If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.
You can never escape; you can only move south down the coast.
Outrage of the Week
20 July 2000
Yet another pissed off update
Well would you look at that? I live.Looking on the good side, this is perhaps the hint of a new era. No offense meant to Pags, but it's high time someone ran the best and most central and basic zone in Subspace who has such reverence for this game that he's willing to go against popular opinion on major issues. SVS is back in Chaos Zone and the horrifying Spider with mine radar is GONE. Thank you God.
Got a little quote from JeffP about that, actually.
yeah, the svs were designed and tuned over years to be well balanced and provide as skill-based of an experience as was possible. Personal skills largely defined how good you were at the game...there truly was a concept of a better-pilot...I liked the svs because it seemed there was always room to get even better, to distinguish yourself from the others...
It was kind of a depressing conversation, really. It came up because I was curious to know what he thought of a recent modification to the server software which allows sysops to limit their players' max resolution. He seemed surprised that I was even asking, and responded that there was nothing he could do about it. Whether the SS Council had his blessing in making the alterations seemed almost a non-issue.
This was baffling to me. Just as Jeff had gone under the assumption that no one cared how he felt about alterations made to his game, I had gone under the assumption that everyone cared. Detached as I am from any of the alterations made to Subspace by the Council (primarily through PriitK and Ghost Ship), in my mind it was a foregone conclusion that of course we had his blessing.
It started with anti-cheating features, implemented out of dire necessity. Over time, new features were added. Increasingly now those features seem less motivated by necessity than by convenience, by prejudicial notions of fairness, and even by the players' unconscious desire to actually be playing a different game. The recent capping of screen resolutions in Trench Wars at 1152x864 is to my mind the ugliest example of this thinking yet.
What's really worrisome here is not that something as opposite the nature and purpose of Subspace as is Trench Wars should be further removed from the game's original intent. The sooner Trench Wars becomes a completely separate game which people don't associate with Subspace, the better. What I'm most concerned with is that these new features, in not directly altering the dynamics of combat, will infiltrate the remaining SVS zones and quietly turn them into something Subspace was never intended to be.
I'm concerned that, as word has it, the resolution ceiling might find its way into the leagues soon.
I'm concerned that hallu, of all people--probably the best friend SVS has ever had--would like to remove random bullet damage from the game. It horrifies me to consider that this is probably on PriitK's schedule of things to to. We go on the conventional mythology that this random damage existed only to hide lag. Do we know this? Have we asked?
There's my personal tastes, and there's what's sacred to a purist...and then there's insult. It was a real eye opener to learn that the man who made the game views this new developement as neither an improvement nor an outrage--but as a barely noticeable addition to a long list of offenses, dating back to God alone can keep track of when.
We never asked.
We had neither his permission nor his blessing. We went to VIE UK. Because we can get into trouble with VIE UK, can't we. We want things from them--and they can sue us.
Jeff, on the other hand--what can he do? Hell, he could probably get into trouble with VIE UK for trying to stop us. He can express his outrage. That's about the sum of his options.
Has it not been well established that we don't really give a damn?
I ask these things as an open letter. To the community, to the Council, and to everyone who has made alterations to this game, in or out of good faith. What have we done to ensure the elements which made this game great are not lost? To whom have we gone for verification that our own personal disapproval is justification enough to change the nature of this game? With whom besides our own personal peeves and wants have we verified that the negligible little bites we take out of its soul are similarly negligible in total?
What do you do to stop a 20th century classic you once loved from becoming an untested patchwork of 21st century amateur tinkerings that you can live with?
It angers me to realize that I've done so little to get in the way of our march towards shame and mediocrity that I didn't even notice action was needed at all. And it saddens me to learn some of the people I admire most in the world have long since given up the fight and can no longer view this game as their own labor of love.
I consider Subspace to be a great and seminal work of art, a defining watershed marking the true birth of a revolutionary and wonderful new form of entertainment. That its creators cannot derive pleasure and pride from it is profoundly depressing to me. This is my opinion only, but I believe the Subspace community has alienated Jeff and Rod through our lack of reverence for their work. By doing so we have harmed them and their other endeavors. How can artists gain anything by tapping the resources of a fan base they can't trust and which does not respect them?
They can't.
That so few people care should be devastating to anyone who loves this game.
<pl0k> in the time it takes to download this game, i could go to video ezy, hire out die hard triology, take the cd home, look at the pattern of 1s and 0s etched on the cd, and hand carve them onto a blank CD
You wave the red flag, baby you make it run run run
Standing on the sidelines, waving and grinning
You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun
Outrage of the Week
4 July 2000
What's that stuck in your teeth?
A lot of fallout, maybe too much for me to process just yet in its entirety, but I will say something about Yazour's recent post to 8025, implying that the news was "either a joke, or some lame 'einexile' ploy", as though I actually question or disbelieve my own sources, or have no sources at all. Rather, since I have discussed the news post with Yazour and reached an understanding, I would like to say something in response to a general sentiment which appears to echo his accusation. There is a sizeable number of people who should know better, who have publicly questioned my integrity and my judgement, and there is also a sizeable group of people who see themselves as the guardians of Infantry and who believe it was unwise of me to go public with the information, or that it was not my place to do so.The first group can be safely written off by anyone who has followed this website for more than a year. The second group concerns me more, however, because it's made up of people who do know better--or at least who fancy themselves as having a level of seniority granting them the right to decree what is better, as though they are the Infantry village elders. Make no mistake, there has been a conspiracy among players who think they now run the community because they somehow have a foot in HG's door.
It's evident when Omicron calls the post "a lapse in his better judgement that can only damage this game". It's evident in Infantry.NMEBase.Com's laughable spin doctoring of the situation, which doesn't dare either credit or condemn the original news post but instead attacks Leaky the Leviathan as a gossip. (I will say that I consider Leaky the Leviathan's initial reading of the news to be way over the top, but his sources are not necessarily my sources, and there are classier ways to question them than portraying him as a predatory rumormonger.) And it's obvious when Captain Harloch implores me not to make the information known, not because it is untrue (surely my friend Captain Harloch would warn me away from bad information!) but because it will hurt the game.
Since he is no longer speaking to me because of this, and because other players have asserted the same position, I offer my response to Captain Harloch as an open letter. It has been edited for readability and taste, and to avoid quoting him or naming sources.
And here is another thing. That "if this gets out" stuff is exactly what kboom said when I told everyone about the security hole in the subgame [Subspace' server program]. I spilled the beans anyway, and by golly Subspace survived...so I no longer fall for that stuff. It sounds too much like something out of the X Files. "If people knew about this, why, there would be chaos!"
And on top of that, you're asserting that I should conceal information I have access to--which would be interesting to people who read my page because they expect me to tell them things that will interest them--so that you and other self-appointed cheerleaders can administer a false sense of the game's health. This by the groundless prediction that telling people the game is in good shape will make it so.
And above all other things, it is NOT your place to decide--nor even to CONSIDER--what information the players should or should not be told, or to estimate what their reaction might be. Their reactions and their feelings are their property, not yours or anyone else's to manipulate, and I challenge you to name a single individual who does not deserve to know everything you know, and deserve to react to that information honestly and accurately.
As long as people don't know the end is here, anyone intelligent will suspect it's coming up soon. Instead of fearing what will happen then, let them deal with what is happening now. Why leave people wondering whether it might drop off the face of the earth? The minute HG admit that it's a dead game, people will respect them for maintaining and updating a classic, instead of simply doing half-assed development on a pipe dream.
I had suspected Captain Harloch's integrity ever since the site removed information which could have embarrassed Harmless Games, allegedly at the company's request. (In that case I was unable to confirm the story without exposing my sources, and I still have not posted it here.) At that point I knew of Harloch's predisposition to painting Infantry and Harmless Games in as positive a light as possible, but after reading through the evasion, panic, and contemptuous dismissal ("So enough with the rumours and scandal") of today's NMEBase update, and after comparing the doomsaying and horror I experienced over ICQ Sunday morning night with the--no other word for it--cheerleading that I'm seeing today ("this is far from enough to sink the game or it's community"; "You only have to look at the posts below to see that Infantry is VERY much alive and full of new things everyday to realise that the game's future is set:"), it is my belief that it is the NMEBase's policy to portray Harmless Games and Infantry in as optimistic and reverent a light as can be accomplished without embedding a John Philip Sousa march in the page's HTML.
Having said that, I offer my apology to JeffP and the rest of Harmless Games for the bitter and gloating tone evident in Sunday's update. It had no place in either a news post or an editorial.
Happy 4th of July
Today we celebrate Britain's failure to prevent a bunch of well meaning philosophers from turning a giant tobacco farm into a hegemonic imperial monstrosity. I would also like to thank Spain and Mexico for allowing the United States to invade, occupy, and annex my homeland. GG.PS - Enjoy the fireworks. They symbolize the growing Chinese military arsenal your tax money is helping to pay for.
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