Gaming - what price redemption ? Words of wisdom...

[Future Unity]

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I've been thinking about this community kind of like in a nutshell compared to LA and their riots. You know, I've witnessed now probably 10 major bruhahas that had to do with gaming, enforcement of gaming, and all matters relating to the big loophole that basically took the wind out of the OMD dream. Man, there used to be a lot of money passed out here. I even made like 200 one month myself. Probably would've been $1000 if you took the opportunists out of the mix. Were you motivated by success ? Was 303Infinity, lauded by mp3.com themselves as a success story, a true success while Father Time is not ? Did you game like a fiend ? Do you have a million plays, half of which were 30 seconds long ? And does that make you more successful than me ? You sure made a bigger profit than me, I can tell ya that.



It's no lie that the atmosphere here in the past was conductive to dirty business. The crap was all around us. But crossing the line was still crossing the line. This is not like when I was 12 years old and got lured by my much older relative to shoplift (which by the way, was my lone brush with the law ever). But I still have to ask myself, now that I get a strong feeling that more crackdown is to come and that some people I know quite well may be amongst the implicated, what price redemption ?



Somebody posted, maybe J. Cepheus though I'm not 100 % sure, a plan for amnesty based on whether someone was a normal gamer or a ringleader. But there are a few things we must keep in mind.



1) Losing a page at mp3.com is not fatal. A few of the options out there are arguably in the ballpark. Personally, a combination of a couple of the other OMDs is certainly not too big of a falloff from mp3.com even if you are a mp3.commer thru and thru.



2) The ones who would ask for redemption, would they be doing so if they were not caught ?

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Which brings me back to our city, the shambles of, that is, amidst the devastation of what gaming did to it. The big PFP dream that got cyphoned by thieves in the night and some of those thieves are maybe some of your best friends online despite this. I realize something now that maybe I didn't know a few months ago. This really isn't about us and them. It's about us. That is us you see on the TV news looting the buildings because they could, you know ? Don't point no fingers like you're so much better unless you first shed tears at how it could possibly come to this.



If there was a way to tell that gamers deserved redemption from mp3.com, that they were like me when I got caught shoplifting, touched by the shock which allowed them to look at their actions. That they could truly feel how impure they had let themselves become, as the soul they put into their music became a non-factor in its uh, success.



Asking mp3.com to try to figure out who shall be redeemed, well, that's asking a lot.



I think the kind of redemption that is needed here needs to transcend OMD music business blah blah. It needs to be about connecting to the source that made you want to do music. Some of you know you strayed waaaay off the path. Your soulblood is the wrong shade of grey now. Music can be the cure for this but you first need to step back and really understand that your work, your art, deserved much better than this callous, dishonorable treatment you gave it. Because the soul that created it is fragile, unique, the best of you.



I just wanted to open this up to the gamers, no names required. The real cleansing that needs to take place here has nothing to do with getting reinstated, or with getting your promo world back on track. You need to talk about how you ended up there. For you. So you can get back to your real essence in heart and music.

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Quote by Father Time

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