I sent this video to Devlin the other day so that the staff can discuss the matters of our heavily tutorial/map infested database. Our members need some sort of motivation, and I really believe that this video contains some really good information on the matter of motivation. Just watch and discuss. I'd like to see what the community thinks.

Excuse me for not having watched the video yet, but I want to take this oportunity to quickly give my thoughts on the topic.

I believe that motivation only exists when the idealized product has some (or any) use for at least its author, and "use" may include opportunities for facilitating, colaboration, fun, pride or any other good profit. Otherwise, nobody would want to produce since their result would be meaningless.
For this reason, the lack of motivation is linked to the lack of usefulness. Thus, some authors leave unfinished works once the reason that made them work on it at first place loses its meaning.

Many factors may make said "meaning" vanish and I believe that a good community can (and should) prevent them by motivating its producers (or, in other words, showing reasons to the authors that values the "meaning").

However, during my short-lived SC1 UMS forum usage, I saw the opposite. Here are some examples:
- Once I wanted help on making a plot for a tower defense map I was making. The first reply I received was literally: "Scrap the whole idea. Making a tower defense map is below anyone's potential"
- In one of my threads, I received demotivating and unecessary replies such as "I don't have interest on UMS maps", "your map is not as good as the ones our members made", "if nothing else, the terrain is good at least" and "your map is basically <name of some other map>"
- Not mapmaking-related, a couple of times I felt the urge of making a topic to debate a certain subject or discuss ideas and got the first page (only page in some cases) filled with unecessary posts like "lolwut", "this is useless", "why didn't you google it?" and so on. I think this topic is my greatest example: I was about to give up just until A_of-s_t made the first reply that had value, and it's the 9th post.

As I said, these types of situations make the producer (which was me in the cases) forget his goal and start to think that he's putting effort on the meaningless.

My conclusion is that SEN, although being a mapmaking website, is a demotivating community thanks to some users' dispensable conduct. If you want this to work, their behaviour has change.
I sincerely hope that my previous two statements are wrong, but that's what the experience I got here tells.

related: I've just seen someone on the shoutbox showing his new signature and the answer he immediately received was "Lame"

Did you see the sig? It WAS lame.

Nice job proving his point, Gigins

The video definitely put it very well, and in an entertaining manner too(although I was hoping for it to zoom out at the end and show the whole board), and while many of the ideas are right, people also like to see some sort of incentive, even if that doesn't mean a concrete and quantifiable reward, just as Adeon said.

Especially on a website like SeN, everyone here is volunteering to do this, is it entertaining? Sure, at first, but then we proceed to get bored, and because we see no reason to continue, we've learned all we can, we quit. The real question is, what reasons cause most mappers to continue? Popularity, respect, and bragging rights are a huge factor. No one wants to make a map if three people are going to download it and only one will play it, we want others to appreciate our work. Through creating impressive works, we subconciously hope to gain unspoken rank among our fellow members. When it becomes apparent that your project is receiving no attention before it's even gotten off the ground, most people stop, because if it's not receiving attention now, chances are it'll be ignored upon completion as well.

It truly is as Adeon put it, it's our memberbase that's causing SeN to fail, not SeN's methods of motivation. Our members are too old and too "learned" to show appreciation for most things. Instead, we, myself included, sit back and compare new projects will old ones, saying "Well, it's just like this, with 3 tweaks", and so the person gives up, because making it like the other map is 80% of the work, yet the 3 tweaks would have made a huge difference had they been carried out. The way I see it, there's really no solution to this problem, because no matter how hard we try, we'll always have a bunch of "well-learned" members who can't take a second to appreciate other people's work, not necessarily for the ingenuity of it, but for the actual effort that is being expended to accomplish the task.

Honestly, all we can hope for at this point is for old members to either stick to the Other forums, or lighten up and show a bit of enthusiasm for every single project that gets started, because it's other's enthusiasm that makes donation work worth doing.

He was being sarcastic while expressing his distaste for the simplicity of the genre.
"I'm personally not really interested in UMS that aren't too detached from melee". UMS maps using default values, no custom names, and simple isometric terrain are low quality maps (my defense map too is low quality IMO, but it was made as a demonstration map rather than a fun defense map). The entire defense genre is indeed boring--it has been done over and over again. The only special thing you did in that map was randomized pathing. As for "your map is basically evolves", it was a request to describe it in simpler terms, without having to download it to play.
Remake a 30 year old game was an EXCELLENT idea. That's what they did with that geometry wars and that pacman game (it's pacman with 3d on a sphere and powerups, and portal is just wolfenstein without guns with portals, hazards, and 3 dimensional movement). You have incredibly high standards for positive responses. What's a really fun game you played in 1990s? How about a port of adventure? How about a port of Duke Nukum? There's nothing original anymore, you just have to add your own shticks to the genre which make it interesting (which you did in your defense map, as did I).
This is the internet. Had you read the conversation it seems that Artanis thinks ALL signatures are lame, just as I hate the color light blue with a passion, and will tell anyone wearing that color that it is ugly. If you can't find humor or enjoyment in arguing about pointless stuff, then you need to learn how, as the internet is FULL of it, as is the real world. Some of my best laughs were of completely pointless conversations I've had with my family like you might find in the Gilmore Girls (ie... they talk so fast in their conversations while making good, well thought out, completely unrealistic points about nothing).

rockz, I am not complaining about the situations I had specifically, I just gave Examples.
I also typed just what I remembered, so the UMS mapping quote may have been a mistake.

Either way, being the internet ugly or not, the pointless arguments being jokes and even funny sometimes and the rudest comments being sarcasm, it's all demotivating.
I also take redundant replies bad as well. The "remake a 30 years old game" post sounds interesting, it's true, but it didn't fit the reason I made the topic whatsoever. I wanted to discuss ideas, and he basically said to rip something old. If he at least gave arguments for why we should do this instead of thinking about something unique, it wouldn't be so negative.

Sencondly, if you made a signature and posted it so the forum could see and all feedback towards you are jokes, honestly, wouldn't you feel demotivated, even for a small degree?
It's clearer when you imagine it multiple times: let's say you made three signatures, and for all the three times it was treated as a joke. This sort of thing gets old and you probably won't feel like making a sig anymore, maybe even on forums other than SEN.

So, my point is that even if some members' behaviour are understandeable or laughable, they are demotivating at some degree, varying between "Very demotivating" and "Slightly demotivating".

You could have asked.

No. I'm special. To be fair, the sig said "LOLTUS". That's asking for it.

Sounds about right. I can't do anything about it. I can't change the way I am. This sort of stuff doesn't bother me. Actually, I love criticism, so long as it isn't flaming. What's demotivating to you might give me an idea.

Well, I won't talk about this in here anymore. This is not my thread and I don't intend to steal it. BlueWolf's video is really amazing, that's what we should be discussing (regarding mapmaking).

The video kind of reiterates why we're all here... doing maps for free...
Mastering the galaxy editor... that should be our new purpose... let's do this fellas!!!

Which is why nobody really liked the concept of Premium maps anyway (but that's besides the topic)

What about we get paid for each map we submit? That WOULD really motivate me! Anyone thinks it's a good idea?

Edit: Adeon I was impressed by all your posts up to now. Keep the good work coming!

Fix'd

Reason's why the sig was lame would've been nice.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 30 2010, 9:30 pm by LoTu)S.

cool video, interesting facts,
adeon- if ye require outside motivation, then you're probably not doing the thing you're most interested in..

i mean, in my case, if everyone on this forum said my map is stupid and noone would ever play it
and i mean everyone, including lurkers, bots and all, i would continue my map regardless

I gave my quick spiel on motivation at sc2mapster
http://forums.sc2mapster.com/general/general-chat/4414-how-do-you-guys-get-motivation/#p12