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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/musicloverrmm on 2024-07-27 07:21:32+00:00.

What happens when a whole bunch of ruthlessly dedicated band nerds are left on a virtual Lord of the Flies island with essentially no moderation, rules, or technological help at all? My friends - buckle up - because we are dogs are taking a ride in God’s hot car - and he is about to forget all about us.

What Are The Marching Arts?

The simplest way to describe the marching arts would be derivatives of marching bands, whether in high schools and colleges across the USA - although they are starting to become popular in other countries as well.

Many high schools in the USA have competitive marching bands - ranging from a few dozen kids playing pop music to huge groups that travel and compete nationally. The largest of these can be pretty impressive. These groups can consist of upwards of 250+ students, and compete in circuits like Bands of America (BOA) and USBands. Sometimes kids practice and audition for years to get into these groups, and sometimes fees can run into the thousands of dollars for these groups to travel and compete. Some of them are seriously impressive - some bands from Texas, Indiana, and Oklahoma especially are world renowned and have several national titles under their belts. College marching bands are impressive, but besides very specific events like Honda Battle of the Bands, don’t really compete against each other in the same way high school bands do.

Drum Corps is similar, but not the same as marching band. Drum Corps International (DCI) is the circuit for these corps (Don’t call them bands - trust me, you will regret it), and these groups, consisting of students 21 years of age and younger, compete in a summer circuit. The differences between marching band and drum corps are negligible at this point - but the very basics are that drum corps are independent non-profit organizations that recruit students from around the country, and that drum corps don’t include woodwind instruments (like flute, saxophone, etc) while marching bands do. Drum corps is termed as marching music’s major league, and just like some BOA bands, are pretty impressive. 

Color guard groups are the flags and weapons you see performing with marching band and drum corps. Color guard groups perform in Winter Guard International (WGI) indoors during the Winter, and once again have their own circuit and competitions. WGI groups can be both high school and independent groups. Drumlines also compete during the Winter in WGI, with battery (marching drums) and pit percussion (the instruments you see on the sideline).

All four of these distinct activities more or less make up the marching arts. People in these groups are very niche, very passionate, and very skilled in what they do. Many folks spend SIGNIFICANT money training, auditioning, learning, and then touring with these groups. I was involved in high school marching band and drum corps - but never got around to color guard or drumline. Just so you understand the demographics of the folks we’re dealing with here - these are opinionated, talented folks.

Fantasy Marching Band?! 

Fantasy Marching Arts (FMA) is a fantasy game in which you can create marching groups, audition performers, design shows, rehearse, and then compete against other groups. You can create one of each of the four categories (drum corps, marching band, color guard, drumline) each season. A season runs around three months and has pre-season, competition season, and a finals season before the cycle refreshes and restarts again. The website has been up since 2010, and we are currently in S123. 

It is a very clicky game. To score points on a scale of 100, you rehearse your sections by clicking a button until your ‘energy’ points run out. As the season goes on, your groups get better. As you compete and do well not only do you win against other players, but you can earn money and reputation, which puts you in a better starting point in the next season as you are able to attract better members, staff, and statistics.

Another way of earning money is by hosting your own events. They cost a LOT of money to set up, so it usually takes a few seasons before you can host your own event. When other groups apply to attend your event, they have their own reputation stats, and the better groups attend your event, the more tickets you sell, therefore the more money you earn (remember this for later). 

The longer your group is around, the more opportunities they have to host events, gain reputation, hire staff, and increase the show difficulty to get better scores. The game is quite fun. I’ve been around since Season 1 - and even though I’ve had years where I don’t play, my groups are quite good. I do like though that I never win every time. There is always some hotshot that signed up three seasons ago that is now beating me. If I ever got to the point where I would win every time, I would just quit and restart because what is the fun in that?

Players get very into the lore of the game, and there’s a good mix of current high schoolers all the way up to middle-aged folks who still love the activity. Players have come and gone, but some keep up written commentaries and game recaps, others had folks submit their group logos for a visual graph of rankings. It is super fun and people get really into it, especially on discord. People can also get passionate and there can be drama - like for example somebody took up an entire week with their events when everyone else puts their events on the same day.

Fantasy Marching Arts Deists

So all of this is good and well and all - but what happens when the entire game is run by a single person, and then that person just… disappears? 

Adam (not real name) is the sole designer, moderator, and owner of FMA. He is a game designer, music designer, and marching band show designer (the latter is a little questionable and as the community is very small, I’ve never seen a group with a show by him). In the first few years of FMA, he was the one manually resetting the season, fixing bugs, and moderating the website. Many dedicated players publicly asked if they could assist him, even on a volunteer basis, but these requests were always denied or ignored.

Here’s the thing - Adam has not - publicly - done anything with the website since 2015. His last log-in to the site at all was back in April. But there are no work logs, no moderation done, no password resets (which were all being done manually), no event changes, no algorithm tweaks, no bug fixes, and no suggestions responded to since 2015. 

The rent must still be paid on the domain obviously, as the site is still up, and the seasons still reset so we can play, but even this has a huge asterisk. S116 ended, but instead of resetting after approximately two hours for S117 it just…. Didn’t. We were left in S116 limbo for a day and a half while we panicked on the forums group, assuming that this was our time to go and the FMA Rapture was nigh. One of the other original players from S1 suggested that he/she/they were friends on Facebook with Adam, but he hadn’t been active there in months, either. Eventually the season reset and we were able to do S117 (with two less days to rehearse… grrrrr). 

My password was compromised in a data breach - and FMA is still the only website that has my old password because I can’t reset it. 

There is a pay to play element of the site - you can pay real money for actual influence, in game money, etc - which people still do, as you can see how they have purchased these things each time a new season updates. It is a little frustrating to hear this because FMA is not a passive income kind of site unless you have a full moderator.

The aforementioned S1 player was made a moderator after the S117 debacle - but this player doesn’t seem to be able to do anything except for moderate forum posts - which is a start as we will soon see. Nothing technical like fixing profiles, banning members, etc. seems to even be possible.

There are a handful of players that have broken the game, have everything unlocked, and would win every time if they entered events. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so, but it can be quite demoralizing if you see they are competing and often, is enough for you to decide to take a season off. These players essentially have gentlemen’s agreements to take seasons off, only enter one group at a time, etc. It’s been nice because it has afforded newer players more oxygen in the game, but there are no mechanics in place for them to do this if they didn’t want to.

The FF Phenomenon 

Like mentioned before, really good groups can take several seasons to get up and going. But what happens when a single player takes advantage of the mechanics of the game to advance themselves in relevance? Enter the user FF (abbreviation). 

FF had, at one point, 26 profiles. He didn’t enter any of his groups into any events except his own. He would farm influence with each group, but instead of helping other players by entering them into their events (increasing their money), he had EACH group create their own event, and then entered each group into the others events. He was farming influence and money at a rate that was INSANE. Within three seasons, each of his 26 profiles leaped ahead of groups that had been around for DOZENS. FF single handedly reaped the benefits of 26 different players in a span of three seasons.

Because Adam was never on, we couldn’t…

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