Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)

Playing Game Hints
41

What I miss completely is a reason to be so insulting. Using harsh words and being so straightforwardly unpleasant that in a RL occasion you would have been beaten to a pulp. Left lifeless on the sidewalk, in a pool of your own blood, if you can picture it.

I don’t think Victor deserves it.

And I don’t think you were forced to play his game so hard that you must go that lengths to state a reason — which although formally legitimate, in some moderators’ eye, is bull’s crap anyway, period — or that you paid real money for it or anything.
It’s not like Victor has addressed you in his game or has been so childishly arrogant in any of the posts I’ve read.

So why the insults?

Who the hell do you think you are, apart from an obvious loser?

As an answer to somebody’s feelings: nope, you can’t kill a troll. You won’t kill him by ignoring him or by banning him or whatever. If he’s been hanging around for 10 years now, as I read, chances are high he will be here for another 10. Common sense should be enough to tell a troll from a bastard (those are entirely different human beings, you know), but a truth has been spoken here: if a troll doesn’t break a rule, you cannot enforce your will on him unless you want to be called judge, jury and executioner. The next time you will be doing this on unharmful posts that you judge by your own meter, no matter what.
So, troll stays. And this is the only rule.

But, at least, give us the opportunity to bash him as he deserves.
Sometimes, lettin’ it go is cathartic.

42

Huh. The troll as the punching bag, thus actually rendering the community a service. Funny way of looking at it.

43

The writing in De Baron is effective because it serves the goals of the work. It does come across as non-native but that only lowers the barrier to entry and engages the player. By the time I realized that this was not simply a cute little game about killing a dragon put out by an earnest but unpolished author, the hook was already set.

And then he cuts to a bedroom scene? That is both risky and brilliant. The most reviled IF setting, coming hard on the heels of a generic dragon fight, all conveyed through artful but somewhat inelegant prose. It’s like he’s reassuring you that this won’t be so bad, you’ve seen this before, it’ll be kind of fun. And then he kicks your teeth in.

The fact that the dungeon lies on the non-essential path interests me as an artistic choice. The symbols it contains may be somewhat incoherent, but that is part of their charm. It’s as though the dungeon is where Victor stored all of the metaphors he discarded while creating the larger work. I’m glad it’s there.

It strikes me as a signature of sorts, repeated later through its absence in Hidden Nazi Mode.

44

Steady on. I don’t think this kind of language is at all appropriate, based on what Jacek has done here.

This seems more like the appropriate register. Insults are fine, threatlike things aren’t.

45

You get plenty of lenience. If we’d pointed out all the times concepts soared completely over your head on Usenet, we would have filled Usenet up, with the last trillion bits being the word “Galatea.” You once argued that being insulted over a message post was slander instead of libel because it was “fleeting.” Nobody called you on that was because – as a group – we are easy-going and chill.

(Here’s how fleeting your message was, by the way.)

So yeah, people are gonna play The Baron, recognize that its appeal is in its concepts instead of prose and axe-murdering and enjoy or dislike it based on that. This happens everywhere. Nobody read Asimov because of his characters. Nobody liked Michelangelo’s stuff because of the robots. When you release Temple of Apshite, I’m gonna judge it on how well the mechanic of removable limbs works and not on how likeable the narrator is. If you want to pretend there are thick, black, throbbing Comic Sans-styled question marks above your head because Victor put commas in the wrong spot that’s fine, but don’t pretend you don’t understand why nobody is agreeing with you.

Now, at this point, my inability to write properly is depressing me, because I lack the words to properly respond to your awful take that the game must suck because, as a non-native work, its not written as well as the guy who wrote Lolita, for fuck’s sake. Hurrr I just put my fist through my LCD monitor because it’s not as bright as the Sun.

46

I don’t think for a second Pudlo believes half the stuff he posts. He’s simply picking a target – in this case Victor and his game The Baron – and insulting it to annoy people, and probably having a good laugh at the people debating his “review”. He’s deliberately insulting not because it’s a good way to get a point across, but because he’s more likely to annoy people by doing it and he’s curious as to how far he can go before the moderators step in and do anything. As the moderators are unwilling to do anything, he’s only going to get worse.

47

Well, that was certainly his take on things, anyway. :slight_smile:

48

You are conflating Victor and his game into a single entity. From the standpoint of critical discussion, I think it’s appropriate to separate them. Saying mean things about someone’s game doesn’t bother me nearly as much as personal attacks or threats. The first contributes to a conversation and the second tries to silence it.

Jacek has made one direct assertion about Victor - that he “really likes postal metaphors” - and one uncomplimentary aside about the “poverty of [his] imagination”. He also said that Victor was not as talented as Robb Sherwin, which I regard as a not unflattering statement in spite of its hostile phrasing.

49

Every other forum in the world bans people. I like that it doesn’t happen here. The only annoying thing Jacek does is make claims that are proven false which he abandons, only to re-assert them later. For instance - Cadre sold the movie rights to one of his games. Zarf got $31,000 from people to make games. Dan Schmidt has made three of the best games ever in Terra Nova, Guitar Hero and Rock Band. There are a lot of IF people who meet the standards of quality and success that Jacek says nobody around here has met. This comes up time and time again and he keeps banging the same drum. Whatever.

(He also bullies people, but this is the Internet. That’s never going to stop happening on the Internet.)

Let me put it this way - your favorite band probably put out a CD you thought was terrible at one point. You might have even posted that the new disc by Kekeke and the Plagoos sucks ass, never thinking that they’d see it or care if they did. Jacek seeing only the negative side of things is how creative content is reviewed in virtually EVERY other form of media. It’s just that there are fewer of us, so we all see it. It’s motivating to me and it’s not like the guy is going to carve your family up if you speak to him in the same tone he uses.

If we were all making first person shooters or sports games, there would be thousands of people with similar attitudes as Jacek.

50

I have my suspicions about Pudlo. It seems to me that things there may not be all that they appear.

Regardless, I do have to say that since adding him to my “Foe” list, my quality of life here on the forum has improved dramatically. So even if it doesn’t make “Pudlo” go away, it’s certainly a lot more pleasant. This doesn’t prepare newcomers to the forum for what they’re in for, but hopefully they get the idea and follow suit.

I haven’t seen any “Code of Conduct” or “Forum Rules” posted anywhere on the forum or the site, which I thought was unusual. So technically by the letter of the law, anyone can say whatever they want to say. Most of us don’t, out of common courtesy for everyone else. However, “Pudlo” doesn’t seem to share this sense of community. Thus he’s treated like the body attacking a virus – desperately wanting to be rid of it, but not having the ability to eject it or destroy it.

I haven’t (and still don’t) spend any time in the IF newsgroups. I don’t know what community reaction to “Pudlo” has been. It seems that all we’re seeing here is people at their breaking point. They’re trying (most of the time) to be courteous and helpful. Then this “individual” who has been plaguing the community for years is permitted to carry on with his usual pot-stirring unhindered.

As a privately operated forum, there’s no such thing as Freedom of Speech unless those in charge allow there to be. There’s nothing wrong with that approach. Inevitably tempers will be lost and the community will rise up against it. At that point you consider the impact to your community and whether the desires of a few (or one, in this case) are more important than the desires of the many.

We can’t put the fault on the shoulders of the mods or the admins. There’s nothing anywhere saying that “Pudlo” can’t say any of the things that he says or the way that he says them. There’s a thread in the Feedback forum, if I recall, centering around hate speech or some such. The higher powers are willing to let a lot go in the spirit of letting the community work it out themselves. When action absolutely has to be taken, it seems to be taken.

“Pudlo” doesn’t appear to be driving any of the “regulars” away. Whether “his” behavior is discouraging to those who visit less frequently or completely turns off newcomers altogether is difficult (impossible) to say. “His” approach would not be welcomed, and would indeed be short-lived, on every other forum that I frequent. On those that I manage, “he” would have been stricken from record and memory after a single post, as I am neither a patient nor forgiving admin. :smiley:

All things considered, until things change, I think it’s best that those of us who don’t wish to deal with “him” do add “him” to the foe list. If you can’t see what “he” has to say, you can’t be antagonized to respond.

51

Sec. I didn’t threaten anyone. I was just trying to say that such arrogance when used on the street would end you up beaten. That was not a threaten. I’m not gonna beat anyone. It’s just that such insults I’m pretty sure one wouldn’t use face to face.
Apart from the fact they are at all inappropriate, given the target.

52

No, seriously, “I’m just saying something could happen to you” is a threat. Don’t do it.

53

Agree.

-Kevin

54

True. Plus irrelevant.

“I’m just saying that if you did that in real life, something probably would happen to you” is not a threat. Not even close. Not even if you squint your eyes and blur them on purpose.

55

What he was saying is that “Pudlo’s” brand of interaction is tolerated only on the internet. He was saying that if “Pudlo” spoke to someone in person, on the street or in conversation, the way “he” speaks to or about people here, it would likely incite “his” target or subject to violence. He never threatened “Pudlo”. He never said he was going to harm him, wanted to harm him or would harm him if given the opportunity. I agree with him. “Pudlo’s” behavior is very Kanye West. I believe “he” knows what “he” can get away with, when and with whom. “He” knows “he” can get away with it on the internet, so “he” does. James merely pointed out that he likely wouldn’t get away with it face-to-face.

Jamespking is Italian. I believe I saw somewhere that English isn’t his native language. I could be wrong. But that could be lending to the confusion.

56

Pudlo is extremely good at detecting sensitive subjects to which people might react emotionally. On Usenet he crafted subtle yet maximally inflammatory posts, carefully avoiding making them obvious trolls, and posted them using a fake name. It was also common for two or three people to mysteriously appear from nowhere and agree with Pudlo. At some point he took a step up from fictional sockpuppets and started posing as other well-known people from the community. (Remember that on Usenet there’s no verification of any kind. You can post using any name and email address you like.) That was also the point where it wasn’t just annoying (or amusing, depending how you took it), harmless trolling anymore. I’m not a huge fan of displaying the post count next to every post, but it does prevent anything like that from happening on the forums.

Personally I can live with Pudlo being active on the forums. If you put him on the foe list you don’t see his posts. If he makes a post, I click it open and go back again just so that it’s removed from the unread posts list. It becomes annoying only when people take the bait. The thread becomes active and keeps coming up in the unread posts list. Sometimes a genuinely interesting and constructive discussion comes out, and that’s great, but mostly it’s just a bunch of people battling against windmills. It’s useless to try to argue with Pudlo, because his posts don’t reflect his opinions – the posts are completely artificial, their only purpose is to annoy people. There’s no reason to tell him that his review is unfair or that he is nitpicking about inconsequential things. He already knows it because he does it on purpose.

57

Debatable, but anyway that’s why I called it a “threatlike thing.” Even if it’s not a threat, using the imagery of violence against another poster is inappropriate. Kind of like that Introcomp reviewer who told Poster to kill himself; that’s obviously not a threat, but it’s not an appropriate thing to say.

I’m not advocating being nice here. It’s perfectly appropriate to sling insults Pudlo’s way; that’s sauce for the gander.* It’s the violent imagery that I don’t like.

*Explanation for non-native speakers.

58

Indeed. I was just hoping I wouldn’t sound like micheal corleone. You know: “I fink somefink bad could happen too yoo. I’m makin yoo an offer one can’t refoose.”
:smiley:

59

Sounds more like Sonny or maybe Vito – I remember Michael as being smoother. :wink:

60

My comment was a response to katz (see above), and was specific to katz’ comment.