Online

[icycalm]

Qpo rented a Mumble server for Insomnia for three months.

Get Mumble from here: http://www.mumble.com/

Install, then setup, then connect to the Insomnia server:

Address: insomnia.mumble.com
Port: 7077
Password: lambs (EDIT: Password now changed. Text us on Steam chat to get the latest one.)

And then you can talk to us.

This will be the official Insomnia hangout for people looking to play something immediately, while the various game-specific threads in the Online forum will be for setting up games in advance. So just take a peek in there when you go online, if you are up for playing something, and see if there's anyone else looking for other players too.

[icycalm]

And now we have a Steam group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/insomniacult

To get an invitation add alexkierkegaard as a friend to your account on Steam, and after I've added you back I will invite you.

The Insomnia Steam group and Mumble server are the places to go when looking for games on the fly. Just make sure you have a working mic before you go there, otherwise don't bother.

[icycalm]

I updated the Steam group's "About Us" section with the following text:

Insomnia | Home of The Cult

WHO WE ARE

The Cult is the official clan of videogame criticism and theory site Insomnia (http://culture.vg). To join you need to subscribe to the site at least once (cost: 35 euros). When your subscription runs out you can keep playing with us regardless of whether you choose to renew it, so it's basically a one-off fee (to ensure that you are serious about joining us and weed out the casuals and the timewasters, who would never open their wallets for a clan). Also note that the reason the fee is in euros is because that's where our Supreme Leader resides, but roughly half of our readers/players are from the Americas, and a number of them from Asia and Australasia, so we are an international clan that welcomes players of all nationalities and countries of residence as long as they speak English.

HOW TO JOIN

If you are a current subscriber who wants to join, post your Steam profile in the following thread, and you will be invited to the group shortly after: http://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=4710

If you are a past subscriber, email icycalm@culture.vg

If you are not yet a subscriber, get a subscription by visiting the following link, and instructions on how to join will be sent to you in our welcome email shortly thereafter: http://culture.vg/subscribe.html

That is all for now, game on.

If you have any questions about how this will work, or would like to suggest changes to the text, let me know here. There will also be a lengthy article published soon, which will be linked off the Steam group's page, that will go into a lot of stuff in far more detail, so look forward to that too.


EDIT: Also note that our Mumble server password was changed because I made the Online forum publicly viewable to attract more players, so if you don't have the new password yet, talk to one of us on Steam chat to get it, and please don't give it to anyone who asks for it if they are not already listed in our Steam group.

[Masahiro9891]

So our clan is featured along with many others on IGN's Planetary Annihilation wiki: http://www.ign.com/wikis/planetary-anni ... /The_Clans

The Cult- International clan, hardcore gaming philosophy

[icycalm]

I see that jeffrobot has changed his Steam username to CULT|jeffrobot494, which is great, and makes me think about changing mine too, but there's a little problem with it. That I'd either want everyone to do this, or no one. I think it looks lame if only a few people have done it. And since I am fairly certain that there will always be at least a few people who will not want to do it, it is better if no one does it. I mean, I could make it a condition of membership, but then we'd lose a bunch of members. I don't even want to ask people if they are willing to do it, because to merely ask would be to put them on the spot and make them feel pressured.

If anyone has any ideas about this, let me know, but right now I can't see any way this would work. Maybe in a couple of years, if we have a couple hundred members by then, we could make this a condition of membership and not care if we lose a couple dozen of them, but for the time being I think we should forget it. By then even some of the people who would be reluctant to use it now may value their membership so much that they would do it.

[jeffrobot494]

In the "Signing up with The Cult" thread on the PA forums, there is a broken link to our Steam group. It points to http://steamcommunity.com/groups/vgculture instead of http://steamcommunity.com/groups/insomniacult.

[icycalm]

Fixed, thanks for reporting it. I played around with the URLs a bit and forgot to update that forlorn thread.

[icycalm]

The Cult tag is fast becoming a fashion symbol like the American flag. Even poor Middle-Eastern children whose computers can only run Red Alert 2 in 2014 want to wear it:

http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... 9#msg76589

But of course they can't afford the authentic one, so they are going for cheap knock-offs.

[icycalm]

Put another way, everyone wants to wear the American flag, but only a few can be Americans. And it's the same with The Cult ;)

[icycalm]

I'll keep a list here of how many players we have per geographic region. It'll be interesting to check, and also I can link it on the Steam group page so that people won't doubt that we are indeed an international clan. Note that this is a list of countries of residence, not nationalities. Nationalities will generally be the same, but not always (as with me). Also, if there are two names listed for one person, the first is the forum name and the second the Steam one.

EUROPE (11)

United Kingdom
Some guy
Breadcultist
Dolt/Ker Blam, Sam

France
shubn/mess

Latvia
ksevcov

Sweden
Qpo

Russia
The Hanged Man

Ukraine
2garinz/Les Grossman

Serbia
mirosurabu

Croatia
moodrecipe/xraven13

Spain
icycalm

THE AMERICAS (20)

United States
Masahiro9891
jeffrobot494/jeffrobot
tackywoolhat/The Double Doors of Perception
danjiro
mothman spirit/mothmanspirit
recoil/recoil345
stevenberg/Steven Berg
Turnus
void/cephissus
infernovia/marredcarcass
Texas
feelingbetter/ImmersedReality
earthboundtrev
radoverum/Expert Button Presser
James W.

Canada
Shoradin
Mac/ironmachter
watatatow/¯\(°_o)/¯

Mexico
Beakman

Argentina
El Chaos

OCEANIA (4)

Australia
chevvy/ChevRage
ingolfr
dinopoke
agentx/Robby

MIDDLE EAST (1)

Israel
CTF

ASIA (1)

Singapore
Adjudicator

[icycalm]

Email from the company that makes Mumble:

Valued Gamers,

We will be performing general server maintenance on our entire infrastructure starting Tuesday November 18th through Wednesday November 19th.

Your service will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes during this timeframe and continue to function as normal after the maintenance. It is our intention to avoid interruption during peak gaming hours.

This maintenance is to continue to improve quality of service for our customers.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

LightSpeed Gaming

[icycalm]

http://culture.vg/features/art-theory/t ... s-friends/

Follow-up emails:

I’m not sure how one can take such a criticism NOT personally. Maybe you meant I shouldn't let it get to me that much. Well, that is a problem of mine — whenever someone criticizes me, it really gets under my skin, doubly so if it comes from a person I respect and his tone is so dismissive. It can get to such a point that I lose my sleep over it.

And since this is not healthy for me and I'm sure something similar would happen again in the future, I decided to leave the group.

Yeah, I get what you are saying, but believe it or not, there are people who are not phased by this sort of thing, but I too am definitely not one of them. Take it easy then.

[Qpo]

I just changed the password to the Mumble server and will now proceed to send it out to everyone that I know has been actively using it. If you're in the group and want it, just message me and you'll get it. (I can also help you setup and test your Mumble settings, if you want.)

Also, and this goes for everyone, once you're on the server you should use the Register function found by right-clicking yourself. When you're a registered user you can connect to the server regardless of password, making it easier to change it in the future. You also get that highly coveted green icon by your name.

[Qpo]

I just finished making personal passwords to the Mumble server for everyone I know is active and will shortly send them out. If you're in the group and want one just contact me on Steam and I'll set you up. The same goes for anyone wanting their username or password changed. Note that I am not always online so I advise you to contact me sooner rather than later if you need help with anything.

[icycalm]

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=25099#p25099

Well I think we should play with people who can post in the forum and can use the Mumble.

It's not only that; more importantly, it's about playing with people from the group, as opposed to with randoms (which infernovia now is), in order to foster the group and improve it in both the quality of the relationships between its members, and their quantity (by having other people see how much fun we are having and making their minds up to join us). I don't want to be the asshole who says "don't play with anyone I've kicked out, just because I've kicked them out", and everyone's free to play with whoever they want, but I nevertheless want to stress that none of you would have gotten to know anyone else if not for my efforts here over the last two years, and the best way to repay me for those efforts is to concentrate your multiplayer gaming in the group, as opposed to outside of it. I don't kick people out of the group lightly. Melty was kicked because he came in a 5v5 PA game and refused to communicate with any of us to coordinate strategy, and later refused to answer my email where I tried to discuss what happened with him. Somali Pirate/taub was kicked for being repeatedly highly disruptive in PS2 (among other things, he came to play with us while on drugs) to the point of calling me an "aspie" behind my back and trying to convince my friend Qpo to stop playing with me. berserkez was kicked for coming onto Mumble to play PS2 but quitting because of his high ping (which was still half to what chevvy and others were happy to play with) without even telling a word to Qpo who was taking time out of his game to help him set his shit up. Masahiro was kicked for being mentally unstable to the point of making death threats against me (behind my back, naturally; do you see a pattern here?), and infernovia was kicked for the SECOND time for being an anti-social uncommunicative asshole.

All these people are socially (and some of them perhaps even mentally) retarded dorks who were poison for this group, as they would have been for any gaming group, and, had they remained, they would have spread their assholic behavior to others so that, even if I personally stopped playing with them, I would still have had to deal with their kind of shit indirectly somewhere down the line, when I came to play with people they would have infected.

tl;dr I know what I am doing when building a group, and you've all had great times when playing in my group, so I am asking you to trust my judgement in these matters and take the long view of the situation, as I do. I hate posting this unpleasantness as much as you hate reading it, if not more, but there is no other way to build a group that is not full of socially retarded fucktards who can't even be bothered to TALK TO THE PEOPLE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE PLAYING WITH. And are these the kinds of people you want to be depending on when launching a 60- or 80-hour CRPG campaign? I don't think so.

[icycalm]

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/smur ... st-1050811

Worth noting the vast majority of the 'pro' comments are unsourced or sourced to his own forums members, of which there is rampant speculation he sock puppets many. And of the ones he doesn't, it is no surprise a condescending homophobe with a god complex attracts some followers - just look at /r/theredpill.

All I have to say is whatever else anyone does under no circumstances should he or his website be trusted with credit card details. You've been warned. I also think @exodusesports should review their inclusion of Cult in the clan wars tournaments as i'm not sure they want to be endorsing an admitted scam artist or his organization.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/smur ... st-1050816

Gives a new meaning to the name "Cult" doesn't it? People were wondering about that when we first appeared, so now they know. It's a in-joke that riffs off the fuss people make about my "OMG UTTERLY UNACCEPTABLE" opinions. It's ironic, it's not meant seriously.

Btw, do you want to join philo? It's only 35 euros a year.

[icycalm]

Made this for the PA forum. Others can use it too if they want, there and/or elsewhere. It should link to Insomnia's frontpage.

[icycalm]

Finally updated our thread on the PA forums:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/sign ... ult.63250/

I would like to ask those people who are on the PA forum now to set my exact signature there as their own signature too. If you want to help expand and improve the clan and the quality of the games we are playing, in and out of tournament events, this is a very quick and easy thing you can do to help a lot. All the other clans are doing it too, so there's no shame attached to it. As for the thinking behind the three links in my signature, it goes like this:

The first link is to the preface of Videogame Culture. This is so as to set us apart, not only from PA clans, but from all videogame clans ever. The distinguishing feature of The Cult is that we are not a group of people united by common preferences in specific games or genres of games or systems or content delivery platforms (e.g. Steam, XBL and so on), but around IDEOLOGY. This has never happened in a videogame clan before, as far as I know. In every other clan all the people are essentially randoms, ideologically, each of whom may hold a jumble of contradictory beliefs around videogames compared to each other. We are different from this, however, and that's why the first link goes to the beginning of precisely our ideology. We believe in not continuing in arcade games, we believe that CRPGs are not RPGs, that sequels are a good and even a great thing, that metagaming is cheating, that the bigger, more expensive and more complex games are more worth playing -- and even playing exclusively -- compared to smaller, cheaper and simpler ones, and so on and so forth. So that explains the thinking behind the first link.

Then the second link is to our thread where people can discuss about joining us, and the third link -- the banner -- leads to our homepage. And here is the BB code that you can copy-paste:

Code: Select all

[URL='http://insomnia.ac/commentary/videogame_culture_preface/']Videogame Culture[/URL] | [URL='https://forums.uberent.com/threads/signing-up-with-the-cult.63250/']Signing up with The Cult[/URL] | [URL='http://culture.vg/reviews/videogame-art/planetary-annihilation.html']Best PA review ever[/URL]

[URL='http://culture.vg/'][IMG]http://culture.vg/forum/file?id=8412&mode=view/rokbox.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Another thing you can do to help is to bump our PA clan thread at regular intervals -- say once a week or so. And it can be a different person every week, so you'd only have to do it once a month at most. That's what the other clans are doing -- chatting between themselves in there on occasion, which keeps their threads at the top, and attracts all the new players who can't be bothered to look in the second page, or even so much as scroll down. It also makes sure their threads have lots of pages, and so it makes the clans look bigger and more important. Can't fault the randoms either for being attracted by these things: my eye naturally falls on bigger, more prominent things too, just like everyone else's. So we could take a bit of our PA discussion, on events, team composition and so on, over there, in order to have a bigger thread higher on the page and attract more new people. I realize it is a lame strategy, but I'd rather employ a lame strategy and get to grow the clan and play huge team games, than be a cool person without enough players to play huge team games. Whatever it takes, in other words. The ends will always justify the means if you want the ends badly enough.

And do post in the general forum once you have updated your signatures, if you find something interesting to post about. Every little post helps. Thanks, guys.

[recoil]

Got this error when changing my signature:

You are not allowed to use more than 0 non-whitelisted link(s) in your signature as a new user, 3 non-whitelisted link(s) were found.

It looks like I'll have to post more on the PA forums before changing it or ask Uber to whitelist culture.vg.

[icycalm]

I had the same issue too. Everyone's had it. I don't think Uber has blacklisted Insomnia. You can't link anything there if you don't have any posts. I think you need at most 5 posts.

[icycalm]

I updated the forum sig code above with an extra link. Please make sure everyone updates it too if you don't mind.

[icycalm]

Sent this email to Masa, Qpo and infern:

We had a great showing at the last Clan Wars fixture with this match that you might want to check:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32qmyGRnyc

It was sad not to have you guys participate, or at least be around to celebrate our progress with us. The first couple of weeks of us playing PA together were some of the best gaming times I've had in my life, and it is strange not to be able anymore to talk to and play with the people who made those times possible for me. For more than two weeks I was barely sleeping and constantly trawling Steam to see which of you were around to play with. Unforgettable times, that I am hoping to recreate and even surpass by continuing to play PA and expanding the size of the clan and its capabilities.

I still think that you are all socially stunted retards who need help (in some cases, like Masa, even from accredited medical professionals) to adjust to being around other human beings, even merely on the internet. But as far as gaming goes you are awesome to play with (with the exception of infern, who is only good for smaller games without the need for much coordination). So if you want back in the clan, send me a friend invite on Steam and we'll take it from there. We'll just have to stick to the games and play modes with which each of you is more comfortable (having said that, both Q and Masa are great for all kinds of games, which is part of what's so awesome about them). I'll just have to do my best to swallow down the continued rude manners of some of you (infern worst of all, Q second), which I consciously realize that they are involuntary on your part, precisely because you are retarded (or in Q's case, Swedish, which amounts to the same thing), but which I can't help but be instinctively enraged at, despite my knowledge of this. So I'll try to work on the rage bit and maybe you'll try to work on your manners, and perhaps we'll be able to stick together and play more games together and have more fun in the future.

Or if you are doing fine without me and the rest of the guys, it's all good, I wish you the very best anyway. But if you want back, now or in the future, you are welcome to come back.


P.S. We could really use Masa (or, failing that, Qpo) to command the army in our last game in Clan Wars with The Realm in a month or so. Just sayin'.

[jeffrobot494]

One of the Realm players has the above email linked in his signature, with placeholder text "The Cult in a nutshell".

I wonder how many PA forumites are reading the forum now.

Sorry to immortalize that comment, recoil.

[recoil]

No worries, man. Needed to get that fifth post, lol. I figure he'll anatagonize us no matter what we say. As for the imgur link, there's better posts/articles for him to link to, he's just not looking hard enough.

[icycalm]

He's 16 years old. For reals.

He told me something about if I've heard about "the separation of logic and gameplay", after I had explained to him and his retard friends that all their ideas were illogical.

I said "From 16-year-olds, yes".

And then his moderator friend deleted my comment.

He follows me around the entire forum and "likes" every post that even slightly disagrees with me. He's utterly obsessed. And I ask you: is that a healthy thing to do for a 16-year-old who already spends all his time on the PA forums because he is autistic?