Talk:Sissyfight 2000

Improving this page
I would like to get this page to a point where it might qualify for the Article Improvement Drive, and perhaps even to Featured Article status. Unfortunately, this seems something of an uphill battle; Wikipedians tend to ignore or even question Sissyfight's significance, while the Sissyfight community has shown little interest in improving this page (beyond acts of vandalism). Still, I think there's hope for this article.

The featured article after which the Sissyfight page can probably best model itself is probably the StarCraft article, since it's the only MMO that's been recognized with such status. Other gaming pages which have achieved featured article status include Donkey Kong, Doom, Half-Life 2, Katamari Damacy, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Perfect Dark, and Super Mario 64.

The Kingdom of Loathing article, while not featured status, is another MMO model which might give this page a sense of direction.

--C-squared 18:34, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Keep/delete
I took the liberty to modify the whole article and write a stub instead. As it is, it mightbe kept, I think. Pfortuny 14:08, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. We discussed this game in my computer-mediated communications course like 3 years ago. Nohat 21:42, 2004 Apr 16 (UTC)
 * SiSSYFiGHT was a webby award nominee game which put the work of Eric Zimmerman (now CEO of top independent game developer, gamelab) on the map. I agree what i wrote doesn't do the game justice. i was hoping members of the sissyfight community would help in writing the entry. enthusiasm is not forthcoming at present. i still think the future will show the game is significant enough to merit inclusion though. even now it's discussed in seminars and academic textbooks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.186.168.63 (talk • contribs)
 * New? I remember playing this, ack...three, four years ago? It had a fair community back then. Keep. Definitely. Ambivalenthysteria 04:27, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. 2k google hits. BL 08:10, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge into something else. keep as expanded. --ssd
 * Keep. I've added a brief synopsis and much more on its development and community. Warofdreams 20:46, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I am an active member of the Sissyfight community and could create a more in-depth article, once I get the hang of Wikipedia (I'm pretty new). Champignonne 00:43, 2004 Sep 10 (UTC)

First major addition
I expanded the introduction somewhat, and added the game mechanics section.

It would be nice to add a community section, as well as some graphics.

--C-squared 15:32, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC) (aka Shrew on Sissyfight)

Shrew! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.26.57.2 (talk • contribs)

Sissyfight is a thriving community where players not only fall out in game, but also on the message boards.

The community regulary have 'sissymeets' where players meet up in real life and spend a day touring a city or just having a couple of drinks.

It's a free game and very addictive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.32.236 (talk • contribs)

Game mechanics
In one of her many June 6, 2006 edits to this page, MaudB removed the summary of the individual moves one can make in the game. While her edit was uncommented, I can understand why she removed it; it was too much detailed information about the inner workings of a game, and doesn't follow encyclopedic style. Nevertheless, I'm going to include it here in the on the Talk page to open for discussion whether we should either restore it to this page, or possibly even create a new page for it.

For clarity of format, I've marked off the deleted section with horizontal rules below. In order to avoid confusion, it might be best to comment above these horizontal rules. --C-squared 09:46, 10 June 2006 (UTC) (aka Shrew on Sissyfight)

- - - -

I apologize - I just got the message from C-Squared. My Wikipedia style errors are due to ignorance. Ditto my lack of comments. C-Squared, you don't have an email address listed, so I came here. Please forgive my clumsy bull-in-a-china-shop-ness. I'm new at this.

You surmised correctly - I took out the bulk of the game moves because they are all available on the game itself, and such a detailed how-to seemed out of place here. I left in the strategy descriptions that aren't on the game instructions, but came about through user innovation.

Some of the other changes I made were because of the innacuracy of giving Zimmerman all the credit for the game, and emphasizing his analyses of it. Full disclosure: I was the Executive Producer of the game. Zimmerman was hired by us, and had never been involved with an online community and didn't know their specific dynamics, as the rest of us on the team did. In fact, except for one person, the core of the original GameLab staff was the team from Word that had been mostly responsible for Sissyfight. There was quite a bit of consternation back in the day re: the press not understanding the authorship of the game and wanting to credit a single, male "brain" who spoke academic-ese. When I came across this entry last week, I thought, "Oh no, not again!"

The game was a true collaboration among a group of Word.com staffers. That said, part of its gestalt was a reaction on my part, as the only female member of the team (and the boss lady) against previous "girl-oriented" and "community-building" efforts which all failed because they stank of do-gooderism and were no fun.

I have more info - somewhere - about honors the game received; its fast viral growth; the astonishing amount of worldwide press attention it got; the fact that it was denounced by Ellen Goodman, boomer-era mainstream feminist, as anti-female (!); etc. Also, another way it was -- and remains -- innovative is in having been aimed specifically at the alt/indie audience. There's lots of film and music of that ilk, but no games of significant scale fall into that niche.

Historical note: one of the main inspirations for the game was Lucasfilm's Habitat (video game). Because that - as a community, not a game - was in large part our model of what was possible in terms of player creativity within the game, the fact that the amount and quality of user-generated content based around the game was phenomenal was, to the staff, perhaps our greatest indication of success. Descriptions of some of that activity (in-game TV talk shows, a novel written about and within the game, a website called "Sissyfight News," etc.) would really add to the entry, I think. I could probably get some of the other Word creators to pitch in on that.

Finally, Electronic Arts was contracting to buy the game and put it up on AOL, and four Word staff members had been flown out by them to California to work on the technical integration of the game with AOL - but the Word.com owners screwed it up.

There's more interesting stuff, but I haven't thought about for a long time and all my clippings about it are hidden... somewhere. I'm not trying to tell my story here, just give the benefit of my background on and knowledge of the game and its conception/reception/etc.

MaudB 11:06 pm, 13 June 2006 (UTC) (aka Tootsie on Sissyfight)


 * MaudB, thanks for your insight and edits. Sorry if I came off a little uppity -- I'm a little over-protective of this page and, of course, the SF community. (And, well, there's no feeling quite like having your foot surgically removed from your larynx.) I'm sure there's a way to incorporate a lot of the information you've shared here (maybe under "Development" or "Cultural impact" headers? I dunno). If you need to contact me, you can do so via my own talk page, or even by PM on the SF message boards. Posting email addies on Wikipedia is an invitation for Bad Things. --C-squared 05:56, 14 June 2006 (UTC) (aka Shrew on Sissyfight)

- - - -
 * C-Squared, oh no, no, no; I was the uppity one, rummaging around in the entry without knowing what I was doing. But all's well that ends well. Of course I am nothing but thrilled that you care about the page and the SF community. I'm too lazy/busy at the moment to think about categorizing some of the info I threw in here yesterday, but we can work on it together bit by bit.

I was just now thinking that perhaps another, small, historical note that might be interesting is that as a teenager, I participated in a little-known computer system that was the first significant online community - in the mid-1970s (!). I looked and there's no entry on it, so I started a discussion item (see, you've learned me some WikiManners) on the Wikipedia page for Control Data Corporation, the owners of the system, called PLATO. It is apparently common knowledge among those early PLATO users that many of them went on to try to duplicate that initial online community experience in their later lives (see: PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community: "As a communication system, PLATO has numerous other descendants. Many people who experienced the online PLATO community were inspired to replicate it on other platforms."), and that was certainly true of me and Sissyfight. If this interests you/others, check out what I wrote and the informative links I added.

To me, the significance of this lies, again, not in my personal story, but in these: 1) PLATO in and of itself is very important to the development of online culture, and the evolutionary line from PLATO through HABITAT and ECHO (the online community I've virtually lived in since 1991) to Sissyfight couldn't be clearer; and 2) that it's no accident that a sophisticated multi-user online game appeared that was so culturally distinct in its theme, design etc. from previous games; the reason being the immersion of its creators (save for Eric Zimmerman, who brought another type of expertise) in online community since they were kids. This led to their not thinking of online community and games as foreign or lesser media in which to work, even though, post-adolescence, they'd moved on to more mainstream and artistic cultural interests (i.e., not just Star Trek and medieval knights). I think the game might be alone in that regard, in its generation.

MaudB 3:18 pm, 14 June 2006 (aka Tootsie on Sissyfight)

The moves that a player can select in each round are:
 * Scratch: An attack which deals a -1 penalty to the defender. Can be countered with either a cower or a grab, and does double damage if the victim is being grabbed or licking a lolly.
 * Grab: A passive attack which prevents the defender from scratching, teasing, or licking. It also sometimes prevents other players from grabbing. A grab also acts as a 2x multiplier against a defender when she is being scratched. For example, if Girl A is grabbed by Girl B and scratched by Girl C, Girl A will receive 2 damage; if Girl D also scratches Girl A, she will receive 4 damage.
 * Tease: An attack which is entirely dependent on teamwork. A single-person tease (also called a "solo tease") is ineffective against a defender. However, for every cumulative teaser added, the defender receives 2 damage. For example, two teasers do 4 damage, three do 6 damage, four do 8 damage, and five can wipe out a player in the first round with 10 damage. Two-person teases can be countered with a single grab.
 * Cower: A defensive move which can dodge a single scratch, grab, or tattle. Successive unproductive cowers, which are cowers that do not dodge an attack, receive a -1 penalty.
 * Lick Your Lolly: A high-risk defensive move which normally adds 2 hit points. Since the maximum number of hit points in the game is 10, licking with either 9 or 10 hit points is of limited utility. If an attacker scratches someone licking, the licker will choke and receive a -2 penalty instead. A lick can also be stopped (with no penalty) if the licker is grabbed. Teases do not interfere with licks, but if a licker receives enough damage to be defeated with a tease, the player will be defeated, regardless of whether or not the lick would have allowed the licker to barely survive the tease. If someone with 3 health is teased for 4 damage while licking, that person would be defeated, rather than survive with 1 health. Each sissy can lick a total of three times in a single game.
 * Tattle on Everyone: An attack which can potentially damage everyone else in the game. The tattle does 3 damage to anyone scratching, grabbing, teasing, or being grabbed or scratched. If two or more players tattle at the same time, the tattle backfires and does 3 damage to each tattler. A successful tattle can be dodged by a cower or a successful lick. Each sissy can tattle only twice in a single game.

Failure to select a move by time the timer rings results in -1 health as a penalty, thereby gradually eliminating those who do not decide in time. However, many players tease out consistently indecisive players. Additionally, if all the players make their decisions with more than 10 seconds left on the timer, the timer accelerates to a countdown from 10, ending the round early.

Whoo, it's been a while. All the recent activity, BTW, has been because of the successful Kickstarter campaign that ran from April 30 to May 30, 2013.

I restored the text above (with a few adjustments) because the movelist that was there was... meh. It might still be too much, and it would be good to pare it down, rather than replace it outright. But I actually think that with the game currently out of commission until September (we hope), a more detailed explanation might work better. C-squared (talk) 20:55, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Recent deletions (June 2006)
Over the past few weeks, probably due to prominent exposure from this thread on the Sissyfight Message Boards, the Sissyfight article has been subject to several acts of vandalism, biased edits, and insignificant additions (imho) by either anonymous or newly registered users. Many of these contributions seem to be merely petty attacks against the Sissyfight administration and established community. I've felt justified in deleting these contributions since (1) none of them have been commented, (2) none of them have been discussed on this Talk page, and (3) most of them do not necessarily seem to be in good faith or NPOV. If you actually feel that the inclusion of this information will improve the article as an encyclopedic entry, then please extend the courtesy of discussing it here, or at the very least, commenting your edit. --C-squared 12:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

- - - - -

Just saw this now, and went to read the SF2K board thread. One thing I wondered about: "AgentScully" posted, "I wrote a poorly written blurb about the ranking system about a month ago, which has since been deleted." That sounds like it could be worth putting back in. Did I delete it? Hope not. I remember "Claudia" (aka Naomi Clark, who was the Producer and Community Designer of SF2K and is now the Director of Community at GameLab) saying, "Sissyfight is a fame-based society." Profoundly true, and the ranking system has everything to do with that.

Also, there should probably be something about Ramona Q in the entry. Thoughts?

Hmmm, using the 4 tildes the system is signing me as "Maudie." But it's still me, MaudB. I guess I have more identities than I thought.

Maudie 03:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The rankings blurb AgentScully referred to is the following, I'm guessing: "Due to the rather competative nature of the game, an organised rankings system was developed. For the break down of the rankings, click here" I was the one who removed it; I didn't think it was notable (and yeah, it's pretty poorly-written). Other Wikipedia videogame articles tend to omit mentions of rank, at most relegating them to external links. If we somehow tie the history of the rankings system (first simply the top 100, then evolving to the weekly lists as well as the top 2500 list) into the culture of the community, maybe that would work for inclusion in the article. --C-squared 08:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * RamonaQ has sort of an anonymous reference to her in the History section (several incarnations ago, it was in the lead section): "...the community has proven strong enough to sustain itself, with an unpaid administrator and moderators managing the game and message boards." I'm not sure we can get much more specific than that—it might be bad style to use her handle/alias. --C-squared 08:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Recent reverts (July-August 2006)
Over the past few days (July 31-present), Nicorette (Talk) and 70.157.53.248 (Talk) (very likely the same person—their edits have been identical or similar) have been editing the History section of this page to include subjective, petty, paranoid conspiracy-theory-style attacks against the Sissyfight administration, with no support from a reputable source. Again, as above, (1) none have been commented, (2) none have been discussed here, and (3) and they do not seem to be in good faith or NPOV. I have been treating these edits as vandalism, and I have left the appropriate vandalism warning templates on their Talk pages.

I do not believe that this is the same sissy who uses the handle "Nicorette", since that person lives in Australia and the vandal is a BellSouth.net customer. --C-squared 16:28, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR (talk) 01:37, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

SiSSYFiGHT 2000 → Sissyfight 2000 — MOS:TM states that "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment". —Mika1h (talk) 07:21, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Survey

 * Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with  or  , then sign your comment with  . Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.


 * Unconditional support. Horsesforcorses (talk) 20:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Any additional comments:
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

2013-2014 Kickstarter/Sissyfight Returns
Many of the changes to this page over the past year have been relatively minor updates, appending the legacy structure here. I think it's worth exploring an overhaul, now that the open beta is underway. --C-squared (talk) 06:58, 5 August 2014 (UTC)