The More You Know (Week 3) - Back It Up

Welcome to The More You Know, Andrew Nino's column in which he takes his gaming experience for the day and looks for a lesson behind his daily experiences to benefit you and him both. We’ll see how this goes, and who knows maybe we’ll learn a thing or two along the way. This week Andrew covers Project Zomboid and the unfortunate setback that has befallen The Indie Stone.

Let’s start today with some talk about zombies! I’ll be honest, much like most gamers I love zombies in media. To this day I can’t put my finger on why I love them so, maybe it’s the solitude of a world destroyed. Or perhaps the idea of surviving against the odds to live another day. Unfortunately I’m not the only one who can’t figure out what makes crowds of gamers and movie goers ecstatic for mostly anything with zombies in it. Game developers and movie director’s alike struggle with offering us as consumers a satisfying narrative.

While there have been some fantastic zombie games including Left 4 Dead 2 and Dead Island there are a plethora of abominations such as Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad. Now when a game like Project Zomboid is given to gamers and you see the scope of just what they’re trying to accomplish, it really puts a perspective on things. Given that the creators of Project Zomboid are indie developers (The Indie Stone) it is to be expected that to set themselves apart they would take some risks and try some new things. The following includes already implemented and planned features, showing that their purpose in trying to change the genre is prevalent. For example, mental health will play a part in Project Zomboid. Remember how in nearly every apocalyptic game, there would always be someone losing their mind? Tormented by whatever events are occurring they either kill themselves or go after you. The question is, why doesn’t that affect the player character? The player should have to struggle with insanity, the endless murder going on all around them. Additionally, why not get infected? Be it in Dead Island, or in Left 4 Dead the player characters are always “immune” to the zombie infection. But what if you could turn into a zombie. How would your final days on this planet pan out, knowing you were going to turn into one of them?

What I’m trying to say with this is that Project Zomboid is an ambitious project. With even half of the planned features being incorporated into it, Project Zomboid is sure to get heads turning. That’s all fine and dandy until the most recent update for the game gets stolen from The Indie Stone. Understandably several of their customers who already bought their copy, and all future updates for $8 were also unhappy. Now, when I say “several” I actually mean every man, woman and child on the internet. The reason this is so is because for some reason, the folks at The Indie Stone chose to back up the update (that had been in the works for months) on two laptops. Both of these laptops were stolen in the break-in and consequently the internet was set ablaze.

Once news broke out of what had happened, an endless outcry across the internet hit Chris Simpson a.k.a. Lemmy (the member of the team who was robbed, and who first revealed the news). One of the first things Lemmy said was “I expect i’ll either get a lot of disbelief or a lot of flak for no regular off site backup. I deserve both”. Unfortunately members of the community were ready to take him up on that with his Twitter followers saying things such as, “You are a F***ing con artist.” Which eventually took its toll on Lemmy who proceeded to get drunk, with his home being broken into and responding to the massive influx of tweets he had been receiving saying things such as, “Call me a con artist if u want i’ll take ur fucjing money and jump out a f***ing window”. The full tirade of tweets can be found here. (Warning – Strong language)

After the above Twitter breakdown took place Lemmy issued an apology and closed down his Twitter account. In a public statement on his blog Lemmy stated that he would be stepping down as a voice representing The Indie Stone and would no longer have any part in public relations, instead focusing exclusively on the development of the game itself.

What I learned is that first and foremost security should always be a priority. (Obviously) as we learned from the Sony PSN fiasco earlier this year, despite not providing any additional benefits to the user it is paramount that your source code is securely backed up on multiple hard drives. In fact, if hard drives are out of the question why not sendconstant back-ups to a dedicated E-mail address? Although I feel as though it’s The Indie Stone’s fault for not keeping constant updates, I learned that the community can make or break someone and that during a time of panic and unrest the last thing a community should do is attack as they did.

I would like to know what does the GamerGaia community thinks. Who do you think is to blame in this fiasco? Was it The Indie Stone for not maintaining back-ups? Perhaps the community for nearly breaking the spirits of the development team. Maybe even the person who actually broke into a home and stole the laptops holding the game on it.

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