What is it about human beings that mean they’re not happy until they’re unhappy? Are we really that calamitous that we feel the need to moan? And moan. And moan. Time and time again, when we release updates, in and amongst the positive comments there is an overabundance of negativity.
I don’t really know how to parallel this to anything. I mean, I could say it’s like being with a woman partner. They ask you how they look, which in all honesty should be a question only dealt to those having completed the ‘Iron Man’ challenge. Still, brave men answer – you tell the woman that she looks ‘fabulous, a stunning example of the homosapien. Worthy of nothing less than the front page of a glamour magazine’, and expect them to smile, but they reply with – ‘You’re just saying that. How could you? How dare you? You, Me… so over with.’ You can’t win. It is impossible.
This leads me to those that possess testicles of ‘Unobtainium’, or the fatally stupid. There is probably only one thing worse than the following answer, but we’ve all said it. In fact, we’ve all got very similar stories, so I’m not going to put mine in. I’m sorry if that upsets you, and it was a difficult decision to make, but I wrote it, and therefore have the casting decision.
So, Mr ‘Neodymium’ Balls replies with: ‘I’m terribly sorry darling, but in that particular menagerie of floral, you look a little bit like a lost bulldog munching on a mayonnaise sachet’.
I guess this is the point, where, for men, things start to contract and retract, a bit like a tortoise in danger. You realise you shouldn’t have said anything, and you watch in horror as woman removes the proverbial nail file from her handbag and says absolutely nothing. She will look at you, and ask if ‘you think you’re funny’.
STOP. It’s time to press pause and weigh up your options, but in reality there is only one. It’s like that point on Call of Duty’s, Zombie Nazi’s, where you’re mate has gone down, yet you’ve still got 100 snarling zombies left to kill, 30 rounds in the gunge-gun, and a Browning that needs reloading. I.e. – You leg it. Again, you’ve lost. Admit it, men are pathetic. Even the man with the perfect bone structure from the Old Spice advert would run here. So what do we do?
In fact, this parallel, albeit somewhat accurate will be the focal point of rage. To be honest it would have been the obvious target for any negative discussion even if I hadn’t paralleled it to woman, and this you see, is my point.
With the recent updates now a week in the past, people are complaining about everything. They don’t like this. They don’t like that. They have found a bug. They preferred it before. They don’t want to spend 120 seconds a day voting for Torn. Bloody hell, it’s almost as if someone has woken them up in the night and told them they’ve just contracted the human immunodeficiency virus, and would they mind awfully not to bleed all over the place.
Whilst we don’t expect everyone to like everything we do, (this is Torn – no one is ever happy) we do like for people to, urm how to say it, think about their comments?
Spam is something that should stay in a tin, it’s horrible, and it’s nasty. You don’t want it advertising all sorts of enlargement possibilities in your mailbox, and we don’t want it in our forums. Often once we’ve released an update to Torn, there will be a bug. There will be something we hadn’t anticipated, possibly an error somewhere. Granted – it can be annoying. It shows us that we’re not perfect, and we do indeed make mistakes. Take this as a formal apology from me, to you.
Humans, as they currently exist are self-deprecating. It’s a known fact. Similarly, being completely organic, we are somewhat vulnerable to disease. A cold for example is not life threatening. After a nice hot bath, a Lemsip, and a Disney movie you’re jumping up and ready to go about normal life. It’s kind of the same here. Nothing is permanent. Yes, there will be the odd bug hiding in random pages, but until someone finds it, we can’t do anything about it.
Often people think the anomalous things that happen after updates are indelible – or they simply don’t read the announcements. It’s all very well shouting abhorrence at Chedburn and the team, but as per usual, the next day, after a warm malted drink and a good night’s sleep, they wake to find everything is fixed.
If you think something is exceptionally bizarre and outlandish, out of the ordinary or a completely contemptible thing for a text based game to do – it probably doesn’t exist. Announcements are not read correctly, and instantly someone assumes something ‘very bad and stupid’ has been added to the game.
We could argue with every single ‘omg this change is sh*t’ post in the forums until we’re ready to explode, but what’s the point. Some Charlie comes round the corner, without reading anything, and posts the same thing. We could reason again that things will be fixed, but, as you guessed it, another Charlie comes round the corner and does the same thing.
So. in summary:
You should expect bugs / issues, and weird things to happen a few days after updates are released.
There is no need to swear at admins.
There is no need to boycott donating.
There is no need to spam the forums with how angry you are.
And to remember; bugs and issues will always be fixed. It just takes time.
