Colony Chronicles - Season 3 Finale.

Intro

I suppose we can't just simply claim our private keys got stolen and some rogue player did our bidding but that’s not what happened. To address an elephant in the room, the answer is yes, I engineered this with a selected few (not all, please spare the young ones) influenced by me. Before I go into the ‘why’, allow me to reflect a little, shall we?

The state of the game.

In a few weeks, NextColony will be one (1). Now that is a milestone even when many has left and never looked back. On behalf of some Delta, we would like to congratulate the producers in advance. During early days, it was all nice and fun with the surge of new discoveries. How the game works? What’s the reward? Racing to up skill level to begin exploration. There were new tools to use and spy but due to the nature of transparency, it’s actually quite an open book. Even famous @famigliacurione took a long break with Jack Steel since Season 1 ended.

Then came the much anticipated Yamato with seasons incentivize by a limited pool to reward players (not for bug bounty) for their commitment to stay within the confines of the game rules or play however they like. Season 1 – Nemesis saw a mad rush of upgrades and the organization of dachcolony was impressive. Then followed by tamed Season 2 – Athene and a conspiracy of collusion of clans to take turns to top the rankings. Is this going to status quo for the rest of the seasons?

How?

By now many of you could have figured it out. Let me try explain it in laymen terms. Imagine an alternate universe Christmas party, aliens exchange gifts. The receiver keeps the box but returns the content and repeat it several times. And the by product is gaining brownie points for doing that. In this case the box is planet, the contents are Yamato and brownie points are brownie points. Sound a bit more like exploration, doesn’t it?

Anyway that part was simple but the challenge was to keep under wraps. Took a bit of planning to orchestrate the instructions. The resulting observation was a behavior where most were affixed getting to the top and didn’t notice the bottom. Maybe that in some way reflects real life scenarios, don’t you think?

No hate, siege, attack or loot. Just the act of gifting and returning the content, repeat.
We cannot change the rules and condition of the game as the server and source was closed. All we did was to publish the instructions into steem blockchain and is up to the game server to determine the results.

Why?

There are several ways to interpret Season 3, depending on which side of the fence you are at. At a micro level, we can be label a bug abuser, taking advantage of a flaw. It could have been simply reported, patched and everyone subconsciously go back to normal. On flip side at a macro level, it’s an opportunity to instill Chaos as the season was that rightfully titled. Most of us tend to be complacent when it comes to “normal”. When a variant of situation arises, it can bring the best or worst out of someone. I believe many have felt the emotion and drama at the tail end or maybe for a fleeting moment. And boy did it wake up a lot of players and start interacting they did, to analyze the situation and maybe some hostility. Heck it even kept the exchange market alive and kicking. Woohoo! Go Stardusts. It's a questionable conscience for a simulated controlled environment. It could also be sandbox for social experiment to exercise unrestricted moves that NextColony has to offer.
Where’s the drama? Where’s buzz? Maybe is just API service down? Once in awhile that happens in discord.

What about the season reward?

Economic motivation or for the love of something much bigger than just a reward? I bet the developers created the game out of passion not purely for financial gain unless I’m proven wrong. It’s unfair to abuse a bug for gain some say. What is fair? Deeper wallet, bigger clan, bigger fleet? Play by the rules and when is not in favor or threatens our comfort-zone, summon the ‘police or government’ to protect the social norm instead of change, adapt and grow.

If it makes some feel better, just forfeited my reward (if any) and distributed evenly to all who are still in the game or as the NextColony judge, whomever that maybe, sees fit. Even Neo had to be sacrifice for the survival of his colony. Take it, have fun with it, I hope.

The Future.

Maybe one day this game can become an example or template to inspire other developers to come into the space. Harness the good, learn the mistakes, improve from it and make something better. As the space needs evolution and change is a pain. Furthermore, we are on an imminent undetermined path of a hard fork or merge into TRON. Get ready just 'chillax'.

Hope you enjoyed the season with a little bit of excitement, emotions, drama and chaos because without the injected psychological flair it’s just a cold mechanical repetition of actions. And we did ~do~ it, and hope it didn’t affected you to ~die~ jumping off the top of a Yamato.

Outro

Honestly I like season title Chaos, do or die 100% deploy & leach. Maybe now to some season 3 can be remembered as,

Looks like I’ll be facing the barrage of a firing ‘comment’ squad, come come.
p/s: @prinzvalium nice meme.
@dachcolony organized as ever, summoned many to sacrifice pulling those under to go up automatically. @youthme admire your confidence, sorry if you can't take rest for next season. @rivalzzz no!!! don’t go. Come back.

Thanks.

Here is a tiny amateur animation of the ranking board.