3. regarding the tone of the community over the last couple days

regarding the tone of the community over the last couple days


  • I'm just really tired. Tonight it was just more of the same. Hopefully the new channel does some good, but I think it is a bit late for me. As you can see from his screenshot, steeler came home from vacation only to catch up on all the sludge being thrown around, and was upset. Tedivm decides to interpret that as a sign that the thunderkittens are indeed the most terrible alliance, just as he has been saying all along. We are getting attacked by it seems like every alliance in the game. That could actually be a really fun event under normal circumstances, but it is getting hard to differentiate between those that are strategic moves and those that are done because people resent us.

    On the social aspect, there is just no way for me to compete. Tedivm is an admin on slack. He seems to be the ringleader of the biggest alliance in the game. He has a ton of influence. He is going to get what he wants eventually, which seems to be for me to leave the game. All for having the audacity to challenge one of his alliance members. I have to worry about everything I do now ending up as a negative consequence for my alliance. I log into the game and I'm getting messages like this from random people I've never interacted with sending me caustic messages.http://imgur.com/a/2rTWp 

    I'm not interested in defending myself anymore, and I don't have a thick enough skin to continue in the community under the circumstances. The community was easily half of my enjoyment of the game, and it just doesn't seem like a welcoming place anymore. 

    Please don't attack my alliance over something they didn't really have any control over. Just attack my rooms.


  • I kindly ask for closing this conversation here as it is. I don't see anything good going out of this.


  • *OPINION PIECE*

    For what it’s worth...

    I joined ThunderKittens about 2 days before the war broke out. My history with any given individual member of TK extends no further back than 1 week as of today. I have no deep ingrained loyalties to these guys, but have been in the privileged position of experiencing the alliance chat and being involved with them over the last week as the war has unfolded.

    I understand this is a high emotion scenario for some. However to those who have been very publicly negative about the personalities of the TK members, accusing them of trolling, bullying, being hateful people and/or generally being miscreants, you are plain wrong... (Well, except for the miscreant part).

    The chat in the alliance for the entirety of the week has been largely focused around how to have a fun war with other players of this RTS. Bonsai went to quite some effort to attempt to have a respectful war where opponents could have fun during the proceedings, whilst maintaining that this is an RTS and wars / combat and other such things should be expected as part of the game and no player should necessarily get a carte blanche exclusion just 'because'. At numerous times he went out of his way to try and negotiate temporary cease fires so that people could resolve issues in their personal lives. He made an active effort to try and involve the community and his opponents in the proceedings on slack.

    A lot of unconstructive things have been said in the heat of the moment over the last few days and parties from both sides are guilty of this. Repetitively regurgitating these things publicly, out of context, to others in community only ever leads to more negativity and misunderstanding. People need to stop that.

    It’s a real shame. It could have been a beautiful experience. When The Culture declared war on TK. The alliance / sun chat was filled with overly excited comments of people eager to see the battles, political events and adaptations in code that would emerge from the scenario and enjoy a brawl with friendly opponents.

    Unfortunately it turned toxic and continued to spiral day after day with both sides saying things in the heat of the moment that should not have been said. In that, no one person is to blame. I really hope the community can heal and that TK can enjoy friendly wars with others in the future and that Bonsai will come back one day.

    TL;DR... Bonzai / SteeleR / the others in TK are great guys and only wanted to enjoy a good war in this RTS we enjoy so much. If you believe otherwise then you are mistaken.



  • Thank you so much for your addendum trebbettes. And thank you everyone for your messages of support on slack and in the game, it truly made my day. It turned out it was a really good thing to get some distance from this, for my own wellbeing. I slept on it before I fully went through with it, so it wasn't made in the heat of the moment. The night earlier I had a squads of creeps headed toward enemy rooms and I couldn't help but think that it would just be seen as lashing out, adding more fuel to the flames. Worse than that, I was worried that it had become true. The game in that context loses all the charm it holds over me, and turns from an edifying experience to a fatiguing one.

    I have just as much responsibility for how it turned out as anyone else. But I've also learned a lot, and perhaps I've grown up a bit. 

    I haven't given up on screeps, it is still a great game. I've moved over to the west side of the map to be at peace for a while, perhaps downgrading my account to 10 cpu after I can get a room to rcl8. I'm going to work towards open sourcing my code base and just refining things peacefully. I wish everyone a good time over the holidays, and a good time in screeps.

    And maybe someday I'll reactivate my account and the screeps world will once again know the fury of bonzai! (the good kind 🙂 )


  • Bonzai 4 president