QUOTE (Arclight @ Apr 26 2010, 12:06 PM)
If these people are going to achieve nothing by this, why are you so viciously acting against them? Fear, you might be proven wrong?
Why should these people buy product from a company that drove away respected contributers to the game, while voicing a boycott because of ethics?
Just because it's Shadowrun?
No one is telling anyone to do anything past wait and see. We don't know what the company will look like in 1 month. Anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous.
It's one of the great fallacies of the internet to believe that even a large minority of the user base is represented by a forum. Granted, Shadowrun's community is smaller, and a link to Dumpshock has been put in the beginning of many books. BUT! that doesn't mean people are following this. This isn't something the mainstream media is going to cover, and we all know how little people even follow that in this day and age.
No.. All anyone are doing in posting here is either venting their frustration or trying to influence people who -do- have a say in the future of the game. And that may even be overstepping my bounds (for instance, we have no clue the true reasons why people quit, nor is it any of our business). So at that point you ask yourself: with as little information as everyone here has, what do they hope to accomplish?
Gonna relate a little story about a man whom I have very little respect for. There is a former journalist for IGN by the name of Matt Cassamassia. He did his job, got connections in the gaming industry, and broke the news on quite a bit of things regarding Nintendo in the late 90's and early part of the decade. He had a platform, one that was fairly visible, and insiders who fed him information. Hell, he even created a forum dedicated to telling information to the outside populace that was under an informal NDA, where he invited influential people. I know -- I was a member for years. But then, things started to change. Matt started to think he knew better than the people who ran Nintendo. He may have, who knows, it's not my place to judge. But over time, his writings changed. In public, he criticized Nintendo games for not matching his standards. In private, he fumed over inactivity and how he felt people were being treated. Again, I was a second-hand witness, so I can't comment.. But nothing got him madder than when Nintendo purged Silicon Knights, Rare, and Factor 5 from their 2nd and 3rd party ("freelancer") positions. That's where all his contacts were, after all, and the ones who were making games that fit his vision.
Matt, in my opinion, forgot that even though he had a position to speak from, he was still just one man. His vision was no more or less valid than anyone else's. Now, we all believe in this world that all it takes is one man to change things; however, it takes others listening to that man for the change to happen. As people stopped listening to Matt, as his cult of personality dissolved around him.. Well, I don't know what happened, as I stopped following him as I got more and more disgusted at how he acted. I even called him out on it a few times personally. And to be quite frank, I think that he had at least some to do with the quality of IGN's writing over the last decade. It's not fair to blame everything on him.. but hey.
I need to make it perfectly clear that these situations are NOT analogous. To my knowledge there is no corruption, embezzlement, cooked books, or other shady dealings going on with Nintendo. (Microsoft during that era is another story, and a part of the discussion I'm leaving out, but hey). I don't tell this story to say Loren is in the right and all the people being vocal are wrong. I tell this story to reiterate: One voice is just that -- a single point in the discussion. There are other voices out there. Some are silent, some are supportive, some are negative. And in this case, squeaky wheels are just making a lot of noise as they rattle around. We haven't heard what is going on inside Catalyst. My guess is that the owners are focused on getting their act cleaned up enough to retain the license, and then from there they'll take as much action as they can. United front and all that. I don't begrudge others from trying to get the license away from Catalyst for what they've done, nor do I feel it is wrong for others to try and put forward their own proposals for the license. But never, ever, for one second believe that this forum constitutes the entirety of the discussion.
Shadowrun will go on. As long as corporations are greedy fucking bastards, Shadowrun will go on. As long as people wish to be vigilantes, Shadowrun will go on. As long as people dream of being elves, dwarves, orks, or badass motherfuckers, Shadowrun will go on. As long as game developers are influenced by Shadowrun, it will go on. And most importantly: As long as you own the books, be them by FASA, FanPro, or Catalyst... Shadowrun will go on.
So please, please, try to avoid being holier than thou. We're all chummers around here, right?
Edit:
[ Spoiler ]
I'm well aware I'm being holier than thou in telling you all to not be holier than thou.