By Espark on Sun 22 Aug, 2021.
Ai-Mo Times
Aug 22nd, 2021
“The only literate tribe deserves the best in information and entertainment.”
Polytopia News
Oumaji Art Contest Winners and Voter Fraud Allegations
On August 18th, members on PolyMain voted for their favorites in the Hamu art contest.
Some server members protested the influx of over 40 new (and allegedly alt) accounts voting for the entries by Braniac, Cody, and Puppydasamoed.
Pixel pointed out the concern to the mods. “I saw on The Brainiac and Cody's submissions a lot of votes that were made by default discord pfp profiles. It looked strange to me... It appeared that most of those accounts, with basic names that obviously weren't normal and [they’d] joined in the last hour. Then I told this in the channel. Mod was pinged and the "bots" were caught coming in the server, voting for 3 submissions - Cody, The Brainiac and Puppydasamoed.” Later, Pixel said, “There is a huge scam. I'm pretty sure [they were] false accounts.”
Regarding the voting allegations, Cody wrote, “I would like to put my two cents into this story and say that the "submission” I made was for an absolute joke because people kept chatting in that channel. I was 100% expecting it to be deleted due to low effort and was surprised to see it still up. I didn't really care if it got fake votes...Like I said, it was a joke. Braniac however is a different story. Who knows if he actually wanted to win with his submission or not.”
P.Mark, one of the art competitors, wrote, “I'm still stunned that someone made a script to produce bots and vote on submissions. People take this competition way too seriously“
The winners of the art contest are below.
1st place by viera
2nd place by Nuggetmaster
3rd place by Papzy3
Tribe Duels
The second round of the tribe duels started Aug 18th. Players have three weeks to finish their duels and report the outcome. Here is the current duels status:
A curious new set of rules showed up on Aug 17th.
Fan Art
By Aetholis’s grandmother
By Praetorian
FanFic
Three Sisters
How the Mountain Tribe split into Xin-xi, Ai-Mo, and Vengir, By Espark
Long ago, when the square was sharp and fresh, the leader of the mountain people had three daughters, Xin, Ai, and Ven. The eldest sister, Xin, was a traditionalist - cold, honorable, and an expert climber. The middle sister, Ai, was a gentle soul who loved to read, meditate, and charm those around her. The youngest sister, Ven, was brooding, strong-willed and rebellious. Following the age-old tradition, when the king felt his time growing short, he called together his offspring to decide who would be the next to lead the tribe.
High upon the terrace of the mountain temple, the clouds layered in the valley below, each sister presented their offering of worth. Xin showed a horned helmet, red with the blood of their ancestors and strong like the mountains. Ai recited a poem about the virtue of inner peace. Ven held aloft a sword, forged from the metal she had mined from the earth.
“What is that?” Ai asked, never before having seen such a weapon. She stepped closer, her staff at her side.
“A razor-sharp abomination,” Xin scowled. “The soul of the mountain, warped into a weapon. Those forges foul our lands and dishonor our ancestors.”
Ven held aloft the blade, “The ore’s true power can only be freed through the heat of the forge.” She pointed the sword at her elder sister. “You are too weak to seize it.”
Xin shook her head, “There may be power in it, but at what cost?”
Then, the king spoke. “Enough. I have made my choice. The next leader of the mountain tribe will be…”
Suddenly, a deep rumble shook the ground. The walls of the mountain temple cracked and dust rained down. The sisters swayed as the square below them shook. Then all was calm again.
“This is your fault,” Xin narrowed her eyes and took a fighting stance, her hands flattening into arrows, ready to launch at Ven.
Ven laughed, “You think you can beat me with your bare hands? Fool.” She took a step forward, her sword swinging for Xin’s neck.
“No!” Ai cried, thrusting her staff between her sisters, deflecting the blade.
Ven swerved, her sword pointing up. Then she lost her balance and plunged the sword into the king's chest.
As their father dropped to the floor, red blood pooling on the white stone, the mountain shook again, angry and loud.
The three sisters fled the temple and the mountain quieted.
Later, to their own circle of supporters, each sister told her version of the tale and claimed that she alone was the true leader of the mountain people.
To this day, whenever the ground quakes, the Xin-xi, Ai-Mo and Vengir each tell the tale of the three sisters and why their tribe is the rightful heir to the mountains.
by Espark
Interview
The following is an excerpt from the Polytopian Interviewer, a weekly podcast with occasional bonus content. You can read the full transcript or listen to the podcast through the RSS feed.
Tntmasta: Welcome to the Polytopian Interviewer, where I interview people on their experiences and views on the Polytopia discord community. I have Sgt with me. How are you?
Sgtsub: Fine, thank you, Tnt. That's how you pronounce it. Right? Tnt-master.
Tntmasta: Yeah. That's one of the ways it’s said. I'm not too picky.
Sgtsub: Yeah.
Tntmasta: How did you first get into the Polytopia discord?
Sgtsub: First of all, I have always been a gamer. From video games to board games, and computer games. I am 36. So in 2020, I was looking for a mobile game, strategy mobile game, more than a full commitment video game. So I found Polytopia and then I started to play against bots. Then I convinced my brother and some friends. But I think I realized for going into the depths game and mastering the game, playing with my real life friends, it wouldn't be enough. So I joined a WhatsApp group, and Telegram group.
I think I actually was looking for some friend codes on the web, like, almost everywhere. From a post in some web pages. Then I found the WhatsApp group and then I started to play with those guys. But there was one day when I was suggesting to play a cooperative game in Polytopia sending screenshots via Whatspp groups. And Zatica. I think Zatica, very active in the WhatsApp group, told me there was already a community doing that. So I was not inventing something new. He told me that Discord had this great community for more competitive playing, because I think he knew that they wanted more than the WhatsApp group had at that moment, I think. I am sure that WhatsApp group is not as competitive as Discord.
I joined Discord and it was actually my first experience with the online and global community. Because most of my experience with games were on the console, just playing against the computers, the bots. I barely played a game against other humans around the world, online. By the time that was the usual way to play any video game. I was told for that, I found discord main and then Polychampions servers, and WhatsApp and trying to be more competitive. I knew my real life friends or family, or even the WhatsApp or Telegram groups.
Tntmasta: Here my first person that said they came from WhatsApp and Telegram. May I asked what country you're from?
Sgtsub: I am from Mexico. I am 36 years old. So most of my friends are players from console games, not actual discord related community games. I have nephews that know of discord because of other more famous games, like Clash of Clans or Fortnite, some of these games that I don't even like. So joining because of Polytopia, something more like chess, than other kinds of games. I think that's why it was so difficult for me. I spend almost maybe a month and a half, trying to find another friend code.
I actually played two weeks with random guys all over the world. I sent friend requests and expected some of them to join my game. I didn't even know the names of the guys I was trying to reach out to. I sent maybe 20 games with random friend codes. When the friend codes were the only way to play multiplayer games. Maybe four or three replied to me and then I got desperate and that way I found it, the WhatsApp group and then the discord.
Tntmasta: Yeah, I'm so glad they changed it to usernames rather than friend codes. Friend codes worked, it just wasn't very efficient at all.
Sgtsub: Yeah, not very friendly.
Tntmasta: How did you get your leader role for the Plague PC team? And what are some of your responsibilities and tasks within it?
Sgtsub: As a fun fact, I was drafted by Cosmonauts first. I was actually invited to Polychamps by Eli in the Cosmonauts, a player, a friend. And when I was drafted by Cosmonauts. Prophet was the current leader at the time and told me that maybe joining the Plague, who were very interested in me since the draft, could be a nice way to balance the league. He was reinforcing the idea of joining a not so strong a team at the time, and maybe helping improve that team.
Actually it was pretty much as he said. I joined, I tried to be active and I tried to be active not only inside the team, but also outside. At some point, I was actually the most active Plague. Maybe not today, a year ago, I was very active. I just got involved in some of the coleadership tasks. And eventually Miguel, the previous leader when he was busy in real life and also he felt, he thought that maybe for this new era of Plague, we are a little bit more famous, I could say. A bit more stronger, Elo. Miguel, he knew that maybe he was not the right person for this new phase of the game. Probably me, being more active, maybe more friendly, or just recognized by other teams.
Tntmasta: Recently, a new server called PolyLive has been created. Can you tell us what it's about and how it works?
Sgtsub: PolyLive is a server for league tournaments. And we define the leagues, fast paced format leagues for Polytopia games, such as bullet, which are games are maybe one minute per turn, or Blitz, which are maybe one or two minutes a little bit more of time, or full papid. We got these names from chess. We thought that using these fast paced games with some live format, like esport oriented format for our Polytopia community could be amazing. Part of this idea, I think, came from bullet tournaments in PolyChamps and also finals from wicked Bender which is a server that has finals happening almost live. Fast players can play and basically aims to live commentated and stream games.
We started the project with an all-star first season. The season zero, which is now happening. We started with this 1v1 all star for the first season and with games happening in live format and watch the players streaming at the same time they play. Most games last maybe from 20 to 30, some 40 minutes. We will test some 2v2 formats. Maybe eventually or long term, we would like to have squads or teams playing like other eSports. Different formats. Maybe two, three or four players playing 1v1 or 2v2, maybe some FFA games playing for a championship, including probably more than one format. We start with the most common and easy to implement. We are preparing the next season, which is going to be fully open for any player interested in participating. As I said, other formats like FFA and 2v2.
The important thing is two things, which is from the name PolyLive is live, which is the games must be played live. That's no correspondence playing. Which is you play and then wait for your opponent's turn hours or days after you played. The games must happen practically in your seat and play and you must finish the game. If the game takes one hour, you will be online completely for one hour. And the second aspect important is the first, the speed of blitz. The concept comes from blitz, bullet, and rapid.
Tntmasta: Do you have any idea when PolyLive will start uploading their games to YouTube?
Sgtsub: We lack of support for these aspects of the server. None of us have experience in managing a YouTube channel. So I am currently the one responsible for that, but as I am learning video editing. I first learned how to record games. I am still learning and eventually maybe something related with streaming. And we have Fed for example. A great guy that’s helping for streaming. But as we now have a lack of help from that. I think the community probably we'll have to wait a little bit more time. I would hope that right before the playoffs, when we define the best four players from the regular season, they are 16. So we will choose one player from each group that the first season will have for the 1v1 league. I hope that by the time we will have the final, hard work and video editing capabilities for preparing the videos in a quality that most of us will approve. I would say that we will be maybe fully happy in how we recorded and edited the videos and uploaded them to YouTube.
This is a system. We were expecting that we have some issues with this. We are not experienced with this. I mean, it's not even something that we do or are close to do in real life and work. I hope that maybe in a few weeks, we can finally start uploading some of the videos we already have. If you join the server, the videos without editing, they are unlisted. You can still watch the games that have already happened from the first weeks, probably 16-20 games. You can contact the staff from the server and we will point out those videos. Maybe for public release, we will need some additions. I hope it can be done in the next few weeks.
Tntmasta: Fair enough. That’s all the questions I had.
Sgtsub: Okay.
Tntmasta: Nice having you.
Sgtsub: Yeah. Thank you for interviewing me.
Tntmasta: Bye.
Sgtsub: Bye.
Read or listen to the rest of the interview in the Friendly Polytopia server.
Mute ban column
There are no public records of any mutes or bans in PolyMain this week
Credits
Thanks to all our contributors: Espark, Druid, Noru, Tinttin, and Tntmasta. A big thanks to Artemis for setting up the website for the newspaper. Also, thank you to our faithful readers for encouraging the paper to continue.
If you want to submit a piece to the newspaper—art, news article, opinion piece, puzzle, etc.—let us know in #article-suggestions.
Keep up, Ai-Mo!