[launching-pad] Find a home for the Gamedev Working Group

[jamesmunns]

This is a tracking issue for finding a long-term home for the WG-gamedev team.

Leads:

• @AngelOnFira
• @erlend-sh
• @kvark
• @ozkriff

Hey there all, as part of #118, I'm starting the triage process of trying to find permanent homes for teams currently under the launching pad. As WG-gamedev is also a working group, #91 is also relevant.

In this first pass, I'm making tracking issues for each of the teams, starting the discussion on whether y'all think there is a reasonable team you think would make sense to move under, and in general checking whether the members of these teams are still actively working on things related to these teams.

I see that https://github.com/rust-gamedev/ does still have some recent activity (primarily the "arewegameyet" and "rust-gamedev" websites). Is the gamedev working group still generally active as a group?

Thanks!

[erlend-sh]

checking whether the members of these teams are still actively working on things related to these teams.

My rust gamedev ventures are on hold for at least ~6months.

I for one wouldn’t mind the WG status of the rust-gamedev org being retracted for the time being to take the pressure off, but I’m only speaking as an inactive member; I’ll step down as a Lead if the WG persists.

I think there’s very good reason to have gamedev WG, but it requires a handful of individuals for whom that work aligns with their day-to-day.

[kvark]

I'm still doing a lot of gamedev related things, but not actively participating in the working group. You can cross me out from the leads list.

[jamesmunns]

Hey @AngelOnFira and @ozkriff - are there any objections to archiving the Gamedev working group? If so, could you please let me know by January 1st? Otherwise I will start the process to move the WG's status to archived.

[AngelOnFira]

Hey @jamesmunns!

Thanks for taking the time to work on this! Sorry about my late reply.

For starters, I just want to post a link to this Zulip message I posted a while back with the state of the gamedev WG. That spawned this discussion on our end since then: rust-gamedev/rust-gamedev.github.io#1417

Most of the information there is still accurate, though the meetup is relatively inactive now (I haven't run it in quite a while), and the newsletter has been on hiatus for a few months.

As @erlend-sh mentioned, there’s still enthusiasm in the community for what the working group is doing. While other working groups have regular meetings and oversee broader parts of the ecosystem, the gamedev ecosystem tends to advance more through individual teams (e.g., Bevy Engine, wgpu, Veloren). The working group has primarily served as a way to highlight this work through the newsletter and arewegameyet.

Looking ahead, here are a few things I'm considering for the new year to make the group more active:

• Several people have expressed interest in contributing to the newsletter, and it would be great to bring them on as team members—or even as leads if they’re available (@janhohenheim, @mamaicode, and @Vrixyz). Additionally, we could put out a call for more contributors from the community.
• Reviving the newsletter with a quarterly release schedule instead of monthly could help reduce maintainer burnout while keeping something the working group actively manages. I’m planning to head this up.
• Shifting around the members listed on the team, I can move a group of people to alumni if we decide to keep the gamedev wg around as a team.

In this first pass, I'm making tracking issues for each of the teams, starting the discussion on whether y'all think there is a reasonable team you think would make sense to move under, and in general checking whether the members of these teams are still actively working on things related to these teams.

I'm not entirely sure how this should look! Providing the options of teams to move under can be seen on the Governance page, I don't think I see a very clear option for a parent team. From my perspective, I feel that the Embedded devices working group is the closest in nature to the Gamedev working group. So I think if there are plans to move the Embedded devices WG, it would make sense for the Gamedev WG to follow suit.

Let me know what you think, James! I’m curious about the best path forward from the Launching Pad/Leadership Council perspective. Happy to figure out what will work best 😃

[jamesmunns]

Thanks for the summary, and apologies for missing the prior discussion you had with JP. I appreciate the links!

Right now I'm making the first pass to find teams that are inactive, and if there is interest in continuing wg-gamedev, happy to circle back around once this first pass is complete. For now unless there are objectives, I'll consider wg-gamedev still active for this pass.

Regarding wg-embedded, there isn't a specific plan for this yet. There have been some discussions, particularly in https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/392734-council/topic/Sunsetting.20of.20Working.20Groups, for teams that represent portions of the ecosystem that are largely outside of the project itself. That's an open discussion!

Feel free to make any team personnel changes directly in the team repo: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/blob/master/teams/wg-gamedev.toml, no need to block on this discussion if you'd like to update or change your roster. It may also make sense to update the discord link to the currently maintained Rust GameDev server I see you moderate @AngelOnFira.

[Vrixyz]

I'm interested in taking part of this working group, the description (esp. the "can be improved") on Zulip from @AngelOnFira is still relevant.

The goal "Focusing on making Rust the default choice for game development" listed on the governance page is interesting, and IMO should drive the decisions.

I believe the media-related activities are the best actionable task for this working group because it also serves as a progress indicator.

We realistically cannot drive game development technical improvement effort as a team: there's just too much topics. (as @AngelOnFira said, efforts are driven through their own teams)

We could take an advocacy role for specific topics and forward it to the relevant team, track their progress, and help out sporadically.

In my opinion, this group needs to define and embrace its objective, re-evaluate its time/member power and settle on a realistic "roadmap" which we sustain to be understood by the audience (media consumers and contributors).