2015-07-06 12:39:50

Hi. I can see both sides of the ball here, but others have already stated what I wanted to so I won't repeat what's been already said. While we're on the subject of vision, I have slitely enough, in both eyes to see pictures and my surroundings. However, a lot of things tend to get blurry when in constant motion, hents is why I wouldn't be able to see what's going on the tv for instants. Moving to the subject of younger game devs, every time this gets braught up, and since my game is an online game, I always for some reason have a feer that my game is one of the games being referd too here. In case it is, i'd just like to say that while I am by no means a perfect admin, I do try to run the game to the best of my abilitys. Getting back on topic though, i'd just like to say this, I can see both positive sides of the sited and the blind communitys. As for here, while i've had my bad moments, and difficultys, its all part of the learning expirience, and i've found that each bad moment here gives way to a better time, where i've learned something new. In a lot of ways, this community has helpt me to better myself, the same with the sited community as well.

Check out the new reality software site. http://realitysoftware.noip.us

2015-07-06 17:19:52

I am a little surprised at the comments on Ticonblu, sinse I've both always found them very easy to deal with and a nice bunch who take cryticism, and in the three titles I've played extensively, inquisitor's heartbeat and she noire were both fine (she noire needed a little script tightening but that is not a ug), and the inquisitor chapter 1 was only buggy in so far as it closed down once on me, and the registering of the cross gesture seemed rather screwy.
I was still able to finish the game however with no trouble. Admitedly, that was on Ios so I can't speak for any other version of the game, but it does surprise me nonetheless, ---- still if issues are reported and the developer's actually aren't responding that isn't good.

As to online games, no Danny, I wasn't thinking of deathmatch specifically, although I do believe it was dmnb that started the craze off last christmas.
With sight levels, what a person loses or whatever is a different question, however I am not exactly convinced myself that the idea of a specialist environment where everything is done for you is correct. From what I've seen myself, if anything it is the opposite way around, in specialist institutions and things run "for the blind" people are taught to get what their given and like it and not! to atempt to look outside the system.
Whether the behaviour people have noticed is a reaction against that, after all to people who feel they have been controlled and have  very ittle choice, even miner exertions of power are a victory, (look at some of the arguements prisoners have over petty things like space), I'm not sure.

One thing I will however warn people of  when these discussions start is runing into prejudice. It is a common cognitive bias to look around and find specific examples that support a hypothesis, simply because a person believes they do, ie, "Jo is being a complete douchenozzle because Jo is blind",  rather than just "Jo is being a complete douchenozzle because jo is! a complete douchenozzle!" big_smile.

I'm not saying  that the fact that a person has grown up living with being blind and all the ways they might have been treated because of that doesn't have an effect, just to be very careful when analysing those effects, sinse it's a little too easy to start making unfalsifyable claims and moving into prejudice teretory, and anyone who is in any way disabled already has far too much of that from everybody else to eal with.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-07-07 02:20:41

I certainly wasn't referring to Deathmatch either. I couldn't say one way or the other, having never played it, but I haven't heard any complaints about it either.

As for the hacking and such in Swamp, Aprone handled that situation like the mature adult he is. And, as has been stated, the reason so many of these other games have so many problems is that younger devs lack experience, and the forethought to really care about the security of their player base. I know that's harsh, but it appears to be true. And I'm not the kind of person who can just sit back and not give a shit when I know, intimately, some of the things that go on. I am really trying not to bring specifics into this, for several reasons, but the point is, I don't think it's a smart idea for anyone to play games that are written by people who have confessed to being hackers, or at the very least have dabbled in writing malware.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2015-07-07 07:19:55

One of the most infuriating things is when people will come onto the forum for the sole reason to start flame wars. They'll start a topic, escalate drama, next thing you know, such immature words as "fuckerface" and "bastardfuck" or whatever is the newest combination of conventional swear words. I find it unbelievably childish and it makes me lose faith in our next generation. It makes me scared to be part of that generation.

Heroes need foes to test them. Not all teachers can afford to be kind, and some lessons must be harsh.
Discord: CritterPup
RPG Discord Server: https://discord.gg/QQcHS3Gk

2015-07-07 08:29:16

That kind of behavior, unfortunately, isn't unique to the blind and visually impaired communities, it goes on in most, if not all, Internet communities.

Part of the problem is that most Internet communities, including this one, allow the use of handles and very little real world or real life information about its members. With such anonymity, nobody knows who they really are, so they act badly with the only possible reprisal being that they get banned from the community, and if they used a disposable email address, and most of them do, they'll be back to cause more trouble.

That's why I use my real name as my handle, and my non-disposable email address on the Internet communities I join. I want to show that I am willing to be responsible for my actions, and that I don't intend to cause any trouble.

I'm not saying that everyone that uses a handle is out to cause trouble since most people use them. I'm just saying that if you couldn't be anonymous on forums like these, forum trolls (as they are commonly called) would not be so common.

2015-07-07 10:17:05

Oddly enough, once someone gets themselves banned that is usually that. I tend to find trolls who just exist to be trolls are less common on this forum, or are very much easier to spot and deal with anyway, than people who simply cannot have a civilized disagreement and degenerate into name calling. In a lot of cases, people will take moderation warnings in the spirit in which they're meant and leave off. However, in other cases people just don't have the maturity to back off from an arguement or to disagree amicably, and in those cases those are the people who get banned.

Even with bans, I've known people who recieve a temporary ban and then grow up and have become valuable members later, although some haven't.

What is more an issue I find is mob mentality, when an arguement escalates, usually with a small vocal minority and a large vocal majority or people who attempt to sit on the fence of the arguement but get drawn into one side or the other. In some of those cases it's possible to head the flame train off at the pass, in others it unfortunately is not and that usually results in topic closure and often someone getting warnings or bans.

Still, one of the more interesting balancing acts I find as a moderator is being in the position of not wanting! to use brute force tactics like bans etc, sinse generally the more you resort to such things the more you will have to, but at the same time being willing to do so as and when necessary, which I can say is less often than people might think.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-07-07 11:08:19

Yeah, I know all about forum moderating and administration, as I was our departments forum moderator and administrator mainly because nobody else was willing to do it. I didn't care, for the most part I enjoyed it, but there were a few moments when I wanted to reach out and choke someone!

2015-07-07 11:54:06

I am in fact growing somewhat weary of the incessant complaints about the blind community. While I used to somewhat agree with it, I wonder how founded the complaints actually are. Remember that everyone who is complaining is essentially also part of this community. Radios you have to tune as well if you want to listen to something useful. There are plenty of tv channels with programs that I would not listen to at all. maybe the same concept applies here, just tune the villains out, or switch channels so that you're involved with something more fun. It really disappoints me to see that there are now two topics about the blind community on the first page of the off-topic room containing mostly complaints which apply to pretty much all communities.
There's plenty of places where blind people don't get accepted at all by the sighted, it's no good hating on the sighted community for this reason either, nor is it good to despise everyone in the blind community except a select few because a couple of particularly noisy people decided to say something obnoxious. The same goes for the playroom as well, I've never found it particularly hard to stay clear of the drama.

2015-07-08 02:02:17

Some thoughts from someone who is quite old compared to most of you, (I'm in my mid forties.)
First of all, people are people, and whether it's here, Google Plus, Facebook, LiveJournal, or a good double dozen other fora I've participated in, there are people who either don't know how to conduct civil conversations when things get hot, or who don't give a tinker's damn.  Believe me, this is not unique to the blind community.  We do have our particular cultural anomalies, but they are small compared to the common issues that plague on-line discussions everywhere.  I refer you to the phenomenon known as gamergate that dominated the tech news for about three months earlier this year that resulted in some truly dreadful and misogynistic behavior on the part of so-called grownups, and the kerfuffle over the Hugo awards.  Google these if you aren't familiar, gamergate or "sad puppies".
Next obvious statement, there is a reason why people in most countries have to be of a certain age before being given responsibilities over lethal accident vectors, such as cars, aircraft and the voting booth.  The on line world is a space that allows for much more freedom of younger people than most other spaces.  This is probably a net bonus, since old farts like me need to be shaken out of our complacency.  But there is a cost in inexperience, in incivility, in the fact that teen agers are simply aliens, most of whom don't know how to feed themselves well, do laundry properly or take any account of money, let alone deal with the responsibilities of running a complex on-line game that requires good security, the ability to consider consequences and so forth.  I know from experience, I was one, and I've raised two, with two more in the pipeline, God help me.
A lot of the drama referred to here seems to me simply the radioactivity of children, and is not necessarily worth writing off a community.  Those of us who are older and have more life experience need to be in the position of mentors and guides, and perhaps not judge too harshly.  Those of you who are the aforementioned aliens, (sorry, but truth is truth, and if you survive it you will get better) please cut the rest of us some slack too.
We all come from such diverse backgrounds, that blindness is, surprisingly to some of you, one of the least important things we have to share with one another.  That said, it is important to remember that my experience of blindness, being in the first cohort of blind children who were put in public schools (or government-run schools for you britts) is very different from that of someone growing up today in a country with few resources to work with.  I was damned lucky; being born even a couple years sooner would have condemned me to having no choice about how I was educated.  Blindness is not the central fact of my existence, that would be the lovely woman who foolishly consented to marry me ten years ago, and the avatars of chaos that claim to be her children.  Others of you have come to different terms with your blindness and who am I to judge, given the differences in our history.
People have been complaining about Freedom Scientific since it was Henter-Joyce.  There are a lot of reasons why they developed the way they did, and there are a lot of modern-day market forces that are stressing their business model to the breaking point.  JFW is still a nice piece of kit that I no longer use, but if it works for you, God bless, kiss kiss and let's go on.
So, if you have a beef with internet forum chatting, that I get, but I think you're misattributing some of the problems you see to this and other such like being a blind-specific affinity group.  For every drama queen I've run across here, I've found a ton of people who are respectful, helpful and love sharing their enthusiasm for our hobby of audio games.  I've had lovely discussions with people, even when we are vehemently disagreeing on another topic about such things as religion, or something equally important, the future of Swamp.  I'm not here every day, and I hardly read every topic, so I often miss the worst of the drama, because it takes place on discussion threads I don't normally follow, so I hear about it as an indirect reference somewhere else.
So I'd urge you not to give up on us just yet.  We've survived the hacking Swamp year, debates over same sex marriage, and we'll survive the poor security practices of people who either don't know any better or choose to be slipshod.  It's ok, that will sort itself out over time.  Hot button topics will come and go, tempers will fray under disagreement, but on the whole, we do pretty well.

2015-07-08 02:05:27

I agree with your sentiments, but I can also sympathize with people who say, enough is enough! Whether they're justified in placing blame on the blind community as a whole or not, and, as an aside, I have always despised the term "blind community", it's human nature to lump all bad behavior in the same group. So blind teen hackers are getting a bad reputation at the moment. I feel that it would be more productive to deal with each individual as a separate entity, but I can also relate to just getting so enraged with things that appear to have become the status quo that I get sucked into thinking that at least certain subsections of this so-called blind community are bad.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.