GSI Warfare

[Pathogen]

Hi. My name is Pathogen ("Hi Pathogen!"). People call me Path for short, which I find mildly annoying, but anyway. . .

I am a regular at the Gamespy Forums, (the actual forum, not just in general). On my birthday, someone posted this little gem for our forum-going community to look at.

Now, over there at GSF, we really, really hate board guests, because they have a bad habit of being stupid. That said, we tend to ritually flame them and then move on.

In this case, however, I was able to ignore the rampant imbeciles of the thread and have a look at BeyondUnreal, mainly to investigate claims such as the following:

1) GSI is an evil empire that whimsically destroys its own gaming community;

2) VB is superior to GS's Java-powered forum network.

As to #1, I regret to say that I really don't care much for FilePlanet, but beyond that I have no personal experience with Microsoftesque monopolizing by Gamespy, nor am I the beleagured victim of any great inconvenience at the hands of GSI. I have no grievance beyond mild irritation with FilePlanet.

As to #2, what I have found here appears to be nothing more than a slightly-enhanced version of UBB, which I don't particularly care for because:

A) The interface seems too cluttered, especially with as many options activated as this forum has (to its credit);

B) Its slightly more difficult to use UBB code than it is to use Gamespy's java-derived coding, which isn't such a big deal;

C) The moderators in UBB-based forums have to do a lot more work to keep out spam and the like than do the GS moderators; I will elaborate on this if need be.

There is one significant pro to your forum in that it is probably significantly less buggy than the GS forums, but this is because the kinks have long before been worked out of UBB, and the forums that Gamespy uses were more or less pioneered in design by GSI itself, which is no small task.

Just to keep you amused, I have posted a poll in this thread as well.

All this having been said, I welcome your comments, scoff at your flames, and retire to my regular forum.

 

[AriTheDog]

that was posted in the first minutes the GSI planet unreal forums came online.

hence, you obviously weren't in that community at all when it was posted.

you also don't understand the reasons behind the move to beyondunreal.

regardless, we've been through this discussion enough times...

enjoy your post waiting queue.

 

[AriTheDog]

oh, and you odn't think they are corporate community killers?

why don't you just try heading over to what was once nalicity, one of the largest UT map sources there is, at http://www.planetunreal.com/nalicity?

what, it isn't there?

that's right. they deleted it, along with all the files it was hosting, in response to our move. a number of sites also had tehir access locked shortly after the move.

mull that over a bit.

 

[RaptoR]

Take a look at these two links and then decide...

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90529
http://nalicity.beyondunreal.com/

 

[ULTBase]

Dam

What the hell are GSI thinking of. Im honestly worried about my site, and whether it will be moved. One thing I dont intend to do is move forums as its just like when I used a different outside forum. I cant see the difference.
Dam this sux ass!

 

[AriTheDog]

hey ULT. haven't seen you before on the f0s, and wanted to say, keep up the good work at fragadelic. you huys release some great maps!

 

[Stryker8]

i still don't get it why you come here
its more then obvious what the most of the people think of gsi (i personally don't hold any grudges against them, the services they provide are very good).
And yet you post a poll about it here, seems to me you'r trying to create more friction between bu and gsi :tdown:

 

[Pathogen]

Ahem.

I have heard about the Nali City debacle, and I can't say that I'm terribly surprised, or that you would receive any better treatment from any other gaming network, especially one as large as GameSpy.

Were GSI a single person that could take care of things quickly and easily, they might still take at least mild offense at what is more or less a massive redirect of their site traffic. Because BeyondUnreal is not sanctioned nor hosted by GSI, it is unlikely that the powers that be behind the decisions made recently at GSI in regards to the fate of Nali City would care much for BeyondUnreal simply using what is probably a considerable chunk of FilePlanet's bandwidth for its own purposes, or even more accurately for the convenience of users who for their own innumerable reasons would rather swallow their own vomit than rely on GSI for anything.

Of interesting note is that www.planetunreal.com/nalicity simply links back to the main page, and that there is no mention of any turmoil of any sort regarding the PlanetUnreal forums on the main page, and furthermore, no visible mention of BeyondUnreal, even though GameSpy is known to cover the openings of independent game sites from time to time in at least brief posts.

Be aware, if you aren't already, of 5IRON's post on the subject in the PlanetUnreal forums, which goes as follows:

"Hi ... Just wanted to point out that you should be able to find all the Nali City maps over at that site's new host. We made sure that all visitors to the old address -- http://www.planetunreal.com/nalicity -- were forwarded to the new location.

GSI has been working closely with the Nali City guys to make sure that they had all of their material available for them before the move. GSI has not deleted any material.

So, if there are any problems with Nali City maps ... well, you'll have to ask the people that run the site."

That was posted today.

shaithis, a person I regard as an uncommonly wise and observant fellow, had this to say around two weeks ago:

"It saddens me to see a community I'm quite fond of fracture like this. It honestly does. What saddens me more is people unwilling to understand that GameSpy has to make certain decisions with the company in mind.

Many of you accuse us of being corporate community-killers, but the truth is really quite far from that. In actuality, we love the gaming scene, and its individual communities. Everyone here is a gamer. We're not a bunch of marketing jerks walking around in three piece suits. I never would've taken this job if that were the case.

But GameSpy has to do what's necessary to be successful as a company, first, and a community enabler second. If we didn't do it that way, there'd be no PlanetUnreal at all, let alone forums.

We like ForumPlanet. We think it's a great piece of forums software, and we hope that once you guys get used to it, you'll agree. Upgrades, improvements... we'll continue to make them. Depite what some might think, we're very aware of suggestions from the community, and we take them into account in just about everything we do.

Those of you who don't want to stick around... we're not forcing you to, but we'd certainly be happy to have you. Personally, I'm looking forward to getting much more involved in the Unreal Community than I was previously. I'm moving a hosted site over here at the end of this month, among other things.

Anyhoo, thought I'd post my comments on the whole thing."

So, kids, it looks like them first, you second.

What does begin to worry me is that there seems to be a lot of unexplained administrative maneuvers that I can find no logical reasoning behind except pure spite or at least anger coming from someone who is probably more than a little anal and/or pissed off and in a position to make such changes. I think that some of the GSI forum moderators may have been tipped into doing a little bit of smoothing over that they wouldn't necessarily engage in were they not employees of GSI.

For the record, I do not own Unreal or Unreal Tournament.

For the record, I find it mildly comical that all this stemmed from a difference of opinion over two different BBS systems that are very much alike.

For the record, I am interested in the final fate of Nali City, and I would be pleased if I were provided with additional details in regard to its current state. News of this sort interests me, and I have begun to be a minor gumshoe under the shadow of this minor upheaval, if I do say so myself.

When I have gotten my sleep I will be glad to discuss what I have seen more cohesively and in detail, but as is you may find that I have left some of my conclusions out for now, since it is 5:15 AM where I am and I have been up since noon (this sort of behavior is normal for me).

And Stryker, the last thing that is on my mind is creating a flame war or any "friction." You have my word that I would not do something so stupid, even for my own amusement, which tends to come first on my agenda.

 

[8-4-7-2]

For the record: The move was NOT, and I repeat NOT, about the use of another forum software.
Look at Raptor's post, and at the post by QAPete. He mentions a post at PlanetCrap there. Look at it, and you will understand.
There are more underlying reasons in this.

 

[Stryker8]

you sound a pretty decent guy, and i take upon your word
but this is really a community thing, hard to explain, we'v been taking to many hits from gamespy lately, though i can't complain about the way things turned out, i would have solved it by talking, but then again, i'm not fully aware of what goes on behind the scenes.
ps: dude get unreal and ut fast

 

[SU3000]

Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law prov. [USENET] "As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.



And the forum issue was just used as a stick to beat eachother with.

 

[Cryognosis]

Originally posted by TTRStryker8
i still don't get it why you come here
its more then obvious what the most of the people think of gsi (i personally don't hold any grudges against them, the services they provide are very good).
And yet you post a poll about it here, seems to me you'r trying to create more friction between bu and gsi :tdown:

unfortinantly,like Path said,it is actully people that go to these forums who posts at GSF as board guests that cause the friction.

 

[ULTBase]

Originally posted by AriTheDog
hey ULT. haven't seen you before on the f0s, and wanted to say, keep up the good work at fragadelic. you huys release some great maps!

Thanx Ari, just what I like to hear.
Personally I would love to stay at PU and the fourms here at BU... I really hope thats possible!

 

[Pathogen]

Since the issue seems to agitate pretty much everyone involved, I think I'll stop here after politely asking just what the Hell happened to cause all this turmoil. I will look at PlanetCrap to see what is up.

Then I will kindly allow this thread to die.

 

[8-4-7-2]

No offense. but you come here, and say that you know everything which happened. You know nothing. All you GSF/GSI folks seem to think, that we hide here behind our nifty vB gimmicks and smilies. The forum software itself is really only a small part of it.

Let's look at PlanetUnreal. Yes not the forum, but the very site itself. GSI hosts it. The server belongs to GSI, yes. But does the content? No.
Nevertheless GSI forces its site directors to sign an agreement which transfers all ownership of news, articles and whatever to GSI. This drove talented people like Yellow5 and QAPete, who worked their asses off for this community away. They worked there because they loved this game and its unique community. Now take redef. He just does it for the money. Heck he doesn't even own UT, but runs the biggest Unreal site on earth. Now all news post are copypasted from mailing lists. There is just no love behind it. Such a great site, built by ambitious people goes down the drain. In the long run GSI lost. They turn one of the best running Planets, into tumbleweed land, by driving off the people who made it big.
Ok back to the ownership thing. GSI does own Planetunreal (the domain), but not the content. Yet, for some weird reason they think they do. This started the first anti-GSI sentiments.

Next thing is Forumplanet.
No it's not about the software, but about control. Here clambert can more or less quickly change anything we want. At FP GSI officials say they must do "feasability studies" for such simple things like an adjustable timezone display. Yes we would have kept our moderators. But the admins would have been people we don't know and don't care about us. At any given point they could have changed things, and there wouldn't have been a thing we could do about it. Over months we knew the move would come.
It's also about identity. This community us unique. You can't just mix it with others like PHL or PQ in an anonymous juggernaut like Forumplanet.
Then GSI makes a test forum. No problem there.
We didn't like it, and said that. Still they forced us to.

So we moved to BeyondUnreal, having no hard feeling towards GSI. But is that true the other way? No. GSI decides to remove the admins mail and FTP accounts. And same for several hosted sites like Fusion or Modelfarm. Officially for "security reasons". Just a silly act of retaliation.

Now the last strike. GSI suddenly deleted all files on NaliCity. The by far biggest source of Unreal/UT maps on the net. Just when we thought this is over, the next silly move.
Well this time they cut into their own flesh. GSI just lost tens of thousands of hits, now comming to BU

I have no problem with all of that. We parted, so it be.
What I don't like is that all the time we voiced our concerns, but were met with noting but ignorance. We started nice, but the GSI officials (Dakota or Sluggo to name a few) ignored us, countered with most silly arguments, sidesteppped arguments, but did nothing to comment on our opinions. So we got frustrated and some flamewars followed. But non of us wants to start flames right from the start

To conclude this, you might also want to read this thread; and escpecially QAPete's reply:
http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90642&pagenumber=1

 

[Pathogen]

Well in the very same day on which that was posted it was revealed that Nali City, if I'm not mistaken, was entirely intact on BeyondUnreal. What exactly are you complaining about?

As far as I can tell nothing was actually deleted, but instead moved in a very. . . Impromptu manner. Certain files may have been down for a short time, but other than that, I can see no real problem.

Perhaps redef is not the best person to handle PlanetUnreal news, but no one else seems to have stepped up to the plate.

 

[8-4-7-2]

You got me wrong (again). I didn't complain about anything. You asked what this is about and I answered

Yes, all data was saved. But I think GSI doesn't realize what it looses. I guess every UT player has at once visited NC. It's the biggest source of Unreal/UT maps. Every mapper publishes his maps there. It's an immense traffic.
And now GSI - for reasons only God knows - shuts it down, and doesn't want this traffic anymore. For a company needing the banners revenues it's a dumb move at best. Noone of us would have objected if NC had stayed at PU and Fileplanet. The NC admins didn't move it by themselves. They were forced to it.

Again read QAPete's repy in the thread I gave you in my last post

 

[Stryker8]

hmm, both replies has some argueable things in them
first, 8-4-7-2, the moving of nalicity wasn't sudden, gsi discussed it with nalicity staff and Bu staff. Everybody did as told, though the bad feelings remain.
If redef isn't suitable to do the job, I, and probably a lot more people, are willing to step up to the plate at any time given. I also have to agree that this is by far the largest, and unique community in all the planets (gsi ones i mean)
Personally i think this whole 'warfare' could have been resolved with negotiations imo

 

[8-4-7-2]

Stryker:
Got a point with NC.
Never mind. My main point was that GSI lost far more than we, and that still stands.

Negotiations:
Sure, yes. But they require that one actually listens to the other. And the ex-PU staff wasn't the one who ignored others

 

[Stryker8]

yes you'r right, and replies like the company first community second don't do much good either
do you know where they hang out?
do they have irc with room someplace?