It’s been a long time since I had my experience with Cipher, but after going over the explanation he gave I can’t ignore it. There's are things that are just too incorrect to let slide.
If this is old news that has no bearing on how things are now, please add the proper context to the original response and I’ll delete this comment. If you still wanna insist that way of framing works than my input is very relevant despite the time that has passed.
And if I think his misrepresentation isn’t okay what about how I misrepresented him? I’d like to know about it as well. What parts were the lies? I honestly have no idea what he's referring to.
Despite his almost immediate follow-up I felt that he was trying to push me out and soon left.
We were the ones being pushed into a corner because he didn't share crucial information on how he does things ahead of time. We never thought to have him leave. We just wanted him to proofread instead. But he then made it clear that way of working together was not acceptable. He had to edit the script or he didn’t want to put his name on it. He wanted to find a way to make editing work rather leave out right, but we already mentioned that we just didn’t have time to let him do that. Him editing was simply not a possible reality under any circumstances.
And, as he himself says, I explicitly stated that the first message was not meant to push him out. We never would've had him leave the project early if he hadn’t been fully against the idea of proofreading, which was the only role we could use then. Since we didn’t have time to let him edit nor were we going to try forcing him to be a part of a project he wasn’t happy with, there was no other way to work with his needs other than to say okay, you don’t have to be a proofreader and we’re sorry it didn’t work out.
In response to my resignation, I received a long and scathing e-mail. Not only did it seem he would actively discourage others from hiring me, but he went on to insult me and my philosophy. Finally, his prior e-mails made me feel like we couldn’t discuss any issues (again, I felt shut out) - so it came as a shock when he noted I could have discussed things with him. This premature backing-out was genuinely my fault, and I worded things in what could have been seen in an arrogant way.
There’s nothing wrong with giving a negative review to someone who treated you impolitely and is someone who will quit a project if things aren’t suited to their needs even over those of the project while not including an advanced warning that they have such stipulations. That second part alone warranted a bad review but I was still going to look past that and just part ways ‘cause it was a small job. Leaving in an unacceptable way after that made it ridiculous. If he didn’t want a harsh criticism or people to want to avoid working with him, he shouldn’t have behaved that way. I didn’t make up the things he did. If you want to say that I still should’ve phrased it in a more professional way, fine. That’s doesn’t put us at equal fault, though. Harshly pointing out bad actions isn’t as problematic as actually doing unprovoked bad actions.
The only excuse for the way he chose to exit the team I can gather is the whole ‘I was being pushed out’ thing. But, again, we wanted him to proofread and it turns out he had a way of working that didn't allow for that and we were left with no other choice than to accept him not wanting to be a part of the project as it had to be. If he really did want to proofread above having to leave the team, there was no way at all to tell.
Rather than get angry (or even refute these claims), I tried to reconcile with him. I didn’t want to return to the project because of his threats (I have more self-respect than that), but because I still felt bad for leaving in the first place. Above all else, though, I wanted to be the bigger person. He accepted my apology. Despite some initial reluctance, I returned (1/2) to the project. (2/2)
There were no threats. I didn’t insist he come back or else/demand an apology or else or anything. He earned a negative review but instead of going public immediately, which would’ve been well within my right to do, I kept it private initially. I told him how unhappy I was and how I didn’t intend to ignore his actions and gave him a chance to respond before doing anything further. That's not an unfair thing considering it was only happening because of the mistakes he made in handling an understandable set back in a game jam.
Again, the major strike against me with this is that I shouldn’t have let the way he behaved get to me and used softer words to describe the ways in which he wasn’t good to work with. But he was still, in fact, not good to work with from the experience I had.
Nothing about that situation makes him the bigger person. He unpleasantly bailed on a project because simply proofreading instead of editing was unacceptable, then he apologized after I wasn't okay with the overall experience. Trying to make it better/finish the job he started showed he was better than the arrogant way he made himself seem, not better than anyone else.
Although, this is subjective, since he it turns out that he thinks amending for that clear mistake means he’s the ‘bigger person’ it rings quite hollow. Unless you think you didn’t do anything actually bad I can’t see how you can come to the conclusion that apologizing for skipping out on a project (one that you asked to be a part of in the first place) for avoidable reasons and needlessly hurting someone’s feelings in the process makes you bigger than the person you hurt.
When NaNo ended, my scripts couldn't be used at all. I owned up to the fact that I may have gone overboard, even though I did not feel that was the case at all.
I still have the Google Docs. On March 27th, at the end of the game jam, there were two scripts I wanted to add his fixes for. One doc is reported to have 1,028 changes, the other 661 changes.
He promised he’d rejoin the project as just a proofreader and I told him I’d have to go into the already coded script and change every fix by hand. A generous estimate is that 150 were actual errors, the other 1,500+ were optional edits. Some full sentences were reworded. In no way can it be argued that wasn’t going overboard for what was supposed to be last minute proofreading.
You will notice that the "good things" he mentioned come across as very backhanded.
Those were not meant to be backed-handed. This time I did use softer words when explaining the problem. Saying he was enthusiastic and doing what he could to try making the script good are pretty much the only positives with the way he did that task. There aren't better things that I just chose not to include to be petty. He had a small, straightforward job that he ignored or lost track of then he did whatever he wanted. So many times we said we wouldn't be able to add edited scripts into the game. That was the entire crux of the original falling out. And the game was ultimately released with no proofreading.
He offered to make up for it by doing more after the release and that was very nice. I told him that. But the conversation we were having at that time was about the fact that he let us down with the second chance we gave him. To be blunter than I was then, him being a member of the team made the game worse (If he hadn't come back at least someone else would've gone over the scripts a little when they had a bit of extra time). The extra stuff he offered to do may or may not have ended up being great, but it would still have been his third chance 'cause he wasn't there when we actually needed him. The effort of everyone else on the team to really successfully complete a game jam were wasted to a degree 'cause of the avoidable errors in the text. That's not good.
I tried to walk away as the bigger person once I calmed down.
Him ‘walking away as the bigger person’ was dismissively saying I was skewed and implying I’m just impossible to reason with.
I have no intention of saying this is the usual, however it did happen and acting as though we were the ones pushing him out, that there were some kind of 'threats', that it's just a matter of opinion on whether he went overboard or not, and etc aren't interpretations I can accept without speaking.
Finally I’ll repeat that all this only needs to be here as a defense if he's still claiming the framing in that original response to me is how it fully is. If he doesn’t feel that way anymore or just doesn’t care to insist about it anymore, than this isn’t needed.