Hi everyone, last week I tried my hand a starting a blitz (and yes, I’ve read Darr’s essay).
Short story short: it flopped, hard.
Let’s take a moment (if you’re interested) in analyzing why it failed. Failure isn’t a bad thing, but not learning from your mistakes definitely is.
##Timing:
In Voice Chat the other day, Zane (the only person to make a submission, technically it’s compiled, go Zane!) pointed out that the timing of the Blitz wasn’t very good; as students are reaching the end of their semesters, their workload is at their maximum; and adults need to keep adulting whilst also dealing with holiday stuff (Christmas shopping for your whole family takes time and effort, oof).
##The Idea:
So, previous resource blitzes focused on creating content that could be considered, as they were, finished products. My blitz, the Frac-Map blitz wouldn’t have even provided the end-user with a finished product.
The plan was to have a part 2, wherein people would take the results of part 1 and create full maps (i.e. it was a 2-step map blitz); but we flopped, and it looks like that won’t be happening. Nobody really showed any interest, so it was doomed from the start.
##Going Forward:
Should we just stick to simple resource blitzes?
The only one I’ve experienced since I’ve started here was the Mugging Blitz 5, and that had a lot of meme entries (something I’m guilty of, as my only entry was a headless Roy).
Would it be better to just abandon the blitz format altogether?
Instead, opting for a repository for each type of asset?
Any and all opinions are welcome, even the ones that just say “Haha you suck and you know it!”
I am looking for ways to give back to the community, and this seems to have been a step in the wrong direction.
Probably best to avoid using blitz for things that don’t have any value added with a deadline. The original blitz was made to be much more impressive because it had a short deadline. Resource creation, like portraits or maps or whatever, don’t have any value added for being completed in a short amount of time.
Ditch the short deadline for a more reasonable one if you feel like you need one.
I’d agree that the timing was awful, and I agree with Zane about the deadline. I meant to submit something, but didn’t get around to it. Before I knew it, it was over.
Not every project needs a super tight turnaround time - but I’ve also noticed “Blitz” is used for any community project that involves crowdsourcing resources or time for one, sole project. Something like building maps together shouldn’t be rushed since it is super collaborative and time consuming by nature. Designing your own map takes long enough, but I can imagine trying to figure out what someone else is trying to do with just a little bit of visual is even more time consuming.
I think blitzes should be coordinated more by members of the community in order to pick times where people can actually participate, versus (What I presume) is sprung upon randomly.
Perhaps a community blitz calendar for the full year could be interesting and get people hyped about the type of blitz that is upcoming down the road, allow people to prepare, clear their calendars, etc. Perhaps doing month-long as well with this format could be interesting since everyone wil have more time to commit to it.
Building off this, what if we did monthly blitzes that then culminated into resources to be used for a community blitz hacking project? Ie each month is a different resource and then the final month or two is used to compile the top ones into a community created game.
I think with better coordination, predetermined timing, and community alignment, the format could work better for everyone.
While that sounds like a great idea in my opinion, it’s still a lot to manage whilst also working on one’s own projects at the same time.
If somebody did want to step up and try to organize for the long run I’d be down to participate. But even that would require a boatload of community effort in the planning phase.
At the same time however, it may be easier to just have posts dedicated to open resource donations, kinda like the animation directory. Then again, without any sort of deadline there’s no incentive/driving force for people to work on contributions.
