@CtrlAltDestroy: many of my favourite TASes and speedruns are for games I never played. Normally, I browse the workbench, or browse the movie lists by platform, for something that looks interesting. And I did that even when I first found the site, before I was really part of the community. Likewise, when I show speedruns to my friends, them having played the game is only a minor benefit in making the choice; being a good speedrun is much more interesting.
My hypothesis is that you are part of a small minority, or at least you were before frequenting these forums.
The change wasn't made just so a2600 runs could be published. It's something a lot of people have wanted for a long time.
And by "a lot of people" he means nearly 7 to 1 forum users, if the poll in this topic is anything to judge by.
It's still very sad to see so much drama, though. I hope we can reach some kind of a compromise in the upcoming weeks.
The change wasn't made just so a2600 runs could be published. It's something a lot of people have wanted for a long time.
Just to get the order of the events:
Looking at movie maintenance log and site commits log, A2600 E.T. was published before I started even working on implementing tier support (and the support wasn't deployed until some days later).
And as to the idea itself, it has been around much longer, but I can't pinpoint how long.
Holy shit, I've been using the internet for 10 years, and I think I never seeing such a overreaction over something so simple. People threatening to abandon the site because someone made official a list of AVGN movies? Something that existed a long time ago? You're leaving for something so small?
And I love how TASVideos had a gigantic structure change, but people are leaving because of TASVideos quoting one of the most important people of gaming culture (yes, it exists, and yes, AVGN is one of the most important. You may hate him, but you know its truth).
About the why not use a small AVGN logo instead?
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =)
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one of the most important people of gaming culture (yes, it exists, and yes, AVGN is one of the most important. You may hate him, but you know its truth).
Thanks; gotta save this for the tasvideos archive.
Joined: 3/8/2012
Posts: 398
Location: Windfall Island
OmegaWatcher wrote:
Holy shit, I've been using the internet for 10 years, and I think I never seeing such a overreaction over something so simple. People threatening to abandon the site because someone made official a list of AVGN movies? Something that existed a long time ago? You're leaving for something so small?
And I love how TASVideos had a gigantic structure change, but people are leaving because of TASVideos quoting one of the most important people of gaming culture (yes, it exists, and yes, AVGN is one of the most important. You may hate him, but you know its truth).
About the why not use a small AVGN logo instead?
You do realize that people didn't leave JUST because of the AVGN stuff, right? Just because people are leaving in a thread about the issue doesn't mean that that is the only reason.
IronSlayer wrote:
Your counterargument would be like me saying that the Earth is round and then you telling me that I need to show it's flat so I can "prove us all wrong".
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Arc wrote:
I think that the problem with the AVGN icon is that it looks like blatant cross-promotional advertising for AVGN. The worst part is that it isn't; you're just advertising AVGN for free.
I did not think it would be interpreted this way but it does seem to be coming off that way. It is not my intent to make it so official, or do endorse him that way, just a fun list. So I removed the icon, hide the flag from listings, and moved the page to my personal homepage from which I will maintain it, for my own personal pleasure.
I'm not at the point where I would leave the site over something so stupid. But I really do hate the idea of giving notoriety to someone who doesn't even contribute to the site. I have no issues with the AVGN guy, if people like them, that's there thing and I really don't care what others like. But, I dunno, it just rubs me the wrong way knowing people put a lot of work into TAS's to be lumped into a category they didn't want to be in to begin with.
That's my feelings on it.
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I sell butthurt and butthurt accesories.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
To those of you who are really so upset that you type up long emotional responses or announce you're leaving the site forever, grow the fuck up.
If someone is taking TASing so seriously that they are threatening to leave, then I'd say good riddance. The site is for fun.
If I were in charge, I might leave the AVGN icons as they are, just out of principle. (Perhaps it's good I'm not.)
OK, I have a suggestion. I've only mildly been paying attention to what's been changing around the site lately, but it's been clear (and almost tautological, in fact) that the loudest, most vocal part of the site, the forums, is driving where it should go... even though this part of the site LEAST needs the site's structuring to cater to it (since they are already the most educated, devoted and knowledgeable about the site's videos, workings and processes)!
How the site should cater for people who come to it (its usability + navigation + content) should be determined by the people who DON'T post on the forums - the people who come with maybe no more knowledge than 'there are cool videos of games on this site'. What do they want? How do they try to find this? What will satisfy them? This necessitates an approach to designing tasvideos based around gathering statistical data and doing 'hallway usability tests' (grabbing friends and colleagues, asking them to use the site and seeing what they do right and wrong and what they expect). Proposals are fine, but how can any change to tasvideos be made in good faith without a study of how it affects the majority, random viewer?
Here's an example of something that would be good to test - it's commonly agreed that TAS movies of the games you have played are the most effective for entertainment, right? Does this imply that all the common ways to navigate to lists of TASes on tasvideos should be sorted by number of games sold in descending order, so as to be most likely to satisfy this rule? You could study this by, e.g., seeing if implementing such a change causes more clicks to become clickthroughs than not doing it. And that would be scientific and meaningful.
(I hope this helps somebody :) )
For science.
Seriously though, I can understand why some people are upset. It's not really the decisions made as much as the way they were made. TASVideos is the most mature and intelligent community I have come across on the internet and the voting process and very active forums make you feel a valued part of it. And then suddenly it feels like that democracy is gone.
The tier system is suggested in a thread with an unrelated poll question. There is quite a big part of the community that feels there should be a part of the site just for speed records, regardless of entertainment, so the poll question ("Should game choice be abolished as a rejection reason?") gets a very positive response (84%, at the time of writing). However, the tier system itself isn't all that clear to many people and before many of the questions are answered the staff decides to go through with the system anyway.
Then it suddenly turns out that even for the Vault, which in the eyes of many was the place for records of any and all games, there exist acceptence criteria. Suddenly a record of a board game isn't good enough for the vault because... It's a board game and board game's don't make entertaining TASes. Wasn't the entire point of the Vault to abolish entertainment as a factor?
And then the flag system. It's a fine system, but to add arbitrary flags to movies* just for the sake of "funny lists"? Those lists are fine, but keep them somewhere else. As said, there are people that like AVGN (although honestly, does anyone above 16?) and there are people that hate him. Do you really want to confront the latter with his face whenever they want to see a movie that coincidentally he reviewed? Especially when there exist perfectly viable options to keep such a list without shoving it in everybody's face? No. And I realise that this has been turned back now, but I expect the site staff not to give in to such childish "oh this is fun let's do this" wimps and just implement them without really thinking (or even talking) about it.
Then there's suddenly two feeds, which confuses the hell out of everybody as well and there's probably a lot more that I can't remember right now that made a lot of people go "Whoa, whoa. What?". That shouldn't happen. Nobody should ever feel that way. Nobody should ever check TASVideos and think "Wait a second, they did what?!" (unless they haven't checked the site for at least three weeks). It's perfectly okay if people disagree with some of the decisions, but they should at least be made to understand your reasons before anything happens.
Now I'm not trying to make anyone look or feel bad. The site staff has always done a great job in discussing their decisions with the community thorougly before making any large changes. Some submission are in the queue for weeks on end because the community is still discussing it. So what's with the sudden rush? Is there some sort of deadline we don't know of? Does the world actually end on 21/12/1012 if we don't have a tier system and an AVGN list?
Then there's some personal peeves I have**, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I can very well imagine that this whole situation combined with certain personal annoyances can be reason enough to decide to leave. Come on staff, what's going on here?
* Seriously guys, that's like making a list of objects by giving each object a bool that says whether it's in that list or not. Something like "list of movies reviewed by AVGN" shouldn't require altering the publication's data.
** Among others: BizHawk. Not the emulator itself, though. But as far as I know, any new emulator is carefully scrutinized before it is deemed "accurate" and movies made with it are accepted. BizHawk seems to be exempt from this as the moment a new system core is released, it is accepted, without any feedback from the community whatsoever.
I think that the problem with the AVGN icon is that it looks like blatant cross-promotional advertising for AVGN. The worst part is that it isn't; you're just advertising AVGN for free.
I did not think it would be interpreted this way but it does seem to be coming off that way. It is not my intent to make it so official, or do endorse him that way, just a fun list. So I removed the icon, hide the flag from listings, and moved the page to my personal homepage from which I will maintain it, for my own personal pleasure.
Thanks. I know I'm not one of the people who's been raging angrily, but this is nonetheless appreciated.
You do realize that people didn't leave JUST because of the AVGN stuff, right? Just because people are leaving in a thread about the issue doesn't mean that that is the only reason.
if it wasn't, why not just getting part of the discussion instead of "leaving forever"?
And.. There was a wiki somewhere that discussed online communities. There, they discussed about making a post announcing leaving the site. If you didn't cared anymore for the community, you wouldn't post it, you'd simply leave.
Paused wrote:
Ohhh, damn.... SO wanted to prove you wrong by just lurking but it seems the internet needs me!
LET'S LIGHT UP THE PAUSED-SIGNAL
(and I guess he was wrong, after all, you're back in less than 2 weeks)
Heisanevilgenius wrote:
Topic derail: In July I sat on a game reviewer panel with AVGN at a convention. Discuss.
Well, everywhere I go in the internet I'll see you, it's really not fair. You were one of the contributors of Zany Video Game Quotes, co-autor of a Super Mario World hack hosted at SMW Central, is part of thatguywiththeglasses.com....
rog wrote:
Gonna be honest, i had never heard of him until this thread.
Yeah, he's very big actually. He kinda of invented the internet video reviews format, I think. I don't know if he's really the first one, but he's one of the biggest. He's going to make a movie funded by the fans via IndieGoGo.
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =)
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Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Posts: 4754
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goofydylan8 wrote:
The decisions made over the last week or two have. It changed what the site is about to reward quickly making speedruns of terrible short games so that we could accept runs for a terrible console.
I was afraid the A2600 release was going to get in the way of this. But I've said this a couple of times already, this direction was decided long ago. If you want submissions that were a catalyst, you have yourself to blame. Seriously, you more than anyone were the tipping point. You were doing hard work, and getting rejected for game choice. That was a big clue the site needed a change.
Then the submission feed became overwhelmed with old terrible submissions that no one cared about making any new submission being completely overlooked.
This is a temporary problem, beat with us on that please.
It wasn't just that we were adding old terrible games but we were now having over a hundred filling our feed.
Unrejecting them triggered something on the RSS feed? If so that was very much unintended.
AVGN
I concede this one as a mistake.
I will continue to view some, though far less than I previously did because the average quality has decreased as a result
As of right now, you have a variety of options in the rss feed. If you don't like the vault, don't follow it. Same with front page publications, and the movie listings. So if you don't want to "wade" through the "subpar" movies, you don't have to. If you feel like the vault is getting in the way of your viewing pleasure, please let me know what you are trying to do and why you are unable to filter.
And this comment is ironic, you stand out to me as one of the biggest critics of game choice rejections. You were quite unhappy with the system back then as I recall. And now, you have what you wanted, and are upset about the quality decrease that resulted, and are still unhappy. From my standpoint you seem awfully hard to please.
Btw, your post hurt, pretty bad. I'm sorry the direction of the site has run you off, I truly am.
And this comment is ironic, you stand out to me as one of the biggest critics of game choice rejections. You were quite unhappy with the system back then as I recall. And now, you have what you wanted, and are upset about the quality decrease that resulted, and are still unhappy. From my standpoint you seem awfully hard to please.
Don't worry about him. After all, he's the one who wrote this:
The decisions made over the last week or two have. It changed what the site is about to reward quickly making speedruns of terrible short games so that we could accept runs for a terrible console.
I think he's just trying to troll cause people to quit.
Joined: 3/8/2012
Posts: 398
Location: Windfall Island
OmegaWatcher wrote:
There was a wiki somewhere that discussed online communities. There, they discussed about making a post announcing leaving the site. If you didn't cared anymore for the community, you wouldn't post it, you'd simply leave.
Yes, because wikis are the most accurate source of information. Perhaps those people care for the community, but not for the site? Are you suggesting that because they don't like the rules, that they should just leave and be assholes by not saying that they are? Atleast by saying you are leaving, you are expressing your opposition to the new changes. Otherwise it could seem like they are just on vacation, or tired of TASing.
IronSlayer wrote:
Your counterargument would be like me saying that the Earth is round and then you telling me that I need to show it's flat so I can "prove us all wrong".
Wow, I bet that when that Mike "Birdman" Dodd guy went to KFC to get a bucket of chicken they asked him what size, he said 'the one on the roof'.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
There was a wiki somewhere that discussed online communities. There, they discussed about making a post announcing leaving the site. If you didn't cared anymore for the community, you wouldn't post it, you'd simply leave.
Yes, because wikis are the most accurate source of information. Perhaps those people care for the community, but not for the site? Are you suggesting that because they don't like the rules, that they should just leave and be assholes by not saying that they are? Atleast by saying you are leaving, you are expressing your opposition to the new changes. Otherwise it could seem like they are just on vacation, or tired of TASing.
No, no, you don't understand. It was a wiki about online communities in general. I'm not saying people are assholes for trowing the "I'm leaving the site" card, nor giving an actual opinion about the site's rules.
I just said that, once, I read in a wiki about online communities that, if you really didn't cared about the community, you wouldn't post about it there, you wouldn't need to post that.
And I believe that happens a lot of times. Because I did it once in a forum, and I came back. I was there.
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =)
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I just said that, once, I read in a wiki about online communities that, if you really didn't cared about the community, you wouldn't post about it there, you wouldn't need to post that.
I probably wrote the law you are referring to. "Boomerang Law: If an active user creates a post announcing they are voluntarily leaving the community, they will almost certainly return. The length of the post is directly proportional to their likelihood of returning and inversely proportional to the time it will take for them to return."
MUGG's post was very short, which is why it is likely he was serious. Usually the boomerang law only takes effect when the goodbye post is lengthy.
