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40oz

Player to Mapper Ratio

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I don't think I could get any honest or accurate numbers for this without performing some kinda DW census and making sure everyone answers and answers honestly, but I was curious if people around here would hazard a guess based on their experience here.

Is there any imbalance in the community of mappers to players? Are there more players than mappers, or vice versa? If so, is this a good or a bad thing? What is the ideal ratio of players to mappers? The two aren't mutually exclusive; as in you can both play and map for doom, but I think to separate the two, a mapper is one who spends more time creating content for Doom that themselves and other people can play than playing other people's stuff, and a player is someone who is more often playing people's doom levels and/or providing feedback and reviews than creating new stuff for others to play.

I don't mean to imply that there is any problem with this. The community seems pretty healthy. Gameplay and weapon mods seem to extend the lifespan of many doom wads, and doom editors seem to be close to their peak in efficiency and speed, making high quality maps faster and easier to make for the average everyman. Plus with Doom 4 coming soon, there's been an obvious resurgence of new doomers, both playing and mapping for doom. And a lot of young ones at that, which gives me hope that the community's lifespan still has a long way to go. Not to mention that there are currently more maps for doom today than most people could play in their entire lifetime.

But for the sake of argument, lets say that doomworld is on its deathbed. The community is reduced to a small handful of doomers who seem to not be phased by the lack of activity in the community to feign interest. All the casuals are gone and every couple months or so a new person signs up, posts a new thread about how they just found out about this cool game their grandpa used to play, can't figure out how to get the last secret in map27, etc. And when they get no response in less than 3 days they disappear forever, failing to defibrillate new life into the community. In the event that this stage in the community is reached, do you think its more likely that the majority of the remaining community members will have left because there fewer mappers means a lack of fresh new and good maps to play anymore, or do you think its more likely that mappers will be discouraged by having less and less of an audience to provide maps for, and the community eventually dries out once more and more maps are created and left unplayed? Who will be the last people to leave, the people creating new maps, or the people playing new maps?

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40oz said:

Is there any imbalance in the community of mappers to players? Are there more players than mappers, or vice versa?

I think it's pretty clear there are way more players than mappers. Even the people who write the Cacowards don't make maps. A recent Cacowards one I read for example mentioned they wouldn't have time to play so many maps if they were busy making them.

If I had to guess, I'd say mappers are less than 5% of the Doom player community.

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Well, this is sort of a "chicken and the egg" sort of question.

On one hand, if there are players left, someone will want to make maps for them and thus the community will grow because of the demand for new maps, or some of them will become mappers to fill the need. Conversely, if there are a few mappers left and no players. Some of these mappers will become players to test out each other's work, and then these player/mappers will show the work to other people because by nature, we are social creatures and like to share work with one another.
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And then if there are particularly creative or awe-inspiring maps, more people may join and try to emulate these maps by mapping themselves.

I think your real question is if people will get bored of the nearly endless possibilities for a game so easy to mod, or that players will get bored of seeing these endless creations.

Also, the history of the game will be a factor as well. The fact that Doom was one of the first 3d shooters, and even though Wolfenstein came first, Doom really piloted the genre and people will learn about it and come here simply because of what Doom is.

I still haven't answered your question though. If for some weird reason the community does stagnate even though all this is true. I would say that the mappers would be the first to leave since the effort to create new exciting worlds out of such an old game would exponentially get harder and harder. Thus making the last to leave, the players.

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I don't think mappers generally map for players. I think mappers map for their own amusement first; other mappers second; and then finally for players. No idea what percentage mappers are to players...10% at the upper limit I'd guess.

about the only thing that will kill the game at this point is a lack of ports that work for whatever is the latest and greatest OS.

Also I think it will reach a point where Doom editing becomes a required course at the game universities for basic comprehension of flow, level design, etc.

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PsychoGoatee said:

I think it's pretty clear there are way more players than mappers. Even the people who write the Cacowards don't make maps. A recent Cacowards one I read for example mentioned they wouldn't have time to play so many maps if they were busy making them.

If I had to guess, I'd say mappers are less than 5% of the Doom player community.


i don't speak for any of the other cacowards writers, who have all boxed around in the map editor. In fact I would say that I am something of an anomaly on the cacowards teams.

But yeah I would have to give up writing reviews / doomwads tumblr in order to make maps in any capacity I would appreciate

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There aren't any statistics on the number of downloads from the idgames archive. For all we know there might be a huge number of "lurker" fans out there who love playing all the latest fan-made WADs but don't spend their time chatting here on Doomworld about it.

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kmxexii said:

i don't speak for any of the other cacowards writers, who have all boxed around in the map editor. In fact I would say that I am something of an anomaly on the cacowards teams.

But yeah I would have to give up writing reviews / doomwads tumblr in order to make maps in any capacity I would appreciate

Right on. Though I've messed around in an editor, I'd consider myself a player for a poll like this. I think you'd have to release a couple maps to be considered a mapper. Or just spend a decent amount of time mapping, comparable to the time you spend playing at least.

Maybe the other Cacoward writers have released some maps though, I don't actually know. I guess for the purposes of this topic, sounds like you're either primarily a mapper or primarily a player.

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In any medium, # of consumers of the content are orders of magnitude greater than # of creators of the content.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the mapper/player ratio was less than 1:1000

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I think in first place you cannot be a mapper without being a player. At least for me: I have to see what other mappers have done, and are doing, to see the current possibilities of editors and engines, and to have new idea about what to map next. For this reason I try to be 50% mapper and 50% player.

However, I must say that inspiration for new maps does not come only from other doom maps but from other videogames, history of architecture, dreams… but I count this under “Life” and not under “Doom”.

Why we map is a good question: do we map for ourselves, just as a challenge to our capacities? Do we map to impress other mappers, “see what cool thing I/we can do” mind-set? I personally map to create good experiences for others to play, so for me it is important to have players, beta-testers, and reviewers around in a good and healthy community.

I like to compare mapping to writing fiction (another hobby I have). You can do it for various reasons, and each author has his/her own motivation. But it is very common for a writer to wish to have his book published and have readers. This is the reason, BTW, for the great number of self-publishers on Amazon.

Asking 40oz question, the last to leave the dying community will be mappers doing maps only for themselves. There probably are, people who want to challenge themselves and have some fun poking around with an editor, without interest for what others may say. Let me say there is absolutely nothing wrong with this: it is just a way of having fun.

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PsychoGoatee said:

If I had to guess, I'd say mappers are less than 5% of the Doom player community.


I personally get the feeling it might be as high as 10%. But then again, it's just a guess, and as the OP said, it'd be impossible to determine unless every single one replied honestly.

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I'm a player here , and i only judge maps and give my opinions after playing them (As a player) . I don't give big attention to any details as long as i find it fun, IMO worst maps are these wide open or well detailed enough to attract players for Nothing besides the view .

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Honestly, at least half of us have sat down with doombuilder, played with it for a few minutes, and gave up, right? Would that technically still make us mappers?

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Protester said:

Honestly, at least half of us have sat down with doombuilder, played with it for a few minutes, and gave up, right? Would that technically still make us mappers?


Well, has "playing with it" resulted in making and publishing a completed WAD? If yes, then yes, it makes you a mapper. If not however, then not. As simple as that :)

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The last people to leave will be mappers. If they were players who liked Doom and only considered quitting it because of lacking new wads to play, they would at least try mapping themselves in the last moment, becoming mappers. Then they would either continue mapping and save the community, or quit due to not enjoying mapping in long term. If the last people were mappers who enjoyed Doom mapping, they would either continue mapping for their personal enjoyment, or quit due to feeling like their activity was useless with so low audience.

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To the OP

I feel you may already know the answer to your questions. The points you gave shows you know in order for the community to flourish there will need to be Mappers inspiring to make unique new content to maintain the Doom audience, including gameplay mods.

And for whether there are more Players than Mappers, since you can include a Mapper as a Player, definitely Players hands down. I'm mapping now, moreso than playing but I will finish those maps at some point and continue to play. Yet I'm still playing some at the same time. Besides, if you didn't enjoy playing you are likely to lose interest in mapping for that game at some point.

I don't think the Doom Community will ever die. Worse case scenario it gets so quiet that this forum becomes more of a achieve with little activity and maintenance. But there will always be someone playing and someone mapping, never a guaranteed end. Especially due to the Tools available made by the fans to allow almost anyone to play.

Doom and its nostalgic memories is a unique entity that can never be replicated ever again. There are and will continue to be other great FPS games produced that will maintain a ever lasting respect BUT none of those can be Doom. Therefore Doom will never be substituted and replaced, resulting in ever lasting fandom.

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