From vanevery@3DProgrammer.com Thu Apr 18 14:00:02 2002 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: "Brandon Van Every" Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.games.development.design,comp.games.development.industry Subject: RFD: comp.games.development.design.moderated moderated Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <1019163247.97673@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development.design.moderated Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 20:54:07 UTC Lines: 170 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:11758 news.groups:405979 comp.games.development.design:29284 comp.games.development.industry:20198 REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD) moderated group comp.games.development.design.moderated This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a world-wide moderated Usenet newsgroup comp.games.development.design.moderated. This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below. Newsgroup line: comp.games.development.design.moderated Designing gameplay and rules systems. (Moderated) RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design.moderated The unmoderated forum comp.games.development.design is overrun with personal attacks, off-topic posts, inappropriate cross-posts, and badly formatted posts. The signal-to-noise ratio of game design discussions can be greatly improved if we create a new, separate moderated newsgroup. Such a forum is more likely to attract game industry professionals to Usenet and thereby increase the value of the c.g.d.* hierarchy as a game industry resource. The old c.g.d.design newsgroup would remain in place for those who do not want their conversations moderated. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design.moderated Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. This newsgroup is co-moderated and all posts are subject to moderator approval. The following RULES of debate shall be in effect at all times: - Posts shall be made in plain ASCII with line wrap at 72 characters. - No rich text, HTML, binaries, or attachments. - No off-topic posts. - No cross-posts. - All arguments must remain intellectually productive. - Inflammatory remarks can be intellectually productive, but usually aren't. - Two people talking past each other is not intellectually productive. - You are entitled to debate ideas, not people. - Personal attacks are never allowed, ever. No excuses. - Debaters are expected to voluntarily de-escalate a conflict when it gets out of hand. If the co-moderators do not feel that these debating RULES are being adhered to, then they will issue warnings, end a topic, reject posts, and/or ban debaters from the newsgroup as they see fit. To ensure more predictability and fairness of co-moderation, the co-moderators shall not approve their own posts, and shall address problems as a team if the need arises. In addition, please at least consider the following GUIDELINES. Guidelines are not rules, they are not enforced, and ignoring a guideline is acceptable community behavior. However, we feel they make the forum more useful for the majority. So, we hope you swallow them of your own free will: - Please stay focused on the current topic. - Please try to add something new to the discussion. - Please don't repeat the same argument for months on end, try to expand your thinking. - Please don't overquote. - Please post more than 'me too' or 'I agree', give your reasons. - Please don't reply at the top and leave everyone else's comments at the bottom. It breaks continuity and everyone has to guess what points you're referring to exactly. END CHARTER. MODERATOR INFO: comp.games.development.design.moderated Moderator: Tom Sloper Moderator: Robert Tweed Moderator: Brandon Van Every Moderator: Peter Cowderoy Tom Sloper has been a contributor to a number of game design and game industry newsgroups for several years. The Lessons on his "School-a-rama" section of his website (Sloperama.com) serve functionally as FAQs for aspiring designers and game industry "wannabes." Sloper wrote and maintains the FAQs for the mahjong newsgroup (rec.games.mahjong). Sloper's illusions of game industry expertise come out of his twenty-two years in the industry of making electronic entertainment, working at such companies as Atari Corporation, Sega Enterprises Inc., Activision, and Western Technologies. Sloper has been directly involved in the creation of 80 unique game titles (not including ports and localizations). Of those products, Sloper designed 18 unique game titles and produced 56 unique game titles. So he seems to think he's qualified to moderate. Robert Tweed has been a Usenet regular for many years and has been actively involved in discussions in comp.games.development.design and the moderated list gamedesign-l. Robert is passionate about games and game design. Professionally, Robert develops small promotional games for blue-chip clients while for fun he is working on a number of larger personal projects. Although this will be his first role as a moderator, he has proven to be level-headed, even tempered and objective, and so is well suited to the role of Moderator. In addition he currently dedicates around two hours each day to reading and replying to messages so should be able to cope with the demands of moderation. Brandon Van Every was the original Newsgroup Proponent of the comp.games.development.* hierarchy in 1998. He wrote its Charters and while they are not obeyed :-) they are still good Charters. In May 2000 he created the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gamedesign-l/ mailing list out of frustration with the level of incivility in the c.g.d.* hierarchy. He stewarded the list as a benevolent dictator until April 2001, when the present co-moderator format was adopted. The rules of debate were finalized at that time and have proven very successful in practice at keeping people's tempers cool. Brandon is well qualified to handle the delicate dance of moderation, having done so successfully for 2 years now. Peter Cowderoy has been posting and sometimes even contributing to the comp.games.development.* hierarchy since 1998, having previously been sighted in rec.games.programmer. He subscribed to gamedesign-l early on and has since become one of the moderators, a role in which he has resided for a year, experience which will prove useful should he have to step in as backup moderator. Rumours that he hunts down trolls with a lamethrower are entirely unfounded - a sniper rifle is far more efficient. END MODERATOR INFO. PROCEDURE: This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups should be raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For Votes (CFV) will be posted by a neutral vote taker. Please do not attempt to vote until this happens. All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups. This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal". Please refer to these documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any questions about the process. DISTRIBUTION: This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups news.groups comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry and pointers will be posted to the following mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gamedesign-l/ Proponent: Brandon Van Every