The Tale of BobJimSlash

[Scheveningen]

Preface: This is going to be a post about a hypothetical situation, real-life references are coincidental or unintended. This can also be considered as yet another eccentric post of mine. I hope the point I make with it makes sense towards the very end.

There is a player known as BobJimSlash. He plays a 4d over-the-shoulder caveman simulation game known as "Grug Plateau 7", and is a very avid and consistent player of it. He is a regular of the one server in which the caveman simulator is hosted on, and he is relatively well known in the community as a regular. He likes the feel of the game and the pacing of the game in how it is, because it gives him a specific experience that other games simply don't have that appeal to him 'just right.' He doesn't mind when the game gets small things added in features but gets rather uncomfortable at the implications of overhauling the game into something different, because he's afraid the game changing in that way would make it no longer as fun for him. He is occasionally vocal about his opinions, some days he is, some days he is not, but most of the community knows what BobJimSlash stands for.

Enter JaneMayCrush. Though she's not a regular for the game, she's a known developer for "Grug Plateau 7." She's responsible for the upkeep of the game and a wide myriad of changes to the game to keep Grug Plateau 7 interesting and entertaining. She's known for her active involvement in responding to feedback and providing her justification for certain changes, though occasionally she will concede to some points made by the community and compromise for the sake of fairness. She tries her best to be constructive even in the face of adverse and not as constructive feedback, nonetheless. Most in the Grug Plateau 7 community agree widely that JaneMayCrush is a competent developer.

JaneMayCrush posts a rather large list of upcoming changes to Grug Plateau 7. Specifically, they influence a large array of changes to the game's pacing and balancing, as well as removing certain features she qualifies as "redundant" or "unnecessary." Overall, one can objectively judge that the preview of the changes will increase the level of depth and difficulty for certain behaviors in gameplay, though at a sacrifice of removing certain features considered 'quality of life' to have.

BobJimSlash sees these changes and notices something in particular. As a bit of background, BobJimSlash gets his fame for being an "apple tribe main", because it is the tribe he played the most. The Apple Tribe always spawned with specific conditions and BobJimSlash was always able to make consistent use out of the resources the Apple Tribe started with and then make larger returns out of them, overall making themselves a powerful influence in-game. At times he would use this to the betterment of other players in order to 'share the wealth', so he would not exploit these game factors for selfish sake alone. However, the changes he sees will completely shake up this and most likely not allow him to do that to the same extent anymore to benefit Apple Tribe players, and not only himself. He is frustrated particularly because this takes him out of his comfort zone of playing the game.

BobJimSlash posts a feedback post and establishes a line of conversation with the developer JaneMayCrush. He clarifies how the changes are a detriment to his playstyle and will also likely make the game much more difficult (and unenjoyable) specifically for Apple Tribe players. JaneMayCrush posts a response entailing how they disagree, and that they believe the changes help sort out disproportionate power imbalances inherent to Apple Tribe. She ends with a closing note that is simply, "You will have to figure out the best way to play Apple Tribe again."

It does not end here, unfortunately. BobJimSlash accuses JaneMayCrush of being dismissive, pushing an agenda and describes JaneMayCrush's behavior as 'lazy'. JaneMayCrush posts about how they resent that attribution to themselves, insisting they only want to make the game more interesting for everyone. They add in a rebuttal that "BobJimSlash" is being a self-righteous dickhead.

BobJimSlash then starts signalboosting and calling to attention as to how JaneMayCrush showed animosity to a player and was rude as a member of the community's staff, and they served as an exact example of what a developer should not be, all the while insisting they should be fired from their position for such alleged mistreatment. This leads to the server host looking into the situation and attempting to determine what went wrong here. While attempting to investigate the accusation of a developer's misconduct, the situation only exacerbates as BobJimSlash and other members of the community continues to attempt to antagonize JaneMayCrush while the latter actively fires back veiled insults to their detractors. Some people defend JaneMayCrush, even, insisting Bob was in the wrong.

This creates a very divided community as a result on such a simple, singular issue that "just happened." Yet it created a lot of  problems where it stopped being just a game to these Grug Plateau 7 players, and it became a "my side vs. their side" issue.

Suddenly, this story ends in A TIME PARADOX! Stuck in the midst of a perpetual freeze, because the story ends here, and so do any further points.
___

It does not actually end, even, I'm certain at some point it will reach a conclusion. I have a few questions, though...

1. Who's actually in the wrong here? You can't say the server provider just for breathing.

2. What could've been done better from the perspective of both parties?

3. Is it fair to have specific expectations to have of people regardless of context?

4. What lessons can we take from this to do better ourselves?

I'm very interested in having a kind of conversation of this nature, just hypothetically, of course. None of what is entailed here actually happened, it is fiction I wrote up, ultimately.

Edited January 2, 2019 by Scheveningen