Danny Piccirillo wrote:
> Sorry i dropped off the face of the planet for a while. I am back now! I
> have heard all of the concerns, and i hope i can address them now. I am
> open to change the team, and i want to sincerely apologize for all the
> confusion and misunderstanding. One of the first changes i made to the
> team was linking to the Debian Games Team and Freedesktop Games from the
> wiki and launchpad page.
>
> People noticed that although i stated that the team would only be
> working from a marketing/advocacy standpoint, i went on about an
> advantage to FOSS gaming is that code and content can be reused, but
> that was not to say that /we/ would be dealing with any actual game
> development. There was a lot of talk about assigning bugs to the team
> and dealing with bugs through the team. I do not think this team should
> have that focus at all. As said before, the Debian Games Team can
> already handle that. What this team can do is tap into the Ubuntu
> community which i am sure is full of gamers who want to get involved
> with spreading the love. Members of this team can pass ideas onto
> developers, and bridge connections between users (which most of the team
> should be made up of) and the Debian Games Team and Freedesktop Games,
> where appropriate, of course. There are also a lot of things that we
> will do that i don't believe falls under the scope of the Debian Games
> Team or Freedesktop Games. fundraisers, game tournaments, creating an
> Ubuntu Gaming Clan, etc.
>
> I'm having trouble responding to all of the concerns, so could someone
> list all of the issues that have been raised so far in a bulleted list
> if the above doesn't cover everything already?
>
> The last question is what to do next. Is a new name really necessary at
> this point? And if so, what should the new name be?
Danny,
If you have the time to lead the team in efforts towards advocacy,
events, etc., and are able to help build consensus by those interested
in the team that this is the direction of the team, you end up
addressing many of my concerns. I'm still a little unhappy with the
name, because I think that people have interpreted it incorrectly in the
past, and would expect them to interpret it incorrectly in the future,
but if it is a sufficiently dynamic team, with strong relations to
related teams (without overlapping areas of activity), it may have a
place. That said, I called for the team to be uncreated, rather than
simply for a name change.
My personal feeling is that the work is better done as a
collaboration between the Marketing and LoCo teams, rather than as a
separate team. Specifically that I believe the Marketing team would do
well to develop greater documentation on best practices for advocacy and
events, and the LoCo teams are in the best position to implement these
between real people around the world. In the specific area of Gaming, I
would expect the Marketing team to develop guidelines on how to run a
tournament, prepare distributable materials discussing how Ubuntu is
good for gamers, and similar work. I would expect the LoCo teams to
actually hold the tournaments, and promote Ubuntu as a gaming platform.
My hope is that by demonstrating how this could work for Gaming, those
interested in other areas (e.g. science, education, audio production,
etc.) would be able to build similar parallel efforts, sharing
experiences on doing things within the Marketing and LoCo teams, rather
than creating separate teams for each area of endeavour. Whether that
social model is one that those who end up building the documentation and
doing the promotion prefer, or whether those in each area of endeavour
would prefer to have separate teams is not something I know, but I
prefer to avoid separation where possible, and rather integrate people
working on the same thing with different foci into functional teams, as
I believe this leads to better communication of best practices to
accomplish known goals.
Regardless of the social model selected, I do believe that this is
work worth doing. While there are a number of resources for developers
of free games, there are few resources for users or promoters. Better
information about available games, guidance on setting up tournaments
and local servers for gaming parties, presentation materials
demonstrating the value of Ubuntu as a gaming platform, and similar
would all be valuable.
I suspect that a fair amount of the initial rejection was related to
surprise and confusion based purely on the name and apparent lack of
coordination with those already working in what were perceived as
overlapping areas, but I'm not sufficiently sure of the full set of
complaints by others to be comfortable generating a bulleted list that
would be complete enough for direct response.
--
Emmet HIKORY
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