The goal is to produce a centralized user-database. The database allows users from multiple games to share accounts cross-game. Ultimately it will provide easy account management, win/loss statistics per-game both per-user and globally (for game-balancing), will allow for easy punishment of hacking/rule-breaking, and provide a way to share client-bases (eg a player from one game gets introduced to the other games using this database).
Here is my most recent revision:
- 1. A centralized sql server hosts the service. This could be done via any cheap webhosting service.
2. A web interface interfaces to the sql server and provides the following:
- a. Easy account management. Can view your win/loss ratio for each game, download auto-recorded replays, etc.
b. A community (forums + messaging). Users can chat and interact with players from their games and other games, and be introduced to new games also using the database.
c. Registration. Anyone can register an account and get instant access to all the games in the association for a low fee (note: the server records payment methods for banning purposes).
d. Administration. An admin can view ALL users replays and game information. Each users-admin page will have a place where notes can be stored about the user. It will have easy access to banning accounts, activating/deactivating accounts, etc.
e. Banning. Users pay for their account when registering and the server records their method of payment. After 3 warnings, if the user persists in breaking the rules he/she can be banned. When banned their account is deactivated and no longer works, and their payment method is no longer accepted for new accounts. In order to re-activate their account they must pay an reactivation fee.
f. Tournament hosting + casting, advertisements, and sponsors. I guess this is part of the "community" technically.
g. Written in Perl or PHP. I vote for perl.
4. Commercial projects must pay to be accepted into the service, FOSS projects are free.
I think this could be a great idea. It would allow for punishing hackers (or other rule-breakers). It would allow for commercial and FOSS games to benefit one another by sharing client-bases. Commercial projects would also have incentive to help out FOSS projects because it benefits the commercial-side of the game-pool by generating new clients via the FOSS games.
Some revenue could be made via hosting and casting tournaments by using advertisements. Some income would also be made via the registration fee and ban-reactivation fee. On top of that commercial projects must pay to be accepted. Altogether, I think the service could pay for itself and provide vast benefits for the FOSS world.
It could be developed entirely cost-free using SourceForge/GoogleCode. Launching the project would require funds, but only a few hundred dollars per-year. A website would be setup that explains what we are doing and gathers user-feedback. This would be useful for generating some support while developing, and would allow us to determine via user feedback how much fees should cost (such as the registration fee). Once the service is ready, and a couple of games have the API integrate (perhaps Glest and Sauerbraten?), we would launch the full-scale website and begin accepting accounts.
With that said, are there any developers here wanting to throw in their 2¢, and perhaps contribute?