MFGG Strategic Plan for 2018

[VinnyVideo]

Leaders in many companies, nonprofit organizations/NGOs, and government bodies make strategic plans to help articulate their organization's purpose and strategy. For many organizations, developing these plans is an elaborate undertaking that takes many months and involves hiring a really expensive consulting firm - and if you're not careful, writing a lot of hokey things. However, developing and communicating a good strategic plan can help lead to better and more purposeful decision-making at all levels of the organization. A couple of members suggested that we write at least a mission and vision statement (the typical starting point for a strategic plan) for MFGG, and I've been wanting to do such a thing for quite a while.

Obviously, MFGG isn't a for-profit business or a major governmental organ, but like every organization that has ever existed, we're responsible for managing finite resources (in our case, people's time and talents that they generously volunteer to us) and using them to produce some kind of outcome (in our case, games, mostly fangames and freeware indie games). This strategic plan is obviously simpler than anything a Fortune 500 company would make - I spent less than an hour writing this, compared to the months it would take for a large organization to build a strategic plan. Still, I hope that someone finds this helpful in understanding why we're doing what we're doing. And if you don't find this interesting, that's OK - at least it finally gives MFGG a chance to use the phrase "SWOT Analysis".

Mission
MFGG is a community for making, sharing, and discussing games, especially fangames based on the Mario universe.

Vision
To be the most vibrant fangaming community on the Internet.

Core Values

• Fun: We want people to enjoy playing games and interacting with the community.
  
• Friendly: We want everyone to feel welcomed on MFGG.
  
• Fair: We strive to be equitable in making decisions when accepting submissions, moderating the forums, and promoting new staff members.

Objectives

• Increase mainsite game submissions and games posts in the Development Showcase forum by 75% in calendar year 2018 (compared to 2017)
  
• Increase mainsite graphics submissions and sprite posts in the Arts and Music forum by 50% in 2018
  
• Increase new member registrations on the forums by 50% in 2018
  
• Increase new member registrations on the mainsite by 40% in 2018
  
• Increase forum posts and topics by 40% in 2018
  
• Maintain high service quality on mainsite - accept or decline 75% of new submissions within 3 days, and 95% of new submissions within 7 days
  
• Increase retention of new members by 100% (as measured by the number of new members who register, post, and continue participating in the community)

SWOT Analysis

Strengths
+ Massive library of resources
+ Site is focused on a well-known franchise that remains popular
+ Moderate-sized community - large enough to be reasonably active, yet small enough to be intimate
+ Members have a wide range of skills and experience they can share with others
+ Forum is now running on modern software that supports new features not available in phpBB 3.0.x

Weaknesses
- Aging mainsite software
- Highly PC-centric - not a lot of resources for mobile development
- Scarcity of 3-D games and resources
- More resources for older Mario games than for newer games
- Some mainsite resources are redundant or poorly-organized
- Struggles in attracting new members during the last 1-2 years of the phpBB era

Opportunities
+ Success of the Nintendo Switch could increase interest in Nintendo in general - there's a strong correlation between MFGG activity levels and popularity of Nintendo's official games
+ Updating the mainsite software could help revitalize the mainsite
+ Increase in the number of people with high-speed Internet access, especially in developing markets
+ Fan cultures are gaining more popularity and relevance
+ Growing concern about trolling and harassment in big social networks could drive people back to smaller communities where conversations can be moderated more effectively

Threats
- Possibility of interpersonal drama driving away good members
- Concerns about copyright issues
- Inaccurate information about fangaming being disseminated on social media
- Independent, nonprofit forums have become less popular compared to newer, better-funded social networks
- Rapid pace and unpredictable nature of technological change

Implementation

• Finish and launch new mainsite software
  
• Continue adding new features to the MyBB forums, including more uses for the currency system
  
• Consider ways to broaden MFGG's scope and potential audience without drifting from MFGG's core purpose
  
• Continue to use social media and video to increase awareness and activity
  
• Host more competitions and events
  
• Hold a mainsite cleanup initiative to remove redundant or poor-quality submissions - we haven't done that in a while
  
• Promote new mainsite staff (if necessary) to maintain service level targets
  
• Promote new forum staff (if necessary) to facilitate events and moderate the forums

[Xander]

Excellent write-up. Some ambitious stuff here. It's great to have aims though!

I'll keep trying to optimize the mobile experience as best I can in an effort to contribute! And more personally, I will continue on my own Mario Fangame (I should make a new post about it on the new forums).

Me.

[VinnyVideo]

@Xander Thanks! I think these goals are ambitious but doable. The last year was rather slow for fangames, but I think the new forum software and other positive improvements have set MFGG on the right course.

Also, I'd love to see you do a fangame.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Xander]

@Xander Thanks! I think these goals are ambitious but doable. The last year was rather slow for fangames, but I think the new forum software and other positive improvements have set MFGG on the right course.

Also, I'd love to see you do a fangame.

It's in production already. I've showed it off before a bit. Mostly engine testing, but it's getting to a very nice place now. so I should be building levels very soon. If I am to set my own ambitious goal, I will be finished with the game by this time next year.

Me.

[Hyper]

This is a well written goal for MFGG. However I have some objection and suggestions:

- Weakness - Highly PC-centric - not a lot of resources for mobile development
Even though I was among the first few member who ventured into mobile development, I felt like mobile development is not a big concern for MFGG yet. To put into a perspective, PC development is a lot cheaper to test with, more controls, and easy to develop with. On the other hand, mobile development is a lot more harder, expensive (like export options in Game Maker), and limited (touch screen controls are just inefficient) to develop with. However I felt like other computer systems like macOS and Linux is more feasible for fangame development. If we do implement games with selected platforms, I would of prefer something like this:
- Windows XP or earlier
- Windows Vista/7
- Windows 8/8.1
- Windows 10
- Mac OS X 10.10 or earlier
- macOS 10.11 or later
- Linux
- Other (Console or mobile)

- Some mainsite resources are redundant or poorly-organized
I totally agree with this. I felt like categorizing (especially with graphics) needs serious improvement. As a suggestion, I would've prefer:
- Type: Klik library, sprite sheet, tileset, background, bundle (zip/rar/etc), other
- Games: <any mainstream Mario games>, Mario Party games, Mario Sports games, ... , fangame, other non-mario games
- Attribution: Ripped, Edited, Original
- Tags: submitter can add any tags like characters, items, HUD, etc.

- Fair: We strive to be equitable in making decisions when accepting submissions, moderating the forums, and promoting new staff members.
Hypernova for Quality Control 2018!

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Main Site | YouTube | Bluesky | My OC

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[Syaxamaphone]

Where are you getting these numbers Vinny? What makes them obtainable?

My games | My twitter | My stream | Sprites Unlimited

[VinnyVideo]

@Hypernova There's a higher barrier to entry when it comes to making games in non-Windows operating systems, but I don't think it's impossible!

@Syaxamaphone I just made up numbers that sound good.

Actually, I'm kidding about that - I really did look at the activity stats for the past few years and set a goal that I feel is ambitious but attainable. 2017 was a bit of a down year for games on MFGG, and I'd like for 2018 to see game activity return to the levels seen a few years ago. I think things have been getting better since the new forums launched, and I'd like to see the positive momentum carry over into 2018.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Willsaber]

• Hold a mainsite cleanup initiative to remove redundant or poor-quality submissions - we haven't done that in a while
  

Imo, much more important than this would be an initiative to fix the tags. There is little to no standardization for how submissions have been tagged. I can search for 3D World graphics, and the site pulls up completely unrelated stuff that makes it difficult and tedious to find what would actually be useful for me. Like this sheet. I will go so far as to assert that the MAJORITY of sprites in this category are not helpful for finding meaningfully 3D World-related graphics.

If there's ever an initiative to manually standardize and fix the tags on MFGG's myriad of submissions, I'd be willing to help do this, because I care a lot about this issue (and I know people brought this up before on the old forum). But first, this community needs to discuss how submissions should be appropriately tagged.

Making terrible posts since 2014

[VinnyVideo]

@Willsaber I always check the tags before I vote to approve a submission, but some miscategorized submissions do get into the system. There was talk about modifying the current tagging system when lumaSMS comes out, but a re-categorizing effort would still be a great thing to do.

Course clear! You got a card.