|
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WSrMJ.png)
Greetings fellow members of the Starcraft community!
I am writing this post as a spokesperson for a group of people who’s truly fascinated about Starcraft and the community (r)evolving around the game. We spend countless hours every day playing, watching, reading and experiencing Starcraft. And yes, WE ARE ENTERTAINED. We do appreciate the scene to it’s fullest extent, yet we are still professional lurkers and we are not contributing to the community’s growth in any way except by being another tick on the streams viewer counters. But we would like to change that and be more involved in the community.
So we started asking ourselves; how can we contribute to this magnificent source of entertainment? Well, the answer was kind of simple as we all work with them internetz for a living. We should develop something useful for the community in form of a website. So we started to put a lot of thought towards what kind of website could be useful for the community, which really isn’t an easy task. We like the fact that the community is somewhat centered around TL.net and /r/starcraft and we would not like to change that. So we started thinking about how we could enhance these sites and the community as a whole, what do we really need?
The answer was the following:
An utility support site for all the contributors of the community. Sounds weird? It is, but we do think it is something that would take the community as a whole to the next level.
Why?
+ Show Spoiler +We love all the different content getting published every day within the community. Wheter it is a live stream, a VOD, a strategy guide, a wallpaper, a song, a blog post, anything, it doesn’t matter - we love it. We love the dedication, the time and the effort that you guys put down on these things. The only “problem” we see with these things is that they disappear way so fast. If you have made something really appreciated you get your 24 hours of fame before your post vanishes into the massive wave of new things getting posted. And the only credit you got from it was some positive comments and a healthy batch of Reddit karma, which definitely is enough for most people. But what if we had some other incentive besides comments and upvotes? What kind of content would get published then? Our guess is way more content and content with way more depth.
We’re talking about monetization, people! But not in that scary corporate fashion. There is a lot of money in the Starcraft scene but it is divided kind of unproportionally since it is only the top tier of the community that gets a share. What we want to achieve is to make it possible for the general bulk of contributors to get some more credit for their hard work.
How?
+ Show Spoiler +We want to build an utility site where you as a consumer easily can find your favorite contributor and show your support to him/her. Or from a contributors point of view, a site where you can compile and organize all of your work in one place instead of it being spread out on all of the different sites like TL, Twitch, Youtube etc. Note that we do not in any way want to draw traffic away from these sites, the content will still be hosted there and we will only build a library consisting of links to the original source. Basically the site will consist of profiles, and you can add all of your Starcraft related information and contributions to your profile for people to find. But how do you support the contributor by just finding all of his/hers creations? Answer: you can connect your profile to Kickstarter, PayPal and Flattr. The latter will be the one we will intergrate the most with the site as Flattr is very suitable for this kind of platform. The thing with Flattr is that it’s not just focused on money, it’s more focused on flattering the contributor, a small gesture of your appreciation. It’s like an upvote/Facebook like with a micro donation attached to it. You add a specific amount of money every month to your account, let’s say $4, and then that amount gets divided over all of your Flattrings that month. So if you Flattr two items, they both receive $2, if you Flattr ten items, they receive 20c and so on. Read more about the concept of Flattr here.You will be able Flattr anything put up on the site as well as anything on a external site with a Flattr button on it. With this we will be able to keep track of anything Flattred and make lists of what’s hot right now overall and based on categories like Streams or Players.
User case, contributor:
+ Show Spoiler +loC.Fate is a Starcraft player on the rise. He’s got a stream and is starting to get a lot of viewers, but the ad revenue from his stream and Youtube is not high enough for him to be able to make a living out of it which means he can not get enough time to practice due to his day time job. loC.Fate creates an account on our site and starts to add all of his content to his profile. He begins to add himself as a player, then continues to add the following:
- Twitch channel
- Youtube channel
- Personal homepage
- Facebook page
- Guides, strategies and blog posts he’s been posting on TL.net
- Fan art he’s been posting on deviantART
He then continues to add every Youtube clip he is proud of separately to his profile. As Fate is a member of the team loC, and the team has made Flattr buttons possible to integrate on their site, Fate can connect his profile on our site to the Flattr button attached to his profile on the loC site.
User case, consumer:
+ Show Spoiler +Bonell Stevenson works as a web developer and loves to watch competitive Starcraft on his spare time. He’s been watching a new streamer a lot lately, loC.Fate, and have really been enjoying it. He feels like he wants to show his appreciation to Fate so he goes to our site and finds Fates profile. He Flattres the profile itself and Fate’s channel on Twitch.tv. He then browses through the profile and finds the links to Fate’s guides on TL and continues to press them as he hasn’t seen them before. Bonell find the guides really informational and decides to give them a Flattr aswell and continues to browse Fate’s profile to see if there is something else of interest.
The project
As this is something we do for fun and something we do as a contribution to the Starcraft community, we would love to hear your thoughts on the project. We want to develop this platform with you, not for you. This is our vision of how it could work and not the final one. If the community comes up with a better way to do this, then we would gladly modify the concept until everyone is satisfied. If it turns out everyone thinks this is an horrible idea, we will simply kill the project. But then we at least tried to make our contribution as a way of repaying the community for all the entertainment it has given us the past two years.
If we continue with this project we would love to involve you in as many ways as possible, like naming the site, designing a logo, coming up with functions and features etc. If you are really good at developing web platforms or is a graphic designer with knowledge of how to design for the web, please do contact us if you want to contribute. Especially the latter one since none of us are expert designers.
We have started a basic Wordpress blog for the project where you can follow our progress. Use the comment system to ask us questions as this post disappears to the depths of the internet. You can also follow the project on GitHub if you know your code.
projecthive.wordpress.com
github.com/simme/projecthive
GL HF,
The Hive Project
|
The Web Developer is an inverted Destiny?
|
Cool, hopefully it works out well
|
intresting.... but kind of difficult to understand....
|
This seems like a good idea, but I don't know if this will give newer contributers a chance to shine easily. It seems like it will have the same problems where a new player or caster can't shine next to someone with a large and built fan base. You might need to add some sort of featured contributer function for this project to work in the way you want it to.
|
Eh ? I dont understand ... Team liquid is not good enought for you?
|
As one of the developers on this project I just want to add that I really believe in this approach. Obviously.
StarCraft as a sport has been a large part of my life the last two years (played brood war vs computer my entire childhood)
I really want to give something to all the people who makes this community so awesome! 
|
If it is from Sweden it will be good. Looking forward to your content.
|
On February 13 2012 00:38 Gyro_SC2 wrote:
Eh ? I dont understand ... Team liquid is not good enought for you?
Absolutely, and as the OP states, we are not in anyway intending to compete with the existing platforms. We are not going to store any content on our site. If you simplify it to the bare minimum, it will be like Reddit with a layer of micro donations on top. Of course it will be more then this. Including moderated content.
That's our plan at least. How we continue from here will depend on the response we get from the community!
|
On February 13 2012 00:38 rightstuff wrote:
This seems like a good idea, but I don't know if this will give newer contributers a chance to shine easily. It seems like it will have the same problems where a new player or caster can't shine next to someone with a large and built fan base. You might need to add some sort of featured contributer function for this project to work in the way you want it to.
We thought of that and have currently an "Editors pick"-list on the front page. We will also promote people who do extraordinary things in blog posts etc. Thank you for the response, this is exactly the kind of feedback we want 
|
It actually sounds like a real nice idea.
Also I LOL'd pretty hard at Bonnell stevenson.
|
has there been any cases where a contributor (content providor) or consumer has used your website? I am looking for examples. keep it up!
|
Sounds interesting, looking forward to it..
|
On February 13 2012 00:45 archonOOid wrote:
has there been any cases where a contributor (content providor) or consumer has used your website? I am looking for examples. keep it up!
Probably not since it's not done. 
We started the project this weekend! And we wanted to get it out early to get feedback from the community. Instead of developing something in the dark and then just throwing it out there.
So, no. No other examples then the ones in the OP!
|
I like this idea, especially the Flattr implementation. This will need a special recommendation system though, popular contributors will naturally get more attention, but you want to give the upcoming contributors a chance.
|
This sounds really cool! It would be rather difficult to do though, I wish you all the best ^_^
|
Good luck, if you actually put in effort and stay behind it.... It might work... I have a sneaking suspicion that this will end up with either a lack of effort on your part or an attempt to make money off of the idea...
|
On February 13 2012 00:48 ODKStevez wrote:
This sounds really cool! It would be rather difficult to do though, I wish you all the best ^_^
Thank you! We know, but we have really gotten pretty far this weekend with the back end of the platform. The hard part will probably get people to use/understand the service. This is why we really need the support of the community to help us develop the best possible platform.
|
GL? Sounds like advertising more than anything else to me though x.x
|
"It's like Facebook, but for Progamers"
That's what it looks like to me. I'm skeptical.
|
Sounds like a fantastic idea to me. =D
|
On February 13 2012 01:06 davefp wrote:
"It's like Facebook, but for Progamers"
That's what it looks like to me. I'm skeptical.
Well, the only resemblance to Facebook is the profiles and the Flattrs I guess. Profiles are necessary to compile all the users content in one place and Flattrs is just a really simple way of making donations. We believe that the donation system will have to be really simple for people to actually use it.
Please do give us some actual feedback on how we could make this work from your point of view. That's the whole reason behind this post, as we will gather as much input from the community as possible before we continue to develop the platform any further.
|
Hmm, I know that a topic like this is going to attract a major amount of skepticism...
All I can say is that this project is going to require an insane, and I mean INSANE, amount of work to pull off. While the grass roots ethos is of course very nice, if this is to be successful it will need to come topic down - you will need to approach the content providers themselves to see if they really need and are interested in this venture. Looking on the Live Stream bar to my right all of the featured streams are either big sponsored/ticketed tournaments or big team players; they all have sources of income that essentially are derived in the same way as Flattr - popularity equals payment.
I guess your target market will be the content providers of the middle range streamers &c that are unable to secure regular income.
At the other end, there are the consumers which you also need to attract, and no matter how you phrase it you will need to attract these away from TL or to have some kind of integration within the site - I think this is unlikely. Otherwise it will be a case of a user watching a stream from say twitch embedded into TL, then for the user to jump to your site to like it and make the 'microdonation' - which I doubt anyone will do. I am understanding this correctly, right?
Also, the phrase 'social microtransactions' makes me wanna be sick - whether this is the future of tinternet or not it just makes me shiver.
That you give your press release via a verbose post on the TL SC2 forum itself speaks volumes....
|
sounds like a good project. What's the ETA?
|
On February 13 2012 01:42 Deleuze wrote:
Hmm, I know that a topic like this is going to attract a major amount of skepticism...
All I can say is that this project is going to require an insane, and I mean INSANE, amount of work to pull off. While the grass roots ethos is of course very nice, if this is to be successful it will need to come topic down - you will need to approach the content providers themselves to see if they really need and are interested in this venture. Looking on the Live Stream bar to my right all of the featured streams are either big sponsored/ticketed tournaments or big team players; they all have sources of income that essentially are derived in the same way as Flattr - popularity equals payment.
I guess your target market will be the content providers of the middle range streamers &c that are unable to secure regular income.
At the other end, there are the consumers which you also need to attract, and no matter how you phrase it you will need to attract these away from TL or to have some kind of integration within the site - I think this is unlikely. Otherwise it will be a case of a user watching a stream from say twitch embedded into TL, then for the user to jump to your site to like it and make the 'microdonation' - which I doubt anyone will do. I am understanding this correctly, right?
Also, the phrase 'social microtransactions' makes me wanna be sick - whether this is the future of tinternet or not it just makes me shiver.
That you give your press release via a verbose post on the TL SC2 forum itself speaks volumes....
Hi Deleuze, thank you for some great feedback.
We are definitely aware of the amount of work this kind of project will require, and yes, it scares us a bit. But at the same time we are really thrilled because if we succeed we will actually have helped the community. This is also the main reason for us not going full throttle in the development of this project - as we will need to hear what the community actually think about something like this. We will need to hear input from the consumers, the contributors, TL and basically every part of the community before we even think of proceeding with this. You are correct about middle range streamers and other community members doing a lot for the community but not getting any direct financial support for their work, being the target group for this project.
We have also considered the fact that it is not optimal to have a third party site divided from the actual content. You are absolutely right, people would prefer to support the contributor right at the source and an integration with TL would be the best thing ever. We have some technical solutions, but they don't really matter right now.
The thing that actually matters is getting a lot of attention from the community. If we get a lot of positive feedback from community here, we have something to show for the major content providers and sites like TL. If we can prove that this is something the community actually wants, we can start integration discussions with TL and other sites. Without the voice of the community backing us up, discussions with the top tier would probably be pointless. Note that integration with other sites is something that is possible with Flattr, hence the choice to make it the base of the platform.
Please do consider this as the concept it is, and not a final product. This is just and idea we have which we put some work behind to be able to present it. It's something we do because we think it's fun and it has the potential of being really useful.
|
On February 13 2012 01:53 smwatkin wrote:
sounds like a good project. What's the ETA?
Thank you! There is no current ETA as everything is depending on the feedback we get from the community. But no matter what this is a huge project and will require a lot of developing and testing. If this is something that seems like a good idea to the community, we will try to publish a beta as soon as possible (x months).
But as I said, this all comes down to how the community embraces the concept and how much constructive feedback/help we get
|
This is a fantastic idea.
I maintain a library of convoluted bookmarks to various media, guides, and links within the Starcraft community, spread across both games, SC1 and SC2, multiple maps, patch versions, races, websites, playlists in websites, etc. This is not a sufficient system but is the closest thing I have come up with to deal with exactly the problem you're describing.
I cannot overstate how excited I am for this project and how much I wish I could contribute to its maturation. It would save me so much time, stress, and energy if we could efficiently catalog the repository of scattered, impossibly difficult to locate, and amazing user created content in this community.
|
|
|
I think its a pretty good idea.
i am not sure if the stream example is the best idea so. Even some GM players who stream have difficulties to get more than a couple of people to watch. I mean it's kinda understandable if i have to choose from so many tournaments and pro players (who a better or more entertaining) i won't watch any random stream. I don't see that changing even if they are represented better with your platform.
For what i see the platform working is stuff like starcraft art, little aps or progams, really high content articles like this one e.g.:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=266019
or very well presented strategy guides.
EDIT: (after second read)
well you actually mentioned my points aswell in the op. sry must have missed that.
|
|
|
Why should I use this service over team liquid's calendar and stream links?
|
On February 13 2012 03:16 TBone- wrote:
Why should I use this service over team liquid's calendar and stream links?
can you donate on TL?
Will you read threads that are on page xxx?
|
On February 13 2012 02:32 BBshakenbake wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 01:53 smwatkin wrote:
sounds like a good project. What's the ETA? Thank you! There is no current ETA as everything is depending on the feedback we get from the community. But no matter what this is a huge project and will require a lot of developing and testing. If this is something that seems like a good idea to the community, we will try to publish a beta as soon as possible (x months). But as I said, this all comes down to how the community embraces the concept and how much constructive feedback/help we get
Usually the community is negative until you show them something. So pitching the idea to the community might not be the best thing.
|
sounds ok at first. but the vibe im getting is that they just want a piece of the sc pie.
i dunno. i guess we'll have to wait and see.
|
I quite like the idea, I could see myself using it quite often to check some guides that is written by a specific person and see how he evolves his strategies. I would say SC2 is big enough for more than TL and reddit, especially since TL is the only site that really get it right along with strategy discussion etc.
But it will take a lot of content to attract people to use it. I could see that even without the donations, it could be ideal for not well-known SC2 content providers to start up an account here but progamers, big names like husky are the ones that will make the site big.
It will need good layout, points to separate itself from TL and reddit, something that keeps the fans coming back.
Anyway, GL to it. Will try out the beta if it ever comes out
|
It's a good idea. I hope you don't make things too sc2-centric though, all types of content producers for all types of games really need an easy way to be followed. For example I like watching everything from lets-play's for Minecraft and WoW machinima through to pro-gamer streams and tournaments for all types of games from Quake to Trackmania (though that's kind of dying) and what I've always wanted is one "portal" by which to access all my content.
TL has been great for SC2, it really has, I don't think the SC2 scene would be anywhere near what it is without TL. So many great content producers were saying that this is THE community for SC, and so the fans came. If you could develop a place where content producers could say fans should go that covers not only one game, but all games, and in turn a place where people new to watching game-based media in general could go to watch content, and learn about gaming though all different types of content, it would be incredible, and a boon to the gaming community at large far beyond the starcraft community.
Anyway, I don't know if this is within your scope as you say your main goal is to increase direct monetization opportunities for content producers in the Starcraft community, so I'm assuming you will be more focused on the financial side of things. I just think it would be great personally to increase the scope of the project, if not at first, at least in time.
|
I would definitely use such a site! It seems to address some of the most blatant problems with sites such as TL and reddit in a very original fashion.
|
I just saw your wordpress and the site looks great. It kindve reminds me of warp prism
|
Why NodeJS? It doesn't make sense to use an event platform for a relatively straight forward CRUD website..
|
On February 13 2012 03:18 OrbitalPlane wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 03:16 TBone- wrote:
Why should I use this service over team liquid's calendar and stream links? can you donate on TL? Will you read threads that are on page xxx?
Are you talking about stream threads? As I do read those. And yeah the donate thing would be pretty cool, I believe streaming on Afreeca does a similar model for brood war koreans.
|
On February 13 2012 02:27 BBshakenbake wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 01:42 Deleuze wrote:
Hmm, I know that a topic like this is going to attract a major amount of skepticism...
All I can say is that this project is going to require an insane, and I mean INSANE, amount of work to pull off. While the grass roots ethos is of course very nice, if this is to be successful it will need to come topic down - you will need to approach the content providers themselves to see if they really need and are interested in this venture. Looking on the Live Stream bar to my right all of the featured streams are either big sponsored/ticketed tournaments or big team players; they all have sources of income that essentially are derived in the same way as Flattr - popularity equals payment.
I guess your target market will be the content providers of the middle range streamers &c that are unable to secure regular income.
At the other end, there are the consumers which you also need to attract, and no matter how you phrase it you will need to attract these away from TL or to have some kind of integration within the site - I think this is unlikely. Otherwise it will be a case of a user watching a stream from say twitch embedded into TL, then for the user to jump to your site to like it and make the 'microdonation' - which I doubt anyone will do. I am understanding this correctly, right?
Also, the phrase 'social microtransactions' makes me wanna be sick - whether this is the future of tinternet or not it just makes me shiver.
That you give your press release via a verbose post on the TL SC2 forum itself speaks volumes.... Hi Deleuze, thank you for some great feedback. We are definitely aware of the amount of work this kind of project will require, and yes, it scares us a bit. But at the same time we are really thrilled because if we succeed we will actually have helped the community. This is also the main reason for us not going full throttle in the development of this project - as we will need to hear what the community actually think about something like this. We will need to hear input from the consumers, the contributors, TL and basically every part of the community before we even think of proceeding with this. You are correct about middle range streamers and other community members doing a lot for the community but not getting any direct financial support for their work, being the target group for this project. We have also considered the fact that it is not optimal to have a third party site divided from the actual content. You are absolutely right, people would prefer to support the contributor right at the source and an integration with TL would be the best thing ever. We have some technical solutions, but they don't really matter right now. The thing that actually matters is getting a lot of attention from the community. If we get a lot of positive feedback from community here, we have something to show for the major content providers and sites like TL. If we can prove that this is something the community actually wants, we can start integration discussions with TL and other sites. Without the voice of the community backing us up, discussions with the top tier would probably be pointless. Note that integration with other sites is something that is possible with Flattr, hence the choice to make it the base of the platform. Please do consider this as the concept it is, and not a final product. This is just and idea we have which we put some work behind to be able to present it. It's something we do because we think it's fun and it has the potential of being really useful.
Well awesome is all I can say then. I'm glad you are really thinking about this rather than going ahead without any feedback from SC2 stakeholders.
Good luck, the microtransaction module is meant to be the future of money circulating the net - it's 'buzz word' status just has a tendency to make me gag on occasion... Hopefully the concept will work and SC2 will have found an answer to the money problems.
I'd STRONGLY suggested you speak to Total Biscuit in that case - for the Shout Craft Invitational they operated a 'tip jar' method of spectators paying small sums to the players (and I think the organisation); this was on top of any winnings that players did (and didn't get) in the tournament proper. From what I've seen on TL Total Biscuit is very receptive to community ideas/thread (with a tendency to get banned and flame). Of course I'm in no way a spokes person for TB though I do think he deserves a hell of a lot of respect from the community, so please take my words with a dash of salt. TB if you are reading this - sorry if I have opened the floodgates to your inbox!
Good luck in your future endeavors - will keep an eye out.
|
This stands and falls with the website design. Make sure it's easy to use, accessible and userfriendly, because the idea sounds good
|
On February 13 2012 03:30 Artimo wrote:
sounds ok at first. but the vibe im getting is that they just want a piece of the sc pie.
i dunno. i guess we'll have to wait and see.
Yeah. I don't see how the site is going to accomplish what TL already does organically. Good luck in your endeavors though, I'll check it out if you guys go through with it.
|
On February 13 2012 03:30 Artimo wrote:
sounds ok at first. but the vibe im getting is that they just want a piece of the sc pie.
i dunno. i guess we'll have to wait and see.
What's wrong with that?
Overall I think it's a concept that can work. As one user pointed out, you will have to be spot on with your design, interaction, easy of use as much as you are with your functionality. Make sure it's straightforward and makes sense from a UX point of view.
|
Kind of hard to give feedback without being able to use it.
It sounds nice, but that's all I can say.
|
On February 13 2012 03:16 TBone- wrote:
Why should I use this service over team liquid's calendar and stream links?
You won't go to our site to see what streams are live and watch them, you go to it to support the streamer through various donation systems of your choice.
On February 13 2012 03:19 ceaRshaf wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 13 2012 02:32 BBshakenbake wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 01:53 smwatkin wrote:
sounds like a good project. What's the ETA? Thank you! There is no current ETA as everything is depending on the feedback we get from the community. But no matter what this is a huge project and will require a lot of developing and testing. If this is something that seems like a good idea to the community, we will try to publish a beta as soon as possible (x months). But as I said, this all comes down to how the community embraces the concept and how much constructive feedback/help we get Usually the community is negative until you show them something. So pitching the idea to the community might not be the best thing.
This project is too big to be able to just begin developing and show of a part of. If we built any more than we have done so far we would most likely have to rebuild a lot after hearing what the community had to say. The blog and GitHub will have to suffice for now. And by the looks of it, a lot or people are getting the concept. We will be posting more wireframes and updates on the fly.
On February 13 2012 03:31 ETisME wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I quite like the idea, I could see myself using it quite often to check some guides that is written by a specific person and see how he evolves his strategies. I would say SC2 is big enough for more than TL and reddit, especially since TL is the only site that really get it right along with strategy discussion etc.
But it will take a lot of content to attract people to use it. I could see that even without the donations, it could be ideal for not well-known SC2 content providers to start up an account here but progamers, big names like husky are the ones that will make the site big.
It will need good layout, points to separate itself from TL and reddit, something that keeps the fans coming back.
Anyway, GL to it. Will try out the beta if it ever comes out
It seems like you get our vision! Yes, the layout and interaction design will be of most importance and we will put a lot of energy on it.
On February 13 2012 03:41 skipgamer wrote:+ Show Spoiler +It's a good idea. I hope you don't make things too sc2-centric though, all types of content producers for all types of games really need an easy way to be followed. For example I like watching everything from lets-play's for Minecraft and WoW machinima through to pro-gamer streams and tournaments for all types of games from Quake to Trackmania (though that's kind of dying) and what I've always wanted is one "portal" by which to access all my content.
TL has been great for SC2, it really has, I don't think the SC2 scene would be anywhere near what it is without TL. So many great content producers were saying that this is THE community for SC, and so the fans came. If you could develop a place where content producers could say fans should go that covers not only one game, but all games, and in turn a place where people new to watching game-based media in general could go to watch content, and learn about gaming though all different types of content, it would be incredible, and a boon to the gaming community at large far beyond the starcraft community.
Anyway, I don't know if this is within your scope as you say your main goal is to increase direct monetization opportunities for content producers in the Starcraft community, so I'm assuming you will be more focused on the financial side of things. I just think it would be great personally to increase the scope of the project, if not at first, at least in time
We have definitely thought of taking the platform to all gaming communities out there, but that lies waaaay further in time. We picked to try the idea on the Starcraft community first because it's the only one we know thoroughly, really love and by our standars; the most dedicated and serious one.
If this site is utilized to the fullest extent byt the SC community, we will probably make a sister site for another community and so on. But for now; just Starcraft.
On February 13 2012 04:34 lastkarrde wrote:
Why NodeJS? It doesn't make sense to use an event platform for a relatively straight forward CRUD website..
I don't know the main reason for picking Node.js as I am not one of the developers, but what I can recall is that the developers thought it would be fun to try making it in Node and sees a lot of potential in it. I'll ask a developer to answer more thoroughly tomorrow!
On February 13 2012 04:57 Deleuze wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 13 2012 02:27 BBshakenbake wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 01:42 Deleuze wrote:
Hmm, I know that a topic like this is going to attract a major amount of skepticism...
All I can say is that this project is going to require an insane, and I mean INSANE, amount of work to pull off. While the grass roots ethos is of course very nice, if this is to be successful it will need to come topic down - you will need to approach the content providers themselves to see if they really need and are interested in this venture. Looking on the Live Stream bar to my right all of the featured streams are either big sponsored/ticketed tournaments or big team players; they all have sources of income that essentially are derived in the same way as Flattr - popularity equals payment.
I guess your target market will be the content providers of the middle range streamers &c that are unable to secure regular income.
At the other end, there are the consumers which you also need to attract, and no matter how you phrase it you will need to attract these away from TL or to have some kind of integration within the site - I think this is unlikely. Otherwise it will be a case of a user watching a stream from say twitch embedded into TL, then for the user to jump to your site to like it and make the 'microdonation' - which I doubt anyone will do. I am understanding this correctly, right?
Also, the phrase 'social microtransactions' makes me wanna be sick - whether this is the future of tinternet or not it just makes me shiver.
That you give your press release via a verbose post on the TL SC2 forum itself speaks volumes.... Hi Deleuze, thank you for some great feedback. We are definitely aware of the amount of work this kind of project will require, and yes, it scares us a bit. But at the same time we are really thrilled because if we succeed we will actually have helped the community. This is also the main reason for us not going full throttle in the development of this project - as we will need to hear what the community actually think about something like this. We will need to hear input from the consumers, the contributors, TL and basically every part of the community before we even think of proceeding with this. You are correct about middle range streamers and other community members doing a lot for the community but not getting any direct financial support for their work, being the target group for this project. We have also considered the fact that it is not optimal to have a third party site divided from the actual content. You are absolutely right, people would prefer to support the contributor right at the source and an integration with TL would be the best thing ever. We have some technical solutions, but they don't really matter right now. The thing that actually matters is getting a lot of attention from the community. If we get a lot of positive feedback from community here, we have something to show for the major content providers and sites like TL. If we can prove that this is something the community actually wants, we can start integration discussions with TL and other sites. Without the voice of the community backing us up, discussions with the top tier would probably be pointless. Note that integration with other sites is something that is possible with Flattr, hence the choice to make it the base of the platform. Please do consider this as the concept it is, and not a final product. This is just and idea we have which we put some work behind to be able to present it. It's something we do because we think it's fun and it has the potential of being really useful. Well awesome is all I can say then. I'm glad you are really thinking about this rather than going ahead without any feedback from SC2 stakeholders. Good luck, the microtransaction module is meant to be the future of money circulating the net - it's 'buzz word' status just has a tendency to make me gag on occasion... Hopefully the concept will work and SC2 will have found an answer to the money problems. I'd STRONGLY suggested you speak to Total Biscuit in that case - for the Shout Craft Invitational they operated a 'tip jar' method of spectators paying small sums to the players (and I think the organisation); this was on top of any winnings that players did (and didn't get) in the tournament proper. From what I've seen on TL Total Biscuit is very receptive to community ideas/thread (with a tendency to get banned and flame). Of course I'm in no way a spokes person for TB though I do think he deserves a hell of a lot of respect from the community, so please take my words with a dash of salt. TB if you are reading this - sorry if I have opened the floodgates to your inbox! Good luck in your future endeavors - will keep an eye out.
Thanks! We will definitely try to get in contact with TB and other members who are on a professional level community wise. We'd love to get as much feedback from every tier of the community, hight and low, but I feel TB would bless us with great insight on this specific matter.
On February 13 2012 04:59 Split. wrote:
This stands and falls with the website design. Make sure it's easy to use, accessible and userfriendly, because the idea sounds good
Correct! We will be putting a lot of thought on this matter. As we all work professionally with the web one way or another, we do know a think our two about interaction design
|
Northern Ireland25014 Posts
This is actually a pretty good idea, will check developments with interest.
|
On February 13 2012 00:34 Zumeh wrote:
The Web Developer is an inverted Destiny?
So Destiny is a Developer Web?
|
Canada5155 Posts
Edit: Misinterpreted the intent and scope of this. Re-opened.
|
Canada5155 Posts
This is a great idea, but to move it from idea to reality, you might want to start with something a bit more narrow in scope that you can implement and build upon. Good luck
|
On February 14 2012 05:43 HawaiianPig wrote:
This is a great idea, but to move it from idea to reality, you might want to start with something a bit more narrow in scope that you can implement and build upon. Good luck
Thank you so much for reopening the thread and thanks for the advice, HawaiianPig!
|
Why flattr? That system has no uptake and is simply not viable. Look at their cost structure:
When you add or withdraw money you only pay a fee to the payment provider you choose. This fee is displayed when you add or withdraw money (you can see it on your payment history as well). We take 10% of your incoming revenue as a fee to keep the Flattr systems afloat, hope that's ok?
http://flattr.com/support/faq
Minusing the transaction and flattr tithe, you're looking at 15% or more of the contribution going somewhere not eSports related. In comparison, Chipin is free. Why not build over chipin instead?
|
This really is a fantastic idea! Being able to support your favorite player or just an "upcoming star" and at the same time directing users to solid community sites like TL.net is truly a win-win concept.
Keep up the good work. I will definitely think about ways to help you get more ideas for this project.
-Winna
|
There's waaay too much fluff talk in the proposal. Give me a brief overview of what makes your idea interesting and a FAQ.
I read that whole post and cannot figure out what would be new or innovative about the idea except that it'd be an aggregation of profile information... with flattr integrated? Am I missing something?
How do you filter the good content from the shit?
What would be the pull for me as an average user to use a site like this if Reddit already filters out the good content from the shit? Why don't I just visit Reddit for interesting content?
|
On February 13 2012 04:34 lastkarrde wrote:
Why NodeJS? It doesn't make sense to use an event platform for a relatively straight forward CRUD website..
Well, one of the first reasons we choose node was to make it fun to develop. To make it easier to keep the interest up!
Also, building it on top of Node.js, MongoDB and Redis will allow us to make really interesting and fun real-time stuff later on! Like pushing out new "crafts", as we call them, as they get created. Reorder the trending list in real-time (might get annoying though..) etc etc Plus it scales quite well so hosting will be pretty cheap. Building on top of a more traditional CMS like Drupal would increase server costs alot since it's more heavy weight.
|
It's really cool and all, but what the hell is it actually supposed to be? You never mentioned once the actual content you'd include in your site
|
On February 14 2012 18:45 gnatinator wrote:
There's waaay too much fluff talk in the proposal. Give me a brief overview of what makes your idea interesting and a FAQ.
I read that whole post and cannot figure out what would be new or innovative about the idea except that it'd be an aggregation of profile information... with flattr integrated? Am I missing something?
How do you filter the good content from the shit?
What would be the pull for me as an average user to use a site like this if Reddit already filters out the good content from the shit? Why don't I just visit Reddit for interesting content?
Hi gnatinator,
The main purpose of the site will not be to present interesting information, that we leave to Reddit and TL. We do not want to steer away visitors form these sites by any means.
What we wanna do is to create a simple support platform for the community. If you find a good piece of content, let's say a piece of fan art. Then if the creator has a profile on our site you will be able to show him you support for that specific piece of art, but also see other creations from that user in his profile.
The main focus is to give the community an easy way to support each other. The second one is to give people a good way to aggregate their stuff for their own sake and for the conusmers, as a lot of content is spread out all over TL, Reddit, Twitch, Youtube, blogs etc. Please do note that we won't host any content on our own site, we will merely be a library consisting of supportable links to other sites.
To answer your question, there will be no need to filter out the good content from the bad, as you will already have found the good content prior to visiting our site.
|
On February 14 2012 19:21 Stropheum wrote:
It's really cool and all, but what the hell is it actually supposed to be? You never mentioned once the actual content you'd include in your site
Hi, I expalained the concept in the post above to gnatinator and I hope that answer will answer you question aswell?
Bottom line: the site will be a tool for the community to use to make it easier to support their favorite contributors of the community.
|
It would be cool if you did your website, but also contacted teamliquid.net and added this service as part of liquipedia. The only reason I say this is because I like the idea of content provider profiles, donation buttons, and content compilations, but I know I won't ever leave teamliquid.net for anything Starcraft related. I don't know why... I just know I won't haha.
|
On February 14 2012 19:36 Beef Noodles wrote:
It would be cool if you did your website, but also contacted teamliquid.net and added this service as part of liquipedia. The only reason I say this is because I like the idea of content provider profiles, donation buttons, and content compilations, but I know I won't ever leave teamliquid.net for anything Starcraft related. I don't know why... I just know I won't haha.
Yes, integration with TL would be great. Imagine being able to support and author directly after reading his guide through a button. However we are far away from being able to do that, not techonolgy wise, but project wise. We need a way more solid base before we even contact TL about something like that. Our proccess looks like this right now:
1. Collect feedback from the community
2. Analyze the feedback
3. Continue building the platform with the feedback in mind
4. Release alpha-version
5. Collect feedback on the alpha and analyze
6. Continue developing based on the feedback from the alpha
7. Release beta, get feedback ->analyze -> develop
8. Final release, get feedback ->analyze -> develop -> repeat ∞
We will contact TL and other SC-realated sites after the alpha as we need something to actually present before we continue discussions with them. We will aslo need a lot of feedback from the community. If we can show TL that this is something that the community actually wants, we figure the chances of a collaboration increases drastically.
|
On February 14 2012 06:36 Primadog wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Why flattr? That system has no uptake and is simply not viable. Look at their cost structure: When you add or withdraw money you only pay a fee to the payment provider you choose. This fee is displayed when you add or withdraw money (you can see it on your payment history as well). We take 10% of your incoming revenue as a fee to keep the Flattr systems afloat, hope that's ok? http://flattr.com/support/faqMinusing the transaction and flattr tithe, you're looking at 15% or more of the contribution going somewhere not eSports related. In comparison, Chipin is free. Why not build over chipin instead?
Hi Primadog, that’s a really good question!
Flattrs obviously “large” cut of the money is definitely something we thought about too. Here is the backstory. But we want to start with saying that even though we plan to use Flattr it wont be the only way to support via “project hive”. We want to hook in any system that people wants to use to support the community as that is the main reason for us doing this. We plan to add PayPal, Kickstarter, or any great system that we can. But we think Project Hive and Flattr is the perfect match here is why. (Feel free to speak if you have a different opinion as this is an open discussion.)
We have thought of a system that makes it possible to support your favorite content provider for a long time. Something simple that works well with the way we consume our favorite form of entertainment, Starcraft. Sure, most big players and casters have a paypal donate somewhere, but a donation with PayPal is invisible to the community and technically not great for how we want to support. We want to easily give small amounts to different types of content, like a vod, stream, team or fan art etc. with one click, show it to the world and feel proud we did something great. Kind of like a Facebook like button, but with actual value, not just a pat on the back. It turned out that Flattr actually is that system. They let you set a monthly budget you can afford and then divide your money by clicking Flattr buttons, just as you click like buttons. That was for us the perfect match, people can support, show it and give something back. At the same time we would get like toplists of content people love and supports.
We have also wondered why the fee for Flattr is as high as it is and found out the following. First Flattr is a very new system (like 1,5 years of public life) which mean that they need to get some kind of revenue to be able to develop and sustain their product. But most important they don’t have any “per transaction fee”, meaning that if you spend 2 euros/month towards 100 different vods/players it will be splitted 100 times. That is not possible with any other system. Eg PayPal have a transaction fee of over 3% but also about 30 cents per transaction. Meaning that if you would to give 50 cents to someone with PayPal they will get almost nothing. Giving 2euros/month to something would yield higher fees with most systems then with Flattr.This project is all about micro donations, it's less about the actual money and more about showing your appreciation.
ChipIn uses PayPal for the actual transactions
+ Show Spoiler +ChipIn does not charge any fees to organizers and contributors of events that send payments directly to the Organizer’s PayPal account. However, PayPal Premier or Business accounts may be subject to fees from PayPal.
We have to accept that if we don’t want do develop our own donation platform from scratch, we have to use an existing system and pay their quote. Once you accept that and focus on pure functionality, Flattr definitely seems to be a perfect fit for this project. Hopefully Flattrs cut will be shaved when they mature and grow as a company. But for now, we just have to deal with it.
Another reason for picking Flattr is that their headquarter is here in Malmö, Sweden - where we live. This means we can have actual physical meetings with their developers/management, which speeds up the process greatly. I pitched this idea to Flattr four months ago and they have been a great help since to our developers. Flattr do have an open and a very advanced API - which is great for us. What’s even greater is that one of their API developers plays Starcraft and likes our idea. He’s been our main contact at Flattr and has helped us greatly with the back end development so far, something he’s doing on his spare time and not as an Flattr employee, which is even cooler. I am pretty sure that if we approached Paypal or any other major service we wouldn’t get this kind of resources and would probably just be ignored. This is a pretty huge project, and the more time we can save without decreasing the quality of the project overall - the better for all parties.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
