MU Peeves Thread
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@Gashlycrumb we sure could
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MUSH Staffing in current year
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Real question: What is staff overworked with in most games?
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@xCroaker From my personal experience both as a staffer and as a player witnessing things:
- Answering questions that are already covered in the game’s documentation. I have been on plenty of games that have excellent documentation both on their wiki and in the game, yet people will still constantly ask questions that have already been answered elsewhere.
- The subgroup of players that exist across all MUs that I refer to as “The Job Mill”. These players will generate more jobs than the entire rest of a game’s players combined, in some extreme cases multiple jobs a day. They are few, and usually just very invested in the game they are playing, but holy cow can some of them clog up a job queue. The frustrating thing is they’re almost always not malicious about this. It’s just what they do to show love to a game. And holy crap is it frustrating. Even more so when large amounts of these jobs require scenes and NPC support. (And now that I think about it, this could almost be it’s own topic.)
- Continuing to work on build / code stuff. A lot of games start allowing players onto them well before their grid & coded elements are actually ready to go, and this will generate a lot of extra work where staff is trying to finish their baseline game and people are breaking things already.
- Dealing with OOC drama. (This one probably feels like the worst even though it’s mathematically not.) Having people get into an OOC argument, or finding out that a player is a sex pest, or is exploiting the game code to their advantage, is rough on staff. It’s 100% guaranteed to require some level of confrontation about it, and that shit is draining.
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@Pavel I wanna hear more about your waistcoat though
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@xCroaker I really was just posting the meme to be a little silly, but I can do my best to give you an earnest answer. Though I doubt it will really be a satisfying one, and it’s really just one person’s perspective. I can’t speak for every staffer on every game.
I think “overworked” is kind of not the right word to describe it. Fatigue is probably the closest I can find. Everything MisterBoring said is true, but I personally find that a lot of players think that the fatigue happens due to administrative tasks. Things like build jobs, xp requests, character apps, etc. But for me, I think the fatigue mostly comes from what I’d call a “creative tax.” When you tell stories for folks, you put your love and energy into it. But you are not drawing from an endless well. Creativity comes in bursts and windfalls, and there are droughts. The ask is that you basically draw from an endless well, though.
I’d also say that point #4 of MisterBoring’s message is very true. OOC drama is probably mathematically rare, but these interactions feel the most weighted because they’re the most stressful. And to continue the metaphor, it draws from the same well as creativity, but uses much more of the water.
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@MisterBoring @Noraaa I get it.
Probably could be forked off into a way to modernize and improve games to be healthy for staff and players
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@xCroaker I think most of us genuinely are just doing our best to accomplish this, while juggling other things specific to our games. In the end I don’t really think there’s a one-size-fits-all solution. More of iterative, incremental improvement, or at the very least striving for it.
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@xCroaker said in MU Peeves Thread:
Real question: What is staff overworked with in most games?
For me, it’s the labor of making sure plot/story is happening fast enough, that it’s happening often enough, that it’s accessible to everyone, that it’s still interesting and fun to people, that all the dots are being connected in an at least sort of sensible way, that it’s not too opaque and confusing and not too simple and boring, that it’s kept summarized and with reminders so people stay apprised of what’s happening…
Even with all that effort, people naturally lose interest in the game/story over time. Very few people are stay to the end people, which is the nature of the medium. I think persevering through the fatigue of “does anyone even care?” is another kind of staff work, perhaps one that doesn’t get talked about a lot.
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I think that staff is overworked by staffing.
It’s been a loooooooong time since I staffed a game. Mainly, because if you asked me to I’d laugh hysterically and log off. I may or may not be back. I have feelings about admin’ing now. LOL
There is not a fix all. I think it has to do with growth of game and trying to include everyone. I think at heart staff WANTS to include everyone and wants to see their stories play out. It’s just not enough hours in the day and then the guilt of not including others. Which leads to the you aren’t doing good enough. Which leads to imposter syndrome. Which leads to you have so many things to do that you just can’t figure out what to do. Which leads to decision paralysis as the decisions that need to be made are coming at a daily if not hourly basis. Which then leads to why bother. Which then leads to leaving.
This could be a week, a month, a year, but it’s the lack of understanding that staff are also people with some spicy brain stuff and brain weasels happening too. They sometimes don’t feel liked on their games either or included. Sometimes too backgrounds to not be too foreground, which they also have to think about how that looks to the general masses that don’t KNOW them.
I think it’s just staff stuff is overworked stuff. Unless you are lucky to find that person that adores an aspect and wants to do it because it’s their happy place. Most are just pulling short straws on who has to run which plot or cover which area, etc.
Just my thoughts. As I said, I run from staffing now so maybe this isn’t it at all.
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@RightMeow said in MU Peeves Thread:
It’s just not enough hours in the day and then the guilt of not including others.
This used to be me, but I think now, going forward if I do run a game again, it will be “If you make it to plot, awesome. If you don’t, well, I hope you find something interesting to do.” or “I’m limiting this game to a maximum player count I think I can responsibly handle, and once we hit the limit, no PCs will be approved.”
