RE: Mafia Championships 2018
04-23-2018, 04:24 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-23-2018, 04:35 PM by Mirdini.)
Oh hey, it's this thing again.
For the record I got PM'd about this way back in 2013 when it apparently started and I forget if I talked to the person responsible in IRC or what because I can't seem to find a PM'd reply. I had a couple of objections to the thing conceptually that I still hold, but iirc some of our more mafia-hungry folks did at some point self-select to participate in one of these (I remember beruru, specifically? Who isn't around here anymore, which fair enough).
To Thingyman's credit it seems they've shifted the focus of the event from PRESTIGE to community building which does ameliorate/nullify the concerns I'll be listing below, so if anyone wants to go for it feel free to announce your candidacy.
To clarify, way back when in 2013 the message I got was
I think most folks who know MSPAFG/(to a much lesser extent) ET mafia history can see why this rubbed me the wrong way and led me to decline (or not answer at all? heck if I know anymore). The concept of a "best of the best" player is elitist, which is bad enough, but I think it's also inherently harmful to running fun community mafia games, for a number of reasons:
a. Most pertinently in a mafia sense, it leads to 'meta' play about players in games, in which certain people are deemed UNLYNCHABLE or given special preference simply because they have such a ~reputation~ rather than anything they specifically do in the game they're playing in.
b. It discourages new players from trying stuff out, especially when one of those 'best' players starts attacking them in the games and everyone else dog-piles on because the 'best' player surely must know what's right! (Never mind that that best player may well be in the mafia :v).
c. It helps support a sense of elitism/'best play practices' among veteran players that also discourages new players from joining or even playing in the games. It's not particularly fun to play in a game when people start throwing around 5-letter acronyms and telling you to stop doing a thing you didn't even know you were doing.
Now, while MSPAFG was not incredibly bad about these things it definitely got pretty hairy and then recovered a bit (because we thankfully realized what kind of jerks we were being) before the MSPA forums unceremoniously imploded. After that we had a bit of a continuation on ET/Chocolate Pi but burnout from the long consequences of the stuff above on MSPAFG plus a lot of us getting busy enough lives that we can't check a forum thread more than once a day (if that) means that the OG MAFIA CREW of Eagle Time is pretty much outta commission these days (die-hard mafia folks who aren't on ET anymore excepted). If mafia does happen it tends to be a For Goofs game that no-one needs to care about too much.
Anyway, apparently I still care because I went and wrote this LONGPOST and congrats to you if you've read through all of it. As mentioned way above, Thingyman seems to have turned this event into a community-building thing, which is neat and if anyone's way into mafia it should be a fun time. In summation, I can concur with Sunspider's points that if anyone's interested enough to want to 'represent' Eagle Time they should feel free to post in here and start a good ol' rip-roaring ELECTION CAMPAIGN. Those can be pretty fun :>
For the record I got PM'd about this way back in 2013 when it apparently started and I forget if I talked to the person responsible in IRC or what because I can't seem to find a PM'd reply. I had a couple of objections to the thing conceptually that I still hold, but iirc some of our more mafia-hungry folks did at some point self-select to participate in one of these (I remember beruru, specifically? Who isn't around here anymore, which fair enough).
To Thingyman's credit it seems they've shifted the focus of the event from PRESTIGE to community building which does ameliorate/nullify the concerns I'll be listing below, so if anyone wants to go for it feel free to announce your candidacy.
To clarify, way back when in 2013 the message I got was
Thingyman Wrote:Hey there :)
I'll keep it short:
I'm trying to gathers players from many different sites to play together in a game of mafia reserved only for the best of the best players. And I was curious to know if you could help me find out who the consensus top players are on this site? If you could give me a short list of people who are widely considered to be the best players, that'd be really awesome.
Any help is greatly appreciated :)
Thanks in advance
Kind regards,
Thingyman
I think most folks who know MSPAFG/(to a much lesser extent) ET mafia history can see why this rubbed me the wrong way and led me to decline (or not answer at all? heck if I know anymore). The concept of a "best of the best" player is elitist, which is bad enough, but I think it's also inherently harmful to running fun community mafia games, for a number of reasons:
a. Most pertinently in a mafia sense, it leads to 'meta' play about players in games, in which certain people are deemed UNLYNCHABLE or given special preference simply because they have such a ~reputation~ rather than anything they specifically do in the game they're playing in.
b. It discourages new players from trying stuff out, especially when one of those 'best' players starts attacking them in the games and everyone else dog-piles on because the 'best' player surely must know what's right! (Never mind that that best player may well be in the mafia :v).
c. It helps support a sense of elitism/'best play practices' among veteran players that also discourages new players from joining or even playing in the games. It's not particularly fun to play in a game when people start throwing around 5-letter acronyms and telling you to stop doing a thing you didn't even know you were doing.
Now, while MSPAFG was not incredibly bad about these things it definitely got pretty hairy and then recovered a bit (because we thankfully realized what kind of jerks we were being) before the MSPA forums unceremoniously imploded. After that we had a bit of a continuation on ET/Chocolate Pi but burnout from the long consequences of the stuff above on MSPAFG plus a lot of us getting busy enough lives that we can't check a forum thread more than once a day (if that) means that the OG MAFIA CREW of Eagle Time is pretty much outta commission these days (die-hard mafia folks who aren't on ET anymore excepted). If mafia does happen it tends to be a For Goofs game that no-one needs to care about too much.
Anyway, apparently I still care because I went and wrote this LONGPOST and congrats to you if you've read through all of it. As mentioned way above, Thingyman seems to have turned this event into a community-building thing, which is neat and if anyone's way into mafia it should be a fun time. In summation, I can concur with Sunspider's points that if anyone's interested enough to want to 'represent' Eagle Time they should feel free to post in here and start a good ol' rip-roaring ELECTION CAMPAIGN. Those can be pretty fun :>