GameMaker Blog first suggested a possible merge between GMpedia and The YoYo Games Wiki when several GMpedia SysOps were spotted on the SysOp list of the YoYo Games wiki. GameMaker Blog also noted that some changes occurring in the YoYo Games wiki are very possibly related to such GMpedia-YoYo Games wiki merge.

Enough speculation. I guess everyone’s just waiting for a final and official word, so here I go…

For the better good of the community, and keeping in the same pace of GMking.org of wanting to provide comprehensive and centralized resources for game developers, GMpedia.org, a game development (and particularly Game Maker) wiki, will soon be merging with the YoYo Games wiki.

While when we originally approached YoYo Games, we approached them for simple inter-wiki cooperation, they seemed to be excited about a bigger move; a complete content merge between the two wikis. Considering the nature of GMking.org, we were hesitant and indeed rejected the initial offer (multiple times), but eventually chose to reconsider and instead asked YoYo Games do address some of our concerns before we go on with anything. Indeed, we gave YYG a list of our concerns and “conditions” and they have agreed to them, seeing them as fair, and thus we are moving forward with a merge.

GMking asked for removal of advertisements from the wiki section of YoYo Games. We wanted to do this because we felt more motivated and comfortable contributing and assisting in a fully community orientated website. While we have no problem with YoYo Games making profit of course, we feel that this will more define the wiki as something that is related to the community itself. YoYo Games agreed with such demands.

We also asked for the wiki licensing to change to Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0, as to allow more open content to be shared, contributed, redistributed, and have others make derivatives of such work. For those who do not know, Creative Commons is an excellent open license, and GMking.org already uses it for most of its projects.

As part of the deal, we will eventually be looking at some direct or indirect method of “crediting” GMking.org for the contributions. This will be in the form of links on a “Contributors” page or “SysOps” page or even the main link. We’re not too strict about this so you’ll find out more as we go on.

All existing GMpeida Sysops have also been added as YYG Wiki sysops and will continue to actively contribute there.

GMpedia also requested that most non Game Maker content should remain in the new YoYo Games wiki. This includes things like Windows SDK articles, Visual c++ articles, etc. which we believe are also helpful to DLL developers for Game Maker. Articles about more direct competitors such as Flash articles and “The Game Creator” articles will be moved over to other open source wikis.

I’m looking forward to seeing your feedback on this.

Eyas