The challenge of interpreting intent

[Tyron]

Dearest Community,

we seem to have stirred some controversy over the most recent update. It was intended as a small fun pun at generikbs live streams, literally coded in 20 minutes, but seems to have escalated into a discussion over in-game animal cruelty.

Perhaps this is also a good point to give some insight on what kind of person is behind these blog posts so you, the community, have less need to speculate over their intentions.

Who's Tyron?
I'm the one that started development of Vintage Story in Spring 2016. I have a huge passion for coding and a love for detail. I've set up this very site, wrote about 95% of the games source code with its web-based authentication and game key system, the account manager, created VS Model Creator (based on MCMC), programmed an team internal asset management system, do the taxes, run the shop, handle support tickets, and anything else we don't have somebody assigned to. For better or worse, I've been steering the ship. It's been stormy weathers, calm seas and starry nights all the way.

I'm a peace-loving creature. In times when I need to recharge my batteries you will probably find me tending after my garden, pruning my tomatoes, turning the compost, do some woodworking or just watching the crops grow. I'm a great admirer of Nature and the Universe. Trying to bring a fraction of that beauty into the digital medium was one of the original goals of this game. 

Interpreting intent
Its easy to trivialize or demonize any statement, action, group or person. There's a million ways to look at a problem. There's never going to be a point where I'd be able to program a new feature or formulate something in human language that cannot be misinterpreted in some ways. The one thing I can do is to inform everyone when I notice one of my statements have been misinterpreted, and I actively encourage the community to verify if their assumptions are correct. More often than not, I do make mistakes. A bug in the code, a badly formulated statement, a missed deadline and the likes. In fact I make a lot of small mistakes but learned to correct them quickly.

In this particular instance "pecker fight" and the change log entry "Roosters now occasionally attack each other when in small enclosed spaces" seems to give some the impression that I directly or indirectly condone blood sports. I don't. Furthermore I also did not intend to actively encourage in-game cockfighting with it and I also do not actively discourage it either. The mechanic itself however is not tailored to close spaces, but simply when two roosters are in vicinity from one another and they do very little damage to one another, and in that matter I have incorrectly formulated this feature. 

Corrections
Thus I will change the previous blog post to correctly formulate the feature, remove easy misinterpretations and henceforth, for the sake of historical accuracy, simply add such corrections in the form of a blog change log at the end of the blog post.

Thank you for reading!

View full record

[Tchey]

Hi,

I don't know why you wrote that as i didn't follow at all any arguments that may have happened, but anyway, thanks for "introducing" yourself and your mood. Keep it going, the result is quit amazing so far.

[Telem]

Heyho,

I am quite surprised to hear about this argument, will the feature stay ingame? And maybe get extended to other wildlife? I mean even deer bucks get into fights over a territory or female its nothing uncommon and would make the whole world kinda more natural. Either way keep up the good work. 

[Tyron]

It will stay, yes. Surely thinkable that it can be extended to other wildlife, eventually. For the time being I'm focused on bugfixing and then probably begin work on the next larger v1.10 update