Classroom Hub (Discovery students..)
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I thought classrooms can already get their own hub by paying for something.
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@aidan-oxley yeah I’m pretty sure you’re right.
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We already have this in place. It's an optional thing schools need to sign up for. Problem is a lot of the time schools don't register as schools and hard to filter them out. Or don't respond if we contact them.
We've made a change that isn't live yet. Not sure if it will fix this problem. Basically there is a "review" system. Where any project that is submitted by a free user, or student user will not show up in the new section. Instead, this will show up in a section called "Under Review".
For any project in the UNDER REVIEW section the community votes to get it in the new. If it doesn't get approved in x days, the project is deleted from the hub. Basically this is a sub section of new where it shows everything.The difference between the approved new and hot, is that there is no sorting algorithm.
Now I don't think this will solve everything. And with the upcoming changes we'll definitely need to change this to not be based of tier, but rather a reputation system. But we'll see how it works.
Another (planned) future change is that the hub will have "sections" where projects will be filtered to when submitting.
For now use the like/dislike buttons will help keep the Hot Projects relevant.
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Also if you have any other ideas on how we can make the system better let us know :)
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@murtaza I like this idea, it will stop a lot of bad projects.
Also perhaps some sort of privileges for people who already have well-received projects in the hub (high like to dislike ratio), one of which could be to bypass this review process.
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@murtaza I’d say you shouldn’t allow free and student users to vote on “under review” projects. Otherwise discovery students may still get bad projects on the hub.
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Organization can’t hurt, either.
For instance, to be pushed left on a chart, you have to have more likes than everyone to your right. To be pushed right, you have to have less than everyone on your left.
To be moved to “hot”, you must get 5 likes in 24 hours, or 15 in a week.
You can only be on ‘new’ or ‘hot’ for 7 Days.
You can be on ‘best’ forever, using the left/right system.
Also, only count 1 like per game per IP per day.
Developers, when uploading to the hub, start with 2 likes on a game (not counting towards hot), indie with 1, and free/classroom with 0.
It could also be a reputation perk to start with an additional “like” on your game (up to an extra 3) to get your game further “left (up)” on the charts.
In theory, this would give more reputable and known developers more of the spotlight on their game than newer, lesser known ones. That sounds harsh, yes, but typically the more reputable ones are also more experienced, meaning their games will almost naturally have more polish, and they’ll have more followers wanting to see their games, but doesn’t eliminate the possibility of new users Games from being seen,
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@thecheater887 Not enough liking going on in the hub.
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@gamecrazy Probably because too many bad projects on the hub that no one could be bothered playing them 😂
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@aidan-oxley Yeah, lots of bad projects. But not enough projects being released either. Take away the bad projects and you are left with just about nothing.
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I stopped working on any new projects because I'm done trying to work around hyperPads restrictions and lack of features, such as object referencing, prefabs and scrolling.
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@kamdroid I can’t even get terrain generation to work right properly. Even as stopped colliding>spawn. I think hyperPad is going to remain as entertainment and concept execution until it adds these critical features.
—but that’s another thread from all times :)
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Hyperpad is good as long as they continue to update... which they haven't been doing lately.
Support is also way slower nowadays.
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@itap-development said in Classroom Hub (Discovery students..):
@murtaza I’d say you shouldn’t allow free and student users to vote on “under review” projects. Otherwise discovery students may still get bad projects on the hub.
This is already in place
@thecheater887 said in Classroom Hub (Discovery students..):
Organization can’t hurt, either.
For instance, to be pushed left on a chart, you have to have more likes than everyone to your right. To be pushed right, you have to have less than everyone on your left.
To be moved to “hot”, you must get 5 likes in 24 hours, or 15 in a week.
You can only be on ‘new’ or ‘hot’ for 7 Days.
You can be on ‘best’ forever, using the left/right system.
Also, only count 1 like per game per IP per day.
Developers, when uploading to the hub, start with 2 likes on a game (not counting towards hot), indie with 1, and free/classroom with 0.
It could also be a reputation perk to start with an additional “like” on your game (up to an extra 3) to get your game further “left (up)” on the charts.
In theory, this would give more reputable and known developers more of the spotlight on their game than newer, lesser known ones. That sounds harsh, yes, but typically the more reputable ones are also more experienced, meaning their games will almost naturally have more polish, and they’ll have more followers wanting to see their games, but doesn’t eliminate the possibility of new users Games from being seen,
A lot of this is how the current hot algorithm works. However, since there are not that many projects being shared to the hub, the hot looks like it is stale. Submit projects, like/dislike and you will see hot change.
@kamdroid said in Classroom Hub (Discovery students..):
I stopped working on any new projects because I'm done trying to work around hyperPads restrictions and lack of features, such as object referencing, prefabs and scrolling.
Sorry to hear that. Object referencing is coming in the next update (not the one we're currently working that should be released very soon).
@gamecrazy said in Classroom Hub (Discovery students..):
Hyperpad is good as long as they continue to update... which they haven't been doing lately.
Support is also way slower nowadays.
Yeah, this update is taking way way way longer than I wanted. Unfortunately we had to shift focus on some business related things so we can make money and pay to exist.
As for support, we try to answer everything within 24hr. Sometimes things take a bit longer because we often go above and beyond with support. There are times were on skype calls with out users diagnosing their logic issues, or helping them implement gameplay elements... Things we shouldn't be doing. But again, if we don't users complain. It's a lose/lose situation for us. -
Ok, you guys are very busy. It is a small team. Thank you for trying so hard, and keep pushing. This update is taking forever.
In the meantime, though, you should give us "power" users more options to create contests, preview new updates and the like.
One thing that I cannot understand... If there are so many users, 1. why is nobody using the forum except us and the occasional newbie? 2. why are there are no new projects on the hub?
Like this whole entire approval idea is a good one, but it won't work unless people are submitting projects.
Here's my own idea:
There could be a beta project section/separate hub, a look-at-this section (for snippets of code, cool little animations, the like)... that way projects don't have to be completed in full before publishing.The -100 behaviors contest was a good one. To keep it short and sweet, how about "best game concept" or "hardest fun game", something like that.
Keep branching out to classrooms but don't forget your core users please, and help expand us... like, remember GamePress (crap aside).
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Ok, one more idea. Because I cannot understand why nothing is happening. Does not leave much of an incentive for the user.
How about a collaboration with an electronic music artist, or with something like audio/art on Newgrounds. "Best game using this soundtrack / best game using this pack from opengameart.org / etc"
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@gamecrazy said in Classroom Hub (Discovery students..):
Ok, you guys are very busy. It is a small team. Thank you for trying so hard, and keep pushing. This update is taking forever.
In the meantime, though, you should give us "power" users more options to create contests, preview new updates and the like.
One thing that I cannot understand... If there are so many users, 1. why is nobody using the forum except us and the occasional newbie? 2. why are there are no new projects on the hub?
Like this whole entire approval idea is a good one, but it won't work unless people are submitting projects.
Here's my own idea:
There could be a beta project section/separate hub, a look-at-this section (for snippets of code, cool little animations, the like)... that way projects don't have to be completed in full before publishing.The -100 behaviors contest was a good one. To keep it short and sweet, how about "best game concept" or "hardest fun game", something like that.
Keep branching out to classrooms but don't forget your core users please, and help expand us... like, remember GamePress (crap aside).
Some good points!
- You do have "power" to create contests.. Use the forum! We'll be more than happy to create a banner in the hub for it and support it any way we can. No one has shown interest in doing so.
Previewing updates? Do you mean for your own projects or hyperPad updates? If your own projects, once again there is a entire section of the forum dedicated to this.
If you're not using it, there is not much we can do. If you mean hyperPad updates , then this is the only update so far where we didn't open up to community beta test. There is never any interest so we just didn't bother this time since it slows us down. There is interest at first, people sign up to try it out. But no one ends up giving feedback and we have to chase you guys down for bugs... For some reason most of you guys like to keep bugs a secret and work around them :). So for this update we just decided not to do a community beta.
- There are not "so many" users. hyperPad is a relatively app user base. We are in the 10's of thousands. But nothing insane.
As for why the community is so small? Well thats the challenge of community building. Our app 2 major parts. The creation side, and the community side. Our primary goal is to get people to use the app, then from there transition them to using the hub and rest of the community. This second part is a huge challenge on it's own... It's why a lot of community-only companies fail (like various social networks, picture sharing etc). We've definitely failed at growing the community, but we're fortunate enough that there is interest in the app side of things still...
Now, also keep in mind that there will never be 100% of users taking part in the community.. Take GamePress for example. At it's peak we had about 500,000 users and about 25-30,000 active users. Do you remember the forum for that? There were about 25 users max. However the "Arcade" always had content submitted.... But that content was trash. The submitted games were bad because we made it too easy to submit. No requirements, a built in icon creator, no screenshots... etc.
With hyperPad we took the opposite approach. We made it hard... As hard as the App Store. This turns out to be too hard, most users can't even create icons the right size so they give up right there... Though if I'm honest, if you're struggling to create an icon then you're project probably isn't all that likely to be a success in the hub.....Which leads me to the next point... There is a drop off in the hub due to human emotions. Users who get more dislikes than likes, rarely submit again.... Often times I get emails for users, or even their parents saying their kids were bullied in the hub... I go look, and it's pretty reasonable constructive feedback given.
Creating an active hub is a challenge. We need to find the right balance between simplifying submission process, but also using it as a quality gatekeeper. While positively enforcing personal growth and encouraging users...
Also, while our rules and terms of service say you must be 13 years or older to use the hub... A lot of kids still use the app. So they use the app, but not the hub or forum... And sometimes "sneak" their way into the hub.
In the next couple of updates, we're actually making user registration optional. This will most likely increase number of app users, but it won't help with getting them to the hub.....
I guess to summarize... It's hard, and we have no idea what we're doing when it comes to building a community (and that's okay!). But we're trying things, and constantly learning (even if it looks like we're not).
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Really, the entire hub is supposed to be a beta section... I think this is also the problem we've created with the difficult submission process. By making the submission too strict, maybe some users think that the projects need to be way more complete and polished.... Basically, anything in the hub is ok, as long as it serves a purpose. It's hard to convey this as a written rule (we've tried multiple times, but obviously keep failing at it). Basically we want to say don't submit trash, but it's ok if you tried hard 🤣. Now that being said, one of the major hub revisions we have planned is categories and sections based off tags. So example and tutorial projects can be easier to find.
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We want to do more contests. But just haven't had the time, this update has already been so late. Hopefully we can start doing them again soon. I do agree that they are a great way to bring life to the community. But again, if you guys want to do contests on your own, we're happy to support you any way we can.
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Our core user base.... This is a hard one. When we first started with GamePress, our core user was never education or classes. We had no idea that there was even a market there. In fact, we got extremely frustrated that these schools and kids were using the app and ruining the community. So much so that we made the biggest mistake ever. We shut down GamePress and moved to hyperPad. We tried to run away from them..... Yet here we are again (on a much smaller scale). But we've matured, and learned some things from that huge mistake.
We shouldn't have run away from them, instead we should have focused on educating them and helping those kids mature into amazing developers and creators. Our major failure was that we didn't see the potential. Like you for example, you've been with us since almost the beginning. At least 4 or 5 years. At the beginning, you were younger, and just trying things. Obviously lacking the skills or knowledge. But you stuck with it, and continued to learn. But now you're actually working on some cool stuff and an amazing part of the community.
We should have helped you more. Helped users like you.
So that being said, education still isn't our core user base.... But we're not going to abandon them again, and we finally see the potential in them. We don't build features for education. We build features the community wants and needs. Our goal is to build the most powerful tool on the iPad while keeping it approachable. We're building a tool first. If schools find a need for it, that's cool. We'll help them use it. But we won't compromise for them..... We've had plenty of opportunities to "sell" our tech to education platforms and walk away from it all. But it's not what we set out to build.
@gamecrazy said in Classroom Hub (Discovery students..):
Ok, one more idea. Because I cannot understand why nothing is happening. Does not leave much of an incentive for the user.
How about a collaboration with an electronic music artist, or with something like audio/art on Newgrounds. "Best game using this soundtrack / best game using this pack from opengameart.org / etc"
Collaborations and partnerships don't come easy, especially for a small community like ours. Basically with any deal, you need to offer something. What I mean is, what's in it for new grounds. Why would they bother partnering with us? They're one of the largest creative communities on the internet. They don't need us, we need them. So what can we offer them?
We've tried these kinds of deals before (not with new grounds... but other sites like Deviant art, meetings with Lego, Disney.. some children's TV networks). Even got far into details... But they ended up going no where and just ended up slowing down the real work that needed to be done on hyperPad.Things ARE happening... It's just not things we can constantly discuss or bring up. sometimes they don't go anywhere. But it's not for a lack of trying.
Wooow, that was long.... I feel this is one of the examples that sets us apart from other apps and communities. We're transparent and honest about what we're doing, our mistakes.... Or what ever. We try our best to answer all questions.
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@murtaza How hard is it to make a community beta? Obviously I would've stuck my hand up to join in with it, and if it helped get this update out faster I would've played with the new behaviours trying to break them 😝
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Wow, that was long. And it really helped illuminate any doubts on my end. Thanks for that.
Just from the user's perspective, everything seemed on hold, and it was pretty confusing. I checked the road map, as well, and I was happy to see that it has been updated with a bunch of new features.
I would happily start a contest, but unless it is made official and posted on the app, people are not going to take it seriously! We don't have access to "announcements" either so for now I'll just type it up, and you'll tell me what to do afterwards.
As for the hub, I think there would be more submissions if there was a list somewhere that stated the requirements (sizes, description, keywords, etc.). Then users could prepare everything before submitting. After clicking submit and navigating to another app, everything is lost every time. Or even a way to save that screen, but not publish.
Also, I didn't mean with Newgrounds. I meant with a user on Newgrounds. Why wouldn't an aspiring artist be happy to lend some of their brand new and unknown art/music for Hyperpad?
