[Setekh]

G'day everyone. Well, we the staff of HLP have decided on a new initiative regarding all the hosted projects that exist here at Hard Light. In light of HLP 2.0 going online and its huge emphasis on community activity and hosted content, as well as the recent rise of several new campaigns and projects, we have decided to refuse all future campaign hosting requests, until further notice.

The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, as highlighted by Woolie Wool's article on the failure of many campaigns to reach fruition, a number of campaigns have been authorised for hosting and they have fallen down before even publishing a demo, let alone completion. Our relationship with GameSpy is also strained by our taking up huge amounts of server space - which alone would be fine, but as it stands, much of it is dead weight. GS gives us unlimited space in order to be productive, not to be lazy. We cannot allow this dead weight to continue amassing. Now, while we know that those of you starting up new campaigns have the best of intentions, consider the fact that many of you will have trouble getting of the ground because the great majority of the community's talent is already tied up with other projects.

This brings us to the second reason. If people already on other campaigns offer generously help to you, that is wonderful news for your campaign, but conversely grim for the campaigns they are already committed to. We do not mean to be selfish but we are not in a position to commit GameSpy's space to a hundred projects that are all under-staffed. Consider what would happen if each person had half as many commitments to attend to: the projects they remain upon would, theoretically, be completed twice as quickly. This is a pressing issue when you look at the number of unfinished campaigns we currently host. It is nearly all of them.

What we propose, then, is this. In combination with our present withdrawal of hosting new campaigns, we insist that any community member considering beginning a new campaign should first offer up their skills to the wider community, in order to speed the completion of the campaigns already hosted. Once campaigns begin to be actually completed, then the tide will turn and we will once again consider new hosting offers. But that is for the future. Right now we are not eager to create more labour when what we need is more labourers.

We do not plan to leave anyone with new aspirations high and dry, of course. Campaigns clearly do not need to be hosted by us to commence and make progress. If you insist that you must start your new campaign now, we will not stop you - and we will gladly point you to free webspace (like Swooh or Tripod) if you require webspace, as well as link to you through the main HLP site. But please be aware of our preference, and also the great service you will do yourself and others if you join an established campaign.

Thanks for your time.

[karajorma]

One small suggestion. Can you host completed campaigns? They wouldn't take much work to put up. Wouldn't need a forum and would only need a small amount of space for the website and whatever was needed for the gamespy download.
 In that way the only way to get an avatar now would be to join a project already hosted or actually get something finished.

[TheCelestialOne]

Why don't you make it so that a campaign can only be hosted if it has released a demo? That way you know it has promise and is an active campaign.

This at least gives an oppertunity for hosting but requires actual work.

[Nico]

That's not real proof, a demo: I was about to release mine when I cancelled OTT.

[karajorma]

It's pretty easy to release a demo. I could release one for TMA tomorrow. Doesn't mean I'm anywhere close to finishing the campaign (or even starting work on it again).

Even worse is that many campaigns get as far as releasing a demo before they fade into obscurity. At the start when people are fired up and happy to spend all their time on the campaign people can get a couple of mods finished and a few missions too. Once the reality sets in and people get a bit more bored they tend to scale back.

I've been saying for a while that newbie FREDders and modders would be better off joining an existing campaign and getting some experience that way rather than plunging off into their own campaigns that will most likely never get very far.

EDIT : TCO posts before I finished editing this but I don't put much faith in demos for the reason I stated above.

[TheCelestialOne]

Yeah, but it at least gives people a chance. I mean if people get out a good demo they are less likely they give up.

*note: LESS likely.

Also, you could just play the demo and check if its not a simple 2 mission demo and then approve it...

[Setekh]

Originally posted by TheCelestialOne
Why don't you make it so that a campaign can only be hosted if it has released a demo? That way you know it has promise and is an active campaign.

This at least gives an oppertunity for hosting but requires actual work.

Unfortunately, that doesn't deal with the problem of the dilution of the community's workers. The person who originates this campaign will not be able to help any other campaigns needing assistance, and other campaigns whose staffers assist the new project will be slowed in progress.

[Sandwich]

Well, I'm pleased to see that there's (so far) not nearly as much negative feedback as I feared there would be.

We didn't come by this decision lightly. The main reason - and possibly the only reason - for HLP's growth has been our acceptance of more - more campaigns, more mods, more people... So we realize that this is a risky step we're taking - essentially discouraging new campaigns.

But personally - although I probably speak for pretty much everyone here - I'm sick of seeing hosted projects wither away and die, or get canceled outright. The Battlezone 2 Community Project, for example, was an incredible work of art that was completed because virtually the whole BZ community was behind it, helping out.

So I hope that this is a step in that direction - we have a wide foundation established, now let's start building for height.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Sandwich
we have a wide foundation established, now let's start building for height.

Well said.

[Tian Guan]

I find it odd that you're casting fledgling campaigns out into the cold, harsh wilderness and basically dooming them before they get off the ground purely under the misguided assumption that people from the condemned campaigns will flock towards the ruins of those already hosted by HLP.

Kinda like shooting down a dove so you can use its carcass to cover a dying crow.


Man, I waaaay over-did the bird metaphors.

[kasperl]

an0n says: NW will host anyone with a good idea. You get FTP, MySQL databases, PHP functionality, me smiting you for no reason, a forum and probably e-mail addresses and other junk. CLICK HERE


i am just relaying the message, i make no promises.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Tian Guan
I find it odd that you're casting fledgling campaigns out into the cold, harsh wilderness and basically dooming them before they get off the ground purely under the misguided assumption that people from the condemned campaigns will flock towards the ruins of those already hosted by HLP.

Kinda like shooting down a dove so you can use its carcass to cover a dying crow.

Originally posted by Setekh
We do not plan to leave anyone with new aspirations high and dry, of course. Campaigns clearly do not need to be hosted by us to commence and make progress. If you insist that you must start your new campaign now, we will not stop you - and we will gladly point you to free webspace (like Swooh or Tripod) if you require webspace, as well as link to you through the main HLP site. But please be aware of our preference, and also the great service you will do yourself and others if you join an established campaign.

We've addressed this. Not providing webspace is not even close to dooming them before they get off the ground. You ought to realise that is only a fairly recent development (last couple of years) that incomplete campaigns received hosting. The way it used to be was that if you had a completed campaign, that was given 'hosting' - a location to be downloaded by the community, as karajorma mentioned. If you think a campaign cannot begin without web hosting from a place like HLP, you are sorely mistaken.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Tian Guan
I find it odd that you're casting fledgling campaigns out into the cold, harsh wilderness and basically dooming them before they get off the ground purely under the misguided assumption that people from the condemned campaigns will flock towards the ruins of those already hosted by HLP.

Kinda like shooting down a dove so you can use its carcass to cover a dying crow.


Man, I waaaay over-did the bird metaphors.

[color=66ff00]Ruins of campaigns? That's pretty innaccurate, some are stalled due to lack of RL™ time, some are stalled due to lack of available skills, the new initiative is not only a good way to get these campaigns back into the swing of things, it's proven to work provided the community holds to it.

Also what would you prefer; 50 non finished campaigns or 5 full releases with quality content?
[/color]

[Tian Guan]

Yes, because all the campaigns not hosted by HLP and VWBB are doing so great.


And it's not so much the space anyway. It's the forums and the exposure that they bring.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]We have the campaign forum here at HLP for that very reason and we're looking at linking to external projects at the moment too.

I think you've got the idea that we're abandoning the new campaign ideas, this simply isn't true.
[/color]

[Tian Guan]

You're telling them to find space, forums and staff from elsewhere and you don't think that's abandoning them?

And as for the 'link on the main page' thing, who actually reads it anyway? Sure it's a novelty to read it now, but in a week or so it'll be little more than a place-holder, linking the 3dap address to the forums.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Tian Guan
You're telling them to find space, forums and staff from elsewhere and you don't think that's abandoning them?

And as for the 'link on the main page' thing, who actually reads it anyway? Sure it's a novelty to read it now, but in a week or so it'll be little more than a place-holder, linking the 3dap address to the forums.

Who said anyone needed space or forums to begin and make progress on a campaign? The major campaigns of the past had websites because their campaigns reached completion - not vice versa. And another fact is that there are hardly any staff in existence that are not already committed to other projects. Adding further projects just makes everything progress slower.

You know, I often thought that exactly what you mention would have happened; it's so blatantly clear that the Forums are the 'centre of the community'. Heck, they are the community. So why wouldn't people just bookmark the Forums and bypass the main site? The main site would be useless, then. But guess what? People don't just bookmark the Forums. People have been visiting the main page consistently for 3 years. And how do you suppose a new community member would be able to figure out whatt his 'HLP' place is? By looking at the Forums? I don't think so. Even if you are right, and the main site becomes a mere place-holder, then we merely extend the offer to including links on the forum index.

[Tian Guan]

On a related note, during the big 2.0 fuss, why not just do a Gaters.net and integrate the site with the forum?

[Gloriano]

good work guys (HLP staff)

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Tian Guan
I find it odd that you're casting fledgling campaigns out into the cold, harsh wilderness and basically dooming them before they get off the ground purely under the misguided assumption that people from the condemned campaigns will flock towards the ruins of those already hosted by HLP.

We are not casting fledgling campaigns out into the cold. What we are doing - and I know it sounds harsh - it discouraging people from starting new campaigns to begin with. There, I said it.

We could have left our hosting terms the same and just said "we discourage you from starting a new campaign, but encourage you to join existing campaigns to help them complete their projects." But we didn't - we decided to take action as well. Perhaps simply stating our position on the issue would have been enough.

But there is also the issue of HLP's size on the GS network - something that we have not really made public. A number of months ago, perhaps as much as a year, we got an email from GS saying that they the HLP folder on the 3dap server was the largest, period. Larger than any other hosted site (which is what HLP is), and even larger than any of the Planet-X mega sites (PlanetQuake, PlanetHomeworld, etc).

We've tried to get hosted projects to go through their directories and purge the large stuff that should be on the fileplanet servers, but it hasn't worked very well.

So... that's where things stand. Any more questions?