Of Community and Funding
 

Massive wall of text. I'd love some criticism on both content and writing style. More on content, as I mean every word.
Note: In this writing I will mostly be referring to Markus 'Notch' Persson's current situation as an easy example. Bear with me.
Today's gaming market is split between two very distinct sides. There's the gaming developers with relatively large budgets and publishers, and there's the 'indie' developers. There are people like Markus Persson, the creator of the wildly popular Minecraft, and the production manager of the similar-but-different indie hit Terraria's: Blue. These people have recognition from peers and fans over the whole world, and their games are very successful. Now the question is: Why are these games so successful even though they have relatively simple groundings? And another question that is maybe more relevant for the community: How could Graal benefit from the findings of that question?

First off, there is a clear and logical reason that the creators of popular games have a certain fame and community following. From the start of the Minecraft alpha's, players/fans of the game have referred to Notch as their 'God'. And even though this is obviously a big exaggeration, it just shows the respect that fans have for him when even popular YouTube shows mention the 'Church of Notch'. Looking at Notch's behavior it is clear to see why:

1. He communicates with his fans. Through media he responds to a lot of interesting shenanigans that the community is up to.
2. He, and his team as well, keep the community updated constantly on what they are doing, and are honest with delays, setbacks, and mistakes made in the process of development.
3. You can see past the job. He shows the fans that he hates this game, loves that one, and had to laugh about this movie. It's easier to like, and to be loyal, to a person who you can relate to. And this seems to hold very true to the gamer world.

But why are the games popular? It cannot be the good marketing, or Duke Nukem Forever would've been amazing, and it can't be the charisma of the game developer. It is, for a any developer, especially if they rely on continuous payments by the players, essential to provide a steady flow of updated content for the player to experiment with and keep interest in the game high. MMORPGs accomplish this through content patches, shooters with DLC, and RTS games with balance patches and expansion packs.

But smaller indie games don't act this way. They add smaller things, like a batch of items, a new enemy, a new game mode, and lots of bug fixes. The players constantly see new features and get to know every individual part very well before a new feature gets added. It allows players to bond to the content and get to perfect the opportunities out of every single addition. So by doing smaller additions in shorter time periods, players keep coming back for the game, and get more involved with the community.

This finally brings us to our current situation. GraalOnline isn't moving forward. It isn't clear to me if the game is dying out, but with the recent shift in focus to iPhone and Facebook Graal, there's a chance that it will.
Aside from that, the community does not know the staff. Stefan posts fairly frequently, but we have no idea what he is working on from a day to day basis. Unixmad rarely posts, and aside from a really vague 'Staff Contacts' list that names him Managing Director, there's no hint to what he does. Having an impersonal staff doesn't bring the community behind them. A community that does not stand behind the developers causes trouble and blocks creativity.

Even then, if the community doesn't know the staff, that would be trivial if the community received frequent updates to move the game forward. But promises and announcements that have been made never got to be released. Flying Technology, Graal3D, a new Level Editor, to name some. This has caused the community to fall back on their own abilities. No new server has been made Classic since Zodiac, and even the prized Zone project started out as a player-run server.

The players are the only reason a game exists. The players bring in revenue, indirect advertising by word of mouth, and enthusiasm for the developers by responding to the content. The players cannot be disinterested, lest the project loses all these things. The players must be looking forward to new content, or they'll stop playing after a while and lose interest. The players must spread the word to others, or new players won't come to look at the game.

How would GraalOnline go about doing this? First, the company would need to create and maintain interest in current projects, and show promise of a long timeline of updates. Second, the game as it is needs the tools for players to develop their own content with greatest ease, as right now the software and facilities are confusing and hard to get into. When players are enthusiastic, quality will follow. Third, players need to see what is going on at the high-ups of GraalOnline. Without someone that players look up to, the players won't have a bar to raise higher and higher in both the game and the development.

So in conclusion: The steps taken in Facebook and iPhone Graal are a step in the right direction, but the management cannot afford to ignore what they came from, and the potential that lies within their roots. Keep in touch with the community and look forward to what the management can do for their players, not the other way around. We aren't living in America from the 60s, you know.

My idea? A lot of the content produced by players is remarkable work that exceeds some works of professionals in the field, and the management should capitalize on that, use the player's content and provide guidance towards hosting player-run games of actual quality. Because I think we can, and I think that we should.

If there's anything to learn from iPhone, it's that Graal happens to work very well as a convenient chat device with an avatar, and as such has succeeded on a platform where there aren't many similar alternatives.

If there's anything to learn from Facebook however, it's that despite all of Graal's advancement in terms of scripting/development capabilities over the last 7/8 years Graal has hardly moved forward as a "game" at all, if anything it has declined.
Subsequently it hasn't really made anywhere near as much of an impact on a platform where there are many similar alternatives to what it is attempting to offer, and perhaps may have benefited from having a lot more content that appeals to competitive players and genuinely new players.

Judging by these two examples it's quite clear that steps are being taken to allow Graal to "expand", such as introducing a theoretically more efficient pricing strategy aswell as improving accessibility.
But it also seems evident that there is not much if any worry regarding "improvement" to the actual game.
The Facebook/iPhone servers are a poorer representation of Graal as a game, plus I can't say there are many known new features within V6 that I'm looking forward to being implemented.

As such I believe that whether we like it or not this is the responsibility of us Developers, and in truth this has always been the way with Graal and I don't expect that will change.
A form of incentive system however could definitely result in a win-win situation that would be beneficial to Graal moving forward as a game, and I hope this receives attention once the current plans are completed.

To keep the responsibility with the players (or developers, what ever you prefer to call it) is an irresponsible marketing strategy. The owners and managers of the project should be interested in pulling new players to the game from day to day, and not rely purely on older players to spread the word of the game. The responsibility of quality lies on the developers, not the people using the software.

I've come to terms with the fact that the way things have been, will continue to be.

Thus, I place blame on the fact that there are no real succeeding servers unto the shoulders of scripters. "lolz community" and "GTA GRAAL" don't really get anyone anywhere. A servers only as good as the ideas the scripter tries to replicate.

The problem is that this isn't really feasible across Graal in its entirety of official servers. There is essentially one developer of the game (Stefan) and he is seemingly up to his neck in responsibilities as it is.

With the exception of the iPhone/Facebook servers where he has at times exclusively devoted his attention to and thus greater quality ought to be expected, there is no way he could oversee quality control on half a dozen other servers which are also much older and therefore likely to consist of a greater quantity of clutter.

The fact that this responsibility falls into the hands of software users isn't so much of a problem in itself, it is infact now the intention behind PC Graal.
The problem is largely down to a lack of self-sufficiency in attracting/encouraging talented developers.
Not only are there little to no incentives to develop, but newer users have to keep re-subscribing for the privilege of being able to do so.
There's then the issue of out-dated tools (the editor) aswell as how difficult it can be for requested functionality to be added among other things.

In short, the idea of players making the game isn't a bad one and is one of the things that makes Graal what it is, it's just in desperate need of nurture.
Some of these issues may be rectified in the not too distant future, but until then it's always going to be the same number of small developers producing anything significant, and thus it will take something miraculous over a long period of time to bring Graal up onto a higher level.

finding decent graphic artists who actually stick around for more than a week has always been my biggest struggle

I'd stay if the scripter was worth much :( Although, as it stands, the idea has to really hit it off with me too.

You must realize that as of now, we (the players) care more about the game in whole than the upper-management. If they really cared of the game, they would devote their time, money, and skills into the game. At a time this was once true but year after year the interest of the management started to decline. Honestly, I bet the management doesn't care as much of us as we do of them. As we the players are easily replaceable. Look at the facts, if all of the life-time classic members got up and quit today, they could fill the void pretty quickly. Just advertise the PC game on iPhone and revert back to lifetime subscriptions for a limited time and a storm of players would replace us and everything will be like it was. You cannot replace the personalities but over time that would be forgotten and new personalities would take over. Developers will spawn because the kids that spend thousands of hours on an iPod have nothing better to do.

Yet that being said, the management needs to revert back to why they started this game. Although I personally don't know the reason, they could have even thought of scrapping the idea before it was ever published, but they need to have the same inspiration and enthusiasm they once had. Young(er) talanted developers they were, striving for success in a growing on-line environment. Why has that internal flame for a game they created to insight prosperity, gone out? Why have they turned to simply making a quick buck instead of going back to the main reason they started the game. Remember that this game only survives due to the time and other players. We can't stop playing because we invested too much time, and to stop now would be a waste (an excuse we love to use). Our friends keep us here, because we get a long with these people in a sort of family-styled way depending on your situation.

Don't force people to pay you for making your game. Take the initiative and make a game worth telling our friends about. Honestly, when new players ask what they can do when they log on, there isn't much to say besides pk, idle, spar, and events. That only lasts so long, and then we all have long bouts of forum-posting and time off from the actual game. Then we go back, to check up on friends and we become attached again. I went slightly off topic, but these words should be uttered. I am okay with how the game is, I understand what will happen. I am not okay with how this game is treated by the creators. Its a game, make it fun or shall we suggest you failed? Because if you cannot make the game fun again, you have literally failed the thousands (hundreds) of players that keep some slight sense of hope.

Liar. :(

He said new. >:I

type a million paragraphs of cold hard facts and it still wont change anything no matter how right you are.

well i think is alot to do with dev tools
like example i had some great ideas but what u know some of the stuff i couldnt even gani in the graal shop unless i made custom bodies and its not worth it..
but idk i think they should convert gs1 into gs2 offline and have it all work
like gs1 does besides the data base systems
so people can learn to script without testbed or whatever

Still, I was hoping Stefan might recognise what is going on by now and comment on it in a somewhat detailed fashion.