Tabletop Simulator and hosting Titanomachina

 Currently I am hosting Titanomachina on Tabletop Simulator. At the beginning of the Pandemic I had recently come off a 2nd unsuccessful (to put it mildly) Kickstarter for Titanomachina and wanted to see what I could do to get people playing. I figured that maybe making it available to be played would encourage people to play it, and since I couldn't afford to pay for marketing and advertising, I hoped word-of-mouth might work. Also, given that there was a Pandemic starting, maybe people would be hopping on Tabletop Simulator so they could maintain their usual hectic schedule of game nights and socializing with friends. 

However, I noticed once I loaded it up that it had a global chat, and that global chat was, like every other unmoderated space, garbage. So I decided to ignore the chat and start by inviting friends to play on invitation-only servers. The neat part was, of course, that I could play with friends across the country and not just the people in my city. Tabletop Simulator actually expanded the circle of people I could play with, since I could play with all my friends and not just the ones living near me. I'm extremely pleased with how Titanomachina has developed since then. I wish I could say the same about Tabletop Simulator and board games in general. 

To put it mildly, the tabletop gaming community has some serious issues. Some aver that those issues stem from having so many unmoderated and unwelcoming venues filled with cis-het white neckbeards behaving the way they always do, which is badly. I agree with that analysis. I also agree with the conclusion that an apolitical space in which to enjoy games is impossible, since playing together is a political act, much like eating together, having sex together, and otherwise existing together on this planet. 

Many of these issues would be ameliorated if we actively curated the spaces we host for racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and so on, so as to exclude bad actors. Tabletop Simulator did not actively curate its global chat, and pushed back when someone rightly pointed out that the half-assed keywording policy they used because they don't have sufficient resources to properly moderate was actively harming their global chat/discord/whatever. Berserk Games apologized badly, apologized badly again and nuked the global chat, and we'll see what they do next. Now the trolls, assholes, and general shitbags have crawled out of the woodwork to applaud Berserk Games for their handling of the situation, and we're discovering another unmoderated space, the ratings for Tabletop Simulator on Steam. 

Now Tabletop Simulator is on the shitlist of reasonable people, and that means I need to find another platform for Titanomachina, because Tabletop Simulator is clearly a bad fit. So far I'm trying Tabletop Playground, but apparently I'm missing a driver and it looks like I may need to return that for a refund because I can't stop getting an error that simply updating my ActiveX drivers should solve. I mean, I would prefer to stick with TTS because of the sunk cost fallacy, and my own crass indolence, but apparently that's not a live option any more. 

Given that this has happened with TTS, I have no doubt that this will happen again with another platform, because everyone wants engagement and nobody wants to spend money on moderation or curation. Also, that the community is the problem, and so the garbage will likewise migrate to the new platform. So I'm doing to have a crack at Tabletopia as well because it looks like having all the Titanomachina eggs in one basket is a terrible idea, especially when I should have realized it was a terrible idea going in. Of course, I could just pull the plug on the entire project and move on, but I'm not there yet. Getting close, but not quite.