TL;DR : What it says on the tin.
I originally started this blog so that I could feel like I was contributing to the Creatures community and while I did touch on other simulation-style games, this blog was almost always about Creatures and the writing that I felt I was doing for the community. I even took great pleasure in documenting the lives of my Creatures but I ultimately took on this project to get involved in a community that seemed very friendly and welcoming.
Due to some issues I had with a few Creatures Caves staff members, I decided to take a break from Creatures and Creatures blogging so that I could separate myself from the drama. I thought this separation would allow me to return feeling rejuvenated and refreshed. I thought I would come back ready to blog and participate again.
Instead, the separation only caused me to lose interest and I started to feel bitter about the people that I felt drove me away from the community in the first place. Sadly, it seems like there’s no returning for me anymore and I’ve moved on to other things.
For all intents and purposes, this blog is retired. I can’t lie to myself or to any remaining readers about how I feel about this project anymore and I can’t pretend that my interest in Creatures was any more than a vehicle to try to be social and make friends. I thought my passion for the games ran deeper than that, but I guess I was mistaken.
Regards,
kezune
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PS: I understand creator rights and rehosting agents and cobs is a big deal in the Creatures Community, so I’d like to clear this up now.
If anyone would like to adopt, re-host or build off of my previous projects, including community projects like the Daily Creature Feature or Community Quilt, please feel free to do so so long as you include the following information:
Include that the project was made or started at least in part by me.
Include a link to this website so that people can look up further information or ask questions. I have the blog set up to email me about comments.
I’m pretty easy-going about rights to use my agents, breeds, scripts, etc so if anything is unclear, feel free to ask, but don’t think I’ll be offended if you don’t.
Sad to hear you’re leaving for good, but I’m not surprised. I thought about leaving myself, but decided against it. The games are still pretty interesting, and it’s a comfortable sandbox to test some ideas out. Most of CCaves is still nice, and that site has helped me in more then I care to say. Plus, you know, genetic breeds. Two of my breeds need a new version, and that fact will continue to bug me until I finish them.
That said, CCaves isn’t my “main stop” on the internet anymore. I’ve found a few other places on the internet that I like. They aren’t as “homely” as CCaves is, but that might be a good thing.
I agree. I’ll miss the rest of the community, but I just don’t feel comfortable with certain staff members around. If they were regular users, I probably wouldn’t have any problem staying because I wouldn’t feel like I had to over-censor myself or worry about my friends’ having their discussions shut down unfairly for “being rude” whatever the hell that means. That phrase is just too vague.
Anyway, thanks for reading and thanks for watching my videos, too. I’m glad we can stay in touch. 🙂
I’ll miss reading your updates, Kezune, and I’m sad to hear that you’re done with Creatures. I will say that I hold out a little bit of hope that you’ll return to the games! I had a very similar experience as yours, and although I felt a bit isolated after I stopped being involved with Creatures Caves, I’ve enjoyed Creatures a lot more doing my own thing and being able to write what I want to. Not trying to turn this into my little soapbox, though! I had a wonderful time getting to know you and talking with you. You’ve got my contact information, and I hope that we won’t lose touch completely!
On a more serious note, you’re not the only one who’s had issues with Creatures Caves, and that saddens me. It used to be my favorite place to visit and interact with everyone. Yet I don’t think I’ll ever feel comfortable logging in again, even if the problem only stems from a few moderators. I do look back at the early days with fond memories, especially when you and I were fellow moderators ourselves!
You had some awesome ideas throughout the years, and I know I’ll go back through some of your earlier posts! Do you plan on taking the blog down during its retirement? I hope not, since there are some really wonderful posts. Maybe one day you’ll return to Creatures purely for the fun of it, but if not, I wish you all the best, Kezune! You’ll certainly be missed in the world of Creatures bloggers!
Hi Jessica! I’ll be answering your last question first. I wanted to address this in my blog post originally but i guess it slipped my mind!
I’ll be leaving the blog up even if only for archiving purposes. All of my files are backed up at Creatures Caves and on Dropbox, but it doesn’t seem right to let all of this time and all of my adventures just fade away or disappear from memory forever.
I’ll probably return to Creatures someday but not in the same way or in the same intensity as when I was active in the CC, but I most likely won’t be posting about it here. Chances are, I’ll be quietly playing on my own time or occasionally posting videos online about the games, but I can’t make any promises.
You have my contact information, too so don’t be a stranger! My life’s just been so busy since I moved on to other things that I kind of lost track and forgot about the Creatures conversations we were having via email. Which reminds me…
I’ll also be leaving my contact information in case anyone needs to get a hold of me for anything. I’m spending more time on my YouTube channel than on anything else, so contact might be sparse, but I try my best to return messages. My email is already publicly available, but I figure if anyone needs me for anything, they can contact me through the following.
Primary: kezune_twitch@hotmail.com
Secondary: kezune.twitch@gmail.com
Twitter: KezuneTwitch
Good to hear that everything will stay around! I got back to loving Creatures by doing just what you did: Playing a little bit on my own, with no intention of talking with anyone in the community. I eventually got back to enjoying Creatures like I used to, and then found a happy place where I could still be a part of the community. Might not happen for you, but can you tell that I’ll miss you? Ha! I’ll be sure to keep in touch. If you do get back to C1 someday, you should find a bunch of updates from me. Just released the new lemons yesterday, and I’ll be onto other things soon. Good luck with everything!
I’m sorry to read this. I’ve missed seeing you around and seeing you full of that kezune pep, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavours.
Thank you, Malkin. 🙂
Well, *damn*. I’m really sorry you’re going. Another reason not to log in to CC. (It never struck me as “really friendly” so much as “moderated to hell”, although that made sense given the presence of minors. I don’t have a problem with high moderation so much as random moderation, and at CC what you can say depends on who you know – even before certain persons took it upon themselves to start gatekeeping.)
It’s a real shame you won’t be doing Creatures though – I always enjoyed your videos, and the CCSF wolfling run last year was a hoot. I’m working my way through your games videos; there’s not a lot of overlap with the stuff I’ve played, so it’s fun to see the run-throughs. That said, you’ve inspired me to go back to Black & White – I’ll be following your Twitch stream and look forward to new vids.
I was starting to get the same impression of the site a few months before I asked to leave the staff team. It just didn’t seem fair. Perhaps the worst part is the double standard I saw from 2 members of the staff team. It’s like once you were in their good graces, you could get away with doing anything to the regular members and all you ever got for driving people away was a slap on the wrist. Maybe. Oh, but a regular member says “something rude” and they get their comment deleted without ever being contacted or without ever alerting the rest of the moderation team. It’s awful. This might have changed since I left, but I’m not optimistic.
Still, it’s taken a lot of time and courage to finally open up about how I feel about how things are run at CCaves. I was dreading a stream of hate-mail and hurtful comments but I think I’m prepared for that. At the very least it’s therapeutic to talk about it.
I’ll probably still play Creatures in my own time and it might make some appearances on Twitch and YouTube, but I’m not making any promises. If I make any other posts to this blog, it’ll be to archive the Stream videos from last year. Oh, but speaking of last year’s stream, I’m putting those videos up on my channel, too. I’m just adding music and cutting out the silence at the very beginnings and ends of the videos to tidy them up. I’m also splitting them up into 15-20 minute chunks to keep them short and more watchable. I wish I could’ve captured the chat but I didn’t know how at the time. Oh well.
I went back there because there are some people I only see on that forum, and nowhere else; but I won’t post on there again. Made that decision when I realised there was at least one mod who would delete posts simply because they didn’t like the poster, and wouldn’t run that decision past anyone else – and (perhaps more importantly) that the rest of the mod team could see what was going on but wouldn’t do anything about it. That’s just tyranny; which is fine in a private forum if that’s how they want to roll, but if they’re claiming to be THE Creatures *community* website then it’s piss-poor. That’s a clique, not a community.
Good for you for taking a stand. But it’s still a damn shame.
Well said, Sarah. I’ve tentatively thought about returning to Creatures Caves because there are a bunch of people who can’t be reached anywhere else, but to hear the recent stories makes me happy I stopped logging in around the beginning of April. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a log of what each moderator does, so comments can be edited/deleted without anyone else knowing about it. That’s not in every case, but part of my sudden leave stemmed from one of those incidents. It’s a real shame that this is what’s happening to the site that claims to be the main community hub. It seems like there are just a couple of moderators/staff doing this, but it’s certainly ruining the site for a lot of people.
Thank you for posting about this, Kezune, and getting a discussion going! Hopefully this will spark some changes in the very near future.
No problem. I’m surprised this caused any discussion at all, tell the truth. Still, I don’t have high hopes this will change anything. In fact, I’m certain this’ll just have me badmouthed and called a dissenter, hah! I’m being unfair, though, the majority of the staff is actually very fair and level-headed, from what I could tell.
By the way, Jessica is right. As of when I left the staff team, there was no way for other members of the staff to see changes to comments, etc. Not only could they not see who did what or whether a past post even existed, but they couldn’t even see their own changes. The only real log of changes were the “edit” notes at the bottoms of posts and a ban/disciplinary action log – even the notes on those could be left blank.
In fact, the only way I found out about comments and posts being deleted in the first place was from seeing the posts myself first hand before deletion or from friends asking what happened to their posts. It put me in a strange position to say the least.
Well, I’ve just added a new post on Discover Albia to bring some more attention to what’s going on. It’s not fair to you, and if this keeps happening, Creatures will lose its fan base. If there’s a negative reaction, you’re not alone! I just hope that the outcome is that it becomes apparent that this behavior is harming the community, and driving people away from Creatures. Of course, I still hope that you’ll rediscover your love of the games and be able to separate that from the community. You’ve done some awesome stuff over the years, and I thank you (again) for giving me some great ideas on how to play! All in all, I hope that no one else will be affected by these staff issues. It’s a shame that a couple of people can do whatever they like, and ruin Creatures for others.
That’s actually quite shocking. It sounds like the practice was a lot more prevalent than I realised. 🙁
I would just like to say that Creatures Caves is not an evil website nor is it moderated by evil people. Users in every community have disagreements and different points of view, but that’s what makes all of us unique and special.
While I only grant moderator, manager or administrator status to people whom I trust to run the website properly, I agree that there is a possibility that posts could be deleted without other members of the moderation team knowing. I believe that I offered to institute a moderation log whereby all staff members could see a full list of all posts that had been edited/deleted in order to make sure there was no confusion or improprieties.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that rather than running away from a problem or leaving a community, sometimes it’s better to stick around and make positive changes. I’ve always emphasized that I’m open to new ideas, changes to the website and user feedback, and I hope everyone understands that I’m genuine when I say those things.
If someone thinks that one or two staff members are truly abusing their powers, let’s find a way to fix it together and make the website and community a better place.
I never said that Creatures Caves or its staff were evil people, just that I thought two staff members were being unfair in the way they moderated. One in particular was hostile enough to make me leave, though if she’s since edited her posts, there’s not any way anybody could prove it.
Anyway, we already spoke in private about that and I decided it was in my best interest to leave the site behind. Frankly, if the two members I have in mind are still in charge (and they basically are when you’re absent) I’m just not interested in coming back. Getting run out and having my friends shut up isn’t what I’d call a good experience.
Besides, I’ve basically stopped playing the games. That connecting thread isn’t there anymore for me. I’ve collected some downloads on the chance that I change my mind and I’ve found ways to talk to some of my friends outside of the community anyway and we’re still keeping in touch. The Caves just isn’t for me anymore, I guess.
Good luck with your site, Rascii.
My post wasn’t directed at you, Kezune. It was just a general reply to all of the people responding to your blog post.
Rascii, unless there has been communication of which the rest of us are unaware, neither CC nor any of the moderators have been called “evil”. Use of that kind of language is inflammatory and just invites drama.
As I’ve told you before by e-mail – if you have a mod who is prepared to let personal animosity affect their judgement, then “sticking around and making positive changes” really isn’t an option, as the person with no power will find themselves becoming a target. This is why I haven’t posted again. I was thinking about becoming more active when Jessica returned to the forum, and I saw how appallingly she was treated. Now it sounds like Kezune has been the recipient of hostility.
If you want people to believe you are genuinely acting in good faith, then do something about this. Even if it’s just creating a system so that “deleted” posts automatically go into an archive, and an audit trail of which mod deleted what. It should be possible to prompt mods with a form when they delete a post, to create an automatic message for the poster along the lines of “Your in was deleted by for .” Send a copy to the mod board. All of which will do no good if you’ve got a mod who’s got an attitude problem that the rest of the mods won’t challenge, but at least it’ll stop the “you deleted my post/no I didn’t/but why?/reasons” kinds of argument. As Bart Simpson so memorably said, “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove anything.” Stop that happening, at least.
Darn it – forgot that Blogger doesn’t like angled brackets. 🙁 The message created from the form would say something like “Your POST in FORUM NAME was deleted by MOD NAME for GIVEN REASON.” If it’s triggered by the act of deletion, the poster will receive a message even if the mod leaves all fields blank.
Hiya Kezune,
I’m super sad to see you leave the Creatures Community. Longtime lurker, mostly because I’m superintroverted and prefer to take things in by reading. But here goes…
I always enjoyed your posts on here and findings on the series, as well as the COBs and agents. I’m more of a graphical person, so seeing some of those beautiful sprite files out there getting the scripts needed to an object was always a wonderful thing–my brain doesn’t work so good in the scripting arena of things, you see! Your scripts were far more complex than something a newbie to that area I could make, making more impressive and efficient agents than what would be hoped.
I do hope you decide to come back eventually–for your own sake, if ya feel like it. I just felt like coming out of the woodworks to say hey, you’ll be missed 🙁 Even if not, well, thank you so much, I hope the blog continues to exist regardless (Well, if not, for a while) if you don’t want to update because it’s a superb resource!
Will really miss your posts. Hope you the best!
Thank you, and thank you for reading. 🙂
By the way, if you take the time to learn to make agents I’m sure you’d find it a very rewarding experience. There are lots of resources online to get you started and just remember that trying and failing is a natural part of learning. Good luck!
I do hope you continue writing elsewhere, ’cause I do like reading your stuff. ><
And by elsewhere, I meant, write about other things…
I appreciate that, thank you. 🙂
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