Why is Pack closing?

Cobalt

So, a person came to me and said “a group of us were talking and we were wondering if you would give us a copy of the db”

I said, sure with some conditions. I would need full transparency on who would be taking over so people would have time to opt out and have their data removed from the game.

Turns out the loudest voice in the group was Machakenzie. I said “yeah, no, I would just remove every single character, log, and player build before I let anyone have it if she’s involved” because I’m not about to let her have access to people’s ip.

I made a post on the game saying if someone wanted it, it’d be will be there would be some strings attached. And I’m not sure if posted this part or not but after discussing it on the ares discord came to the decision that it would be more work than I wanted to do to expunge the dB sufficiently to hand it over. So instead I would just help someone install my config files that don’t have anyone’s info on them onto their own game.

In the meantime, I got a message that Mackenzie was asking the original person about it to get an expunged version of the dB. At which point said person gave me a heads up and said “I don’t want to be in the middle of this anymore”.

IoleRae

Disgusting.

Her behavior disgusts me.

Please remember the part she had in the split between MSB and BMD.

KarmaBum

@Cobalt lordy, just when it feels like it can’t go any lower

Just from my own past experience? Don’t give away your DB. Don’t let someone take it over. We did that with GH, and I regret that decision big-time. Stuff only got worse, and - even though I publicly walked away - there’s still a sense of responsibility. And people who still think I was responsible for shit that I had no control over.

If they love it so much, let them make an homage.

IoleRae

@KarmaBum

Seconding this. Honestly, in no circumstances would I recommend Cobalt share anything. Given who it is that wants it, no.

You have no responsibility to facilitate her abusing people.

Snackness

Thirding, from a data safety perpective. Don’t give away any version of the db.

Pavel

@IoleRae said in Why is Pack closing?:

Honestly, in no circumstances would I recommend you share anything.

I can only think of one real purpose, given the relative ease of building things with Ares, and that’s archiving.

I’ve often considered setting up a modest archival setup of dbs I have or acquire, just for nostalgia’s sake.

IoleRae

@Pavel

Nope, I wouldn’t recommend that. Even if the initial host of the archive is trustworthy, you have no guarantees that the person who inherits it will be, and splits of that sort of service happen a LOT in our community. There’s way too much PII involved for my comfort levels, and a wiped DB is useless for archival purposes.

Polk

@SpaceKhomeini said in Why is Pack closing?:

“Don’t just let players write theme wiki.”

I agree with this.

I don’t like having a mish-mash of game staff voice, ST voice, and player voice with no way to distinguish.

I get why it happens: it’s cheaper and easier just to set up one Mediawiki and throw absolutely everything on there.

But if you can do otherwise, do it.

Polk

@Snackness said in Why is Pack closing?:

Thirding, from a data safety perpective. Don’t give away any version of the db.

Anonymizing data is hard!

Pavel

@IoleRae said in Why is Pack closing?:

a wiped DB is useless for archival purposes

Depends on what you’re archiving.

sao

FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE

Testament

I’d never give away copy of a DB. I’d give away my theme GDoc files, I’d write out the settings I had used in the creation of my game.

But no way on this green earth would I be willing to give someone who I don’t know access to player’s IP or their logs or pages or anything. There might be two people in this community I’d trust to do that.

Anyone else is an unknown quantity and it’d just be better for them to make their own game.

KarmaBum

@Pavel @Testament Ares has a built-in archival function for essentially everything public-facing. https://gh.texthibitionism.com/ <-- GH archive someone made. It includes all characters, logs, wiki pages. It’s available to anyone who can login to your portal. You just download it as a zip file.

So banning someone nukes their access.

(You both have logins; see what it looks like - https://la2043.aresmush.com/wiki-archive)

Pavel

@KarmaBum Mmm, I do have to keep reminding myself that Ares probably doesn’t do things the way I’d expect from another codebase.

CuriousGamer

@Cobalt Most people have already covered everything for Macha/Mackenzie here. I will only add that I’ve found out that some of my circle of friends knows some of hers, or are in the same circles, etc.

She does have her friends in the community. And for the person that was the intermediary, she likely has more. And they have friends. I’m told she ran Marvel: The 80’s.

There’s also a new game spinning up on ares, harvest moons - it has lycans, witches and such. Some people are checking out this new game - https://harvestmoons.aresmush.com/

There is something out there now of similar genre.

Tez

@CuriousGamer Does it have farming tho?

CuriousGamer

@Tez Probably not in the gameplay, but you could probably be a farmer. It might be less work than an actual harvest moon game.

If it’s a game that has at least 50% less Macha, and good coffee - isn’t that what matters?

KarmaBum

@CuriousGamer at least one of Macha’s buddies is already playing there, so just keep your eyes up

Cobalt

@IoleRae said in Why is Pack closing?:

@KarmaBum

Seconding this. Honestly, in no circumstances would I recommend Cobalt share anything. Given who it is that wants it, no.

You have no responsibility to facilitate her abusing people.

Yeah, I’m 100% not going to give any copy of the database away. As a gamerunner people put their trust in me to keep their person data safe. I do take this very seriously.

I was willing to give my configuration files to people. If folks want the way I had chargen setup. But I’m not sure about even that at this point.

TNP

Back when Empire State Heroes was a thing, Macha was literally in the middle of any drama that happened. If it didn’t involve her directly, she had to jump in and often bitch on MSB. Staff never believed a word she said but she had her defenders and sympathizers. Definitely a very toxic player. and as manipulative as the best (worst) of them.