As I’m the one who called the truce that spawned this ridiculous conspiracy theory thread, I’ll go ahead and address the issues for you all.
1. Yes, we all know each other. When the game was created, invites were sent to seven people. One of which was out of town and declined to play, leaving us with an empty spot. That spot was filled by our good friend doktur conkur. For those of you that didn’t just realize what that means, seven of the eight people in this game know each other, or are at least loosely affiliated (I know that a few of the guys do not know each other personally, but all have mutual friends). 90% of the time, we play amongst each other only, but every now and then we get a random or two in a game by accident. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that we all truced against the “outside player”, but when I called the truce, the dok had 180 men to my 60, and was chatting away like a happy little school girl. In hindsight, a 3 round truce was extreme overkill, but in reality, the truce lasted one round at the most, so that’s not really an issue. Also, if the admins think that we should start playing private games, then we’ll start doing so. That’s a non-issue as far as I’m concerned.
2. If you look at our old games, you’ll see that we are constantly screwing each other, mainly b/c we think it’s funny. To be 100% honest with all of you, I’d rather the outsider win the game if it enabled me to somehow piss off one of my friends. This is a game, meant to provide enjoyment, and angering a friend is 1000 times more enjoyable for me (and everyone else in this “group”) than winning a couple of points and upgrading my ranking. Hell, I’ll probably grow tired of this game in a couple of months and forget all about it, but for now I’m enjoying it and spending a lot (probably too much) of my down time dicking around on this site.
3. Now that we’re all clear on the fact that we’re all at least semi-acquainted and probably a bunch of smartasses, let’s get to the supposed cheating. The idea that we’d play as a gang in order to harvest points from unsuspecting “outsiders” is (for lack of a better word) just stupid. Not because it’s impossible, not because it’s immoral, not because it’s unethical. It’s stupid because this is an online strategy video game with no prize for winning. If you think that we’d intentionally cheat in order to gain clout or status in the online gaming community, then you’ve misjudged us to say the least. This is not a conspiracy, so I suggest that you guys all take a deep breath, take the aluminum foil off of your heads, and go outside and get some sun and fresh air. Please go look at my gaming history. If I was really trying to boost my ratings do you think I’d play in so many speed games against people with way better ratings? Furthermore, if you really look, I’ve got more than a few speed games where I was unable to finish. The reasons for not finishing vary, but they all revolve around having other things to do and not being able to sit in front of a computer for several hours at a time. If a game goes too long and I need to leave, then I leave. Would I really be doing that if my ultimate goal was to become the supreme conqueror of the virtual Risk universe? The same line of reasoning can be applied to the rest of the “group.” If our goal was to play as a team to gain rank, wouldn’t we probably all have a lot better rankings?
4. Now let’s get the bigotry accusations, b/c that’s really the only thing in all of this that is even worthy of being addressed. If you look at the chat log, the dok did not initiate the name calling, but his immediate response to it reads as follows:
2011-05-24 02:35:02 - doktur_conkur: gayboat?
2011-05-24 02:35:15 - doktur_conkur: wtf kinda place is this?
2011-05-24 02:35:17 - doktur_conkur: xD
2011-05-24 02:39:12 - doktur_conkur: i don't see pink agreeing to anything
2011-05-24 02:39:54 - doktur_conkur: i just see him fucking up his chances royally to play patsy-roadblock for his buddy
2011-05-24 02:40:24 - doktur_conkur: that'd be you, cyan
2011-05-24 02:40:26 - doktur_conkur: ya gayboat
2011-05-24 02:42:02 - doktur_conkur: Blue & Yellow: it seems we have a gang of rabid chihuahuas scavenging for group gain; we should prolly band together
2011-05-24 02:44:43 - doktur_conkur: you're all getting bad, bad ratings you bad, bad boys
2011-05-24 02:45:34 - doktur_conkur: go ahead Pink: lean into cyan down there, he's a house of cards
2011-05-24 02:45:58 - doktur_conkur: show your master how you can flex
2011-05-24 02:46:34 - doktur_conkur: i'm assuming cyan's the alphamale what with breaking the decency barrier first
2011-05-24 02:46:41 - doktur_conkur:
2011-05-24 02:48:54 - doktur_conkur: all joking aside, you're just going to rape eachother's backsides as soon as you cut into me...and with no developed bonus regions so be careful how you swing your numbers
2011-05-24 02:58:35 - doktur_conkur: after thinking about it for a bit... playing games together and then trucing is bad faith... it's an obvious ploy to keep point between your inner group
2011-05-24 02:59:29 - doktur_conkur: while takin gadvantage of any that cross your path
Now I have to be honest, I don’t know what half of that crap means (“xP” for example is totally foreign to me), but I do recognize him calling someone a “patsy”, a “gayboat”, and a “gang of rabid chihuahaus” while I think he referred to himself as our “master” (he could have been calling someone else “master”, but I’m not fluent in online chat shorthand, so I could be wrong in this assertion). Even though the dok himself was calling names here, I think it was all meant as good-humored banter , as was his comment of “you're all getting bad, bad ratings you bad, bad boys
.” So all in all, I’d say that the dok wasn’t really mad about his situation in the beginning. It was only after he fell behind and people started responding to him that he got upset and threw his little hissy-fit. He later goes on to call us “douche bags”, “dipshits” and (my personal favorite) “frat boys” and then starts saying that we’re bigots and somehow trying to oppress him.
I should also point out that the dok claims to be an actual homosexual, which is totally fine if true. But I have a couple of points that I’d like to make on the matter: 1) He didn’t seem to mind the “gayboat” comments at first, as a matter of fact he took part in them rather whimsically and 2) He didn’t “come out” so to speak, until arkansania claimed to be gay in this very thread. While I don’t know whether or not the dok is really gay (and don’t care one bit), if he’s not and is just pandering to the admins, I think he’s playing a very juvenile game. Accusations of bigotry are not in any way funny, and they shouldn’t be thrown around lightly and in this case, I think that they are totally unfounded. Also, if he’s not gay, and is just stealing arkansania’s shtick, then I think he should be flogged in public for not coming with some original material. Be gay or don’t be gay, but for God’s sake, at least be original.
5. And now for a bit of social commentary on this whole messy affair. To everyone who has weighed in on this matter, my friends included: This is an online strategy game and should be treated as such. There’s nothing at stake here AT ALL, other than mythical points on a board on the internet. If you take it so seriously that you’re going to spend countless hours chatting, complaining, arguing, and crying about things that you don’t like, then you should delete your account immediately, go outside and get yourself some fresh air. More to the point, you should probably go get yourself laid, be it with a male, female, gimp, frat boy, or farm animal (don’t forget, we’re from Arkansas). Too much tension is unhealthy and some of you people need to blow off some steam asap before you find yourselves at the top of a bell-tower.
To the doktur, I’d like to say that you need to calm way the hell down and learn to take things a little less seriously. In the grand scheme of things, you’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. You’ve put a lot of time and effort raising a stink about a video game that you play with total strangers. You don’t like that we all actually know each other and you think that we’re out to steal your points and give you a bad rating. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t care about my rating or my points one bit. If the admins want to drop me to zero, I really won’t bat an eye. You, on the other hand, seem borderline obsessed with your Conquer Club status. If that’s what really gets you through the day, so be it, but I think you’d be better suited putting all this effort into a hobby or something with an actual pay off. Judging from your comments, I suspect that you’re pretty young, and you get picked on at school quite a bit. I’ll tell you now that if you handle yourself in real life like you’ve handled yourself on this site, life’s not going to do anything but get a whole lot harder. I think you need to learn to relax, lay off the video games, and go make yourself some real life friends. And most importantly, stop using all those damn emoticons
Hope that cleared things up.
-bhoward (your friendly neighborhood frat boy)