"Time flies, when you're having fun, I heard somebody say..."
That's the opening to one of my favourite songs, and also a very fitting description for what's been another wonderfully-successful year! Seemingly out of nowhere, our little parallel server for Gunia's has morphed into a three-year juggernaut. As a game server, it remains a hold-out for Minecraft 1.6.4, a highly-stable Gulliver mod, and a world that respects people's hard work and dedication. And as a community server, it has essentially become a kind of second home to many of us. I have often said that should I need to shut down the server, our community will never die because it has essentially transcended the game server and can function without it, and I believe that's now true more than ever!
That being said, time to get all dolled up and deliver my traditional anniversary address!
This will be a shorter address than usual because, for all the good reasons, I feel that interest in the actual game portion of the Big Sister server has been waning in recent years, and I include myself in that thinking.
There's of course the obvious technical reasons... the fact that we never change is a double-edged sword; many of our players DO get bored and run off to newer servers or other games. That's a given and perfectly understandable -- and while many talented players and staff go to great lengths to continue pouring interesting new content into our server (and bless them for it), it will continuously lose effectiveness over time as the Gulliver mod ages (update hopes notwithstanding), Minecraft releases leave us further being, and players grow up. Under these circumstances, the game server ceases to be a play arena, and falls further and further into the role of museum, nostalgia trip, hobby center, and interactive chat room.
And yet, THIS IS A GOOD THING!
I would be worried if, even after all these years, players continued to cram in here, spending countless hours (and potential study/work/sleeping time) building convoluted creations or engaging in immortal roleplays. The fact that this is NOT the case... that instead, activity on the server has become much more strategic, and we now spend 85% of our time on the Discord server rather than on Big Sister, Little Brother or the forums... proves to me that people change. They grow up, evolve, move on, improve, get better... they are not all static entities, but living, breathing human beings behind the avatars with changing life circumstances that need more of their attention over time. Therefore, the decrease of play activity is a fact that should be CELEBRATED and encouraged, regardless of how counter-intuitive it sounds -- and that's because I want my server to be populated by PEOPLE, not player counts!
So that being said, we lasted three years this way... but can it last four years?
I would say yes...
...But that's probably as far as it can go, and we should seriously look into gracefully winding down in 2017, and closing up shop before the server renewal on January 2018, at which point the Big Sister world, and Little Brother, will be packaged up, archived, and freely available to download for anyone interested in opening their own Big Sister mirrors, or just owning their pieces of server history. Financially it would no longer make sense for me to keep a living museum going for five years when it might hardly get visited; and morally, I feel it's important for things we hold dear to have proper closure, allowing them to go out with a bang rather than a weak fizzle into obscurity. I have seen many of you grow up, mature, improve, and even claim the server experience has helped you tremendously in life (and I'll include myself here too) -- and as such, all of you deserve the right to move on to a clean slate and a new experience, rather than to have the old experience devolve into a kind of emotional anchor. In other words, tap into some very over-played lyrics...
As I said earlier, doing this won't have the same impact as it might have two or three years ago. Aside from many of us growing out of Minecraft, we have also grown a lot more social and a lot better connected. A year ago I was still an enigma to all but a select few; but now most of you can just reach out to me with a flick of a keyboard or the mic,... always good for those crucial midnight food questions (woo!!). We talk together, we sing together, we draw together, we play other games together, we watch movies together, we trade recipes together, we learn mod-making together, we vent to each other, we encourage ourselves to take life-changing leaps of faith (such as with your's truly), and recently we've even been able to help with homework together! We are now, without a doubt, a true community; and communities are destined to last a LOT longer than game servers. Even if we should eventually disperse, friendships have good lasting power! ^^
Now this is where I normally would offer a cool new feature on the server or some fundamental change to make my handling of things better,... but seeing as how Year 4 may be our last, I don't think this is prudent anymore (besides which there hasn't been much time for me to work on anything, lol). But if there is anything I CAN promise for the coming year, it's that I promise to be more of a human being, enjoying more of my real life as well as our cool social community, leveraging many of my lessons learned here to restart RL efforts to return to social media. I feel myself increasingly-cured of the soul ailments that made me do what I did three years ago (of which I have many of you to thank!), as well as much more eager to forgive those transgressions as they did ultimately bring us together. It's through that forgiveness and growth that I can accept the past for what it was,... a hard road to my exceptional present ripe with great opportunities for tomorrow... and let it go gracefully with the respect it deserves.
In my mind, both the server and Ciabatta (as her character) are great metaphors for my own personal ascendance; it's my hope that many of you can claim the same as well, and can also look back on these three years with warmth, fondness, gratitude and accomplishment.
More than ever, and from the bottom of my heart... thank you!
--Cia
