State of the Sim 2 - Commentary

[Jubilynn]

So this morning I was greeted to this message in my Inbox:

Several Players killed off their characters permanently from BB. Their reason being that "Jubi doesn't care about her players, only that she has high traffic"

If this is true, well I must say it saddens me, and paints me in a very negative light I feel is completely unfair, that said if thats how people feel, then its your Second Life.

A few comments I'd like to make:
1) I've played around SL and online for a long time, very rarely have a found moderators of sim owners as responsive to players as the small team here. It was one of our goals when setting up the sim.
2) Every step of the way, player input was solicited and weighed heavily in every decision the mod team, espically myself, has made.
3) The idea that I only care about Traffic, is absurd. As is the idea, that a sim owner can ignore traffic. Its fairly easy for the person not paying for the sim, to disreguard traffic figures as meaningless. However, Traffic is important to any sim, and is importat to both the stability and growth of Bottany bay.
I have no desire or illusions of grandure of turning Botany into some giant sim. However, I do feel an obligation to ensure that enough people visit, to support the sim, both by infusing it with new playres, and spending $L to offset the cost some.
Considering I put to a vote, and solicited new ideas for how to get things rolling both RP wise and Traffic wise, the Idea that I don't care about players, seems a bit off the mark.
Also, I haven't spoken to ANY of the players who decided to take such drastic and permenat action. Thus I am only left to assume what brought them to this conclusion. Seeing the overwhemling Poll numbers, I'd have to say it wasn't the proposed change in setting, but the discussion on BSDM & Rp. If this is the case, I'm sadened that people couldn't discuss it rationally, or even come forward to discuss it personally, but felt the need to kill off their charchters and move on in my absence.
That said, I firmy belive that it is 'your' second life, and if thats what it takes to make you happy, then good luck to you. To those of you who decide to stay on, I still hope to continue to work with you all to make Botany Bay a vibrant, diverse, and more importantly, fun, place to play.

Thank You,
Jubilynn

[Jubilynn]

Well, an intresting 24 hours. I'm still confused about a few points, but from what I could gather, with out being able to talk with any of the principles involved...

1. 3 players decided to kill off their charchters in a 'horrible accident', and pack up and leave the sim for good. Each states their own reasons for this, some willing to share, and others not.

Obviously this is a personal decision, SL is susposed to be fun, and if your not having it, then its time to move on to greener pastures. As I stated before, I am a little put off by the amount of hateful feelings that seem to exist with at least one of these players.

After shifting though what other players and the mod team has sent me, I can only conclude the following...

That is that the player in question, seems to have taken one or two roleplay sessions, too personally and assinged a Real Life ( or OOC ) malice to other players charchters actions where none existed. This is a common occurance in Online RP, much more so in Second Life, since in a way RPGs on SL are a 'game within a game' as people are already taking on a 'persona' of their real selves when they log into Second Life. I feel sad, that this player's feelings are so in knots over a simple, if 'intense' RP. And wish them the best as they move on.

That being said, I'd like to reiterate what we said in teh welcome notecards - This IS NOT REAL. Roleplaying is like Acting, players take on Personas of thier charchters. So if a charchter is a angry, sullen, alien; it doesn't mean that the PLAYER is. In fact, players, espically moderators, ofter play ANTOGINISTS, to add some conflict into the game.

Which brings us to the next point, if you so choose to play an Antoginest, sometimes a lighter touch needs to be applied. I've played them in the past, its difficult, people get angry (Real Life Angry). I find it helps to keep things in prospective, and to involve the moderation team in your efforts. They will help you keep 'with in the bounds' of belivability and help make not only yours, but everyones experience more enjoyable.

Antoginists are an important part of te RP, and by that I don't mean jsut obvious 'bad guys" but the whole spectum of 'grey' between the black and white. As Roleplayers, we live in the 'grey'. Its where most of the intreaguing stories come from, the clearn black and white makes for a First Person Shooter in most cases, of a children's tale.

As we move forward into the new build and extended storyline, I'll be a bit more poractive in trying to address "seperation issues" as they arise. As always, thank you for hanging in there, this is the type of Drama I try to avoid, but at times it seems unavoidable.

Comments / Insight always welcome.

[Serus Ninetails]

I have spoken to all three of the players who have opted to leave us at this time. Two of them state that they simply wish to pursue other roleplay venues and we wish them all the best as they do us.

The third is distraught because of the way plotlines that occured in the past developed, and from what I could tell from our conversation has become unable to separate in character from out of character. In other words - when someone plays a character that isn't pleasant or a protagonist who does antagonistic things to spice up the RP - she was taking it extremely personally, getting hurt and hoarding up a lot of negative emotions until they finally burst all over the place.

This is a danger in Second Life roleplaying that I've encountered far too often, especially among the BDSM community, so let me reiterate: you are not your character and I am not my character. Is Johnny Depp really Jack Sparrow? No - he leaves work at night, goes home to the wife and kids and is just Johnny Depp again.

Similiarly, we come here, we play characters, and then we log off and are ourselves again. Or we play characters that may get into a big fight with each other and whale on one another while we're joking to each other in IM's. Jubi and I in fact do this all the time.

If you cannot separate yourself from your character, if everything that happens to them hits you very personally and emotionally, then a role playing game (especially one that involves peril and Pirates and Smugglers and may be dangerous) is not for you. It's exactly like if you sat around a table playing Dungeons and Dragons and the DM kills off your character with a nasty dragon bite. If you're sobbing hysterically over this - then DnD may not be the game for you.

Regardless, we wish all three of our departing players well, and hope that they find what makes them happy both in real life and in second life.

-Serus

[svetlana]

In game, In character: (i.e. What you know) The loss of the Milaya Moya was a tragic accident that killed 4 slave girls and otherwise did not damage any colony property. Cause of the accident would be difficult to determine, nuclear fireballs are like that, however there is an eyewitness Arealuis Barbosa (?) who was flying chase during the test.

Was it an accident? Sabotage by the DD militia? Or something else? Do you care, either IC or OOC?

One of the first person's talked to about this took it as an OOC 'screw you' to Jubi, herself and the sim as a whole. And became very angry because of that, failing to see the irony in the fact that is exactly how Samantha took the death of Eve. In essense the in game actions were given OOC meaning, and these OOC sentiments will govern and alter the in game actions. You did not "joke about it" in IM with Samantha, nor warn her at all. It was a surprise, just like the last(?) tragic flight of the Milaya Moya.

You play this IC/OOC game to whichever suits you best, it is always the other folk's problem, others who don't play right or feel the way you want them too. The fact that both of you have this pat speech that you have obviously given a number of times should tell you that maybe *you* are the one messing up.

[Jubilynn]

No, I did not take 'in game actions" as anything ooc, I took The very OOC statement of " jubi only cares about traffic, jubi doesn't care about her players" as pretty much an untrue, and hurtful statment Svet.

This has be discussed to death, but for the record:
1. Said several times: its a game, when it isn't fun its time to move on.
2. Noone took issue with a the 'storyline' it was the verbose, very angry OOC messages you sent to several players about WHY you created that particular story, that made people upset.
3. I never sent a "screw you" to Sam, Loli poisoned jubi, in a way jubi would not know of. Sam never bothered to RP any interactions with Jubi, so never had the oppertunity to find out that loli had poisoned her. Since noone reacted to jubi's progressively worse symptoms, Jubi Miscarried. What ever "OOC" anger you Think I , the player, had agisnt Sam, simply didn't exist. As a player, I feel Sam isn't the strongerst Roleplayer, her storyline consisted of rough dominaring sex with teh explicit purpose of impregnating her parter. Thats her thing, thats fine, but my; and others, interactions with her mostly consisted of us talking , and her standing mute. Again, not a problem, but also, not the most engaging RP oppuntunities. Apparently your experience with her is different and I wish you luck. You seem set in your opinion that some big ooc conspierancy existed against Sam, which isn't the case.

[Serus Ninetails]

I sought out all three of our departing players to inquire about why the decision was made to leave, as I did not want to go on secondhand information.

Two of the three were polite and brief in thier responses - and we departed wishing one another the best. The third, obviously you Svet - became irate and informed me I was part of the problem that made you decide to leave. Even going so far as to spam my email inbox with profanity laden hate messages until I had to mute you to make them stop.

I at no point during our conversation "became very angry" as you claim and I attempted to calm you as best I could and offer the advice that I strongly feel you need to unplug, calm down and focus on real life for awhile - I still believe this.

I have the conversation logged if you need proof of this, just as I tried to send you proof that you and I have had numerous perfectly calm and friendly IM converstations in the past that you seem to have no memory of and refused to look at. That's why this sudden, apparent hatred of me is coming so far out of left field and - to be honest - disturbing me greatly.

As you have been told numerous times before now; I had NOTHING to do with the plot about Jubi losing her baby. I don't have much interest in pregnancy plots and was keeping myself far out of it for this reason. I happened to be online at the time Jubi roleplayed her miscarriage - so I went along with it and had my character behave as I thought she would. She's got lousy social skills and is a wild animal - so she became emotional and lashed out because she was afraid for her friend.

And that was the extent of my involvement in that whole plot, period. I've never discussed it with Sam because I WAS NEVER A PART OF IT.

Nor was I in any way involved in Loli's decision to poison Jubi so that she'd loose the baby or Jubi's decision to roll with it since neither of her lovers were paying attention to the fact that she was getting very ill.

The fact that you're choosing to focus your vitriol on me over a child that never existed in the first place and a plot that you yourself began ignoring a few days after roleplaying giving birth is more evidence that you desperately need to unplug.

[svetlana]

First off, you are punching after the bell. Congratulations, you win. Svetka is gone.

Second, you've already declared me crazy Dr. Serus, so continuing an argument with a crazy person is going to be confusing to outsiders.

Third: you really need to read what was written in the post above. You were not the first person told. Nor did I send any posting or notecard to anyone except Jubi, verbose, angry or otherwise.

As for my anger at you, I dare say that we have a unique history. I do not know of anyone else who spent weeks bragging and talking up the sim and the people to a good friend of theirs, only to have all that destroyed within 5 minutes of her first visit when she was told she was "too dangerous to live" and threatened. All without the alledged IM "wink wink nudge nudge" you claim. Well at least with Deeb and myself, you and Jubi probably were having a heck of a giggle.

Nor was their any of that, again at least with me, when you declared Svetka "next" during Loli's fun time. Nor did you do that with some of the others in the bar. So my anger with you in particular may be unique.

Now that that is out of the way, I still believe and contend that neither you nor Jubi care about the people you mess with. I base that contention on the overuse of this IC/OOC dichotomy that you keep trying to enforce. Yeah, we've all heard this speech a number of times, and we hear you, but I see it for what it is. It's a blow off. It is not dissimilar to what a bully does after harassing someone, "Whatsamatter? can't you take a joke?"

When someone's feelings get hurt in RP, someone who cares will try to fix things. They don't blow off the other feelings or declare them crazy and in need of psychatric help. They do not declare their friend's feelings invalid. They will try to console or repair things, instead of telling them to suck it up or move along. They will use the IM to talk things out, maybe even apologize, instead of going into a set speech that has obviously been given hundreds of times before. Hmm.. what is that saying about doing the same thing over and over and over expecting different results?

When you go into that set speech, you stop listening, (or reading their post.) There are a number of errors you made, and confusions that would be cleared up if you actually listened, or read, or even did the IM thing you discuss earlier with someone besides each other. You do that because you care more about your ego, than you do your alledged friend's feelings. The fact that you cannot see the irony in trying to convince people you care, at the same time you are telling folks to either play your way, or get the hell out, well...irony is not your strong suit.

For the record, no where was it suggested some overarching conspiracy. I believe Jubi simply doesn't care about the feelings of others. I contend that this IC/OOC stuff and your activities as an unlicenced psychiatrist are nothing more than defense mechanisms used to preserve your own egos at the expense of alledged friends, to refuse to acknowledge any validity to their sentiments. Your arguments seem to confirm that.

[Jubilynn]

Ok, This has become counter productive.

I had prepared a long 'counter point' reply to Svet's post, then I realized that this will just continue back and forth and as teh moderator I have a responsibility to put an end to things when they become out of hand. This is out of hand.

Svet, I wish you well where ever you go. We apparently have a fundemental differeance that can't be overcome. Essentially:

- You belive charchter and player actions are one, and that is 'normal' and 'healthy'

- We contend that charchters are simply parts players play, and do not reflect thier feelings or attitude. Like Actors in a play or movie.

- You don't discrimenate or seperate the two.
- We Do.

Its no wonder your hurt and upset, but since this is a fundemental difference, there will be no agreement on the matter. In my, rather broad, experience, wrapping RL and Fantasy Life ( OCC and IC) together never ends well.

Again, I wish you well, and do hope that at some point, you unplug for a bit and get some perspective on things.

Jubi