Post by foobar on Oct 22, 2024 18:10:55 GMT -5
- Leaked spoilers for upcoming plots, with details that appear to have originated from staff documentation and conversations.
- Shared confidential issues we were facing, including discussions between players and staff, sourced from private conversations and requests, sometimes quoting staff voice chats almost verbatim.
- Frequent leaks of IC information and rumors, leading to involved players feeling anxious, upset or acting out both in-game and in the community.
- Publicly posted personal information about players and/or their PCs and/or communications with staff, accompanied by posts of negative, wildly inaccurate character judgments, inflicting emotional, psychological and reputational harm.
- Targeted staff members by revealing their identities and then launching baseless attacks on their character, resulting in similar emotional, psychological and reputational damage.
Overall, Seasons was actually kinda awesome, we met nearly all of our ambitious goals. The staffing team was the strongest it’s ever been: collaborative, creative and refreshingly free of the internal strife that plagued past teams. Moderators were effective and the community spaces were much improved: some of our harshest critics even began to express genuine appreciation. Communal game areas were bustling, player plots were flourishing and we received an outpouring of feedback from players telling us this was the most fun they'd ever had in Armageddon. Our planned meta-plot was full of promise and excitement. Yes, there were obstacles; nothing is flawless. But we were ready to face those challenges and work through it. What we weren't prepared to work through was this community’s constant barrage of hatred.
It honestly baffles me that you haven’t managed to grasp even the most rudimentary understanding of the human condition or cultivate even a semblance of genuine empathy. Your pseudo-psychological analyses of players, staff and game dynamics have been so profoundly misguided and off-base that, were the consequences not so harmful, they might even have been funny. Your caricature of Halaster is such an alien character that I genuinely do find that amusing. But overall it isn’t funny, because your bullying has real consequences. Because you surround your nonsense with just enough 'gleaned fact' to make it seem credible. Your posts cause tangible harm to real people, players and staff alike. They reach out to us, asking for help, bewildered by the attacks. We feel like we should be able to protect them, yet we find ourselves powerless. We have undoubtedly lost good staff and players due to the morale-sapping impact of abuse propagated in this community.
Your short-sighted inability to comprehend the ripple effects of your own actions doesn’t negate those effects. Imagine, if you will, a few disparaging posts about a staff member. Now picture how those remarks breed anxiety, chip away at morale and curb that person’s creative drive. Instead of dedicating their energy to animating for players or working on their plots, they’re talking to me, contemplating stepping away or needing a break. Instead of supporting my players or working on our meta-plot, I’m now trying to reassure that staff member, telling them to take all the time they need while silently worrying about how we’ll cover the gap, promising them that I will take on all of their responsibilities too. During all this, I inevitably drop the ball with one of my leaders, whose plot suffers. That, in turn, frustrates several players who were involved, which snowballs into drama on Discord about ineffective leadership. Now I’m caught between supporting my players, salvaging my plot and moderating a community uproar, all while exhausted and emotionally drained. That can be the result of just one or two posts. Multiply that by 98 pages of incessant vitriol directed at various members of our community, staff and efforts starting from Day 0 and you might start to fathom the scope of the impact you’ve caused? Probably not.
The notion that online bullying is harmless because "you can just not read it" is nonsense. It’s not that simple. Even if the victim manages to avoid reading the hateful comments directly, they still know they’re there, festering. People bring it up, screenshots get shared and the toxicity spreads, impacting reputation, relationships and mental health. This isn’t 'merely digital', it doesn't lessen the impact because it's on a screen, it’s psychological assault that seeps into people’s real lives, creating anxiety, isolation and tangible consequences. The "just ignore it" mantra is nothing more than a convenient way for bullies to try and sidestep accountability.
You attempt to hide behind some imagined higher purpose, that you’re exposing wrongdoing and standing against some sinister conspiracy in Armageddon Mud. You’re not. Yes, historically there have been bad actors on staff, and the current team includes members who themselves suffered under those same people. But those times are over. The fight you claim to champion is one we already fought, and won, the right way. We removed the toxic elements and began rebuilding, striving to save what was worth loving about this game. .
Oh! And you are of course advocating for justice against the supposed evil of player cheating, noble in your whistleblowing. Except it's not. It's just dramatics. You are the RPI-based embodiment of the Daily Mail. We were and always have been absolutely 100% prepared to take cheating seriously, with no favourite players nor 'friends of staff' who aren't beholden to the rules, but that doesn't work if nobody tells us about it. This can absolutely be achieved without creating a spectacle or upending the game and community, allowing other players to continue enjoying themselves without being overwhelmed by negativity and over-dramatised scandal, simply by communicating with us through the proper channels. But you need the spectacle. You want the damage. Are you so consumed by anger that you need someone to vilify just to feel important? If it's not staff, it's the players! If it's not the players, it's staff!
Personally, I am pretty confident the relaunch would have continued to be a success if these forums didn't exist, or at least if you hadn't waged fresh war against us while we were trying to heal and rebuild. What we achieved was incredible and the work, passion and creativity that went into it was honestly mind-blowing. Would we be seeing 100 players a night? Probably not, no. Would it be without its issues? Nope, but nothing ever is. But we'd be having fun, telling stories and collaboratively world building without the toxic stench of certain members of this community constantly hanging over us.
What's different between now and the past? From my perspective? We are. We're actually just a bunch of squishy, kind-hearted creatives who love the game, inherited it at its lowest point, wanted to do right by the world of Zalanthas and its players and also have a good time doing it. We're not prepared to just angry-Nyr our way through this. And now we're tired and drained and dispirited and we can't continue like this, because it is the opposite of fun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Jcarter, you really ought to shut this shit down already. It's getting old and weird.
- Usiku
p.s. All the plots are the same?! I thought you had our plot doc?
jcarter said I wrote TMZ articles and now I'm being compared to the Daily Mail. What's next? Infowars?
I will level with you. I have a history of posting my cautious optimism here about Seasons. I am also confident that the relaunch could have been a success, though I attribute its failures to a different cause than you do. You know how you picked your sponsored roles just as much as we do. We know about right of first refusal, and about cheating players being favored with special roles once again.
But perhaps most importantly to this conversation: I would not have posted what I posted if it wasn't already being spread in OOC channels. I don't know why you and your game's ardent supporters find this so difficult to comprehend, but the game had quietly-cheating players surrounding it, ruining your game right under your nose. You were being dishonestly undermined by your own playerbase days or even weeks before the information they were greedily sharing between them was posted here. I did not post that information here to be some noble whistleblower. I did it because the information was no longer a secret. You and your fellow staff members were happily pretending it was a secret, and perhaps that was enough for you to keep going, but let's face it. If your own players wanted the game to thrive, I would never have received any information to post, and this all never would have happened.
I'll ignore the ad hominem and chalk that up to your frustration with the feeling of betrayal by your own staff and playerbase. It's never easy to learn that those you respected did not respect you in return.
So - the news is that there are assholes on the internet? Congrats, I guess?
'The playerbase' is not a monolith, just like 'armageddon staff' is not a monolith. You'll find assholes in any group of 100+ people. You can either talk to them and try and convince them to stop being assholes (YMMV) or remove them from the group. None of that is possible when they're anonymous assholes, though.
And who is protecting their anonymity now? You are.
