MH10K
4 min readJan 27, 2021

Let me start by saying that I’m not fickle. I get annoyed when people react quickly and extremely to singular or short-term events. It takes a lot to break my optimism or faith in something I believe in. This, unfortunately, has led to being hit with irritating counter arguments that include phrases like “blind faith”, “where’s your proof?” and “what if you’re wrong?” I choose the word ‘irritating’ because the outcome is always the same: smugness on the challenger side and, well, nothing but “time will tell” on my side.

I don’t want to come across as bitter today (this isn’t a FUD article) but I’m frustrated. I was banned from the Cryptokitties discord server this morning. It has since been reversed, but I haven’t gone back yet. I’m not sure how long it will take me to go back. But that’s not going to happen until I’m ready. Which I guess is why I’m writing.

I love these digital cats. I have involved myself in the community in whatever ways I can. I’ve helped new players with advice and free kitties, I’ve designed accessories and outfits for them, I’ve organized a small group of kitty poker players and generally tried to be a pretty good guy. I’ve challenged people before when I feel it is warranted and, almost always, remained civil and constructive. I want the community to remain a community. But people play this game for different reasons. And that’s important to understand.

I’ve seen a few active players leave in the nearly 6 months that I’ve been playing (the game itself is only 1 month older but, from all accounts, that month was a hell of a month) which generally seemed like they were upset because they disagreed with the direction that parent company Cryptokitties (spun off from Axiom Zen) was going or not going. There were operational mistakes made, tactical mistakes made and other mistakes that I’m not sure how to label. But, eventually, CK would usually try to outline what happened, apologize and offer assurances of improvements. They would assure us that they would remain true to their word and clearly communicate if any of their established methods of things like trait introductions would change. I accepted their messages and carried on.

I accepted them because I get it. I’ve been on the other side and, let me tell you, just when you think you’ve seen everything, a raccoon chews through a wire in a transformer at the top of a telephone pole and takes down your entire data centre because the thing that’s supposed to switch to backup power had also failed without you knowing it. Or someone filling in for someone else issues a wrong command and Kitties with already-mutated genes appears in G0 (zero) kitties.

I don’t picture CK offices being the most organized, corporate place. So I applied informed patience and went back to my business. But others needed their supposed pound of flesh. Which obviously they weren’t entitled to. life lesson for the day: the world owes you nothing. You are entitled to nothing. Get used to it.

So people left. They went to other games. Or went to twitter to post on every article they can to continue their quest for revenge or whatever they hope will result if they can successfully burn the CK house down.

I still love the cats. In a previous article, I explained how I went from the username “must. have. one.” which was borne from a need to satisfy my curiosity about what was causing all this ethereum noise to “MH10k” which, at the time, seemed hilarious and, not unlike the Y2K bug, a problem that I could deal with at some point too distant in the future to care about. At the time of this article, I’m not far off of 3000 kitties. I have a collection that I’m very proud of. Lots of rare ones, kitties wth mutations at the lowest-possible generation, a previously-full trait codex and a shelved plan to pick up the one expensive fancy that was preventing me from having a full collection of fancies. I collect. I rarely sell. I’ve accumulated kitties through selective pairing for low-probability mutations (which results in lots of fails) and a ton of remnant breeders from old fancy chases.

There are a few players with about the same number of cats as me. A lot with fewer and a few with more. The one with the most is the one that has broken me. He has 65k. He goes by the name “Kitten Mittens” and I don’t know what his strategy is. I can tell you one thing, though, it’s not conservation of ETH.

He breeds using tools. So do I. I use the term “tools” to generalize something that has been developed to help a player overcome “friction” in some aspect of the base CK game. Some tools help with breeding, some tools assist with buying kitties with newly-released traits, some tools help you find marketplace kitties with hidden genes. Tools, in general, are designed to help solve a challenge.

Communities have a fundamental problem: they are made up of people. And people are different. Some in small ways and some in really significant ways. That’s what usually keeps things interesting. There are rules in the Discord about how you should interact with each other.

I suppose that it’s the unwritten rules where the real conflicts arise. Because they are unwritten, they can exist broadly and be shared by many or can exist in a single player’s mind as how they feel others who want to be a part of the community should act and operate. This is where this article takes place. In the unwritten rules in my head.

Utilitarianism is the theory that people should act in the interest of the greater good. The greater good, as it relates to CK, is growth of the active player base. Kitty values are market-driven (supply and demand).

Sharing unfinished draft. To be continued.

MH10K
MH10K

Written by MH10K

digital kitties / cute, fun and sometimes rare / arguments always

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