PDA

View Full Version : Project Request Subscriptions



Korax
19-03-2008, 08:11 AM
We have been getting quite a lot of requests for game development since the relaunch of SAGD by local companies and organizations ranging from 1 month projects to a few months with funding attached to it. From what we could gather its typical projects perfect for typical two-man teams or so.

We don't have a mechanism to deal with this yet, but I think its something we should address.
I'm sure there are individuals or small teams out there that would benefit from such projects financially and furthering skills.
I'm also thinking it should be a good first step for anyone wanting to get into game development that has no other means in the immediate future to get into it.

The scale of these projects are not large enough for our company to justify spending the time, as our time are more important furthering our game tech than the financial benefits from such projects as we already have income measures in place.

... but why let good opportunities go to waste because we as SAGD admins don't always know where to place them with prospective developers? ;)

I'm suggesting adding another submission form to our "Contact Us" page where a lot of these requests originate from where we will direct such people to submit their project information. Then people interested in being informed of such projects (that takes it seriously) can subscribe the email address of their choice which will be used by the SAGD backend service to send the information to them which the originator posted.

Obviously your email addresses are unknown to anyone using SAGD.

Its better to have some form of mechanism or process in place to share this information, rather than creating threads all over the show for each possible opportunity that comes along.

Please let me know how much of you are interested in such functionality so I can take it into consideration with the next round of updates.

FuzzYspo0N
19-03-2008, 12:06 PM
lol, i didnt even know sagd was active :P (jokes)

But yea, i think it would be cool functionality, but again (lol) you are reinventing a sort of wheel.
First hear me out : With the likes of GGE and many many other places like it, there is a lot of market for developers and projects alike. Marketing those opportunities is always goiing to take effort "somewhere" such as posting on a forum, posting somewhere central.

Having somewhere central thats not specific to any community would be my view as the coolest option.. the dynamics of team are all to lacking in general. For example if you had a domain and some web space and put up a rss feed only.. each submission through the system can be relayed into the Rss after being cleared by an admin. anyone wanting to see the available projects, can read the rss accordingly.

The other option is a small, tiny system to start with using flags, a percentage, a developer list and a screenshot page. This allows the submission of projects by for example <insert mystical educational company here> edulol. edulol posts a project called math blaster, they want a game for this and this audience, x time frame, y funding, z developer limit, and a portfolio to show you have what it takes, or a "challenge" that can be done in a few days to show a prototype and capabilites. Then once edulol makes an announcement of the project, and all RSS members are aware with a link, domain.com/?id=12345
a page loads with the relevant game info and project stuff and a page that says "fill in the following if u are interested" , with "who am i" what experience i have, projects iv completed/worked on/ sort of a mini CV and then all THOSE submissions of developers are sent to the project initiator. once the project initiator sees someone they like they may contact them directly and if agreed upon, can make a simple flag change like "number of developers on board" and they can update the progress as it goes on.

Its hard to detail a working system but i have written one before and its not too complex. if you would like to have the source/more details email me and we can discuss it :)

But overall, i like giving community opportunity to grow as well, but making it global sort of makes it more accessible and not limited.

kurtkz
19-03-2008, 01:33 PM
Korax, that would be brilliant. I second FuzzYspo0N's idea.

Korax
19-03-2008, 01:43 PM
lol, i didnt even know sagd was active
Seriously?

Well, anything in life you work on would be re-inventing somebody elses wheel anyways.
Not a good reason for then doing nothing about it. ;)

The people doing these queries are very likely not game developers, or following a specific community, and will most definitely not know about GGE.

They will most likely search local web content.

Since these queries does happen a lot we need to think up a simple and straightforward way to handle the incoming requests/data and expedite it to interested parties.

I like your RSS idea.
At the moment I'll probably follow an email approach, maybe with conjuction with a fixed RSS link with the information (prent & past) if this option has enough supporters.
Doing both is easy enough.. maybe two hours of work max.

A further build on your idea is I can write a quick webservice, to help expand the reach of this request submission mechanism. This is to allow more sites, like for example the Game.Dev site can add such a form, link to the webservice I'll make available and external visitors that posts a request can submit either via SAGD or G.D, it goes though the same mechanism to send the emails and/or update an RSS feed avalable to anyone via a fixed url.
That way we are sure this functionality is not only limited to SAGD.

How does that sound?
Simplicity is key though.

What I'm really interested in is to know how many people across both communities supports such a request processing mechanism (I've made a similar post over on SAGD), be it email, RSS or both, as I'm intrested in adding only useful functionality to the system that will benefit both the requestor as well as the developer that would be intrested in action on it.

It much better that plainly have the information go to waste because of a lack of a simple mechanism to share this information with everyone. ;)

Although building a total system that manages everything from requestor to developer and everything inbetween would probably turn out counter-productive and likely not worth the effort.

If I get anything from 10 or more votes that it will be useful to get this information in one way or the other, I'll put time aside to implement this simple process.

But, if anyone has more ideas, they are more than welcome.

These requests happens on a monthly basis, and its a good idea to be able to sift/mine local demand to help build indie developers, not only via skills, but with a possibility of making some money off it.

Afflict
19-03-2008, 01:59 PM
See this is where I come in and drop some links and leave... o don't i sound spammer like ? :S

http://www.jobberbase.com/ Pretty neato software it seems like it might solve your problem.

O theres also this, which is rss'ish but hey its more of a blogish thing.

http://www.planetplanet.org/

Enjoy...

~Afflict.

edg3
19-03-2008, 02:03 PM
I like your RSS idea.
At the moment I'll probably follow an email approach, maybe with conjuction with a fixed RSS link with the information (prent & past) if this option has enough supporters.
Doing both is easy enough.. maybe two hours of work max.
I quite like the RSS idea, but email also works for me. A combination of both would be ideal as Im not home to check email all day, and I can read RSS feeds on my phone, so honestly either works well.


Although building a total system that manages everything from requestor to developer and everything inbetween would probably turn out counter-productive and likely not worth the effort.
Well, that isnt entirely true :)
Using Drupal you could easily set up all the user groups, registrations, mass mail, etc in a few hours. I have all the things you would need set up on my site already and have spent time playing around with the different modules in drupal, and if you decide to go this route I would recommend Drupal. :)

EDIT: forgot to mention it include RSS feed capabilities.

(my url is in my sig)

Korax
19-03-2008, 02:56 PM
I've saved all the links you guys added so far then I'll start looking at them and see what can be used.

Being available mobile is also a huge plus, so I'll definitely have RSS in my plans then.

FuzzYspo0N
19-03-2008, 06:43 PM
Although building a total system that manages everything from requestor to developer and everything inbetween would probably turn out counter-productive and likely not worth the effort


but i have written one before and its not too complex.
ill rephrase, i have a system like this, would take less then a few weeks to tweak it. logos, etc :)

But anyway ;p I like what has been suggested. as a developer i wud like to help where i can. having made a system (amost identical) similar , it wud be pancakes.

email/rss/output = output = output

:)_

Korax
20-03-2008, 07:37 AM
Do you have a temporary place to put it online?
Id love to see what your system in it current state can do. :)

cairnswm
20-03-2008, 07:49 AM
I think its a great idea :)

FuzzYspo0N
20-03-2008, 08:07 AM
Do you have a temporary place to put it online?
i do have place, but it wont work in its current state, i butchered in a couple hundred features last minute and broke it (this was a few years back)

Draw out a small design of the system you want, ill find the design of my system and post it here as soon as i can. it shud be in here somewhere.. then we can establish whats here and whats needed. it might be simple enough to just copy paste code from there to rebuild what you want in terms of functionaliy, thats how i wrote the code cos i use a bunch of it all over :)

Its in php, and its web based.

Korax
20-03-2008, 08:22 PM
See if you can find your design doc on it.
I will in the meantime then put some thinking into it.

Whatever your design contains will sure help formulating something that should be able to work for everyone. :)

In the meantime a quick function using a combination of email/rss should do the trick.

When people submit requests for development work, the system already saves the requests to the database (currently), so any older requests will remain available for the RSS feed.

I think its a good way to get people willing to pay and people willing to work together without the admins of both communities having to wonder about to whom to channel the requests to.

FuzzYspo0N
20-03-2008, 11:56 PM
yea agreed,


In the meantime a quick function using a combination of email/rss should do the trick.

youre making this? or have/want/etc?

Korax
21-03-2008, 03:37 PM
Yip, I'll code it up. :)

I'm working to release a large upgrade to SAGD, if all goes well, I should have it done (the development) before the long weekend is over. Once its up I'll add this email/rss functionality to the system from there.

Once it works I'd love to have comments from you guys, knowing if it works good enough to start from. I think as an extension to this an easy/simple way to manage people requesting (pay) for projects and those willing to work on them would be cool. Maybe along the same lines as carreer sites has a employer/emplyee section.. just much more simplified.

The RSS though I think should have some kind of "Report" link for submissions that has nothing to do with project requests since its open to the public.

thoughts?