50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
My friend Andrew (who you’ve seen on the Chez Geek episode of Tabletop), sent me this gif with the note: “our network was running very slowly and Tabletop froze on an especially imposing face. Sam, our production manager, made it even worse. Enjoy.”
See you in your nightmares.
We wrapped production on season two of Tabletop on Tuesday night. When I got home from the set, Anne asked me how I was feeling.
“Do you feel sad that it’s over, or relieved that you get to catch your breath?”
I grabbed a glass out of the kitchen and walked across our living room.
“I’m tired, so I’m looking forward to a couple days of being a fat piece of shit on the couch, but I’m going to miss playing games all day for my job.”
I poured an Arrogant Bastard Ale out of my kegerator — a gift to myself — that’s been in the living room since it arrived a little over a month ago.
“That makes sense,” Anne said.
“Yeah, and I’m really proud of what we did this season, so I feel sort of sad to say goodbye to my crew for another year.”
I filled my glass and took a sip. “Ahhh that’s good beer.”
“This thing is the Leg Lamp,” she said, pointing to my kegerator.
“You mean it’s a thing of indescribable beauty that should be in the front window?”
“No, I mean that it’s a thing that really needs to be in your office and not the living room.”
I took a drink of my beer. “But if it was in my office, we’d have to walk all the way down the hall to get beer.”
She hesitated and I pounced. “See? That’s science. I win.”
I sat on the couch and she looked at me. “I’m going to move it as soon as I clean up the disaster that is where my office used to be*. Thank you for being patient.” I hoped she would not use up all the glue on purpose, as we settled down to watch the season finale of Game of Thrones.
Today, I’m starting to get back to normal. I’ve slept a lot the last two nights, so I only feel a little fuzzy in my brain. Also today, the newest episode of Tabletop was released! It’s Smash Up, with Rich Sommer, Cara Santa Maria, and Jen Timms.
Watching this today, I am once again blown away by the magnificent work of our editors. This game has a lot going on, and they worked very hard to make it understandable and entertaining. Tabletop is a show that is made in editing, and I realized while watching Smash Up today that the last five days of production, while very long and intense, represent only the beginning of the process that makes Tabletop possible. So, Yasu and Steve, if you’re reading this: thank you for your incredible work. I’m grateful to have you on my team.
*During production, my office becomes a huge pile of boxes and games and all kinds of stuff that just gets set aside until production wraps. It’s currently the worst it’s ever been, because in addition to the usual cruft from production, there are several boxes of things I brought home from conventions last month, as well as a whole lot of homebrew that’s bottle conditioning. It’s a hot mess.
Earlier this afternoon, I tried to open up Echofon, my desktop Twitter client of choice. It gave me a persistent “401” error, which meant that it wasn’t working with Twitter’s API. I did some searching and learned that Twitter had changed its API, and if I wanted to continue using Echofon, I’d have to upgrade to the current version.
No problem! I upgrade things all the time! I hit the update link in the menu, and the app told me that I was using the current version. Uh oh. A little more searching, and I learned that Echofon wasn’t supporting the version I bought, but was supporting a version that I could buy through the App Store. I didn’t want to pay again for the same app, so I looked for something different, and now I’m very happily using Tweetbot.
An interesting thing happened, though, that I thought was worth discussing in more depth than 140 characters at a time allows.
I said:
Sad to bid farewell to @echofon, but I’m not paying twice for the same app just to upgrade. Hello, @tweetbot.
— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) June 12, 2013
A non-zero number of developers were offended, and a growing shitstorm swept across my desktop. The general gist of the response was that I suggested users should expect free support forever and never pay to upgrade software. I read what I believe to be a large number of false equivalencies, and rather than try to respond point by point on Twitter, I’ll talk about it here where we can probably have an interesting and informative discussion.
First off, I never suggested that developers should not get paid for their work, because I do not believe that. I did not mean to imply that all upgrades (like OS 1 -> OS 2) should just be free. I also realize that, in this specific instance, Echofon did nothing wrong. The developer ended support for its desktop version (which I had bought a license for in-app) and began to support mobile and App Store versions. So I would be wrong to expect Echofon to give me the App Store version because I’d already paid for the version I was using. In other words, I wasn’t paying twice for the same app; I was paying twice for essentially the same app that would be supported through different channels. I still don’t feel okay doing that, and I think it’s silly to expect users to pay again because Twitter changed its API, but I support Echofon’s decision to conduct their business the way that they feel is best for them. For the record, someone at Echofon offered to give me a license key to use with the App Store if I sent an e-mail copy of my receipt to them. I don’t know if they’re extending this offer to everyone.
One of the many false equivalencies was “would you do Star Trek again for free if it was reshot to 16:9”. This is absurd, not only because I’m more suited to play Riker than Wesley, but the more I thought about it, I began to consider what this person may have been saying.
What I think this person may have been saying was something like, “if you were asked to do your job again because the technology had changed since you first did it, would you think it’s reasonable to not be paid for your job.” Another wondered if someone who paid for w00tstock 4.0 could reasonably expect to get into w00tstock 5.0 without paying. Again, I believe this is a false equivalency (the w00tstocks are entirely different shows — versions, if you will –, while the specific piece of software I was talking about had stopped working and would not work again if I didn’t pay for the same software in a different distribution channel), but I see where that person is coming from. If I was a software developer and I read my tweet, I may have pulled out my jump to conclusions mat and decided that Wil Wheaton was saying my job isn’t worth getting paid for, and what I make isn’t worth supporting. Man, that Wil Wheaton is really a dick!
So, to be clear: everyone who makes things deserves to be compensated for their work. I fully support developers who make awesome software (and Echofon is awesome) and fully believe that those developers should be able to earn a living from their work.
Further: I would never expect that I am entitled to OSX 10.5 simply because I bought OSX 10.4, especially if the new OSX was fundamentally different from the old one. However, I do believe that it would be wrong for Apple to make me pay an additional fee because something I already bought from them stopped working through no fault of my own.
This point is where I feel like what I was saying and what developers on Twitter heard diverged. If you invest lots of time and energy into a new version of your product, and you believe it’s fair to charge users for that new version, that’s entirely your prerogative. I do not believe that it’s right to charge users for what’s essentially a maintenance update, but as I am not a developer, I can’t say if that’s fair or not.
What I do know is that I will always support development of projects I love and which provide me value when I use them. All things (in this case, features) being essentially equal, though, I will give my money to the developers who provide me with the best service experience, and in this case, I got a better service experience from Tweetbot than Echofon. Your milage may vary.
Last year, we shot the entire season of Tabletop in 10 straight days. I think we maybe took two days off in there somewhere, but my memory is a haze of rolling dice (badly), having all kinds of fun with awesome people, and losing games. Oh, the losing games.
This season, we had to split production into two different weeks, and in three hours, we’ll start production on the back half of season two. To prepare, I’ve spent tons of time in the last month or so playing the games we’re featuring, so I not only know them well enough to guide players who are new to them, but maybe have a chance at just winning one fucking game on my show. Just one, Gaming Gods, that’s all I’m asking for. IS THAT SO WRONG?!
Um. Sorry. Lots of coffee at the moment.
So last night I set my alarm for 7am, managed to fall asleep around midnight even though I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve … and then woke up at 5:45 because I’m so damn excited to get into production. It’s going to hurt my brain around the time we wrap tonight, I’m sure, but the excitement and joy of playing games I love with awesome people is going to keep me going all day, like it does during every day of production.
I’m sure I’ll be posting pictures and maybe a few stupid cell phone videos from the set on Twitter, so if you want to see them, I’m @wilw.
I have this idea, and I need your help to make it happen: I’ve heard amazing stories from thousands of people over the last year about how Tabletop has touched their lives in a positive way. I would love to share some of those stories with my crew, so they know how much the show they’re working on matters to people they don’t even know. If you have one of those stories, would you please post it in a comment here? Every morning, I’ll print one or two out and read them to the crew before we start shooting.
Last night, my friend and associate Tabletop Producer, Boyan, came over to play some games with me as we prepare for season 2.5 of Tabletop, which we start filming a week from tomorrow.
We’re going to play Ticket To Ride: Europe, because I think it’s a wonderful example of a Tabletop game that’s a variation on a theme, with some minor changes, that’s just as fun to play as the original. In fact, this is the version of Ticket To Ride that made me fall in love with the game. I didn’t like the original the first few times I played it (it wasn’t the game’s fault; I was carrying some baggage from a few really bad games of Power Grid with me), and the smaller map, stations, and tunnels made Europe a game that I still love to play.
As you can see by the blurry hand up there, trying to hit the table, I asked Anne if she’d come back on the show and play this game with us.
She said yes, so the three of us played this game and a couple others last night, to prepare for filming next week. And not that it matters, but I won all the games we played, because the cameras weren’t rolling.
But here’s the thing … for almost 4 hours yesterday, I got to sit in my dining room and have a beer while I played boardgames I love with my friend and my wife … and it was legitimately for my job! I was actually working and loving it. So I want to take a moment and just say thank you to everyone who watches Tabletop, and everyone on our crew and at Geek and Sundry, for making this life I currently have possible.