Many of those who follow me either in SL or through twitter know that I was rescently let go of webmastering the in-world extreme metal club Black Label. The entire thing was a shock because I'd just been paid earlier that morning and by afternoon they made the announcement that they were closing everything down: the club, the groups, the land: everything. Tried getting the owners to reconsider or leave it in trusted hands and just by the way the main owner talked about it, I knew her mind was up. Said the reasoning was internal that the both of them were tired of the wining and the lateness of the staff, and other things.
From my prospective I can see why they closed. When I came to work for them in 2014 I was already picking up where a previous webmaster had either left or was fired or dropped off the face of the earth and it was up to me to fix this mess of a website they'd left me, which was fine because it let me creativity shine through and the end result was the layout that was there until the site went offline(which I have a backup of). I want to say it was probably late 2015 which I noticed that something was going on - either djs were late, staff was never around, or there was someone trying to pull rank over the owners which lead them to being booted from the club/sim but I mean, they always found a dj or host to fill a spot so the end result must have been in im's then what was said in the groups.
As many in SL know, I run Fouse Radio with my wife and SL Partner Sage and I know from doing stuff with ESO with my brother-in-law that in both instances, we'd fight like dogs to keep someone from trying to take control of what we worked hard to keep afloat. We went through a similar thing with COD: Ghosts. A player named KSI(not KSI_Gotbobo but someone else) thought they could run EPiC Nation better and tried to take it over by ordering Kyle to give it to him. If there's one thing I've learned it's you don't order anyone to do anything unless you have the power to do so. He was promply kicked from the clan and reported to Microsoft, and then later banned for using a JTag'd Xbox. My point was that I've been there with dealing with those that think hostilly taking over something is the best way to do things.
I remember telling the owners numrious times that if they ever needed anything or wanted someone to let me know but no, they were through so Black Label is no more. I know many of you reading this are probably thinking to yourselves 'yeah but it was theirs and they can do to it whatever they want' and for the most part that's true. I guess I feel partially responsible for keeping Black Label going because without a webmaster to keep the site and social media going, no one out there on the net's going to find it(and there are those in SL who search the net instead of SL's fucked up search pages for this stuff). How did this impact me directly? Well I lost my land. Without a paycheck to keep the tier up, landlords don't care about the why, just that they get paid so they can pay Linden Labs to keep their sim going. It's a vicious chain. Thinking back on it, I don't think even if they gave a heads up I'd feel any different. I still would've lost my land, and I'd still be here blogging about it. That might come off as one-sided to alot of readers and that's fine(I'm not going to apologise for it). The point to get across was that the owners could've sought other ways to keep the club open. It's too late now though. It's over. My rant's over.
Monday, February 15, 2016
