FCAL Proposal Announced at GoMe

[teedyo]

Yep; and you've obviously missed the point. Let me spell it out....

The MO"RE announcement and the road map were intended (by Cyan) to be posted together. Members of the community took it upon themselves to postpone posting the road map because it was supposedly "too vague" for the community to handle. They intended to wait until after the press conference.

It's the long history of occurrences like this that makes people wary(and a bit weary).

EDIT: I should also state that these types of things don't just occur in the Myst community but all around. It just seems to be the way things are and thus; experienced people are wary.

[MustardJeep]

Chogon said

Sorry for some of the confusion. We did want to let the Guild of Messengers have some exclusive time with the announcement. I'm sorry if that confused some fans.

P.S. I didn't miss the point I got my copies of the announcement and roadmap off the messengers site like many others, I'm just busy I didn't mind the brief wait.

[D'Lanor]

There is one thing I do not understand. Surely you are not going to use the ULM for content delivery to MORE? The ULM is a great tool for the offline version but the online version comes with an internal patcher ready to use. This internal patcher gets its updates from a dataserver, not unlike the ULM.

You can simply point maintainers to a test dataserver and anything you want can be delivered right at their doorstep.

Setting up a dataserver is not that hard. There are quite a few ex-UU admins (including yours truly) who could set up one for UU. All we would need is some info from Cyan about the structure of the MORE dataserver. Judging from my old MOUL patcher logfiles it cannot be that different from an UU dataserver.

[Dot]

The FCA process was developed before MORE was announced, and focused solely on Uru:CC and delivery via the ULM. That bit will need to be changed, of course, to reflect the delivery method employed by MORE.

The idea here was to use the current proposal as a starting point to open up debate with the wider community. It can be modified and updated, but Cyan has the final say.

[Metabasalt1]

I think the news about MORE is very exciting. The fans will finally get the power over the ages! But this is going to be a LOT of work to make it happen. We are more than technically competent to make this happen, but we will need to band together like never before. If we start quibbling amongst ourselves, it will not work!

[BladeLakem]

The FCA process was developed before MORE was announced, and focused solely on Uru:CC and delivery via the ULM. That bit will need to be changed, of course, to reflect the delivery method employed by MORE.

The idea here was to use the current proposal as a starting point to open up debate with the wider community. It can be modified and updated, but Cyan has the final say.

So, has Cyan bought off on this process already? Or are they waiting for community review and rewrites by the Maintainers? (If so, I'd suggest that be clearly stated in several places - I'd gotten the impression that this was a release of a policy that was already set).

[andylegate]

So, has Cyan bought off on this process already? Or are they waiting for community review and rewrites by the Maintainers? (If so, I'd suggest that be clearly stated in several places - I'd gotten the impression that this was a release of a policy that was already set).

Not sure what you mean by "bought off" (do you mean "approved" or "accepted'" I'll assume that's what you mean.)

Cyan has seen this proposal in it's entirety. And approve of what they have seen ("Looks good!" I believe were the exact words).
That is based upon the proposal for Uru:CC, with the possibility of the same proceedure being used for MORE.

Now it's been brought to the general public to get: opinions, more ideas, suggestions, etc. Except the things I listed that Cyan said they wanted in there.

As far as Uru:CC goes, we can take it back, after all of you have made change suggestions or expanded futher on things in the proposals (also voice concerns), and we take it back to Cyan to make sure said ideas and changes are still good with them, if so, we can then start using it for Ages for Uru:CC.

The proposal is ALSO being made as a base idea for User Ages in MORE (obviously we're lacking details, or will need to change things for MORE that we don't know or are unsure about at this time). This will be a long discussion, as Cyan indicated with their Roadmap that we have a lot of things to do first before we can try putting User Ages in MORE.

This most likely should have all been pointed out at the beginning. Be patient with us, as we're new to doing this too.
However, don't stop pointing out problems like this either! This is just the kind of feed back we need to make sure that we are not forgetting something, or confusing people about!

[Chacal]

...but we will need to band together like never before. If we start quibbling amongst ourselves, it will not work!

Be careful with that kind of statement. It is too easy to dismiss valid concerns as "quibbling". Remember, whistle blowers are always branded as unproductive, "not team players", unpatriotic, etc. Until they're found to be right.

This sounds overly dramatic for a discussion about an on-line game, I know. We're not writing the Constitution here. But it's the same problem everywhere, you see, with the same people.

When a new system is proposed, there are some who will enthusiastically endorse it without asking questions. The kind of people who open spam mails and click on the links. Then there are those who are naturally cautious to begin with. They will first try to discover the flaws and point them out for correction. Security people, among others, work like that. That's the way we are.

Although the people involved in the FCAL discussions with Cyan are acting in good faith, they are proposing a system which will attract other kinds of people entirely. It introduces dangerous precedent of fans policing other fans and ratting them out to Cyan. Once the idea of being policed is accepted by fans, what will prevent those people from slowly gaining more control with Cyan's unknowing approval?

Imagine this: A year from now, with private shards running, surely we will need someone to inspect them and maintain some kind of order, won't we, make sure there is no offensive material, no giant cones in the City? Surely poor Cyan won't be able to maintain the law and will need some help. Well, we already have a system and people for that, we just need to give them a tiny bit more of power. Won't make much of a difference after all. And then to the next little change. I spoke of the bf2 situation earlier, that's exactly what happened. And at each little change, EA said "Looks good!"

So, you see, the problem is not the current FCAL proposal or its exact wording. It is what comes after. It's not that we don't need some rules, you see, it's that there are people who enjoy making rules and pushing them on people. They're not happy until they've imposed "order" and got rid of "chaos". Actually what they enjoy is control and power.

We just need checks and balances. It is easier to prevent this than to get rid of that kind of people.




Maybe at this point you're wondering why I am so vocal about all this, why I am so worried about positions of power in our guilds and in MOUL.

the reason. Or don't. It's boring and probably irrelevant. Show Spoiler

Here's a funny thing: I have been leading gaming communities and gaming servers for years. I'm the scary guy who makes the rules. People who don't obey them get banned from servers and forums. I hate that job and I don't know why I always end up doing it. I also hire people who will enforce the rules (admins, what Cyan calls "Resengs"). My criteria for hiring is "able to do the job, didn't ask for it, doesn't want to do it". I make rules for them too.

Sometimes I get the people I mentioned above. Those who enjoy ruling, kicking, banning others. On a gaming server, they're always asking to be made admins. Every time I was forced to hire one who wanted it (sometimes the pressure is too great, come on, he's a good guy, he posts a lot, he organizes events, he's popular, he's our best player), every single time I ended up firing him for abuse of authority. Every time it was traumatic for the community.

Why did I keep doing that job then? Because of checks and balances. There's none. I'm it. Action game servers are not run as democracies. It's a ruthless world full of guys who take their game very seriously. There's money involved. There's always a dictator on top. If I wanted to keep enjoying my games (back when I had time for games), I had to make sure I didn't let anyone ruin them. So everywhere I went I became benevolent dictator, and then I couldn't quit because I didn't know what kind of dictator the next guy would be.

But surely, you say, that's only in action gaming world? Those guys are just gamers full of testosterone. It wouldn't happen to us. It wouldn't happen in real life.

Here's a sad thing: It is also part of my job in real life to make rules. People who don't obey them lose their job or go to jail. I hate that part of my job.
It is also part of my job to hire people who will enforce the rules. Guess what happens?

I joined the Uru and GoW communities in the hope that it would be different, that there would be no more rules, politics, leaders and busybodies. Just a comfortable game and a great hacking community. For a while it was like that and we were happy. Then people came from the outside and pushed us into having elections ("the other guilds are laughing at you!"). So we got a leadership. But they were just councillors, and they were not going to keep secrets from us. But Cyan asked for it, what could they do? And now we'll have a FCA panel, appointed, not elected, under the leadership of a GoMa Guildmaster (a true one, not just a councillor). And we have a messenger who decided not to deliver a message because it was "too vague" for the community to handle. I can't wait to see what happens next.

At least this time I made damn sure I would never end up in the job.

[Alahmnat]

Hi everyone!

I may very well be committing a massive faux pas by registering here just to say what I'm going to, but I wanted to make a couple of comments about the FCA process (since this is the first time I've been able to say anything about it), and clear the air regarding the roadmap release, since I was one of the two parties involved in that (the other being Marten), and I feel my post on the MOUL forums has been taken entirely the wrong way.

First, to get the fightin' words out of the way, I want to categorically state that the decision that Marten and I made regarding the roadmap's release was not made because we didn't think the community could handle it. We made the decision to hold off on releasing the roadmap until before the press conference (not after), which at the time of the original release hadn't even been scheduled, so that we could guarantee that someone from Cyan would be on-hand as soon as possible to answer questions, because we knew that there would be a huge number of them based on the vagueness of the roadmap (I hope that the roadmap being vague isn't a point of contention... even after the press conference with Chogon, at least half of it is in the "we don't know how that'll work yet" category). I can't speak for Marten, obviously, but I personally have a lot of faith in this community (despite my occasionally depressed blog posts, I'm still an optimist at heart), and I think it can handle quite a lot of vagueness, given how much of it we've been dealt in the past. However, knowing that Cyan was intent on communicating very clearly as much as possible with their plans for MORE, we felt it best to make sure that clear paths of communication would be in place before we released further vague announcements. That being said, I, like Marten, apologize for misunderstanding Cyan's intent that both their letter and the roadmap be released at the same time. The information was given to me to give to the Guild of Messengers, and my only instruction was that the information not be released publicly until Cyan gave the go-ahead. The particulars of how to release the information afterward, as I understood them, had been left to the Messengers to decide. There was no malice, intent to deceive, or intent to indefinitely withhold information behind our decision; we operated under the goal of making sure the community could get the answers it was invariably going to want. You're welcome to continue to consider that decision a mistake or a bad call, but please don't put words in my mouth or assign intentions to my actions that were never there.

Now, on to the nitty-gritty.

I feel incredibly awkward coming over here to say this, because I'm not sure if it's something that should be said here or at the GoMa's forum, and it revolves around something that 1) is not on the roadmap in any way, 2) was never seemingly brought up by Cyan during the initial deliberations for the FCA/FCW license discussions with GoW/GoMa, and 3) is going to look incredibly self-centered and power-hungry of me (possibly undermining my previous assertions to the contrary). But, I'm already here, and I was directed here in the first place after discussing this subject with BladeLakem, whereupon he noted that this conversation was taking place, so it'd be stupid of me not to say it. I may cross-post this to the GoMa forum at some point in the near future, but I'd like to get some official comment from Cyan before taking this farther than I will have by the end of this post.

I had the immense honor of being one of the few people outside (or even inside) of Cyan to be given a copy of the MORE letter and roadmap, and spent probably an hour or so discussing it with Rand and RAWA. Now, at the time, they had very little to say officially, and a lot to say about what they wanted to see happen "some day" when it came to the structure of fan-created content and communication in MORE. They also didn't mention that they had already been discussing FCA/FCW licensing with GoW/GoMa, so I was surprised to see the post from the Messengers about it on MOUL. Anyway, one of the things Rand and RAWA mentioned was the idea of possibly allowing players to extend the D'ni universe through MORE, and just how that would need to be managed to make sure we didn't turn the canon into a block of swiss cheese (or at least, more of a block of swiss cheese than it already is). The way Rand described it, the GoW would be in charge of distributing the tools needed to create Ages in MORE (something Chogon backed up in the press conference), the GoMa would be in charge of reviewing the content of the Age for bugs and other technical issues (no mention was made of quality beyond technical stability), and the thing that made me nearly have to change my pants afterward, the Archivists would be in charge of reviewing story contributions that might have an impact on Cyan's IP, using a set of guidelines that Cyan would provide. The mechanisms for actually executing these processes would be left to the discretion of the Guilds themselves

Now, I find myself in something of a conundrum, because this was in no way part of the official roadmap, so I have nothing on paper to back up my claims that Rand said this, and I'm in the awkward position of also being the person who has been leading the Archivist charge in Uru since Kirel come out last year (further, I've already instigated one argument in my post regarding my trustworthiness, so I suspect I may have put myself at a disadvantage for civil discussion here). I readily recognize that you have every reason to suspect that I'm simply trying to inject myself into these latest developments in any way possible (though if you could see how many other things I have to do in a day, you might suspect that less ), but I promise you, this comment from Rand completely blindsided me.

That having been said, I would like to offer my services, such as they are, toward discussing how story approvals and denials should be handled by the future FCA panel. The Archivists, through DPWR, have a considerable quantity of publicly available material regarding the Myst canon that can be put at the disposal of the FCA panel when making their decisions. If/when Cyan provides guidelines for how FCA can extend or reference the Myst canon, in the event that they get sent to the Archivists (no idea if this will happen, just covering all bases at the moment), I will personally ensure that they are shared publicly to the extent that Cyan approves (I suspect entirely). If they don't get sent to the Archivists, and the GoMa is instead entrusted with the entire (technical and story) oversight process, I won't argue the point, but will still be willing to offer my services and those of DPWR to assist in the approval process as required/requested.

I will be emailing RAWA shortly to get some clarification from him about how Cyan sees the Archivists playing into the FCA process when it gets modified to support MORE, and see if I can't get an official comment from him, or better yet, some official post that I can point to beyond Chogon's "all the guilds should be more involved" comment in the press release that says "yes, we like the Archivists", if indeed they do (if not, I'll shut up and go back to my Archive ).

[pappou]

As i look up, peering through the cigar smoke, i see that i am back online – thanks more to chance than all the hard work of the lovely people in Bombay. And during the loss of my internet, I see that the GoMa has done an endrun around the GoW.

Nothing unusual about that. It happens in the best of circles. I say, Cheers to GoMahahaha; and GoW may as well get used to working for the guys in the maintainer suits. After all, there it is, black and white, a done deal (according to Andy):

“1. The Guild of Maintainers (GoMa) will act as agents for Cyan Worlds as far as FCA agreements....” and so forth.

No mention of the also-rans, at all, huh?. Guess GoW was asleep at the switch during the secret meetings. Well, spys are just not as reliable as they used to be.

As for me, I say it sounds just peachy keen in this most wonderful of worlds. I see nothing to gripe about. After all, Cyan can still say yes or no (whatever that is supposed to mean -- why do they keep saying that, anyway?).

Meanwhile, I think i'll just go have a beer with the rest of the mob. Would the archivists care to join me (or do they have a contract too?)