Guild Expansion Readiness Program
Phases
Discovery
Information is collected about the game and community interest is gauged by the GERP Team. The GERP Team is only responsible for evaluating community interest in the game and selecting the director, efforts to build interest or rally support must come from the general membership.
Activity
- Discussion about the game should be posted in the Imperium Lūdī.
- Suggestions for entry into the game may be sent to the GERP Team.
- The GERP Team begins internal nomination and selection of the game director.
- The GERP Team assigns one or more advisers (known as champions) who will work with the new game director through the rest of the process.
Completion
- Game director has been selected by the GERP Team and approved by the AIE Council.
Expedition
The Expedition phase is the period during which preparations are made for launch of the guild. The new game director will build her or his leadership team and will determine which parameters will best meet the needs of the AIE community (realm, faction, PvE/PvP, etc.)
Activity
- A new forum is created for the game in the Imperium Lūdī.
- The game director selects the starting officer corps for the game. All officers must be approved by the GERP Council.
- Parameters such as faction and realm are decided upon by the game director and game officers.
- UMAMI integration development begins.
Completion
- Game has entered general availability.
- The guild has been created in-game.
- A process for joining the guild has been published.
- A policy, based upon the Unified Policy has been approved by the AIE Council and published.
Settlement
The population of the guild begins!
The game must be in open beta or general availability at this point.
Activity
- An ad hoc member tracking system may be used if UMAMI integration has not been completed..
- Guild settings, policies, and processes are tuned.
Completion
- UMAMI integration has been completed.
- The subforum has been promoted out of the Imperium Lūdī.
Domain
The game guild becomes a full-fledged division of AIE.
Activity
- Members are requested to register in UMAMI within some reasonable period of time to track membership or the data from the ad hoc tracking system is imported into UMAMI.
Timeline
The amount of time that it takes to progress through the phases will be different for every game. However the timeline will be governed by the following constraints.
- Settlement may not begin until the game is in the general availability phase. This is the point where anyone can join with no restrictions other than purchase or subscription within a geographical region. An open beta period will be considered general availability.
- Access permitting, the Discovery and Expedition phases should be conducted during pre-beta or closed beta for new games.
