Those Who Remain is a game about psychology.
There is a saying in business. It goes, "If your boss does not like you, that's your problem. If you don't like your boss, that's your problem." Such is life.
A good number of people that read this missive in a masochistically serial manner are from out of town, out of state, out of country. Many have met me in rl through business or found me through keen internet sleuthing only to find I am afflicted by a sexually transmitted condition called "Black in America."
Some have gotten in touch to ask if I am ok and I won't bury the lead any more than I already have. I am 5 by 5, my family is buttoned up, the team has conditional prep for just this situation, like tornado watch. We good.
Others have asked if I'm scared. Scared for myself, scared for my people, scared for my country. This is an easy question to answer. No, the answer is no. But the reasoning behind why I would not be scared for myself, for my people, or for my country is tough to explain without years of context that metastasizes into an innate feeling in one's soul.
Let me try and explain.
Imagine you roll a toon and the game force starts your run in a Mythic mode dungeon, on a hardcore pvp server, with no instructions, no option to change settings, no gold, no inherited traits, and no gear. Other players refuse to party with you based on race and aggro generated. Most other classes in your start area are twenty levels higher than you, all the mobs are red text, and calling a GM results in permadeath.
Oh, and you can't log out. You are never not a target and will for sure get ganked while idle, so you always gotta be moving, gotta grind high-level areas with low-level stuff, become a trader, entertainer, gladiator, do whatever you can to acclimate to the environment. And at any time, for any reason, a person can file a complaint against you that gets you banned. Can't fight it, because the developers don't see any problems with the code. You are the bug.
Every couple of seasons there's an in-game demonstration that starts because someone posted a clip of a hardcore player getting super ganked. Players will call for the developers to change the broken functionality. The developers will publicly denounce hackers and racists who gank and spam in chat and promise to do some vague "better." Some players keep it civil, some figure, "fuck it," and gank at will. Whenever this happens, no lasting changes occur except it gets exponentially harder for the players on the hardcore run.
How long do you think a person would survive in that game before the procedurally created violence of the everyday grind stole their trust in anything, pushed fear deep, deep down into a hole, and whittled their emotions down to only one prevailing imperative: Survive, by any means necessary.
Anyway, I say all that to say I'm not scared for myself, I'm scared for the people just waking up to the horror show that we call everyday life around these ends. These people are prone to wild acts born of hubris, thinking they are protected by a magic shield of righteous that formed in eight minutes and forty-three seconds. Ok.
They do not fully understand that when this server marks you as a hostile faction, they are not fuckin' playing with you. If you are not with the shit, don't play with them. Please, play smart, please, play safe.
Shouts to information. Rip tb Rip tc Rip tall-t. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.
The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : Games : Compunction
