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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 03:48   #1
Phil M
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A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

The number of changes we've had in recent rounds seems to show a lack of vision within Planetarion. So why is there no project leader for Planetarion?

At the moment there are seperate "departments" of people who seem to do their own thing at times. The multihunter department decides to remove the support planet rule. I thought this department was here to remove cheaters and instead we have a department which is setting all sorts of little rules.

I want to see a more successful team which runs Planetarion, I'd like to see the following:


Planetarion Manager - A non-coding job with control over all aspects of Planetarion. This person sets the vision of the game, decides the future as well as most recruitment for Planetarion staff. Any other member of staff who no longer fulfills their job can be removed by the manager, instead of being kept around in other positions trying to stay as long as possible. The manager should set deadlines and know how to manage people.

I'd suggest that someone like Appocomaster would be most suitable for this job, assuming he would drop his coding duties to let others work on the game.

Development Team - Similar to the existing team but is ultimately answerable to the manager. Preferably with more recruitment as many projects (such as the portal) aren't being delivered.

Support Team - Similar to the existing support team, the current team is doing okay.

Gamemasters Team - The GMs. Similar to the multihunter team, why a team which enforces other rules are still called multihunters confuses me. These are the people who enforce rules but do not set them at all. If any suggestions are to be made then they go through the manager.

The Rest - Anything not covered above which helps run Planetarion. Server administrator, forums administrator, IRC, etc. These are extra roles which help the game and are all answerable to the manager. They are not inflated roles with grand titles to keep people in PA Team, but instead people who can help the game with their field of expertise.


One of the key points is that the manager should be able to spot when someone else isn't contributing much to the game anymore and replace them. As a manager I'd just say thank you for your contribution, but it's now time for someone else to have their chance at helping to make the game something better. This is something which I feel holds Planetarion back, many of the staff are the same old people and very few people are given an opportunity to shine due to a lack of recruitment.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 09:57   #2
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

I think that Kal has the PA Manager role cornered as he has fingers in many pots; if Appoco gave up coding I'm pretty sure there would be little dev done on PA as the coding pool would shrink from 2 to 1 (Cin does some if I remember correctly).

Dev Team was myk and Appoco but then myk found real life. If the community was asked to do the portal I'm pretty sure that we could come up with something pretty damn funky and in a much shorter time frame than we've had with the current portal issue.

I think that one of the cockups PA Team do is continually blurring lines of who does what and giving too much responsibility to one person, ie Fiery running 2 departments; dont get me wrong, no disrespect to Fiery but you don't see in a normal company someone incharge of both Sales and Recruiting, they're separate jobs with separate work loads.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 10:02   #3
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Indeed, the multihunter department is both judge and executioner at the moment, it's something that I've not been totally happy about myself.

As for the vision, you're right, there is little to none. PA has been pathetically low on people who could and would develop the game with a little more long term vision. Appoco and co do their best, but I think it's clear they either can't do it at all, or just don't have the time to do it.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 11:08   #4
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk
As for the vision, you're right, there is little to none. PA has been pathetically low on people who could and would develop the game with a little more long term vision. Appoco and co do their best, but I think it's clear they either can't do it at all, or just don't have the time to do it.
They don't want to or cannot do it, only options. Since Spinner's departure there has been little to no "consistent" development. What was done by Appoco, Cin & co is to randomly select things to code without actually considering how the changes affect long-term gameplay, mainly because nobody feels responsible to actually decide what the gameplay should be like. Sorry Kal & Co, but saying "Planetarion should be an online science-fiction strategy game with thousands of players" simply is not a gameplay outline. That's just the very first sentence of each game design document, but to describe gameplay you need a whole ot more. Please note that I do not advocate setting up a game design document in full details, but we should at least have a rough document describing which elements are supposed to be in the game and especially how they are supposed to work together to achieve certain goals (yes, exactly, this is a vision in regards to game development...). Outlining such a vision does not take time. Time is then only required to actually balance details.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 11:43   #5
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

didnt misty come up with a design document some eons ago?
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 13:45   #6
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

lol
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 14:42   #7
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Smudge
I think that Kal has the PA Manager role cornered as he has fingers in many pots; if Appoco gave up coding I'm pretty sure there would be little dev done on PA as the coding pool would shrink from 2 to 1 (Cin does some if I remember correctly).

Dev Team was myk and Appoco but then myk found real life. If the community was asked to do the portal I'm pretty sure that we could come up with something pretty damn funky and in a much shorter time frame than we've had with the current portal issue.
Recruit recruit recruit! The effort to get extra staff for Planetarion seems to have dried up badly.

There seems to be reasonable recruitment for multihunting and the support team, Fiery has two forum threads for both of these. It's an effort at least.

Game development isn't quite as fast as it could be and no recruitment is done. Some recruitment was done a while ago but it doesn't seem as if anyone got recruited from it, instead yet another support person was chosen. Many talented people are being missed because of the lack of recruitment here. I'd guess that some of the more skilled coders wouldn't have any interest in joining support or multihunters, they're being missed if this is the only recruitment being done. If my memory serves me correctly Appocomaster, myk and lenore are all people who have been through the support team. Sadly I can't think of anyone recruited in any other way.

Portal development is also slow and poor. Many people have offered to help with this in the past and the same people who have failed to give us a new website are the ones working on it. This is an area in which PA Team needs help from people.


I'd suggest the following to help bring extra useful staff to Planetarion:

Go through all people who have offered to help on the portal or game development and ask if they'd like to help finish the new website and portal. Ideally this wouldn't involve an NDA. Get the best contributors from this and turn them into game developers and then get them to sign an NDA. By introducing them to the portal and getting that done you'd have a finished website and you can see if the work they've done is of any use and if they're worthwhile to keep for more development.

Real life affects us all, most of PA Team have done a good job before but it's obvious that extra help is required.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 19:59   #8
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil M
Recruit recruit recruit! The effort to get extra staff for Planetarion seems to have dried up badly.
That's because no-one wants to do it.



What you're ignoring, Phil, is that Planetarion has no paid employees. It is no-one's job to make sure that Planetarion succeeds. Jolt have made it clear that it's not their priority.

There is little reason to work on Planetarion unless you feel particularly affectionate towards the game or its community. You certainly aren't going to get any financial reward. It's very unlikely that anyone can be found with the kind of managerial ability you want to see who isn't already working for another company - and this automatically limits their disposable time. In recent years PA has primarily had university students running the game, since they have the closest skill set to what's required and also have the spare time.


But at the end of the day, they're not professionals even if they work to professional standards (which I don't doubt). If you want professionals to run Planetarion then they'll need to be paid professional salaries, which evidently isn't going to happen.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 22:47   #9
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

No offense, but PA has never had a vision of what it wanted to be. It was a fluke that was simple enough for the community to do what they wanted with it, thus spawning the format of alliance wars and politics, non of which existed in the game to begin with. The playerbase had a vision, not the devs.

So what happened to that vision? Well, in essence the devs tried to "implement" the vision of the alliances, but because they never even understood their own game(don't argue with me on this, there's too many examples of it, know your PA history), their attempts at implementing this "vision" resulted in a needlessly complex environment that strangled the creative gameplay. Bad decisions, populism and inept leadership hindered progress and in fact set the game back. Instead of developing, the game has been devolving into the weak replicas which existed before and during it's hayday.

And really, did anyone expect Jolt, an outsider financer, to come in and provide the game with leadership and moment for progress? Seriously, they were the only people more ignorant about the game than the devs...
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 23:20   #10
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

You guys can go round and round on this all you want, this simple fact of the matter is that unless the game goes open source, or Jolt does a sudden about face and injects some leadership and money into the game there is really nothing Appoco or Kal can or will do to change the current direction of game development. It's frustrating to be sure, but unfortunately there is really nothing us average gamers can do about it unless someone wants to pony up the money to buy the game from Jolt.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 23:28   #11
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Monroe
You guys can go round and round on this all you want, this simple fact of the matter is that unless the game goes open source, or Jolt does a sudden about face and injects some leadership and money into the game there is really nothing Appoco or Kal can or will do to change the current direction of game development. It's frustrating to be sure, but unfortunately there is really nothing us average gamers can do about it unless someone wants to pony up the money to buy the game from Jolt.
Spinner has tried before, Jolt said no.
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Unread 8 Jan 2008, 23:37   #12
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Open source is a way of coding, which still requires a centralized management. If the management is inept, no amount of free coding will fix that. For understanding these concepts better, I recommend reading about Cathedral and Bazaar coding.

However, you are correct, I doubt anyone on the current staff knows the game well enough to create a vision much less implement it. That's never been what PA staff was chosen to do, and thus non of them have ever been capable of doing such things.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 01:58   #13
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Open source isn't the answer because, as Sun_Tzu said, it's a response to coding needs not general needs. Planetarion's biggest problem at the moment is in management and development.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 03:27   #14
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

It would be nice if recruitment was taken more seriously. I'd guess that most people agree that the game needs real leadership, but it's easier for PA Team to just carry on as they are and ignore it. Yes they can probably run the game for a long time, but I really think it would take new people with new ideas to help rejuvenate the game.

What I find annoying are mistakes being made and not that much is done to improve the situation. A dead portal has been launched and instead of trying to get people who might have experience in the area of building a portal they tend to try and redo the entire thing all over again by the same people who made the mistakes in the first place. Many people have offered help in the past (myself included) but seem to get ignored.

It's hard to help Planetarion when the people who run it don't seem to want much help.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 08:10   #15
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

PA has never been willing to listen to those who could have helped it. It's always seemed to me that the people working on stats and game mechanics were picked quite arbitrarily, whilst ignoring offers from several well respected and knowledgeable community members.

Now it's a bit late, since almost all of those who knew enough to be able to do some good have long since quit playing.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 10:00   #16
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Joining PA Team has, since r7 or so, more been a case of nepotism than providing skill.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 12:49   #17
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Last time there was a 'manager', things fell to pot Its all well and good in practice, but when your not paid for it and relying on others it just doesn't work (I was there).

A leader is needed, but its very hard to do whats needed with very little support from those above. Jolt need to commit a bit more first before anything will really happen down here
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 12:56   #18
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

with regards to PA development..whats the point in hiring people when the PA Suggestions forums does exactly the same job...and even that is ignored most of the time.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 12:57   #19
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Because there's not a lack of random suggestions, there's a lack of consistent longterm development. Did you read the thread at all or did you just decide to post the first thing you could think of when you saw the thread title?
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 13:04   #20
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

but when none of the "random" suggestions are implemented, how can they possibly make it to long term development. Theres no point in saying something is a long term development simply because you think it will last a while. Lots of these random suggestions could be altered, adapted and improved on to make it successful for the future and for the game
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 15:17   #21
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

off topic, there needs to be a systematic approach to suggestions forum to make sure they get implemented, ie :

* template for people to suggest there idea, so not just 3 paragraphs or 3 words of your idea, but getting people actually thinking about it and saying how it would benefit the community, the pro's and con's of it, development time, exploitable or not etc

* a running log to be kept CONSTANTLY updated (i think there is one at the moment but its not updated much) to let people in the community to know whats what

* proper moderation in there, ie once a suggestion has died down for it to be closed but still kept for record.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 15:22   #22
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Smudge, someone needs to be there to implement things before anything useful like that can ever happen
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 15:54   #23
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by [DW]Entropy
but when none of the "random" suggestions are implemented, how can they possibly make it to long term development. Theres no point in saying something is a long term development simply because you think it will last a while. Lots of these random suggestions could be altered, adapted and improved on to make it successful for the future and for the game
I think you misunderstand the meaning of longterm development. You NEED a longterm development plan to be able to decide whether suggested features fit in that plan or not. You can use it to check if the result of a suggested feature won't interfere with the desired final state of the product(version). Without such a plan (or vision) development basicly comes down to whatever (random) feature a developer cba to implement at a given time. And that isn't exactly a winning strategy, since you'll most likely end up with conflicting features, and thus a bad product.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 17:17   #24
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by furball
Open source isn't the answer because, as Sun_Tzu said, it's a response to coding needs not general needs. Planetarion's biggest problem at the moment is in management and development.
Going open source would hopefully make the game not for profit. With that perspective they might be able to attract management who is qualified, and also willing to work for free. Part of the problem is that as things stand at the moment PA is a for profit company where none of the employees get paid. This means there is a natural disincentive for the best people to work on PA.

The PA team is aware of the need for long term development, and there is a pipeline of sorts that helps narrow what suggestions from this forum get seriously considered for implementation, but it is not systematically organized, and there is no clear leadership to develop vision. This is in large part because of what I have already mentioned, there is simply no incentive to put in the hard work and long hours necessary to develop and maintain a consistent vision for the game.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 18:59   #25
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by [DW]Entropy
but when none of the "random" suggestions are implemented, how can they possibly make it to long term development. Theres no point in saying something is a long term development simply because you think it will last a while. Lots of these random suggestions could be altered, adapted and improved on to make it successful for the future and for the game
Wandows covered your misunderstanding of 'long-term development', but I have more to add.


Most of the suggestions on the Suggestions forum these days are repeats of old suggestions that have already been argued against ad nauseaum. Others are completely hopeless because they'd excessively unbalance the game. Some are good, but are lost in the dross.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Smudge
* proper moderation in there, ie once a suggestion has died down for it to be closed but still kept for record.
Sure, but I'd like to emphasise that it's not up to forum moderators to do this - there needs to be an active development team looking at every suggestion and deciding what to do with it. Their decisions can then be passed onto mods to manipulate the original thread appropriately.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Monroe
Going open source would hopefully make the game not for profit. With that perspective they might be able to attract management who is qualified, and also willing to work for free.
What a load of balls. Open source is great for work that can be done freelance (e.g. coding) but managers don't work for free. There needs to be a guaranteed income for the game to pay for servers and bandwidth as well as any staff - and it's impossible to rely on donations with a game of this size. It'd be a suicidal business plan.
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Unread 9 Jan 2008, 20:57   #26
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

I think people are getting a little bit confused about my expectations when I suggest the game needs a manager. I'm not suggesting a person with management training or experience in management is essential!

The ideal manager is someone who understands Planetarion as well as game design in general. Someone who has a good idea on the strengths and weaknesses of Planetarion and how to improve them. A person who is familiar with web development as well as the coding side, although this could be a person who doesn't code so much anymore. Most importantly this person needs to be a people person, who can recruit people and delegate the tasks which need completing. Not someone who just gives a huge task to another team member but stays with them every step of the way to ensure that the job is done.

Basically someone similar to Spinner. He had an idea, a vision, was good at recruiting other people and is a reasonable coder. I wouldn't say he's the best at any of them but he obviously had the ability to lead Planetarion.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 00:07   #27
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by furball
What a load of balls. Open source is great for work that can be done freelance (e.g. coding) but managers don't work for free. There needs to be a guaranteed income for the game to pay for servers and bandwidth as well as any staff - and it's impossible to rely on donations with a game of this size. It'd be a suicidal business plan.
Not for profit does not necessarily mean it costs nothing to play, and yes good managers will work for free on open source projects, look at linux among many others. I for one would donate my time to help manage this game (I do long term software design planning in rl) if it was either a payed position, or Jolt made it open source.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 10:43   #28
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by furball
What a load of balls. Open source is great for work that can be done freelance (e.g. coding) but managers don't work for free. There needs to be a guaranteed income for the game to pay for servers and bandwidth as well as any staff - and it's impossible to rely on donations with a game of this size. It'd be a suicidal business plan.
Actually, Monroe is closer to the truth than you are. And there's plenty of successful, big and complicated open source projects to prove it.

[edit]Oh, I was too late.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 12:21   #29
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk
Actually, Monroe is closer to the truth than you are. And there's plenty of successful, big and complicated open source projects to prove it.

[edit]Oh, I was too late.
There's an important difference in that what those projects require is a lead programmer and what PA requires is someone who isn't necessarily a coder at all, simply someone who understands the game mechanics.

I might aswell say it as everyone who knows me knows what I've been implying throug-out the thread, and that's that there really aren't that many people(except me and a few other retirees), who actually understand game mechanics well enough to do the job of managing this game. Arrogant? Yes.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 12:27   #30
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil M
I think people are getting a little bit confused about my expectations when I suggest the game needs a manager. I'm not suggesting a person with management training or experience in management is essential!

The ideal manager is someone who understands Planetarion as well as game design in general. Someone who has a good idea on the strengths and weaknesses of Planetarion and how to improve them. A person who is familiar with web development as well as the coding side, although this could be a person who doesn't code so much anymore. Most importantly this person needs to be a people person, who can recruit people and delegate the tasks which need completing. Not someone who just gives a huge task to another team member but stays with them every step of the way to ensure that the job is done.

Basically someone similar to Spinner. He had an idea, a vision, was good at recruiting other people and is a reasonable coder. I wouldn't say he's the best at any of them but he obviously had the ability to lead Planetarion.
I'm afraid you've got a rather unrealistic view of Spinner. He might have been a reasonable coder, and he might have been somewhatable to recruit people, but his recruitment choices were seldom spot on, as I said earlier he really did not envision what PA became and he failed horribly at understanding what it had become and managing what it was. Passage of time has faded the memories of many of his failures it seems.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 12:36   #31
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Monroe
Not for profit does not necessarily mean it costs nothing to play, and yes good managers will work for free on open source projects, look at linux among many others. I for one would donate my time to help manage this game (I do long term software design planning in rl) if it was either a payed position, or Jolt made it open source.
From what I saw the other day, you might well have the potential to become quite good at understanding the workings of this game, and I don't doubt your skill at what you do, however you would do good in recruiting some knowledgeable people to work with(if you ever choose to apply for such a task and were to be given the responsability).

ps. For reference I've often used teams of people to bounce ideas of, knowing each persons strong points and weaknesses. If I can defend my viewpoints against any objections they may have, then I know it's a good decision.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 20:14   #32
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil M
The number of changes we've had in recent rounds seems to show a lack of vision within Planetarion. So why is there no project leader for Planetarion?

At the moment there are seperate "departments" of people who seem to do their own thing at times. The multihunter department decides to remove the support planet rule. I thought this department was here to remove cheaters and instead we have a department which is setting all sorts of little rules.

I want to see a more successful team which runs Planetarion, I'd like to see the following:


Planetarion Manager - A non-coding job with control over all aspects of Planetarion. This person sets the vision of the game, decides the future as well as most recruitment for Planetarion staff. Any other member of staff who no longer fulfills their job can be removed by the manager, instead of being kept around in other positions trying to stay as long as possible. The manager should set deadlines and know how to manage people.

I'd suggest that someone like Appocomaster would be most suitable for this job, assuming he would drop his coding duties to let others work on the game.

Development Team - Similar to the existing team but is ultimately answerable to the manager. Preferably with more recruitment as many projects (such as the portal) aren't being delivered.
If the manager sucks, there is no one to fix things up, since he holds all the strings, there should be atleast some vouchers to support his ideas or decline them, One of these vouchers would be the head coder, seeing he is one to know what can be done and what can't be done. Lets be honest nothing is done without the coding team so naturally they deserve some freedom to work and a say about their own visions.

There should be an active developement team, which makes suggestions themselfs to be valued by the community, or otherway around a team that values suggestions made by the community and possibly finnish them in form which is doable by the coders.

The hard part about coding is many does it their own way, (as much as I understand about it) and if there are many to code, finally no one can read or edit the mess. Thats why the developement speed is limited and the amount of coders need to be limited.

Anyway anyone in the team shouldnt hold up to their positions so tightly, I am sure they will be let in back to work for the game, when they loaded their batteries and hold interest again. Even the HCs of the alliances take breaks and returns to their work when able again.

Good post!
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 21:15   #33
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

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Passage of time has faded the memories of many of his failures it seems.
always the case, time fades failures and enhances the successes.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 21:48   #34
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ave
If the manager sucks, there is no one to fix things up, since he holds all the strings, there should be atleast some vouchers to support his ideas or decline them, One of these vouchers would be the head coder, seeing he is one to know what can be done and what can't be done. Lets be honest nothing is done without the coding team so naturally they deserve some freedom to work and a say about their own visions.

There should be an active developement team, which makes suggestions themselfs to be valued by the community, or otherway around a team that values suggestions made by the community and possibly finnish them in form which is doable by the coders.

The hard part about coding is many does it their own way, (as much as I understand about it) and if there are many to code, finally no one can read or edit the mess. Thats why the developement speed is limited and the amount of coders need to be limited.

Anyway anyone in the team shouldnt hold up to their positions so tightly, I am sure they will be let in back to work for the game, when they loaded their batteries and hold interest again. Even the HCs of the alliances take breaks and returns to their work when able again.

Good post!
PATeam has been there before, where the 'manager' holds all the strings, I remember it well.

What you say about the coding is right - everyone ahs their own distinct development style, what helps others to work on each others code, is to between the team devise a set standard to lay code out in, and also to make sure all your code is actually commented well so anyone can read and attempt to understand what is going on.
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Unread 10 Jan 2008, 22:25   #35
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ave
If the manager sucks, there is no one to fix things up, since he holds all the strings, there should be atleast some vouchers to support his ideas or decline them, One of these vouchers would be the head coder, seeing he is one to know what can be done and what can't be done. Lets be honest nothing is done without the coding team so naturally they deserve some freedom to work and a say about their own visions.

...

The hard part about coding is many does it their own way, (as much as I understand about it) and if there are many to code, finally no one can read or edit the mess. Thats why the developement speed is limited and the amount of coders need to be limited.
I've never quite understood the argument that democracy has to be introduced into every aspect of everything because the leader that is chosen might turn out to be horrible. Is it just me, or is it blatantly easy to spot horrid leaders before they are ever chosen? At any rate, any decent manager would of his own accord consult with the people he appoint for each task before making decisions on the subject, that's just common sense.

Whilst there are huge differences between coders, the key is to build a modular infrastructure which allows a single person to work on a single aspect of the game which is then patched into the game as a whole. It is also paramount that coders always document their code, even as the saying goes, "a piece of well written code is better than any amount of documentation". Editing or patching together code should really not be a problem, as has been discussed before here, open-source software is far more stable than closed source, even with hundreds, even thousands of coders working on it independently and their efforts being patched together to form the programs.
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 00:17   #36
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mit
PATeam has been there before, where the 'manager' holds all the strings, I remember it well.
The manager shouldn't hold every single string but should delegrate out sufficiently. If he doesn't do this then he shouldn't be managing it anyway.

One key point which is needed is accountability, something which doesn't exist these days. If something fails then PA Team seem to give excuses. With recruiting comes the ability to remove someone if they're causing a problem. If the manager is becoming a problem then there is always someone above him - Jolt.

To be honest Jolt should be having regular conversations with the manager to see the progress of the game, instead of letting a bunch of volunteers do their own little thing. If the dialogue has dried up then that manager should be demoted or removed. Also if anyone else in the team has problems with the manager then they should be able to contact Jolt regarding it.

Just because MrBrick had to be removed doesn't mean that everyone else would be the same as a manager. However if you think about it the current PA Team are quite similar to him, instead of standing aside and letting other people to join and improve the game they're refusing to budge. They constantly shuffle their own positions even though they don't have as much time to commit to the game as they used to.

People can be replaced, nobody is so valuable that other people can't do the same job. Something which you should all understand from the real world.
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 01:57   #37
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil M
To be honest Jolt should be having regular conversations with the manager to see the progress of the game, instead of letting a bunch of volunteers do their own little thing. If the dialogue has dried up then that manager should be demoted or removed. Also if anyone else in the team has problems with the manager then they should be able to contact Jolt regarding it.
One of the major problems with this idea is that there is rarely dialoge between PATeam and Jolt. Having been PATeam and having been in the channel where they reside, i have seen that pretty much 99% of the time Biffy is not at team meetings, is not around to ask questions of and most of the time PATeam members have to join Quakenet to find anyone from Jolt to talk to regarding PA.

Believing that Jolt are going to be there have regular contact with PATeam is a little silly, regardless of how professional and friendly Jolt (and Jolt reps - ie: Biffy) are with regards to other Jolt interests, PA will never be given that same level of attention.

Appocomaster does his upmost in steering PA in the direction he feels is best and he is supported 100% most of the time by the rest of PATeam but the problem (as so many others have pointed out) is that unless PA pay someone to manage the game it will not be able to develop in the way it should if someone was full time (or even part time) paid to develop it.
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 09:58   #38
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chef!
Believing that Jolt are going to be there have regular contact with PATeam is a little silly, regardless of how professional and friendly Jolt (and Jolt reps - ie: Biffy) are with regards to other Jolt interests, PA will never be given that same level of attention.
So, why does Jolt run PA at all? They certainly have an interest in the game, even if it is just that little extra money to come in. Don't they want to make more money from it? Or do they think the game doesn't fit their portfolio and as such should be removed? Either way, Jolt could and should act accordingly, with at least some mid-term goals in their mind.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chef!
Appocomaster does his upmost in steering PA in the direction he feels is best and he is supported 100% most of the time by the rest of PATeam but the problem (as so many others have pointed out) is that unless PA pay someone to manage the game it will not be able to develop in the way it should if someone was full time (or even part time) paid to develop it.
Sorry, but it is so untrue that such a manager would have to be paid. A start would be to cut the dead wood which does nothing in PA Team except wearing a title, and replace those with people which actually show interest in the game. Yes, Appocomaster is a start, but in the end even he does not want to decide about game related issues because he fears that the others, which aren't doing anything anyway, might disagree with him on these issues.

Also, a little note about professionalism: Professioinalism does not come from being paid, it comes from being skilled. If you are unable to dedicate yourself to something, then you are unable to ever be a professional in it.
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 10:37   #39
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

I have to wonder over what the big deal is with joining another server if that would improve the lines of communication between PA Team and Jolt. After all, most top players of this game resides in tens of channels over several networks and have hundreds of pm's open at a time. Atleast I used to, when I played back in the day. For PA Team to be on 2 servers and about 10 channels...that's not so much asked imho.
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 10:39   #40
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chef!
One of the major problems with this idea is that there is rarely dialoge between PATeam and Jolt. Having been PATeam and having been in the channel where they reside, i have seen that pretty much 99% of the time Biffy is not at team meetings, is not around to ask questions of and most of the time PATeam members have to join Quakenet to find anyone from Jolt to talk to regarding PA.
I assume that the only person PA-related that gets paid to do their job is biffy (who apparently doesn't do his already-half-assed job)? If so that is utterly pathetic. Appocomaster has worked his little cotton socks off for this game, and maybe if some decisions weren't correct, or we've had some screwups (this has happened to everyone running the game at some point), the effort's always been there.

Plus add in that as far as I know appoco was trying to develop a game in perl, a language he had no previous experience in?

Nothing really to add the to the discussion, just hopping on the anti-jolt bandwagon for a couple of stops!
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 11:50   #41
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu
I've never quite understood the argument that democracy has to be introduced into every aspect of everything because the leader that is chosen might turn out to be horrible. Is it just me, or is it blatantly easy to spot horrid leaders before they are ever chosen? At any rate, any decent manager would of his own accord consult with the people he appoint for each task before making decisions on the subject, that's just common sense.

Whilst there are huge differences between coders, the key is to build a modular infrastructure which allows a single person to work on a single aspect of the game which is then patched into the game as a whole. It is also paramount that coders always document their code, even as the saying goes, "a piece of well written code is better than any amount of documentation". Editing or patching together code should really not be a problem, as has been discussed before here, open-source software is far more stable than closed source, even with hundreds, even thousands of coders working on it independently and their efforts being patched together to form the programs.
I prefer good old dictatorship ofc, thats when things go smooth and things dont need to be discussed hundred of times, but since I know how lame taste people has, its gona be a popularity vote and some jerk gets chosen, which eventually appointments more jerks to the tasks, and soon we have a game full of dickheads in charge. MARK MY WORDS.
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 12:29   #42
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

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Originally Posted by Ave
I prefer good old dictatorship ofc, thats when things go smooth and things dont need to be discussed hundred of times, but since I know how lame taste people has, its gona be a popularity vote and some jerk gets chosen, which eventually appointments more jerks to the tasks, and soon we have a game full of dickheads in charge. MARK MY WORDS.
No picking on the jerks, the jerks are the good guys ;P It's the popularity-whores and suck-ups that are dangerous ;/

I do know what you mean though. If it's a pure popularity vote to determine who becomes said manager, then we're going to end up with some tool like Tesla in charge. That's why the choice should be made, as always, through non-democratic means by vouch of people of merit(this does not mean high planet rankings or such but people who've proven a deeper understanding of the game).
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 19:18   #43
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Good Standing in the community has always helped when getting into the team (after all, who'd pick a no-body that just 'appeared' out of nowhere).
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 19:18   #44
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartless
Also, a little note about professionalism: Professioinalism does not come from being paid, it comes from being skilled. If you are unable to dedicate yourself to something, then you are unable to ever be a professional in it.
I don't think you've got it quite right there. You are right in that to be a professional, you must be skilled. However, you don't necessarily have to dedicate yourself to something to be professional - it's the skills that determine it. Nevertheless, to be an effective manager then you do need to be active in order to keep an eye on everything you've delegated.


It's rare to find people with these skills, however, who aren't already using these skills in a full-time job - and are being paid for them.
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Unread 11 Jan 2008, 21:12   #45
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

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Originally Posted by Mit
Good Standing in the community has always helped when getting into the team (after all, who'd pick a no-body that just 'appeared' out of nowhere).
Subtle ;P

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Unread 12 Jan 2008, 03:14   #46
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

There was an interesting study recently about failures and problems in large software projects. Their summary was that it doesnt depend on the complexity (as most people assume) but directly correlates to specification changes during the project.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu
open-source software is far more stable than closed source, even with hundreds, even thousands of coders working on it independently and their efforts being patched together to form the programs.
Thats a pretty adventurous claim. Have you worked on larger projects using ISO9000(1) family norms?
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Unread 12 Jan 2008, 04:15   #47
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Indeed. 50% of ****ups during software projects come from wrong, incomplete, inaccurate or changing requirements.
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Unread 12 Jan 2008, 05:09   #48
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

I think Sun_Tzu should be King of Everything.

If you could vote for a King, I'd vote Sun_Tzu.

The game needs competence in leadership; which at the moment it severely lacks purely due to the restrictions of having Jolt in charge.
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Unread 12 Jan 2008, 15:32   #49
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Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramihyn
There was an interesting study recently about failures and problems in large software projects. Their summary was that it doesnt depend on the complexity (as most people assume) but directly correlates to specification changes during the project.

Thats a pretty adventurous claim. Have you worked on larger projects using ISO9000(1) family norms?
I'll answer that a "no" and continue to state that I don't know a single programming language(a bit of html, but that's about it).

However I do know one language, english, and luckily they do lots of studies and publish said studies in said language, thus allowing me to acquire knowledge of things without having to experience them firsthand. I also discuss things with other people who do have firsthand experience, thus fleshing out my viewpoint quite a bit.

Nice try though.
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Unread 13 Jan 2008, 00:23   #50
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Thumbs up Re: A Planetarion vision - a manager required?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu
I'll answer that a "no" and continue to state that I don't know a single programming language(a bit of html, but that's about it).

However I do know one language, english, and luckily they do lots of studies and publish said studies in said language, thus allowing me to acquire knowledge of things without having to experience them firsthand. I also discuss things with other people who do have firsthand experience, thus fleshing out my viewpoint quite a bit.
Ok, so you dont know what you talk about, but can do it in big english words. Grats

If you make such a radical claim like you did, i challenge you to actually support that by some kind of evidence. With evidence i dont mean the fact that you talk with a bunch of enthusiastic hobby coders or php coders on irc. But in a seperate thread, preferably on another part of the PA forums to not spam this one.
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