Journalism Interview: Masterdan

Masterdan: When I first joined BYOND I was about 15 years old and very enthusiastic about game creation engines such as RPGmaker and Graal Online, I also had a hidden obsession with Dragonball (which is unusual, since I didn't really like anime.). When my friend Tye told me to come join a Dragonball online game on a site called BYOND I was thrilled. Basically I came to BYOND to play Dragonball Zeta, which in retrospect seems crazy to me as I have come to really dislike the repetitive nature of the game and the lack of real gameplay depth, but at the time I was completely hooked and I was thrilled that there was a game making engine capable of making online 2d games.

Masterdan: The potential, damnit. I see an engine that has grown to incorporate all sorts of fantastic ideas such as customizable GUI, OpenGL based transparency effects and SQL support and I can't help but wait eagerly to see what the community will do, how it will react and how the games will improve. I've only been marginally disappointed with the results, there have been some really interesting projects and I am enjoying watching new games and demos come out. Still, I seem to always be expecting more and that keeps me around. I want some catalyst to be introduced, maybe some influx of bright eyed and highly motivated developers. Also, I really enjoy debating game design philosophies and I think BYOND is a great place for heated debates!

Masterdan: I always start a game with the idea that it is going to be something very simple and interesting, like a proof of concept. I started GOA just to play with a projectile system, however the BYOND community has one really impressive quality (most people like to focus on the negatives), the BYOND community is very excitable and the people who played my game were very enthusiastic and brought a lot of motivation my way. My motives weren't always pure though, I had some major gripes with the poor practices that games such as Zeta (after it had been mutilated by Raekwon) and NBOTLS had, such as the pbag/log training systems and the lack of balance. These pet peeves really motivated me to demonstrate better gameplay ideas in some naive attempt to show everybody the error of their ways and bring up the quality of BYOND in general (and improve our reputation!).

Masterdan: You'll have to excuse me a bit on this, I haven't really been a consistent consumer of BYOND games in years but I will tell you which games I find the most interesting:

Anime: Dragonball Online 2 While I had some real conflicts with Pmitch over the project management, I always respected the quality of his graphic work (but I didn't respect the programming capacity of some of his previous co-owners), now the DBO2 team appears to be healthy and competent, the engine is looking very potent. I will watch DBO2 very closely to be sure to give somebody hell if I ever see the gameplay reduced to punching bags and meditating.

Roleplaying: Cowed, not because it is original (it's a CowRP rip, and I mention it instead of the original because Cowed is still improving while CowRP is not.) and not because it has good graphics or interesting programming either. I like Cowed (and CowRP) because it's the only game in the roleplaying guild which hasn't been reduced to a grindfest. I love being able to join a roleplaying game and have a focus on your role and some community driven story instead of investing 5 hours a day on killing monsters. I never really liked JRPGs, and a great deal of the roleplaying guild falls into that category.

Action: This is the guild that contains all of the games that have all the BYOND critical acclaim, and yet I cant think of a single game on it that I actually have ever played more than once. There are lots of great, well programmed and well presented games here.. If I had to pick one It would be murder mansion.

Casual: Mafia!

Strategy: Ill give Ultimatum credit for being well presented.. but I don't care for the gameplay at all. There are a few games in strategy that looked interesting that I never tried (ie Solar Conquest), but.. nothing really stands out as something I've really been a huge fan of.

Masterdan: The idea behind the anime game demo was to give the programming illiterate something more ethical to use for their games (wean them off stealing for gods sake) and to try to get the community involved in an open source demo for people to learn from. I wanted to get the great artists on BYOND's pixel guild to get involved with making a free to use graphic set and to promote a more positive attitude on open source. The biggest mistake was that the demo was rushed out the door and contained several runtime errors and a few bad practices. The first alpha release of the demo was met with a lot of hostility for these issues (I had hoped it would be met with constructive tips instead) and for that reason I lost interest in the premise. I see the merit in correcting mistakes or bad practice, I do not see the merit in discouraging collaboration however. Would I work on it more? No, but not because of the criticism, I really don't have time to work on side projects and if I had free time I would be a) sleeping and b) updating GOA.

Masterdan: I think things have improved, markedly. However it is important to remember that Guild Master is a figurehead position, sure I could make changes but It was the fact that several people (most of which didn't even like me) took me up on my offer to help improve the guild, and through cooperation with several game judges and moderators we were able to effectively debate important issues and implement new regulations that set a higher bar for the Anime guild. When we started on the guild, an actual problem that we faced was that the guild was full. Yeah there is a limit, I think it was 1000 hubs? Over the course of a month (and with Tom/Lummox's help with clearing out old entries) new policies were implemented with a surprising lack of bias and immaturity, the guild lost the vast majority of rips in a very short period of time. The excuse that the prior guild master used, that the anime guild was far too large to implement standards, was proven to be wrong. I'm very happy with how that worked, and I'm very happy that the guild is now effectively run by volunteers and not by a single dictator.

Masterdan: I was working on an RPG once, project gaia. It was planned as a turnbased sideview rpg with a very strong faction focus (think FFIV with the ability to found/capture towns and castles.). The project didn't work out because I lost motivation, probably because the community doesn't have the same enthusiasm for fantasty rpg games as they do anime games. Its unfortunate but it is almost like market forces dictate supply, even with game design.

Masterdan: There is one reason why the GOA leak upsets me, and that is because I really wanted GOA to be a good role model to the BYOND anime community. I don't think it impacts those who play GOA though, nobody who would work on a rip has the capabilities to actually improve on the original product, it isn't a competitive issue its an issue of wanting to show people that source leaks aren't inevitable. The development course of GOA will not change (I promise) based on the leak, in fact the leak might be a minor motivator for me to release a significant update sooner (it would make the old version leaks outdated).

Masterdan: Lets just say that if I did update, I would want to make it more than a series of bug fixes and balance tweaks. I cant tell you specifics because I don't know when ill have time to do the update in the first place, but If I did a major update it would include new clans with varied gameplay mechanics.

Masterdan: I am sympathetic to people who are fans of my old projects, but honestly I have spent the time to give hosting files to several different people and all that ends up happening is a server is hosted for a month where only 2 people are online, and frankly I can't say that I want to keep trying to bring back an outdated and clearly dead project.

Masterdan: Its old, that's the first thing I would say. Project Gaia is not in development and I know I talked about it earlier. There were public tests, and the graphics were pretty good.

Masterdan: Oh absolutely not, I knew I had areas of the source code that could use streamlining and the ideal way of improving those snippets are always things I have been aware of. The only actual criticism that I read was a piece of code in which I used a for statement for all clients in the world that were logged in to characters, instead of having a list that keeps track of clients of that sort which is populated during the log in. It was a good suggestion in my mind, and something I didn't do only because I was too lazy to do it. I am sure there are a few similar examples, things that certainly aren't going to hurt my feelings.

Masterdan: Im a fairly social person and I like to go out to bars, events, concerts. Sometimes when I get a little worn out I become more introverted and play a few rounds of Starcraft 2 (when the beta comes back up, damnit). I have recently become a bit of a workaholic, its sort of the natural consequence of articling as an accountant and for that reason my personal life has been devoid of things like hobbies.

Masterdan: Well, I was in early grade 10 when I found BYOND and when I think back before then I guess I was doing things like riding my bike and being afraid of girls. I was a kid, I played a lot of video games and was pretty interested in things like programming and web-design (things I no longer hold much of an interest in).

Masterdan: BYOND never had a direct impact on my life, I would still be working at the same job and I would have the same friends. I think BYOND was more of a private creative outlet for my ideas. In terms of how I would be occupying my extra free time? Maybe I would have learned to play the guitar or something, heck that would be awesome.

Masterdan: I'm in public audit with a big four accounting firm, basically I review the financial statements of private and public companies. It is a process known as articling, where we require a certain amount of hours of work in public practice. At the same time I have to do correspondence school for my accounting designation which is currently what I should be working on instead of answering these questions! Woops. Regardless, nobody is too interested in accounting.

Masterdan: Already answered this, I think

Masterdan: I think I answered this one, too!

Masterdan: Nope, anybody with a long term memory knows that BYONDs game quality has been steadily increasing these last 5-8 years. When I think of the game selection and the quality of the graphic art and programming back in 2002, ugh. I know everybody likes to be nostalgic but try the wayback machine website and check BYOND out 5 years ago and see if the game selection improves.

Masterdan: There needs to be more open source projects, a community created resource pack for new developers (basic icons, game environment demos). BYOND also needs to reach a larger audience, Tom has an interesting idea with allowing BYOND games to convert into flash, but I would be more interested in BYOND games being compiled to work in HTML5 so that iPhone apps could also be created using the BYOND suite (though not sold on the app store, damn you steve jobs!).

Masterdan: The bad moderation. Its never been good and it is too touchy of an area for Tom and Lummox to challenge so it wont be fixed. The BYOND software is awesome! I wouldn't take away qualities from it, I would just add more things.

Masterdan: Ian Peregrine. I like that his games are released often, with a concise and consistent game design philosophy and style. None of his games appeal to a mass audience but I give him lots of credit for making high quality projects despite having only modest popularity.

Masterdan: I just love Starcraft 2, I also love Napoleon Total War and Sim City 3000. Oh, and Cortex Command, I am a little bit obsessed with that game.

Masterdan: Its okay, but I feel like BYOND has invested its time too much into making an active socializing network of its website and has attracted a disproportionate amount of people into BYOND that neither play the games nor develop them. It's bizarre and not really ideal at all. It would be nice if the focus would shift more towards support of DM and of people's projects. Instead of making the site revolve around people and their half baked opinions and outbursts, the site should focus around projects and facilitate the flow of ideas, collaboration and even match up developers with different strengths (graphic art and programming) in an effective way to get the ball rolling.

Masterdan: I have a real pet peeve with anybody who believes in Ayn Rand's philosophies about being self centered and hating the poor. I am not religious at all, but I have a very strong belief in the value of altruism and not thinking the world revolves around you (ie modesty). I don't like arrogant people, I don't like libertarians, I don't like the far right (or left for that matter). And what's more, Silkwizard really conveys a message about him being a hollywood bigshot, which somehow allows him to embody all of the most annoying qualities of a stereotypical left wing LA wanker with all of the worst qualities of a stereotypical right wing libertarian nutjob. The result is terrifyingly obnoxious and I might even be allergic to it.

Masterdan: I am not in school anymore so grades are kind of irrelevant now (but I graduated!), and women.. I don't know why I ever took credit for being especially good with women. I'm probably moderate at dealing with women, and a little too much of a coward to really capitalize on the strengths that I do have.

Masterdan: Two things you never want to do at the same time, 1) say something stupid, 2) say something easy to remember. That'll be my advice to you. What other BYOND memes are there?