Kazyyk - Antares Founder - AMA

Hey, everybody.

I'm Kazyyk, the founder of Antares Roleplay. Some of you probably still remember me.
I thought this'd be fun, so here we go.

Ask me anything.

 

Thank you both for asking questions. I'll check back periodically and respond to pending questions lump sum, like this.

In order to answer this question, I feel I need to provide a bit of backstory.

Antares actually isn't my first community. I got a taste of community management in the Arma 2 DayZ mod, where I befriended a Moderator of a server I played on (whose name I can't remember now) and one day they went off to start their own server. Naturally, I followed them. I started out as a player, eventually became a Moderator, and then eventually became an Administrator, and then eventually took over the entire community while the previous owner focused on his IRL job at the time.

This was my first time ever running a community and I loved it. After that, I wanted to do it again. When Starbound released, I was browsing the Chucklefish forums for servers to play when I realized there was a lack of roleplay servers. (Unbeknownst to me at the time, there actually were other roleplay servers, I just didn't find them) So I got this idea, "Hey, I bet people would like to roleplay in this game. I could be one of the first servers up and running for that purpose!" and so, I spent the next few hours purchasing a dedicated server and setting everything up.

Long story short, I made Antares because I thought people would like a good quality roleplay server to play on and I saw the opportunity to get my foot in the door.

I actually didn't think Antares would succeed at all, to be honest. I thought I'd get maybe 10 people interested at most and it wouldn't really go anywhere from there. So I guess you could say I wasn't really prepared for the explosion of popularity that ended up happening. I wasn't nervous at the time, I actually was very relaxed about it. Server management being one of my favorite hobbies, it was fun getting all the bits and pieces in order. I had a blast setting up the forums, creating rules, reading all the different applications (this was before it got old), taking on moderators, and all the general admin-y stuff that these kinds of things require.

 

Thanks for the question!

Unfortunately, I can't really say. Ever since I stepped down as Administrator, I haven't really been following the SBRP scene, much less the Antares scene. I don't really know what's going on in the community, or the server, and honestly? I like it better this way. It's liberating. My job now is to make sure that forum and the server run smooth, and add the occasional new feature or upgrade. So in that respect, I could say that I want to see donations make their way back to the site. I have no problem paying for the server, but it'd still be cool to offset costs even just a little bit.

Oh, and votes. I'd be thrilled to see more votes.

 

why are u smellin me

I stepped down for a number of reasons, some I won't go into. One of the biggest reasons was that I felt that I was slowing the community down and no longer capable of leading it. I was burnt out. When I started Antares, I was eager, excited, full of passion. I was determined to make Antares the best SBRP server and I was pulling out all the stops, handling everything myself. Fast forward two some odd years and I'm mostly just chiming in and delegating everything to other Staff members. I think I would've lasted longer if I didn't do so much myself, but I had trust issues at the time and didn't believe anyone would put in as much effort into doing things as I would.

Couple that with recent employment sucking up all my time, I knew I was just going to continue to be lazy. I had to be replaced.

Watermelon, hands down. It would be too difficult to eat food with a tennis ball head.

 

From the start, I always believed in utmost technical quality. I didn't cut corners. I only used a VPS for a few months because I had to for financial reasons. After I started getting some money, I purchased a dedicated server. It ran over $200/mo, which I would later find out is a horrible deal. A friend turned me onto a reliable company in Canada and Europe that host similar specs for a fraction of the cost ($65/mo) and Antares has been hosted with them ever since. The server is currently based in Beauharnois, Canada.

 

If you mean profit, then no. I've gotten hundreds of dollars in donations over the years, but I've spent thousands. Donations helped mitigate those costs and always went towards the monthly server fee and the ad campaigns I used to run. They never went towards anything else. There was a brief period where I said I was taking 5% of donations to keep for myself, but I never actually did as it proved too much of a hassle to manage. So everything poured into the PayPal account which automatic server fees are taken out of, which essentially ensured they were used only for that purpose.

I used to receive a bit of criticism regarding my rampant spending, as many felt that the things I were purchasing weren't entirely necessary. An example would be the very first forum skin/style/theme I bought, I had it custom designed. It cost about $500. Something people weren't aware of, however, is that none of the donor money was spent on this project. As said above, it was always reserved to pay server fees (and the odd ad campaign).

 

Oh, that's a tough one... it was a long time ago. I only remember bits and pieces. I know in the beginning there were only a handful of colonies. Honeydew Prior and The Freezer are the ones I can remember. I don't know who is still here, sadly. I can look at people's join dates on their profiles like you can. No names in particular stand out, primarily because I talked with so many different people pretty much all the time. The memories have largely turned into a blur.

I never was an active player, I didn't really play. There were a couple times I hopped on to roleplay, but most of the time when I joined, it was to resolve a dispute. I think I only did that a couple of times, too. (Moderators would usually take care of it.) I mostly spent my time administrating rather than playing, because administrating was more fun for me than playing the game. That's not to say the game isn't fun, I just enjoy the logistics of creating something and trying to improve upon it.

Some people may not believe me, and that's fine, but honestly? I tried to ignore it. I mean, yeah, it messed me up a bit. You put hard work into something, try to make it the best it can be, then a large portion of your followers just up and leave because they think they can do it better. It reflected badly on me, and it was hard not to take it personally. Yet, we focused inward. We moved on. We had to keep working on Antares.

This was a bit of a wake up call, though, and did play a role in my eventual stepping down.

As for when they came back, I felt that it would happen eventually. Antares always had the same people, the same faces. We were a community, and yeah, that community split across two servers, but it was still a community in and of itself. People still server hopped between Antares and OE and talked to their friends regardless of where they played. I never saw OE as "the enemy", because it was still largely made of members of the Antares community. When everyone came back, it felt like the community becoming whole again.

Again, some folks may not believe me, but we (the Antares Staff) always tried to ease relations between OE and Antares when possible.

 

I'm happy that I'm known for this.