the few people who stumble upon epicmafia despite its lack of advertising are greeted with a very steep learning curve coupled with weird bugs and a community tradition of stonewalling newbies, and the even fewer who endure those hurdles lack any semblance of a respectable competitive scene in main or casual gameplay in sandbox, often finding themselves in plssing contests or cluttered chat rooms
the community it's managed to foster over the years barely hangs on by the threads of nostalgia, tight-knit cliques, wacky political simulation games, and a fleeting hope for what could've been a good internet mafia format
Google defines "hazing" as "the imposition of strenuous, often humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and initiation."
Hazing IRL has kind of a funny history, especially as of late, but has been a mainstay in special clubs, fraternities/sororities and certain organizations for a very long time.
In Sandbox, however, hazing manifests itself as one of our most self-defeating traditions in the form of Policy. Policy-lynching noavis, who are more often than not new players who wandered into the wrong lobby by accident, is barely a form of hazing at all. Most people who are hazed know that it's coming, but because of the insular nature of this website and how we've developed a sort of dialect, there's no way for a new player to immediately navigate and understand this.
I got rebanned again for 8 vios, some of which were unfair, some of which were trivial (speaking Spanish, posting a link of sims skeleton pr0n in sandbox chat with a nsfw warning, "hipfiring" a mafia who had cc'd sheriff)
Plus there was a thing a while ago (3+ years ago if I remember correctly) where it was "policy" to bully and immediately kill anyone who didn't have an avatar, those people usually being new players who don't know how to change their avatar. I'm not sure if it still happens today. It still might be happening nowadays. But regardless, that probably scared off a ton of potential newcomers.
do we have to have this conversation again? em had little advertising in its infancy and none now, infrequent updates, a dated gameplay interface, constant downtime, etc.
it's like town of salem is womens basket ball and em is mens basketball but the court is on fire. it's the better game but its painful to play.
