Well, I've always been the sort of 'good old days' kind of guy, when this forum and its members were more, how do you say, tight-knit, and threads seemed to be more interesting, and so did the replies.
Nowadays, everything has gone more and more...average on this site. Threads, at least by their titles, don't really interest me as much as they used to (though there are a few), and there are so many members that there's really no one to remember in the future because of the mass.
But either way, I don't degrade any new members. I've even seen some who have been here for a while who I'd much rather degrade than a new-comer. It doesn't matter whether they come from Facebook, through Zynga's assistance, or not, rather, it's all about the content.
And by content, I mean that they should try to fit in, not announce that "I came from Facebook, yay!".
I mean, if they wouldn't do that, how would we even know that they came due to MM?
And another thing. The fact that there are literally thousands of members who only come to this site to register and vote on the MM poll, now that's bullshit. New members are nice and all, but just to help win Zynga against all the other amazing developers it's gone against...that's just wrong, and I'm not really fond of the competition, and how the developers advertise this competition.
I always thought of MM as more of a quality-determiner, emphasis on the past form of 'thinking', which is 'thought'. Let Escapists, who've come to this site, out of their love for videogames, have a fun, little competition, vote who's the best game developer. When a company who fishes in gullible non-gamers with primitive games with no real memorable qualities, and attaches itself to one of the most popular social networking places on the 'net, and also advertises their game on the front page before you enter that application, then the competition has firmly changed from 'fun poll', to 'popularity contest', which also infuriates much of the current userbase of this site.
Also, we all already know Zynga will win, and what is the fun in a competition where you already know the outcome? It's pointless. It's cheating, that you can, in a matter of minutes, log in, vote, and then leave the site forever. Is this really what the staff wants?
The moment Zynga won against Square Enix (which was, also, the first competition I voted on), then I thought 'why the hell doesn't voting on this poll require a certain number of posts?'. And not like a lot, even 15 would be nice. Anything but this.
MimsySnark said:
Life is too short to get worked up over a silly little contest that has no real life impact, and is just meant to be a fun activity for us at the escapist.
Ah, but doesn't this sentence contradict what your previous one told us? I'd specifically like to turn attention to the last few words, 'at the Escapist'.
First of all, this activity isn't fun. We know Zynga will win because they advertise it on the site, and that is not fun at all.
And second, 'for us'? 'At the Escapist'? Majority of the 10,000+ voters at Zynga aren't 'on the Escapist'. The phrase, to me, constitutes a willingness to stay. A wanting to join the community, and participate in its activities. Voting on one poll, and then leaving, isn't really that. It's more like visiting someone's home, and then pissing on their porch briefly before leaving (where the inhabitants of the home are us, members of the Escapist, the porch is this poll, and the pissing is symbolized the fact that many users are against Zynga/the advertising/that they're winning so easily, and the leaving is...well, leaving).
