Candidate Statement for 1.20 Board Election

[Hejnewar]

Hi, so as a candidate I decided to write a little about why I decided to be a candidate and what I would like to push for as a part of the board.

So during the last cycle, I didn't really see any major movements or ideas from the board, neither for increasing the budget (so earning money) or improving the quality of the game (no art that I'm aware of commissions for 1.18). Perhaps they had other tasks that I'm unaware of but that doesnt change my perception of lack of game improvement.

I myself would like to tackle both of those issues. In the following ways that I already proposed once:
Creating either an artbook or soundtrack for wesnoth from entirely new art or music, of the two art seems more likely to happen. This would allow for both improving the quality of the game and possibly refunding part of the costs or even let us earn something extra, which we could reinvest later. The point of this is providing easy way on the most popular gaming platform that is Steam to support wesnoth and its development while getting something extra and not necessarily us creating this with the sole intention to just sell it as a product (that doesn't mean that the quality should be lacking) which hopefully solves to „players already have that” problem as well with just different approach.

I also wouldn't limit the art to just high quality commissioned portraits, I believe that high quality pixel art also has its place in the same or separate artbook, especially if we would do an artbook for a faction or a campaign.

If successful, this would allow us to reward mainline campaigns of exceptional quality with beautiful art as well, increase the number of tracks and improve quality of music overall, possibly having a soundtrack created specifically for a campaign.

Hopefully this would create a positive feedback loop where by creating high quality content we are able to reward work of exceptional creators with even higher quality and in the case of artists we are possibly capable of offering the commission's form time to time because after all it is better to commision from known community members rather than just random people on the internet.

Additionally in my opinion we could commision (provided sufficient funds) other types of things as well, whatever we are missing, as long as they dont require regular maintenance.

Also I'm not gonna pretend like this is a 100% guaranteed business plan, but at the very least we still are left with high quality art and an additional way for the community to support us if it is put into motion.

There is also a second reason why I'm candidating and that is due to me wanting to actually increase the quality of elections themselves by hopefully making other candidates also think of and make their own statements of what they would like to do, winning to me is actually secondary, discussion of aforementioned issues and making other candidates work a bit more comes first!

[doofus-01]

There is also a second reason why I'm candidating and that is due to me wanting to actually increase the quality of elections themselves by hopefully making other candidates also think of and make their own statements of what they would like to do, winning to me is actually secondary, discussion of aforementioned issues and making other candidates work a bit more comes first!

I agree that candidate statements would make these elections more meaningful, thanks for pushing that.

Possibly off-topic

As far as nothing happening for art commissions: It's not as easy as some might think, especially if it isn't your money and it isn't just up to your personal taste. I understand how nothing happened last cycle. We were spoiled by LordBob and kitty, and the musician community back when it existed. Wesnoth is run by volunteers, and it is a hobby, not a charity or civic organization. We need to have realistic expectations for how much effort is going to go into the dismal work of finance, compliance, and contract negotiations (commissions). If there is a specific "campaign promise" to do something, that's great, it just has to be realistic.

[Pentarctagon]

Also, while it's not something that would be visible from the outside, during the last cycle we did actually spend a large chunk of time just figuring out what exactly the process is for doing commissions (aka contract work) through SPI which has all been documented now. Obviously that doesn't account for the whole cycle, but it took more time than you'd probably assume. Also, there haven't actually been any proposals for commissioning any art or music - we could of course have been more proactive in asking for proposals as well, but anyone who has a specific idea of what they would want commissioned can send it to the Board to be considered.

For the art book, I had a similar idea a few years ago (and IIRC there was even an informal sort of poll for it on Discord), just that like with a lot of things there's always been other priorities. Selling it on Steam would probably be fairly difficult until SPI can get a Steamworks account setup (which is very unlikely to happen any time soon), but we could potentially put it up on itch.io in the mean time.

[Pentarctagon]

As far as a candidate statement goes: I'll keep trying to improve where I can, but for better or worse I'm not much of an ideas person nor am I much good at bringing attention to Wesnoth. So my plan would essentially be to continue trying to provide a stable, consistent foundation where other people are able to make the kinds of important, player-visible changes that Wesnoth needs to catch up with other games.

[Hejnewar]

Possibly off-topic:
As far as nothing happening for art commissions: It's not as easy as some might think, especially if it isn't your money and it isn't just up to your personal taste. I understand how nothing happened last cycle. We were spoiled by LordBob and kitty, and the musician community back when it existed. Wesnoth is run by volunteers, and it is a hobby, not a charity or civic organization. We need to have realistic expectations for how much effort is going to go into the dismal work of finance, compliance, and contract negotiations (commissions). If there is a specific "campaign promise" to do something, that's great, it just has to be realistic.

That's not off-topic at all, that's just valid statement countering my plan and yeah that is true I don't have experience with commissioning things for companies, I assume that not many who weren't board previously have and that might be valid criteria, but if it is overwhelming one, any change is unlikely. About being realistic, I'm not, I won't be if I was I wouldn't have done half of the things I did. Yet still it is something important to consider and think about.

Also, there haven't actually been any proposals for commissioning any art or music - we could of course have been more proactive in asking for proposals as well, but anyone who has a specific idea of what they would want commissioned can send it to the Board to be considered.

Yeah, what I'm proposing is the board being more active in pushing for game improvement.

For the art book, I had a similar idea a few years ago (and IIRC there was even an informal sort of poll for it on Discord), just that like with a lot of things there's always been other priorities. Selling it on Steam would probably be fairly difficult until SPI can get a Steamworks account setup (which is very unlikely to happen any time soon), but we could potentially put it up on itch.io in the mean time.

Steam would be best and perhaps it would be good to push them in that direction, but any platform is fine since we can still do the marketing on steam still I would expect lesser gains from that since on steam there is possibility that random people will buy it and that possibility is way lower on other platforms.

Also, while it's not something that would be visible from the outside, during the last cycle we did actually spend a large chunk of time just figuring out what exactly the process is for doing commissions (aka contract work) through SPI which has all been documented now. Obviously that doesn't account for the whole cycle, but it took more time than you'd probably assume.

To be honest I can't really think of a single action the board took that was visible to me and since there are no reports on what is actually happening, you can't blame people for thinking nothing is happening. Perhaps it would be good to change that.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Probably I'm a bit late to the party, but on the other hand I decided to wait until the election started to make my own statement.
As you know, I became a member of the Board in 2022 (because Iris resigned); although real life made me less present and active than I wanted, I oversaw us joining SPI and I'm currently keeping an eye on the closure of Wesnoth Inc (although I'm not directly involved in this). That's the point: most if not all of the Board's activity consists of bureaucratic stuff, not of steering development in one direction of another.
This is what I can promise: if elected, I'll keep doing what I already did in my mandate, which is nitpicking and finding pitfalls in anything that covers the Board's competence (including a part of our Constitution that ought to be amended for future elections) and approving things only if I'm satisfied with the answers I get. After all, I wouldn't be at peace with myself if one wrong decision ends up being harmful for the project.