So the big question is, will the site shutdown or will in continue. Is this a joke, or not?
The answer is: A little of both.
We never had any intention to shut down the site this month, but we also have to face some cold hard facts. On the one hand, TASing capabilities in emulators and for the site have grown significantly in recent times. On the other, we haven't had most really hard core members stick around long term. We have new people coming, but some of the older crowd to some extent seem to be getting fed up and leaving. The idea of TASing is now more well known, but people are no longer fighting for the idea of TASing. In our progression, our activists have grown complacent.
Our community survived the hardships of coming into being, and putting up with people who didn't like the idea our site advertised, and felt we had no right to even exist. We survived our founder deciding to throw in the towel. The question is, are we strong enough to survive from ourselves? Can we exist with no pressure driving us on?
With our current server subscription running out soon, these are important questions. With the added features we have on the site, and ones we plan on adding soon, our load has gotten heavier. Further, since the addition of streaming video from our site, more people have been coming by than ever before to simply watch videos. I do have some interesting things being developed in my laboratory which is only going to stress these issues further. These factors probably mean a higher server cost for the upcoming year. Is the community still interested in funding the site? The answer: a resounding yes! Thanks to everyone who sent me a message pledging support for the upcoming year, your support will help shape decisions on what features we will be adding to the site in the months to come.
As Bisqwit stated, the purpose of April Fools isn't to scare the community and cause heart attacks, but to test drive features that wouldn't go well on other days, and get a good laugh out of people. Now some of you did get a good laugh out of this, and appreciated the elaborate lengths our staff went to fool you with a long winded thread. But some of you were also extremely saddened and even cried. And for the latter of you, I can't thank you enough. Not because I enjoy watching you suffer (quite the opposite in fact), but because seeing so many people truly enjoying and truly appreciating our site, never wanting to see it go, and fight for it to continue is what keeps the staff going. I want to thank everyone who sent me heartfelt messages on what TASing means to them.
One user wrote in to tell me that TASVideos cheered him up while he had a death in the family. Others stressed how important our research was to them. And many expressed how we provide unique art that can't really be gotten elsewhere. One user wrote: "It is more than just a website to me, this place has become a good source of friendship, and I would be sad to see this place close down."
Those who came out in droves to show their support really means a lot to us. The main staff throughout the entire year gets a lot of grief over the things we do and things we don't do. Every decision or change inevitably has a member start a thread to chew out the staff, with others joining in. We accepted a bad movie. We rejected a good movie. We reworded something. We changed a color. The list goes on and on. We rarely get any thanks for the hard work we do. Then, when we ask for help to advertise the site further, word things better, create some demos, no one seems to have an opinion. This is not about the staff looking for payback, but quite the opposite. Despite it all, do you like the site? Or would it be fine if it goes out quietly in the night?
So for this April Fools, we did something Bisqwit would never do: Announce something scary - to get people to give an opinion and a reason why our site is important. Controversial - to spread like wildfire to other gaming sites to get people to check us out again if they haven't in a while. And also attack the heart of the rift in our community - the value of speed vs. entertainment.
Some people who left recently told me it's because they're upset we don't fuel every frame war, reject movies which only improve a few frames, or accept movies which are sloppy. Others are upset when we do have minor improvements without large changes, where it only seems people are going for speed records, or reject a sloppy movie which did entertain a lot of people.
The thread was carefully crafted around this issue, suggesting records aren't accurate, how about entertainment only - if the site continues. Surprisingly enough, one of this site's most "gung ho - speed above all" members messaged me that he'd want the site to continue anyway. Seems the rift isn't as big as I thought. Seriously, instead of attacking one another, and fighting with the judges over decisions, view all that against the site as a whole. Don't just think about leaving. Consider if your disagreement and disapproval is worth shutting the site down altogether?
We rely on our users for content, and if all the good people leave, we won't have much of any. Before you think to yourself that you'll just go off on your own and make TASes as a hobby ignoring out site, remember that our site makes and improves emulators for TASing. If we don't have people here demanding emulators for newer systems, or requesting fixes for older ones, you can't enjoy your hobby elsewhere either. We're also one of the best sources around for documentation of games. So if you feel like leaving, remember all that we also provide. We're not asking you to get along with every member on the site, but please continue to submit your work when you're done. We have our differences, and we can hardly find a pair of members to agree on more than a couple of things, but I think we can all agree on our love of TASing.
Speaking of newer systems, the amount of submissions we've gotten so far this year seems to be low. One user suggested it's because all the good games have already been TASed rather well. Perhaps he is right. But that's why we need to start looking more at newer systems. We've added so many new systems to be TASable, and we really haven't seen that effort paid off yet. Come on people, get to it!
Another user also wrote to me with a suggestion regarding all the good games being taken already - more and more game hacks are being made all the time! He is quite right. I want to alert everyone that some time back, we changed our rules regarding game hacks. If you find a hack which is really good, and you can make an awesome original TAS with it, then by all means do so!
Now of course, there's still the problem of the issues brought up about why TASing isn't the same as playing a game on the actual system.
It has been mentioned that emulators have more consistency than systems do. This is true. It has also been mentioned that emulators emulate averages of a system, instead of any exact cases. This is also true. In fact, those who work on emulators here, such as people like myself, have known this for years! Initial state randomness which was brought up in Blades of Steel thread is well known among emulation authors, and is exhibited in many games.
While it is a nice pipe dream thinking that perhaps our runs can be considered theoretically possible on a real system, that's hardly what we're about. We're about entertainment. We're about finding something in the game to portray in a movie that will make someone familiar with the game wipe their jaw off the sub basement. We're about art. So if you're about to make a movie to beat the last speed record, remember this: Try to surpass it in entertainment as well, don't just look for the simplest way to progress in a given time interval.
So knowing that TASing is more theoretical than what many people previously thought theoretical to mean, is there any point in having a speed record at all made with an emulator? Considering many variations of a particular emulator, and multiple emulators for a system, probably not. But look at the flip side of the equation too.
When you go to make a speedrun on a console, start up state is completely random. Timing states in the game vary constantly too. In fact, you can cause the console to time things differently by changing the temperature in your room, or using a different television set. A clever engineer could tweak his console's environment to give a more favorable play through than what his competitor would be facing. Speedrunners on real consoles have a lot of randomness or "luck" that they face, that even alters by restarting the game over and over again, but further, some people could be "cheating" the system without you realizing it!
All the points brought up in our thread actually make speedrunning look worse for real consoles than it does for emulators. When you get a video of a console run, you really have no idea what went on in the making of it. A television set with internal scanrates altered could speed up a game ever so slightly, resulting in a run which is a couple of seconds faster than the last by not doing anything else. The case can be akin to two racers supposedly evenly matched on everything but skill, where one racer is secretly packing an invisible turbo engine in his car.
With an emulator on the other hand, given a recorded keypress file, and told which publicly available open source emulator you used provides a more honest run. We can verify that what you did beats the game, we can verify you didn't cheat in any way, but did exactly what you stated you did. Our best emulators provide the same challenges every single time you play it, for everyone, so all our members have equal footing if they want to go in for a challenge. Adding on top of that our tools, the competition is no longer defined by your natural inborn physical limits, but merely your time and dedication. We offer the ultimate in equal rights, fair, balanced, and verifiable game play. It doesn't match an actual system to every last detail, but the games are the same - only better. They play back consistently, and without secretly hiding anything.
So thanks for showing your support, providing information on why you love TASing and what it means to you - which we'll use to overhaul our information pages. Thanks for coming back to our site, reading this, and hopefully participating (more) in the future.
Your ever loving dictator,
-Nach
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
