Alright, it's time to make my post. Really, it needed to wait a few more days, but it's apparent that it cannot wait. I really put my foot in my mouth with my posts earlier in this thread. I made them while I was at a rest stop on the road, and really should have given more time and thought to make sure that what I typed was really what I wanted to say. I'm in the middle of a cross-country road trip to take one of my daughters to see a specialist at a hospital for a condition that she will likely have to live the rest of her life with. Combined with some childcare/extended family issues on this trip, it's making it a lot more stressful than it should be.
I had wanted to go deeper into the 'Genesis of Mystic' and how he came to be involved with SRB2, but a summary probably better serves the purpose right now. I will offer this one humorous tidbit... his very first map had about 50 Boss 1 Eggmen and a crapload of broken sectors.. it was supposed to be an edit of Meadow Match, but sure didn't look it! Yes, even the mighty Mystic started out as a noob.
The crux of it all is that Mystic was always cold and logical, but not the giant bully he developed into, along with a lot of other things I discovered only long after I left. I have met him in person many times... both before I left while we were working together, AND a few times after I left. Our working meetups were just that, work. One time we met up at Gettysburg College and I coded while he designed and we both tested CTF in a single day. This was around Demo 3 time. He was very good at testing and taking the reigns on multiplayer modes. That's where I found value with him on the dev side.
Sonikku and I had no desire for community management, it just wasn't our thing. We're both big introverts. It's cool to talk with people, but when moderation is needed, it was the last thing we wanted to be dealing with...it is a literal full-time job. Mystic really jumped at this chance to manage the forums for us. In many cases, community-run things overtook official-run things... ever wonder why #srb2fun is not called #srb2? There actually used to be an #srb2, and #srb2fun was the 'community' IRC channel. Eventually it got so popular it took over.
And so we ran like this for a few years... Mystic running all of the community stuff, while we could focus on just making the game. Fans started to build other things, like a wiki, with folks like DarkWarrior and HotDog003 making large contributions. Mystic was largely the only person who crossed over between community to dev -- with his dev aspects focused solely on multiplayer components. It's a very well known public running gag that it was my opinion that Mystic made some of the worst single player levels. Mystic onboarded a few moderators and brought more people on to moderate things like IRC.
Keep in mind most of this reflection is about up to and including 2006.
In 2007, I took about a six-month break from SRB2. I'm not sure anybody noticed. This is the time when I worked on my own engine project that eventually went on to power Roly Poly Putt. I was facing severe SRB2 burnout.. but had made significant progress toward a post-1.09.4 version. The development team structure had to change into something more conducive to 'crunch time'. The fact that I knew in 2008 that I was going to get married accentuated this. This is when what is considered to be the modern devteam 'Sky Sanctuary' was created, along with heavy use of a secret subforum and #srb2dev IRC channel. While this structure is reflective of modern commercial game development houses, in hindsight it was a poor long-lasting organizational choice because it effectively took game contributors from community members to some kind of fraternal status.
I know the next question you're probably wondering... 'why in the world did SSN leave Mystic in charge?'. I know a lot of other people don't see it this way, but with v2.0.4, I considered the game FINISHED. It was an end product I was happy with, and went completely from the start to a credit sequence. I had ZERO expectations for the game to continue development, and in some ways, it was confirmed with the long release cycles of 2.1 and 2.2. I was simply looking for someone who had deep and lasting experience with the project, and that I knew wasn't going to go anywhere. Mystic still lives in the same place he did when we were in our teens. To say some of his personality, habits, and life is static is a bit of an understatement. With him, I thought that at worst it would create a slow decline and folding of the project, and at best he'd eventually pass it on to a group much more capable (which is what we are going through now, except by force).
Hearing all of these testimonies and stories in this thread of how Mystic treated people is not entirely new to me, as I stated above, but I wasn't aware that the problem went much deeper and darker. I always tried to balance out his negativity by giving lots of encouragement to newbies and maintaining a positive vibe, at least the times when I was around. We all start somewhere, and we all have mentors and people that come before us.
Ever wonder why it says 'PUBLISHED BY - a 28.8 dialup modem' in the credits? It's because that only until the LAST YEAR of my tenure in SRB2, did I have anything other than a 28.8k dialup modem. This limited me severely to community participation - those during my time probably remember the constant impostors in netgames saying they were me. It was well-known that my official edict was 'I don't play netgames, so if you see someone saying they are me, it is fake'. This just encouraged me more to leave the community management dealings to folks like Mystic. In the case of JTE, believe it or not, I have NEVER PLAYED SRB2JTE, despite it being all the rage at the time it came out. I wasn't about to run a program on my computer called 'The Supervirus', and what I did see of his behavior in the channel of being your typical arrogant narcisstic programmer did not appeal to me at all. I wrote him off very quickly, and did not pay attention to him. Nobody came to me either about any of his predatory behavior, as Mystic was the face of the IRC and MB and people would have gone to him first.
I didn't even know what was going on with him, until it was made publicly known whenever it was and Rob made a full announcement on Discord that 'some member' was banned forever due to predatory actions. When I left SRB2 in 2009, I truly left. I had no dev FTP access, no code access, no IRC/discord dev access, with my only remaining permission being able to view the rarely-posted-to Sky Sanctuary subforum. I have a wife and countless kids now, and there is nothing in SRB2 that makes me who I am now. I pop back in now and then solely to wave to a few folks, and maybe offer a few words of encouragement. Think of me as like a retired sports star, like Terry Bradshaw, except I don't even provide commentary (except here...)
If I had known what was going on with JTE and others, I would have IMMEDIATELY pushed for his removal, even overriding any objections from Mystic (however, I don't think he would object, but I am talking about the Mystic I knew before I left). I saw this kind of predatory behavior bubbling up in other areas of the Sonic community -- PACHUKA of Sonic CulT being one of the high profile cases. I didn't want this kind of behavior seeping over into SRB2, and I also didn't see any evidence of it during the times when my phone line wouldn't disconnect. With me not being an IRC gnome, my main source for community reflection was the MB.
I will recount one interesting moment that happened post-retirement, when Spazzo discovered that Mystic was hiding a porn forum on the messageboard. I discussed this quite a bit with Mystic in private with how distressing it was, but at that point his response essentially was 'TLDR; I'm in charge now'. Due to this, Spazzo and I both requested that our real names be removed from the credits, which is why you don't see them there even to today. In addition to me 'truly leaving' as mentioned above, the community atmosphere at the time was in no way conducive to me being able to do anything more about it.
Seeing all these accounts of people talking about being bullied by Mystic when they were just young children makes me really sad. I knew he could be a jerk now and then, but I really didn't realize how truly widespread or severe it was in many cases. None of you deserves that sort of treatment and I hope that through being able to talk about your experiences on this thread, the community can finally get all this gunk out of the pipes.
If, back when I was around, something was brought to my attention and I didn't act on it, I apologize to whomever it hurt. Growing up, I personally had to deal with being targeted by sexual predators, many whom I didn't realize were just that until looking back on the situation as an adult. I even had a mentor that I really looked up to in the Doom community try to cyber with me once, making a very awkward situation and changing my perspective on him forever. I don't just sympathize, but I emphathize, and I will regret any moment where I did not take appropriate action to protect others for the rest of my life; because when I hear stories like that, it makes me think of my own experiences.
I think it's also worth mentioning the influence Mystic's behavior had on so many community members. I alluded to this earlier in a post about Ash, but the purpose isn't to single him out - the pattern repeats itself with A Cat, Velocity, Spazzo, and so many others. The way Mystic initially treated them spawned the carnage that followed. On the flip side, you had many people who looked up to and 'hero-worshipped' Mystic - Rob, Prime, and several others past and present. I've met a few of them IRL and I can tell you with a lot of certainty that these people are not anything like Mystic, and likely subconsciously 'adopted the culture', or 'drank the kool-aid' to gain his favor and become part of the club.
If it's your thing, please pray for Mystic. Having known him personally for so long makes me know that he needs it. Do not worry about him returning, or spreading misery to some other corner of the Internet -- that is not his style. But he needs to figure out what he's doing next like you will never know. You know how at school they say the bully does what he does because his own life is miserable? I'll leave it at that.
As for the future, I'm glad this is all over, and I am excited about what the future holds. You've probably heard me say this already, but projects like this have always been about learning and having fun, and everyone should be able to do so in a safe environment. Unfortunately our world is not perfect, but we can certainly try.