Caltrops - OMM and Caltrops History

Forum Overview :: OMM and Caltrops History

by Ice Cream Jonsey 08/27/2015, 8:54am PDT

Roop wrote:

Did he ever post here at Caltrops, ever? I think he took that old guard / new guard horseshit war we had on the omm forums seriously, and stayed away. I miss that guy, I used to read Gamersangst even.

If you're good at something, there's a certain thought of discounting the newb outsiders. Here's a pathetic story ripped from the headlines of my own life: I view the scene that made text adventures from around 1997 until recently as the best era. There was an energy and sense of community to it. I'm not into a lot of new stuff because I think it takes little programming effort to make CYOA games, which dominates in terms of numbers because it's easy to churn out and there's no parser, which is where the magic is.

Then it occurs to me that the people who made them commercially in the 80s at Infocom and so forth viewed my scene exactly the same way. I'm sure they were thinking that we had it easy, as they had to program in ZIL for chrissake. Plus, they sold more copies than we can give away for free. I get it.

To go on a posting run like OMM, well sure: nothing is going to mimic that community. Barborito's paranoid didn't help the transition, but the offshoot is always going to be looked down upon by the trendsetters. (That's even before the fact that anyone in IRC feels superior to everyone posting in a forum, which is this whole other thing.)

We've done a lot of things that made Caltrops worth having. I feel justified keeping this place going after the Veronica Incident thanks to Quentinbec's adventures, "Just Heard Shots From Outside," Jerry Whorebach and bombMexico's everything, Paul's cooking videos and so forth.

All right, no more nostalgia for websites past for the rest of the year from me.

ICJ