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Old 05-15-2008, 05:52 PM   #11
Fern
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 156
Fern is on a distinguished road
Re: Deck Chairs on the Titanic

The spirit of any game can become a fragile thing if neglected or maligned. If one single person -staff or player- has the power to enhance or throttle that spirit, then perhaps the game itself is in need of some serious rethinking.

One person with a malignant attitude and an outside-of-game audience like an IM connection can do as much damage as a person in the game who brings a toxic stench into the game itself, and they're significantly more difficult to counteract when acting outside the gates. Even the best helmsman in the world will be challenged by that level of venom.

Add to that the fact that the memory of a bad gaming experience can persist even after the problem itself has been squelched.

If you say the name of one game I played years ago (which will not be said on this forum), my immediate and highly visceral reaction is loathing, triggered by the memory of several players and staff, their PK mentality and their resistance to spell-checking. Of course, this persists - long after the typos have been fixed, long after the staff member has been canned for favoritism and cheating, long after the player in question left for greener pastures, and long after I've abandoned the place as a player (and subsequently don't really care what their PK approach is).

In that case, the blame cannot be placed outside of my own memories.

The same holds true for great gaming experiences. Memory persists.
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