Re: The newest problem to plague sbyw
Right, so this topic blew up.
I've seen some behaviour that's skating pretty close to that line of character assassination/personal attack, but most of you have been pretty good. I advise that you keep doing that. I was very glad, for instance, that the user who threatened to "tear Mason apart" didn't actually do it. I'd have stepped in there.
Okay, onward.
Mason, you don't really know me, so I'm hoping your relatively blank slate where I'm concerned lets you see my opinion with as little filter as possible.
But seriously? You've pretty much just sealed your fate on a social level as a developer, without some really large and comprehensive changes to your attitude. Most players will not put up with this - as the previous fifty-odd posts have proven - and it's time to sit down and ponder your life choices. Because what you're doing isn't really working.
If you banned Jimmy69 for posting someone's password, I'd agree with that decision on its own, wholeheartedly. You don't ever post someone's personal credentials publicly and then get away with it. Jimmy, that's slimy, BTW, so don't ever do that again, eh? I feel your ban should stand on those grounds alone, myself. If I were running SBYW, I'd have done that, and stuck to my guns. I don't need players screwing with someone else's security, and the attendant drama that creates.
That said, however, the sheer amount of spam implied by this thread, Mason, is just incredible. You might call that fun. Most of your players, who just want to play your game in peace, probably don't agree with you. I'd love to run stats and get a player satisfaction survey on just how pleased your players were by that stunt of yours. Harmless fun, was it? Well, was it worth it if your game starts hemorrhaging players and if trust in you is at a seemingly all-time low?
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt even though I feel that TH is a thematically confusing mess with balancing issues, even though CH was rather repetitive and not all that interesting. I figured, "Hey, at least he's trying. That's more than I can say for some I won't name.". There was effort there. And as far as I'm concerned, anyway, you just tossed almost all of that goodwill away. I have no interest in playing any more of your games, especially those which either cost money, have an online/multiplayer/server component or both. Nope, no thank you. This is an excellent way to turn away new players and to piss off old ones. It's also a really cavalier attitude to have toward those you are claiming to serve by providing audio games.
Listen. There are entitled people everywhere, folks who think you owe them everything because you gave them one small thing. They're a pain in the neck, and I get that. I also understand that you're generally pretty laid-back on a lot of things, and that your idea of fun is still at a point where you think spam is funny. But if you want to be taken more seriously and earn back your shattered credibility, you're going to have to act in a more mature manner and prove to the community at large that you're worth backing. If you have issues making decisions, then talk to some close friends about how to delegate better. If you have trouble making rules that fairly represent the game environment you want to foster, same deal. But if you really don't care - and your actions do make me wonder, I'm afraid - the best thing you can do is go find another hobby, because this one is going to drag you down otherwise. You'll be pounced on again and again by people who think you're trolling them or don't care about them, and they will in most cases be justified in doing so. If you don't care about your player base, or if your actions make your player base fear that you don't care, you're quickly going to cement your bad reputation, and unhappiness for all will likely ensue. If that occurs, do yourself a favour and reassess your life goals, because it seems to me that you're really not all that happy doing this. A dev who cared would've seen the public outcry and done more than just shrug in apology. Oh, and speaking of apology, I disagree that "I said I'm sorry, can we move on now?" is an appropriate response. That's a start, but it's not enough. When I fucked up back in November and was waving around the big stick, warning people and generally being snarly, many people called me on it. Some were more violent and outraged than others, and some may have pushed too hard, but there was no doubt that I was not reacting well to the situation in general. So I was able to take a step back and realize that the choice we'd agreed upon and which I then put into place was not going to go over well. And it didn't. I owned it, and I promised to be better. How many public outbursts over my decisions have there been since? I can count one or two raised eyebrows at one post in particular - I gave a nonpunitive caution and a couple of people objected to it - and that's it. This suggested that I learned from my mistakes, and while that doesn't mean I'm just going to agree with everyone all the time, I took criticism to heart. By acting the way you are at this point, Mason, you're...really not doing that. People have no reason to suspect that what you did won't happen again. You keep saying how harmless it was, and how people could just disrupt their gameplay a little in order to allow said mindless fun to continue without bothering them. This isn't apology. it's called victim blaming, albeit in a more abstract sense. You're basically saying "Well I don't have a problem with it, and you could avoid it by doing such-and-such, so get over yourselves". That's the message you're conveying. That's the impression you're leaving us (those who play your games, and those who don't, like me) with after we see that. A hint for you: if you want someone to believe an apology, don't immediately qualify it by saying something which equates to "it wasn't all that bad". Really makes your reliability on that front take a serious nose-dive.
I hope you're capable of internalizing some of this, but I'll be honest. I've got my doubts. I'll leave it here though. I hope you can turn it around or, failing that, I hope you find another pastime to fill your days and your hours, because this one really isn't a good fit for you right now.
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