As I already notified several people a few days ago, I've decided to take an extended break from NationStates. To those who have been wondering, my aunt has had a rough time in the hospital -- this is her second time in the hospital in the past few months -- but she seems to be on the upswing and things are looking like they'll be okay. Nonetheless, these difficult days have made me realize how short life really is and how important it is to actually live it. It's time to put a stop to spending way too many hours on NationStates and start spending those hours on living. So that's why I'm taking a long break. I'm not calling it retirement, because it isn't really, but I intend to be around much less, and the time I do spend here I intend to spend in a casual, social way. For a while -- weeks, months maybe -- I'm going to make a relatively clean break and not be around at all, so I don't fall back into old habits of sinking huge chunks of my time into NationStates.
That said, this isn't a resignation of citizenship in Osiris or anywhere else. I may still be around enough to keep my citizenship. If I'm not, my citizenship will lapse naturally, and that's okay. I do want everyone to know, though, that this isn't a ragequit. Nothing happened in NationStates that led me to make this decision. It's nothing against Osiris or any other community I'm in.
But on my way out, I do want to address a general issue that has become a real problem in NationStates, an issue that really dragged me down during my term as Pharaoh and that has negatively affected plenty of other people in even worse ways. That issue is the toxicity of the NationStates community. That toxicity isn't exclusive to Osiris; in fact, this community now does better in regard to toxicity than many communities, and I'm very proud of that. When Osiris is impacted by OOC toxicity, it is usually because we have to deal with stress and pressure from outside. So just know that in what I'm about to say, I'm not really speaking to Osiris, but using this medium to speak to the broader NationStates community.
In a game that is as social as NationStates, there is always going to be a degree of OOC conflict, and some of that is going to go too far. That has always been the case. And yet veteran players -- those who have been around since 2012, like I have, as well as players who have been around even longer -- will agree with me when I say that the toxicity has reached levels unlike anything in the past. To be sure, there have been extremely toxic incidents in the past, and sometimes prolonged incidents. But this isn't just about incidents. This is about a culture of toxicity. This is about toxicity itself becoming some sick subset of "gameplay." This is about people who get off on harassing and seriously trolling other people, people who wear delete-on-sight designations and posting gore spam as badges of honor, people who make false accusations of harassment and other serious OOC offenses for gameplay gain, and more than anything else, it's about people who think it's acceptable or even cool to indulge and enable those people.
And much of this is about gameplay itself. Most of us know deep down that gameplay isn't even a shadow of what it once was; the days when it was even a shadow are long behind us. For many gameplayers, gameplay is now just going through the motions and doing what's familiar. It isn't exciting, and for some -- more than you would think -- it isn't even fun anymore. With no technical change on the horizon to improve the situation and breathe new life into gameplay, this monotonous Groundhog Day situation is leading to unhealthy behavior, unhealthy politics, unhealthy gameplay. Gameplay politics are becoming rooted in OOC toxicity because that's all that's left. How sad is that? How unhealthy is that? So part of the solution needs to be a dialogue to re-imagine gameplay, to transform gameplay into something else entirely. Make it more about RP, make it more about the WA, make it about whatever you find fun and exciting -- but for your own sake and the sake of other players, make it about something other than the constant drumbeat of toxicity. Remove toxic players from the community efficiently and without fanfare, but don't turn toxicity or anti-toxicity into a political movement. Find something else to do. That isn't worth doing.
What prompted me to address this issue was seeing someone on Discord ask if Raven "ragequitting" NationStates means I've won. I know they meant it tongue-in-cheek because of our past. Still, it struck a chord with me. Raven and I have had our differences, and at times we've gotten OOC upset with each other, but Raven is a decent person, a nice guy, a fun NationStates player if you take the time to get to know him, and like every other player, he doesn't deserve to be subjected to OOC toxicity. When good players quit because the gameplay environment has become so toxic, no one wins. NationStates loses. Stop losing. Do something about this.
I <3 you all and I really, truly hope the environment improves, and this game can start being fun for everyone again. That will be something nice to see when I come back and visit. Best wishes, truly, to everyone.
