my motivations behind the tronic spoon, ladle, et al

[2020]

I have had a few nice comments about the Spoon event, and some encouragement to get on with the next one, and a few expressions of reserve too. A lot of people took part, my first game was super-exciting (and stressful!), and team-captains did excellent jobs in organising games. However, the play-offs have fizzled out through no lack of effort on the part of players or captains...

I too think that many people have lost their original enthusiasm, which is why most people get more and more reluctant to join things as they grow older... they become a little more skeptical, mistrusting of their fellow man etc etc.

Despite this, I am going to stick as close to the original timing of the Tronic Cup as possible: to have 1,000,000 players in a single tournament a year after 0.2.8 came out, which was something like 16th March 2006. Idealistic, I know, but something which is do-able IF we try out new ways of organising ourselves.

To make my motivations clear, I have written them up in the wiki:
http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php/Talk:THE_LADLE

Be as critical as you wish, gentlemen... time is running out for all of us.

[Joe]

i love this line:

Forget becoming a Jedi Knight with his light-sabre -- become a Tron Monk with your light-cycle! - Quoted from 2020

[Phytotron]

Be warned, the following will be harsh, and it's not intended to bruise feelings or ego, but I consider it a needed reality check. Plus, hey, in the larger scheme of things, it's a trivial website forum related to a videogame, which conveniently leads me to my point. I think you're mad. I think your attitudes toward the world's social and other ills are glib and trite. The notion, wherever it comes from in your Quixotic delusion, that you would "save the world" with a video game is nonsensical and obscene. Like the way you formulate your posts, it is not transcendent, revolutionary, enlightened, or meaningful. It's pseudophilosophical dreck—muddied waters in an attempt to make yourself appear deep. I would suggest that you go find a real-life cause with which to involve yourself—something meaningful in the real world with real people that has real effect and impact. Forget this lazy man's hero complex. If your despair is earnest and sincere, devote that energy toward something actually worthwhile.

[ed]

2020, you're insane.

Personally, I think the world is ****** with very little chance that we will leave it for our children in the condition we found it. The only way we can do something about it is by getting together. If we can get together for a game, then we can get together for more important reasons, using the same social mechanisms. Hence my emphasis on self-organising. I think religions have had their day. I think politicians too. The scientists and economists don't have sustainable solutions.

Your answer to some of the problems of the world is to play tron?
Then it'll all be okay?
There's many people out there trying damn hard, some risking their lives trying to change the world for the better.
If I showed that statement to my wife, who devotes a large portion of her time (and my money) trying to better the world for our kids, she'd be livid.
If you feel that strongly about it, go join them and stop playing video games.

I'm still scratching my head trying to understand you.

Let's have another self organised tournament just like the last one. The spoon went smooth as silk, let's do it again - it's not even finished, still waiting for the matches to self organise.

[2020]

I would suggest that you go find a real-life cause with which to involve yourself—something meaningful in the real world with real people that has real effect and impact.

Thanks Phytotron, I already have and continue to. However, you may have already experienced the... how can I put it?... the cynical nature of our fellow human beings...
And to continue this vein of pseudo-philosophising... it is all virtual... apart from the fact that in the time it took us to have this little tet-a-tet several thousand children under the age of 6 have died from easily-preventable social disorders... which I am sure you already know...
Let's not snipe one another Phytotron... each to his own... see you on the grid...

[2020]

2020, you're insane.

totally

There's many people out there trying damn hard, some risking their lives trying to change the world for the better.

true
and they need help from every quarter
however irrelevant it may appear to come from...

If you feel that strongly about it, go join them and stop playing video games.

be active in every front...

I'm still scratching my head trying to understand you.

thanks
ed
and i am sorry to have caused you this...
i can assure you
my head is thoroughly scratched

Let's have another self organised tournament just like the last one. The spoon went smooth as silk, let's do it again - it's not even finished, still waiting for the matches to self organise.

ok

[gnorty]

I like armagetron

I am competitive by nature

I am virtually nocturnal, so playing at odd hours is not an issue to me

the spoon was kinda cool and fun

so, let's try another time.



That's what I think. No motivation for world peace, am I a bad person?

[Lucifer]

World peace through video games can only happen if some new video game became popular enough to knock those annoying fps games back down to the ground.

[Phytotron]

Your responses again demonstrate the shallow depth of your comprehension, adjectives for which I've already given. Glib, trite, obscene, myopic. Ed's wife would be right to be livid. Any conscientious and half-rational person with any concern for humanity should be.

Think about the severely ****** up places in this world, and the people who "live" there, and think about how they would react if you showed up with this big stupid grin on your face and told them about this stupid little video game that you think will turn the world into a utopia if everyone played it.

Go find some refugee woman in Sudan who has nothing, whose husband has been shot and quartered in front of her, who has had one child forced into war, the other raped repeatedly over the course of three days by soldiers then shot in the head, and herself raped, beaten, given AIDS, and left for dead. Approach this woman with your big stupid grin and you tell her how this stupid video game played mostly by a bunch of self-centered, snot-nosed, moronic cracker teenagers who haven't even heard of the Sudan, let alone give two shits about it, will make her life a bed of ******* roses.

Go confront some vile, torturous, rapist, murderous war lord and tell him that you've found this really neato video game that, if he were to play it with competing war lords, it will make him a peace-loving, altruistic, compassionate human being. Then hope you don't get your head blown off.

Frankly, I think you should be ashamed. None of this "see you on the grid." bullshit. Real life is not a video game, and vice-versa.

[Lucifer]

Personal attacks, silly?

[Tank Program]

You don't have to use drastic examples to make the point Phytotron.

[2020]

You don't have to use drastic examples to make the point Phytotron.

let him

let me use the game as a metaphor
since it is common to our experience

when faced with a superior player
eg zop
i find that i have to prepare for his advance
and if i do this successfully
with other team-mates
we manage to keep him back in midfield somewhere

that is
the direct head to to head approach
will just in my death

this also goes for traps etc
which eg garissimo has introduced to me

the same goes for rather tricky games like go
where an immediate and direct confrontation
can often lead to a swift and terrible defeat


it is clear that the person who represents himself with the avatar Phytotron
feels very strongly about the terrible state of the world
as his mind is clearly snagged by its most graphic and hideous problems
and it also seems clear that he has experienced the limited power he has over effecting any significant change in his lifetime...

i suggest he play more team-games
and perhaps after experiencing the miracle that is team-work
his hopes and aspirations be rekindled
until one day
he together with his many friends
feel empowered enough to really effect massive social change

personally
i believe 200,000 people marching against poverty or war
is less signficant than
200,000 self-organising constructively
whether for a game or for anything else for that matter

[Phytotron]

Again with the attempted hijacking of a topic to try to start crap with me, Lucifer? Come on, really, get off my jock.

Tank, I think my examples were proportional to the extreme and outrageous contentions embedded in 2020's mentality, if not less extreme than his. Consider what he suggests, then weigh it against what I point out.

2020, you're simply off your rocker. You seem to have about as much of a brain lock as, oh, certain fundamentalist religious zealouts. And like them, I doubt there's much more that could be said that would have any greater success in setting your noggin straight over this banality. That is, at least, too much for me to find worth bothering.

One space cadet with some oddball, delusional obsession and nearly religious mindset about not only a video game, but a very narrow and particular mode of that video game, is of a great deal less significance to me than the real-life issues and causes with which I do invest my time and energy (despite your presumptions to the contrary), or anything else, for that matter.

So everyone put on a big, happy, clueless smile. I'm walking away.

[Lucifer]

Attempted hijacking? You're making personal attacks here, that's unacceptable behavior, as far as I know. Threads get locked for that. And I've *always* called you on the floor when you've made personal attacks, even going back to when you'd attempt to hijack threads with "christians are dumb" crap.

Get a civil tongue in that mouth, boy! We want to hear what you have say, but personal attacks are things we don't want.

[Tank Program]

You know Phytotron. I've re-read what you've said, and I've re-read what 2020 has said. And it seems to me you're not reading what he's saying. He is not saying that playing Tron is the path to world peace. He's essentially saying that the experience of self-organizing the spoon is a valuable experience. That the communicative skills we aquire while playing with a team are also useful.

2020 is stating his thoughts in a calm, thoughtful, and somewhat amusing manner.

You, Phytotron, are shouting your thoughts out like it's your dying confession.

Either demonstrate why teamwork is bad, why the right to assemble peacefully should not exist, or leave it be. Because, in the light of how I interpret what's been said... It really looks like you're missing something.