What’s up recently with all these bad, rotten attitudes coming out of our hobbies in recent time? I realize for the most part these situations are not new, for the past several months I’ve been somewhat focused on the Farming Simulator side of the simulation gaming hobby and haven’t spent a great deal of time reading content from the other areas. However, in just the past few weeks I’ve been reading up on topics related to the flight sim hobby and just truly amazed at the rotten attitudes I’m seeing and hearing.
In the past several weeks, we’ve heard from one after another mod developers dropping out from the Farm Sim mod community due to a variety of reasons. But mainly these reasons can be categorized under mod theft and abuse. I’ve discussed this ad nauseam both in written form (on this blog) and in verbal form on the GrizzlyBearSims YouTube Channel. I really don’t know what else to say regarding these topics other than we (those of us who truly care) need to do our best effort to help the newcomers to our hobbies. The more we demonstrate good behavior, positive attitudes etc. the better our communities will become. But unfortunately…not all communities are created equal.
I’ve been involved in the flight sim community even before the internet age. But just about as far back as I can remember, there’s been a cancer brewing inside and this cancer comes down to ego and attitude towards newcomers to the hobby. It’s somewhat funny in a way, the flight sim community have been begging for more modern versions of our platforms to be developed. Just as I blogged about on Saturday, history will claim “2017 A Great Year for Flight Simulation”. With new versions of both Prepar3D and X-Plane, plus the much anticipated entry from Dovetail Games….you can’t argue that there is no better time to become involved in Flight Sim than the here and now. But with all these new entries, the saying of “If you build it, they will come” will prove to be very true. But what will these newcomers think of us old curmudgeons?
Bad Attitudes, Bad Communities
As is the case in all the general simulation gaming communities I’m involved with, there are some good ones, but there are a ton of rotten ones where the cancer of individual bad attitudes is just boiling over. The truly sad thing is for the most part the admins and moderators of these various communities in many ways are the major source of the cancer as they either refuse to do their job or even worse, they contribute to the overall sense of negativity.
Whether you want it or not, updated releases of our popular simulation based games will generate brand new interest in these hobbies. In addition, for those of us who produce content on YouTube, Twitch etc. we are also very much a contributing factor of this revolution. After all, that’s one of the main reasons I created my YouTube Channel.
It’s always been my policy to not use my blog or YT channel for negative purposes, so with that said…I’m not going to “Call Out” by name or slander the communities I consider to be negative. But later in this article I will mention one very good community which I not only belong to, but I also serve as an admin.
Pet Peeve
Want to know one of my biggest pet peeves with the various communities attempting to support these simulation game interests??? Well, I’m going to tell you. My biggest pet peeve is when someone (anyone) asks a question in a forum or community and the response they get is to berate (scold/criticize) them for not taking the time to search or Google for the answer themselves.
When I run into these types of situations I truly feel like asking the owner of the community specifically why they even bother running their forum/community? After all, isn’t this the reason why we have forums?
I realize there are certain individual types out there that simply expect everything be handed to them. These are the types of people that instead of trying to learn something on their own, they simply want (and expect) others to do the hard work for them. These types are easily identified and should be handled on a individual basis. But this is a small issue overall. I truly believe that most individuals do try to search first before asking, but sometimes (actually more times than not), the search results can create more confusion for the new person.
Things Change
In just the past week some news broke in the flight sim community regarding a piece of software which had historically been distributed as freeware or donation ware. However, due to real world issues the original developer of this software either didn’t have an interest to develop it further, didn’t have the time or perhaps some other reasons. In any event, the software was going to essentially die the slow death.
The software in question is called Prepar3D Tweak Assistance (PTA). Basically it is a software tool to allow flight simmers to automate the tweaking and fine tuning of different configuration parameters in P3D. As previously mentioned, the developer of PTA made the decision not to further develop PTA for the brand new 64 bit Prepar3D version 4 flight simulator.
However, another interested party stepped forward an offered his expertise and even offered a dollar figure to purchase the original source code of PTA with the idea this individual would carry the torch forward to keep this tool alive and well for years to come. With his original offer, this individual planned to continue to leave it as donation ware…but to bring a long-story somewhat shorter, the offer was rejected and after some time the parties agreed on a new offer. But with this new offer being a larger investment, the decision was made that it would change from freeware/donation ware to a payware product.
OMG! You would think some how this decision was going to end the world as we know it. This decision would also lead to catastrophic flooding, the return of the plague etc. etc. The reaction this news should have received was “Thank You” for stepping up to save an extremely valuable tool.
Folks, stuff happens. Plans change….it’s part of life. While I often think back to the days in the flight simulation hobby where awesome things (aircraft, scenery, utilities etc.) were created/developed and openly shared with everyone…many times these things always died the slow death because the original developer simply lost interest or life simply took over.
While I had never used PTA, I did purchase it when I came out and WOW…Just absolutely WOW! It has truly been worth the small investment and I’m extremely thankful to Matt for rescuing this wonderful tool and making it available. If you are a P3D v4 user and interested in the PTA tool, learn more here.
Please and Thank You
While I’ve discussed some things that I feel the leaders within our communities could do a better job controlling, we’re not all innocent. We all need to remember the manners we were taught in our young age. Please and Thank You are two of the most important words we can say and if you’re going to say them….you need to mean it.
PC-SG Community
Earlier in this article, I discussed some of the issues concerning many of the various communities designed to support a particular simulation interest. A community which I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of and also serve as an administrator and moderator is PC-SG. PC-SG was launched just over two years ago and has become an extremely popular community supporting various PC simulation gaming subjects including Farming Simulator, Truck Simulator (ATS/ETS2) and even Flight Simulator. Our team of moderators/admins are the best in the business and we’ll never criticize for asking questions. While much of the conversation in recent weeks has been related to farming, I’d really like to invite those who may be new to Flight Simulation over to PC-SG and help us build up the interest.
Final Thought
The title of this blog post ends with the word “Hobbies”. Hobbies are meant to be fun, relaxing, entertaining etc. etc. While I enjoy the ultimate realism these hobbies provide to us, we all need to relax and understand that most involved have lives outside of the gaming hobby (myself included). Our individual lives including our work, school, family, health etc. SHOULD ALWAYS come first.
Until next time…
Happy Simming and be cool….
Jerry