Heavy01 MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE RECENT TURN OF EVENTS, AND

MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE RECENT TURN OF EVENTS, AND MY GOODBYE.


Mighty No. 1156 Heavy01
12/13/2013 - 17:02
This will be my final post on these forums as well as my goodbye. Now first of all I want to let everyone who showed support or was “rooting” for me, be it by making OC about me and spreading the word on the internet outside of this community about what was happening and what I was trying to accomplish, or by showing your approval and even nominating me as a moderator or, hell, even community manager (which I don’t believe I am qualified for) within this very community, that you’re all awesome people, and you all fought the good fight with me, it wasn’t me alone, I only was chosen by you to voice your concerns in the most appropriate way, I was merely your sword. We all showed what makes the megaman fanbase so incredible and dedicated: the same dedication that made this kickstarter happen to begin with and blow the initial asking amount out of the water. Most of us never knew neither could have guessed it would give a turn for the worst, even though there were signs (yes Mr Kamiya, I knew) we did not want to listen, and how would we want to? All we wanted was our videogame, a megaman successor, with nothing else getting on the way like it happened multiple times with Capcom handling the franchise.

Now going forward, I want to state very clearly that these are my personal thoughts regarding the current state of affairs, I am not speaking for anyone now but myself, this is my last post, and I want to explain why I give up. With this I am  you should give up too, you’re a free individual and you are free to make your own conclusions and decisions.

Now let’s begin by stating why I came here to begin with: I didn’t come here for any personal reason or to fight for any agenda, I used to be a forums person but not anymore, I don’t really participate in forums nearly as much as I used to. I only came here after I found out what was happening because I felt this couldn’t be left untouched or ignored since it would trigger the worst imaginable kind of disaster for this game if left unchecked. That disaster has already begun and it can no longer be stopped, the damage is done, so if I continued to speak my mind here I would only be wasting my time and speaking to a wall (And Ms Dina has made sure to let me know very clearly that is indeed what is going to happen).

But what disaster exactly am I talking about?

People are pulling their funds in protest and out of pure spite and repulsion for such a blatant act of cronyism and climb to power, or because they fear their investment might be compromised by someone with an agenda (regardless of it is true or not, they simply don’t want to “wait and see”), the community is being brutally fractured into 2, no, 3 sides (Dina supporters/enablers and SJWs, those who oppose Dina because they believe she is tied to an agenda and also oppose SJWs, and those who just want their game with no pointless drama) taking part in a never ending social justice war, Inafune’s and Comcept’s reputation and trust is being ravaged, people that have nothing to do with this community and didn’t even back the game are starting to hound the project and feed off it like carrion birds, all for the sake of making idiotic and biased clickbait articles for the sake of ad revenue, and these people hide this shady business model under the delusion of “gaming journalism”, this in turn only makes people more angry on here, fuels yet more wars and countless arguments where both sides never end until their bodies physically beg for them to take a rest, and they are arguing about something that should have nothing to do with this game.

That’s a fact, it is happening right now, and it will only get worse. Now… how did it all go so wrong? Why is this even happening here? Because of a single person: Ms Dina Abou Karam. But what in the heck did she do that could cause all of this in the first day she told us her name and stated the job she was apparently “hired” for?

Her first mistake was choosing a side and assuming it would not affect her on this job, and make no mistake, she took it, and we know she took it and embraced it based on the countless tweets people dug out from her, she cheered for this side and supported it: feminism. We know she is a feminist, it is no secret. Now, is she a radical feminist, where does she draw the line and does she even know how to draw it? Well that is a matter of interpretation and opinion regarding her tweets, in my own personal opinion I believe that she really isn’t that much of a radical and controversial feminist and I doubt she will even be allowed to inject her agenda and beliefs into this project, she also has been completely neutral on her stance when speaking here, she is just a young and thus easily influenced person who wants to take part on something that she believes it’s important, this thing happened to be feminism, that's okay, that’s her business and not mine. The problem is taking an instance in social justice issues is a double edge sword if you don’t remain anonymous and pretend to hold a job like this that deals with public relations and speaking to a crowd. Notice people like Anita, she fully knew what she was getting into and knew she would gather controversy, because this whole move is fueled on controversy, and she took the chance to use this controversy to empower herself, I never gave her any attention because I knew what she was trying to do to begin with and I absolutely don’t care about what she preaches. Controversy fueled by feminist agendas is a bolt of lightning, and Anita took that bolt head on and used it to empower herself like a crazy super hero (villain?) from a comic book. On the other hand when Ms Dina presented herself to our community, she took this bolt of lightning without realizing it was coming straight to her and instead ended up frying herself, it is kind of sad when all is said and done.

So was her taking an instance on social justice issues that much of a deal? Well, for the position she pretends to hold now such as community manager, it is, her biggest mistake was letting us know her name instead of presenting herself as an anonymous person or an alternative persona with absolutely no previous history if she pretended to play along to fool us, but at the same time not stir us up, for the sake of the project (assuming she really did have no intention of injecting her agenda into the project nor has any hidden motives and truly wanted to just do the job she landed by cronyism in peace). Instead she told us her identity, didn’t bother to hide any connection to her past history and THEN pretended to fake a persona (which in my opinion was awfully cringe worthy) and believed we would be dumb enough to not see right through it. After she was called out she made the GIGANTIC mistake of deleting tweets which showed us who she really was when she does not have to put on a mask to speak to the public, and thus her persona was almost immediately stripped away from her by angry fans within the community.

But let’s go a little deeper now, what exactly is wrong with this person representing the megaman community and acting as the middle man between a fanbase and the developers, or in other words, “managing” this community? I mean, besides her controversial social justice background, was there anything else? What about her actual skills as a professional or her motivation for joining this project? This is where it gets ugly.

We all know that she “never really got” what the MN9 fuss was all about and was “never an mm player”, but she did support it because her “bf” (best friend? Come on now is this really what you consider the megaman fanbase is composed of? Naive children?) and friends were working on it. Now you all know the rest of the story, there is no point on repeating it, you all know who she really is and that she lied to us (and keeps doing it, unless she really thinks we will believe her tweet about “the bf preordered it” also stands for “the best friend preordered it”), you know why she is an issue, and why she needs to be removed and stripped from any position that has anything to do with speaking to us (put her as designer or whatever, anything else, just not this). She is simply in absolutely no place to represent any community she barely has had any exposure to before the kickstarter began, this isn’t exactly an entry level position open to anyone regardless of experience like flipping burgers at McDonalds, nor a strictly upper level position either that requires a ridiculous amount of skillsets and experience, it’s a relatively simple position but it does ask from you that you know how to do some basic stuff: deal with public relations and at the very least know the bare minimum about what the megaman franchise is all about as well as its history. It’s funny because there are people (that have actually been playing games before it was “in” and “cool”) who are not really die-hard fans of megaman nor even backed this project, but have played megaman games here and there, you know, megaman 1 / 2 / 3/, then some megaman x and x4 here and there, then maybe some of the handheld games and spinoffs and that’s it, they don’t really care that much about it besides being entertaining and solid games (I personally know people like that). And the fun part? That’s really all she needs to know, but she does not even have that.

But what about her skills? Okay she had a rocky landing but maybe she knows how to actually manage the community and has solid skills in public relations thus she can get away from this disaster? No.

This person has completely ravaged the community in her first day on the job, her twitch reaction (reason to remove her from this position alone) to this backslash was to DELETE TWEETS and LOCK HER TWITTER while IT WAS HAPPENING. Are we are aware of how incredibly stupid and amateurish this is? The very first thing to do under such a situation is accept the damage is done and there is no repairing it, and at this point it is simply better to remove the cause of the damage (her) and move on. But if that is not possible, then the least she could have done is accept it while raising her shoulders and show us that she has nothing to be ashamed off and nothing to lie about, this would at least give her some sense of credibility and respect, minimal as it is. This is all she had and she COMPLETELY BLEW IT AWAY; she destroyed the only thing that might have made her ride this out eventually in a completely dumb, irrational and reckless move fueled by panic and under the pretext of "seperating her personal life". And let me once again reiterate the entire ramifications of this dumb decision, anyone can now forge fake tweets and assuming they’re subtle enough they can be used to further drag her through the mud by passing them as “legit but she deleted it” and make people even more angry about her and even if she claims they are fake why would people believe her? Imagine her as a policeman and shooting herself on the foot the first day she is given a gun, this is what she did.

So okay very first dumb move, but what’s next? Maybe she can argue well enough her way out of this, maybe she is a very articulate and smart person and she can at the very least damage control enough to get her way out of this? Not even that. We all know she is trying to damage control, that is the only thing she can do in such a situation, but she’s not even good at it, it’s incredibly hilarious. “I meant my best friend, not boyfriend”, that’s right, she CONTINUES TO LIE even more thus rendering any further damage control like “I don’t have an agenda and I’m not even really a designer at Comcept guys it’s okay!” completely void in the eyes of people that don’t desperately want to believe her. Now this is where I post my original "big post" (you all know which one) with my fears and questions about her that many of us share. What did she do? She simply tried to rehash her answers and call it day, not even addressing 1/4 of the post. However I told her to properly address me as a lot of us agreed my original post was pretty much everything wrong with her right now, if she would have done at least that she could have proven herself or at least prove she can handle damage control on her own, you know, manage a community?. She failed miserably.

Now we all know the rest, she ignored me, didn’t show up for an entire day and then simply tried to focus on other cherry picked questions or tried to be “all silly xD” in a pathetic attempt to try to cool things down, she failed at that too, and in desperation I would assume she contacted her higher ups or someone else to help her, this person ended up being Mark. Now I have no problem with Mark and I believe that if he had been our CM day one to begin with, nothing would be happening right now, we would all be anxiously waiting for the next Call vote and getting excited on what is to come. The problem is this person tried to damage control for her, and don’t get me wrong it was a solid damage control even though I didn’t buy most of it, also this person has a really excellent way of “tranquilizing” people up and easing fears (even if they still exist and won’t go away totally), he is essentially the polar opposite to Ms Dina. Why wasn’t this person our CM to begin with? He has no controversy haunting him, or rather, we barely know anything about him which is exactly the way things should be, THAT is the kind of person you want holding such a position, absolutely not her. Now Ms Dina has lost even more respect because she has proven she can’t fend for herself but instead she has to rely on others to calm things down. Isn’t this redundant? Why does someone else have to come and do the job for her? Why is she here then and who thought it would be a good idea to pay a man to do the job for a person they also have to pay but fails miserably at her job? Just what in the hell is going on and who is behind such terrible business decisions? And on top of that she has the NERVE to state she is “tired from responding to questions” (excuse me?) and will take TWO DAYS TO REST (which came out horribly as “see ya on Monday folks, they don’t pay me weekends ;D”, dear god will the disaster ever end?). Please tell me this isn’t happening because I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Is she even aware on the position she finds herself in? She had ONE opportunity to shine and prove herself and she didn’t even try. And it seems her job must be safe enough due to her strong connections because she keeps very calm.

This is the person they thought we deserved as community manager, this person is a gigantic middle finger to all of us megaman fans, this is basically saying “this is what megaman fans and backers deserve as their voice”. This is a complete insult and under any functional company (and cronyism is the exact opposite of “functional”) this wouldn’t fly and it would have been dealt with practically from day one, let us be reminded of the fact plenty of people have lost their jobs because of what they said on twitter while representing a company at the same time, it is nothing unheard off, what is bad for business is bad for business, period, gender is also irrelevant here.

This is where cronyism is starting to become more evident. This person hasn’t been stripped from her position because she wasn’t picked by her qualifications, she has a safety net due to her connections at Comcept and firing her isn’t as easy because they wouldn’t be firing just another employee, but a friend (girlfriend?), thus making the situation way more awkward. It is clear her connections and job security are more important than our voice, and that is the reason behind this unnecessary, cringe worthy and blatant damage control and trying to force us to like her instead of simply putting her in a position where she has no contact with the community. That’s right, not even firing her completely, just don’t assume this person can hold a job where she speaks for us when she can’t even speak for herself, has no clue how to deal with the public and doesn’t know this fanbase in the slightest bit, and then assume we will just accept her after everything that has happened. Now I’ll let you know I am fully aware that her position isn’t anything big and is “entry level”, the problem is she has no business landing an “entry level” position at a project like this with absolutely no experience nor skills on public relations, besides the fact she apparently knows japanese and knows some guys. There are plenty of indie games and small business looking for fresh talent, there are plenty of places she can fit in, and she does have some artistic talent (though her selfinsert artstyle might be horrible, in my humble opinion), she clearly has a degree on art, it's just that not all entry positions are equal and your qualifications are important when taking into account the entire equation, and when you insert all the variables into said equation it spits out a negative number in Ms Dina’s case. I’m also aware there are a lot of people working on the industry that work on projects they don’t particularly have any passion for nor know a lot about, but their skills are so brilliant and required that it becomes irrelevant. The problem is Ms Dina has absolutely nothing backing her worth. Also there is a difference between forging a set of professional connections and contacts based on your experience because people want to redirect you to the right people so you can get the job you deserve based on your skills and want to lend you a hand, and blatant cronyism.

So far you probably noticed I have barely touched on the point of her being a designer. I am aware of the current damage control where she claims she is not a designer at Comcept and that she is not designing robots and won’t have any influence in the game. I’m sure she would be ignored in the meeting room and many of the talented artists working on the game with years of experience behind their backs would merely let out a sensible chuckle if she even dared to imply inserting any of her design choices influenced by her agenda or artstyle, so I really don’t have many fears regarding that. The problem is that now that we know she has zero training regarding public relations, does not belong on this community as the head of it, and can barely type more than a few mediocre damage control paragraphs a day then asks for someone else to do it, and she wasn’t hired for her artistic talent to work as designer then… what in the hell is she doing at Comcept? I just don’t get it.

If you’re still reading this then that means you really care, and I am proud of you because you actually care about the future of this game and the franchise. What follows next is my stance regarding Inafune, where my love for this franchise rises from (and thus my motivation to defend its future), my stance on the western and Japanese gaming industry, and why I wanted to back this project and will sadly be refunding my pledge in the near future.

I’ve always loved megaman since I was a child, I couldn’t afford many games growing up but my father would always give me a couple of games every year, one of the first games I remember playing was Megaman 1 on the NES, and the franchise has stuck with me since, I remember wondering myself as a kid how games were made and asking my father if megaman was a soldier for firing a “gun” and why was he blue instead of green, he explained to me that games were made in computers and that megaman was in fact a robot and not a soldier, and that he fought for everyone and not an specific country, that is what inspired me to get into programming, that mystery (which isn't such a mystery as a grown up) behind how games are made with computers and what robots are and how they are programmed. My father passed away when I was still a child, but the videogames stuck with me, and thanks to him I learned what my passion was, programming. I have a dear love for this franchise, and I’ve been with it since the beginning, played every game (except Xover, dear god) and have also taken every blown to this franchise and the way Capcom has mistreated it directly into my chest. The megaman franchise went to a cruel downfall after the ps1 era and never recovered, and might as well be dead now (but boy did I jump out of my chair when I saw megaman on Smash during E3).

And then this whole kickstarter happened and once again I had hope, hope that Mr Inafune would reboot the franchise I loved without capcom and give us another game with nothing getting on the way. It was perfect, the way he presented himself, the way he spoke, it was simply perfect and I immediately knew this would be amazing, I mean, how could it not? He promised us “Japanese game creators with extensive experience in the genre” and he wasn’t just bluffing: the man behind the level design back on the original megaman? The man behind a lot of the character designs on many capcom games back when they were good? The woman (that’s right, woman) behind the original soundtrack of the classic megaman games? Well damn, megaman fans all over the world exploded. What could go wrong really?

However I had a slight fear. I’ve been a fan of Mr Inafune for a while and I follow what he says regarding the industry, and there is something I really, REALLY disagree with him: he believes the Japanese industry is on decline and stagnation (which is not completely false, a lot of Japanese developers are stagnating) and that the future is in the western industry and Japanese developers should focus on making games that will sell more on the west (and we know how that usually ends up like, right, capcom?). I’m a fan of Japanese games mostly, because they’re essentially games in their purest form. There are no agendas, little drama involved, no rampant pandering to everyone at the same time so no one complains, no obsession with making movies instead of games, they’re games, and they are marketed to whoever buys them the most, period. The western industry has been plagued by these social justice issues recently, trying to pander everyone at the same time, and that has played a large role in the downfall of many western developers (Bioware comes to mind). Even though there are a lot of western games I enjoy from western developers (Witcher 3 looks to be my goty for 2014), mainstream western games are practically dead to me. So I’ve always preferred mostly Japanese console games and western (Europe mostly) pc games.

Obviously I feared Mr Inafune’s belief that the western model is superior to the Japanese one might affect the soul of this game, but with all these talented people from Japan, my fears were not that big. And then Ms Dina came along. Did Mr Inafune believe this is maybe what westerners would want? That he might want to adapt himself to the western industry if he was making a game funded mostly by westerners, and he decided “hiring” this person for the sake of equality would be what westerner megaman fans wanted to be represented by regardless of her qualifications? And maybe he honestly thought this was the right thing to do without fully knowing the damage it would cause? Did Mr Inafune’s affection for the west go too far, just as if a westerner moving to Japan because he believes it will be like an anime would quickly be in for a rude awakening? Maybe, or maybe not, but the motivation behind this horrible decision could very well be funded there partly on top of the fact Ms Dina had connections to begin with.

I know I’ve been rambling for a long time, a lot of you are probably thinking (Okay we get it, damn) but again: this is my last post so I wanted to let everyone interested enough in me (and I know I've unintentionally developed some sort of hero like cult on here and outside of this community) know everything that has been going on my mind, and I mean everything, because you will not hear from me anymore. Ultimately I am sad to announce I will be removing my pledge because I feel offended that this is what apparently megaman fans deserve as a representative, a person who can’t manage a community she doesn’t understands neither cares for beyond what her job requires her to pretend she does. My trust for Mr Inafune has also been greatly damaged. There is also the fact that I want to take no part in the drama that is being forged as we speak, everyone will try to feed off this issue to push agendas left and right, this is a disaster and it is clear the higher ups have decided Dina will stay. Well, then I must leave and take my pledge with me because she does not represent me, she is an awfully underqualified person who got her job because of cronyism abuse (and this along with nepotism are a gigantic political problem in my home country, I absolutely despise it, and I will not enable it) and is merely pretending to care about this fanbase, every time she posts I cringe, every time she brings forth her persona and tries hard to show how much of a “megaman fan” and “gamer” she is I die a little inside. I would feel terrible if I knew I helped enable this, and even though I already made the mistake of pledging, there is at least something I can do that speaks for itself more than this entire post: Remove my pledge. Mr Mark has let us known that there are no funding problems even after the current backlash, so it's not like I have deluded myself into thinking "Yeah, take that!" or believing that I will be delivering a catastrophic blow, or even change anything or hurt the project, it is merely but a message, a message from an angry and disappointed megaman fan. Interpret that message as you will.

Before I go I would also like to point out that in my opinion, for whatever it's worth, the user "alraz" (which so far is the only moderator which really made me question him) who was chosen as a moderator is incredibly underqualified for said task, and if this is the kind of person that makes a cut as moderator in these forums then I must sadly say that I believe the quality of this forum will be compromised. People like Mark (I assume he has moderating powers) are more in line to what a moderator (even community manager) should be. Just for future reference.

I wish the best of luck to everyone and I hope you see the game you want realized and hope you can ride this out without a lot of damage, you did not have to go through this, you don’t deserve it, you’ve already been through enough as a megaman fan and the only reason you’re being forced to deal with this disaster was because of someone who decided taking a shortcut to improve her resume was more important than the game you backed.

The megaman franchise will always live on my heart, and who knows? The game might actually turn out to be fine and this whole thing will calm down in a month or so. However I will not wait and see how it pans out, and should it go horribly wrong I don’t want to be a part of it, I’ve already seen the corpse of my beloved franchise burn to a crisp before my eyes and I don’t want to see it repeat again, I don’t want to just “wait it out” and hope for the best, especially when I gave money out of pure trust and that trust has been lost. It is clear the community won’t be listened to completely or when it comes to protecting some friend’s (girlfriend’s?) paycheck. So I have no business being a backer nor coming to these forums.

It's been a hell of a (annoyingly) long post hasn't it? I apologize if I went on too long or if it's hard to read, I've been programming for too long and eventually you forget how to type or structure your wording and arguments, I'm no English major. I also I felt I wanted to leave no open ends, and this was the result.

Rock on, everyone

Goodbye.