Customers

[Mordraugion]

For those of you that don’t know me I have been active as a player for nearly 4 years and during the last 18 months I have taken on the roles of a Planeshift Game Master, Forum Moderator and IRC op. In each case I saw an area where I could provide something that the game I enjoy so much required, applied and was fortunate enough to be accepted. I work fulltime for 50 hours a week and Planeshift occupies whatever free time I have left over after work and looking after my son. My motivation? It is the same as most of us I want to give a little back to a game that has given me a lot of fun and to enable others to share that fun and to try and add my influence to try to fix what I want fixing.

Just recently there has been mention that you the general populace of Planeshift are customers and that because we (Members of the Dev/Moderating Team) don’t see you as such it is implied that none of us cares about what you think or want.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, to me you are all friends, fellow players and colleagues, and to call you customers implies a master/servant relationship with *me* being paid to provide *you* with exactly what you want immediately and with no questions asked. Everyone who plays adds something to the game, from as little as another name in someones story to inadvertantly stress testing the game mechanics while grinding.

I may be mis-remembering and I've lost my logs but a long time ago a player ran an rp that in my opinion was outside settings, we had several long and heated arguments on IRC which ended with me saying if you dont like the settings join the team and fix it, through a positively awesome work ethic he did exactly that. Now I'm not saying everyone could do the same but how will you know unless you try.

[Prolix]

Only people who have bought into the cult of consumerism could believe that planeshift has customers. It is kind of sad really as they have been convinced that they could have no other role in society. For them to be a customer they would have to be buying something you were selling.

[Rayken]

Well stated.  For people fresh off of Google, it's understandable if they don't realize that Planeshift generates no money for anyone.  But the mentality of "The devs owe me this" for whatever reason is unhealthy in the long-term for player and project alike.  Planeshift is a party, not a restaurant.  You're not paying for food and service.  Instead, you bring what you can to make it more enjoyable for all.  If you show up empty-handed, that's cool too.  Just keep in mind that you're a guest.

[neko kyouran]

What if they bring comedy through funny captions put to pictures of kittehs?

[Prolix]

Hey it is fine if you only share glyptic puns. While some people may not appreciate them others, delight in the imagined distress they cause. I believe that is a delight shared by the kitty proponents even if only secretly.

[Rayken]

Kittehs, comedy, and glyptic puns are welcomed at any party!  Also nachos.

[Mythryndel]

I understand what you are saying about PS not having customers. I do not pay money. I do not, for the most part, get a say in how things progress. I am simply asked to enjoy myself, be courteous to others, and file bug reports if I find flaws in the game. This is all more than reasonable.

I do have one problem though. How is asking for a little more communication being that demanding? I may not be the typical user here, but all I have asked for is status... or notice of some kind about issues/outages. Using the news box on the forums would be very handy. Something like:

PS Server conditions: Fairly Stable
NPCClient conditions: Fairly Unstable

5-day forecast: NPCClient issues being investigated, Server may be taken down while troubleshooting.

That would be incredibly helpful to us users/players. It has been hashed/rehashed so many times i don't think i can count that high, but giving people 1 minutes notice of a server outage is, well, rude.

On the plus side... Xordan (i believe) has posted on the forums about one or two planned outages, and I am EXTREMELY happy about this. Also, the last couple of times i was playing and they were taking the server down, they announced it would go down in 10 minutes. So things are improving, and I hope to be out of things to file well worded and useful bug reports on... Soon (tm).

[Caarrie]

That would be incredibly helpful to us users/players. It has been hashed/rehashed so many times i don't think i can count that high, but giving people 1 minutes notice of a server outage is, well, rude.

the admin have no excuse anymore.

http://www.hydlaa.com/flyspray_upgrade/index.php?do=details&task_id=1912

[MustangMR]

I'm sorry, but I disagree.  Every person who uses a service you provide is a customer.  Amount rendered for those services is irrelevant.  Tell the millions of OpenOffice users they are not customers of Sun. Tell the millions of Linux users they are not customers of whosoevers distribution they are using.  Is not the PS development team a customer of Ogre (oops, Crystal Space), the developer of PS's graphics engine?  How would they feel if they were told, sorry, you're not a customer of ours because you didn't pay for this so bug off and we don't care if you're having trouble using it.  The PS team has leveraged from the open source community, and they are surely customers of those software providers.  If you are having trouble with this concept, you have missed the boat on the whole open source movement thing. 

This may be a matter of semantics; the OP's feelings about the people who play PS is beyond a typical customer/provide relationship, but in the strictest of definitions, they're/we're customers.  If you don't like that, then you should stop advertising PS as an open source project, and stop leveraging from the open source community.  The GPL is designed to protect users and developers equally.  It's just a way of thinking about the people who use your products, so please don't take it lightly or dismiss it just because there is no money changing hands.

That said, it doesn't give us, the customers, a right to be asshats to the development team.  I admit I've crossed the line a time or two out of frustration, and bottom line is that even though I argue we're customers, we should still appreciate the work being done by the dev's.  What they do is not easy, and it's just common courtesy.

[Tuxide]

Is not the PS development team a customer of Ogre, the developer of PS's graphics engine?

Comes to show how much you know, PS does not use Ogre3D, it uses Crystal Space.  Also, that's not how voluntary projects work.  People get paid with nothing more than peer respect.  If PlaneShift was a funded project with people who are paid to contribute to it, then it would be totally different.

Furthermore, there are people who are paid to contribute to Linux and OpenOffice.org, and even Crystal Space makes money.  But there is no money going into PS.

[MustangMR]

Bah, you're right, CS, not Ogre on this project.  Still open source.  Same concept.

[Mythryndel]

I think that we are starting to veer 

*queue mystical east asian voice over*
This isn't about linux, openoffice, crystal space, etc. I understand that there are people who very have opposing views on the customer/provider relationship. I think that, like has been pointed out, because of the open source roots of the project there is a bit of a blur to the normal lines. The ultimate "payment" for a project like this is respect and making whatever contribution you can to make the whole better. This means, unless you have proof, don't just assume the devs are out to ignore you.

On the flip side, If a project like PS is going to work long-term, respect has to be a two way street. Over the last several months, I have observed that several of the PS staff (and I use that term loosely to mean anyone who is officially on any team) have really started to see the players as more than just whiny children who complain endlessly about how crappy their free toy is. Not that there aren't a few of them, but i digress. The point is, the devs have been more vocal with the players/community and I think that will go a long way towards helping the players feel like they are respected too.
*end mystical east asian voice over*

I may just be rambling at this point... but let's not turn this into, yet another, flame war about players vs devs.

[Tuxide]

The point is, the devs have been more vocal with the players/community and I think that will go a long way towards helping the players feel like they are respected too.

One thing that I've came to realize is that this forum generates a lot of communication overhead.  I believe this is what you are seeing, people are wasting their time saying things that are totally unnecessary.  One of the goals of effective software engineering is to minimize the amount of unnecessary communication between groups of people--users and developers, developers and testers, users and testers, etc.  So I am interested in ways to reduce the amount of communication here because there shouldn't be this much.

[Under the moon]

I always thought of PS like a free park, even as a player. We work on it to make it better for those who wish to walk the paths, as well as for our own (yes, we are entitled) enjoyment. How odd would it be for a free park to greet visitors and users to the grounds with "Welcome Customers!"?

People who use free services/products are not customers. They are users. I am a proud User (or end-user) of such services/products as Firefox, Openoffice, Freemind, PlaneShift, Blender, The Gimp, and many others.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
cus·tom·er    Audio Help   (kŭs'tə-mər)  Pronunciation Key
n.  

   1. One that buys goods or services.
   2. Informal An individual with whom one must deal: a tough customer.

Customer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A customer refers to individuals or households that purchase goods and services generated within the economy. The word historically derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods there, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future.

No, you are not a customer.

So long as I am not paid to do this work I will not under any circumstance be held to a higher standard in terms of my tone or demeanor than the posters here.

You will notice in the long history of posts I seldom lose my cool or behave less than cordially unless someone goes well out of their way to be an asshat.

Here are things paying customers do that I will generally not respond well to fyi:

-Demanding a fix, feature, or addition
-Accusing us of not moving fast enough while contributing little or nothing
-Deciding what is the highest priority to be fixed
-Ignoring the posts of the development team
-Personal attacks
-Repetition of previously stated positions
-Ignoring the work that has been done
-Whining

When people post civil nicely stated questions in a non accusatory tone they are generally answered promptly.

If the response a poster gets is curt, that means we are busy.

Busy doing what you ask?

Building PlaneShift.

I am not a customer service agent and refuse to be treated as one. You aren't paying me to be nice to you. You aren't paying me.

You want myself and others to work for you for free, treat us like you are thankful.

--mod's note: edited to add quote's for easier reading.