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| Future of ModDB / IndieDB | Post Reply | |
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| Jul 16 2014 Anchor | ||
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Hey all, for those that don't know me i'm the creator of ModDB, IndieDB and Desura. When I started these sites many years ago (ModDB is 12 years old!!!), my goal was to make it easier for gamers to find great games/mods no matter their stage of development. And more importantly give game/mod developers a place to share their work and grow their fanbase - without being dependent on press/editors gatekeeping the important gaming news sites. Since then a lot has changed. We've got Twitch streaming games, bazillions of mobile games, F2P, amazing engines accessible to all to only mention a few things. Despite all this change the ModDB and IndieDB communities are stronger than ever, reaching over 250,000 unique readers a day, and I'm contemplating what challenge I can take on next to further help game/mod developers promote their craft. Hence why i'm starting a public brainstorm. As a game developer or consumer what do you wish was easier, what would help you out? All ideas are welcome from tweaks to ModDB and IndieDB to completely new sites. So far the project on top of my list is opening up all of the services ModDB and IndieDB offer, enabling game developers to design and host their profile on their own domain completely with image gallery, video gallery, twitter feed, news, comments, downloads etc. |
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| Jul 22 2014 Anchor | ||
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I think the site needs better moderation way to many people necro posting up old posts. |
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| Jul 22 2014 Anchor | ||
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Just wishful thinking but if it was easier for Mod/Indie pages to customize the main page, something like a template. Something like LoNer1 addon but official and could be done via the page profiles editor. But considering;
Maybe you guys are working on something like that now anyway? |
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| Jul 22 2014 Anchor | ||
over the last years I've seen a lot of profiles made and then abandoned and never used again which with this would take up a fair bit of space if even half the people change their profiles... you could make use of the level system so for example people from level 0 to 10 can only change the banner and avatar, level 10-20 can then choose from a selections of backgrounds , level 20 and above can upload their own backgrounds. And maybe Mod groups can upload their own backgrounds and banners and such to the system Just an Idea |
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| Jul 22 2014 Anchor | ||
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Whenever I check here for new posts I can usually spot a spam post which is a sign of neglect to me. This place has an admin but he doesn't catch these things, makes me feel like not even the admins read this stuff anymore and I feel like I'm strolling by a city block left to rot. I know it's not fair, admin isn't paid job and he can't be on 24/7 but that's how it feels to an outsider. Same with projects, nearly every project seems to get in by uploading 3 random screenshots and deleting them right afterwards. Some projects never posting more. Why can't there be a proper moderation for setting up project page or making a project page public? These things must cost you some resources somewhere. You need to get out the unfeasible projects and not let them back in, ever. I'd consider also wiping off all projects that rely on IP-infringement. Most of these get abandoned or get a cease and desist order if the are about to become something. When you push through the change in attitude (a project means commitment, take it seriously) you'll also need less resources to moderate the spam caused by trivial attempts at something impossible. I'm not saying people can't do on their own but you shouldn't host that around here. How can you boost the forum activity? Let's first ask why do people come here? To have a random chat about games, to get advice, to find jobs and find artists. At least that's how I see it. There are so many categories but are there enough posts to justify each? To check new stuff everyday is to just click on "active topics". It's almost like using this forums in one category. If you realize that's what you do as well then there's something to consider. How do we improve people getting advice? By having active people that can give advice. So what would make the experienced developers stick around? Filter out the most common questions with FAQ / pinned topics / moderation / beginner area because people get really tired answering the same thing day after day. If you can afford to pay your moderators try to get someone that actually knows something so that if it's slow he can answer questions instead of catching the bad guys. To support the much needed altruism you could build a karma/reputation system so that good answers get points and recognition (because otherwise the helpers get nothing) and maybe enable gaining some profile stuff through that. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to even require some forum interaction before you'd able to set up a game project. That would sure spice things up around here and perhaps more people would ask and learn things before doing something stupid like posting their "open world sandbox GTAV style MMORPG/FPS hybrid based on LOTR and Dragonball on Android" projects. Increased forum activity paired with the fact that bigger percentage of the projects are something you can take seriously you could also assume that it would boost the level of recruitment posts of both employers and employees, free and paid alike. It could lead into a virtuous cycle of forum activity, project quality and recruitment quantity. Tighten the interaction. Many sections on the site are redundant and take you to places you could go using different route. Sure you can say it's easier said than done. It's an investment of resources and step in a more serious direction. It could fend of some people that wanted to start casual and *maybe* grow into something over the years but I say the casual path is well-trodden already. Edited by: shadowflar3 |
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| Jul 22 2014 Anchor | ||
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- More infos, weekly roundups of whats goin on on mod/indiedb. There are so many "let's play"s out there. An indiedb/moddb-lets-play channel would be cool. Just some thoughts |
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| Jul 22 2014 Anchor | ||
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This has some good suggestions: Moddb.com I'd also like to see this: Moddb.com (notification of replies, maybe even @mentions)
I like the reviews, but there's too many far extreme views with no comments/actual review. I'd like it if it forced you to provide at least a 25 character review if you do a 10 or a 1, then maybe people would actually put stuff down that's useful in the comment (which is the useful part of reviewing), and if not, then they would maybe give a slightly more honest score.
I'm not sure that's a good idea, some developers like to be able to just post their content and then work on their game and not have to take time away from developing to increase their level on moddb just to be able to change stuff like that. They still want to look professional, but may not have time to spend hours posting on moddb. Edited by: Darth_Futuza |
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| Jul 24 2014 This post has been deleted. | ||
| Jul 24 2014 Anchor | ||
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This is great appreciate the feedback. Looking at this discussion and starting to sort through it, here is what I have so far:
-- Scott Reismanis |
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| Jul 25 2014 Anchor | ||
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Hi, A place where you could write a description of what you want ( full play through or specific level, trying to reproduce a bug, trying a new functionality, art or animation feedback ... ), the requirements ( platform, estimation of the time required, if you want the tester to play with a gamepad or a keyboard, the date at which you expect an answer ... ), the number of participant you want, the type of participant you want ( artist, programmer, hardcore gamer, casual, what language they speak ... ) and other things I don't think about at the moment. That would be a standard form. A page would list all those ( with some way of sorting it ) and you HAVE TO choose one already existing AND give your feedback before yours is listed ( or maybe get one for "free" ). The feedback would be anonymous or not (their should be a way to ask for further information if the person giving feedback is OK ). The list should be random, no things like popular game first, or best ranked game first. Their might be a need for an "assignment functionality" to prevent a feedback request not being answered by anybody. Maybe people would be ranked on the feedback they give ( accuracy ?, usefullness ?, punctuality ? ... ). That would allow non developer to participate if their feedback rank is high enough but I think at first this should be limited to game / mod developpers. Another small thing would be to have a Steam Greenlight link ( if possible it should show the steam client if it is open ), twitter, facebook ... in the game profile, and having them automatically at the bottom of every news. Some sort of signature that could be tweaked like "Vote for xxx on [profile:greenlight], follow [profile:twitter] on twitter" and would display the corresponding logos. Having to had those manually each time is kinda annoying. A thing that could help developer would be to have contact with the "press" through IndieDB / ModDB but I have no idea how that would work ( Monthly recap sent to video game sites ? ). |
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| Jul 25 2014 Anchor | ||
I think the problem that people say about the commenting system is more about the comments on profile / game / mod etc pages where if you keep replying to someones comment after 4-5 messages they can get all messy and some comments get pushed to the second page and some comments get disordered. By disordered I mean like the second comment will get pushed down to the bottom and the person replying to the comment pushed down is now replying to a comment thats in the chain but not the one they wanted to reply to. It can make for some confusing conversations. |
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| Jul 25 2014 Anchor | ||
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I like the IDEA about feedback exchange. But such system to track that everyone gives and takes what they deserve? Not going to fly well. People would abuse it to get feedback on their own game or just not use it. If the community didn't return the favor after you helped many people with their stuff, this is not going to fix it. People are selfish now and they will be selfish in the future. I'm thinking 0 word feedback, random generated, copy-pasted... if people are even smart enough to want any testing/feedback. Playtesting part especially I see as something totally unfeasible for a system that is fluent and popular. You have to download and possibly install this library and that extension and read custom instructions to be able to test an incomplete and unorganized part of a game. Then sweep, uninstall, and repeat for another project? The key being here that you don't just force/buy a good playtesting or feedback out of someone. People who are feeling lost or unsure about their own projects can sometimes give advice to one another and see something the other guy doesn't see but things like eye for grahic design / composition and technical knowledge in workflow or programming aren't something that magically multiplies in the ModDB / indieDB resource pool if you introduce such system. For any question asked or not asked it is vital that there is someone more experienced in the topic to answer it. On another site that shall remain unnamed has well established protocol of people that are experts on their field (programming, visuals, audio, story etc) answering any questions. They don't need the advice of other people (certainly not of those who come to the site asking for help themselves) but they still offer their knowledge for free. They spend huge effort on questions, making their own diagrams explaining their points in multiple paragraphs. As new members find this community awesome having gotten help with their project/issue, they stay and gain experience and help some newcomers that can't figure out the basic stuff out as having to answer those questions are what makes experienced people grow tired of the system. They have a credit system where users can freely up/downvote posts with some restrictions and they keep tabs on the user score. There is no reason to try to unfairly grow points because the points aren't used for anything but for sign of trust in your word. And if you were a fool and tried to get points using foul play and use this position to troll the other veterans would still highlight the misinformation in your post. Why can't this site be the same? Apparently any credit system is out of question for these forums, quoting this part from one of the site admins: So official view on it is that people growing reputation are but attention whores. That has lead to a situation where there is too much new blood and the experienced people have grown bored seeing the same stuff day after day. Even if you grow some skill over the years, how do you think mediocre users feel when they see the same noob questions answered at best by noobs? Like they have evolved and don't belong here anymore. And when for example some experienced user tackles a project or idea on how feasible it is and how the author should probably do some research and smaller projects first the army of noobs who simply think the idea is awesome gang up against the one person that actually had any insight on the topic calling him party-pooper. The results of asking and giving feedback are far too random and discourage people. There is no respect for expertise or number of people helped in any form. The reputation on the forum doesn't exist and it means nothing whether you're the biggest saint or sinner. Why should people bother? Yet another site uses the post count alone as a quick sampler of the answer quality and does extremely well. But this is more limited site focusing on one area of game development only and in such small circles the reputation is always somewhat present whether you track it or not. These forums aren't small and would require even more regulation than this reference site. Based on everything people have seen here, is it really worse environment to provide a reputation system rather than an environment where you can't track reputation and people are safe to neglect it altogether? Edited by: shadowflar3 |
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| Jul 26 2014 Anchor | ||
That was a personal opinion not an admin opinion as i personally hate and dislike the current karma system as much as i love the site as a whole. That is why i stopped commenting recently - wanted to avoid being credited or discredited for comments. The current karma system works in 90% cases except for those few 'karma burial' cases, for example: In all those cases users whose comments were buried by karma feel very bad and discouraged from the site. Same goes for karma trolls who go to a member profile and downvote all comments made on that member page - whoever made those comments. People are disgusted because of that as well even if it's "just a karma troll". But why dislike the karma system itself? Because it is a way too easy to give to or take karma from user's comments. Mostly only popular comments are given credit not always those who deserve it so the karma system became a popularity contest. The only real suggestion here was to always require people to reply or give a reason when upvoting/downvoting comments but that could complicate both the karma and comment system a way too much and it would prevent quite a part of the community from ever giving a karma vote. IMHO would be also bad if Mod DB has gone Facebook way and allowed only positive karma (except that it would at least flush karma trolls out). |
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| Jul 31 2014 Anchor | ||
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thebmxeur really liking the idea about a feedback exchange. I can certainly see that helping some people out. Having said that sharing a build to get feedback could mean it winds up on piracy sites and that be very hard to stop. I also agree that better integration with greenlight / facebook / twitter would be nice, as would a press system. having said that a press system would only work if the press participate so not sure how you would get it off the ground. shadowflar3 we could definetely add a post count to users name, in the past it typically led to silly responses to bump it up. Based on the discussion i'll add to the list:
-- Scott Reismanis |
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| Aug 1 2014 Anchor | ||
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Would like to see the comment system and generally activity on the site backed up by real (digital) rewards so it's not just a popularity contest or attention whorism. So, making activity points spendable. For example, an user could buy the above are only examples. Something of that kind at least. Also making the comment system more like the Youtube one - 3-way vote system - registered members' Upvote/Downvote system split into Agree/Disagree/Spam, so people who are politely criticising or politely expressing disliked, unpopular ideas are not treated the exact same way as spammers or intentionally offensive members. And yes, comments disagreed with not buried; only spam comments buried. Downvoted comments would receive same number of bonus activity points as comments agreed with: only members who made comments that received too many "Spam" votes would receive no activity points or perhaps their APs would be even reduced. So overhauling the comment system in a way that politely expressed criticising, unpopular suggestions, ideas and opinions are treated fair. Also showing how many people agreed or disagreed with the comment - like currently in the review system - rather than displaying the total "score" of each comment & reply. Edited by: feillyne |
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| Aug 1 2014 Anchor | ||
Why wouldn't people also want to "attention whore" for these amazing rewards that enable even further "attention whoring"? "Attention whoring" for something that you get to keep on your profile is much more lucrative than just "whoring" for "attention" in a single thread. By AP are you referring to the existing, barely documented factor of user level system:
Begs many questions such as why the scope of thousands, you are not using the sub-thousand definition anywhere? Because it's cool to have thousands? If you intend to make use of smaller units in gaining, I can't imagine what would justify for something as measly as 1 AP when it takes 1000-fold to make a mere job post.
In no way does that make people behave nice. When they see something they don't like or are offended by (whether polite or not) they will seek to bury the post and deduce points from the member. If there's one option to do less harm and another to do more harm they will pick the latter. You are still leaving it up to the public to decide whether something is "too mean" and enable censorship for the post and punishing the user beyond the scope of the post. How can you be so worried about "attention whoring" and not worried up authors or even fans being offended by criticism and going on personal vendetta against someone that on any project page is bound to stands out with his opinion? Removing Activity Points that are awarded for activity doesn't make sense. You are active and you get AP, you are inactive and you don't. Not being a kiss-ass, or disagreeing with other people, being brutally honest or even being rude is not inactivity and I believe it's mostly unintentional. Being personally offended by something doesn't make it "spam". If there's content that shouldn't be there it could be marked as "spam" and after 3-4 reports the mods get a ticket to check it out, remove the post if necessary and remove user or ban him from posting comments for a while. That's what needs to be done to stop the spam as someone who posts spam messages is obviously not worried about his AP. Edited by: shadowflar3 |
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| Aug 1 2014 Anchor | ||
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Please you can read my post again, and very carefully. It's 50% about helping people who are DISAGREED with. Right now their comments are buried and currently they are treated like spammers, and thus they are completely discouraged from using the site. Agree/Disagree/Spam system would separate disliked comments from spam comments, and spam burial would need more than 6 reports (not just 3-4) than the total number of agree/disagree votes so good comments are not buried at all. |
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| Aug 1 2014 Anchor | ||
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I already adressed your naive assumption of offering an alternative: people aren't going to use it. They are going to press spam anyway because they're offended and want to inflict maximum damage and because you're making it trivially easy. If comment reader is indifferent they aren't going to waste time clicking anything whether they agree or disagree. You acknowledge your system needs fixing but this suggestion is not doing anything about the issue: the good people get still _attacked_ via like/dislike mechanics and are "completely discouraged from using the site." |
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| Aug 1 2014 Anchor | ||
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Not really. Seen many discussions here and can safely say most (not all, obviously) would mind the difference between disagree and spam vote. If it was worded like agree / disagree / spam vote, explicitly worded as "spam" (EDIT: or maybe "offensive" to make it more explicit) vote, and they were allowed only to choose 1 option out of those three, they would most likely choose the 1st or 2nd option. The 3rd spam option would only be used against offensive commenters yes, but only rarely against good people who criticised or proposed disliked ideas. Perhaps that wouldn't solve other problems coming with the 3-way system - like spamvote/karma trolls, or developers deleting criticism without even waiting for any community opinions about it. Edited by: feillyne |
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| Aug 1 2014 Anchor | ||
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Not really. Seen many discussions here and can safely say most (not all, obviously) would mind the difference between disagree and spam vote. And click "spam" every time. Consider the current system. People currently choose to downvote and bury comments even though they know what it does. BECAUSE they know exactly what it does. They will also use this same exact mechanic in the future to do the exact same thing when they feel it's appropriate to bury and downvote. "Disagree" option would only enable some people who are indifferent enough not to click "bury", but it wouldn't reduce any negative impact any user gets for "spam". Hiding posts or punishing users is not for grand public to decide, it's a moderating job because of a little concept called responsibility. Stop trying to outsource it. Edited by: shadowflar3 |
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| Aug 1 2014 Anchor | ||
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For myself, I would like to see the forums split between moddb and indiedb. It would be nice to log into indiedb and talk about new games and moddb to talk about modification. Just mouthing off |
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| Aug 2 2014 Anchor | ||
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Ah, this thread has been opened up. Good. I want to show you guys a prime example of overhauled pages, in real time, ofcourse. Feast your eyes on what a few changes to moddb's "outer core" can do:
Live Preview: Moddb.com
Live Preview: Moddb.com These designs give a way more refreshing feeling. Now, while I know most of ModDB's members like the theme with the red and black, I'd like to give people with the knowledge of how to do this, like myself, a greater chunk of responsibility. I like the ideas with the leveling and credit system here, but I think having an activity point system worth real digital money would not compliment moddb. I think I'd like to see a system implanted where users like ourselves with lots of activity and in general, lots of online time, get more 'freedom' within moddb. As it stands now, the leveling doesn't give you a single benefit other than bragging rights. I'd like moderators to take it more seriously like said above. Give long time users some 'extras', depending on what they'd like. A system like this would of course take some time, but I don't want this notion to go to waste. I'd like to add a few bulletpoints to the list as well. So far I see we got:
I'd like to add:
I'm eagerly waiting for more discussion on this topic. Cheers Edited by: Lоnerboner |
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| Aug 2 2014 Anchor | ||
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I actually hate the misery profile for being clusmy and making clicking on the ModDB related links a chore since the CSS is annoying. Glad when I'm back on a sane ModDB page again. Nevertheless customizing the profile would be great. Especially great would be to be allowed to use a custom CSS for news posts. I've got to duplicate the same CSS style definitions across various page elements in HTML mode all the time trying the system to not eat them up. Just having a CSS defining global styles for H, P, IMG and IFRAME tags would make things easier and cleaner. What goes for the karma system it should be totally dropped. If you use "spam/non-spam" trolls will down-vote and bury anything not linging up with their fanboy views. If you use "agree/disgree/spam" trolls will again disagree or spam depending on what buries the comment easier. If you use "helpful" trolls will up-vote any fanboy comment burying the critics ones by dropping them down the list. No matter what you do a comment-voting system will always be misused while adding nothing useful in the first place. It will always be a fanboy-abused system no matter what. Another something which really needs rework is the comment notification. You get no notification if somebody posts a comment on your profile somewhere or replies to you. You constantly miss questions or feedback because you never get notified somebody said something. This would also allow to filter out troll comments easier since you can delete them as soon as they are posted instead of stumbling across them weeks later. Improving the search system would be also nice. The current mods searching is rather restricted making it difficult to find something interesting in the vast amount of mediocre IP-recycling and one-news-wonder projects. Especially if you are looking for non-run-of-the-mill stuff like ego-shooter-XYZ or (J)RPG-xyz you have a hard time properly filtering the system. The mentioned "tags" is a good idea but needs some kind of reviewing from time to time otherwise attention-whores spam their profiles with as many common tags as possible. Another something I'd like is pointing out the non-run-of-the-mill projects better. In MOTY/IOTY you try to show some with the editors choice but there are a lot of projects having people doing work instead of spending all their time in annoying PR-drama leading only to hot-air projects of little actual merit in the end. There should be a way to surface those projects which really are non-standard in whatever way. ModDB/IndieDB should stick out of the vaste mass of mediocre game websites showing the latest main-stream crap by bubbling up those projects which get overlooked that are though interesting in contrary to the mass. Right now ModDB/IndieDB favors the wrong kind of projects, those with PR-drama, these projects which do not need more attention as they have already enough. And don't say "you can do news posts to PR", that doesn't count. Doing news-posts is a chore right now due to the flacky text editor, the lenghty upload system, the broken video upload (the video problem is still not solved, i'm using YT for videos since a couple of month now) and getting down-muscled by PR-drama news posts talking about how great their last week-end has been instead of talking about actual news-worthy information about your project. So the current system doesn't work for creative projects without large PR budget hence it is required to tune the system to give these projects a chance. Maybe use a special tag or category news are published in too for these kinds of projects. Make it so only content moderators can put stuff there to keep PR-drama out. People wanting to look for the more special stuff can look there while main-stream fans can still look at the conventional news posts. Maybe somebody has other ideas to help bubble up these projects. |
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| Aug 2 2014 Anchor | ||
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Something I would love to see happen with the sites is an easier way for finding/searching for skilled modders to join your team. The "Jobs" portion of the website works great, but I think it could possibly be cleaned up a bit and add an "Available For Work" section as well for those who are looking to work with others. Maybe integrate it with their profile, etc. My idea would be to have a new section, like "Jobs", for those seeking work (paid or unpaid). This section will be categorized by skills (Concept Art, Writer, Coder, etc.) and will work similarly to how "Jobs" works. The forums already allow us to seek out certain skills, but I believe a new system such as this would be much easier and allow more people to be noticed because of the way it would work. For example, the poster would have to select Paid-Only, Unpaid-Only, or Both so the right crowd would be directed to them and few their personal portfolios of previous work. Just an idea I had because of the frustration I've gone through with the current way searching for people has worked. |
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| Aug 2 2014 Anchor | ||
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Alright so updating the list, here is what we have now:
Adding the following to it now:
Rest of the suggestions are great, but a little hard to decypher into something workable. will think about them -- Scott Reismanis |
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