As those of you who have followed my semi-controversial stay in the Minecraft community probably know, I'm one of those people who tend to be vocal and opinionated on various subjects. I can't stand it when something just doesn't seem right and harms many other people in the community.
But... maybe that's not the right way to go?
Recently, I have realized that I have consumed myself in arguments for far too long. Most of my creative and non-creative time has been spent arguing and attempting to prove my points and not actually creating things.
I personally believe that people who actively try to change things for the better are necessary, or else... how would we progress? The problem is when you stop actively changing things and start being like a grumpy, old man who complains about youngins not doing things his way. And that's what I feel I had become.
I've not been modding a lot during most of April. My time was consumed fighting for open modding, trying to make people aware of the current situation with Minecraft's development, et cetera. Despite a fewrather positivechanges, it didn't really work. People grew tired of my whining, and rightfully so.
The problem is that I was unable to prove open-source modding is better. Sure, I wrote a blog post, and it changed the minds of quite a few people, but I didn't really have an example to go with it. It would definitely look a lot better if, instead of lurking /mcg/ and Reddit, I had actually spent time to make a mod that would clearly benefit from its open-source aspect. My strategy for advocating open modding clearly worked when I did things that were only possible due to the mods being open (see my Statues and Chisel ports, as well as Immibis' mods porting). When I stopped doing them, though, I lost the foundation for all of my argumentation.
My problem, in this case, is that I spend too much time worrying about everyone around me and too little creating things I genuinely care about. I have many ideas I want to work on, but being consumed in fights and flamewars won't help to make them happen.
Idealism is good when it leads to creating more ideal (note: not ideal) things than what was currently available, because then everyone benefits. It's not good when it leads to baseless fighting, because then nobody benefits and everyone loses... patience? Sanity?
That's one of the reasons for which I decided Minecraft modding is not for me. It's hard to create in a community which I find it hard to fit in. It's hard to create in a community with norms that bother me. It's hard to create when you constantly get involved in drama.
Me moving to modding Minetest is not yet definite... I'm trying to look into the tools I have available - the Lua API isn't bad, but I still wish I could move on and create my own game. The problem with that is I lack motivation. Therefore, I'll just keep modding Minetest with their small, dedicated community of players and modders. It makes me feel a lot happier than engaging in weeks of drama just to get a modpack done, and then being told your modpack sucks and will never be playable just because its vision revolves not around gameplay, but around fairness.
Perhaps the Minecraft community just can't be helped. No matter what happens, it will stay the same - it has social norms which are set in stone and unlikely to change. If some are okay with that, fine, but I'm not.
And perhaps the better route is to say that it can't be helped... and move on.
EDIT: Updated the third-to-last paragraph.