This isn’t something I would normally consider, nor was it something I thought about just now. In fact, I had been thinking about this for a couple months now; while I was working on the Golems and while I devised an idea for NiftyBuilder. What can I possibly say, except I’m not happy with Nifty.
Sure, whatever, it sounds funny of me to say that I’m not happy with something like Nifty, but there’s a lot more to it than just a punchline. If anything, it has all been a culmination of various events that has led to my uncertain but notable choice. If you don’t want to be bogged down by a bunch of backstory, I’ll suggest you skip to the section Realising what was Wrong, as this will be long.
If anyone must know, Nifty started out because of a meme. It was a part of a “triad” where saying “neat”, “nice”, or “nifty” would prompt a response mentioning that it is, indeed, the name of a mod, and you are then awarded a gold star for pointing this out. The last part was made up, but in hindsight it was basically an early primary school game. At that point, there wasn’t a mod called “Nifty”; there did exist one called “Nifty Mod”, but nobody wanted to buy it because it was called that, not “Nifty”, even though “Nice” isn’t actually called as such, either, so I guess I don’t get it.
In any case, the mod was made, and all it really did was add Stairs, Slabs, and Fences of various materials already in the game, such as Diamond or Obsidian. It was simple, to say the least, just being a decoration mod. Surface level, it looked like a “haha, Diamond Stairs. That’s so wacky”, but deep down, it was something I did legitimately wanted. Why not Diamond Stairs? Why not make it a mod about the simple decorations for creative builds?
Time went on, and new materials and block types were introduced. I had also been devising ideas to make adding new content to the mod easier so that it would be possible to use Nifty as a sort of addon library. On top of that, I wanted to take Nifty to the next level with Golems of all kinds. It was during that time that I had thought long and hard: this isn’t some meme mod, it’s something I want to make fully fledged, standing on two feet and all on its own. That was when I questioned Nifty and the entire premise it existed.
Before I delve more into what caused my change of heart, I want to warn anyone of a hot take in the next section. If you do not feel fit to read it, I would suggest skipping ahead to the section Realising what was Wrong.
Since you are reading this section rather than skipping it, I assume you are willing to accept a hot take.
I will not be liable for any damages to your emotions, and any means of trying to change my view will likely fail, since I tried and failed for months.
This starting paragraph is being stretched out to absolutely make sure you understand that you are about to read something rather controversial and that I will not be accountable for how you feel afterwards.
Well, I guess it's less warning you about how you're going to feel, more like warning you that what I'm about to say is most certainly not popular opinion. It's also probable that I'm going to receive backlash or even threats against me because of how controversial it may be to some. Whatever the case, I may not listen because I have tried to change my thinking for months.
I guess you actually do want to read on, then.
Something else that happened this year, well, I guess the real question is what isn’t happening this year. That’s beside the point I’m making; it’s not about real world events that are transpiring.
I don’t want to make it a secret anymore. People can be horrible, that’s just how it is. However, what I cannot stand for nor even face without a permanent reminder is people abusing their power but being oblivious or humble about how popular they are. Anyone even remotely popular can sway a great chunk of a community, and I think anyone who has a platform needs to be careful about what they do, even myself, which is why writing this section is riling my anxiety up.
Quark frog. It’s stupid. It’s a half-arsed implementation that spawns in the thousands and isn’t even toggleable in config because a pompous dev is behind the mod who thinks they're always right. Most importantly, it was the centre of a bit of…controversy, I guess. Someone had created an issue asking to have it changed but was refused. Okay. Later, someone tagged in rather hostile about the reason it even exists and looking like an amateur job. Unreasonable response, but easily handled with a lock of the issue—that didn’t happen, did it?
No of course not. Who better to deal with an issue than the shining idol of a meme that is pure and untouchable that is Vazkii? Of course, like any power-hungry popular kid in primary school, the best way to handle this situation is to get a brigade of half a hundred strangers to bombard the issue to target another stranger and protect a dead meme. It just makes sense, doesn’t it?
That was rhetorical, shut it.
Nobody involved stood back and said they needed to quit it. Nobody wanted to hold Vazkii accountable for the actions made. Nobody except the permanently traumatised child stuck in me. A child that has seen this almost same situation unfold on themselves in real life years ago. A person with this child that doesn’t want anybody to ever go through this experience ever, regardless of whether they acted unreasonable. However, I think I know why nobody stood up.
Vazkii has power. All it takes is saying anything, and everybody listens intently. Do they need to have been directly involved in a situation to know what is wrong? Nope. They’re always correct. It’s not just them that has this influence, either; it’s the stans and simps of them. The people who idolise them because they are creepy stalkers, or people who pay money for arbitrary features in a game addon and an exclusive No Ban card so they can be closer to their idol with their parasocial relationship.
There’s a lot of things I’ve heard from these people.
Literally, I can point you to any instance of a mod adding ban code to a game. Is it any different? A person acted unreasonable to the author, so the response was to be equally or more unreasonable. “He started it”, “She started it” is playground excuses. Nobody should care who started it. In fact, take a step back and imagine yourself as a nobody who doesn’t care about the supposedly deep meaning behind precious memes, which would basically be a sensible human. Would you imagine a large group of people spamming you was an act of self-defence, or an elaborate bullying tactic? Maybe if you were a decent designer, you’d realise the complaints about the ugly frog were correct, but what do I know? I only studied design for two arduous years. Memes should probably stay as they are and never be realised.
So roughly fifty people targeting the one user is reasonable?
If you read a dictionary, you’d know that “target” means “an object of ridicule or criticism”. It doesn’t need to be repetitive or harmful; just having any implication of negative response to anyone is targeting. I mean, this take is partly targeted at Vazkii, considering how hard it is just to even get into DMs, let alone properly voice concern. Bullying is a means of intimidating a victim. How is fifty strangers spamming one person for having a say not bullying?
I’m going to need you to look up “2016 youtube prank fails” and listen to what those jocks in the videos said. “It’s just a prank, bro” is something that is even a meme itself because of how stupid those people were in the video, so how can you suddenly be oblivious and replace “video” with “meme”. Even if the idea of just saying "ok boomer" is supposed to be a harmless meme and that the word "boomer" is supposedly not a harmful remark, does that mean "trap" isn’t a slur? How about that N-word people keep making memes about; is that not a slur? I could call you a dick because you are male and have that part, but just because it’s true, it doesn’t mean I’m attempting to denigrate you. Any word in the dictionary could be vulgar or a slur if enough power is put behind it, and quite frankly, fifty people using “ok boomer” in reply to one person should make it a slur.
Why should I not care? Vazkii might as well be the entire modded community, and if the “entire modded community” means to be exactly like my detractors in the past that constantly bullied me for years, then I’d rather go into a mental psychosis than believe it. I don’t care how somebody acts, all I know is that there’s a person, and that I should stay within bounds. If I overstep them, intended or not, I will try what I can to rectify it. If anything, the internet is just a digital real world, and if there is anything that those random school seminars taught me, it’s that people will try to look you up, especially online harassers or even employers. Seeing the reckless actions that Vazkii took would baffle me if I were an employer, especially for how easy it is to find their real name. "Whatever happens on the internet stays on the internet" means it’s permanently archived, not that there’s a barrier between real and internet.
I did. It sounds like I didn’t because half the responses were from what fleeting time I did to talk to them and I had to ask someone to even get into DMs, a group one at that. It was hard to put into words what was wrong. Despite how I speak here, I actually held back on what I wrote because I was scared. It would have taken one wrong word and I would be laughing stock. If anything, I probably am already and I don’t know because I’m not there in the server. Considering how some people do respond when I did call them out, I’d even hazard a guess Vazkii didn’t even care even after I spoke to them. There isn’t anybody holding them accountable, some because they are allies, others probably because they are scared to do so, as was I. On top of this, my feelings with this had changed, but my chance to DM was gone again, and is it really worth bothering someone else when I should just be able to speak to Vazkii then and there? The answer is I wrote this in response. If they truly did care, I should be able to access DMs just like that, not persuade a bunch of stans to even remotely get a chance.
At the end of the day, this take doesn’t matter. Nobody wants to or is willing to hold them accountable for their action. Anybody that does so is a villain, anyway, regardless of what they said. As such, my view with this place has soured drastically, along with Nifty.
If you had skipped the previous segment, the long short of it is that a sequence of events made me weary about the community and what it stands for. Whether or not you did read the segment, you might be asking why it matters? Why did a part of a community start to sway negative feelings about my own mod?
It’s because Nifty was born from the cesspool, and I feel a level of responsibility is on me. Part of it is because Nifty was made for them so it has a part of that community, the other part is that, well, I feel like being forced into passiveness is my fault. Nifty holds an embodiment of that community, and I want to give it a clean slate.
It also isn’t just because of how they behaved. After I had pushed the latest updates to Nifty (as Curseforge held my mod in limbo for days), the number of downloads it got between then and as of writing this is pitiful.
So what you’re saying is I should be proud of wasting months of my life unpaid and locked inside four walls? Entities aren’t easy to make. Texturing was giving me a constant burden what with how entitled people were with wanting textures to almost be exactly like 1.14’s technical mess of an art style. Modelling, I almost had artist’s block. Coding, well, that was all just tedium to get an entity to work, not counting the actual construction of the Golems because I at least had fun discovering something new.
When I was first making updates to Nifty, they were basic. Things like looking at Redstone and thinking about how they could be decorative blocks. New kinds of decorative blocks like Trapdoors or Fence Gates, perhaps those would be of use for decoration. It wasn't until I began work on Golems that I felt more than just "haha funny mod". The idea of Golems started as a joke, and when the poll results came back for Golems, it looked and felt like a joke. What changed was the amount of effort put into getting these to look good and work properly. I could have just made Iron Golem reskins, but I didn't. It was then that I wanted Nifty to be more than just some punchline or some brushed-over decoration mod. Unfortunately, when I did push those Golems out, it felt like Curseforge was out to get me, and that putting effort into a mod like this wasn't worth it. Nobody wanted passion in their joke; they wanted a funny. It's why those new files for 1.15 with the Golems still hasn't even hit over 100 downloads each, and the last file has well over 2k.
In any case, even if part of this fault is on Curseforge, I still believe Nifty was all built on some stupid punchline and was only successful because of a fluke. This doesn’t make me anywhere happy in the slightest, especially when my other bigger mod barely garnered 10k after publishing and is only now picking up steam, and my two smaller mods are just a meme, or so unwanted it only has 500 after a year. As such, I feel that it is time to let go of the name Nifty and give it something new.
As it currently stands, I have a half-baked port of Nifty for 1.16.1, but I am waiting for 1.16.2 to roll around so I can focus on updating without having to change versions arbitrarily. I may use this opportunity to come up with a new name. Something that describes the simplicity but versatility of the mod at its core. I’ll be bouncing around ideas for some names, maybe put it up to a poll on what name I should choose. Current decisions are leaning towards Ornamental/Ornament, but I may think of more.
The description page has always been on my hitlist. Last time it was ever updated would have been 1.5 when I added Betweenlands support, but that was to add a footnote. The page itself would have been updated for 1.3, so no mention of Doors, other new materials, or even Golems. There are a few things I want to do, such as adding a proper logo and a title banner, which will go together with a rename. I also want to add some more screenshots, rather than just the one that crams in everything into one screenshot. One more thing I want to do is make the description more succinct and, well, descriptive.
For the mod itself, one thing I want to do first is port it with “an additional feature”, which I will keep under wraps until later when it is more finalised. Once that port is done, I want to look into adding a couple new features. Not just a vanilla decorative block or material; an entirely new decorative block type that will aid in construction significantly. I won’t tease their names just yet, but I will say that they will fit nicely into corners.
The name "Nifty" will be more a legacy name. Old files will still use this name, but come the rebrand, Nifty will be disowned as the name and a new one will be decided. Currently, there isn't a name decided as mentioned earlier, but there'll be plenty of time to come up with a new name.
This was a much longer statement than I had expected to write, but I wanted to let everything in my mind go. I wanted to say that Nifty itself made me unhappy, and that’s because the mod was nothing but a punchline. There were many circumstances that lead to my decision, but I think the time is right for a rebrand.
I don’t want to be upset about my own creation, but when the mod feels more like fan service than a proper mod, it wears me thin. As such, I will be looking to disown the name Nifty and turn it into something else. All previous mod versions before the rebrand will still be under the Nifty name, but going forward from that, it will no longer be used.
Then again, knowing this place, this entire thing was pointless, and I’ll end up walking myself into something else I’ll regret. <.<
You were very brave to write this, Androsa, and I think that's awesome. Vazkii really isn't held accountable for what he says or does and it's angering if I'm being honest. I can't wait to see what's in store for Nifty!