This seems like a very cool project, thanks for sharing! I agree that this type of project can be considered a “moonshot”, which implies that most of the potential impact lies in the tail end of possible outcomes. Consequently the estimated become very tricky. If the EV is dominated by a few outlier scenarios, reality will most likely turn out to be underwhelming.
I’m not sure if one can really make a good case that working on such a game is worthwhile from an impact perspective. But looking at the state of things and the community as a whole, it does still seem preferable to me that somebody somewhere puts some significant effort into EA games (sorry for the pun).
Also, to add one possible path to impact this might enable: it might be yet another channel to deliberately nudge people into in order to expose them to the key EA ideas in an entertaining way (HPMOR being another such example). So your players might not all end up being “random people”, but a ratio of them might be preselected in a way.
Lastly, it seems like at least 5-10 people (and probably considerably more) in EA are interested or involved in game development. I’m not familiar of any way in which this group is currently connected—would probably be worth doing so. Maybe something low on overhead such as a Signal group would work as a start?
Considering that I need to cast a relatively wide net to find even thousands of players, the messaging about Mineralis is not very selective on purpose. I think that the overall demographic will end up being relatively random within the set of people who are gamers and enjoy JRPGs. Whether JRPG fans have a predisposition towards EA—that remains to be seen. :)
I would be super humbled if the game ends up being a success and can be considered useful for the purpose of actually teaching EA concepts. However, I would imagine that a vast majority learns better through reading articles or listening to podcasts.
Setting up a group for discussion sounds like a valuable idea. I added a personal task for that and expect to get to it late next week. I’m thinking Discord might make the most sense, given that many developers already use it anyway.
This seems like a very cool project, thanks for sharing! I agree that this type of project can be considered a “moonshot”, which implies that most of the potential impact lies in the tail end of possible outcomes. Consequently the estimated become very tricky. If the EV is dominated by a few outlier scenarios, reality will most likely turn out to be underwhelming.
I’m not sure if one can really make a good case that working on such a game is worthwhile from an impact perspective. But looking at the state of things and the community as a whole, it does still seem preferable to me that somebody somewhere puts some significant effort into EA games (sorry for the pun).
Also, to add one possible path to impact this might enable: it might be yet another channel to deliberately nudge people into in order to expose them to the key EA ideas in an entertaining way (HPMOR being another such example). So your players might not all end up being “random people”, but a ratio of them might be preselected in a way.
Lastly, it seems like at least 5-10 people (and probably considerably more) in EA are interested or involved in game development. I’m not familiar of any way in which this group is currently connected—would probably be worth doing so. Maybe something low on overhead such as a Signal group would work as a start?
Hey Markus, thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Considering that I need to cast a relatively wide net to find even thousands of players, the messaging about Mineralis is not very selective on purpose. I think that the overall demographic will end up being relatively random within the set of people who are gamers and enjoy JRPGs. Whether JRPG fans have a predisposition towards EA—that remains to be seen. :)
I would be super humbled if the game ends up being a success and can be considered useful for the purpose of actually teaching EA concepts. However, I would imagine that a vast majority learns better through reading articles or listening to podcasts.
Setting up a group for discussion sounds like a valuable idea. I added a personal task for that and expect to get to it late next week. I’m thinking Discord might make the most sense, given that many developers already use it anyway.