<Tarlan>: Aloha SkulFuk!
<SkulFuk>: Ait
<Tarlan>: First of all, Tell us something about SkulFuk in real life ;)
<SkulFuk>: Anything in particular? Or just the boring crap?
<Tarlan>: Hrrm, I don't think that our readers will enjoy boring crap
<SkulFuk>: The boring stuff: 31, male, UK, care worker by day yadda yadda.
<SkulFuk>: More interesting: I get called a "slag" for a reason, though personally i prefer "legend"
<Tarlan>: Legend? Smells interesting.
<SkulFuk>: Tbh there's not much to know about rl, I exist, I do stuff, I eat & sleep. All the usual. Other than having a habit of going through as many women as possible & having a large retro gaming collection there's not much to know.
<Tarlan>: Heh, I see. So, about toribash, how did you find it?
<SkulFuk>: Boredom lol. I was completely smashed & bored, so I went looking for something different to play. Spotted an article on Tigsource about TB & that was that.
<SkulFuk>: A few days later there was a 3 page spread about Toribash in Linux format. Bored or not I would've checked it out after that.
<Tarlan>: So, talking about Toribash, you registered back in 2008, since when have you started to show interest in being a staff guy?
<SkulFuk>: Um... That's a whole different story
<SkulFuk>: Once again I was bored, then I spotted a load of stuff in the support board that either wasn't answered or had some bullshit wrong answer. So I started helping people in there.
<SkulFuk>: After a while I got a PM telling me I'd been made local mod of support.
<Tarlan>: What a lucky bastard!
<SkulFuk>: Few months after that I was talking Veb on IRC & he decided ot make me Smod.
<SkulFuk>: A few days later he decided to change that to ninja, tossed in some TSA & gave me access to the support mails.
<SkulFuk>: Did support mails for like 2 year before it switched over the SlipAnc.
<SkulFuk>: So yeah, never applied for a thing
<Tarlan>: Yeah, I saw that story in Rapid threads ;)
<Tarlan>: Hrrm, ninja. What's your job now? In general, what do ninjas do and deal with?
<SkulFuk>: My "job"... Hmmm... I don't really have a specific one now. The other's usually say "SkulFuk does whatever SkulFuk does" when describing it.
<SkulFuk>: I tend to hang out in various areas of hte forum, still do stuff in the support board, and when needed I deal with hacks, scams etc
<SkulFuk>: Since my 1st week as ninja was the same time the Vlad thing happened I've ended up rather good at dealing with that sort of thing.
<Tarlan>: What has tb become for you? I mean, it is definetely much more than a simple game for someone who've spent so much time round here.
<SkulFuk>: That depends on what's going on in TB at the time. These days it's starting to feel a bit like babysitting kids. Then when the kids get upset they spit their dummies out & throw their toys out the pram.
<SkulFuk>: There's still fun to be had, though usually the staff's idea of fun doesn't line up with the community. Just look at the zombie event for example. Users generally hated it.
<SkulFuk>: I guess it's got to the point now where trying to do something a bit different isn't a good thing. People are only interested in the auto tournament rooms, betting & other boring grindy/farmy things.
<SkulFuk>: Means we end up sat picking out arses waiting for a case to come in rather than being able to actively engage the community.
<Tarlan>: Throw their toys, farmy things? Reminds me Dramer's case, heh. Well, I suppose that much has changed since those "old good days". Do you miss them?
<SkulFuk>: A lot has changed. Static clan servers are gone, farmers are worse at hiding what they're doing than ever, the community had gotten greedy. Everything seems to revolve around grinding for TC, then selling them. No one plays for fun anymore. The last part being the biggest & suckiest change.
<SkulFuk>: Games are supposed to be fun, people should be having fun playing them, not spending hours upon hours repeatedly doing the same thing for a tiny amount of money. You want money, get a job.
<Tarlan>: Yeah, that's sad.
<SkulFuk>: It's like gaming cancer, and TB's not the only place infested with it.
<Tarlan>: And the last question. What are your views towards the russian segment of the community? Is it fully negative because of all those problems caused by Vladcasl/DRAMER or are there any positive sides of it?
<SkulFuk>: OOOOHHHHHH The RU community! There's a can of worms.
<Tarlan>:
<SkulFuk>: It's not all bad, just the bad stuff tends to take the spot light. For every week spent dealing with "hackers" and farmers there's maybe a minute where you spot something good come from it. It's severely outweighed & resulted in a pretty crappy reputation.
<SkulFuk>: The same applies to the BR community, well except I'm yet to see anything good some from them as a whole.
<SkulFuk>: At least the RU guys do stuff, though not as much now as they used to.
<Tarlan>: Hehe, we do, but not for other communities
<SkulFuk>: Yeah, it's like the RU community wants to keep itself segregated. It's pushed itself away from everyone else now to the point where it's gained a stigma.
<SkulFuk>: Like rubash used to do events for the whole community, aint seen one of those in a long time. If any have happened it's been so small that it's been un-noticed.
<Tarlan>: Rukeepers*
<SkulFuk>: Heh, hard to keep track of group names these days :/
<Tarlan>: Oh no, I thought that you're talking about them.
<SkulFuk>: The last event that comes to mind was the Deadly Game.
<SkulFuk>: Even so that was a while ago.
<Tarlan>: Yup it was awesome. And now we're planing to make something like that again ;)
<Tarlan>: Well, I think that this is it. Any final words for our readers?
<SkulFuk>: I had involvement in that event. It was me that gave it the go ahead, provided the items blah blah.
<SkulFuk>: Final words?.. Um, well this is gonna seem a bit douchy, but anyway. You all remember that blanket ban that happened. Yeah, well ideally that wants avoided. It's a simple case of help us help you, all it takes is one person to ruin it for everyone.
<SkulFuk>: And start making events again.
<Tarlan>:
<SkulFuk>: o7
<Tarlan>: Thanks Skul! I really enjoyed this interview ;) So, now you can come back to work, and I can come back to reports.
<Tarlan>: See ya o7