Was not intending to post again, but since
Keyvias (of
Muse Games) has decided to try and publicly throw me under the bus, instead of letting sleeping dogs lie, I'll share my perspective.
I run a YouTube channel called Community eSports, which is where the majority of all competitive Guns of Icarus footage exists. I created this channel back in 2013 while I was organizing GOIO events, since I felt it was important to preserve the game's competitive history, and other tournament organizers were not doing it at the time (most still don't). In addition to footage from events I've personally run, I reached out to other streamers of the 2013 era events (Fjords, Cogs, Hemlock-Rejkva) and got permission to upload their footage as well, so it wouldn't be lost. Until last week, I was editing and uploading all the footage coming out of the Sunday Community Skirmish.
In February of this year, I contacted
Ayetach (of
Muse Games) and asked if a link to the Community eSports channel could be added to the Guns of Icarus Online splash screen.
Ayetach suggested having a forum thread instead, since it wouldn't be fair to showcase only my channel. I agreed, and he said "Boca" ("Bureau of Competitive Affairs", the collective of forum members
Muse decided to put in charge of developing the competitive GOIO scene, who ran one event at the end of last year and have done nothing since then) would make that thread.
A few days pass, no thread from "Boca", so I ask
Ayetach if I should make the thread myself, and he says "
yeah".
I go ahead and make this thread, ask
Ayetach if it meets their standards, and his exact response is - "
If you’re cool with adding more as we go or myself helping add more where its warranted then yeah looks great!", which I took to mean that if I kept it up-to-date he would not interfere, or at least contact me before he did so.
One week later, I go to check a reply in the thread, and find that all the formatting has been removed, and a number of links have been inserted into the list in a seemingly random order, completely destroying any organization which had been present. I get back in contact with
Ayetach, tell him I'm not cool with the changes he's made, and more or less "go off" on him. He tells me that he won't interfere again, but the thread will not be added to the splash screen, and will have sticky status revoked.
Almost two months go by, and I've been keeping the thread up-to-date with new VODs. One day I come here to update the thread, and find that
Keyvias has (once again with no contact to me) decided to clone it, along with the changes
Ayetach made to my thread previously (at least they are in chronological order this time). This new thread by
Keyvias is, of course, stickied.
So what were the changes that Ayetach made, and why did I (Urz) "rebuke" them?The entire point of adding match footage to the splash screen was to promote the competitive Guns of Icarus scene, exposing the footage we've worked together on to a greater audience, and hopefully bringing some new competitors in.
To achieve this goal - we should put our best foot forward, which means showcasing the highest level of competition, and the highest production values. This is why I separated out the "Major Tournaments". We want to entice new players/viewers by showing them our coolest shit first. Two hours of unedited footage of an open lobby that someone happened to record is not compelling content.
Ayetach's (and
Muse's) position is that all events should be represented equally, regardless of quality. This stance ultimately stunts advancement of the scene, because in addition to not holding our best wares in front of us for passers-by: the people who put the most work in, and produce the best results, are not rewarded.
This is just another entry in Muse Game's historical obliviousness towards building their competitive community:- Continually fucking up the balance of the game, with a flawed methodology built on statistics-without-context. Only after three years of community pushback are they finally revising their model.
- It took two years (of me and others whining about it) before there was an event list in the game client.
- Trying to push everyone to the (totally irrelevant) MLG GameBattles platform, which was (predictably) a complete failure.
- Absolute refusal to include in their marketing plans any personalities who play games on a competitive level.
- Offloading competitive development to the "Bureau of Competitive Affairs", a group of equally oblivious community members who fell flat on their face right out the gate, and who's "major tournament" (Blood and Brass Battle Royale) was only able to attract six teams. To what extent that result can be attributed to "Boca's" own failings, or to Muse for whittling down the competitive scene over the years, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
This last example (and first, chronologically) is a story of
Muse slighting me personally, and the start of a strained relationship I've had with a few members of their team.
In mid-2013, Qwerty2jam, PapaParadox, and myself, hot off the heals of the "Icarus Sky Tournament" (the first event I organized, which Qwerty and Papa casted), decided to build a structured league. We spent a few weeks hammering out the details on Skype, and eventually posted a large concept and rules document entitled "Community eSports".
The proposal was summarily rejected by the community. There were legitimate problems with the format itself, and the consolidation of power was clearly unwanted. The idea was shelved.
(Since I came up with the name, I later adopted it as an umbrella brand for my other events.)
A few months go by, and
Keyvias makes a post detailing the "new competitive scene", which as you've probably guessed, was them completely co-opting our design and presenting it as a wholly original idea. No acknowledgement that it was based on our work, no attempt to reach out and get our thoughts on why we didn't pursue it previously, or how it could have been improved.
"
Muse's" league ran for one season. Nobody signed up for the second.
Is that why I made this post? Is the reason I'm fed up with
Muse Games because of the disrespect they've shown me personally, after my efforts to promote and expand the playerbase of their game?
Yes, but also no.
I made this post because of
Muse Game's greatest sin towards us - it's their game, they have all the power, and they've refused to use it for the betterment of competitive Guns of Icarus. Between ignoring the feedback and concerns of prominent community members, and delegating competitive development tasks to people who are clueless, they've destroyed any chance that GOIO will ever be more than it is now.
