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+--- Thread: Opening up about Charisma (/showthread.php?tid=448)
Opening up about Charisma - Vitiman - 02-04-2018
This is a bit of an unusual thread for me to make, as I have always felt too guilty and unjustified in talking about these events for the last 4 and a half years, but even though they haven't really bothered me in quite some time, I think there's a hefty amount of misinformation and outright inaccurate accounts of what happened regarding the breakup of the original Super Charisma Bros. group, and considering over the years there have been people who initially didn't trust me because of these rumours floating around, it's clear biting my tongue did more harm than good.
For those of you who aren't really sure what any of this is about, this thread probably isn't in your best interest to read. However, if you want to anyways for some reason (maybe arguments teenagers had half a decade ago brings back memories to you or something), then let me catch you up to speed: the original Super Charisma Bros. group that appeared in Charismas 1-6 had quite a nasty falling out that occurred on in early September. Before this, there was one shortly after Charisma 4 ceased development, but that was more of a mutual breakup and while there were a lot of bad feelings surrounding it, there wasn't a whole lot of backlash pertaining to it either.
Really, I just want to clarify some things and give my side of the story. First of all, a lot of people have thought there was a correlation between the Charisma group breaking up and my little... account suicide incident. This is only partially true, but it's really just indirectly more than anything. Throughout August, I was growing tired of the community here due to a number of things bugging me and I was also getting out more and doing more things with my life (more on that in a moment), including starting a band with a friend whom I knew in person and potentially getting a job (but that fell through). The Charisma gang officially broke up on the evening of September 9th, 2013, while the Wiki incident happened at the tail end of the month on September 29th, 20 days later. The wiki states I was also banned much earlier on the main site on August 27th, but this was only because my account was compromised and I wasn't able to log into the email to reclaim it for a little while, so I just stopped using my main site account and asked Miles (who was then an admin) to give me a new password sometime in the future and I'd confirm it was me somehow. Regardless, the two events don't really have anything in common apart from probably not making me feel too great about being here.
Secondly: there was a very big aspect of the falling out that went public around that time - the accusation that I did not give my fair share of credit to the other Charisma members for assisting in developing the games with them. This is a pretty big deal to me, and I was called everything from "merely a producer" to a straight up liar regarding the details of this thing. Allow me to clear it up right away: not once was this brought up in private to me before or since that day. The other Charisma members never seemed to have an issue with me calling my own games mine, and I have credited them on numerous occasions for artwork, music, and anything else they made for them. Of special note goes to Charisma 4, which was never properly finished, but was a big production with all hands on deck. The same can not be said for Charismas 5 and 1-3, which did actually have ideas tossed around (some of which were used), but nobody was directly assisting with writing the story with me, or programming the game, or picking out most of the assets or coming up with the gameplay ideas. That was all me, and yet at the time I still felt guilty because perhaps I hadn't credited my friends enough for what they did for me regardless. That's my fault, and I should have made them know that without them, none of those games would have existed - even if I was the primary developer. Charisma was a display of friendship and it always has been.
To add to the above, my final correspondence with Greeno (before a brief conversation in mid-2014) on the day of September 9th actually has no mentioning of not being credited in the games, and was actually about me not developing Charisma 6. As I said earlier, I was very busy with my musical projects (both as a band member and recent solo work) and in general wasn't terribly interested in game development at the time. Similarly, the last time I spoke with Cam was in reaction to Greeno deleting me out of nowhere, which resulted in Cam deleting me out of nowhere.
Finally: does this mean I hold animosity towards Cam or Greeno? To tell you the truth, no. Well, sort of. I feel like I was made the scapegoat in their minds by the end of it all, but there were some pretty stupid things I did scattered throughout 2013 that I wish I could take back. I was sharing staff forum info with people in a bid to be closer to them, I held a mock conversation with VinnyVideo and was encouraged by another staffer to pass it off as legitimate (I'm surprised a bigger backlash didn't come from this, honestly), and in general I was a moody, overly emotional teenager. But at almost 5 years later, am I actually mad at them? Maybe at one point early on, I was... but not really anymore. I've been doing a lot of other stuff in my life, along with sorting out other issues over the years.
Of course, it's easy to say "nah, I'm not mad anymore. It's been long enough, the past is the past", but it's difficult to really bury the hatchet and move on from it. I'll always appreciate them for being my friends, even if it was just briefly - I still hold my memories of laughing over stupid things on Skype with them and the other past members of the Skype group, and contrary to popular belief I do actually cherish the original 6 Charisma games (yes, including 4 and 6... to some extent) for being little time capsules of silly in-jokes and concepts that came into fruition as the pinnacle of a post-adolescence desire to make really, insanely stupid things to make my friends laugh. If anyone else laughed, it was a happy side-effect - but the people I was trying to impress the most were the other Charisma members.
Sorry about all of this, MFGG. I've had it on my chest in some form for a while, and I know it's really cluttered and mostly drama-laden crap, but I felt like it was important to finally get out in the open.
RE: Opening up about Charisma - Kirby's Adventure - 02-04-2018
(02-04-2018, 02:46 AM)Vitiman Wrote: Considering over the years there have been people who initially didn't trust me because of these rumours floating around, it's clear biting my tongue did more harm than good.It’s probably worth mentioning I’m one of those people. Even on a completely different forum! And, when Vitiman came back, on the Nü IRC as well.