Volunteer Labor?

[PsychoBlonde]

I brought this up months ago on the BSN, and some of the devs on the Dragon Age team considered it a bit, so I'm wondering--would it be possible or helpful to offer volunteer labor for the most tedious, low-skill aspects of the game? I'm talking about, say, writing blurbs for books you can find in dusty corners, or writing journal entries or bestiary entries or any of those myriad of tiny details that can really flesh out the game but are a huge drain on the valuable time of devs who need to be doing things like writing character dialog, designing plots, creating cinematics, etc.

 

This game is going to have an ENORMOUS amount of content, and maybe having volunteers pick up some of the details would be a way to make it feel content-dense AND huge.

 

This wouldn't be like the rewards for Kickstarter donations where you'd get to design it, obviously, you'd be little more than a glorified typist. But I think it could be a fun way for people to pitch in provided it could be done in a way where it saved time for the devs rather than being one more logistical hassle.

[jivex5k]

Yeah if they could figure it out I'd be willing to contribute in whatever way possible.

Heck, I'll donate my CPU cycles for rendering if they work it out.

[Dawn_]

@Psycho.

 

I don't know dear, some people pledge really high tier to have some privilege..i don't say it's a bad idea. But, if i was in their place and if your idea was to be done i would be like "WTF did i pledge so much, then ?!?".

 

KS isn't a store i know..But the higher the money you put the more you get really touchy on thing like this.

[UncleBourbon]

@Psycho.

 

I don't know dear, some people pledge really high tier to have some privilege..i don't say it's a bad idea. But, if i was in their place and if your idea was to be done i would be like "WTF did i pledge so much, then ?!?".

 

KS isn't a store i know..But the higher the money you put the more you get really touchy on thing like this.

 

The suggestion doesn't seem to be designing epic/unique items/npcs/equipment, but that volunteers should be considered to fill in tooltips or history tomes, maybe tombstones and misc. npc chat. Things that are low concious impact, but on a subconcious level add to the immersion of the player.

[Gallenger]

The major issue would be the QA on this kinda thing. Who would look through all the entries and submissions and make sure they were what was wanted and or appropriate for the game. It may end up adding just as much work for the team overall.

 

I'd be down for it though lol.

[Dawn_]

@Psycho.

 

I don't know dear, some people pledge really high tier to have some privilege..i don't say it's a bad idea. But, if i was in their place and if your idea was to be done i would be like "WTF did i pledge so much, then ?!?".

 

KS isn't a store i know..But the higher the money you put the more you get really touchy on thing like this.

 

The suggestion doesn't seem to be designing epic/unique items/npcs/equipment, but that volunteers should be considered to fill in tooltips or history tomes, maybe tombstones and misc. npc chat. Things that are low concious impact, but on a subconcious level add to the immersion of the player.

 

I understand what she meant , no issue with that But these high backers could also think "why people who pledged less would be able to add content in the game like me, while they might have pledge 10 times less ?!". I love the idea, but i am concerned for its reception by some people.

 

I hope you understand my concern here .

Edited October 26, 2012 by Dawn_

[HansKrSG]

I would not want any of us, whatever writing skills we imagine we have, to write any lore or the like in this game. I am sure some simple scripts and programming snippets could be done by a few of the backers, but I think the time and money it will cost the project to find suitable people for such a task, and then checking at each turn that whatever they delivered, actually worked, I don't think it will benefit Obsidian at all.

[Jaesun]

DEAR GAWD NO! Keep the general public the hell AWAY from this game as much as possible. Obsidian know what they are doing, AND this is one of the smallest budget game they have worked on (if you look at the dev costs of say NWN2 or KotORII). There is nothing at all to be worried about. And "fans" helping would be a terrible terrible idea.

[Zoma]

No. Don't.

[Thangorodrim]

I think they might be better served by making a portion of their website for fan generated material ... not for the game itself but to keep fan interest and provide glitzier stuff for visitors to see ... Blizzard and their fan sites have been served by this approach for years with postings of fan fiction, fan art, etc ... that would allow the creative type to indulge their creativity but without impacting the game design, development, or QA ... I think having lots of engaged fans and fan articles would help the final product when it launches as well so they get more new purchasers, in addition to the KS folks

[Jaesun]

wrong post. :/

Edited October 26, 2012 by Jaesun

[Ignatius]

What you suggests is still a bit too much on the creative side of free labor. I'm sure Avellone or Zeits would enjoy writing bestiaries/books enough that they'd rather do it themselves.

 

Maybe they have some Excel work for you to do. Like plugging in 2000 separate figures or something.

[Frisk]

Obsidian already has somewhere close to 200 people who pledged $1000+ for the privilege of having an input into the game. Just managing their contributions is going to be enough of a headache.

 

Keep in mind that for legal reasons Obsidian will have to verify that anyone contributing to the game is not ripping off the intellectual property of a third party. There is practically no chance they would allow non-employees to write something like game lore - they cannot take the risk that people might be copying the text from somewhere else.

[nikolokolus]

As a general rule I hate the holy hell out of fanfic ... so I'm gonna go with "no" on this one.

[evdk]

No. How would that even work legally?

[Superdeluxe]

No buy alpha testing Could raise additional funds

[Jasede]

[Volourn]

This is silly. Why ar epeople voluntering to do something people actually get paid to do? If you want a job at Obsidian make an application or else youa re going to get paid professionals fired. If you can get volunteers to write for fre no need to pay someone like Mr. Sawyer right?

 

Obsidian is a professional company not a charity case. To me, it is insulting to them to think you can do their job for free.

[Nonek]

No. When I pay for a suit I expect the needlework of my tailor, not the produce of the local asylum. No offense to any asylum for likening them to the Bioware social network.

[Volourn]

What does BIO have to do with this? It's the Obsidian forums last i checked. Don't blame BIO fanboys for Obsidian fanboys being silly.

[Durinax]

on a side note, I think that this would open too much opportunity for information to leak also. They will want to release measure dosages to our addiction, and having others input could put that in jeopardy

[-Zin-]

Eh.. sorry, PsychoBlonde. While I appreciate the thought you're presenting, I don't feel it's a good idea. In my opinion, the writing of even fictional books in a video game isn't something that should be written by random people. It should be written by professional writers who work closely with the game, and knows what narrative elements works with it.

 

If they accepted random people to write for them, Obsidian would have to hire a staff of professional writers familiar with the established lore. This staff would have to look at a ton of novels they'll have to read reject/accept/edit/reply to.. and those that are accepted needs to receive a contract, and their work will require further writing/correcting... But I mean.. if Obsidian is gonna hire any professional writers who are familiar with the lore then.. they should use those writers to write the lore to create a more consistent universe.

 

Writing smart and good is hard work, and it would be too much effort looking at random submissions from people all over the world. So to quote Jaesun: "Dear gawd no. Keep the general public out of this game as much as possible." I agree lol, but I think it could be said nicer.

 

Now, who the hell am I to tell you all this, and why am I so opinionated? Well.. You don't have to listen, but my father does work in the book industry and it's a pain receiving book submissions/poetry submissions. 95% of the submissions are just headaches with lack of proper writing skills. The remaining percentage may know how to write professionally, but their work still needs a lot of correcting/editting. My father has sometimes taken on people who aren't professionals, but that hasn't worked out well so far. So yes.. Calling writing volunteer work is a no-no, and I don't want to see it in a high quality game. I rather there be a lack of books, rather than have a vast sea filled with a confusing amount of books with highly varied level of qualities to them. I'm guessing PE's world won't have internet where you can look up ratings for them either. Quality over quantity is what I'm trying to get at.

Edited October 26, 2012 by -Zin-

[HereticSaint]

I supported Obsidian and this project on Kickstarter so Obsidian would develop and design this game, not a group of volunteers. These volunteers would have to be initiated into just the design and direction they want to take this game, which would take time and resources by itself, which means they would have to recieve a bare minimum return on that effort. On top of that they would have to look over all the work that these people did and in the case of coding, make sure there is absolutely nothing malicious within said code which means more effort lended towards that. On top of that you would have to have confidence that someone who did this work wouldn't leak any information you don't want leak, yes, there's contracts but can you really trust these people to not tell their friends? Friends who will leak random information on random websites, no.

 

Interns are one thing, I don't know if they have any working on this and if so how many, but usually there's a capped amount that is acceptable depending on the studio and then once you reach that point everyone just needs to work harder if they want to reach the goal at the same point.

 

Basically, what I'm trying to say, is having random people from the public contribute is a terrible, awful idea that almost positively would lead to more work than it saves and potentially lead to random lines of malicious code or leaks of information about things they aren't ready to talk about yet for whatever number of reasons.

[JWestfall]

If you are truly volunteering labor, I know exactly the gig Obsidian has in mind for you:

 

Forge their signatures for the thousands of signed box editions.

 

Other than that, I do not believe outsourcing such things as in the OP would be such a good idea, for multiple reasons that have already been highlighted.

[Malcador]

I brought this up months ago on the BSN, and some of the devs on the Dragon Age team considered it a bit, so I'm wondering--would it be possible or helpful to offer volunteer labor for the most tedious, low-skill aspects of the game? I'm talking about, say, writing blurbs for books you can find in dusty corners, or writing journal entries or bestiary entries or any of those myriad of tiny details that can really flesh out the game but are a huge drain on the valuable time of devs who need to be doing things like writing character dialog, designing plots, creating cinematics, etc.

 

This game is going to have an ENORMOUS amount of content, and maybe having volunteers pick up some of the details would be a way to make it feel content-dense AND huge.

 

This wouldn't be like the rewards for Kickstarter donations where you'd get to design it, obviously, you'd be little more than a glorified typist. But I think it could be a fun way for people to pitch in provided it could be done in a way where it saved time for the devs rather than being one more logistical hassle.

 

Nope. I'd rather not have you jackals do anything directly input to the project.