VLOG: Points Of View – Your Weekender Comments
February 13, 2019 by lloyd
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Super-appreciate being included in the discussion, guys. 😀 I’ll be honest, I hadn’t considered what happens if more than one person wants to start an entry on the same battle.
I was just wondering if the community might find the database more useful if there was some way to gauge (a) who / where it came from and by extension, the general “quality” level of the entry (I guess this would matter more for historical).
Please understand, I’m not trying to be “grognard elitist” here – the ten sources and twenty books and 400-piece 5-hour wargames that say … “Oriskany” might put into an entry on Pegasus Bridge might honestly not interest someone who just saw it on Youtube or at the gaming store and want to chuck some dice around.
Maybe a “flavor” rating, to be set by the person making the entry? Perhaps as simple as:
1) Casual
2) Serious
3) Research
Thanks again! 😀
Yeah I’m still trying to get my head around it too mate.
I understand completely where your coming from though, I’m just wondering how we achieve that and still keep it kind of ‘wiki like’ so we don’t end up with a mass of duplicate entries.
I need a little more time to work out the mechanics of it, but it could be as simple as having little to no information in the base entry, and the information is contained in individual users projects and those projects are ranked based on some form of ‘quality’ rating perhaps?
Just to muddy the waters, do you it would work to somehow identify Subject Matter Experts (SME) within the community that could entries in the registry?
It could:
– help to separate it from the curration team, so they don’t feel overloaded-
– build on @oriskany‘s quality of data point
– be an achievement for the member so recognised
I do realise that there could be a negative gatekeeper type aspect to this. perhaps the community itself could make the nominations as to an SME.
Just a thought….
PS: thanks for the shoutout again, but I’m a Kiwi, not an Ozzie…. Some cultures think we sound the same, but not us; although both countries make damn fine ANZAC biscuits.
I am of the opinion that it should be simple and easy to use when it comes to this database. I don’t think we need there to be clarifications on specifics or authentication of entries as it were – especially when it comes to the detail of it. We’re not Wikipedia, as we’ve talked about before, and folks will go there for that information.
When it comes down to it I think it’s (in my opinion) something as simple as…
Battle Name: Whatever the battle might be called
Battle Realm: Fictional/Factual (just a drop-down menu to choose which)
Date: Simply enter the date of the battle, be it historical or fictional
Combatants: The sides that fought in the battle (multiple entries allowed here)
Outcome: Victory/Defeat for which sides
Brief Overview: A text box where those that make the entry input a summary of the battle
Applicable Game(s): Bolt Action, Warhammer 40,000 etc (chosen from our own database)
Terrain & Landscape: The environment the battle was fought in to give hints for people recreating the battle themselves
Image Uploader: A gallery of images uploaded by anyone who wants to show off more about the battle including art, terrain, maps etc
Linked Projects: Where someone can link to their own project where they are working on this particular battle
All of this then goes into the system and gets checked by a member of staff or an expanded curation team who just checks it over to make sure it’s not spam and then it gets added into the database. People can then access it and edit like Wiki and make suggestions to change entries or upload additional pictures.
Each battle can then be given a star rating out of 5 or something to show that it has been given a lot of thought and attention and a little reward for someone who puts the work in.
This is now my favorite mid-week show/series…
The whole photo recon thing works well .It was a little more awkward 25 years ago when we did it before mobile phones but was great fun
I’m working away and being put up in a hotel ATM, i jumped on the bed and flipped open the laptop to enjoy some gaming material and there i see my comment on “points of view!”. I am well chuffed!
Great episode guys and i am with @warhammergrimace on this one, this show has become a real mid-week treat that allows a deeper thrashing out of ideas as well as an opportunity to review material from the community that could give whole new perspectives on a topic.
Looking forward to next week POV!! (Non erotic of course!!)
Re. the idea of GW creating a closed eco-system for 3d printed minis. I fully expect you are correct and that if 3d printing becomes as ubiquitous as we all think it will then they will attempt to go down this route. The question for me though is whether they will succeed sufficiently to make a viable business model. The reason I am sceptical is that they haven’t a great track record when it comes to technology – remember the GW patented “flamer” airbrush powered branded cans of compressed air? That was GW’s attempt to grab a slice of the airbrush action and they totally half-assed it with a substandard, over-priced product. Its the way they think about this kind of thing. They haven’t the resources to develop their own tech so they’ll have to pay a third party to do it for them (with maybe some plastic gubbins clagged on the outside like skulls or double-headed eagle to gimmick it up), but then add a whopping margin on it which prices it way beyond the going price for a mid-to-low-end product it will likely be. Just like they do with tape measures, PVA glue and even boxes of sand!
The problem is that while this may work with bottles of PVA glue, the 3d tech is a different order of magnitude, and unless it is competing with the better value independent products, why would anyone bother? Would you pay high dollar for cruddy 2nd rate prints “just because” they were Space Marines? Or would you scam pirate copies or alternative sculpts and print them off much cheaper on your indie tech at a lower price for better quality? Given, even when it is fully accepted, 3d tech is still going to be a little niche compared with buying a box of ready-produced toy soldiers.
My guess is they will struggle in this area, unless they really have rethought their ideology – that if you stick GW logos on any old crap the fanboys will lap it up at twice the going rate.
Maybe I’m cynical and jaded, but that’s what 35 years of playing GW games will do to you… 🙂
LettinG the big boys put adds directly on your server could lead to trouble.
But, then again sWoping C and D letters could be considered a blood sport.
Don’t we all enjoy good bloody sports.
@warzan I think I have said this before, but re different types of playing games. One of the magazines ran a game where the players were given a description of the area they were moving into and were represented as web cams so they can only see what their table top avatar can see. They each had I think 1-2 runners representing brigade commanders feeding back to the c&c…
It’s almost like YouTube don’t understand that most people skip the adverts?
Finally got it right first try @warzan ?
On the game @dignity brought up with a team of players in the command bunker and one player moving the minis – anyone else remember the TV ‘Time Commanders’ on BBC2 year’s back where they had a team of four players using Rome Total War to refight battles from history where two players were the generals and were giving orders from a dais while the other two were down ‘in the trenches’ relaying orders to the guys controlling the computers? Sounds similar to what Justin is mentioning albeit computised instead of with minis (and without Mike Loads and another historian coming in at the end to explain how the battle actually went in real life).
Northern Ireland nuclear waste – shh Justin, that was supposed to be our ace in the hole for Brexit; we secretly dump all out waste there and then agree to give it to Eire to secure a better Brexit deal without Eire knowing they’re getting a bum deal. ?
“We’re not making children’s TV here” – hmm that’s an idea, how about a second channel called OTT Jr or something which is dedicated to covering the more kid friendly games out there and how to get gaming as a family/getting young-uns into gaming? I’m sure there’s already plenty of content you could draw on and you could even cover things like @bloodbeard ‘s Roman Risk (perhaps you could adapt it and bring it to one of your local schools as part of your coverage).
You might not have Kaiju in Ireland, but you have banshees and Leprechauns and stuff. Plus you’re next to Great Britain so I’m sure you get some overspill from all the weekend alien invasions before a certain medical practitioner in a blue box has chance to stop them. ?
Tea? TEA? @warzan tries to kill me!11!! *now of watching the video*
On the topic of YouTube and blacklisting it. Since you already upload content to vimeo for backstagers why not use it for the regular videos too? And be it just as a backup plan. YouTuber Louis Rossmann ( https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup ) does it and explains why he did it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdLNGVr8OPM
Also, if you’re IT guys are up for it, you could set up your own peertube instance (aka Server https://joinpeertube.org/en/ ) and have no further trouble. (I really like peertube because of it’s decentralized nature. Even if other servers go down, your video will stay accessible.) Hit me up with any followup questions 😉
Just for warren to know, Elmo also refers to himself as Elmo, not me or I. Warren equal to Elmo….not even close.
lol
@warzan the illuminate are watching you !
BEASTS OF WARRIN @warzan ???
same in Scotland @lloyd nothing more hazardous that a Celtic hen night.
I think at the moment people see the programs an think you need a degree in CAD to make recognizable things on the 3d printers which put’s many off taking the plunge.
Regarding the YouTube stuff, I think if you were to split content it’d make way more sense to do it via the Lloyd and Justing route where you split it into board games and warga…cough cough….I mean miniature games.
As for the backend side of YouTube stuff though, having war or any of those terms in your metadata will flag your videos to YouTube, however if you’re still getting the green monetisation icon it’ll mean that YouTube isn’t actively punishing you. As for the paid ad-service side of things, it’s a different kettle of fish, you can’t even put an exclamation point in your ad title or anything like that or they’ll ban it for being sensationalist or something like that.
There’s a couple of things though to consider, obviously if you do create a new channel you’ve got to jump through the new hoops to get it monetised with 1k subscribers and 4k hours of watch time which will be a massive pain.
The final point is just to clarify something that Lloyd had said about watching more as a viewer and therefore getting delivered more ad’s. The way the algorithm see’s it is that it doesn’t matter if you watch a lot of one specific channel in one sitting, what they look for is what video is generating a long one-session viewership. For example, if I watch an Indie Thursday video, then I click on a Lets Play from another channel going through that game, then another video and so on. YouTube will recognise that the first video that started that session converts viewers into long watch-time sessions and then will push that video more (if it consistently does that). It makes sense when you think about it.
Really enjoying Points of View – it’s great to continue the weekend discussions!
@warzan point made! ?
I feel like rulesets for generic fantasy work because we “allow” it to work. I feel like nowadays Tolkien’s work has aged (like wine or whisky) and become its own thing again. Since the movies and the GW product, it really has its own flavour. So while in the 80’s and 90’s generic fantasy drew heavily from Tolkien, these days I feel it has kind of gone away from it too.
I also feel that your sci-fi examples are too narrow, though I get what you’re saying. (We all know that 40k has drawn from so many other sources over the years, though it too has been distilled to its own flavour).
Use 40k minis and play Bolter-Action 40k ( or whatever it’s called) or use non-GW minis and play 40k. You’re still playing 40k.
But what about those old sci-fi movies of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s? Ice Pirates, the Last Star Fighter, Escape from New York/LA? Robocop? They’re generically sci-fi enough that they don’t fall into your other examples, but what system do we use? What about cross overs? I could easily see how Firelfly could almost shoehorn into the Alien universe.
Let’s go to video games: what was the rest of the world doing while the Combine was enslaving humanity and Freeman was nowhere to be seen?
That’s where I see this kind of game coming in.
Lolol! Consider your words, what? Mate don’t ever change!
So my first points of view VLOG. I like it, good review of many topics, think this is a must keep venue!
Thanks for checking out my comment. Good to feel part of the development discussions, and thanks for mentioning the curation team’s recent success too.
On the question of why bother with the Battles database (with apologies to Field of Dreams) – if you build it, we will come. (Easy now). If the tool is there then there is a good chance the community will use it. Curiosity is a powerful force and this feels like a novel way of exploring and interacting as a community.
I liked your ideas of the way the decline of the high street will manifest as a turn toward experience over consumerism. That makes sense of the changes that have taken place in the last few years. Also there is nothing wrong with having you guys speculate on the future of the hobby or GW specifically. You are a bit like a spoken version of the Delphi Method which is a way of predicting the future using a panel of experts answering questions. Perhaps it is worth trying it if we are serious about predicting the future of 3D printing for the hobby?
Sounds like a good idea for a Mega-Game! I was thinking about doing something like that for my Pegasus Bridge project. How to get commanders involved and the like. Su&Sd have some good videos on their mega-game experiences!
https://player.vimeo.com/video/123956861
On Snag-a-Normie week – My Dad is absolutely against board games – but he loves his cycling – so this Christmas I got him to play Lanterne Rouge – now he’s pestering me to paint up the little cyclists in his club colours and is already asking about the new expansion (which adds cobbles) – as the cobbled classics are his favourite races!!!
@warzan a question about your Youtube victimisation…
I get why the algorthym may be punishing you, but you’re not the only Wargames channel on Youtube (sorry!). How is it that they’re able to get seen by other Youtubers? Why aren’t all wargaming channels being punished equally?
I’m just concerned that you might put a lot of work into fixing a problem but it’s weird that it’s not affecting others.
yep as I’ve said in the vid it’s probably layers of things that have built up over time.
because it’s such a closed environment it’s hard to say, and coupled with how evasive they have always been when talking to them (at any level) I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.
On this: I’d also like to know if it helps you guys more if I watch your YouTube content on YouTube, or on the site as I usually do?
no, really it’s just for reaching new folk.
Here is where the party is 🙂
Lindybeige has a lot of historical warfare content on his channel. I would actually be surprised if the lot of you weren’t subscribed already. But he uses the word war and other words belonging to the same semantic field a lot.
Since, as far as I know, relative closeness within semantic fields is at the basis of all of googles language algorithms. I do not suppose it would be practical to subject a video’s voice transcript to the same kind of strict filters one would subject the video and channel titles to. However checking to for the regularity of the occurrence of certain spoken key words and their temporal distance to each other might serve to group texts into categories. Some of which might be of course be deemed undesirable for advertisers. Over all a new channel and strict semantic hygiene are probably the safest route to take if you want to be listed and receive adds.
But I digress! Since @warzan also mentioned wargaming with static pictures or limited information I highly recommend you watch this video of the Gentelman mentioned above has done a splendid video about how wargaming was used to win the battle of the Atlantic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ
@dignity I thought you were cool. But you’re not even registered to vote?! I’m not sure if I can follow somebody that doesn’t vote…. 😉
Seriously, if democracy is going to wane here, I want to at least feel sure that you will carry on the tradition over there. 🙂
@warzan, the Lady is Mary Whitehouse!