Re: Important questions, or about our future

case in point: earlier today some dude named Marwin who had never been here before got on the chat and started asking for help, well, finding a link TO DOWNLOAD THE GAME took me 15 minutes and 4 searches on the forums even though I ve been reading it on daily basis for the past 2 or 3 years (the !Amiga thing on the chat didn t work either)...

that is absolutely unacceptable, people come here from Google and can t even find a link to download the game, NO WONDER they just sign up and leave shortly thereafter.

Did you really missed that? Due to so called Copyright issues it will never happen that you ll find the complete version of SWOS online on the site/forum/(officially) as link in the chat. Would be something like a suicide to do that. And of course we won t risk our beautiful site because of gaining more active members with not legal modifications , just because they are too lazy or impatient. Everyone will find a way to all needed files if he really wants to.

The system was always like that and it didn t stopped people from registering/playing online in the past. Seriousness is the magic word

There are many ways to search for the reasons why we haven t got new active players...does anyone really thinks to know the reasons? No, all comments are just speculative.

Btw...I m still working on a complete new tutorial for new members. It s not easy to make it legal in all points. And of course it has to be described in that way that everyone will understand it.

Do you seriously think that the brand owners would waste time and resources to take down a site that gets so little traffic? Come on now, if anything our community is just free advertisement for their SWOS port for Xbox live...

Besides, there s so many sites out there that actually host both the games ROM s and the Kickstarts in plain daylight (some rank even higher than sensiblesoccer.de on Google search...) and Codemasters has never really given a flying fk about any of them (they don t even care about SWOS anymore to begin with...), even sensibleita has had the download links on the front page for ages (doesn t sensiblesoccer.pl host them as well? Isn t that the version that usually gets linked on the chat?) and we ve never gotten any notice so yeah, all things considered not having a link to download something that, in fact, is what your website is all about is just silly (and confusing).

Worse comes to worst Elmicha will get an e-mail demanding to take down the links and that s about it (It s not like anybody s making money out of this anyway), big f deal. .

Regardless (cause hey at the end of the day whoever owns the site has the right to choose not to publish the links and we got to respect his decision) , you could ve at least replaced the broken links/links to useless versions in the download section with a huge disclaimer stating something along the lines of YO PEEPS, IF YA WANNA PLAY ONLINE ASK ON THE CHAT FOR THE GAME DOWNLOAD, THANKS .

Do you really think that Codemasters is the company who has the rights for the Kickstart Rom? It isn t the game, Retri. The problem is the Rom file And trust me...our site would be ripped off faster than anyone would ever think...

No? I ve never once stated such thing.

Anyhow, this site (just to make a random example that I was able to dig up in less than 2 seconds via Google):

www.internut.it/amiga.shtml

...has had the kickstart rom ever since I started playing SWOS online (circa 2008) and I d bet my car that it s been donwloaded more times than sensiblesoccer.de has members, your point?

Addition: Copyright to an old thing like the ROM file? you might ask yourself.

Doing my daily business im faced with that problem nearly every day. All Amiga related things are so old that noone would ever think that there are STILL Copyrights on nearly everything. Hard to believe, but it s true. I had a lot of disputes because of that and a lot of talks with different lawyers about that. So I know what I m speaking of

To make it clear: sensiblesoccer.de will ALWAYS be a legal site. Doesn t matter if we could gain more new players with the other direction. This site is worth to protect it in ANY way. We never had problems to do it that way. We had a lot of active players with this strategy in the past. It worked 4 years ago, and it will work at some time in the future.

I m sad about the low activity too, be sure of that. But that s no reason to risk something with doing something rash...

If you re so eager about nitpicking for the sake of it, let s start off by making clear that the site stopped being legal the moment we posted on the forums the links to the SWOS exe + Kickstart Rom (which is why the biggest websites about retrogaming observe a strict NO WAREZ policy - when something fishy slips through it generally gets deleted within minutes from being posted) so this is really and I mean REALLY a moot point. Them links are still there available for everyone (although finding em ain t that easy), by the way so watch out cause the the Internet police might be out to get ya ll.

pro-tip: if you had printed 5.000 brand new copies of SWOS and were selling them in bundle with 5.000 Commodore branded PC s with a fully functional WinUAE installed THEN you d likely get your ass handed to you by whoever owns the copyrights, allowing a HANDFUL of die-hard fans to download 15 yr. old, seemingly dead software on a niche website without even profiting off of it is NOT, for all intents and purposes, going to get anyone jailed. Let s be realistic, come on.

Furthermore, lemme get this straight cause I might ve misunderstood, you faced disputes (lawsuits?) for re-selling old Commodore hardware on ebay due to copyright claims on pre-installed software? I m no lawyer but that s easily the most far-fetched thing I ve heard all day. :-X

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Anyhow, you guys keep acting like there s no problem at all and like the community is going super strong (the heck do we need new members for? pff, can t play SWOS like a Top-10? Can t run the emulator? Get off my lawn then! ) so meh, this thread s approaching pointlessness very quickly as per usual (besides, I don t wanna steal dimet s thread with partially off-topic digressions, sorry about that).

If you need my help for anything (site, forum, promotion, newbs mentoring, etc.) you know where to find me.

After some week I try to make conclusion. I wont summarize the answers, but the most important, what I have learnt: Let s keep what we have achieved. Prominently ASL and national leagues. Every new initiative must be after this stable basis.

Here are the tasks (I think) require to do:

1. Why have veteran, legendary players left or become rare to see?
I want to make a survey, but I don t want to make it alone. I need 1-2 people with who I can discuss the questions etc.

3. What can we do to make more newly registered players start playing, at least once?
I think there aren t enough new players for even a smaller league. Maybe a league for new players + players below 1200 SRN? I still don t know.

4. What can we do to invite new players?
Somebody would investigate why Poland (and partially Italy) more successful. We would learn new tricks for recruiting.

5. Where are all the other nations, especially some very active ones?
1-3 volunteers are needed, who will try to connect them.

6. What can we do against TEAM? – HF – GGS – THX attitude? How can be bring back (more) fun and friendship?
I have a brand new idea, it may work, may not, I will post it soon.

hi man, just let me show my point of view:
1- yesterday i was talking about this with a vanished SWOS LEGEND. he told me that he has got a real life and blablabla. i think he told me everything and nothing cause we all have that kind of trouble, anyway we find a lot (few?) of time to join the chat and/or playing. really, i can understand everything but i cannot justify the absence of someone...

3- many player just sign up to download the swos package.they play some carrer then let swos die (again). i think they have not our passion about this game and we can do nothing, just hope in new blazej like users
4- we have made an italian site with a carrer-style modality for italian players. we are making a lot of publicity on many and many retro-gamer sites. once new member is integrated we suggest him this site to improve his skills.

6- maybe many of us doesn t speack english very well then they prefer to play only. i don t know if you know what i mean (eheheh i don t speack En too ), if i am right you cannot change this behavior easily. maybe you can start to teach english to the whole europe

I have a bad habit: speak/write too much, and some of my good friends here like me, but please try to focus to the specific problems! Even if this post is also very long.

was you talking about Retrieving. wasn t you?!?!?!?