CIEL'S PROFILE

kind of miss posting here, or the general feeling of what it was like to post in an rm community. is anyone that i know still around? or anyone cool that i don't know? let's argue about naufragar

I am certain this impressive assortment of fine individuals and still more astounding spectrum of username colors will propel RMN into a new year of prosperity with both grace and style. Modding a large number of people has proven to be an effective strategy, as the likelihood that one of them will do something beneficial increases linearly per capita.

Similarly effective is entrusting the same person with responsibility numerous times despite him or her having proven ineffective in the past - in theory, after a certain number of failures that individual will encounter an impassable threshold of shame whereupon he must act to the organization's benefit if for no other purpose than to maintain the internal pretense of worth, which is of vital importance to the psychological well-being of civilized persons.

My final accolades go to the extensive use of color-coded rank structure, which shows the world that this latest initiative is a well-considered effort and thereby has the potential to be at least moderately effective. And really, if such a movement does not hold sufficient affectations to, at least temporarily, convince the public of your competence as an administrative entity, what then is the point?

Cheers to my friends, colleagues, and associates here at RPGMAKER.NET! Happy New Year!

I leave you with this quote;

<@WIP> and if there is one thing I hate
<@WIP> it is friendship

author=ankylo
The front page isn't the only place to find games and if 80% of the games here don't meet your standards, maybe you should leave or I don't know, help the people who make those games.

didn't i just write a 50000000000 word topic on how to make rmn a more nurturing learning environment for developing game makers? since i as a rational human being recognize that it is impossible to engage in comprehensive one on one hand-holding with dozens or hundreds of subpar game creators until they produce work of satisfactory quality, i have been attempting to start an initiative at this site which would eventually yield succulent fruits for these ailing young would-be designers. results thus far:

i don't appreciate your dismissiveness or snide insinuations, but given that you have repeatedly demonstrated a limited understanding of the situation i have difficulty taking your comments to heart. it seems to me in no way constructive to engage in dialogue with an individual whose first reaction to criticism is blind, destructive hostility;

author=kentona
the real reason was that everyone here was being whiny bitches so one day ankylo accepted absolutely everything that was in the queue, 7 Dragons included.

author=ankylo
This. stop $#%^*&# whining.

i apologize but i do not understand how you are helping with this attitude, and yet after knowingly defacing the front page with poor content in some childish attempt at revenge, you do a 180 and assume a holier than thou stance on those genuinely trying to make a difference. i would normally just disregard posts from a member with this sort of disposition and apparent decision making skills, but i have been led to believe you are for some reason involved with the content management of this site rather than just server administration and feel i have no choice but to pursue this line of discussion beyond the locked topic if any improvements are to be made to this site.

merry christmas evertyvbody!!!!

after seeing the staff more or less sweeping many of the best ideas and suggestions in Strangeluv's topic under the carpet I decided to make this reply in a topic of its own because it is probably the most important thing i will ever write here.

Dear Staff,

Yes, it's your right to decide how to do things. But as the people running a user contributed content (UCC) site you at some point have to take a look at the how these decisions are being received by your user base and affecting the site's well-being and potentially reassess your methods. I have seen a troubling level of defensiveness and self righteousness from some of the current staff when questioned, so this may come as a shock for those select individuals, but the goal is not to do things YOUR WAY or to shine a light on your favorite obscure game. Your responsibility as staff is to 1) tend to the site's health and nuture your userbase's creativity 2) make it an attractive place to work on and showcase creative products, bringing in fresh users and their projects. Getting your pet game a few downloads at the expense of either one of these goals is -stupid-.

The featured game is a very very powerful tool. Why? Because it occupies the most significant portion of RMN's most valuable resource: the front page. It is RMN's primary avenue of content delivery and communication with its users, whether they be first time visitors or long time members. I honestly can't understand how this isn't immediately obvious to everyone involved, but you are going about this all wrong - there is such unrest over the featured game because of a disconnect between the staff's intent and the public's perceived importance and significance of that particular venue. Bad news for the staff; the public is correct about the featured game's importance due to the reasons I have described.

An extremely successful UCC site will tend to communicate with its users via the front page in a meaningful, relevant, and invigorating fashion that fosters a sense of creativity, activity, and community. Snews, for example, is generally not very effective as an article because it doesn't investigate anything in depth or provide new information - it regurgitates events that most everyone is already aware of. (But then again, it's the staff's only real sign of a pulse and in that sense is welcome.) The only compelling part of it is the interviews, which are too short generally and really should be expanded into a dedicated feature rather than being a literal footnote on a recap article. The key to engaging and productive interaction between a site's staff and userbase is that any content (articles, features) released on the front page should generate POSITIVE ACTION. That's two words - it should generate an action of some sort (discussion resulting in the birth of new ideas, perspectives, or products) and this action should be positive (healthy for the user base and by extension content generation). Articles, interviews, and features are all tools that can and should provide insight, perspective, and inspiration.

Featured games should be representative of the community's finest work and a sign post to the outside world - 'Hey, look at the amazing things we make here, you should come and make amazing things with us!'. More than that, being featured should absolutely be something users aspire to - an achievement and honor one can work towards by improving the quality of their work. It may sound 'shallow' to those who strictly advocate making games for oneself, but the prestige factor within a community that is respected can be a big motivational boost. (Thinking about how cool it'll be when everyone likes the game you're working on is an oasis on the horizon in the scorching desert of development.) These sorts of things generate 'positive action'. Putting an obscure game that you, as a select few staff members think 'deserves' exposure in that venerable position on the main page is like jamming a square peg in a round hole - it creates NEGATIVE action. Due to the disconnect in perception i have described, many users are merely bewildered by your choices. Rather than generating inspiration, perspective, and discussion tending towards the ultimate goal of - more videogames, better videogames - it causes doubt, questioning, bitterness, etc.

If you want to spoon-feed your userbase your favorite games that they have heretofore passed over due to indifference or ignorance, it is best that you do so in a more subtle fashion. Write a thorough article about it once a month or create a new section of the site dedicated to 'staff picks'. A thoughtful opinion article on the merits of an obscure title by a member of the staff will be more likely to generate positive interaction in the form of analytical discussion and academic debate over design strengths and weaknesses. The poisonous response resulting from the perceived injustice of putting a rather evidently inferior product on the pedestal in place of a 'more deserving' title will no longer be a factor. Believe you me, this is a huge thing. I have had discussions with people both inside and outside this community who find it staggering that the staff here have passed over titles that were celebrated on numerous other sites in favor of games whose merits are, at best, difficult to grasp.

The featured game is important - so important that it should not even be changed if there is no suitable successor. If it must be changed and there are no candidates, hold a game making contest and feature the winner. Eyes Without a Face, a recent contest entry, was actually a wonderful candidate for a feature for several reasons. It utilized REFMAP graphics in RMVX, which is not often (if ever) done and could potentially expand the palette of VX users who hadn't previously considered graphics conversion, let alone using anything other than RTP. Think back to the year 2000! Playing innovative RM games opened possibilities and presented new ideas to us. Seeing the innumerable tricks people used to achieve various effects was what gradually raised our standards. Anyone else have their world blown open after playing Kindred Saga? Yeah. It's important to expose games that do something new or different, because people learn and go on to make better products! This is especially true for the new generation whose first exposure to game making is RMVX - they are in the position now that we twenty-somethings were in at the release of RM2K (except they don't have the benefit of having grown up playing the 16-bit style games RM is capable of creating, and so are possibly in even greater need of guidance by example.)

i like to think of a successful UCC site as an 'engine for inspiration'. Rather than being a very static, even stagnant, dumping ground for people's work, it helps generate a snowball effect wherein people are inspired to create better and better work by observing the creations and perspectives of others in the same field. For those of you who have been in the RM scene for a long, long while, when you hear people talking about the 'good old days' at GW or whatever their personal RM alma mater is, they always mention how INSPIRING it was to log in and look at all the cool games and projects people were working on. There is a distinct lack of that nowadays in the English-speaking community, and that is in part because there are no longer any effective, structured UCC sites. RMN could be something really special, it could even completely reinvigorate the amateur game making scene. But not as long as the staff continue along the seemingly narrow minded, self righteous, and ultimately self destructive path they are on now. If the current staff, or future additions or replacements begin to observe the principles set forth in this post (that means doing actual work and investing at least as much thought into this site and the state of the greater game making community as I have) great things can happen.

People ARE watching RMN. There are consequences to what is done with the front page. I visit French and German RM sites, and they occasionally discuss what is happening here. Lately the consensus re: this site has not been so good. They are similarly baffled by the choice of features as many here have been and, as human beings are wont to do, make generalizations about the 'strange/bad tastes' of the community as a whole. It's troubling to see comments dismissing this site as silly or of poor standards from external sources who are not familiar with any of the individual personalities involved here. It makes one wonder how RMN is perceived by those whose thoughts we don't get insight to - the individual looking for a community to invest his creativity into, whose primary measure of this site's worth is the game it chose to feature, and more to the point, the overall potency of its front page content.

The staff have a lot of work to do going forward if they want to exploit the full strengths and potential of a UCC site. WIP created something really cool here, a framework GW would've killed to have five years ago and everything needed to build an amateur game creation mecca. Best start thinking about the greater good of the RM scene, because you are in the best position to be its saviors. Make use of this opportunity! If the ultimate point of this post is still unclear, here's the staff's job in three simple rules;

Elevate shining examples of game creation so that others might learn.

Reward exceptional effort so creators are given additional motivation and sense of purpose.

Examine and revere achievements in design so that others might be inspired.