by 2watson Krummelz
  • @Evangreenwood, sixthly and seventhly, blew me away although I cant find eleventhly
    Thanked by 2EvanGreenwood edg3
  • edited
    [Removed by moderator - deemed to be spam/trolling]
Sign In or Register to comment.