Are things slower around here?

[E-Man]

I suggest we take a step back and look at today - we've talked about social media and about specific people who've come and gone on the forum. What about videogames, though? How have they changed in the space of five years, how does that impact the nature of the assets we rip, and how has it determined the kind of users who frequent this forum now?

Well, ever since the site expanded to incorporate more VG Resources, including models, I noticed that a lot of the submission activity is coming from the model part of the forum. The primary reason why that is relates to how most of the sprite sheets from the more popular games have already been ripped. As a result, new rippers turn to ripping models to earn their keep. Considering that there are thousands of models that remain untouched by rippers, I can imagine that part of the section receiving a lot of business for years to come. Also, since CGI models are the norm in games these days, there will be more new models to rip then there are sprites.

While that is fine and all, the one thing that slightly bothers me is that most of the model rippers (especially the new ones) are ignoring the main site and mostly keeping to themselves. If this forum were to keep getting new member to talk to and contribute, then we may as well find a way to persuade those users to leave their "hangout" and give the rest of the forum a try.

That's not it so much as most of the amazing spriters in question were all on the staff team at the time so it wasn't that they were "allowed" to do those things, they just made and enforced the rules themselves so nobody stopped them since it was their own job to do so.

Anyway the staff team has more or less completely changed since then and while we try to be relaxed and fun about things and give people a hard time sometimes, I think we're all in agreement that being straight up toxic isn't cool anymore.

Hm, that makes sense, Vipershark. If the admin of a certain web site acts like a jerk to everyone else, who exactly do you report that kind of behavior to? It's easier to do if it is a site with more than one admin (provided that the other ones are actually respectful), but if this admin is the only one on the forum, things get pretty complicated from there. I'm very glad that the staff no longer acts nasty to anyone anymore (with the exception of what happened to Vinn, but he brought that upon himself instead of realizing that we were only trying to help him) and that I can assume that you guys take more careful measures in choosing new mods and admins.

That being said, though, it does make me wonder how that factors for the non-admin examples of spiteful users. I'm not that well versed in the history of this web site, but I don't think that (don't quote me on this) Frario was not even a mod (heck, I didn't even think Frario was even toxic to begin with since only one of the spriters Sevenstitch mentioned was the one I'm most familiar with). Considering this, it makes me wonder if there was any factors that let those kinds of spriters get off scotch free with acting toxic.


Anyway, Sevenstitch, I didn't see you as calling anyone out. You were only being honest and if you had to use specific examples and users to to convey your experiences, I wouldn't blame you. While it's true that a lot of the best spriters on this site where pretty nasty, it is easy to forgive any of that as long as they ended up losing their venom and act friendly without any hint of hostility or superiority. I can't say that all the spriters eventually dropped this kind of spitefulness, but from what I've seen so far, almost everyone on this web site is kind and very helpful.