Salon.com picks up story
by Alphaville Herald on 12/12/03 at 9:11 pm
For those of you who didn’t come via the story itself, salon.com had just posted a story on recent events that we have been reporting in The Alphaville Herald. I highly recommend this story, since it sythesizes everything in a comprehensible way.
Here’s the link: Raking Muck in “The Sims Online”
Dec. 14 addition: A couple of quick comments about the article. While it quotes me as saying “E.A.’s move was “clearly censorship,”‘ I believe the “clear censorship” remark was in reference to Maxis banning references to alphavilleherald.com, which I think is ipso facto censorship. On whether the termination of Urizenus was censorship, well now we are in the realm of intentions, and I don’t know that it was *intended* as censorship. Here I think I told Farhad that “we are in the realm of probability theory” — that it was either attempted censorship or a series of surprising coincidences. I guess I still hold out hope that Maxis will say it was all a big screwup. I think there is also a kind of “fallacy of accent” in the remark that urizenus “investigates the shady underside of life in Alphaville”. Uri’s principle goal has been and remains to study the emergence of online governance structures in alphaville. Evangeline was interviewed not because of her salacious and sordid past, but because of the role that she played in the formation of the sims shadow government. She was alphaville’s Mr. Bungle. Of course at the last minute Uri went with a salacious title for the article, so he has only himself to blame for this particular misconception.
entropy123
Dec 13th, 2003
The salon.com article alerted me to the interesting goings on in Alphaville. It seems improper that the wealthy thirty-forty somethings at EA/Maxis would lash out at what I perceive to be the more responsible element of the online community, while presumably leaving the peodophiles and pornographers….unmolested.
IMHO EA/Maxis’s action beautifully illustrates how corporate America thinks. Screw the customers, screw the community, screw anything but our bottom line.
While I would rather solve problems through other means, these people only think with their wallets. I’d sue EA/Maxis silly.
AndreaMarie
Dec 13th, 2003
Ever since reading about this, I have come to the conclusion that I no longer want anything to do with Maxis. I have four accounts and am seriously considering deleting every one of them. Given the way they treat their customers, badly, and let the biggest liar and scammer ever continue to run a muck, I have come to the conclusion that Evangeline has to be related to someone at Maxis, or even the developer himself. With as many accounts as he has, of course they would be on his side before any one elses.
Here’s hoping something good happens within the game…but I seriously doubt it will.
Jordan from New York
Dec 13th, 2003
I was recently perma banned for an offence on another ea morpg called Earth and Beyond. I made a miner slip and broadcasted some bad language on a public channel (i made a miss tell). I am not one to take things like this sitting down however as I already have an authoritarian complex if thats even such a thing. Upon reading the email that I was banned forever (I had no warnings i was being banned until i read the email, no conversations with a gm at all) i proceeded to take steps to prove ea wrong and get my account back and i suceeded. First i posted 4 topics on the ebportal chat room at ebportal.com, in case you wanted to read them seeing as i found the link to this site on that forum( this is the chat room used most by the people that play). Next i wrote 10 emails composed of the reason why i was banned and peices of their TOS policy that supported my arguement to 3 different email addresses that i came upon that delt with ea game support. I only got automated messages back but i dont believe that for a second. I got this idea from the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” heh. Lastly and i think the one that had the most effect, I logged on using a friends account and broadcasted across every chat channel for people to send in help request saying that my character (i dont wanna say his name incase ea is monitoring your web page) was wrongfuly banned. I even broadcasted on every channel how to submit a help request heh. I broadcasted these 2 things twice last night and once this morning.I am not writing this to entirely boast about my winning battle but also to give you some ideas of how you could get your account back if you show choose. It is all in the reputation however, not what you know but who you know. Good luck.
Jordan
Robin
Dec 13th, 2003
What the heck is cyber prosititution, and if it’s not real, what’s it matter?
futureStep | net.tech, academia, society & culture
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Very interesting goings-on in the Virtual World World. The Sims Online owner, Maxis, is using heavy handed practices to silence a vocal critic of the game, Urizenus, who runs the Alphaville Herald, a news blog which reports about things in…
online casino
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I’d be happy to answer anybody’s questions on these topics.
blackjack
Feb 12th, 2004
I find if i try it that way, it really works.
Mae Mai
Jul 11th, 2004
The Salon.com article is Raking muck in “The Sims Online” By Farhad Manjoo In the real world, Peter Ludlow is an academic, a professor of philosophy and linguistics at the University of Michigan whose books go by sober titles like…