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Jul 30, 2012 -- 3:22AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Medium and message, apples and oranges. 'Friendly and approachable' is about the medium, Saying 'no' is the message. There is no limit whatsoever to how pleasant one can be while saying 'no'.

I firmly disagree.  You can bake a cake out of poison, and the cake might be a beautiful medium, but the message is still death.  If you refuse someone's input, being nice about it is really just an insult.  An honest tyrant crushing you beneath his heel is better than someone who will smile to your face while working behind your back to ensure that nothing you try to accomplish will ever come to fruition, gloating silently that you'll never even know who sabotaged you.

Aug 1, 2012 -- 6:59AM, willpell wrote:

Jul 30, 2012 -- 3:22AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Medium and message, apples and oranges. 'Friendly and approachable' is about the medium, Saying 'no' is the message. There is no limit whatsoever to how pleasant one can be while saying 'no'.

I firmly disagree.  You can bake a cake out of poison, and the cake might be a beautiful medium, but the message is still death.  If you refuse someone's input, being nice about it is really just an insult.  An honest tyrant crushing you beneath his heel is better than someone who will smile to your face while working behind your back to ensure that nothing you try to accomplish will ever come to fruition, gloating silently that you'll never even know who sabotaged you.

In that case you're changing the message. MaRo would be a honest tyrant crushing you, but with a smile on his face.

Aug 1, 2012 -- 12:59PM, chronego wrote:

If your suggestions are not for the best of the game, he has to say no. That doesn't make him rude, or even anything less than nice; it just makes him smart. In fact, if you're forcing suggestions on him that would be bad for the game, bad for the fans of the game, and bad for the company that makes the game, I'm pretty sure Mark's not the rude person in that conversation.

My point was not that he should always say yes, but simply that he is by definition not being friendly by refusing to even consider a suggestion.  If someone tells you to jump off a cliff, and you want to be friendly, you should ask why they've suggested such a thing, give them the benefit of the doubt that they might have actually had some good reason for bringing it up, and let them explain whether they're trying to make a point.  You let them be the first one to prove they aren't your friend.

My suggestions are all about what I deem to be best for the game.  Telling me "we can't do that right now for these reasons" is not "saying no", it's explaining your position as I have explained mine.  This is both reasonable and friendly.  Refusing even to consider someone's opinion, not giving them the chance to explain themselves, using your superior social position to avoid any need for compromise or negotiation?  Not friendly.

Aug 2, 2012 -- 12:55PM, chronego wrote:

Why are you assuming he'll just say no without giving a reason or hearing you out?

I don't know what would happen if I actually got to talk to him, since others in the company would certainly make sure I never got that far; that's how hierarchy in a corporate environment works.  But I'm fairly sure that if I did actually get face-to-face with him, I probably wouldn't be able to convince him to abandon many of the principles he's espoused in this column, such as "If you fight human nature, you will lose".

It's not some unalienable right that you get to have him reply to everything you send him; there's no way he can respond to everyone.

Not "no way", though certainly no practical way.  I understand the problem of not enough time to deal with everything extremely well, but some combination of not having to do anything else with your time (not having to grocery shop because other people bring you food, for instance, or not having to sleep because you're wired up to some now-impossible machine which physically and mentally recharges you at all times) and having assistants to help you compartmentalize the task for maximum efficiency could enable a person to do far better with their time than is possible under our appallingly primitive system of today.  And someone as singular as Maro is, or I believe myself to be (I admittedly can offer little proof), is firmly deserving of such preferential treatment.  A small nation of ordinary people with nothing better to do could devote their lives to the maximization of potential of a single visionary individual, instead of being so devoted to, say, a sports team or a religion or just the making of bombs to blow up their neighbor.

But he usually does give a reason why they can't do something when he has the chance. For instance, his tumblr is positively riddled with him responding to player suggestions with either "Ooh, we'll consider that" or "We can't do that for reason X". He very rarely (no examples even come to mind) just says "no" without explaining himself.

I am vaguely curious what sort of "no" he could come up with for my previously-stated belief that Magic is not an intellectual property which should be treated as a business to make money, but rather that it is a cultural heritage which should be handled with the utmost reverence, and that design's priority should always be to do what is best for the Magic multiverse as an ideological construct, whether or not it is of benefit to the players or to the bottom line.  Somehow, though, I doubt I would get a terribly constructive response.

I honestly don't get you, willpell. Have you actually met MaRo in person and had him be rude to you?

No.  It's far more likely that if we did meet, I would be rude to him, as I'm not a person who cares especially for social niceties.  If he used my rudeness as an excuse to avoid listening to me, though, as has very often been done in the past by others, it would only prove my point - that you are not "friendly" if you refuse to listen to what is important to someone.

I was stating that for the sake of argument in this case, not for practical reasons but simply to ensure that the obvious, merciless, unpopular truths did not go unspoken.  I am offended by too positive an attitude, and so feel compelled to point out the harsh facts of the world as they are when ungentled by self-congratulation, which render good-natured conventional wisdom into hollow hypocrisy.  This is the perspective of one who, if you labeled him "Evil", would point out that it is not a "Good" act to judge people in such a fashion, and would in fact rally other "Evil" individuals into a crusade to exterminate the very concept of "Good", and regard all the casualties of that war as entirely the fault of the one who first slapped a derisive label on him rather than having to listen to his logic.

Because it seems to me that you're judging him wholly on an assumption of how you think he'd act. Which is neither fair nor logical.

On the contrary; if we have not met a person (or even if we have, since you never really, completely know another person), the only thing you can do is judge him on such an assumption, made as best you can manage with the data you've managed to acquire.  The future is always unknowable, doubly so when it involves human behavior; all we can do is predict it as best we can and try to minimize the extent to which we will screw up.