The Problem

Greed.

Greed in itself is a perfectly understandable virtue. Without it, there would likely be no homo sapiens sapiens today. Thanks to this need to keep all the good stuff for ourselves (see: food), humans would live to see another day, rather than starve in the dirt like their less fortunate relatives, neanderthals.

However, that was the Stone Age. This is the Digital Age. That was the advent of the wheel. This is multi core, hyperthreading. That was a struggle for food. This is a walk down the street to the supermarket. (If that's not possible where you live, I'm rather surprised that you have a computer and internet at all.)

The problem is, at our explosive rate of growth (Middle Ages to Industrial Revolution to Spaceflight to Personal Computing to The Cloud in 500 years), evolution just can't keep up. So we still feel the need to whore everything.


This is what I'm getting to.





The problem.
With.
The world.
As we know it.



Part of my job as a GM, along with all the others', is to host events. Basically give out Pokeballs and other prizes to bolster the economy and keep player morale high. The irony of this is that, in a human moment of pure avarice, people want more. More. Moar. MORE MOREMOARMORARERMOAREPLSPLSPLSPLS!!!!

LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

I witnessed this firsthand when I was given chickens by System in SMS v62. For those who don't know the story, here it is in a nutshell:

I was the only player in v62 beta, non-GM. System gave me 100k chickens to test all the NPCs with. When I was done, I had 60k left. I held events. I grew paranoid, because it seemed everyone knew I was mysteriously rich. I gave half my Chickens to Eminize. He betrayed me. I was banned.

(Betrayal is a crime of the highest order. I will neither forgive nor forget you, and I no longer trust anyone, thanks to you, Phil.)

What I learned during this though, was that people can never get enough, and never enough to their own advantage either. When I was hosting events, people absolutely loved me. I was a hero. More events pls! More chicken pls! Pls has more! Where you get chicken? I wan chicken! Give pls!

So, with my incredible generosity, I gave.

When I was banned, I thought that all those who I had supported and helped, through funding, smegas, training, might return and help me instead.

I got a reaction more like: "nub gtfo now."
"who is this guy"
From one of the people who had buddied me and constantly reminded me how incredible I was for helping him: "I think that he went way too far with this, giving thousands of chickens to everybody like that, and he should leave now." (Thousands? More like 10. Way to hop on the bandwagon)

Anyhow, I left, disgusted with the way the community was at the point. Beyond repair. And nothing I could do. Naive me, thinking generosity and benevolence could solve problems.

Fastforward a bit. Ryan is now complaining to me that people who loved him and his events turned away to Hewson when Hewson hosted easier ones for more prizes.

To combat this, I see two clear options:
1) Terminate events altogether
2) Reign in the community with a standard of Event Rules.

I remember my early days in SMS, mostly Nick's epic event hosting, and so I cannot let my beloved events go. Thus, I call together all the GMs to set a rule of events, so we won't have *coughTimmycough* certain GMs giving ridiculous prizes, causing others who give reasonable prizes to be seen as inferior, in their greedy little eyes.

That is all.