Re: Swamp, zombie fps by Aprone
Where to begin?
Ok, it never does harm to tell someone you appreciate them. Aprone/Jeremy, you've taken all of us on a wild ride, one that even you didn't plan two years back. There have been passionate disagreements, annoying glitches, design decisions I didn't necessarily agree with. . . and there has grown up a magical, fantastic thing, an emergent phemonenon, the creation of a community where none existed before, a community that spans nations, time zones and cultural assumptions to a degree never seen before in the audio games world.
Sure, the game was a smashing success, taking our technology to new places and setting a new minimum expectation for anyone who's going to call themselves a bad ass developer. Many people have spent countless (or large but countable hours at any rate) gaming in ways that come damned close to my understanding of how sighted gamers do it. No one has come so close yet, even David Greenwood, my former favorite dev.
But the community is the most important part of what has come out of it. Swamp is, let's be real here, a game, a pleasant way to pass some time, or perhaps a harmless way to get out the aggressions of the day, or the month or a life spent dealing with shit that just ain't fair, and ain't gonna get any fairer in our lifetimes. So it was nice to take careful aim and bulls-eye a deadhead across the river, or unlimber the Vulcan and unleash mayhem.
But it's a game people. It's just not worth that much agony in and of itself. The community grew up around the game. If the game goes away, the community still exists, if its members make the effort to make that happen. Is it what we want? No not so much; I'd be sad to see Swamp go away. But is it the end of our lives? No, it isn't. If you've made friends on Swamp, figure out who they are, where they are and use any of the three gazillion other methods of communication that modern life gives you access to to maintain those friendships. Be inspired to write some fiction of your own, in English or your language of comfort. Reach out to people in trouble that you met through this game and help them out if you can. At least offer them the comfort of knowing that somebody gives a damn.
But can we please put away the inflamed rhetoric about "not giving up the fight?" What fight? How precisely do you intend to "fight"? Ok, if you're a programmer with ideas how to defeat the pond scum, then by all means contribute them to Jeremy or another developer to put off the day when this happens to another project, or to this one again. Sure, if there's a new test server and Aprone adopts the sensible strategy of employing only private testers, and you happen to be one, then by all means, test the hell out of it, do your best to b reak it, including finding new ways to cheat, while keeping him fully informed along the way.
But really? We're not giving up the fight? What does that even mean? If it means that we are going to make conscious efforts to maintain those friendships that we all say are so important, than that is an amazing bit of goodness to come out of this.
The problem here is not technology, it's culture. Those who've pointed out that Swamp isn't the problem are absolutely right. And by the way, it's not just blind folk, (and there's no way to prove that the wankers are even blind,) this sort of thing does in fact happen to other projects, both games and otherwise. there is no technological fix, at least over the long term. Very large businesses such as Symantec make their living based on the knowledge that any defensive measure you can take is of impermanent use. The only way to be fully secure on lin e is to not be on line at all.
Coming back to you Jeremy, I've been a fan boy/gadfly/thrilled player of yours since at least the Lunimals days. I have appreciated your willingness to engage with us right the way along. I have appreciated the clarity with which you explain design decisions and assumptions. I have appreciated your openness to user ideas. I have the sense of you as a standup guy. I donated to you out of that appreciation, rather than to keep any specific server up. I will not feel that donation was in vain, even should this be it for Swamp, or for all your game development for our community. And should you ever find yourself near Pentwater MI, please let me know you're coming and I'll gladly have you and any family you have over to dinner, where I will raise a toast of hand-crafted, lovingly made homebrew to your efforts. I'd like to do that for you as a token of appreciation, from one craf tsman to another.
Do what you need to do, like I said six months ago or so. If you need to walk away, then walk. But keep in touch if you can, as others have said, you have many fans, and a lot of us would be your friends for true, given the opportunity. And a friend supports a friend when that friend has to make hard choices. I'd say you've earned that in spades, from me and from everyone else here, whether they are intelligent enough to realize it or not.
And if you need a tester/gadfly/fan boy with development experience, though not to your level and mine is twenty-plus years out of date for anything from the replacement for the BrailleNote to a self-driving car, to a beer and pretzels game that goes rogue and takes the audio community by storm, well then I'm there if you want me.
*The Mad Violinist pulls a fiddle out of thin air and plays a haunting air that morphs into one of those Scottish marches that conjures up a fog- bound plain and armies coming over the hill with bag-pipes scurling their unearthly call to the dead to rise and smite the foe.*
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=149702#p149702
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