Having a Club jersey

Thanks for the update Wes but I have to add some points to this.
Firstly I understand from a business perspective that clients and finance is important to the sustainability to the business how ever we, the user are also clients and as a collective over the last 4 years have built the business with our finance every month. if it was not for the small people like the users using the platform where would Zwift be?

I understand that it is not financially viable or sensible to provide every team (small team) with team kit or those who do not contribute to the community in any affective way but just ride. There are many large teams on Zwift that make major contributions to the platform and still have no in game kit. As a matter of fact within the top ten teams on Zwift there are at least 4 teams without kit.

Regarding contribution to the community and organising events that your paying customers want. I like many others have organised many events for the community and on many occasions with very little thanks for it but that is part of the deal I suppose.

I would also like to point out that the current system used to organise events is prehistoric to say the least and is seen by many as unfair. In terms of Teams running events, just a quick sample reveals ZHR with 32 this week, DIRT with 19, Pack with 12, ZSun 7 and British Tri ( new ? ) with 5. We currently have 2 social rides running and one series.

Those listed above run great organised events but how do they manage to get all the good times and allowed to have so many events on the go at the one time. I have tried to organise more events but always blocked by the comment that the time slot is not avail or it is too close to another similar event!!!. I one point like others I was told that if my event never pulled enough interest it would be pulled from the events calendar. I am sure that I am not the only person who has received this massage. I was also advised that I should just join an event that was already organised!!!

You have said that you are looking at a system that makes things clearer on how clubs gain access to custom assets but it is a work in progress!!! you have been telling us this for the last 2 years. last September or the September before that some of us were advised that Zwift was working on BETA system to book or organise events. This information came from a reliable source within Zwift HQ, what happened to that or is Zwift still working on it?

The so called system was meant to have loads of drop down menus as to what could be selected for each organised event and created of a form similar to a Google form which would make perfect sense in the fact that Zwift Events would receive all applications for events to a central place and all in exactly the same format.

Many organisers sent their requests in, in numerous different formats with no definitive layout for those receiving at Zwift Events!!! Zwift HQ or Events do not give instruction unless you ask for them. There should be a Organisers user manual with all the questions and answers (Not an FAQ) a proper user manual to refer to. by doing this Zwift Events could easily reduce the manpower and time spent on a system that fails many and will continue to do so.

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That would be helpful. I was told it was 500 members, (not 50), but we are over 600 and still waiting. Maybe some day when Zwift brings this feature back.

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I think DIRT had around 2000 (maybe more) riders on the FB team page when they got the jersey to share with the Indoor Specialist riders, which they wear in the bigger events.

Haha an other Quake2 nierd whoā€™s cycling. :slightly_smiling_face: Missing those days. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :man_biking:

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The guy behind ZwiftPower is another one. :smiley: I think Iā€™ve known him since 1998 (canā€™t remember if weā€™ve ever met though - if we have itā€™ll have been at a LAN party nearly 20 years ago).

Thatā€™s awesome :slightly_smiling_face: Those days you connected with k56 modem, hpw games. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Then ISDN came and you got a ping around 50-60.

Well if you talk to him, tell him well done, from one former Quaker to an other. :metal::man_biking: :grin:

Flipping LPB! In my Q2CTF league we imposed a 2 LPB limit (per 6 player team). :stuck_out_tongue:

image

Happy days!

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Hi, Iā€™m Mike Doom. I make video games professionally and enjoy this service immensely.

I think User Generated Content is a critical game system in any long term service model. It should be rolled out as soon as multiplayer is heavily used IMO. Hereā€™s an easy way to do it:

  1. Backend Setup: Add a link on the playerā€™s data blob that points to a central DB texture lookup (AWS and/or Playfab is great here).
  2. Dynamic Content Loader: Create a cache on the client. Keep 100 Jerseys in memory (or allow for a slider control). Lazy load the images from a local dB. Lazy unload. Lazy download them from the backend texture DB.
  3. Client Settings: Allow player to wipe or clean (keep as flight file links to allow for hand modification). Also allow to say how big the UGC cache can be: 50 jerseys, 100, unlimited, etc.
  4. Website: Create a frontend website over Backend DB that does the user moderation. There are a few solutions out there, but should be easy to build from scratch. (1-2mo).
  5. Moderation: Have submission criteria of how to upload. Image scan it for known patterns for moderator flag. Peer reporting system. Automate complaints and flags to a central mailbox. QA and production can pick it up easy.
  6. Pipeline Improvement: Over time automate the approval submission through adding more algorithmic evaluation steps. E.g. Name filter, Better machine vision for pattern recognition / filtering, complaint management, etc.
    6)Encrypt as needed (Blowfish/256 is usually enough)
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All that stuff is easy, or relatively easy.

Actually creating good-looking jerseys is another matter, I think. Most users wonā€™t have the skills or tools necessary to create a texture that looks good when wrapped around a 3D model.

It was hard enough using a basic PCX image for the blocky Quake 2 player models! =)

As a rider for a club, we believe paying a yearly fee to have a jersey created and available for team members solves the financial aspect.

Has that ever been discussed by Zwift HQ?

With so many clubs and teams across the world, I would think having a department that had this focus could be a new source of revenue for Zwift.

Plus, to make it even easier, Zwift could just give size guidelines that we could give to the designers at each jersey company. So after they create each years kit design, we then have a image file to upload to Zwift, pay them our yearly Zwift team membership amount and bam.

Not seeing how hard this is.

When I am creating a new work advertisement, that designer gives me images pre sized for me to upload to each of the social media platforms.

I would l like to see an option to be able to purchase or upload a custom kit, and Iā€™m bummed to see that itā€™s highly unlikely Iā€™ll ever get to.

I realize the suggestion of that costing $5 or something is ridiculous. Somebody really smart with a lot of skill has to spend a lot time doing the work on a really expensive computer with a bunch of really expensive software.

Does anyone have an idea of what that would cost? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000?

If Zwift isnā€™t interested in creating this department/service, how about a way to upload a custom kit that meets Specification X? There is someone out there who would die to open a business doing this.

All of this of course, depends upon things way past my understanding, such asā€¦ does 1,000s of customs kits jam up the game in some way, or reduce its effieciency, etc.

It may just be impossible technically at this point in time for the game to support more than X number of kits, and it is what it is.

I know plenty of people spend thousands and thousands of dollars per year on custom team apparel, and Iā€™m willing to bet thatā€™s still true in this game. You canā€™t get a custom kit in reality for $100, and I donā€™t expect to in Zwift either.

But I sure would like to have one!!!

Keep in mind that allowing submission of user generated content comes with a host additional considerations and complications (for a global service like Zwift).

Sadly, itā€™s not as easy as just letting users submit a .jpg file from a jersey shaped template, and calling it good. :slight_smile:

This is just one of the many things we need to consider outside of whatā€™s already been mentioned in this thread.

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Hi Wes,

I donā€™t think I could have been more clear in my post that I realize itā€™s not as simple as a jpeg.

There clearly is an acceptable format for producing a custom kitā€¦ you have them already.

Whatever that specification is, if you arenā€™t willing to generate them, then there are many people and companies who would be. A person like me might pay $10,000 to have that kit producedā€¦ clearly NOT a jpeg.

Then Zwift verifies it meets spec and uploads it for me and then itā€™s just in my garage and I have the private unlock code for my club/team/riders.

Until somebody puts a price to it, no one will be able to know. If you said itā€™s 100K, then it would pretty much end it.

If it was 10K, you step into reality for teams and people with money to pay.

As I also stated, Zwift might just say, ā€œour system can only handle 50 kits totalā€. Sorry! Then thatā€™s the end of that as well.

People who suggest itā€™s $5 or a jpeg are already out of their minds, but you should test the Zverse and see if people are willing to pay what it would costā€¦ as soon as we have an idea what that might be.

My response wasnā€™t in regards to the technical implementation constraints, it was more about logistics of user generated content in a global platform like Zwift.

To give a simple example, how would we confirm that what is submitted is owned (or is properly licensed for reuse in our game context) by the submitter and not owned by someone else? How do we handled licenses or copyrights which are specific to a country or region but not in others? What happens when a license expires but the item is still in the game because the original submitted stopped Zwifting?

Thatā€™s just a few examples from copyright issues alone.

Summary: Itā€™s complicated :slight_smile:

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It seems like there is enough interest in this service to pay for a dedicated employee to handle everything you highlight. After all, it would only take 10-50 teams/clubs/entities per year willing to pay a few thousands of dollars for in game branding to cover the expense.

With regards to the branding/logo/trademark ownership, all of that is easily handled with process.

Food for thought.

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Thank you Wes. Iā€™m new to Zwift and our local bike shop owner has a KICKR display with Zwift featured for people to demo using their shop account at the bike shop. He asked what the process it get the shopā€™s jersey in the platform and, after reading this entire thread, just have to tell him ā€œit is complicatedā€ for sure. I understand all your challenges for what you mention to verify copyright etc. Iā€™m hopeful you all come up with some methodology that is fair since right now there are group with the privilege of having custom kits and the rest are precluded.

We worked on a solution that can solve most if not all the issues Wes brought up, and finally get club jerseys going. Wesā€™ points were well thought-out, this means Zwift is thinking and trying, which is exactly the direction we want to eventually get our custom jerseys. Wes, ping me if youā€™d like to discuss further. email address removed or https://www.block-star.com/

Lets hope you manage to overcome the ā€œtechnicalā€ difficulties soon . There is only so much and for so long that marketing can help sustain a business dominant position before the start ups come along with a comparable product with more engaging set of features and user experience to challenge . I would suspect that while this inability to offer a feature clearly much wanted continues, Custom kit has to rank pretty high for anyone thinking of competing with Zwift as a way to do so with a compelling reason to switch.

Why is custom kit different from any other configuration options offered . How do you stop people not naming themselves in a way that also does this . Then more importantly How does the vast array of other social media and global platform providers e.g. amazon , ebay to name but a few who offer far more in depth abilities to create custom presence deal with this problem. There seems to be a lot of emphasis put on reasons to not do it , rather than those to actually do it . The point is that customization of appearance of avatars is hardly bleeding edge as others have pointed out 20 years ago you could do it .

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