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Obduction Backer |
Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 12:11 am Posts: 2633
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This will probably be long given my history with the community.
I'm Tweek.
I got into Myst back in 1998 when my sister purchased a copy and I started playing. I lurked around the community for a bit before getting more into it in 1999/2000.
At the time RivenGuild was /the/ community site to be. Gordon Currie ran it with Doug McBride and hosted several other community sites on it. Also running was the original Riven Lysts.
Cyan Chat was more active, with Cyan employees joining in and dropping hints for puzzles (spyder) and myself with others strove to figure out who spyder actually was.
I ran a website that eventually became The D'ni Jazz Club. I was on the Lysts when J0ker attacked causing the Lysts to close down, then Gordon couldn't keep funding RivenGuild, who asked Ubi for help (As Ubi were publishing Myst 3 at that point and Gordon built the Myst3.com and Realmyst.com sites). Ubi said no, people started lashing out at Ubi (which probably set the stage for when Uru closed the first time) and RivenGuild eventually closed.
Uru progressed, the DRC forums sprang up, testers started testing, Zandi ran his puzzle which I took part in (I still have the Uru shirt he gave me in my wardrobe). Shortly before being added to the Ubiru beta testers I traveled to London to see a demo of Uru writing a report to post for the community to see. Eventually I was then added to the Rehearsal testing group who tested content before it hit the live servers. During the beta the Guild of Greeters started up, I joined and helped them with development of their forums (building the skin which is still used today) as well as working with other greeters to develop a new section of the site for Q&A and D'ni history, I was a Greeter myself and later became a Mod on their forums before being kicked out with out a word.
After some issues I distanced myself from the group. At some point (possibly before I forget where it is in the time line) I also served as a Mod for a short time at DWPR before retiring after making some mistakes (come to think of it that was before Uru because it was my first moderating gig so it was before DJC even had forums I think).
I joined a group called the MystWorlds Site Council. The group was comprised of Ubisoft employees (community managers for Uru), Cyan (to a degree) and Community Leaders (owners of sites like Uru Obsession, MystCommunity, DWPR, GoG etc). We passed news from the companies to the fans and vice versa, arranged contests, interviews and other such things for the community. We also worked on a lot of grassroots stuff for the Uru Expansion packs, Myst 4/Myst 5 and so forth.
During Uru (2003-2004) I was heavily involved in the cavern, taking part in the story, arguing with Sharper, with the DRC, publich speaking about working together so-on and so forth and was at one point (prior to the arguments with sharper) working very closely with Sharper and the Great Tree group before a difference of ideologies surfaced (IC: They wanted to fake DRC chat logs, I didn't think that was right).
Uru closed, we moved to Offline Uru. I started tinkering with the game files gaining access to D'ni again. During this point I joined COBBS which is basically the origin for hacking the game. I started building a story on the various forums about being back in the cavern with others like BlueMax and IMForeman. More and more people joined the initiative and BlueMax set up a site called D'niRaiders where we could submit "Raider Reports" about what we were getting up to. After the closure of Uru Prologue I worked on a post-drc-leaving interview with Dr. Watson.
Hacking for Uru got more interesting, new tools came out for changing SDL values on the fly (adding removing barriers, adding removing hood stuff for example) as well as tools for editing FNI and SDL files. Various groups broke off from this, AgeBuilders, New Tree Group (or something like that) a Guild of Writers (not the same as the one that existed now). I joined the GoW back then and helped with site layout stuff.
When Path of the Shell was due to come out Sheldon was working on a grassroots puzzle site I helped design the graphics work for it.
Same with the graphics on Twigg's site for Myst Tree (Myst 5 grassroots puzzle site).
Through the MystWorlds Site Council, I was also tasked with working on some graphic design concepts for the Book of Marrim cover (for the Myst 5 Strategy guide) and a Myst box set collection of all 5 games as part of a idea to be floated to Ubi for an all in one box set. I also contribute (like other fans) some words regarding Cyan's work for the Myst 5 strategy guide. As well as working on several graphical elements for the MystWorlds.com site. Also took part in interviews for the MystWorlds site.
Back when Uru Prologue was around I started a subsection to DJC called Beneath, which was an IC site formed around a group of explorers working to restore D'ni like the DRC. The site is still around to this day (albeit at a designated domain name) and is now home to a growing Uru archive and my downloadable Ages.
Until Uru started, I joined the servers, running an IC story with a group of people on one before moving to chip's shard to host the story on. Eventually interest in UU vanished (didn't dig the flying around multicoloured people stuff that some people enjoyed doing). Cyan launched Dmala, I joined that. The DRC showed up and rumbles started about Uru coming back. The DRC floated the idea of DRC Liaisons (grins at the people out there shivering at the memories of that farce). I put my name in as a candidate, voting took place and I was elected along with Eleri, CAGreyWolf, Gadren and Vortmax.
The Liaisons were not really given a clear role for what to do, every attempt at defining one was met with resistance, pretty much everything we did was met with resistance (I still have the DRCL forums archived in my Uru folder). The DRC were of little help, Marie Sutherland would suggest things which we'd put to the community which unsurprisingly was resisted. In the end Wolfie quit, I shortly followed suit and then the others and it all fell apart.
Don't get me wrong, we weren't perfect in all this, we made mistakes. But yeah that was a mess, I had already been feeling burned out before that certainly was after.
The DRCL's worked on trying to pass information from the DRC down to the explorers and from the explorers to the DRC. As well as organizing "Town Hall" meetings with all of the DRC members as well as GameTap members and Cyan employees.
With MOUL returning I once again ended up beta testing, and once again ended up in the rehearsal testing. I followed along trying to get into the story again like the past but found it hard until the episode format started. At which point a lot of my interest in the game dropped.
During the time MOUL was around I was contacted by Cyan along with Amon-re (DDfreyne) about an intern position, which we both took up. During that time we overhauled the MOUL site, cleaned/rewrote the code, removed the Flash elements, along with other fixing things. We also worked on putting together the MOUL newsletter (content was provided by Cyan and we coded it together and worked out sending it through email) as well as the Cosmic Osmo's Hex Isle site and a few other projects that never saw the light of day.
I started working on a Guild of Fine Artists site which was going to host tutorials and what not on there (resources for artists), the site sat quiet until the news of the Guilds starting on MOUL popped up. I then restarted trying to set the guild up, asking for input from the community. Unfortunately (like most things in this community) it resulted in drama which in turn resulted in me not wanting to go near it with a 700ft long pole of Nara.
MOUL closed, Age building started progressing, I started learning Blender, about 6 months later I released Cass, 6 months after that Fahets was released.
I started a site called Inkwell which was to be a resource for Age Builders with multiple authors. Eventually the GoW restructured Dev Blogs on their site and I rolled the site into the GoW blog.
I retired my internship position after the work were were doing slowed down and after some differences in opinion on some things with the rest of the community.
After that my interest in everything fell right off and I wound up pretty much retreating to the GoW.
Since then I spent the time trying to figure out my views on Myst/Uru and the community, swinging by the odd forum now and then to see what is going on (the usual same bickering), as well as doing an interview for the GoME about my wonderful views on the community/myst/uru and other things.
Aside from haunting the GoW I keep relatively quiet focusing on Age building projects and Beneath
I'm sure I've left a lot out, the decade plus I've been here was spent busy doing stuff for the community in some form or another.
But yeah, that is who I am.
Last edited by Tweek on Thu May 28, 2015 12:52 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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