Ephemeral, joining the game in August of 2009, has taken an active part in the development of osu!, hitting a large amount of milestones in the game. He has made one of the game's most popular beatmaps, acted as a key role in the development of the Mapping Assistance Team (MAT), and even developed many key features in the game that are still used today! Now, he has a new role as the Community Manager. We've decided to interview him, to learn more about this well-accomplished member of this game.
Hello Ephemeral!
Hi!
Let's start off with something easy. What do you actually do as the community manager?
I act as a mediator between team members and take care of tournaments/contests. Most of my work is done through the back-end.
How long would you say you've been a community manager (not having the title, but actually managing the community and teams)?
About a year, year and a half?
How'd you get yourself to doing this job instead of your old development job?
To be perfectly honest, I'm not the best at development. It took me, what, a week to make the channel dialog? And I talked with peppy and he said he could have done it in 5 minutes. So even though I do a bit of developing, I prefer to manage the community.
What's the most difficult part of being community manager?
I think we have a pretty diverse team as far as nationalities go, with many people from many different cultures, and the language barriers make coming to one kind of decision the most difficult part. If language barriers weren't such an issue, I wouldn't be needed, and I could sit at home playing video games.
What's your favorite part of being community manager?
*laughs* There's a favorite part? Really? There's nothing really "favorite" about it, to be honest. I wish it wasn't needed, and I know that really isn't a "favorite" thing, but I just wish I could have been a BAT, rather than being a personal secretary. I guess there is the satisfaction of seeing people do stuff without me having to step in.
What's your reasoning behind merging the two teams (MAT & BAT) together?
I've actually been thinking about that for a long time. To be honest, when we cut the gap between the MAT and the BAT, I was hoping that we would end up with more bubbles. At that point, the MAT was practically the BAT anyway, since they were doing a lot of the bubble work.
But weren't the MAT supposed to be the "trial period" for BAT entry?
Yeah, they were. That's a pretty silly question. In the end, it ended up being less of them being in a trial period and more like being BATs who couldn't rank. Even more so when they could only proto-bubble, which was pretty useless.
Do you ever see the MAT coming back?
Hmm... That's a tough one, to be honest with you. I can't say no to that, because I think there would be room for a preliminary team in the future. Maybe if the team gets bigger, or we need the extra help during the next BAT rounds, then we'll bring back the MAT. Perhaps what we need is something akin to the MAT, but not official. Maybe a group of people who we know are skilled modders - there are a lot of people who probably have potential to be BATs, but promoting them all at once would be a disaster.
The BAT is for moderating beatmaps. One of the reasons for the MAT's existence was also to judge if users are able to moderate the community as well. What are your thoughts on the matter? Shouldn't the role split be a bit more visible?
I've always had mixed feelings about this. Sometimes I think what we have right now are the GMT, which are basically just about moderation, and they tend to gravitate towards and focus more on their home community. Then you have the BAT, who are more of general moderators - it's not expected of them to moderate, but they have that power if necessary. The people here who wouldn't have moderated in the first place still won't moderate anyhow.
What do you do in your spare time nowadays?
Hmm... Well, I do a bunch of stuff. I play a text-based game called Achaea, I play Wurm Online, Dota 2, League... I basically play video games, I thought that was obvious. I run my own webserver Chiwa too, or well... Chiwa runs itself these days.
What color underwear are you currently wearing?
Grey with white stripes.
Oh, and one more thing - what's it like to be a golden shower?
Please don't bring up bad memories. Zallius's office is a frightening thing.
Well Ephemeral, it was a swell interview! Is there anything you'd like to say before we call this a day?
I don't know. Make people feel like they don't have to question me through the osu!monthly. I just wish more people would talk to me, since God knows we need more people to actually do things. Just please, talk to me. I'm desperate. It's like that one anime about the girl who wants to be popular. Just like that.
—osu!news team
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