Written by Citizen Alpha Sunday, 24 January 2010 03:03

Article Index
The Rise and Fall of CCNGTA
The Glory Days
The Gangs of CCNGTA
Circling the Drain
Why so serious LSPD?
The Gift of Embitterment
The WTFMan Debacle
The Return of CCNGTA
Derailed Mindset of the Long Time Player
The Splinter Servers
The End
Epilogue
All Pages

Derailed Mindset of the Long Time Player

If you think about it, it was pretty damn hard to get banned from CCNGTA. All you really needed to be to play on CCNGTA was a halfway decent human being. So long as you leaned more towards “productive” instead of “destructive” you were pretty much set for life no our server. There were quite a handful of players I didn’t care for playing on the server that I never touched or showed the door. The rules and banning policies were designed so that staff couldn’t ban exclusively on disposition because that’s not fair to the players. This especially applied to me. Unfortunately for a lot of people we also brought the unprecedented element of accountability to our players. This is great news for players who are positive influences on the server because they see a lot of recognition for their actions, but the negative ones get the raw end of the deal by getting booted out for their actions.

I often compare the internet to the podium effect with public speakers. When a speaker addresses a large group, from a psychological standpoint some require a podium to alleviate nervousness. The podium technically doesn’t matter whatsoever because the audience can still see, hear, and identify the individual behind it but the speaker feels safer because the majority of their body is covered. So, despite it being painfully obvious who they are, they feel more brazen and able to convey their message. The internet seems to have the same effect on people. People say, act, and behave in ways that they would not normally because they feel they’re protected and have a safe buffer, like a podium to a public speaker. However the reality is the same, when it boils down to it, your still you. Whether you’re an idiot under the handle RedNinja5 or PartyHatBoy, you’re still an idiot. 

These folks who got the boot for these reasons typically hold a grudge, despite the fact that we don’t ban if you’re an idiot, just if you break the rules. You’ll have people that will play on our server for months and months, invest thousands of hours, then decide out of the blue to exploit or cheat only to get banned on the spot. “How dare they”, they’ll ask. They will see us as betraying them, we should have flexed on the rules, and we should have understood and respected their time on our server. They thought we were friends. Well, we hold the same feelings. We watch, we may not catch everything, but when we do we hold everyone to the same standards and this upsets people. We kick their podium down and drag them off the stage, just like everyone else who has purposely attempted to harm our server and community.

These same players were the ones giving standing ovations when we did the same to run of the mill cheaters. Now they’ve picked up the Animal Farm philosophy of, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Fairness is only fair if it applies to everyone but me. It’s easy to demonize me and the rest of the staff for enforcing these policies; after all we’re the executers of the unpleasant action. Our stance on the server rules was purposely meant to tie our hands on these matters. Trust me when I say that banning a long time player is just as unpleasant as being banned if not worse. We’re left to deal with the repercussions of your actions while you’re simply shown the door.

Most of these players never let this go. They’ll never understand what was done was necessary and they’ll never hold themselves accountable, just us. Aside from these long time players we had problems with another sect of long time players. In general, when things are going great everyone’s your friend, that’s just how life goes. When there’s a free lunch, everyone eats. I think I also did this to myself as well, but there’s a person behind this wall of text and that can be a hard concept to grasp for a lot of people. I say I did this to myself because I didn’t do a lot to convey that in the things I did and a few of my actions came off rather inhuman. The code I produced, the bans I executed, certain talks with problem players, the server reports, etc.

Even players I had spent gobs of time with fell into this mindset after a period of inattentiveness from me. Eventually, figuratively speaking, I had to say, “All this comes at a price that I can’t afford anymore.” I was met with a lot of, “Fuck you for not paying.” Not a whole lot changed outside of the code for CCNGTA. There was no management change, the rules were amended once to add a caveat for illegal activities (yes, someone was mad for being banned due to real world criminal behavior against CCN) but they hadn’t changed since late 2007, my skill set actually got better over time with the code, and we had the same drama and problems we always did. But now that there wasn’t time to dedicate, I was a hack coder, a draconian leader, a liar, a donation swindler, and an all around evil bastard. I was ironically getting butchered for the exact same reasons I was being lauded for 6 months prior with a big adjective change because I didn't have the time to put in. The most discouraging portion of all this was the fact that a lot of long time players sank to this mentality. People who I’ve spent time with, helped, and defended forgot all that. They cast aside their experience and allowed others to do the thinking for them. I was made out to be the devil because I couldn't provide to the server the sacrafices I had provided before.