i want to point out that through the years i've interacted with syncerror, he has always been responsive and gone beyond what i expect from any game company to do for people who play its games.

he has unbanned people when i've asked nicely, after the extremely infamous person banned was convincingly apologetic and promised to not misbehave ever again (he misbehaved again, and got banned again, and i didn't ever ask again on his behalf [it was a bit of an experiment for me to see what would happen]).

he sat in on an interview for esr in 2010.

he gave me premium keys for quakelive back when i was planning a tournament for esr that, unfortunately, fell through due to some interesting behind-the-scenes admin drama involving a couple of well-known personalities in the general quake community.

he has always been respectful and nice in conversations with me, even though i call him stinkhair and mock quake players in general; even though i've been banned from the quake live irc channel more times than i can recall for such dastardly deeds as mocking death, abusing white-knight players like picklelover13, and generally playing the role of internet bastard in moments of extreme boredom.

i get the sense that many esr users don't empathize with his position, or feel as though they have better answers to what they propose are problems for quake, or something along those lines. i get the impression that these people are the kinds of people who, like anxious small dogs, invent problems in order to have something to pay attention to other than the soul-sucking loneliness they feel when their owners leave their site for more than a few minutes.

i have a lot of love for syncerror, and for id software, even if it is fun to make fun of people, and even if my sense of humor is crass and objectionable. i want the new quake champions to be a great success, celebrated the same way the recent doom was, for a great integration of modern convenience and classical punishment.

I was told that I need to contact the ZeniMax marketing department.

that's what they tell the little people to get them to fuck off. I have connections

I was only trying to connect ...

I think SyncError must be as close as it possible to players. He must speak about all aspects of the game with us. He must speak with us every week. He must start his streams on twitch. We must look what he doing on his work. He must feel us as his family. This is good for him, id and for us.

No need to live in your cave SyncError, open your heart for us, and push ELO ratings in game(at first)

He should probably just hand over his login credentials to ESR to make it easier.

About pain and understanding

If you politcorrect, if you filter your speach and words. It's like water-filter: more filters-> less useful and useful substances, vitamins. If you protect your organism from negative microbes, viruses, then your immune system becames poor.

So speaking with different people, with rude and flatterers, truth-seekers and idiots makes your skills even higher. You grow as a person.

To write what you really think the only way to became understandable. Drop out politcorrectness and other barriers.

I think not only SyncError is a gentle guy, but Tim Willits too. When i look at their photos i want to hug them and drink beer with them.

I sincerely believe Sync is a nice guy. He seems to be the only one left at id who's even remotely in touch with quake community. Among all other id staff members he is the one who I feel is one of us. Sure he might have had some shitty ideas and pulled some clumsy moves, but he was the only one who ever listened to feedback, showed interest in socialising with the community (posting here, watching cups and shitposting in twitch chat). I see him as the only bridge left standing between us and id.

That being said, I feel like his influence at id is limited and that is a shame. If in some strange turn of events id listens to anything we say and makes any changes proposed by us, its gonna be because sync told em.

I highly doubt this interview would reveal any significant new info, but I think you should do it. Considering how much shit he got from us during the years and how well he handled it, I feel like he deserves to be heard

quakelive was the perfect sandbox for trying risky ideas. the playerbase was small and isolated, and the game was at the end of its popular life, so mixing things up to see how players would respond was a really great way to figure out a way forward for a future quake game.

the problem a lot of quakelive players had was that they weren't looking forward, they couldn't see the forest for the trees.

people don't see a lot of the blood and sweat and failed experiments that lead to good development, and when the quake community was experiencing these directly they assumed that id was trying to create a financially successful and popular commercial title, rather than implementing some ideas to gauge response and test future gameplay for a new game that was probably still in conceptual or very early alpha phase.

many esr users are not productive people, and so they don't understand the labor and messiness of productivity. they judge things from the pseudoacademic sterility of their imaginations of a perfect world, rather than with the understanding instilled by experiences trying, failing, and succeeding at achievement. they don't understand that refinement can be a lifelong pursuit, and that the lessons learned from something like quake 4 and quakelive don't always have an immediately apparent practical.application in all circumstances.
circumstances and configurations of personalities and experiences and epiphanies must also develop in harmony with desire. desire alone isn't enough, and many esr users only ha be a combination of desire and consumer experiences.

they're typically very ignorant, and those types of people are generally averse to empathy and even open listening

and to be fair to the critics in the community, I think there was a problem of communication of the reasons that quakelive was being played with. the lack of official words left a lot of room for speculation (that doesn't mean that the negativity was justified, just that it could have been checked by some careful public relations).

in some way I think syncs hesitance to agree to me visiting comes from a corporate mindset of fear due to the impact that the negativity at the ql end of.life...but I feel that's the sort of fear driven risk aversion that ironically drives negative speculation.

also, I think that the "final" steam release was a really touching love letter from id. they tied the knot and gave ql players most of the tools necessary to play the game in perpetuity if they preferred. it was definitely a better send off than shutting down the service and telling players to go try to set up quake 3.

quakelive was the perfect sandbox for trying risky ideas. the playerbase was small and isolated, and the game was at the end of its popular life, so mixing things up to see how players would respond was a really great way to figure out a way forward for a future quake game.
Yeah, but at the same time the "mixing" of "things" "up" actually lead to the demise of quake live, and its utter failure as a viable product for ID and Bethesda as well.
The product was a major failure for the company, and from a community perspective as well. They didn't really connect with their community, there is still a veil of secrecy to their direction with QC, and there seems to be no reaction to any community dissatisfaction with the game at all.

Imagine how Bluehole (the PUBG developer) would have treated this, or Valve would (look at CSGO and DOTA2 community interaction).

I see very little "blood and sweat" and only "failed experiments" after Q3.

I have been on and off in this community for over a decade and I see no improvements from ID Software's, in particular SyncError's side.

I'd totally love to see that in-depth content you have in mind! I think it may also bring back some life back to this website :). Some random things that popped up in my head which could maybe make it more interesting for Syncerror:

- propose a zero-tolerance for hostile and child-like behavior for X months (or until QC is released), putting people on probation quickly.

- don't release all interviews at once. You can start small with one interview, you can then check people's reaction and behavior. Only when that goes well you publish the rest.

- I agree with your impression that what is generally 'on view' here in the comments is a vocal minority. Can you find any data to back this up? You could look at the % of people leaving a comment in the last 30 days vs unique site visitors per month, and see if there's a trend throughout the years. Maybe there's a way to 'reactivate' the silent majority and get these commenting again? I also believe most of this silent majority to be over 30 years old and thus (probably) knows how to behave.

Oh btw yesterday a Dutch tech website gave away a 1000 QC keys for their long-time registered users. You should DEMAND Sync to give us some too :)

Everyone would love to see something like that but expecting that said everyone will behave is not realistic.

I would rather see debates of a ferocious ESR user and ID software. :D

sync knows, he knows about the shitty vocal minorty and he also knows talking about it wont help any1 and its a waste of energy and time-space itself. That is why he rather focuses on the oposite spectrum of people who know how to talk about a problem in a non-abusive critical way. Those are the opinions he helds dear.

So yes, do the ESR interview, tie sync and esr site back together in an unholy matrimony :D

OP you have showed us that you can write truly and wholeheartedly, please try to avoid repeating the same thing in other words like you did in the original post ;)

But does he know about the shitty vocal majority?

But does he know about the shitty vocal?

He doesn't.

This is why I said you should be blocking champs content and enforcing the NDA.

Oh you're from that site that insults our staff and publishes NDA.

But you want an exclusive?

Who knows, but my point was you'd be in a better position to get this stuff going forward if you played ball.

In fairness the better part of ESR has been good about it.

Nothing you said was false or new, however "he" is also from the one site that is the hardcore fanbase of the game for the last 15 years. And it would be fair if that trumped being clueless but(or maybe consequently) nice.

there's a lot of stuff I'm happy to do to score some time at id to generate original content for esr, but playing with balls is where I draw the line

you seem to want to help the site, but at the same time, you broadcast that it has to fit in with your ways when you have nothing to sell.

PROTIP, nobody is ever going to let you into a dev house (or talk to you)if they don't trust you.

by announcing you see NDA's as sucking up or playing with balls, you're not going to get anywhere because these places will have strict protocols in place to keep you out.

It wouldn't be so bad if you thought that as an individual user, but having an admin role on the site essentially makes it harder for anyone else around here to do something similar.

I haven't announced that I see ndas as sucking up or playing with balls. I made a joke about playing with balls because you said 'play ball'.

I also haven't broadcast anything about anybody or anything 'fitting in with my ways'.

Oh, well before you said that you said...

"there's a lot of stuff I'm happy to do to score some time at id to generate original content for ESR, but"

Which made it look like you were not doing something which was fairly serious.

And when you do stuff like that, the comedy is derived from quoting exactly what was said, and turning it to something funny or perverse.

When you add a letter to make your joke work, it doesn't work, at least on me, hence my reply. But whatever.

"playing with balls" was obviously a pun, no?

it may not be a big deal for you to play with somebody's balls for a little quid pro quo, but I come from a different culture. it's just not my way.

you should send him flowers and a box of chocolate truffle with a random steve_jobbs quote from #quakelive irc on it.
an interview will only confuse us (and him possibly, too)

wow qumau you sound a lot like brandan, but you have a different username, this is confusing.

brandan isn't here, mrs. torrence

george bush

I'd rather have a covert, fully anonymous potentially-dangerous-for-the-interviewee interview with some id employee who's been working at the studio for a few years and tell us what's really going on there. I don't think a management-approved interview can yield much interesting information (no offense to Sync).

It depends on the questions and how much you can read between the lines.

Depends on the questions, the answers and the format. Not really interested in reading the usual.

At first I thought sure why not, but If that's Syncerrors first reaction then why bother. Nothing against Syncerror, he seems to care about Quake and I understand his reaction from a corporate PR- and marketing point of view.

An interview where they would be willing to talk freely about anything you ask would be very interesting.

it would, but I don't think that's going to happen with a company like id. maybe in 20 years. I think there is a lot to talk about that isn't cliche or trite, and doesn't regurgitate the same nonsense. I prefer Socratic type dialogues to question answer interviews, and when people relax conversations can become very interesting and engaging.

I like to see the personalities of people, not so much ask black and white questions about development etc.

nah this site is a cesspool let the guy do his thing without esr nerds shitting on everything

The problem is that kind of interview would work only if id and sync personally consider ESR a friendly and worthy speaker and not a bunch of snobs who think they know better about every aspect of the game than the actual devs. While, mainly, all their luggage of knowledge is just some old gossips about the ex-pros of QL.
Well, except for the meaningful minority of persons like Memento, Asyy, map-designers, enthusiasts and so on.

Personally, i would appreciate a friendly and informal interview with a lot behind-the-scenes details and stuff.

Not interested in another bullshit like "its gonna be new but old quake" that id spams in every corner. Like, at all.

All we need to know is: "It's not a MOBA."

That <1000 player base and dire performance really showed them snobs on ESR.

Well, its not a binary construction: either id wins or we (esr) lose.
We could lose both.

And thats the case now, i'm afraid.
Even if the qc would not have been such a mess and poorly promoted, it seems that the mechanic is just way too old for these days.

And so we are, the acid spitting lizards who used to be dragons and shit.

It's so sad :(

I think ESR should run a show like "between two ferns"

where would we ever find a jerk with an unlikable personality to serve as the whipping boy for the guests?

Only if the interviewer has BALLS.

where is the interview?

ok my question for the interview:

am i a champion if i play a champion in quake champions?

garz you're trampling on a grave here.
Not cool.
Just saw this topic and I thought I drop in to vote no, and here you are , trampling on a grave :/

If there was ever a time we could use a bran qmau interview with id Software, it would be now.

Syncerror, fix QL motherfooker.

Would like to see ESR users to put something inside ID software employees.

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