Outreach Discussion

Good ideas -- one nitpick: the GPL is a software license. It is not designed to work well for content like images, models, textures, concept discussions, the GDDs, literature, help text, podcasts, and the like. We have to decide the rights we're willing to give people for each of those. For example, many open-source projects put everything under CC BY-SA, under the name of their organization. This, I think, is a good idea, especially for all our refined concepts -- share the fruits of our labours, and encourage paying it forward, as it were.

However, many artists might prefer to keep the copyright in their own hands (for example, Oliveriver might want to be able to make derivatives of the works he's made for Thrive someday, and put them under his own copyright), and we have to respect that too. That's why I'm opening the floor on this particular question.

How about we by default adopt the CC BY-SA license, but give any contributing artist or composer the option to keep personal copyright?

Sounds perfect. What do we do about content that's been posted here already? There's a slight chance that someone who posted art or something here some time ago might come back and complain. What we can do is just ask the prominent content-producers, they'll probably agree, and then for any other random bits of content we can assume we have permission, or assume we don't have permission. I lean towards being careful with these sorts of things, so unless we have a lot of content made by posters that are now gone (which I doubt, seeing as apart from music we have very little, and iirc the understanding over on the music forum is that music made fir thrive is released under some permissive license anyway), we shouldn't lose out on much by assuming we don't.

So far I've assumed my music has been part of Thrive and the CC BY-SA license - I personally have no problem with other people taking the melody of, say, the Main Theme and creating their own version providing it's credited as such, although the Share-Alike license may become problematic if I was to make derivative works, even off of my own music, with the intention of anything other than it being freely available. Especially if I based it off the Main Theme, which I suppose I'm exercising use of the license through having remixed Hongchong7's original.

There's a whole vista of other nuances with the music and copyright - we've been considering the possibility of using music from other sources (much later in development of course, once we might actually have the recognition to ask for something like that), and of course there's the problem that 90% of "Thrive's" music from 2012 to early 2013 wasn't actually created by our own composers, but I think by now that can be effectively swept under the carpet as we don't intend to use any of the mis-attributed themes.

Anyway, on the subject of a template advertisement, would a video suffice to give much of the explanation? At the moment I don't think it's in any way a viable strategy - the Thrive Indie Game Preview is just a series of images and text boxes, and a large amount of the negativity it's received has been a result of this, but without actual gameplay there's not much more we can show. Once the next release is done I suggest a new version of this preview is created showcasing the gameplay footage (even if it doesn't really have the graphics many people will want) along with text and possibly animated diagrams of planned game mechanics. If the plan is to go forward with this advertising campaign after the next release, a video with actual gameplay may be far more effective in grabbing someone's attention. Of course, a further text description would still be useful, and would obviously have to include a download link.

I was looking around the forums for something to do before my exams come up and I noticed that you guys need an artist to make advertisement posters and banners. If it's still needed I'll get right to it! Until my exams come up though but after that I'll be available for a long time.

Edit: If you guys have any specifics or any thing for the ads, tell me and I'll try my best!

We need to get a concept image of the microbe stage put together that shows what we want it to look like / expect it to look like when it's all neat and polished. This will hopefully put faith in the people that see the advert and think 'I don't want to play a game full of green doughnuts and hexagons! I want to play out cellular evolution!' The question is, do we really know what we want the finished microbe stage to look like? I mean, we have the old concepts but, if you compare them to videos of real cells under a microscope, they just look like spore without googly eyes. Also, there is somewhat of an 'inconsistency' with that and some of the other more realistic looking concepts. Personally, I feel that it should be realism all the way.

Do we have a quasi-active trailer thread anywhere? If so this should probably be moved there.

With the new website near-complete, we need a better trailer than the Thrive Promotional Video, which, as several people have pointed out either in its comments or indirectly when the old website has been used in marketing, is pretty Belgium. Long paragraphs of text followed by assorted badly-presented concept art doesn't really scream potential for success, and has probably been responsible for turning away useful newcomers.

Also the Main Theme used is three versions out of date. That synth orchestra in the final crescendo...AAARGHWHYDIDIEVERTHINKTHATWASAGOODIDEAPLEASETAKETHISOFFTHEINTERNETRIGHTNOW.

Anyway, we really need a replacement, and I obviously can't be trusted to make anything cinematically acceptable. There are, however, five things I believe we need:

1. Gameplay footage - Once 0.2.4 is released this should be fairly easy to come by. In fact, the current unreleased build will suffice, as it's cosmetically identical to what should be released; only the overarching gameplay will change.
2. Rendered footage - See: Tritium's microbe stage trailers, although we can't rely too heavily on concept models for fear of over-promising on the game's existing appearance.
3. Shorter annotations and descriptions - One-line phrases mostly.
4. Concept art - Still arguably one of the most enticing parts of the game, we'll need at least some concept art. Who doesn't want to see The Disturbance get another outing? Obviously it'll have to be used a little more tactfully than before.
5. Better music - Any piece from the Microbe Stage Soundtrack will do, although I'd suggest either Vireo, Vigeo or The Saga of the Puddle. If necessary I've been considering a solo piano Main Theme variation, so I'd be happy to compose it if we need something a little more emotional.

So far we do have a couple of trailers already lying about, sections of which could be cut together to form the new one:

Spoiler:

Ta da!