MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Ported MAME 0.72 to the Nintendo Switch

> That decision at the end of the day is upto the "users" they'll make an informed
> choice
> around which builds they want to use on their own devices.

It's been clear where you stand after years of your posts, but I should be equally clear: By and large, users don't make anything even remotely resembling an "informed choice".

In actual fact, users go for what they perceive as the path of both least resistance and maximal ignorance. In most cases, that seems to be ancient versions of MAME bundled with ROMs that they find on this or that torrent site, or whatever combo is being peddled by the latest and not-so-greatest fly-by-night websites that post individual ROM sets up for download.

These users neither know nor care about the overall aims of the MAME project throughout the years, nor about the development process, nor the rationale behind the decisions made. They care about one thing, being able to play old games for free.

In fact, you can see it all over Reddit release threads and right here at home on MAMEWorld: If you actually try to inform users as to the overall lay of the land, what they stand to benefit by upgrading, and what they're missing out on by using a decades-old build, not only do they not care, they quite often react with outward hostility to the person trying to educate them: The person laboring to help them be truly capable of making the "informed decision" that you refer to.

At the end of the day, it's not my business to judge what version of MAME a user happens to find most appropriate for their use case. But when those users become not just hostile, but openly abusive, towards the people who actually make things happen, the people who actually enable these users to relive their childhoods, for simply having the downright audacity to educate and inform them, then I will happily judge the lot.

So many of you on here love to clutch at your pearls when MAMEdevs lash back after brooking years upon years of abuse for having the temerity to not do exactly what you want, it's nauseating. At times I feel like an abused wife, being expected to bow and scrape in obsequiousness, to cook and clean exactly to the husband's liking, while getting a slap or a black eye for the apparent injustice of serving him a steak that's two degrees too hot, or god forbid, two degrees too cold. It's sick.