By now, everyone knows about the CLIQUE. Basically, it started as a group of people that liked to play Marathon. Because they weren’t completely satisfied with what they had, they started making new things and contributing to the community. Whether it was new maps, new game types, new scenarios, or whatever, they took it upon themselves to do whatever they could to make Marathon more fun to them. But now, several years have passed since the CLIQUE formed. So here’s my question, why has no new group surfaced?
There is no longer a bunch of new content being created for alephone, and that can’t be blamed on the lack of people playing the game. If we compare how many new files per month are now posted to Simplici7y, to how many were posted on Fileball per month a couple years ago, it has gone way down. But, the metastalker stats show that the number of games played per month is still going strong. So, where is the new content? Sure, we’ve had a few new things lately, Lua visual mode, some new maps by Ryoko, new gametypes, but those were all done by CLIQUE. Out of all the people playing on the metaserver today, why hasn’t a group of the less annoying people gotten together and started creating their own stuff? That is exactly how the CLIQUE formed in the first place. None of us knew each other before joining the AIM room to play games, and we formed a group because so many other people in the AIM room were annoying, or didn’t stick around very long. The metaserver today has the same problems the old AIM room had, and a minority of competent people still play games, so the situation seems exactly the same.
The major motivation for creating content is that you get to play maps, game types or whatever that you created yourself. Sick of the same old maps? Bad maps? Create your own! When I started playing alephone online, infinity stock maps were hosted more than anything else. They were really not very good, so better maps were created. What is so different now? Looking at the list of people that host the most these days, almost none of them make maps. This seems very strange to me.
Irons and I had a discussion about this a few days ago, and we threw out some ideas as to why this might be. Is it possible that there are enough good maps available these days, that we just don’t need any more? There are probably 5 or so high quality map packs out there that didn’t exist when I started playing. But it is just my opinion that these maps are good. It seems like a person just joining the community might have their own opinions about what is good, and then why wouldn’t they want to create their own maps to go along with that? The opinions of CLIQUE, as influential as they are, might suffocate newcomers’ desire to be creative, or maybe it’s just that the members of the CLIQUE are still active enough that no new people need to start making content. This may be true; Ryoko has been updating his Paradise Lost pack with new maps lately, and I released a few Lua game types. Even so, let’s face it: everyone likes to play his own stuff. Back when Irons was mapping, he’d host his own levels all the time. When Red Spectrum still needed playtesting and was not yet as widely-revered, Ryoko hosted it all the time. Mappers have always liked to show off their efforts, and that just doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Maybe there is a new group of people making content that I’m not aware of. I consider $lave to be sort of a “new generation” player that is making good stuff, but it seems like there should be more “new generation” players by now. Again, the presence of the CLIQUE might have affected events, $lave feeling that he is overshadowed by or on the periphery of the CLIQUE, and so he sees no point in breaking away from the established order. There’s a certain awareness in the Marathon community now that wasn’t yet established in the AIM chatroom days: Pfhorums and metaserver did not catch on until after the seeds of CLIQUE had been sown. Ryoko, Irons, Treellama, and I had no sense of the orders that already were in place, or we ignored it altogether, jumping on Pfhorums instead of taking the old route of community through the Story Board.
Among the other things Irons and I discussed, one of the strongest points was that a new forum (and community) launched at the same time that CLIQUE was in its infancy. We wondered if a similar event might allow a new group space to grow on their own board. Again, there is a counter-example, INFINITYS. On the surface, INFINITYS looks like a breakaway community that wishes to redefine some segment of Marathon. Several things are preventing anyone taking INFINITYS seriously (not the least of which is the higher-quality service provided by F.B.O. and Pfhorums), but one must remember that the creator of INFINITYS was banned from another community, unlike Appleswitch and the CLIQUE.
I know this blog doesn’t provide much opportunity for discussion, but I would really like to hear some thoughts on why this might be. If that doesn’t happen, I at least got to rant for a while.
