Hello all,
I am writing this post with mixed feelings, but with irreversible conviction in my decision to leave the game and the broader Particracy community. My resignation, as it were, will happen gradually as I look to publish everything in my draft folder, and will likely occur in earnest around the end of this month. I will be leaving the Particracy discord immediately.
Quickly, I'd like to thank many of you with whom I have had positive, enjoyable and substantive OOC conversations and RP collaborations with. Particularly I'd like to thank Pandowlpaws and Zhongxian/Ryouta, two players which have been essential to both my personal enjoyment of the game and who are always fun to talk with. Strangely, I also feel compelled to thank the game itself for providing a creative outlet for me, as well as opportunities to expand my knowledge on a variety of topics.
I want to congratulate Wouter and the broader community on the test release of the new Particracy. I will likely continue to play it from time to time, though with no where near the same level of involvement as I have had with Classic. Simply, this is because they are two different games: Classic is a roleplaying game while the new Particracy is a strategy game. There is nothing wrong with this difference, though I was drawn to Classic because of what it is.
Classic, however, has flatlined and my interest in it is at an all-time low. Particracy is like the land where time stands still, both in terms of that which is obvious (interface, etc.) and in the sense that meaningful reform, development and evolution is nearly impossible. Either worthwhile reforms are not implemented and result in pages and pages of unnecessary debate, or changes are made very quickly, which almost always results in more issues than they solve. Prior to my resignation from the GRC on 01/11/2018, I wrote a list of recommended changes to make the organization more viable and better organized. Nearly every member of the GRC at the time (to my memory, as the post was private) agreed that at least one of my recommendations should be implemented, and yet nothing has changed. Now, perhaps my changes were bad: nonetheless, I think this point illustrates that even with a broad consensus of moderator/GRC/community support, nothing changes. Blatantly, interest has shifted: Wouter Lievens has stated on Discord that "[he prefers] to make no significant changes to Classic," (14/11/2018), and moderators have put forward some RP changes, but are focused on assisting with the development of Alpha more than anything else.
Now, on the topic of the community I must air a few grievances which I'm sure may alienate me, but nonetheless, have continued to bother me. I don't think there is a single person here that would dispute the very simple fact that Particracy's community is toxic. I would also go as far as to say that it is unsafe. There are a large number of open secrets in this community. One example springs to mind specifically for me: the one player in his late 20s who attempted to solicit a player in his early teens to send him explicit images through Discord. I'm not going to disclose their identities, but most players know who I am talking about.
In my conversations on Discord, I have been quite transparent about my personal life, including my racial identity. On a number of occasions, I have received messages in which players feel that it is acceptable to directly use blatantly racist slurs against me, particularly early in my involvement with the game. Whether it was one time on 19/01/2018 when a certain player called me a "wannabe chink," and "squint eye," or one other message I received on 05/03/2018, in which another different player called me a "gook," which is of course very specific to my Korean ancestry. I allowed these messages to go unreported because not only was I desensitized to racism to a certain extent, but because I felt a pressure to let it slide, so as to fit in (the first message was sent by someone who, at the time, was a prominent member of the community). Of course, since then I have become far more vocal in my denunciations of racism and other forms of discrimination on the Discord server. However, I have often been irritated by how frequently these protests go unanswered. In their desire to prevent criticism, the moderators and the administration of this game have often looked the other way, or put someone with a history of such actions into a temporary Discord timeout/ban, only for them to return to the exact same sort of activities which got them placed there in the first place. The widespread ambivalence toward discrimination here has led to myself and another player trying to maintain a poll of the times that players mention his Jewish ancestry unsolicited: we lost count.
In conclusion, Particracy is like a bad relationship. You get a marginal level of joy with her, but it doesn't out-shadow the fact that she calls you a chink, is unable/unwilling to grow and solicits children behind your back. I truly wished that if I ever left this game and community, it would be a happy conclusion, but that isn't the case. Until next time.
WuHán.