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Onderwerp: Quixotic Press |
1199 antwoorden
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Quote ( Max Watson @ March 10th 2016,09:23:23 ) I've already chosen my tyres for next season (I had them chosen since about R15 if I was going to make Elite) so it'll be sign a TD, then just get it done.
I actually picked a different tyre than I intended since I sent you these answers. You can blame David Rolleston for that!
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Quote ( Mark Webster @ March 10th 2016,13:02:44 )
I actually picked a different tyre than I intended since I sent you these answers. You can blame David Rolleston for that!
Aye right.....this you getting your excuse in early in case it all goes Pete Tongue. You know what you were proposing to do would have lead to you re-entering the pit of despair :-)
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These interviews are a good read, and a relatively experienced person like me can still learn a thing or two from each interview!! Rookies should defiantly note everything that is said in the interviews so they can learn how to be like these lot
Another top interview as always Max :) And good luck Mark in Elite :)
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Great interview.... Thanks
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Great read, nicely done. There's a good reason why someone like myself is still learning about the game thanks to people like Webbo. Good stuff there.
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Great job guys. For us lower-leaguers these interviews are proving invaluable. I'm learning a lot, thank you.
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Quote ( Kyle Morris @ March 10th 2016,13:14:24 ) These interviews are a good read, and a relatively experienced person like me can still learn a thing or two from each interview!! Rookies should defiantly note everything that is said in the interviews so they can learn how to be like these lot
Another top interview as always Max :) And good luck Mark in Elite :)
Dont worry. I am reading, watching and learning. Good interview. Maybe one day it will be me answering the questions in elite.
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Nice Interview Mark :)
Elite getting better every season :)
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#160 geplaatst Maa 12 2016, 09:54:48 (laatst aangepast Maa 18 2016, 08:24:46 door Max Watson)
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A special treat to kickstart your weekend: it's time for the second of our Spotlight interviews! Part of the reason for starting this thread was to look towards the future, of both the game and the community, and it is this to which we now give our undivided attention, with the help of a candid conversation with an extremely distinguished interviewee...
Welcome, Vlad. Tell us a bit about the man behind the legend. What do you get up to besides working on the game?
Not that much to be honest, I play the occasional online game, do family stuff and travel from time to time. I also try to keep in good shape by working out at least 2 times a week, which due to my health situation is a must do thing but I also started to enjoy it with time. That's at least the things I can say I do publicly, without the need to kill you :)
Take us through a typical day in the life of El Presidente. How long do you spend every day working on the game?
Typically I spend between 6-8 hours, but there are also exceptions. When I am in proper mood and itch to finish something then I can work up to 15 hours. But there are also periods when I get burned out and just can't do anything at all, at least not creative stuff. Then I either take some days free time or do tasks which don't require any creativity but rather some monotonous work.
Do you follow the elite title battle every season? You do a great job of remaining impartial, but it must sometimes be hard.
Usually I don't follow it that close, but when there are some discussions in the forum I do take a look at how the season has progressed. As for being impartial, it is not that hard when you are on the other side of the scene. You really don't care who wins, but I do like it when there is some rivalry and when players show some character instead of being friendly all the time :)
Some time ago you revealed that, through no fault of your own, GPRO was suffering some financial difficulty. Could you update us on that situation? Are we closer to getting this issue resolved?
We are indeed close to resolving the issue. While some things related to that situation won't be resolved until 2018 I have built a good plan to handle things. This was the time when we hit rock bottom regarding the game finances, but thankfully I got some help to steer us clear from long term troubles. The most important thing is that I don't need to spend any more time dealing with the aftermath from this and I can fully focus on what matters.
There has been much talk in recent times of a mobile app for GPRO. How is this progressing, and is it still a top priority?
We had some progress a few months ago, but since then I've had no time to dedicate to it. Currently it is not a top priority, but as soon as I finish some other projects I will get back to it.
What other new features are on your 'to-do list' for the near future?
I usually dislike sharing such to-do list plans, because most likely impatient people will start asking me "Hey what is the progress on this? When is that going to be implemented?". I don't like having such pressure when coding and planning things. Here are a few things that I've wanted to do for a long time:
• livery market - it will allow you to buy and sell uploaded and approved liveries for supporter credits. I started coding this a year ago, but left it unfinished due to lack of time and other priorities.
• fuel suppliers - still have to develop the concept behind it. Don't want this to be very similar to the tyre suppliers. Feel free to assist me with some discussions in the forum :)
• private leagues - this is a really big project. You will be able to organize your own championship with friends and customize the gameplay rules like point scoring system, practice and qualifying format, race time and length (you could have a race every day). Obviously this would have to happen in a way that is completely isolated from and does not affect the main game. This one is something for the far future, but will surely be worth doing.
• new race screen
• mobile app
Of course there are other small things I have on my list, some you may even not call features, but they are still important and take time to develop.
You mention the race screen: many people over the years have advocated an overhaul of the race screen (positing ideas such as making it 3D). Do you ever see something like this becoming a reality? Perhaps more importantly, do you believe that doing this would alter the character of the game?
If this happens then I can only be responsible for the back-end programming of it. I think people in general have unrealistic expectations about what I can do and what I can't do. If you look back over the past few years, quite a lot of non visual/non graphic changes, improvements and optimizations have been done to the game. However people discard those improvements as "cosmetic", without understanding that they are still important, take time and effort to accomplish and most of them are aimed at improving the running and longevity of the game. However if some major visual/graphic changes are going to happen I will definitely need some help and backing from the community.
Now back to the race screen. Just a few weeks ago a member of the community presented to me a proof of concept of a top view (2D) race viewer. You could see the cars (as dots or minimized car liveries) moving around the track map. I liked it as it could be integrated into the game without any changes to its game engine, character or concept, so I gave it the green light. Now we have started doing some work on bringing this to life but we are still at an early stage. At first it may be released just as race replay viewer, but once this is done, it will not be very hard to adapt it for the live races. The problem is that most work on it is presentational/graphic so I feel a bit worthless that I can't be of more help with it, but I can for sure offer some financial backing of the project in order to keep people motivated to complete it.
Some of the most regular complaints from veterans and newcomers alike relate to elements of game mechanics (e.g. 'pure' randoms, random weather generation, sponsor system, random training gains in certain disciplines). Are there plans to review any of these elements in the future, or are you satisfied with their current output?
I am mostly satisfied with these areas, but that does not mean that I will not review and tweak any of them in the future. We try to simulate a racing/management world for you to play in, and as real life has many random factors in it, it is only fair for the GPRO universe to have them as well. It is up to the individual manager to plan for them, take them as part of the game and deal with them in a proper way (and no, I don't mean by sending me an angry mail complaining about it). There will always exist the flock of managers that call everything "a random" and won't look at the management approach they take, but there is not much I can do to make them happy.
The S52 announcement informed us that some new TDs were imminent. Are these to be elite-calibre TDs, or are Marinelli and VanLinden to be the last of that breed?
I can't give you more details at the moment but most likely the new TDs will be introduced at the lower and mid levels.
We all wish to see the game grow. Could you talk a little bit about GPRO's marketing/advertising strategy? Is there any way (aside from referring friends) that managers can help in this regard?
Manager referrals are by far the most effective way to bring long term players to the game. I just wish more people did it more often. During the past years through trial and error I have come to the conclusion that the game is a product that is very hard to market anywhere. I will give you a standard scenario as example. Advertising networks who advertise our game expect to get paid between 1.50 € to 3.50 € per player registration (depending on the country of the player). They get paid no matter if the player even confirms their email, logs into the game, starts a race, completes a season, let alone become a long term player or supporter. As you can guess more than 90% of players who will register will not stay. There is obviously no way to financially sustain such advertising campaigns. Other games can do it due to their pay-to-win features, but for us with the limited number of players/supporters and the low revenue/player ratio, it is simply impossible. Don't get me wrong, I hate pay-to-win games, but it seems the majority of casual players aren't bothered by this approach game developers take to make their games successful. But I am at the same time happy that I've kept GPRO as one of very few online games without the pay-to-win features and I really like when people show appreciation for it.
I am not sure what else can be done regarding the marketing of the game. I believe I've done what I could with the resources that I had available. I took many measures to make the game easier to access and approach for new players, and there have been some positive effects from this, but there is nothing I can do to make the game easy to market as a whole.
Some time ago you announced that all advertising for the game had had to be stopped. Has this now resumed, despite the limitations and drawbacks you mentioned?
It has been partly resumed but on a much lower scale than before.
On a related note, many rookies have expressed concern about the small number of players in rookie groups. Are you considering altering the group structure to address this, or is the emphasis on acquisition of new players?
I share their concerns and I've been thinking to make the Amateur groups a bit smaller (30-35 players per group). This will hardly affect the upper groups, while the participation in Rookie will increase a bit which would make things more balanced. Feel free to open a discussion about it in case you have some thoughts on it.
Are there any areas of game development that would benefit from the technical expertise of community volunteers?
The game development can mostly benefit from help with the graphics/presentation of the game. Things like race track backgrounds, driver faces, etc were developed mostly by community members, I only provided the server side programming to integrate them in the game. When those community members stopped contributing, the development of those areas of the game stopped as well. So if anyone feels like designing a race track background or some driver faces, they are welcome to do it and join our graphics team.
Also the current hold up with the mobile app is the definition of a JSON API interface for the game pages (at least those that we plan to put in a mobile app initially). If someone thinks they can help to make the documentation/definition of such kind of interface they can let me know. I am sure there are a number of people who have already dissected the HTML of the game to make parsers for their tools, now they can do the same to help us define this JSON interface. Once the definition is done, I can then work on the server side part of the app according to the definitions and the person responsible for the presentation of the mobile app can do the same (we already have someone working on the presentation).
Any hopes for the future, requests, or final words for the community?
I have some hope that somehow we can bring back the other admins to contribute again with the development of the game. Do you know the reason why they don't want to be involved? The reason does not depend on finances or anything like that, but it is mainly due the spirit of the current community. Over the years people in the community have built this "complaining" culture, basically not a day can pass without someone complaining about something, moaning that something has not been addressed on the hour, threatening not to support the game and actively encouraging others to do the same, discarding the time and effort invested into maintaining and running the game as it is. Who would want to work in this kind of environment? I can't deny that sometimes I ask this question to myself as well. Who would want to come home after a hard day at his daily job and read the rants and complaints in the forum? Of course anyone would prefer to sit on their couch, watch TV and not go anywhere near a computer. My hope is that there is a way to change this in the future. If the community does not change this approach, then I am afraid you all will be stuck with just me slowly pushing the development forward, in parallel with all other tasks that I do.
Vlad, it's been a privilege. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer, and thank you for all the work you put into the game.
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Nice look into what is currently really going on. 
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That is a fantastic interview and answers a lot of questions for everyone.
With regards to the very last answer by Vlad, the 'complaining culture' comes from a breakdown in communication. Plain and simple. That is why people are up in arms about a real community manager and why one is needed.
They need to absorb the ideas / suggestions / complaints of the community, ADDRESS AND ACKNOWLEDGE them, correlate the data, and present it to admin and then present it back to the community.
That way your community feels valued and your complaints go down.
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Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 ) Any hopes for the future, requests, or final words for the community?
I have some hope that somehow we can bring back the other admins to contribute again with the development of the game. Do you know the reason why they don't want to be involved? The reason does not depend on finances or anything like that, but it is mainly due the spirit of the current community. Over the years people in the community have built this "complaining" culture, basically not a day can pass without someone complaining about something, moaning that something has not been addressed on the hour, threatening not to support the game and actively encouraging others to do the same, discarding the time and effort invested into maintaining and running the game as it is. Who would want to work in this kind of environment? I can't deny that sometimes I ask this question to myself as well. Who would want to come home after a hard day at his daily job and read the rants and complaints in the forum? Of course anyone would prefer to sit on their couch, watch TV and not go anywhere near a computer. My hope is that there is a way to change this in the future. If the community does not change this approach, then I am afraid you all will be stuck with just me slowly pushing the development forward, in parallel with all other tasks that I do.
I would just like to respond to this, just to mention it will ALWAYS seem like that if you dont take into account than generally people that are satisfied won't voice their opinion as those who are not and wish to complain will make sure anyone and everyone knows about it. That is why you notice the complaints much much more than the good comments or feedback. Please don't let those that voice their complaints stop the input of admins and ruin it for those that are satisfied, development is important/essential to stopping those satisfied becoming just another complainer.
If you were a shop and sold 100 tvs, you might see 3 of those people again only because they wish to complain, you wont ever see one of them again wishing to thankyou for a great tv.
The poll function is a great way to get more feedback from community not just the active forum users.
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#164 geplaatst Maa 12 2016, 10:24:59 (laatst aangepast Maa 12 2016, 10:32:33 door Keri Lovell)
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Whats important Brendan is acknowledgement of voices.
Here's an example. Somebody suggests something. Lots of people think its a great idea. It gets completely ignored. It turns into a complaint.
By having a community manager acknowledge it initially, put together a list of most popular ideas, feed them to admin and work on what's possible and what's not and why and then feed that back to the community you completely take the complaint part out of the equasion.
People are more than satisfied that something can't happen if they know why. Like this interview, it goes a long way to building bridges, communicating with the community. The very first comment was:
Quote ( Mairo Toom @ March 12th 2016,10:11:42 ) Nice look into what is currently really going on.
That should tell you everything you need to know about the importance of communication. And well done Max for recognising that. And to Vlad for being honest and up front.
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I enjoyed reading it, it's great to hear what is planned for the future :)
Maybe Vlad should hire Max as official GPRO Correspondent so he can communicate his seasonal thoughts/updates thru him :p It'd be nice to have a seasonal thing...its nice of you to come out from the dark Vlad, and should more often - maybe it would go some way to eradicating that element of frustration from (some of) the players side in not knowing what is going on? :) I applaud this interview because it embraces and shows the importance of having a link in the game to what is happening. It's nice to read about :)
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Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 ) I've been thinking to make the Amateur groups a bit smaller (30-35 players per group)
I support this idea. My group usually has 30-35 people racing anyway. :)
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best and most important interview till date
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Thanks for the interview Max.
Nice to get some views from behind the scenes.
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Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 ) GPRO as one of very few online games without the pay-to-win features and I really like when people show appreciation for it.
Yes, you should be proud of this. Its very much apreciated. :)
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Robin, if that is done then it has to be the organic version that I've suggested. The rigid structure that exists between rookie and amateur promotion/relegation is the problem.
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Great interview Vlad, wiithout doubt this is the best online game i have encountered. Keep up the great work
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Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 ) I've kept GPRO as one of very few online games without the pay-to-win features
Quote ( Mattias Svensson @ March 12th 2016,10:38:36 ) Yes, you should be proud of this. Its very much apreciated. :)
+∞ :)
Quote ( Stuart Foster @ March 12th 2016,10:32:31 ) its nice of you to come out from the dark Vlad
+1 :)
I really enjoyed reading that one and hope that things work out for all of us.
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Bravo!
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Nice to read.
I do believe this is the first time I have seen any communication from him in the many seasons I have been here, not saying he has not spoken before this interview but I do not recall ever seeing it..I do realize he has been on and has made quite a few changes in my time on here but it is good to see his thoughts here.
I think if he could make the time to speak like this a bit more often (maybe atleast once a season) it would go a long ways and he and this game would gain more respect and potentially get less complaining from many of us and I'm as guilty as anyone for doing so at times..
He answered questions I had often wondered about here and I'm satisfied with his response as I had not considered his side of things
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Good interview.
Thanks for all the effort Vlad, it is truely a great game. I hope the negativity in the forums can die down and those instigating and flaming it change their attitudes! There are some that keep the forums going, and I'm glad their there, just hope they realise they have a deffinite role to play in changing the spirit of the community!
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#175 geplaatst Maa 12 2016, 11:05:09 (laatst aangepast Maa 12 2016, 11:07:29 door Egon Blissi)
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Great interview.
Especially nice to know that the future of Gpro is not in danger anymore:
Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 ) This was the time when we hit rock bottom regarding the game finances, but thankfully I got some help to steer us clear from long term troubles.
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Brilliant!! The future looks bright=) cheers El Presidente & Max
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Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 ) Over the years people in the community have built this "complaining" culture, basically not a day can pass without someone complaining about something, moaning that something has not been addressed on the hour, threatening not to support the game and actively encouraging others to do the same, discarding the time and effort invested into maintaining and running the game as it is.
Good interview, in some points.
My question about this is, simple, what improvement had to came from Flo's retribution after this times, after reading this sentence?
My 50 cents
Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 ) If the community does not change this approach, then I am afraid you all will be stuck with just me slowly pushing the development forward,
So I understand there's a community person, on the Admins, so, and looking back, you should inquired and push the pink 6 stars manager to do the job correctly, insteed, losing time and strenght in matters basicly, doll. Being friendly, it helps.
She's never gonna be, Gordon or Tomasz.
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Quote ( Max Watson @ March 12th 2016,09:54:48 )
Now back to the race screen. Just a few weeks ago a member of the community presented to me a proof of concept of a top view (2D) race viewer. You could see the cars (as dots or minimized car liveries) moving around the track map.
From what I've seen so far this is a really great development, congratulations to everybody who has been working on it :)
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But I am at the same time happy that I've kept GPRO as one of very few online games without the pay-to-win features and I really like when people show appreciation for it.
very important indeed.
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Finally. An interview with someone worth interviewing.
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