Current Situation on Aoe4 and Aoe2

[lecracheursagacite]

I suppose I’ll start by answering your question. No. As far as I am aware, you are not guilty of criticizing things like Nili’s sexual orientation (whatever it is), looks, religion, so on.

But. And the big but which often isn’t a favorite word. But it looks like you are choosing to stop there rather than looking at the complete definition of cyberbullying. I am not trying to insult you, but words can have really deep and multiple meanings. From quoting the dictionary and wiki, are you not guilty of ‘mean-spirited messages’, which could also be called hate speech? Another part of how cyberbullying is defined. Which is to say, using words (speech) to express hatred (hate...) to a person or maybe even a thing for whatever reason and those reasons could be many? Semantics can often be debated but if you can define hate speech another way, I’ll listen.

Like the two posts of yours that caught my eye within past two days:

Battle of Africa 3 - Official Announcement

Announcement | Handbook | Maps | Discussion | Questions & Answers | Registrations | Discord Official Announcement The biggest and most prestigious team game tournament of Age of Empires II is finally making its return. It is long overdue, but we cannot be more excited to share with you that...

www.aoezone.net

And

Current Situation on Aoe4 and Aoe2

It's not an s tier tournament, and I think it's totalling 6-7k viewers atm, which isn't bad. However, rage forest is not a "great" TG tournament in the sense that it's like the 'grand slams', such as HC, RBW, NAC are for 1v1. Boa is different in this regard I think since it's an actual s tier...

www.aoezone.net

Guilty or not guilty of hating on Nili?

In the first one for example which is a tournament announcement topic, Memb called it hate, and seems like a lot sided with his message (I was one of them btw). The second one well, do I need to really talk about it? Is it not to say, “Thanks Nili for allocating 100k to aoe4 and not aoe2 which killed aoe2.” Given the positivity of this topic, of course. It feels like something deep is there.

Criticism of what Nili did was fine imo (even strong posts can be fine) but only as long as the topic was relevant imo. Not for four months and to add, you agreed with me on the time length. Wouldn’t you agree four months is an unusually long time to criticize someone or even randomly throw negative things pertaining to it about? Because otherwise it feels petty, personal, and frankly it becomes bullying. The Will Smith incident lasted 10-14 days, and that’s Hollywood which is far bigger than the aoezone scene will ever be. That’s with all due respect to the aoe scene btw.

Also, you tagged Nili twice, so you clearly wanted his attention. Do you want to clarify why? I don’t get a positive impression. And I don’t think I have ever seen you really post anything other than something about Nili for months.

On that note as well, one thing that bothers me is that I tried to go to your profile to look at recent posts (to find these two messages but I had to do it the hard way) but it said the user has restricted who can completely view their profile. Care to share why that is? It feels like you’re hiding something honestly and that doesn’t bode well. What would I find if you disabled it and I made time to look at your posting history for the past 4 months? How many Nili posts am I going to find if I took an actual count? This isn’t me trying to zing you btw, just me being very direct about things.

Like I for instance disabled the option for others to see when I am online/what I look at because it feels like I am trying to read a newspaper and anyone can peek over my shoulder. That feels like some small violation of privacy tbh. But anyone can view any message I have ever posted or liked. So, what’s your reason for disabling all those options?

Also I was going to post my message, but there’s actually a third post I had in another tab before I was going to close it (because I couldn’t search your profile, I came across it).

Current Situation on Aoe4 and Aoe2

It's not an s tier tournament, and I think it's totalling 6-7k viewers atm, which isn't bad. However, rage forest is not a "great" TG tournament in the sense that it's like the 'grand slams', such as HC, RBW, NAC are for 1v1. Boa is different in this regard I think since it's an actual s tier...

www.aoezone.net

Come on honestly. Tagged Nili again (3rd time), and that with the second paragraph feels like you are bullying him. Or am I gravely misunderstanding things?

Bullying is maybe not the best analogy to use when the supposed perpetrator is more or less ostracized by a large portion of the community and the supposed victim is a well-known tournament host and streamer.

 

[Rayne]

Bullying is maybe not the best analogy to use when the supposed perpetrator is more or less ostracized by a large portion of the community and the supposed victim is a well-known tournament host and streamer.

It’s not an analogy, it is a real thing and what is going on. Bullying is defined as “prone to or characterized by overbearing mistreatment and domination by others.” It fits mistreatment and certainly feels overbearing when he admitted it has been months. I am not trying to insult you here and infact, I actually have respect for you and I find you level-headed (if this part doesn’t sound insulting).

Don’t you agree that definition fits perfectly? Otherwise from a top google search, bullying is defined as intent to harm, intimidate, coerce. Harm isn’t just physical but mental and even emotional (maybe even spiritual?). Wasn’t there intent to mentally harm Nili in all the posts I linked? Sure looks like it to me.

 

[Dkastro]

More than cyberbullying I would say it's boring. I come to aoezone to talk about age, tournaments, the new civs. Ok maybe it's fine to talk about Nili in this thread, but every time the conversation flows in another direction the usual suspects bring Nili again... And the same with every other thread that has a connection with the subject.

I think it would be fine if you have your own thread to bash Nili in the name of free speach.

 

[ltm]

Nili is a streamer and brought this controversy onto himself by doing his content creator job + tournament coordinator job + tournament organizer job all at the same time, despite being well aware of the obvious issue there is when it comes to allocating funds.

Now sure there are always people taking it too far and you can argue about wiki definitions all day...but for me personally it seems disrespectful to people that didn't choose to be public figures and suffer from cyber bullying. Often kids that are scared to go to school, that feel their whole life is in shambles, that might even think about suicide.

I don't know Nili personally but i'd imagine some "toxic" comments don't really hurt him, mostly because he 100% knew what he was doing and yet went with it anyway. If this is cyber bullying then every streamer, or really any kind of public figure get's a fair share of cyber bullying. Idk, but watering down something so serious always leaves a bad taste for me.

 

[stanno]

The truth is, Nili was just abiding by whatever rules and objectives were imposed by his employers.
And it's not up to any of us to criticise him for that. He's doing the job that he's being paid to do, and sometimes even taking money out of his own pocket to fund a tournament, as was the case with N4C.

 

[x0r6zt]

The truth is, Nili was just abiding by whatever rules and objectives were imposed by his employers.
And it's not up to any of us to criticise him for that. He's doing the job that he's being paid to do, and sometimes even taking money out of his own pocket to fund a tournament, as was the case with N4C.

Just to be clear, I'm not condoning the Nili hate, and personally think it is way too excessive.

But why aren't we allowed to criticize people who are just abiding by the rules and objectives imposed by their employers?
Are we not allowed to criticise Russian soldiers just because they are following orders? Can police brutality be ignored and not criticised because they are within whatever rules and objectives they have been given?

Bad decisions, and the people making them should be criticised. It's just a shame that a small minority of people have gone so extreme in doing so and it's resulted in personal attacks.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

@x0r6zt I think you criticize based on how much choice they had and what they did relative to what they could do.

It’s not an analogy, it is a real thing and what is going on. Bullying is defined as “prone to or characterized by overbearing mistreatment and domination by others.” It fits mistreatment and certainly feels overbearing when he admitted it has been months. I am not trying to insult you here and infact, I actually have respect for you and I find you level-headed (if this part doesn’t sound insulting).

Don’t you agree that definition fits perfectly? Otherwise from a top google search, bullying is defined as intent to harm, intimidate, coerce. Harm isn’t just physical but mental and even emotional (maybe even spiritual?). Wasn’t there intent to mentally harm Nili in all the posts I linked? Sure looks like it to me.

Nili is a streamer and brought this controversy onto himself by doing his content creator job + tournament coordinator job + tournament organizer job all at the same time, despite being well aware of the obvious issue there is when it comes to allocating funds.

Now sure there are always people taking it too far and you can argue about wiki definitions all day...but for me personally it seems disrespectful to people that didn't choose to be public figures and suffer from cyber bullying. Often kids that are scared to go to school, that feel their whole life is in shambles, that might even think about suicide.

I don't know Nili personally but i'd imagine some "toxic" comments don't really hurt him, mostly because he 100% knew what he was doing and yet went with it anyway. If this is cyber bullying then every streamer, or really any kind of public figure get's a fair share of cyber bullying. Idk, but watering down something so serious always leaves a bad taste for me.

Yes this. You can see from the pointing out of the things that Nili is not criticized for (e.g. sexual orientation) he is conscious of what generally constitutes a personal attack. He might want to berate Nili but it does not seem like there is a strong effort to oppress and humiliate him. There is also what I was getting at, that bullying typically comes from a position of social power, because without the weight of (perceived) popular agreement nothing a bully says has quite the same effect. You can't really bully if you don't have that influence.

 

[MaSmOrRa]

Nili facts so we can stop arguing about it:

1. If Nili was not employed by Microsoft and received the exact same funding for the exact same N4C (AoE4 tournament and all) that he actually did then no one would think it was an issue at all. This means that suggesting he used his position to improperly enrich himself is at least mostly unfair.

2. According to Masmorra, Nili was hired at Microsoft by Will McCahill, who is the "Business Lead" for Worlds Edge, which is a "studio" Microsoft created internally to manage the Age of Empires franchise. As Business Lead, Will McCahill is responsible for overseeing the "business and insights" of World's Edge, which in English means the strategy underlying what they do with their games from the perspective of generating revenue. That means Will McCahill probably has some idea of how he would like the esport promotion funds available to him split between AoE2 and AoE4 (and the others). If this is the case then he did not hire Nili to decide how much funding AoE2 and AoE4 got but rather to determine which tournaments within these individual spaces should be supported and how heavily. Unless Nili is going rogue and somehow not getting corrected then blaming him for the reduction in funds available to AoE2 tournaments is also unfair.

Tiny correction, Nili was actually hired by Forgotten Empires!

 

[Rayne]

@x0r6zt I think you criticize based on how much choice they had and what they did relative to what they could do.



Yes this. You can see from the pointing out of the things that Nili is not criticized for (e.g. sexual orientation) he is conscious of what generally constitutes a personal attack. He might want to berate Nili but it does not seem like there is a strong effort to oppress and humiliate him. There is also what I was getting at, that bullying typically comes from a position of social power, because without the weight of (perceived) popular agreement nothing a bully says has quite the same effect. You can't really bully if you don't have that influence.

I see what you and Itm are saying and while I don’t dismiss anything you both are saying, isn’t this essentially the ‘sweep it under the rug’ kind of attitude? Or turn a blind eye?


It isn’t a more serious type of bullying as you are mentioning (frankly I suppose not as petty), but it still fits the profile. The cores of words or some things don’t change.

Like how in law, there are crimes varying in severity. There are federal crimes which are some of the most serious, and then there are misdemeanors for instance going from I think A to C. This would go somewhere in there tbh. But misdemeanors are still crimes and so are federal, both part of that same core. One is just lesser. That’s why I said it should there should start being a week suspension or so, since I don’t see it as permanent ban worthy or anything like that. Just something to get the message across that it isn’t alright. Others have agreed it has been taken a little too far.

As for power well, there isn’t the same social power I suppose. But there is the power of anonymity over the internet and has actually had some of the same usernames regularly join in on it (which I actually haven’t seen as of late). Just like high school cliques exist, internet ones do as well. It did have some effect thinking on it actually. Still something.


You said there isn’t a serious effort from him to humiliate Nili (I would just use the word annoy). At the risk of sounding like a broken record, four months of effort is a lot for the sake of anonymous slander.

 

[SouFire]

I understand the though position where you need to defend ur friends/bf/gf cause their work or incomes depends on the current game's prestige. But honestly those things should be separated and no one should ever try to censor anyone specially if they have conflict of interests.

This topic is just a reflection of several bad decisions that have affected negatively the aoe2 community but somethings have gone beyond logic, for example the topic about nili, he did wrong but he is just another employee and he has to do what his boss says, you guys have created the false perception that nili could choose where to allocate the funds for events, which makes no sense, you gotta see things from the company's perception, all the previous funds were to promote aoe4 and now that that game is out the rest of the funding will be on that game even if it is a bad game, it doesn't matter such funding was already designated when developing the game.

Microsoft can at any point cut the funding for further aoe2 events for years and suddenly come back in 5 years sponsoring things to promote age of empires 5 cause aoe2 will be once more their most active game.

Aoe2 top players will be off until aoe4 dies and they can't milk it anymore and i have no doubt they will be welcomed back with the very same prestige and fanbase they had a year ago, so we all should move forward cause the ongoing situation isn't changing tomorrow, i can predict more aoe4 big cash events as soon as the golden league ends.

For aoe2 we are not going to see really high cash events for a while, in fact i think if there is another 50k usd event isn't coming from microsoft but from another company or rich sponsor but with the current twitch numbers and ladder activity the game for itself isn't really attractive, so whatever, we can't turn the tide we are merely spectators so i'd suggest to spend ur energies on something different.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Tiny correction, Nili was actually hired by Forgotten Empires!

Now I'm confused. Isn't Forgotten Empires a third party development studio? Does World's Edge contract out the work of managing the franchise esports to them too?

 

[Influenza]

Nili facts so we can stop arguing about it:

1. If Nili was not employed by Microsoft and received the exact same funding for the exact same N4C (AoE4 tournament and all) that he actually did then no one would think it was an issue at all. This means that suggesting he used his position to improperly enrich himself is at least mostly unfair.

I really have no clue how you think that second sentence logically follows the first. The details of N4C weren't finalized until months after Nili took his position as tournament organizer... after which he helped give his own brand an inordinate sum of funding.

It should be impossible for someone to even mention a "conflict of interest" while also saying "it is unfair to suggest he used his position to improperly enrich himself."

 

[robo]

The details of N4C weren't finalized until months after Nili took his position as tournament organizer... after which he helped give his own brand an inordinate sum of funding.

I'm pretty sure Nili mentioned in his interview with Nelson that he confirmed he would have received that funding if he didn't take the position, before taking the position.
Ie. He would have had $95k/100k funding for a NAC/N4C event regardless of the situation. He didn't just give himself money, thereby denying it to others.

 

[Influenza]

I'm pretty sure Nili mentioned in his interview with Nelson that he confirmed he would have received that funding if he didn't take the position, before taking the position.
Ie. He would have had $95k/100k funding for a NAC/N4C event regardless of the situation. He didn't just give himself money, thereby denying it to others.

In that same interview he suggested he had full discretion on how much money his own tournament would receive. He even mentioned that N4C could have been 50k, if he decided for it to be the case. But, of course, ultimately he gave himself 100k instead.

 

[malamadre]

From what i have seen from memb. He preffers 2 50k tournaments, rather than 1 100k tournament. So boa probably could have a bigger prizepool and its moderate prizepool is bc of a design choice not bc nili spend all ms money into his failed Lan party.

 

[p89]

I'm glad almost every content generator back to AoE2 already. Missing Kasva, Viper and Nili only.
Happy to see AoE Live-Streams column full of AoE2 like lasts years.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

I really have no clue how you think that second sentence logically follows the first. The details of N4C weren't finalized until months after Nili took his position as tournament organizer... after which he helped give his own brand an inordinate sum of funding.

It should be impossible for someone to even mention a "conflict of interest" while also saying "it is unfair to suggest he used his position to improperly enrich himself."

In that same interview he suggested he had full discretion on how much money his own tournament would receive. He even mentioned that N4C could have been 50k, if he decided for it to be the case. But, of course, ultimately he gave himself 100k instead.

It could have 10k if he decided for it to be the case. The question is whether the amount he gave his event is reasonable or not independent of him being the one to give it. That is the only way it is truly "improper" enrichment. You say the sum is inordinate so your argument checks out logically but I am not sure I agree with that assessment. If Nili was not employed by Microsoft and received 100K to host an AoE4 LAN tournament using the NAC branding I think people would be bothered it was an AoE4 tournament rather than an AoE2 tournament but there would be no great outcry that that specific host received that much money to put on an event nor any real surprise Microsoft threw that much money at a single AoE4 event.

 

[IYIyTh]

I wonder how much certain nations "return to norrmalcy," will impact streamers and potential sponsor revenue/donation(s). A lot of folks had time to watch streams while their work lappy' was in front of them over the past several years -- wonder if that will stop paring back and what that will mean if that trend decreases. Likely more consolidation/less variety imo.

 

[Dusk2Dawn]

This weekend it seems we have both an aoe2 and an aoe4 s tier tournament; time to compare numbers oO

 

[akku]

This weekend it seems we have both an aoe2 and an aoe4 s tier tournament; time to compare numbers oO

Aoe4 had peak viewership of ~ 10K on last Sunday.
I think aoe4 peaked at ~ 7K yesterday.

Aoe2 had peak viewership of ~ 11K this Wednesday, during Rise of the elephants TG.
Not sure what was the peak for Resurgence alone, since there were multiple tourneys going on, but aoe2 on Saturday peaked at ~ 8K
Rise of the elephants seem to be having a lot more viewership than Resurgence so far, but this could be because there were like two other tourneys going on simultaneously.

Not sure what would be the aoe2 numbers in YT and Facebook. But I assume ~ 2K live viewers in YT and ~ 1K in Facebook for aoe2.
No idea about how aoe4 performs in these platforms.

 

[JUDAS]

This weekend it seems we have both an aoe2 and an aoe4 s tier tournament; time to compare numbers oO

Liquipedia can say whatever it wants, but comparing a 125k tourney vs a 10k tourney seems a little twisted.

 

[LeoMontero]

dont understand how people dont see (aoe4 fans), that a 125k game has less than 3.5k in the main chanel. and now RB will feature an aoe4 tournament? wtf. with those numbers, it should be not even in consideration.

 

[akku]

@MaSmOrRa
Is the interview ready?

 

[MaSmOrRa]

@MaSmOrRa
Is the interview ready?

Has been ready since Monday, still waiting for Microsoft's approval...

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Has been ready since Monday, still waiting for Microsoft's approval...

Is Will supposed to be the one relaying Microsoft approval to you?