Imagine yourself playing an intense game of Kalah, with every score carefully plotted out, every move a hair's breadth from victory or certain doom. At the last, your opponent has just one move left, and you know you are going to win!!! Suddenly, before your opponent clicks on the very last pit, POOF! He just leaves!

This has occured over and over and over again to hundreds of Whyvillians, and frankly, I am tired of it! I know I am not alone in my frustration.

Before our wins and losses were recorded, citizens were able to go and enjoy a fun game, even finish it in style and class. We could chat and meet other game lovers, and play simply for the joy of playing. Now, everything is focused on "I MUST win! I can NOT let my rating fall down!" The end result is, citizens have resorted to just bailing out mid-game so they don't lose! This is not right.

Say you are on a soccer team. You and your opponents have played a fierce game, and they are leading by a point. There are only 10 seconds left in the game. Are you and your team just going to run away because you are about to lose? No! Of course not! So why do it here, on Whyville?

Sportmanship is required whether you are playing a physical sport like basketball or soccer or a board game like Kalah or checkers. No one wants to play with a poor loser!

There are several solutions to this problem, as I see it:

1. All citizens could agree to be responsible and mature and play their games out, whether they are going to win or lose.

2. There could be 15 rooms where scores are recorded, and 10 rooms where the games are just for fun, so if you are that concerned with losing, you can play in a non-recording room.

3. If two people are in a game, and one person leaves in the middle of it, the person who left should have a loss and the one who stayed would be the winner.

Whatever the solution may be, we have to put a stop to this serious display of bad sportsmanship!

Signing off,
Iqgirl

Editor's Note: As I understand it, the original intent was that if people skipped out of a game, the person who's still there would earn a win. At a recent staff meeting among the programmers, someone said they'd heard that this part of the games was not working properly, and the team set about to fixing it right away. They hope to have everything corrected soon.

Thanks for letting us know, Iqgirl! If you see any new problems or ways to improve our games, please let us know! Whyville is all about constantly improving our site, our games and our selves -- nobody's perfect, but we can always get better!