Best of 2006 The SimHQ Staff pick the winners from this past year Page 6

By SimHQ on January 25, 2007 in _commentary, hide

Best Game That Wasn’t A Game, But We Played It Anyway

BoontyBox

While annoying and upsetting as it arrived unbidden and unspoken of until too late for those downloading a paid expansion to the IL-2 series, it was easily used, turned off or deleted, and allowed the Ubisoft blessed no-CD file to work flawlessly.

SecuROM

What can make a much anticipated simulation on an import DVD unreadable? It was enough to make one mad enough to eat their tinfoil hat!

StarForce

Not only will it install itself on one’s system and reportedly damage a W/R CD or DVD player, it can infest a forum board to where it’s no longer about simulations but about the copy protection.

2006 Winner

BoontyBox. We still weren’t amused one little bit when it searched the hard drive for other “Boonty compatible” software games and simulations. Not amused one bit about the whole affair. We were amused at the people that got really, really mad (and a bit paranoid!) about it. But one could turn it off or uninstall it pretty easily. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for some of the members whining.

Best (and Worst) Forum Performances

A BA_Dart disclaimer: I did not write any of what follows. 20mm did it. Although, if you like it, I will gladly take the credit. If you don’t like it, I take no blame, take it up with him. Thank you.

– BA_Dart

2006 was an interesting mix of forum activity. On the one hand, most all of our members exhibited posting prowess and admirable behavior. On the other hand, we had a certain few who either didn’t get it, got it and didn’t care, or just flat wanted to poke other members eyes with sticks (Internet figuratively speaking, of course).

Let’s look at the first category, Best Forum Performance. These members outnumber the Worst Performance members by a wide margin.

And so my winners are you who make our site your home page and who post regularly, contribute and post in good form. Those of you who have advised us when something was amiss in the forums and took your time and effort to tell us, in the interest of making things better. You who post in fine spirit, and who, even when verbally insulted, demonstrate enough self-control to turn the other cheek and say to themselves, “hey, your problem, not mine“, and not allow themselves to get into an Internet fistfight. Which, by the way, no one has ever won or ever will win.

Now, the flip side. The dark side. This is a toughie. Not because there are so many — there are relatively few — but because there are so many sub-categories.

There are the obvious members who have embarrassed themselves with their obnoxious forum behavior and been banned. Many return (or attempt a return) in an alias, many times similar to their previous nom de plume.

We call these people the “How can we miss you when you won’t go away” crowd. They include folks who have returned multiple times, been booted, return, booted again, ad nauseam. In many cases, they have railed against SimHQ, about what an authoritarian, autocratic, worst moderated, Nazi infested, pick your worst adjective site in the whole world we are, who advertise these comments in many and sundry internet locations, and then, before you know it, boom! Here they are again. Or they petition to be reinstated, promising that they will never repeat their behavior, only to do exactly that, and then blame us for the problem.

I always ask myself, “If we’re so stinkin’ bad, why are you back? Just leave and be gone forever. The more instantaneous, the better.” But no.

I must point out, I do not include any SimHQ member who has a disagreement with the site’s policy or procedures or anything else, and decides to go elsewhere. That is their right. It is always our members decision to be here or go somewhere else, and that is never a reflection, in and of itself, of poor forum performance.

For the sake of brevity and Dart’s sanity (which is always in doubt as is mine), I’ll stop now.

– 20mm

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