Starting an online community for Unreal Devs.

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hey all,

As many of you know it’s pretty difficult to get your game noticed amid the sea of games out there.

I’ve been thinking about starting an online community for experienced unreal developers who have proven themselves in gameJams.

I really want to focus on creating a collective of individuals and teams who make small-scale, awesome games on a quick turn around, regularly, as opposed to say AAA developers who only release something every 3 years.

I’m planning to get a website + domain and broadcast regular (monthly?) google hangouts with other developers and asking them about their projects.

What I really need is some love, advice and participation from the UE4 community, so if you are interested or have some advice lets have a discussion here about it.

If I get a large enough expression of interest from notable developers I’ll get started on the project.

2

Unreal community is here, no need to split it.

3

I have so many forums and communities that I am a part of that adding another one would just be too much. I have seen this approach tried before on various other communities (both Game Development and Non Game Development) and it is very seldom a success.

I wish you all the best … but I probably don’t fall in to your “notable developers” category … so I probably would not be joining.

4

Agreed with TDoro, I think it’s better to develop what we have, expanding and etc, but not splitting

5

I tried doing my first tutorial on a first person shooter only to find out that the props folder is not in the restricted access section of my project where as the help file made it look so easy to find so if some one could give me a link to this folder that would be highly appreciated. i moved from blitz basic, visual basic, game maker, construct 2, unity, gamesalad, none of those were working out for me, until my dad found unreality development engine 4 was free, so this saved me hundreds of dollars. I would definetly reccomend this fabulous product to anyone.

6

We already have the forums, answerhub, IRC, reddit, gitter (though pretty inactive). I think it’s already too much, tbh.

7

I think what we need is a Game Jam forum right here :slight_smile:

8

Now that gets a +1 … 8-p

9

Google hangouts is a neat idea, but I agree with the others - there’s no need for another community when we have one right here.

10

Especially as more people join this community I think its important to keep the older more knowledgeable members here. It would help keep the friendly, helpful atmosphere.

11

Agreed. I have a separate chrome window just for all my Unreal development stuff. I don’t think there’s a need to fracture the community any more.

12

I could see where a community forum for Elite developers has a place. But the timing is all wrong. There’s so much change happening in the engine and coming down the pipe, that you have to stay close to the source, the core forums, and soak it all up. UDK didn’t split away, although some of the same initiatives were started (mostly wikis that died off). My guess is, that the main forums will be best for at least the next 2-5 years and beyond…

That probably means over-saturation of repetitive posts now that UE4 is free. So it would be good to have a system in place to defend against that. I’m not sure what that should look like, a comment voting or a post voting system?

Either way, I think we need filters, so you’re not always having to scan hundreds of posts every day just to keep informed…

13

Thanks for the comments guys.

What I’m talking about is an exclusive community for those who regularly release content, and a platform for those people to share that content.

It might have small message board, but it would primarily be about showcasing the work of members who would also link back to the community in the projects.

If I get interest from a few game makers I might consider it, I suppose the greater aim would be to have a website with quality playable games.

14

That still seems like a hard sell. I think influence is the word that’s relevant here… If you were a leading member of the forums, a big contributor, like Rama because he was strong part of the UDK community before, then maybe you’d have enough influence to convince certain devs to jump ship albeit part-time. However, exclusivity is a tricky thing to manage. You could easily end up inviting the wrong people who form their own clique and alienate those devs you were really after.

Filtering content tailored to high quality games sounds like a good idea. but how would you do it? I have another idea. If you’re set on doing something UE4 website related, then how about offering a tool for tracking the vast amount of posts on the forums… A webpage that could categorize and classify the more valuable posts & threads. So instead of an exclusive community, a list of exclusive posts. Its already becoming a challenge to stay informed here, and the forums may well become saturated now that UE4 is free.

You’d probably have to work with Epic to add extra categorization to each post / thread, for instance, a thumbs up / thumbs down voting system like some tech journals have. Then your website could analyse these and introduce a well-needed filtering system. Just a thought. Anyhow, if you keep pushing ahead with your idea, then why not go after the devs you really want and PM them directly and privately.

15

I think the WIP and Released Games threads covers what you need Neurocase. I am hesitant to see a community split because all the knowledge for Unreal Engine currently sits in these forums and in my experience these splits quickly die out and are soon forgotten.

I would rather prefer you to keep on posting here and encouraging people here and sharing all your content here … 8-}