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Forget the Utopia

By: Specplosive

  This article is meant to discuss the causes of various problems that have arisen in the OHR community, including, but not limited to, the recent flamewars. My goal is not to blame particular individuals, but to critic ideas. To those who believe that any discussion or critic of the community is a waste of time and the beginning of a flamewar, I will try to prove you wrong. (Although I agree flamewars ARE a waste of time.) However, you should view this article merely as one point of view, and its concern is not really to be accurate, but more to encourage others to express their ideas on this subject matter. I tried to keep my rambling from being too long and redundant, but it may still be a bit long for this type of article. Anyway, let's get to the point.

  If you have looked globally at the recent flamewars, you probably noticed many people tried to prove there were "unfair" situations in the community. That some games are over-evaluated, some people have favorable and unfavorable prejudices against them, are examples of their accusations at the most "influent" people of the community. Arguments like that are natural considering such prejudices probably do exist, and the counter-argument that a reputation is built through hard work is also legitimate. However, instead on going on with the usual flamewar insults, let's examine the question of "reputation" in detail.

  Usually, we expect that people will be considered or "judged" by their actions and declarations. Two opposite attitudes may influence this judgement. First, some people will judge by the past. At the extreme, these people will let no chance to one for improvement as they will constantly bring back one's mistakes in the past. At the other extreme, judging only by the present would make one's good actions be forgotten when one commits a single mistake. As you can see, reputation is double-edged.

  To those who hope prejudices could be removed from the community, think again. We are not in some utopic group. At best, the OHR community would be a cyber or virtual metaphor of "real" life. By this I mean that the same social "rules" that you may apply to your school exist here. One cannot know well enough each person to judge him/her accurately. I will not give concrete examples, but you perfectly know that there will always be people whose work is acclaimed beyond reason and others who will be totally forgotten. There will always be people with a better reputation who can say basically what they want and not get blamed, and others who are constantly watched to get their mistakes pointed on. And this reputation is not as systematically related to good actions as in Ogre Battle. Many things like that are unfair. That is part of life. Note that the word "part" here is important. This is not a fatality. If all you want is to get your reputation up easily, you know whose acts to follow. But is there anything more to that than reputation?

  What we should not forget is that the making of a RPG is an art. If you have read Rinku's design article in the last OHR Monthly (which you should have, IMHO), you have surely realized the quantity of work involved to create the best RPG you can. Considering this, it is normal to be somewhat frustrated by games which didn't need much effort of their author being in the most popular. The question here is what does popularity means except popularity ? Just think of pop music. In my opinion, any top 10 or 30 of OHR Games means as much as the charts of your local radio (but as the charts, they have reason to exist). In any way, your game's quality will speak by itself. If you get critics, answer to them by a game, not a flame (hehe, funny slogan here).

  In conclusion, I believe blaming injustices that come from the "reputation" system is trivial. If you want a good reputation, fine, use the system at your advantage, but if it's not your main goal, remember than the satisfaction of victory is proportionnal to the adversity. Make (or contribute to) great games, prove your worth, maybe to others, but first to yourself. Don't be afraid to encourage people you seem worthy of, as you're the only one who can express your OWN opinion.