Current mood: anxious

Healing process
I've been thinking about getting some of this off my chest for a while. For some reason (probably because I have the time today) now is the time.

If you weren't involved in Diddlysquat this probably is of no interest to you, and you probably won't understand what it's all about anyway. But what is behind this cut is the complete story of Diddlysquat, uncut, un-expurgated, warts and all. Mostly detailing *how* and *why* it all fell apart complete with the aftermath. It's not pretty, it's not funny, but I had to spill it.



Look, nobody – pretty much – would be interested in this apart from me and perhaps the people who were directly involved in what happened (and probably they either wouldn’t be interested, wouldn’t agree with my view point or wouldn’t believe me anyway). Most of them don’t have LJs (I’m also not using LJ identities for those who do to further protect their identities), and since I don’t think anyone other than the people in my friends list reads this there’s no point in locking it for “friend view†only. I have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of and nothing I won’t stand over 110%.

This is a *get something off my chest* post. Yes, I have harboured bitterness and animosity on this subject, basically because I believe *very strongly* that I suffered more than anyone else, and I believe *very strongly* that I was made the victim of a *political* situation that had nothing at all to do with me.

I also believe that part of the *final throws* of the situation were blown out of all proportion by one person’s extreme over-sensitivity and paranoia. I didn’t help by having big feet and a gob to match, but really no harm was meant, no harm was done, and no positivity has been achieved for anyone by the stance taken against me by the other parties (although I have absolutely no doubt that they don’t see it that way...but that’s their prerogative).

In part this will stand as an example of how one man’s loyalty to friends/family is another man’s knife in the back. In another way this will stand as another good reason why you shouldn’t be too trusting of people because people with little to lose will shaft you without a moment’s hesitation, because they have so little to lose.

Ok, so what’s it about?

I want to come entirely clean about the whole Diddlysquat situation, start to finish, no holds barred, the truth, the whole truth and – I can assure you – absolutely nothing but the truth. If other people have more information that makes the situation different from what’s presented here, then that’s fine. That’s *their* personal viewpoint. This is mine.

I don’t think it actually *offends* anyone - there's nothing in here I wouldn't say to the face of the people involved, although there are some who perhaps should feel some remorse about what happened (including me to some extent, but I’ve no problem admitting that). There are some people who might disagree with my viewpoint of what happened, and that’s up to them. But anyone who *truly* knows me would also know the truth.

From about 2000 to some time in 2004 I worked from home. I did a lot of hardware/software development work and as a result spent all of my time sitting in front of the PC on my own in an empty house. I’d be on the road a lot of the time too, but between sitting in the car on my own and sitting in the house on my own I began to crave a bit of company; and having little other option I started subscribing to a lot of what might be termed “online community†type stuff. One of the places I started spending a lot of time was in the Boards.ie forums (in retrospect, this was a wholly ridiculous way to spend my time. I now would *never* go near boards.ie for fear of being sucked into the black-hole of arse-hole-ish-ness that populates the space…but how-and-ever). So I started tootling about in the RPG forum, and eventually got involved in an online SLA Industries game and met a bunch of people as a result, some of whom I later played with face-to-face.

When that game finished the people involved chatted about maybe running a different game and I offered to run something a little bit sci-fi/horror based on some ideas that I’d had kicking around in my head for a while. When I outlined the idea, a number of the folk who were going to get involved became quite enthusiastic and a little discussion started regarding whether the idea could be commercialised into a game.

Now at that time I was very keen to point out that I had *no* interest in this, and that although I had some interest in developing the idea for purely fiction writing purposes that was as far as I would be interested in going because the whole game industry thing was just a pile of crap and wouldn’t work (beliefs I’d formulated years earlier and still held to be true).

Contrary to my better judgement the seed had unfortunately been planted, and over the subsequent months it began to weedle in my brain. Bad thing.

I approached one of the people in the game group who had already expressed some interest in the development of the game, we had a chat and eventually sat down together one evening in a bar in Blanchardstown. I pointed out to him that I’d be interested in supplying background info and setting info for him to build a game around, that I wanted to retain some degree of editorial control over where the whole thing was going, but as far as I was concerned it was up to this person (let’s call him ‘A’) to do all the game related stuff. This was agreed, and off he went with himself.

We started having weekly meetings in the bar to discuss the idea, he would bring along bits and bobs of game mechanics stuff and I’d bring along bits of world related stuff. After a short while A proposed bringing in two other friends of his (called C and L) to help. I shrugged and said “why not?†because…well, because the game had nothing to do with me as such it was A’s gig.

I asked the people involved to sign non-disclosure agreements that quite simply protected the ideas at the core of the game in the hope that they wouldn’t run off with the whole thing and do their own thing. Mostly I did this to bring to their attention that I was very serious about this, that we were working on an idea that was close to my heart and that I wouldn’t be happy if they decided to plagiarise any of it for their own ends. I essentially didn’t know these people from Adam outside of a few face-to-face gaming sessions so I felt justified in trying to protect myself a bit.

The weekly meetings continued, but as usually happens when there’s a few people involved in something, the whole thing just started to kind of drift with no real progress being made apart from a whole lot of chat. Around this time I started to think maybe the situation needed to be managed a bit more closely if it was to go anywhere, and that if the *product* was going to be of any commercial viability then some sort of organisation would be needed as a vehicle for it. As a result (and much to my regret now) I formed Diddlysquat and started touting it around as a “game publisher†that would produce this game. Putting on my commercial hat, it was obvious that a number of things needed to be put in place to get the thing moving and that our profile needed to be enhanced. So we booked a trader’s table at Gaelcon 04 and decided we’d do a survey of gamers, visiting all of the conventions between Gaelcon 04 and Gaelcon 05 at which point we’d publish our findings. Call it market research if you will, it was mostly about profile building though.

Gaelcon 04 came and went. Numerous members of the gaming group came along to help with the survey etc and were I suppose *adopted* into the Diddlysquat team mostly on the request of A, C and L...I didn’t object on the basis of the “more the merrier†principle.

J – joined the team but had (I have to say) no particular function but had intentions that he’d help with storyline stuff.

JB – joined the team but really had *absolutely* no function. As it turned out however he became useful later although nobody other than me seemed to see it.

T – sort of unofficially joined the team on the fringes. She became more involved later.

Ca – did not join the team, but she helped out at conventions. I was never under any illusions that she was only there to help out. She did her own thing.

A little while later R also joined the team. R was J’s girlfriend and had some talent as an artist. We would be needing an artist at some stage and I couldn’t think of any good reason why I was going to say to J, A, C and L that R couldn’t be involved...why would I? I thought we were all sort of friends, you know?

After Gaelcon 04 we put together a plan for what we were going to do over the coming year, much of which involved the possible roll-out of three intermediary games followed by the Big-One. We were to launch a playtest of Spectres:Ancient Hordes at Warpcon 05, so we all set to work on this. Of course, it meandered a bit and I was still very worried that the game mechanics were pretty much all over the place when we started preparing for the convention which was to take place in January.

I started to get a little excited and enthusiastic about the whole situation, partly because people were taking an interest in what we were doing but also because it *seemed* that there was a chance we might achieve something with the talent we had available.

I’d already begun to notice there was a fair bit of back-biting between some of the group members. I put this down to immaturity (they were all a LOT younger than me) and mostly tried to ignore it.

T did really *nearly all* the work on the Ancient Hordes scenario for Warpcon. The others did bits and bobs, but really the majority of the work was down to her as far as I can tell. I didn’t do a whole lot myself actually.

The entire team went off to Warpcon and all in all the con was a success in that the game got played, we were well received and folk said nice things. I began to feel we had the potential to take this somewhere and I started telling other people a lot more about our grand plans. Shit, I even promised the gamesoc from NUI Galway that we’d donate a piece of original artwork from our first publication to their charity auction to be held at their con!

After we returned from Cork I decided it was time for us to really get organised if we were to ever have a chance of making the schedules we’d set for ourselves. I also started to look at the whole commercial side of what we were doing. The problem was that very little actual work was being done on the game.

We’d meet every week in the apartment shared by J, R and A. I’d turn up each Monday bang on time ready to work and we’d be waiting for people to turn up, waiting for people to finish chatting about this and that, waiting for people to finish watching crap on tv, waiting for people to have their dinner etc etc...then there’d be next to nothing *tangible* done since the last week, nothing on paper, just stuff people had *thought* about or whatever. It never seemed to matter to anyone that *I'd* been at work all day too, hadn't eaten and had a half hour drive to get home once it had all finished. I didn't mind doing this. I did it because I *wanted* to do it.

The only way that more time would be put into the game was if people were made sit down and work on it. That wouldn’t happen unless they were taken out of their normal space and made get on with it.

I’d been tossing the idea of a shop around for a while, and it seemed to me that if I were to open a shop and *employ* one of these people (even on a part time basis) in the shop, I’d actually be able to *make* them work on the game and have time to work on it myself some of the time too.

Who? Well A is a career person who certainly wouldn’t be giving up that to work in a feckin shop. L was in college and doing a bit of retail work on the side and *probably* wouldn’t be interested...maybe. J had a crap job he didn’t like and might have been interested. JB had his head in the clouds and seemed to be working towards his own ends. R had a career and probably wouldn’t be interested. T had a young family. She’d expressed an interest in helping in a retail venture so was worth bearing in mind. C was in a dead end job and seemed to be going nowhere, he had probably the best potential of being someone who would both benefit from the job *and* be useful for working on the game if he could be focused on it.

The leap from my current business to a retail business would be huge for me, and would involve a pretty substantial investment and an abandonment of my current business investments, so I wasn’t about to just throw it out there and see what happened. So before I went any further with this I decided to meet with each of the *team* members individually to see where they thought the project was going and gauge which of them were serious about trying to make it work.

Outcome of meetings :

A – hugely positive as usual, was worried about the amount of commitment he could put into the project. Specifically singled out JB as someone he didn’t want involved. I complemented him on his work in rallying the troops and general organisation

C – hugely positive, lots of ideas, very *on-side* with what we were doing. Specifically singled out JB as someone he didn’t want involved. I commented on his usefulness as a rules-bitch, but mentioned his lack of focus and difficulty finishing

L – hugely positive, plenty of ideas, very keen to be involved in gaming business, singled out JB as someone he didn’t want involved. He was always very quiet but I couldn’t fault the stuff he came up with when he actually produced stuff

R – positive, extremely friendly and seemingly *on-side* with what we were doing. I pointed out she needed to be working on more digital stuff for it to be useful and for her to develop her skills. I’m pretty sure I also mentioned that we’d have to appoint someone with more experience to head the art team once we got further along

J – positive and enthusiastic. He singled out JB as someone he didn’t was involved. I pointed out that he needed to work on his writing skills and how I was willing to do that with him

JB – positive and enthusiastic but he couldn’t see a long term future in this because he was planning to go to the US. I pointed out that I actually thought he was the best games demonstrator in the whole team and that I’d have liked him to lead the Space Grunt game team (mostly because I had more productive uses for the other people in the team)

All in all, I thought the meetings were productive and useful and gave me a chance to talk to people individually, something that very rarely happened if ever.

Shortly after this, we were to attend Lepricon 05 with the usual band wagon. Little did I suspect what was to happen over the few days there.

Day 1 – everything went pretty normally. During the day I had a chat with both A and C individually at different times. I was beginning to get really cheesed off with elements of the *Irish games establishment* and had made a decision in my head to break away from all established norms and just do whatever seemed like the best thing at any one time. I’d discussed this with both A and C and said about setting up a team something along the lines of the Steve Jackson MiB but without any specific company affiliations in what they were demo-ing. I talked about establishing this independently of Diddlysquat and having people just go places and play games. I spoke about having them encourage youth gaming and play opportunities in schools and scouts and kids playgroups etc. I/A/C mentioned that if you were to do that you’d need to be registered or licensed and trained. Both A and C independently volunteered that they were doing the training and that they’d be ideal for such a plan.

I didn’t ask them to do this. They VOLUNTEERED. That’s in big letters for a reason. It’s important.

At the end of the day we all went back to the apartment of A, J and R and sat around chatting and watching TV.

J, R, A, L and C all produced a document they’d obviously prepared in advance that to my eye looked a lot like a list of demands, and an attempt by them to somehow prevent me from moving down the road of a retail venture that they wouldn’t be entitled to a percentage of. This shocked and puzzled me, but I didn’t think about it too much right then.

Day 2 – J and R didn’t turn up, claiming it to be a waste of time because there were so few people at the con. There was some more chat about various things but we eventually just abandoned the con, and (if I recall correctly) A, Ca, C and I went for dinner. I threw out my views on the table that from now on it was just every man for himself as far as the community was concerned and that I had no intention of pandering to any of the community figures any more. All reasonably well received (remember, A and C are present here, both of whom I have discussed my ideas with, both of whom are aware of what I’ve said and both of whom have offered their own input on the scheme).

We’d come up with this idea about “The Irish Blind Monkey Knife Fighting Association†the week before as a joke made at the expense of the IGA, and we even had T Shirts for Leprecon with this on. I set up a website and everything all on a whim as a spur of the moment thing, with all of the content written on-the-fly just saying stuff like “we’re going to promote gaming for kids, we’re going to promote gaming opportunities for young people in child-safe environments†etc, all the kind of ideological stuff I’d had in my head but hadn’t actually thought through or done anything about (apart from mention to A and C, both of whom had actually endorsed and encouraged the idea by stating they’d be willing to get involved and run these events by virtue of their specific youth related training).

Come Monday I have had time to absorb the comments from the Saturday and – I will freely admit – I was actually quite hurt that the others would firstly somehow believe that I had a hidden agenda, an agenda that they believed involved shafting them, secondly that they believed that they somehow had claim to areas of my life that would involve massive personal risk for me alone and thirdly that all of this was going on behind my back with such incredible levels of two-facedness from people I had thought were my friends.

Almost simultaneously, A made a comment on a forum and included the URL of the IBMKFA. Questions were asked on the forum, and because A had very little information on what was intended (and because I *wanted* to make sure the information that got out was accurate and not attributable to someone who had no responsibility for it) I answered the queries and spouted on about what we intended. I didn’t realise that I’d just stamped all over the toes of Ca who was just getting her kids gaming group off the ground (actually I *hadn’t* stamped on her toes, I’d only stated the facts, but she perceived it as such and blew a fuse).

With the atmosphere already tense between myself and the team, having their friend and (to some) relative publicly involved in a flame fest with me was too much. A and C both immediately withdrew any support for what I’d tried to do with IBMKFA and denied having ever made the offer of support, rallying to Ca’s side.

At roughly the same time, R (who had obviously secretly been fanning the flames of revolt from the start) launched into me at the Monday night meeting, bringing J (her boyfriend who had contributed roughly zero to the project anyway and had nothing to lose...I think he was also a bit jealous of the fact he couldn’t step up to the mark when it came to producing stuff we were likely to use) with her as well as C (for some reason...but probably because he was J’s best friend) and to some extent L (because he was a close friend of C) and also A (because...well, because I think A is very weak willed in this regard and tends to go with the flow). R’s principle problem was that I hadn’t used any of her artwork on the Diddlysquat website.

So we had a full scale revolt, with only really T on the outside (she also rallied to Ca’s side, but I don’t blame her for that as she wasn’t involved in some of the other stuff that went on and is *also* more likely to remain loyal to her other long standing friends and family than me.

One of the things that *really* got to me was that at the final big-bust-up meeting, I raised the point I’d always been extremely honest and up-front with them all and that it was mostly themselves who had been disingenuous with each other. In particular I pointed out that every single one of them had been critical of one of their own members and that only I had stood by him throughout. C pushed and pushed and pushed me to say who that was despite my protests that it would be unfair to say in the middle of the group. But he kept on pushing and eventually forced me to reveal what had been said about JB – who was present at the time, and was left almost in tears by this. I was totally disgusted by C’s attitude. It *completely* changed my opinion of him as a person and with that I had no further interest in being involved in the project with these people.

There was simply no chance that any of the team were going to help with anything any more. Where they’d *all* been going to Maynooth and Galway to support us in conventions the week after, they *all* made excuses (some of them very lame) and bowed out.

That was (effectively) that for Diddlysquat. I felt utterly betrayed. I was shocked at how (from what I can make out) one person in the group could turn instantly against me on the basis of her work not being included and then be so vindictive as to sabotage the entire venture.

I have no reason not to be frank any more. The stuff she submitted just wasn’t very good. I saw some pretty good stuff she’d done but the stuff she gave to me was amateurish and didn’t give the impression I wanted the site to give. So I didn't use it, which - as owner of the thing - was my choice to make.

The situation between myself and Ca was again, just stupid. Nothing I did threatened her or what she was trying to do, but the way A and C immediately disassociated themselves with me when the initial argument occurred simply made me look like the bad-guy. Who wins? Well, Ca basically. Who loses? Well, there’s no such thing as the IBMKFA now, so the people I believe we could have worked with to expand the hobby in Ireland haven’t benefited. You can say I’m over-dramatizing the situation if you like but these are simple facts. We might not have made the thing work but we would have tried, and that’s what counts. I don’t have the stomach for it now.

Where did I go wrong? Pretty much everywhere. I knew at the start it wouldn’t work but I gave it a go. I didn’t want to be involved in the game side of it but I got involved. I only wanted one person working with me but ended up with a pile of people. I tried to raise our profile but just made a bigger target for people to shoot at. I thought I was helping that thing that I thought was the *Irish Gaming Community* but I really shouldn’t have got involved. I shouldn’t have trusted a bunch of kids with something that meant something to me.

Some people would argue that I made too many enemies in the wider gaming community and generated too much controversy among people who didn’t like an outsider coming along and messing with their domain. I don’t know how much this is the case. I think shake-ups are needed, but I now just think I was the wrong person to do it (too old, too not-Irish, too not part of the recognised clique, too not an active player etc). Most people in the community are complacent, hence the non-existence of the community as I see it. I’m also not really a conventional gamer type, so I’m afraid I find a lot of conventional gamer types to be just annoying/boring. Sorry conventional gamer types. If you’re my friend then I obviously don’t think this about you.

Result for me : the biggest and most long lasting emotional trauma I have experienced other than my divorce.

When I do things for people it’s because I want to. I don’t *do* hidden agendas. I don’t *do* underhand, and I certainly NEVER intentionally do things to hurt or damage other people or things that are important to them.

Am I a feckin’ neurotic for still having this festering in my head after all this time? – Yes.

Am I really disappointed that it couldn’t have gone somewhere? – Yes, of-bloody course I am!

Will I try again? Not a hope.

Lasting impressions of those personalities involved :

A – I have nothing against him, he’s a nice bloke but he’s a bit of a drama-queen and is prone to exaggeration. It seems to me that he was more keen to go with the flow and remain part of the group that stand up for the truth of what happened.

C – I don’t want anything to do with this person. Shame, because he’s very bright. But he’s also a back-stabbing twat.

L – Clever bloke with a lot of imagination. I liked him and have no animosity towards him.

JB – Shit, he’s only a kid. He can be a bit annoying but he’ll grow out of that. I have nothing against him...and on the night he fell asleep in the middle of a meeting (which I didn’t *actually* notice at the time) he at least had the balls to send me an email the next day and apologise!

J – silly boy. Needs to grow up big time and get his testicles back from R before she devours them completely. Member of the back-stabbing twat brigade.

R – Queen of the back-stabbing twat brigade. I hold her responsible as one of the principle destroyers of Diddlysquat. Lazy and mediocre.

T – She was only on the fringes of the thing. She took a stand with Ca over the IBMKFA but she (like Ca) was not there when C and A pledged their support for the thing, and whilst you might blame me for my enthusiasm in promoting the idea I wouldn’t have done so if I didn’t have the people claiming they were willing to back me up. I like T, she’s not normal but she’s grounded more than any of the others...probably as a result of being a bit older and having a family.

Ca – I have nothing against her. I think she’s just got a peculiar view of the world and her place in it. She’s worked really hard at getting the stuff together she’s done and you can’t help but admire her for that, but she doesn’t hold the monopoly on *doing the right thing*. She’s another of the people who’s views regarding the broader gaming community lie in a different part of the spectrum to my own, and whereas I’m willing to discuss and compromise and find ways forward, she – like so many of her fellows at that end of the spectrum – is not.

So what of the original *idea*?

Well, the original setting was a far-future science-fiction setting based on Earth that was to be called Spectres : World of Reversal, and we’d decided to produce three prequel games called Spectres : Ancient Hordes (set in late iron age Ireland), Spectres : Diabolical Path (set in early 20th century Europe and US) and Spectres : Hell’s Gate (set in the near future).

The playtest scenario for S:AH was played at Warpcon 05 and is available for download from Game Crafters’ Guild. A quick and dirty scenario for S:WoW was played at Gaelcon 06 and although all written up etc hasn’t yet been uploaded to GCG but I will get around to it soon.

I really doubt I’m going to do a heck of a lot more with it than this, partly because my priorities lie elsewhere these days, but also because it brings back bad memories. Maybe one day I’ll do something fiction related with the overall story (which is precisely what I’d intended to do in the first place), but we’ll have to wait and see.

If you’ve read all of this, you’re probably either confused or annoyed or wondering why you just wasted the last x minutes. Sorry. But I just sort of felt I had to get this out of my system. All part of the *healing*.