FA Development - An Oculus Rift Guild

[Tbone]

I recently created a thread about the future of the guild and where I ultimately wanted to go with it. It outlined a plan to make FA the first truly VR gaming guild. To take it a step further, I envision FA becoming a source for developers of games and VR tech to get feedback and test software. The feedback from everyone has been very positive - enough for me to start thinking of how to move us towards this future.

Goal: To have a revamped community that focuses on the Oculus Rift and VR gaming. This would include revamping the website, forums. recruitment, social media, and gaming applications (TS, Steam, etc.).

Deadline: Spring 2014

Website: We've actually been working on a new website on and off behind the scenes for over a year now. In functionality and design, it's actually pretty close to where we envisioned it. This gives us a major step ahead in designed a new site. My plan is to start working on this new site and changing it to focus on the Oculus Rift and VR, while also keeping SWTOR in the mix and adding some support for EVE.

Forums: The new website also has new forums. Due to the nature of our new project, we're essentially moving from closed doors to open source. Our public forums will have an expanded role. I'm also expecting our community to be much larger and diverse and we'll need to plan for this.

Recruitment: This perhaps will be the biggest change. Due to the fact that it would be a larger community supporting potentially lots of VR games, recruitment for access to the larger guild community may simply be an application, without an interview or challenge. If we started focusing on a VR MMO or something more specific, we could recruit from our larger community into a more focused guild (something like "chapters" of the guild that several multi-game guilds have. SWTOR could keep its same recruitment and EVE could do it's own thing. So our member structure would look something like:

Visitor -- Registered -- Member of Guild -- Member of Chapter

The entry point for member of guild would be a simple application, whereas joining a specific chapter (SWTOR, EVE, whatever) would require more hoops.

Social Media - In general we'd want to be more open, sharing as much as we can to spread the word of the Rift and FA's involvement with it. Besides integration, we have other broad plans that I'll outline in  minute.

Gaming Applications - This is something that hopefully we can work with devs on. What's best for VR communities? Will Steam be the best way to connect in games? Will TS still be the best way to chat? Will these systems need to be integrated better into the games themselves? Should VR come up with its own system. I think this will be a big part of our "experimenting". What breaks immersion? What enhances it?

Streaming Channel - Sared brought up in the Staff forums the possibility of having an FA gaming channel. Some sort of TV stream (Youtube or other) that switches out between hosts that's playing 24/7. Again, this is good exposure, but beyond that the current interest in Rift videos is pretty big. Not only is it exposure for us, but exposure for the Rift and, ultimately, more eyes looking at ways to make the experience better.

Our biggest hurdle at the moment is that no one in the guild has a Rift, and right now everyone is planning on getting the consumer version. Even if we tried to get one, it will be months before it is delivered. That being said, if we do plan on going down this road, I do feel like getting a dev kit is a must. I joked a while back about doing guild fundraising to get a Rift, but now I'm thinking it might be worth it. I also do have VERY LIMITED access to a Rift devkit from a guy here in DC, but so far I've only done a two hour demo of it.

So I want feedback, ideas, opinions - let's get this stuff ironed out! I'm excited about the prospect!

COMMITTEES

Website/Forums
Tbone
Lithium
Manicvelocity

Recruitment
Tbone
Strod
Revalis?

Social Media/News Agrigation

FATV/Streaming
Tbone
Sared
Strod
Manic

[Strod]

Website: We've actually been working on a new website on and off behind the scenes for over a year now. In functionality and design, it's actually pretty close to where we envisioned it. This gives us a major step ahead in designed a new site. My plan is to start working on this new site and changing it to focus on the Oculus Rift and VR, while also keeping SWTOR in the mix and adding some support for EVE.

Could be a total bomb, but I think something very subtle, simple and elegant as the home page. Maybe just a symbol or a letter to represent a certain game or chapter if you will which takes you to a FA/Game themed version of the website. Nothing cheesy, it would have to be spot on FA style, but something to make the member of said chapter feel total immersion to their part of FA gaming.

Forums: The new website also has new forums. Due to the nature of our new project, we're essentially moving from closed doors to open source. Our public forums will have an expanded role. I'm also expecting our community to be much larger and diverse and we'll need to plan for this.

This may sound like a bit of work, and some may just think it's pointless, but if we are going to become more of an open forum and not so much a closed off one. We could create rewards that have graphics associated with them, and they can display on our profiles when checked. Think forums achievements, they could range from owning a VR, to being in FA during MxO, to being in FA from TOR, 10 medal, 5 year medal etc. Each graphic would have a specific design based on the achievement. Example, our current FA coin designs could be easily adapted, and a MxO one could be say a code bomb image or a PS made image of the Neo graphic from in game. You can get very creative, and it'll keep people active on the forums, believe it or not.

Recruitment: This perhaps will be the biggest change. Due to the fact that it would be a larger community supporting potentially lots of VR games, recruitment for access to the larger guild community may simply be an application, without an interview or challenge. If we started focusing on a VR MMO or something more specific, we could recruit from our larger community into a more focused guild (something like "chapters" of the guild that several multi-game guilds have. SWTOR could keep its same recruitment and EVE could do it's own thing.

I will troll forums and any type of media constantly posting reply and whatever preset message with video we make or link to what we want as advertisement every single day. This is the best way to recruit in such an open forum. You HAVE to be on the ball and it's tedious, I have no problem volunteering.

Social Media - In general we'd want to be more open, sharing as much as we can to spread the word of the Rift and FA's involvement with it. Besides integration, we have other broad plans that I'll outline in minute.

Twitch.tv streaming will be mentioned down below, but this deserves it's own sentence. A weekly podcast, to get our the word on VR and FA, FA and VR. I know Manic and Sared have already done something posted on the forums, but it'd be a great way to advertise, get members involved, have a weekly set and I would also, be willing to help with and be apart of it.


Gaming Applications - This is something that hopefully we can work with devs on. What's best for VR communities? Will Steam be the best way to connect in games? Will TS still be the best way to chat? Will these systems need to be integrated better into the games themselves? Should VR come up with its own system. I think this will be a big part of our "experimenting". What breaks immersion? What enhances it?

As far as communications go, TS I think would be our best bet, as we have had it for years. However, since I have yet to experience to Rift, I don't like assuming, but can a button be mapped for the Push to talk? I think pushing a button to talk will break the immersion, but it is a slight break we may have to accept as open mics can be problematic. I think Steam has it ducks all in a row and will be a great way to keep in touch and see who is online at a moments notice. However, I think more research and actual usage will be needed to give a real answer while using the Rift.

Streaming Channel - Sared brought up in the Staff forums the possibility of having an FA gaming channel. Some sort of TV stream (Youtube or other) that switches out between hosts that's playing 24/7. Again, this is good exposure, but beyond that the current interest in Rift videos is pretty big. Not only is it exposure for us, but exposure for the Rift and, ultimately, more eyes looking at ways to make the experience better.

I am extreamly interested in having a hand in this, I have debated getting into streaming something, and I was eyeing twitch.tv as my platform. At the moment, it would be difficult to setup cash flow wise, but I would be able to have this in place before the Rift consumer version hits the open market.

[Manic Velocity]

I am dying to get our new website out the door.  This should be the first step in imbuing FA with a sense of renewal.  And I haven't yet investigated this for our new site software, but our website should definitely have some mobile functionality.  At least on the forum end, but if it can be site-wide, all the better.  Having to constantly pinch-zoom around the forums when I'm out and about is a real pain.

Loving the ideas for a more open recruitment process.  We can still be selective while dialing back on being secretive.  Visitors to the site should know who we are and what we're about.  I think even a "Staff" section with some bios would be cool.

I've told Sared I would be willing to assist with the streaming stuff.  My job is already moving me into a position of doing some video editing for our satellite businesses, so I should have plenty of tools available.

Gaming Applications: TS and the forums are our primary forms of communication.  GroupMe is effective in getting quick message bursts out to everyone.  So I'm thinking integration of the Jabber chat service might be a comfortable in-between.  If people just want to shoot the shit, but don't necessarily want to do it via TS.  There are plenty of desktop and mobile applications that connect to Jabber.


And this is just a "personal preference" thing, but would we consider going back to our old insignia?  I've never liked the new one, despite the fact that I designed it.  It's complex, fragmented, doesn't scale down well (becomes obscure at smaller sizes), and overall just doesn't look "angelic".

The old insignia is simple, clean, and... hell, it's basically perfect as a symbol.

[Sared]

I want to try and have some more regular guild meetings as a part of this. We used to have weekly meetings, but as recruitment slowed down and a regular raiding schedule got hammered out, this kind of fell by the wayside. I'd love to try and figure out a good date to sit down and get some voices around the table on this, share some of the ideas that we've been tossing around in the officer boards.

Regarding FATV: don't let the idea of 24/7 streaming scare you. I used that as an example of the kind of thing that this can lead to in the future. For now, I'd like to focus on doing more focused pieces with specific coverage. The essence of the idea is that we've got a lot of clever folks around here that LOVE tearing into the nitty-gritty details of the games we play (whether that be from a mechanical, story telling, or artistic perspective). I want to share that insight with the world. I also think that establishing this kind of platform will give us a much more practiced and resonant voice when we are able to do more in-depth coverage of the Rift.

How does monday evenings still work for everyone? I know Nocry and a few other folks might not be able to make it, but recording and hosting on Soundcloud/Mediafire/Youtube or something should be simple enough.

P.S. I'm biased towards the old logo as well.

[NoCry]

Fanx Sared - I think meetings should certainly kick off again at a time and place which suits the majority. I greatly enjoyed the minutes and I think it helped people know what was going on and get on too.

I also agree with "opening up" the application process etc.

[Erathaol]

That whole post is terribly exciting, but what really tickles my fancy is the FATV idea.  I'd be very interested in participating in that venture.

I also like the idea of broader recruitment and a larger forum community.

The game chapters might be a necessary implementation, but I've always been a fan of one big happy group all playing the same thing, however unrealistic that may be.

Count me in among the old logo fans.  To me, the new logo has represented FA in SWTOR.  The old logo, however, IS FA.

EDIT:  Weekly meetings!  As someone who doesn't play SWTOR, I miss these so much.  It's one of the easiest and best things to re-implement, so let's do it!

[Strod]

Logo:

I also agree with the idea of bringing back the original logo as we relaunch FA so to speak. The TOR version was cool, but it wasn't broken to begin with so let's un-fix it.


Weekly Meetings:

This needs to be brought back asap, regardless of our future endeavors. This was our biggest way to give many voices a chance to be heard and a nice way to just have an hour shooting the shit with everyone without an "in-game" agenda.

Recruitment:

I remember back in MxO, when we had the picture/gif of an Angel player from in game as the image on the puzzle. I think it would be a sweet ass idea, to somehow incorporate a Rift/VR revival of the same concept. Maybe Tbone on a 15s-30s loop with the Rift on as if he is staring at you while your on the puzzle. Could be some potential there, if not my exact idea, but something along those lines. I believe Rift/VR needs to have a presence even in the puzzle. You shouldn't need to have one, but we should incorporate it somehow into the process, be it videos, some kind of demo of puzzle solving in the Rift, I don't know. Ideas are flowing.

Social Media:

Another crazy, perhaps money based idea. I remember not too long ago a poster being shown in our randomness thread I believe. Showcasing a Blue pill esk message. Gave me a Cryptos chill seriously. I loved it.

Perhaps, we can make our own, and those of us who wanted to, could post them all over our downtown areas, theaters, game shops etc. Something kinda like the image Tbone posted above just maybe refined to what we want to actually put out there for awareness. That could be huge if it caught on.

[Tbone]

What's great about what we are doing is that all of our old concepts that were based in the Matrix universe now are relevant again with VR with some tweaking.

[Manic Velocity]

I just spent the evening re-creating the old logo as a scaleable vector image, just in case.

[Tbone]

I just spent the evening re-creating the old logo as a scaleable vector image, just in case.

I was looking at the version I have and it's wacky. Edges are all wonky and I can't get it to look right.

[Manic Velocity]

I think the only versions anyone has anymore are in JPG or PNG format.  I've never been able to find a vectorized version, so I figured I would just make one.  This way we can scale it as big or as little as needed without any loss of quality.

I see a lot of devs decorating their Rifts with "googly eyes" and whatnot. It might be cool to print up a bunch of FA decals to put on ours.

[Manic Velocity]

Tossing ideas out there.  Looking for feedback.

THIS IS A VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY ROUGH DRAFT.  DO NOT USE IT ANYWHERE TO PROMOTE ANYTHING.

THIS IS AMATEUR HOUR IN PHOTOSHOP.  THIS IS NOT QUALITY WORK, AND IT BRINGS SHAME TO MY FAMILY.

[Tbone]

The Furious Angelic Cyclops!

The logo looks nice. Can you share the vector image you came up with?

[Strod]

I would like a Copy of it with and without the eye too please, if you are willing. I was unable to find the old logo as well.

[Sared]

http://www.mediafire.com/?es97nkmmfko1xz6

The Illustrator file is dated from '05. Remember bothering someone fierce for it.