An AGS/Indie Adventure Community beyond this Forum

[edmundito]

Background
I've been away for a while, and unlike some other folk it wasn't because I was kicked out and was too proud to come back or anything, but it's because I've been quite busy and the AGS community (the way it's set up and not the people) is set up for a full commitment.

I really want to know what's going on, even if I don't use AGS right now and might not even use it ever again. I want to know when the awards are going on, when new versions are coming out, what games are worth checking out, and so on. But if I'm not hanging out in the forum, then the information becomes overwhelming.

I'm not the only one who feels like they don't have time to check stuff out. Us AGSers who met at the Game Developers Conference (Matt Hammill, Dave Gilbert, I, and Deirdra non-agser-but-makes-adventure-games Squinky) all agree that unless you're not dedicating your life to AGS, then you can get kind of lost on what all is occurring. And that kind of sucks. I'm sure there's many others (Phil Reed? Rodekill? Where have they gone to?) who might be interested in checking out what AGS is up to, but they're in the same position as us who can't be as involved as we used to be.

The Discussion
Can the AGS Community go beyond the forum? There are several issues that can be talked about:

1. News: There has to be a way for people to get weekly/monthly updates on what's happening in AGS land, and talk about them. A simple blog (aka a news page with the option to post comments and a rss/atom feed) might be a solution to this.

2. Games: I know we are living under CJ's roof, but the success of the engine/editor is mainly because of the games. So, why are the games displayed in such a mess right now? why are there three "pages" for games (hints page on the forum, the game page on the forum, and the game's page on the website)? Why aren't we all commenting on the games page instead of the forum? And why are the games getting a tiny little corner on the website's front page?

3. Xenophobia: Overall, aren't we all making interested in making story-based/graphic adventure games? Why are there communities for each of the engines out there (sludge, wintermute, ags) where there are people in those communities have similar interests aside from technical issues corresponding to each of the engines. I'm sure they'd all like to show their games in production, chit chat, talk about adventure games, have mspaint threads, and all that jazz. None of that has to do with the AGS Editor anyway. Can't we all just get along?

Discuss. Please, let's leave technical logistics aside from now (as in who's going to work on what, who's going to design or code anything, and who's going to pay for it). I know that there's also solutions/alternatives to these problems (like the underground Adventure Gamers forum for #3) but I'm talking about looking at this from such a this-is-all-duct-taped perspective and rebuilding the pillars of our community.

[Radiant]

(1) nice idea, but other than released games and new AGS versions, is there really anything happening? Unless of course you want a weekly gossip update

(2) good question. I think it should be feasible to integrate the forum with the games page, so that the games page simply displays part of a forum thread. I've seen in general that comments in the forum really don't match up with comments in the games page (i.e. positive vs. negative, or many vs. none), which is weird.

(3) don't know, I'm not familiar with the others.

[Nostradamus]

1) a blog or a newsletter by mail can be a good addition

2) we comment on games here because here you can discuss and reply, on the game's page in the website there's not much room for discussion. It's technically possible but it's inconvinient. And since we talk about all other subjects here there's no sense in having talks about the games themselves elsewhere. It's much more comfortable to have a game announcements thread where people let you know of their games instead of having to go to the website and see what's new. This is the discussion place and the site is a database. And a game page on the site doesn't need 20 pages of comments like we have here on Completed Game Announcements. The database (in the website) should be short and to the point like it is today.

3) all the other game engines have produced very few games while AGS has produced hundreds of games. No reason to merge the board of AGS , the uber engine with the big community with boards of niche engines that produced only a few games. Plus such a merger would result in too many "which engine is better" threads that will just lead to flame wars in the end.
Chris Jones put a lot of work in developing the enging and the hundreds of game makers have put a lot of work in developing games, I don't think they should put themselves in the same category with lesser engines.
There's no rule against discussing other engines or their games here, and in fact such disussions have happened. It just shouldn't be an official merger.
For the overall big pictures, there's always Adventure Gamers, which reviews commercial games as well as indy games like AGS and other engines and has a forum.

[Ali]

There are some interesting suggestions here.  I think it might be nice to have an Other Software and a Non-AGS Adventure thread. The former could allow people to discuss the technical side of other engines, and of graphical software like Photoshop or Blender. The latter would be a good place for people to post non-AGS discoveries, or for non-members to promote games.

I've seen forums like these on other sites and they seem quite handy. Regarding the games pages, I think Radiant's observations are right, but since they're in the midst of an overhaul we should probably wait to see how they turn out.

[Layabout]

I had a period where I wasn't around for about a year. I came back, and I certainly didnt find it overwhealming with all the changes. I'd check out the forum every now and then in that time, but I rarely contributed.

The only things that changed were some new names, engine improvements and lots of game releases.

It's like joining as a newbie again, although a few people remember your name.

Since I first came here in 2001 (i think...) Many things have changed. Ezboard forums are gone, the engine uses windows now. I remember using the bloody dos ags editor! Loads of games have been released.

But other than that, all that goes on here is talk about things, and if something important pops up, it might go in the popular threads bit.

Other engines. Well, the Adventure game talk and chat would be the place for that. Its not AGS talk and chat. I'd say if a wintermute or whatever user wants to let us know about their game release, then post it in there.

[Andail]

I don't think a community needs to suffer from xenophobia just because it doesn't want to merge with every other similar community out there.
Our forums are rather neatly sized for their purposes, we have a productive games' department with numerous releases every year, and we're still close enough to each other to have social gatherings and lots of fun activities.

There are communities that aren't based on engines, like Adventure Gamer to pick one.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I endorse Andail's message.

[edmundito]

I wasn't thinking necessarily of a merger since the technical social aspects would be kind of crazy and nearly  impossible (especially if nobody is getting paid for it hehe).

The future I see is an adventure game sharing website that features things like in the games page and all the activities in the forum minus the technical questions and support, that was born out of the ags community. It welcomes anyone to join, whether they play these indie adventure games or they make them, or know someone who works on it, but it's not based around an engine. And it's something that stays non-profit.

It wouldn't make sense, however, to have two communities that mirror each other (AGS and this new one). It would be cool if the new community just grew out of the existing ags data and anyone who wanted to join and participate can do it. Also, for what would remain of the AGS forum would share the same account system, kind of like the lucasforums. And if they want to (I know they have commercial intentions), wintermute and sludge can integrate their forums into it as well. So it wouldn't be to merge, but to officially open what is now the AGS community to everyone in the world.

As for flame wars and shit like that, strictly prohibited. That would be the #1 rule... Those people might be unfortunately too proud to join, anyway. (and I hope we don't have any AGSer flamers please! we're better than that...)

---

But that's an ultimate vision. For now, it'd be nice to have a community blog that supports the forum accounts, or could be an extension of the news page to have comments and an rss feed.

[Dave Gilbert]

An interesting idea!  And I remember this conversation.  I never did get to meet Matt Hammil, who is a guy who made an AGS game that ended up being an IGF finalist.  I remember talking to Deirdra about the Interactive Fiction forums.  The two big engines were Tads and Inform.  There wasn't a "tads forum" and an "inform forum", there was just an "Interactive Fiction forum" and people discussed both.  Course that was back in the usenet days and maybe people were more tolerant then!

Of course, there are several sites that cater to adventure game fans as a whole - the Adventure Gamers, Gameboomers, and Just Adventure forums spring to mind.  They even talk about development there, too.  I'm not sure a seperate site about AGS dev is necessary.

That said, a little blog or newsletter about "what's happening in the community" would be nice.  I certainly can't be bothered to read the multiple page thread discussions about the meets, but I'd still like to know what's going on with them should I decide to go.  Of course, finding someone active enough to report on everything worthwhile (and who can deem what's worthwhile anyway?) would be difficult.

[AGA]

Pssst, Adventure Developers exists.

[Layabout]

and my gets updated.the problem with that kind ofsite it needs a lot of dedication, which doesn't seem to happen

[SSH]

Well, perhaps if people want a summary of what's going on in the world of AGS, I can try and do that in my new blog

Oh noes, I finally succumbed!

[edmundito]

Thanks! This could work, as long as you don't abandon it.

It could also become the official AGS blog, if CJ gives the blessings for it...

For now, I'll add it to my reader!

[Ciro Durán]

Well, thanks to SSH for that. I agree with Edmundo. I really love AGS, but other gaming projects and real life(TM) can really tax your time to sit and experiment with AGS.

I for one add SSH's blog to my reader 

[LimpingFish]

I can see where Edmundo is coming from, and the benefit of SSH's blog-born. But we have a wiki that, seemingly, very few people read, while others, myself included, have started little side dish-type sites (like this). But people, in general, haven't shown much interest, and the projects have more or less stagnated.

It's very hard to sustain interest in these sort of endeavors. 

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

Hi everyone! (Particularly Edmundo and Dave.)

I haven't been here in a while, and I don't really have all that much to add to this, but yeah. I'm all for more generalised adventure game dev communities. These days, I'm using WME for most of my projects, even though I find myself never really visiting their forums. It's just the way I work, I guess; I don't tend need help from a community in terms of figuring out how to code something in a game engine, preferring instead to work with documentation that's already there. Invariably, this means I barely have anything to talk about on engine-specific forums these days, sort of just showing up when I have a game to release and that sort of thing.

Instead, what I like having the community for is to talk about design-related issues and ideas. There's a little bit of that kind of thing going on at AG and AD (both of which I'm motivated to frequent because I'm part of the staff there), and I discuss the kinds of things that interest me over at my blog, but I would love to see more of it, more frequently. Sometimes, there'll be something I feel compelled to read and very occasionally respond to over here on the AGS forums. And I used to do so a lot about two years ago; remember that whole fiasco with The Forgotten Element? But lately, I'm not particularly aware that there's been anything of note to discuss, other than seeing what games people are actually making. And there are so many of them here that I don't really know which ones I should bother playing.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what kind of point I'm trying to make, other than yes, I still exist, and yes, I'd love to talk to anyone about game design, no matter what engine they choose to use.

[rodekill]

I'm still lurking in the shadows...

Roughly once per week I ache for the old days when I was heavily involved in the community... sadly the career has taken most of my free time these days (I actually make games for money now! At a studio and everything! Crazy!).

I'm really tempted to crack that new version of AGS open and make something, but the amount of work involved at this point is just beyond the time I have.
Rodney Kill will make his lazy return some day!

Actually I'm really amazed with all the familiar names I still see here on a regular basis, even after all these years.
What an incredible community!

I think one thing that would be great in my situation would be a newsletter with community updates, game releases, tutorials and stuff like that. Something I could read on my lunch break at work.

[edmundito]

"Rodney Kill will make his lazy return some day!"
- Sounds to me like the plot to Rodekill: Forever. He must get back in shape and return to his glorious job as a space janitor.

So far, SSH you are you doing an excellent job. Perhaps too good. Please don't get burned out.

I've been using Google Reader, a web feed reader, to keep track of everyone these days. It's a little strange when you start, but once you start subscribing to a lot of blogs, then you wonder how you ever lived without it. So far, thanks to SSH, I feel like I'm up to speed with what's happening in the community. Thank you! I may not be replying to your blog posts, but I'm definitely reading.

[auriond]

Count me in as another silent reader! I don't comment to Blogger anymore because I'm lazy to retrieve my account password, but I'm adding the RSS feed to my LiveJournal friends list.

I visit this forum every day, so I don't know what else I'd want to see. But this thread has led me back to LimpingFish's blog so all's good

[Andail]

Welcome to the thread where you post about how busy you are with your career and stuff