Should You Play Your Own Game?

[Kestrel]

Yes because:

1. This isn’t a paid job, you deserve to have fun on the labour of love you built.
2. It’s very easy for game admins to grow out of touch with what the actual day-to-day experience of the game is like. This especially matters on crunchy games. You need to have the experience of someone stomping you into the dirt in the least fun way possible, in order to appreciate just how unfun it is for everyone else (and realise it needs fixing).

It’s good to have some boundaries and separation between staff and players, but this isn’t one IMO.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

Yes, because we made the game we wanted to play. If it had already existed, we’d be playing over there. But it didn’t, and now it does, so why should we be punished for making it happen?

Also Kestrel’s reasons above.

[Muscle Car]

As long as staff characters are marked as such, absolutely they deserve to play!

[Third Eye]

Sure.

I can’t imagine having the motivation to staff if I didn’t like playing what I was running, but also I think not playing your own game as a PC doesn’t really accomplish anything and is performance/optics rather than an indication of anything. I’ve seen staffers who technically don’t play do far more abusive things on NPCs than they could’ve done on PCs.

[Meg]

So, what do you guys think about staff not playing the game? Would that raise any red flags? I know the immediate thought is from people saying ‘oh, staff shouldn’t play’! But if staff legitimately did not want to play any characters, would you find that a warning sign or anything?

[dvoraen]

@Meg Not necessarily. I mean, it entirely depends on the staffer. I feel like my best example of this would be the people who have done MU* coding over the years but didn’t engage other than with the codebase.

I know there’ve been both good and bad apples there, so…

[Wizz]

I’ve seen plenty examples of both extreme ends of the scale – where staff doesn’t play and stays uninvolved but winds up treating PCs as dolls they mess around with like…I dunno, Sid from Toy Story, and on the other end staff who center the entire plot around their personal characters and expect everyone to constantly gas them up and give them the spotlight.

I think choosing to play or not choosing to play are just different ways to engage with a game you make, each with their own unique challenges and pitfalls, and aren’t inherently problematic or better on their own.

[Kestrel]

@Meg said:

So, what do you guys think about staff not playing the game? Would that raise any red flags? I know the immediate thought is from people saying ‘oh, staff shouldn’t play’! But if staff legitimately did not want to play any characters, would you find that a warning sign or anything?

It’s not a red flag for me in the sense that I’d be reluctant to play a game where this were the case, but it is a nuisance on the level that I’d tolerate from a friend whilst bitching about it to my other friends.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Kestrel said:

It’s very easy for game admins to grow out of touch with what the actual day-to-day experience of the game is like. This especially matters on crunchy games. You need to have the experience of someone stomping you into the dirt in the least fun way possible, in order to appreciate just how unfun it is for everyone else (and realise it needs fixing).

@Muscle-Car said:

As long as staff characters are marked as such, absolutely they deserve to play!

I strongly believe that every alt, staff’s PC or not, must be identified – RP as many characters as you want, but don’t pretend to be more than one player, whoever you are.

This rule put an end to ninety-some-percent of troublesome crap I had to deal with and reduced player anxiety by some unmeasurable but noticeable amount.

But it does mean that some players are going to treat staff PCs differently. But if you don’t mark alts, many players are going to figure it out anyway, and you’re bound to tell some. So in that case you’ve created an in-group with a seeming advantage (in front of people who’ve probably seen it abused to advantage in the past) and for what?

Staff should play PCs if they want and what they want, and it is helpful for knowing what’s happening on the game and what it’s like to use the systems, etc, but don’t expect it, or the words of your play-group, to be a great example of what it’s like for somebody who found your game on MUDstats or the like.

[Third Eye]

@Meg
It’s kinda just whatever. I might wonder why they were running a game they didn’t want to play but if they weren’t engaging in weirdo behavior on their NPCs who were exempt from a lot of PC limitations idk that I care.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Third-Eye There’s a secondary issue in there – PCs that are just called NPCs 'cause they’re staff PCs and staff aren’t allowed PCs in their own section is a weird thing that happens. I’m not sure it matters much except for giving bad vibes, though.