Hail,

  Over the last week, some events have been afoot in the Myth
community involving myself, the Myth World Cup tournament which I
manage, Clan Plaid, and the Civil Order. You may have heard about
these events, which stem from the recent semi-final match of the MWC,
between the Dwarven brigade of Clan Plaid and the Civil Order
tournament team. If they don't interest you, then please stop reading
now. This is going to be a long ride (over 2500 words' worth!), and I
don't wish to inflict it upon anyone who is uninterested (to that
end, newsies may wish to spin the remainder of this text off into
a separate file).

--

  Firstly, let me start by saying that this text isn't an attack.
It's not a defense either, as I don't believe that any of the parties
involved really want to attack me or my tournament. This text is
intended purely as a clarification.

  Secondly, this isn't going to be a detailed account of events,
either. I've been down that road before, and in this case I don't
feel that it will help any. Any perspective that I provide will
inevitable be coloured by my own 'mauve-coloured glasses', and 
anyway it appears that much of the discussion surrounding this
issue has taken place in private web forums or on Hotline.

  One of the tenets held very dear by my father is that communication
problems are responsible for a huge fraction of the evils of mankind.
I can remember him saying this from my childhood, but it hasn't been
until this very year that the principle has been truly struck home.
Consider, if you will, the nature of the Myth community:

  - Each of us interacts purely with our computer. With a few
exceptions, such as Lake Tahoe and my very own LAN gaming, we are
all suspended in our very own Chinese Rooms. Unable to maintain any
real-world cues to behaviour such as body language, intonation and
phrasing, we are forced to resort to a text medium. While in an
actual game of Myth there are other cues available (such as arrows
raining from the heavens), for the most part all communication takes
place through (often tersely worded) English sentences.

  - By its very nature, Myth as a game appeals to a wide range of
people. My own order (Altus Praeses) includes people from North
Carolina to New Zealand, aged from 15 to thirty-something, and we
are by no means an extreme example of the variety that may be found
in this community. I like to delude myself that, at twenty, I
represent the rough midpoint of the maturity spectrum, able to
relate to both ends to some degree. However, this isn't always the
case, and this represents yet another barrier to communication: the
differences in cultural and social background that each one of us
brings to bungie.net just can't be escaped.

  - Communication also takes place in a variety of mediums that
are loosely associated with Myth. The bungie.net chatrooms, web-based
forums, email, USENET news, Hotline... all of these avenues of
communication share one thing in common. The Internet. An instant
means of communication, where messages can zip from one side of the
world to the other by the touch of a button. In such an environment,
it's very hard to take anything back. I believe Wired magazine
coined the phrase "Nothing ever dies on the Internet."

  - A corollary of such a rapid-response communications system means
that discussions can happen at breakneck speed, back and forth and
back and forth in the space of a few short hours. When factored in
with the different timezones that we all live in, an entire debate
can take place on one side of the world while some participants are
sleeping, blissfully unaware that anything is happening in which
they should be involved. I know that this has bitten me personally
several times, living as I do on the opposite side of the
International Date Line from most of my acquaintances.

  - The Myth community is not particularly cohesive. While we may
use the central icon of bungie.net to tie groups together into
something that we can tag with the label 'community', in reality
we all have our particular views of what constitutes the community.
Be it the IP address of a Hotline server, the URL for a news website,
or the email list of your ordermates, your perceptions are coloured
by those around you. And nobody can possibly undertake to follow
everything that is said in every corner of the community. Isolation
leads to insularity leads to misunderstanding.

  - Finally, Myth is very much a group activity. We are all very
much attached to our online friends, and just as in real life,
people's public images and their reputations are emotionally charged
subjects.

  All of these factors act to impede communication in the online
environment, and they're all somewhat responsible for the snowballing
chain of events that has led me to write this message. Lest you
dismiss these arguments as theory only, allow me to quote excerpts
from a discussion held recently on Myth Lexica's tournament forum.

Umbra: "CP defeated civil without cheating as they understood the
  rules, enough said."
MrWuf: ""WE DEFEATED CIVIL WITHOUT CHEATING". You indirectly accused
  us of cheating. Quit it...your hurting my feelings. :("
Dminor: "I don't think anyone here is saying that you guys cheated."
MrWuf: "Ya see...a funny thing happened after I wrote this...someone
  ELSE read it. What's even funnier was that person had different
  ideas and points of view than I did. Can you believe it!!! They
  even had Mauve color glasses on instead of Rose colored ones!!! 

  Something I write is completely inoffensive to me...when someone
  else reads it, its completely offensive. When folks are emotionaly
  invloved they WILL find something that pushes their buttons, pulls
  their triggers and generally sets them off. TRUST ME!!! THEY
  WILL!!"

[The entire conversation may be viewed starting from
http://www.mythcodex.com/cgi-bin/lexica/tourn-lex.pl?read=67]

  Miscommunication is a big problem. But this is nothing new, and
certainly anyone who deals with people in an online environment (i.e.
every single one of us) should take this into account. And, in our
own ways, we all do. Whether it takes the form of emoticons, /me or
its derivatives, or saying HARR! a lot, every one of us tries to get
away from the impersonal nature of the medium.

  My solution has been, whenever I am trying to communicate
something as clearly as I can, to phrase my words very carefully.
This means that my writing tends to purple prose, flowery metaphor,
legalese, call it what you will. For the most part, I have found this
approach to work very well, and it certainly helps me (IMO) project a
useful image in the context of a tournament organiser. However, it
has its drawbacks. Even when I attempt to speak in a straightforward
fashion, people perceive innuendo and veiled hints where none are
intended; even down to accusing me of speaking with the "forked
tongue of Satan". Obviously I need to work on this.

  Having pointed out the difficulties involved in coordinating a
tournament that is, effectively, a travelling political roadshow,
it's time to address the meat of the matter. I won't mince words
here; in various statements I have taken several stances on the
central issue, which is that the #CP#D team adopted a strategy in
their semi-final match which I didn't want to see in the tournament.
In the Raisin Barn (Team) Captures games, they used their spider
queens to push many of the balls high up on the edge of the map,
which meant that foot troops [non-spider units] could not contest
the balls.

  I felt then (and still feel now) that this strategy renders the
game a complete waste of time, and makes any non-spider-queen units
effectively useless. If I had ever thought of this strategy before
the match, I would have immediately created a rule outlawing it, to
enable the game to be played as I had intended. However, I didn't.
At the time that the match was played, the Dwarves' strategy was
completely true to the letter of the tournament rules.

  After the match (which I tried to attend, but it was held during
my working hours, and my Internet connection was too saturated to
let me stay online), I received the films of the match, and saw the
strategy in use. I was dismayed at this, as it wasn't conforming to
my expectations of the game at all. Since this match was one of
the semi-finals, it was very dear to my heart and I didn't like to
see things going so 'awry'. I decided that I would ask the teams to
replay these games with the additional rule prohibiting this
strategy.

  This was a bad call, as has been pointed out to me at length since
then, repeatedly (so don't even bother re-iterating it, please). This
is where things started going wrong from the communication point of
view. 

  Basically, through some mis-communications an agressive mode of
debate was established between myself and the Clan Plaid team,
although I wasn't fully aware of it. I understand that things got
quite vicious on their private message board towards the end,
and I posted some moderately barbed notes on the MWC website.

  However, I would like to categorically state that I never wished
to accuse the Clan Plaid Dwarves' tournament team, nor Clan Plaid as
a whole, of cheating; using outlawed strategies; exploiting the MWC
rules with malicious intent; or being dishonourable in their playing
or their dealings with me and the Myth World Cup.

  It's a shame that I have to go to these lengths to say this. In my
mind I never accused them of anything like this, merely stated that
I would never feel comfortable using such strategies, and that they
might wish to reconsider their attitudes towards Myth both as a game,
and in the greater context of a tournament (after one 'spying'
incident that was otherwise not acted upon). Unfortunately, when I
was trying to speak plainly, my words were interpreted as innuendo,
and when I was trying to sidestep around an uncomfortable point (boy,
now that was a mistake), my words were interpreted as openly hostile.

  These communication failures aren't easy to pin on one person, nor
should we try to. However, a good deal of the blame inevitably falls
upon me, for not choosing my words well (or perhaps, too carefully).
I have tried to explain these misunderstandings, both in a private
Hotline chat with (some of) the #CP#D team, and more publicly on
the Myth Lexica's Tourney Lexicon.

  It seems, however, that #CP# feel that the broader Myth community
will draw the same inferences from my statements as they themselves
have done. Who knows. Perhaps Scruggler is right, and you do believe
that I am undertaking "to smear #CP#'s honor" and that I "went on a
slander campaign against the Order [he] founded and [which he has]
worked for 10 months to make one of Bungie's best."

  If I was a religious man, I would swear on the Bible that this was
not the case. However, I am not, and in lieu of that I place my hand
on my copy of Kernighan and Ritchie and say to you, #CP#:

  "I don't want to end our relationship in bloodshed and strife like
this. I have always believed, and even now still believe, that you
are one of the nicest collections of people who play Myth. Far be
it from me to sling mud at your name; I would be singing the praises
of your games and your welcome far and wide, if I thought that there
was anyone in this far-flung community of ours who didn't already
know. And I never, ever, wanted to ruin the fun that is Myth, for
a single person. I only wish that we could all step above these
communication problems, but that's never really going to happen. For
my part, I am certainly not going away from this situation with a bad
taste in my mouth, and I hope that none of you will either."

  I regret this series of events. Just like I regret a lot of things
to do with the Myth World Cup, most of which (I hope) are behind us
now. But we all have to learn from our mistakes, and continue
striving to do better next time.

  Sitting in the last afternoon sunlight on a perfect day that I
haven't been able to really enjoy, after spending the best part of
thirty hours over the last week dealing with the fallout from this
issue, I have to wonder how this can be avoided in the future.

  I think that the main thing I'm going to take away from this is
that there are obvious benefits to having a fast response time as
a tournament manager; I've been congratulated on this many times. But
when the downside hits, it really hits. Consensus is a slow process,
but one that lends a stability necessary in any high-stakes
competitive endeavour. And when the stakes are so low (baseball caps,
anyone?), it's paradoxically even more important. Because the hidden
prizes that we're all playing for are those of respect and other
intangibles.

  The other big issue here is one of control. Allow me to paraphrase
my earlier post from the Tourney Lexicon:

"The natural instinct is to step in and just make a small tweak, to
gently nudge things back on track when they get a little askew.
Nobody likes the idea of abandoning their creation to the set of
rules that are meant to govern it, and having no further input.

However, this just doesn't work in a competition environment. What
you may intend to be a gentle nudge sometimes meets with pressure,
and in an eyeblink things can change from a 'simple' change to a
tangled web of accusations and wounded pride."

  It's pretty obvious that my approach to managing the MWC has fallen
down rather impressively when it encountered this particular issue.
The best lessons are always those which were hardest learnt, and I
don't believe that this will be any exception.

  I hope to see the Clan Plaid Dwarves battle it out with Rabble
Forces for the grand final of the MWC next weekend. It should be
an epic struggle, and I look forward to it. As always, watch the
Myth World Cup website for further information.

--

Distribution Information:

  As #CP# are looking for a public apology, this message is being
distributed... widely. I have emailed this message to many people,
including a large collection of news sites, all captains of the MWC
tournament teams, and other interested parties. I would ask that
people do **not** press reply-to-all when replying to this email,
to prevent a spamfest. If you want to talk to me personally by email,
feel free to do so. However, if you wish to discuss the issue more
publicly, I urge you to use Carch's excellent Tourney Lexicon at
the Myth Lexica,

http://www.mythcodex.com/presents/lexica/tourney/

  I have posted this message on several web-based forums as well.
If you wish to repost this message on your own web page (or, say,
the #CP# private messageboard) then please do so, preferably
unedited. For reference, the complete text may be viewed at:

http://www.mythcodex.com/presents/worldcup/news/ts_cp_apology.html

--

Butcher
Tournament Manager
Myth World Cup '98
butcher@mythcodex.com
http://www.mythcodex.com/presents/worldcup/

19:31 NZDT, 24 Oct 1998