Players vs. Coders
Relations break down

The other day, once again perusing rec.games.empire, I came across a game summary for a game that had just recently ended. It was the regular stuff; power charts, reports, cute awards, and brief summaries. Then something towards the end caught my eye:

I would also like to take this opportunity to announce my retirement from the game of empire. I don't like the way the game is going and the platform that is taking it there. I suggest that the empire community remove the empire-list mail list and move the discussions back to the news group where it belongs. Then maybe some more voices would be heard.

Pat Loney
AKA Overlord

I was immediately concerned: Here was someone who, if memory serves correctly, had been running games since 1991-1992, and was not quitting empire because of other interests, or lack of time, or marriage, or any of the other really great reasons to quit Empire and move on with life. Here was someone, obviously in the trenches of games on a regular basis, who was quitting the game because it was changing, and these changes were out of his control.

It made me wonder. How does "Josephine Empireplayer" get her new, wonderful ideas to be heard and implemented? How does "Joe Empireplayer" prevent a bad idea from being implemented?

Too often it has come down to an empire golden rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules. Not literal gold, mind you, but the more valuable gold of time, machine cycles, a steady 24-7 internet connection, and the technical prowess to build and maintain an empire server. If you could do this, then you could implement or turn off any idea you wanted.

But what of the less fortunate, the crowds who brave the slowness of the local time-sharing machine, agonizing at the slow connection but still unable to depart from that terminal because of the addictive claws of the long-term game or blitz? What is to become of their ideas?

Ask many of these regular Joes, and they will tell you the perfect position to pitch a new idea to a server-god or a developer: on your knees. Quietly prodding or supplicating these developers to action is often only partially successful at best, and completely fruitless at worst, and many really great ideas fall by the wayside, washed away with all the other ideas thought of by forgotten little people.

On the other hand, ask developers about these virtual Lilliputians, and they will repeat ideas to you that are so bad, that they could turn Empire into a mockery of SimAnt.

You see, the coder, the developer, the server-maintainer, these are the last-bastions of hope for the quintessential empire game; the game we play in our dreams. They are the last line of defense against those that would love to see twenty-six sectors types (and other assorted bad ideas). The idea-givers stand before them in a horde, seeking to sweep the developers' productivity and sanity aside with their relentless rush of concepts that would turn the stomachs of any game designer. So the developers ignore, or they patronize, or they belittle the vast quantities of notions, most of which should either be ignored, patronized, or belittled.

But there are the few for whom the development of Empire is of paramount importance to them, even if they do not have the time or the resources to be directly involved in that development. That they do not deserve to be lumped in with the refuse of the regulars is obvious. Their methods for ensuring that they aren't are often less than tactful.

Take Tom Tedrick, for instance. Like many dominating players in many games, he can sense something bad like a camel senses water in the dessert. He may not immediately be able to tell you what exactly is wrong, or why exactly it is wrong, but his warnings itself should not be taken lightly.

Yet his reputation for being condescending to players is well known, and his ability to listen to squeaking drivel (no matter how correct it may be) is practically nonexistent.

Yet might it not be possible that his yells, his insults, and his stubbornness is not because he is not open to new ideas, but because the road that his ideas travel on is to narrow, and he still hasn't gotten all his ideas out the door yet?

I don't claim to know Tom Tedrick's mind. My support or refusal of his ideas are not the issue; the results of the interactions are the main thrust of my diatribe, for these results are the stagnant situation where players may immediately dismiss new implementations before truly understanding them, and the developers dismiss ideas because they were not properly packaged and shipped with the obligatory pot of jam. They use the good old "lameism" "if you don't like it, make your own game", and move on with other, arguably useless implementations.

And Pat Loney, one of the best deities Empire has ever known, walks away.

The truth is, the problem doesn't lay with Empire, but with the social dynamics of its participants, participants who do not know how to talk to each other, or establish an effective dialogue, or filter useless information while at the same time acknowledging valuable content. Commercial software developers had the same problem.

If a user complained about how a piece of software wasn't doing the "right" thing, they would try and change the way that user did business, instead of doing the right thing: responding to the user's need. Of course, over time, commercial developers came to realize that the more they listened to their foolish users, the more software they could sell, and the more money they could make.

Of course, since no one is making any money from this venture, the dynamics are slightly different. One of the most frustrating things that a developer (especially a volunteer) faces is someone ranting at how various changes are screwing up the game. It is only natural for that developer to reject any ideas, as theirs was rejected, and to drop the "do it yourself" line.

Yet developers are in a unique position of power in the Empire community, and thus owe a responsibility to that community that exceeds any given player or deity. This responsibility does not give them the luxury of outright dismissals of suggestions and lamentations of people who are not lucky enough to share your abilities or your resources or your time, but who may be equally competent, knowledgeable, and dedicated to the game.

It is with the acceptance of this responsibility that light might flicker at the end of the ever-growing murky tunnel. Maybe with responsibility to the hundreds of players that keep this game alive with participation, developers might come to realize what their efforts are all about; to make the game stable and bug-free foremost, to make it playable secondly, to make it fun thirdly, and to make it realistic lastly.

Maybe there needs to be an Empire developer's charter, a pseudo-constitution that all new entrants can read and take to heart, and learn of their responsibility to the game, its players and its alumni. Yes alumni, because without alumni, there is no understanding of the passage of time, and without that understanding, there is no existence, and with no existence, there would be no need for an Empire Hall of Fame.

By now, you should have surmised that I am occasionally prone to wax philosophical about a great many things. How many times have you asked yourself "If I ruled the world, what would I do, what would I be?" It is an interesting question to try to answer if you have an afternoon filled with nothing but a path to bike ride on, a game to watch on television, or leaves to kick your feet through. Yet it is this exact question that must be asked before making the smallest of changes to the Empire code. The changes that you make, the ideas that you suggest, no matter how trivial, are ideas that you will bequeath to a new world, a world that will differ from any world constructed before it. In that respect, you, the developer, do rule the world. It is your duty to be a noble servant to the people.