The Anti-Hax Formula: Curtain Call

[DougJustDoug**]

Yes, it was all a big joke.

If you haven't seen it by now, please read this post by Noah, the vigilant flood-protection moderator on the Smogon Shoddy Battle server. That post is the punchline of a huge April Fools prank to make an Anti-Hax Clause and implement it on the shoddy server.

When I say big joke -- I should emphasize the word "BIG". This prank was a huge undertaking, and involved a lot of planning and work by many individuals. We actually approached it like a performance. Since I was the writer and director of the whole thing, I'm making this thread to give everyone a "behind the scenes" look at the production, and to give the many members of our wonderful cast a chance to come out and take a bow.

The whole idea for this prank actually started over a year ago, when discussing April Fools on IRC.

[2009-01-08 04:37:57p] <@DougJustDoug> I thought about this for april fools -- Post that Smogon has decided that all games will now be won or lost not just by who faints the opponents team. But there will be an additional "Quality of Play" calculation made at the end of all battles to determine the winner. The algorithm was developed over a six month period by X-Act and is now being used on the server.
[2009-01-08 04:38:01p] <@DougJustDoug> The real calculation in the code would be a simple 50% coin toss. For a day we could watch people bitch endlessly about the "Quality of their wins".

Last month, the idea was brought up again, and a lot of badgeholders really liked the idea. But, we realized there was no easy way to spring something like this on the community at the last minute. If it was going to be convincing, it needed a lot of advance planning and setup by a wide range of people in the community. Since it was my idea, and I like planning big projects -- I wrote a "script" and decided to make this into a community performance.

Here's the initial script that started it all.

As the performance unfolded, we made many changes to the script and timeline. But, all in all, the whole thing unfolded fairly close to the original plan. As you can see, there was a defined cast for the whole thing. Here's a list of the participating cast members (I'll let you try to figure out what roles they were playing):

Ancien Régime
Articanus
Articuno64
august
AvatarST
Blue Kirby
Caelum
Calciphoce
darkie
DM
DP Crobat
Elevator Music
Imran
JabbaTheGriffin
Jibaku
Jimbo
Jumpman16
Kevin Garrett
Lee
Lorak
maddog
MS
Obi
QibingZero
reachzero
SoT
Tangerine
TAY
tennisace
Twash
Twist of Fate
X-Act
zerowing

We had one non-badged member of the cast -- XxBlueCookiesxX. If you read the script, you will see it was planned all along. But, the role was not cast until late in the production, when BlueCookies was accidently given access to a private discussion about the prank. We decided to use the mistake to our advantage, and BlueCookies did a great job in the role!

I'd also like to recognize two users that were not part of the cast, but deserve special mention.

Lemmiwinks MkII
Blame Game

These two users participated heavily in the PR thread, and had no idea this was a prank. I commend both users for their polite and respectful handling of the situation -- even in the face of all the absurd arguments and discussion happening around them. Internally, we were making bets as to when these two would "crack" and go off on a flame spree. But they maintained their composure throughout, which was remarkable.

Although this whole thing was a joke, I prefer to think of it as a sort of "morality play". We intentionally painted a gross caricature of the Smogon decision-making process, and tried to poke fun at ourselves in the process. While we take competitive pokemon seriously, I hope this joke shows that we try not to take it TOO seriously. Every cast member was intentionally trying to play on their reputation and history within Smogon. I'll let the public judge the quality of their performance.

I also think that through all the chaos and arguments that came out of this joke -- we have actually gotten an interesting look at how the community views the importance of luck in the metagame. I was fascinated by many of the points made in the various discussions around this, even some of the "fake posts" made by cast members. I'm not sure of all the lessons learned here, but it's certainly food for thought. For all those that despise hax and wish it could be eliminated, I think the moral of the story is -- "Be careful what you wish for."

To all members of the cast and community, feel free to post commentary on the joke in this thread. If anyone out there really got their feelings hurt, or was legitimately pissed off by the whole thing -- please don't spew invective here. Take a minute, relax, and look at everything that happened -- and I think you'll start laughing with the rest of us!

[Tangerine]

Finally... i can go to class. I'll post thoughts on this after! :P

My role is very easy to guess!

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpos...3&postcount=73

[Havak]

This was an amazing prank, well done to everyone involved. I should've got more involved lol

[Aldaron*]

Wasn't as involved with this as I would have liked, but I complained / whined a bit in #biuret to make up for it!

Anyway, great prank, and it was awesome reading all the responses to this on other forums.

To everyone who was actively involved: good job!

[Panthera]

Well played. A few things gave it away enough that I sort of expected it to be a joke, but at the same time it was handled well enough that it being real wouldn't have been surprising. All in all, quite amusing.

[Bosgoed]

Well, this was easily the best pokemon related April Fools joke ever. Hats off to everyone involved.

[Jimbo]

beep beep

this was so fun.

edit

oh forgot, fuck darkie and his hax!

[Lorak]

Originally Posted by Fat DougJustDoug

To all members of the cast and community, feel free to post commentary on the joke in this thread. If anyone out there really got their feelings hurt, or was legitimately pissed off by the whole thing -- please don't spew invective here. Take a minute, relax, and look at everything that happened -- and I think you'll start laughing with the rest of us!

To be honest, I never really considered myself a "celebrity", but DougJustDoug said that quite a few people in Wi-Fi and other places look up to me because of my stance in breeding, etc. as well as the art I do. It's been a fun joke, to be sure. To all of those who supported my stance against the clause, IMs or IRC, it's appreciated.

[iKitsune]

I wish it was real now. Well done to all.
I can now go and laugh.

Edit: This should definitely go in the Greatest Hits.

[JabbaTheGriffin*]

I didn't actively argue my point in Policy Review but that's because I haven't really posted in Policy Review since the Order of Operations thread so I didn't want to go too crazy lol. It was fun as hell arguing with jrrrrr on AIM and a few people in biuret at one point I even started believing in some of my arguments which was pretty sad lol.

Oh and so much fun today going "what the fuck why was my win overturned"

[twash]

This was fun, and huge props to Doug who did 90% of the work!

M_Dragon: Analyzing battle data for luck factors...
M_Dragon: ???????
M_Dragon: Analyzing battle data for luck factors... Paradise wins!
M_Dragon: i have 6-0ed him
M_Dragon: WHAT THE FUCK

This alone made it worthwhile..

I should've been more involved but got caught up with other stuff.

Well done on everyone involved, this was excellent.

[reyscarface]

Oh boy, i look like a retard now for agreeing about this so much.

Anyways, nice joke.

Ummm, so all the battles we lost in the ladder to the 50% coin toss will be like that? I mean, lots of people lost a lot of points (just asking) =/

[Kevin Garrett]

This was a lot of fun. I liked seeing everyone's reactions and the discussions in the main chat. :)

[Chozo]

Well played, gentlemen. Well played.

[Haunter**]

So even XxBlueCookiesxX was reciting?That's incredible... Congratulations!!!

[M Dragon]

Oh great
I have lost 12 points because that

[gorm]

smogon <3

[StarmanXL]

Wow, I have to admit that was gold.

Kinda makes me wish I still played Standard so I coulda said something about it.

[Tleilax]

Fucking BRILLIANT. Now I'm glad I hadn't finished the enormous anti-feature rant I was typing out.

Kudos to you guys, you sadistic bastards.

[Griffin]

Hahahahaha, good stuff good stuff.

I was almost going to post in that discussion thread, had I had any interesting experience with the "Hax Clause".

Props to the ones involved.

[Aldaron*]

Originally Posted by Fat ReyScarface

Oh boy, i look like a retard now for agreeing about this so much.

Anyways, nice joke.

Ummm, so all the battles we lost in the ladder to the 50% coin toss will be like that? I mean, lots of people lost a lot of points (just asking) =/

The ratings will not be reset.

Sucks to be you guys!

[Mekkah**]

Today I ran around on the standard ladder occasionally with an Explosion-based team to turn battles to 1-0 or 2-0 (since that was the original idea - to make it only coinflip in those close battles, but apparently the mechanic just went all-out here)...I did enjoy everything related to it, though I did not post in the PR thread at all on purpose.

[QibingZero]

..and here we have Doug solidifying his command of next year's Smogon Awards too! This was great fun, and I was glad to be a part of it. I didn't post as much as I'd have liked to, but I did my best to argue it on IRC and shoddy as often as possible. All credit goes to the mastermind himself, though!

I'm glad this stayed as secret as it did. A large amount of people were in on it, and for everyone to keep 'in character' for a month was quite a challenge.

[Veedrock]

The time frame made this work a little too well.

Good job to the cast. It really doesn't get much better than this.

Oh damn, all those older members saying they were coming back was part of the play? Doh.

[PurpleWeezing]

Awesome. Simply awesome. Well played =)
PS: I haven't lost a single game due to the clause xD