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#6 The Guardians: Scaling the Vetting Process

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2016 12:21 pm
by goofyspaceranger
Glossary post #6 for "A Toy Box Tale: Recapture the Spark!"

The Guardians of Infinity
In the story, The Guardians are a small, trusted subset of Disney Infinity players who help in the vetting process of shared content. They are typically not Toy Box Master Artists, but rather those entrusted with protecting the Intellectual Property of the Walt Disney Company, and helping to maintain the family-friendly environment of the Toy Box.

Untrusted Content
Friendship circles within the current version of Infinity already provide a subset of unvetted, untrusted content (with the corresponding legalize to protect the Walt Disney Company). If the growing database of Toy Boxes is akin to a virtual Library of Toy Box Tales, might there be an "untrusted section" of submissions available to all amenable, older players? And over time might there be a trusted subset of fans who would own the vetting process? This goes back to the history of Infinity's launch, where they targeted 6 year olds and found the average age of early purchasers was 13. This is not a kids game; it's a family game. And the "older kids" can help ensure that this family-friendliness is maintained. If you have little kids at home, you would probably just want access to the trusted kids section. But if you don't, you could sign up for access to the entire library before the vetting has finished, and be encouraged to participate in it.

Crowdsourcing Early Reviews
A Community Toy Box counter of "Liked" could denote an informal "review" when it resides in the untrusted section of the Library. Players would have the option to "Red Flag" a box for inappropriate content so that Disney Infinity's new owner would be alerted to review it directly. Removal from public access could be automated, with review followed up later, so the mitigation would be fast. False Red Flags could be dealt with nearly as severely as submitters of inappropriate content, so there's responsibility both ways. In addition to rankings that encourage Toy Box Builds, there could be rankings on Toy Box Plays, because the more plays a given Toy Box gets, the safer it is likely to be.

A Toy Box That's Easier To Like
Fans have expressed that it should be easier to "Like" a Toy Box - it's a little hidden & cumbersome within the current Community Content menu. Perhaps it could be done through a Creativi-Toy. The confirmation toy seems functionally redundant with the versatile Text Creator, but it has a cool thumbs-up/down icon. Perhaps it could get a new property to ask the player whether or not to Like a Toy Box. This new toy could be activated at any point, and for Toy Boxes with a single Challenge Maker, would make a cool addition to that end-game animation. The same tracking would be used to ensure that a connected player could only Like a given Toy Box once. It would make the shared experience smoother, and facilitate the vetting process with regard to crowdsourcing.

Open Sandbox
A huge side-benefit is that adult players of Infinity don't need to wait for the vetting process to complete, and Toy Box builders can have the intermediate challenge of their creations being promoted to the trusted kids' section. It opens Community Content wide open while providing additional mitigation for families simultaneously, at basically no additional cost to the owning company. 8-)

Delegated Vetting
The new owner of Disney Infinity may also decide to designate some subset of adult fans to be trusted, volunteer, fully-authorized "Guardians". Applications could be accepted from long-standing supporters such as Toy Box Master Artists, Fansite admins & promoters, etc. There is also a largely untapped market for the educational value of Infinity and as that expands, those educators would be excellent candidates as well (with proof of identity & their institution, perhaps combining their purchase with 501c3 forms). As a Gatekeeper, the player could have access to Toy Box review tools that always allow Spark Mode, could scroll through all Text Creator properties from any location, trigger any number of Replayers from multiple camera views, etc. Yet there could still be a rule that the Toy Boxes must reach some "Played" level of say 100 or even 500 before a Gatekeeper can promote it (a more organized database will significantly drive the number of downloads of nearly all submissions). It ensures multiple levels of mitigation and makes it more of a game within the game. This would be in addition to any automated vetting tools that the owner may have. This would significantly delegate the vetting process to the fans. It would minimize the ongoing costs to the owner, open up the bottleneck of vetting, and actually provide better protection of the brand.

Squashing Cy-Bugs
Occasionally a Cy-Bug will make its way into a Toy Box build and mess up the game, for every developer knows that developers never make mistakes ;). Sometimes in retelling a story, the storyteller finds a way to make it better; sometimes from player feedback an Artist wants to improve upon their existing Toy Box. This was problematic with Community Content - a second submission was often discarded, and it increased the bottleneck of the vetting process. Descriptions needed to have "udpated on this date" notes, and Disney Cast Members were "unofficially" notified via Twitter. It would be a cool improvement for the new vetting process to support Versioning. A separate field would denote the version number. If you re-submitted, your Like count goes to 0 & if your box was promoted/trusted, it becomes untrusted. The Library would only show the highest Version of a Toy Box. The delegation of the Guardians significantly relieves the bottleneck, and the loss of Likes discourages builders from re-versioning too often. It would further increase the quality of Toy Boxes.

The Cross-Platform Toy Box Library
This could replace the current Infinity Cloud setup based on friendship circles for simplicity & safety. Platform-specific friendship circles make sense for multiplayer playing, but the shared "cloud" space would be even more powerful if it extended across all platforms. The majority of Infinity players are likely to be in the extended unvetted space; parents of younger players are less likely to want any access to unvetted content regardless of gaming friendship circles - and they'd have more than enough content from a reorganized database. This would provide the Disney Infinity Toy Box another differentiation as a product while protecting the IP of the Walt Disney Company. It would further reduce the ongoing costs of the new owner with its crowdsourcing & delegation of the vetting process. The Toy Box Library would become a specialized collaboration & shared file environment, where players share Disney Toy Box Tales & Games. This could help the negotiation process of acquiring the Disney Infinity Toy Box Engine from the Walt Disney Company in the first place. And it would make the Toy Box experience that much more fun.

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