Development by community, the next big experiment?
Tor Gaming, being an inquisitive bunch, wants to carry out an experiment using you, the wargames community. Fear not, no test tubes or chemicals will be used.
Many times, we have seen beta programs from various c
ompanies that allow the players to 'test' a company’s internally developed rule set just prior to it being released. How successful these programs are, we're not entirely sure (not having access to the data collected from these and the changes made because of it, it's very difficult to say).
We're sure they must be worth doing, why else would they be used? So, obviously, the community is worth using. But we want to see how far the community can take it. We want to go beyond the community 'beta testing' a ruleset.
Community driven development is something that happens very much in the software industry and we think it can happen in our little corner of the world.
We want to see what will happen when the community is tasked to try and develop a rules system. Not just beta test a system, but also build it from the ground up.
I bet you're all thinking 'Oh yeah, and then you will make money out of it and we get nothing'. Well, no. We won't make a penny out of the rules. In fact, they may end up costing us....
Part of this project is a stipulation that the ruleset that is developed by the community will belong to the community. We will provide an area on our forum for the rules development. We will stipulate the type of game it should be, it’s our experiment after all (first up will be fantasy mass battles style game. Blocks of infantry and cavalry etc) and then let you get on with it. We will be around on the forum, but we won’t push the development in any direction. We can help with the project management of it if needed, but we will not touch the rules.
The rules, once the community are happy with them, will need to be released. This is where Tor Gaming will help. We will publish the rules as a free PDF download. This will include a layout design (again, decided by the community, but paid for by us!!).
The key thing to remember with this is the whole process will be community driven. Anyone can get involved. No single person will be responsible for it. Everything will be decided by democracy (another side project there, does democracy really work?!?!?!?). The end result will be free from copyright and freely available for everyone to use at no cost.
So, if you think you can be part of this and be happy with the fact you will be one voice in amongst many then you are the sort of person we are looking for.
We're setting the challenge, are you going to step up and accept it?
If you're interested, you can let us know here