Improving community involvement

[tehjman1993]

Hey everyone,

While sitting here at work doing essentially nothing, I figured I would suggest an idea that popped into my head. Let me start from the beginning before we get into the main idea:

With the new application process, it's apparent that we want more involvement on the forums. The 5+ post count requirement is an interesting take on "forcing" people to participate on the forums, and with the Wannabes as a whole. Although there are good intentions in this requirement, I don't believe this is the best way to involve new members, or any community members, with the rest of the group. I've noticed that there are too few non-Wannabes players that post here, and that's a shame. Look across any of the chats in any stream in the Wannabes - there's plenty of talk and humor to really form a community. However, I don't believe we've really done much to include these viewers, these supporters, our fans. This is not an attack on the Wannabes involvement - I think we're a very well connected group through Skype, Twitch, this forum (which could use a little more liveliness), and now Ventrilo!

This is where I want to propose my idea. To involve more non-Wannabes members, we should host a 'community night' of racing. Sure, we do races from time to time within our own group, but why do we not include the viewers? I believe an official announcement every week that would state what race we would do (and at what time) may help increase the involvement within the community. For example - an announcement made today for a Friday night or Saturday afternoon race for "I wanna go across the Rainbow" - open to ANYONE who wants to participate. We could advertise the "weekly community race" across multiple streams, as well as making a thread about it here. Anyone who's interested could make a forum account (if they haven't done so already) for more information. We even have a SRL guide on these forums - there should be no one left out who would want to participate.

This is my idea, in a nutshell. Please let me know what you think about this ... I really do believe this would be a great way to not only increase forum activity and community involvement, but is a big 'thank you' to our viewers and supporters for sticking with us. Giving them the opportunity to race and play against their favorite streamers and other viewers is, more or less, awesome.

Thank you for your time.
-Tehjman1993 "TJ"

TL;DR Weekly race open to community, not just Wannabes.

TL;TL;DR More races.

[OhNoezEinPandy]

It is indeed a pretty need suggestion, but the races are already open to everyone. I jumped in myself as a pre-onlyviewer and try to participate now from time to time. Of course it would help to advertise the races with a set time in the forum but the requirements are pretty rough set by speedrunslive:

- You need to register by yourself on SRL (I think we got a guide around here in this forum)

- You need to have a considerable amount of upload to stream (and have basic knowledge a of a broadcaster program)

- You need the actual time to race (viewing half-afk a stream isn't an actual time consuming factor)

- You need to accept that you will eventually get destroyed hard (having an actual chance to win is quite considerable in the fun-factor for most people)

The problem isn't that the races aren't open to everyone, because they actually are. It is more convenient to just watch the race than participating in it.

-> What we actually could do is building up a set schedule for races, advertise in the twitch.tv channels and write simple guides in how to participate to ease the work of the viewer in order to make it more accessible to race. If we had enough people we could invent some kind of bracket system so we would have races in similiar terms of skill to
make it more exciting.

[tehjman1993]

-> What we actually could do is building up a set schedule for races, advertise in the twitch.tv channels and write simple guides in how to participate to ease the work of the viewer in order to make it more accessible to race. If we had enough people we could invent some kind of bracket system so we would have races in similiar terms of skill to make it more exciting.

This right here is exactly what I was going for. Set schedules for races, and really emphasize the fact that the races are open to anyone. I've noticed that a lot of the races we do here are more or less made "on the spot" and are only open for about 5 minutes before we actually start the race. A set schedule is perfect, and an emphasis on 'anyone-can-join' is a big plus.

The other points you made are obviously up to the viewer. I agree with all of your points - the stream, being accepting of a loss, etc. We are not here to set up some random guy's stream, however, we should make a racing schedule to facilitate the viewer participation and experience (whether they're watching or racing).

I also like the fact that you pointed out different skill levels. If this idea were to get very popular, we could potentially split up different days to different "skill difficulty" races - one day could be an easy games race, one could be an experienced games race, and one would be for "professionals." All in all, you pretty much typed the rest of what I was thinking, Pandy

[Wolsk]

When I was streaming a couple days ago, some of my viewers were asking about playing some games with/against me, which I said I would love to do.  This would be perfect.  I've been wanting more organized races because I really enjoy them even though I always get destroyed.  Make it happen.

[ethinthenougathorn]

Its a great idea! And if youll be starting with schedules, why not make it a real "sport"?
Ine could make different leagues or let people bet on winners, ....

[Swordslinger]

Its a great idea! And if youll be starting with schedules, why not make it a real "sport"?
Ine could make different leagues or let people bet on winners, ....

Because I don't want to gamble away my Zuzus and Effs

This is a very good idea though i kinda hope this goes through.

[klazen108]

I really love this idea! Unfortunately, I still haven't seen it happen, or even many wannabe-exclusive races in the past couple of weeks! (don't hate me if it did happen and I missed it, I only watch nearly every day) You guys should really get together and figure out a good time to host a community race, something like this would really draw in an interested crowd.

(My captcha image was an apple, that can't be a coincidence )