Positron, and anyone else interested, I'm going to do my best to describe the game of telephone as it occurred from my perspective (bystanders can take it as a lesson in what not to do); but more importantly, this is all framed around an apology. To Matt Miller, to the community, and to the staff members at the Titan Network who tried to keep me level-headed. It may have been a game of telephone, but I started it. After reading Matt's post above, it is clear to me that I misinterpreted him long before MassivelyOP.net and MMORPG.com misreported my tip. Much credit to the Titan Network for trying to convince me of this.
Matt, when I reached out to you for comment about doing another AMA, I remember what you told me very clearly. You said "My job search is my number one priority. I'll
probably be using another open document format like last year." That word isn't actually where the game of telephone began, but it's important because of how I interpreted it. It's clear, after your post above, you were saying you were probably going to be answering another AMA, and that's the format you were (at that moment) considering.
What I heard was different: you'd probably be using another open document format like last year, implying vis a vis you'd already decided to do it, but weren't yet sure how. Now, I've run that misinterpretation by a few people in the short time since I read your explanation, and they all agree they'd have taken it the same way I did. I don't think that means I should be off the hook for it, but I'll get back to that in a moment.
The game of telephone began with a non-mutual understanding of the nature of our relationship. Something that actually came out of my narrow-minded mouth in the past few hours was, "Really? Fans really do that? Just contact developers out of the blue for chit chat?" The resounding reply was yes, yes they do. The simplest way to put this is, bluntly, I've never approached any developer for chit-chat, ever. Only when I wanted specific questions answered for the community, or, after a game closed, to express sympathies and thanks. Small-talk occasionally follows, but never by my initiation; my goal is always to show gratitude for their time by wasting as little of it as possible.
...All of which is context, context I should have given you. And, being completely honest, I thought I
did give it to you, but I guess I didn't. I don't save chat logs; I took a screenshot of the one chat I shared with Titan staff. (More about that in a moment.)
During last year's lead-up to the AMA, when I passed along your comments to the community, you gave the impression that you're a very to-the-point guy, something I appreciate during a pointed conversation. My naive expectation was that you
knew I put you on my Steam friend list for one reason, and one reason only. To contact you once a year, to help give fans a month-long head start on gathering their questions on the Titan forum, so we'd all have a productive AMA when you announced your live document (or whatever you'd decide to use) was going up. I still think there is a good idea in there somewhere, but my approach to it was very clearly terrible, and I'm sorry.
We did this last year and that worked out fine, which led me through my own fault to an assumption about the nature of our communication. But the biggest mistake of all is one I made last year too, despite how that went: I played telephone. A better way to do it would have been to ask you about the event and offer to set up a thread,
after you made an official announcement about it.
Your post above is reasonable and clear, but there is one thing that made me uncomfortable too. You did get more messages on Steam; two more I think, practically begging you to clarify your tweet, because it was causing very negative repercussions that neither of us intended. If I were anyone else reading your post, I might think this Captain Electric fella was sending furious buckets of hate mail. That wasn't the case. My goal in contacting you at that point, which I made clear, was not to seek any kind of apology, but to cooperatively deescalate the community's reaction to your tweet.
But my last and supposedly final message to you was incredibly angry. I had no idea that we were on two very different pages from the start, and how that was very much my fault. All I could think was, any time it has ever been brought to my attention that I've inadvertently caused some distress, I've taken, at minimum, thirty seconds, used the keys on my keyboard, and corrected my faux pas. I've done just that, more than once (way more than once). People have always held me to that standard, and rightly so. So I felt indignant, and spent the past few weeks feeling indignant, after you replied, pretty bluntly, that it wasn't going to happen. On that day especially; I was getting flak from Titan about interrupting your job search, while watching you tweet about an 11-hour Pillars of Eternity binge, and I was beginning to assume the worst about you. The one screenshot I took of one of our conversations was just so that
somebody would believe me that we had actually talked about the AMA. Only Titan staff ended up with it; my friends all refused, they said they didn't need proof to believe me. Still, my credibility aside, it was embarrassing to see something
for the community derailed by all the jokes. Just to keep my conscience clear, I don't think anyone ever actually used the word liar.
I haven't lambasted MassivelyOP or MMORPG here, simply because I don't want to portray them as anything more than additional participants in the game of telephone I started. Yes, MassivelyOP misreported my tip; they later corrected it, but not before MMORPG picked that up and ran with it. Additionally, you are saying you wish they would have verified with you, which sounds rational.
But I'm going to throw myself onto the fire here. I just dug up a copy of the message I sent MassivelyOP. Massively uses a comment form on their website, but I copied the text into a text file, as fate would have it, so that I could later incriminate myself. It is one tremendous piece of crap, and, much like the fish that keeps getting bigger, not at all as detailed as I remember:
I'm giving this annual event a little love to help to get the word out. Two and a half years ago, Positron said he would keep making AMAs every anniversary as long as the questions kept coming. Recently I contacted him, and he's aware a thread has been set up on the Titan Network for people to gather their questions in anticipation of this year's AMA "Loregasm". I'll keep the thread updated. (My post is the fourth from the OP, owing to a thread merge.)
*A moment later, I sent them an "oops" message with just the thread's link.
TonyV swears this was all just a little misunderstanding. But maybe that's letting me off too easy. Would anyone want me doing their PR after reading all of this? I am sorry Positron had to go through this, all because of my terrible communication.
Edit: minor correction, it was two screenshots, it wouldn't fit readable in one shot.