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Anarchy Online Gamer Responds
An anonymous reader writes "Thought some people might be interested in seeing a follow up on the NYT article about the Anarchy Online player. His reaction to it was less then supportive. You can read about what he had to say and what other players had to say." See the original story for background.
SO I have to come into work on friday night for a DB conversion. This story comes a long, and I go and read the original, but when I go to read the original NYT article, they want me to pay. I tried the PARTNER=google trick, but no dice. This sucks.
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This link really isn't fair. AO admittedly got off to a horrible start but I was amazed at the effort they put in to turn it around and the ability to make it suceed. I don't play anymore but this is now a first-rate game and has lasted alot longer then most people would have guessed when it was first released.
I would bet (and this is just a guess) that the amount of respect they pay to 'off the record' comments is directly related to the chance that they'll need quotes/interviews from you in the future.
Some guy who plays computer games likely has no off the record priviliges. On the other hand, someone like President Bush likely has all of the leeway that he could possibly want. It's simple economics really... they can afford to piss off the gamer.
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I was sent a C&D letter from MLB Properties last summer concerning my website and was subsequently interviewed by several different newspapers within a week or so. EVERY SINGLE ONE of them misquoted me. The most common error was paraphrasing something I said, but maybe not exactly the same, and then placing quote marks around it as if I had uttered those exact words. One New York paper even inserted grammatical errors into sentences I never spoke! The key thing is that I believe all of these reporters were composing stories from memory rather than tape. About a month after the initial wave of publicity, a reporter in the Philly area (Harrisburg?) named David Jones contacted me for an interview. The first thing I did was relate my previous misquotes and asked if he was using a tape recorder. He was, and he produced a very accurate and fair story. Sometimes what looks like malicious reporting could be nothing more than sloppiness.
OMG 1 KN0W T3H D34C0N B3TT3R TH@|v |-|3 KN0vv5 |-|1|v|53L|= B3CAUSE 1 @M T3|-| UBAR HACKAR TYPE D00D. come on guys, Please come to me for information. All the speculating is kinda funny and mostly wrong :p
Yeah, who the hell wouldn't be excited to be approached for an interview by the Times (this was BEFORE the jayson blair story broke btw)
While the guy was here, I played a bit of AO (please once more keep in mind that I work from my home office and a BIG perk of working at home is that while waiting for a customer to arrive, I can load up ao, grand theft auto, UT, watch a movie, etc and play during downtime. that's nothing to look down on, as I bet 99.9% of the human race wishes they could do the same. Please let's not kid ourselves here :D
I work for 9 hours a day with no lunch break, oh heavens forbid I play a game when I get a few seconds to catch my breath.
Oh yeah, regarding all the IT speculation stuff. Yes, I did not complete college, I went the cert route (net+, A+, MCP, etc etc etc). Back when I started out years ago, certs had a buttload more clout than they do now, which basically made college far less of an immediate concern.
These days, certs mean absolutely nothing. The tests are easy and everyone has them, so degrees are where it's at.....which is why I'm going back to school :p
Surely that's gotta make alot more sense now, right?
Yup, I didn't like the bankruptcy crap posted and yup I put down how much I (approximately) pulled in last year to counter attack the bankruptcy stuff. There's alot more to bankruptcy than "oh we didn't make any money", but I won't go into that here :D
You know what? Alot of shlashdotters just seem bitter to me. Many of you are so unhappy with your lives that you lash out at the nearest target in order to make yourselves feel better.
Last time I came here it was with the written form of a bag of nickels, busting everyone upside the head with the poorest grammar and most ghetto talk. Was that the real me? I'm much more calm now. Is this the real me? Ingame I talk about putting women's feet in my mouth (which is just so off the wall that you gotta laugh...OMG TEH FOOTNESS!) is that the real me?
The Times says I'm this depressed, lonely anti-social individual that withdrew from society to play AO.....buuuuut, I still hold down a job, have a wife and an active social life. Is that the real me?
You base your opinions on one facet of a person's personality instead of looking at the bigger picture. Really, for those speculating on who I am or what I'm like, get your heads out of your butts and think for yourself.
Has anyone even thought about contacting me instead of guessing? I mean um, wouldn't that be the logical thing to do? Not flaming here, but really....think about it :p
Meh, this is kinda cool actually. The Times article itself sucked major goat balls, but here I am getting flamed on slashdot (this site seems popular....how the fekk have i never heard of it? Oh..."news for nerds" :D j/k of course).
Heh, I think when it all comes down to it, I'm just a guy like everyone else. Nothing too spectacular, except for my enormous penis....really, it's enormous....stop laughing.
The Times is out there to sell newspapers. Im sure when the guy got here, he was expecting me to suck on severed feet and spank off to foot fetish videos. When he saw a working guy with a wife that likes to go out and party and doesn't really even have a foot fetish, he was probably pretty damn disappointed.
So he made some shit up, exaggerated, released info he overheard my wife and I talking about, etc.
Someone could actually do a story on him. The entire time he was here, he was sweating his AO game. "I really wish I could log in AO" times like a million. I finally got tired of his crying about Anarchy Online and let him log into his char from my comp.
Heh, from what he told me, the article was delayed a bit because......well, he did nothing but play AO....a
What could drive a reporter to shun their supposed "objectivity" and engage in such social denigration? Was it just making the NYT reader feel good about themselves? "Big" Schiesel appears to have been irked by Thedeacon's interpersonal power in AO, perhaps because a powerful in-game community standing is something which those in the physical world may never attain.
This lack of respect toward emerging cultures and communities is a sign of the irrelevance of the media establishment. A reporter would not be able to get very far with this kind of twisted prejudice toward any given creed, race, or religion. Schiesel's blunt attack on a person who merely loves a new form of expression cannot hide behind the thin moniker of journalism, a profession which the NYT has nearly defined (and certainly destroyed).
- JML
Having had same thing happen to me (in a book, libeling me, etc...) "rape" is the perfect word for the feeling. No one is saying it's the same as physical rape -- the legal punishments are totally different, for one thing. But the _feeling_ was that I was totally powerless, ruined, damaged, ashamed, unworthy of self respect and contunially subject to someone who could to run over my life with a steamroller; like someone had bent me over and rammed me against my will, and they kept on doing it, over and over. That's really how it feels.