FCAL Proposal Announced at GoMe

[andylegate]

Basically the only difference between the old FCA process and the new process is: it won't all be on poor single Tony at Cyan legal.

The guidelines are still pretty much the same, but people will be going to a rotated FCA panel.......not a over worked Cyan employee.

We spent many weeks working on Cyan with this, and much that was discussed was coming up with a way that would be acceptable to not only the fans, but Cyan too! Bottom line was: Cyan has the final say in everything. Including if someone where to ask for a FCA, the panel approves it, but Cyan turns around for some reason and says "No." they could do that if they so desired. They have the bottom line on EVERYTHING.

It won't be the FCA Panel's place to decide if an Age is textured right or not. If the meshes are built right or not. That will be a different process set up for MORE that has not even been discussed yet but if you'd care to, you can more than participate it it RIGHT NOW.

The only thing that the FCA Panel and Maintainers testing the Age will be doing is what we've been doing all along: looking for copyright violations, offensive material, and making sure the Age doesn't crash Uru every time you try to link there!
Story conflicts are mentioned too, but so far we have not had to worry about that. But that was something that CYAN brought up: Fan Story Line Conflict. They were worried about Your story conflicting with someone elses.
Cyan's story line was brought up too, and they shocked us by saying that, with THEIR guidelines we can also check for conflict. They didn't shoot down the idea at all.

Chacal, I know you don't like the idea of Guild Leaders, but again, Cyan came to us, not the other way around. They also requested the discussion be kept private simply because they didn't want to talk about something in public that they weren't even sure we could do!
They can't deal with a mob. They have to have smaller groups that they can communicate with. The smaller groups can deal with the mob (all though quite frankly I don't really relish that myself, sigh.). And that's what we're doing right now.

We're showing every one with this FCA Proposal, that it's something that we've already worked out with Cyan, and Cyan has told us what THEY wanted in it. Now we're asking the Fans what THEY want, and try to make it mesh!

I'm sorry that EA Games left a bad taste in your mouth. Heck, I don't even play BF anymore, nor MoH. I'm a COD man myself. Activision all the way dude!

Please don't just shoot it down right away. Look at it, think about it, with the knowledge that this is what Cyan has also already agreed to, and then start making you're own suggestions. I've seen you do that many, many times here. Give us feedback on it in a positive way. I know you can do that too, as I've seen you do it.

[Branan]

One thing I think we'd all like to see is a list of what Cyan specifically requested, so we as guild members know what we can discuss with the guild leaders.

As far as the FCL panel's power - I think as long as the panel members are beholden to both the community and Cyan, there won't be any problem. The GoW and GoMa members need to be able to replace the panel if they get too full of themselves (the panel, not the members), and Cyan, of course, needs to be able to replace the panel if they're not following Cyan's guidelines.

I also don't think that the FCL stuff should be specific to the GoMa - I'm not a member there, but from what I know, that was never part of what the GoMa was created for. I think there should be representitives from both the GoW and GoMa on the panel, and those members should be elected by their respective guilds, not appointed by the guild leaders.

Just my 2¢

[MustardJeep]

At this point what was specifically requested is fairly short; The bulk of the actual proposal had items highlighted as good ideas after they were thought up by the guild leadership rather then having to be requested. I can see where many concerned GoW members would like to know the current "stable points" in the proposal but unbiased by that the entire document is getting a good review on all of it's points.

I might suggest PaladinOfKaos if your curious that you PM Chogon to see if he is comfortable declaring publicly any points in the current proposal more stable then others.

Later.

P.S. I'll leave the question up for the rest of the leadership to discuss but it's chogon's show to decide what's called permanent in public.

[Chacal]

They can't deal with a mob. They have to have smaller groups that they can communicate with. The smaller groups can deal with the mob (all though quite frankly I don't really relish that myself, sigh.)

Yes, I can see that you don't like it.
It shows by you calling us "the mob" in pretty much all your posts.
I guess it's better than "the unwashed masses".

GoW members are not a mob, they are skilled and reasonable individuals who could have brought constructive opinions in an open discussion, if the persons contacted by Cyan had just said "Sorry but we feel there is no need for secrecy. If you want our help, we will discuss this with our members and get back to you with a proposition".

Besides, your assessment is wrong. They can deal with us. This is not the MOUL forum. It's less trouble for them to deal with a few individuals, of course. But they don't HAVE to do it that way.

But I would hate to make you go through this distasteful exercise that you don't relish. I'll just go back to the mob. Please run the Guilds as you want. Both of them.

As I said before, I'm tired of fighting.

It's just a game, after all.

I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm attacking you personally. I'm not. Really.
I'm not over-reacting either, or reading meaning into words out of context. I'm just sad that everything is proceeding as I thought it would, months ago.

[andylegate]

Points that Cyan wanted in the FCAL Proposal:

1. The Guild of Maintainers (GoMa) will act as agents for Cyan Worlds as far as FCA agreements.
2. FCA candidates will submit a proposal for an Age (or Shell - more on that later) to the Guild of Maintainers either through a web interface or through the Uru Library Manager (ULM). The candidate will provide enough details of the age and storyline to help the approval process.
3. Then through some guild process (committees, guildmasters, etc.), using guidelines provided by Cyan, will approve or deny FCA requests. The FCA candidate must agree to the FCA terms (such as by clicking on an "I agree" button).
4. The GoMa will send approved applications with the agreed terms to Cyan (either immediately or in batch) for Cyan to keep on record (since the agreement is really between Cyan and the FCA candidate).
5. The GoMa will make sure that the Age name is unique, the index number is unique (provided by GoMa), filenames are unique (provide a unique four letter prefix) and the storyline does not conflict.
6. The GoMa and GoW will provide monitoring to insure the FCA candidates adhere to the terms of the FCA agreement. Violations will be brought to the attention of Cyan of which Cyan will determine the course of action.

7. Any other types of FCAL's request that do not pertain to Uru (IE Myst, Riven, Myst III, IV, V, and other Cyan Products) should go directly to Cyan Legal.

Cyan also agrees that if there is something that is "gray" about a Writers FCAL request, that they can act to provide further guidance on it.

Those were the things that Cyan insisted on, and the Guild Leaders agreed upon.

Everything else in the FCAL Proposal was suggested by both the GoW and GoMa Guild Leaders to Cyan. Cyan has looked over what you see posted and has agreed to everything on the proposal.

So any of the points you see listed above is something that Cyan wants. If you want to see any of the above changed, then we must ask Cyan if we can change it.

Anything else in the proposal that you want to see changed, again suggest it.

Oh, but even then, we need to ask Cyan afterwards if it's okay. They have the last say and bottom line. Not us.

[andylegate]

@Chacal

It shows by you calling us "the mob" in pretty much all your posts.
I guess it's better than "the unwashed masses".

Actually the term I used was "a mob". The mob would be something else entirely (IE TV Show Sapranos).

I apologize to anyone that may have taken offense to that term. If you like, think of it as an acronym: Mass Of Bodies.

However, in the future I will no longer refer to the massive fan base as a mob, but instead Massive Fan Base. So MFB for short.

Please run the Guilds as you want. Both of them.

I'm sorry but you are quite mistaken here. I do not run both Guilds. I'm a Guild Master with the Maintainers and with the help of 6 other people whom are also Guild Masters, I help run the GoMa. I do NOT run anything over here, I'm simply a very active member. I can not dictate policy nor guidance here at the GoW, only suggest and comment as any other member of the GoW. The only policies and guidance that I can say are on matters pertaining to the GoMa.

[Trylon]

*sings*
We are the angry mob
We read the papers every day
We like who we like,
We hate who we hate
But we're also easily swayed


Lyrics by the Kaiser Chiefs

[andylegate]

Tylon......yer flat......it starts with A sharp........

[teedyo]

I wonder if there are any recent occurrences that lend support to people's wariness. Hmm.... Perhaps the MO:RE referenced Roadmap that didn't seem to exist??

Just sayin'. Something that is historically common in this community.

Perhaps once everyone realizes that Cyan isn't always playing games and everything they say isn't a puzzle...

[MustardJeep]

Do you mean this road map that was posted to the messengers site?

MORE Roadmap

* MORE servers will be restarted. These will be run by Cyan and run on machines that are either owned or leased by Cyan. The software and game assets will be as it was when Myst Online was shutdown on the GameTap servers. However, all accounts and avatars from the GameTap servers will not be available and will have to be re-created.
* There will be some restructuring of MystOnline.com to accommodate the new direction of MORE. Including the forums and the policies running the forum.
* Release of the 3DS Max Plasma plugins for creating MORE content. Release of the source for the plugin (only) to the Guild of Writers. This will allow for the easier creation of fan created tools as well as being able to use what Cyan used for creating Myst Online content.
* The Guild of Maintainers (in conjunction with Guild of Writers) will act as an agent in approving fan created content creation for MORE.
* Create methods and processes for testing fan created MORE content. How this will work has not been determined but is crucial for fan created content. Then a process will be created to bring Guild of Maintainers final approved and tested content forward to main server for all users to enjoy.
* Release binaries for a few front end servers to be run on fan run servers (front end shards). These fan run servers will have to be registered with the Cyan server and will help alleviate bandwidth issues. These front end processes will be limited to game servers and file servers. All authentication and avatar databases would still be handled by Cyan servers. This way a user needs only one account with all their avatars, no matter what front end shard they connect to. As a matter of fact, accessing the front end shards will be seamless for the user, and they may never know (or care) which one they are running on.
* Create processes and release binary updates to the front end shards so that shard owners can host specific age game instances (such as a particular Neighborhood) and be able to control the states of that instance. End users will not have to do anything special other than link to that age and they will be routed to the shard that is hosting it. This will allow the front end shard owners to provide unique experiences on the age instance that they host. (By the way, the states the front end shard owner's change will only affect the instance of the age they are hosting and will not affect other age's states, even if it is the same age.)
* (Pie in the sky milestone!) Cyan Worlds will create new content and storyline. This may be done solely by Cyan or in conjunction with the Guilds.