Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?
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This might sound like hedging, but it really depends on the game.
Some games actually have ‘rewards’ built in. For instance, on a certain Star Wars game I used to play on… players started out with nothing but could apply to have a Force User after a certain number of votes. But staff had no obligation to approve an application.
So I saw certain players rush to get 200 noms, only to be told ‘No, sorry, no Jedi for you.’ While literally every staff member had a Jedi or Sith.
So no, STAFFING isn’t a promotion. But it definitely puts you at the front of the line for things, whenever you want to apply for them. You stop getting told no, almost entirely.
I’ve staffed a few places, and the main ‘perk’ that I got was that I basically got the plots I wanted to run ‘rubber stamped’ by another staffer, rather than having things scrutinized like ‘Why would Spider-Man decide to convert to Pastafarianism? Does he even like spaghetti? Which comic did you read that in?’
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I agree with many here that staffing can be rewarding and draining.
I think it’s naive to believe that staffers don’t get treated differently by other players (not every player, but many of them), that they don’t have a little more weight put onto their words and the opinions of their characters because they’re played by a staffer. As others mentioned, it’s also easier to get things approved by other staffers because you’ve created a relationship with them and have banked social capital.
There are benefits even if you’re a good staffer who isn’t trying to take advantage of your position – even if you’re trying NOT to take advantage of your position.
But there are also downsides – if you’re a good staffer: your characters can’t rise to the very top of any pyramid of power, you spend your time spotlighting others rather than yourself (I believe players should do this anyhow, but I would argue that staff must do this, acknowledging that I have not been good at it in the past), and you worry about player perception of whether you’ve been advantaged or not and don’t take some opportunities you otherwise would because of it.
But there is definitely privilege to being a staffer, whether being a staffer is a privilege or a punishment.
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In most circumstances when this comes up, I think the more important issue isn’t about privilege or punishment, but about power and perceptions of power.
Something can be hard or unpleasant, but still put you in a position of power or perceived power. In Mu*, it’s both perceived and real - even if staff aren’t getting game perks, they can see player IPs, or sheet secrets, or +where, or ban people, etc.
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I really, desperately, completely want to tell stories. I’m at the stage in my life where I want to tell stories for others, because //I// want to be surprised by the endings also. Being able to do this really is something that ends up smacking hard because those endings sometimes clash into theme. If you’re staff, you’re golden (mostly) and can make decisions on how to move forward with those stories. (Insert a bit here about communicating with fellow staffers, staying in theme, being ‘realistic’ etc.) If you’re not, then at times the story comes to a crashing halt so you can rope in someone else for that permission to go.
I like that side of staff privilage.
Dealing with the OOC side of staffing? I feel like that’s the cost of being able to drive story. It’s sure as fuck not always worth it. I was in the same staff group as @tsar and @KarmaBum and it fucking //sucked//. People were convinced we were attacking them personally over what felt like every little thing. It was exhausting. In that case, the cost way way outweighed the story benefits.
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@junipersky said in Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?:
I really, desperately, completely want to tell stories. I’m at the stage in my life where I want to tell stories for others, because //I// want to be surprised by the endings also. Being able to do this really is something that ends up smacking hard because those endings sometimes clash into theme. If you’re staff, you’re golden (mostly) and can make decisions on how to move forward with those stories. (Insert a bit here about communicating with fellow staffers, staying in theme, being ‘realistic’ etc.) If you’re not, then at times the story comes to a crashing halt so you can rope in someone else for that permission to go.
I like that side of staff privilage.
Dealing with the OOC side of staffing? I feel like that’s the cost of being able to drive story. It’s sure as fuck not always worth it. I was in the same staff group as @tsar and @KarmaBum and it fucking //sucked//. People were convinced we were attacking them personally over what felt like every little thing. It was exhausting. In that case, the cost way way outweighed the story benefits.
THAT’S RIGHT YOU WERE THERE.
Why did I think you were in that nightmare search cycle instead?!
Maybe all the nightmares blended together.
Does this violate search confidentiality 8 years later?!
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Seems to me there’s a lot of viewing it as punishment. When I’ve become staff of a game I get a lot of reactions, but a lot seem to be ‘I’m sorry’ or variations thereof. Even ‘It’s not a happy place to be’.
But it should be fun? There are definitely some parts of it that end up being less fun, but I dunno.
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@Snackness was in the search cycle
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@tsar shudder
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I applied for gold that cycle which led to people going “OMG THIS IS SO RIGGED” and me dropping out before the end.
PRIME EXAMPLE of why being staff sucks.
Retrospect, I wish I hadn’t.
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@junipersky said in Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?:
I applied for gold that cycle which led to people going “OMG THIS IS SO RIGGED” and me dropping out before the end.
PRIME EXAMPLE of why being staff sucks.
Retrospect, I wish I hadn’t.
I think, in hindsight, there was just a lot of very negative and bad behavior happening there at the time in general. Someone got mad at me for scheduling an event for a time that the only person who responded to the scheduling said they could be there. It was A Time.
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@Polk said in Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?:
@mietze I agree, but I also know that some people have been burned by a particular kind of player.
The players who seek to become indispensable and then abuse that, are definitely bad for the game.
But most people who want to help, aren’t that.
Staff who seek to become indispensable and then abuse that are also definitely bad for the game. You know that better than most.
That is just one of the privileges many staff relish. If you can just boot someone out of a sphere, even when you don’t have the authority to do so, then the “punishments” of being staff are obviously worth dealing with (or not dealing with in some cases as we have heard).
Like others have said. It is kind of both. Like most things there are good parts and not so good parts.
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Going to go with privilege though there’s definitely also punishment.
Sometimes people view a staff bit as a reward or as some kind of ‘final level’ to the game. They definitely see it as a privilege (and if they then go on to do absolutely nothing with it, they might be viewed as punishment to the rest of the staff).
There’s no debate, though, that having a staff bit is a very large pool of social credit. A lot of things you do will be perceived as interesting and exciting simply because it’s staff doing them. On the other side of the coin, all of your behaviour across characters and the IC/OOC divide, is also viewed as the actions of staff to a great extent.
But due to the sheer amount of interest simply because of the staff bit, I’m going with privilege.
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@hellfrog said in Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?:
It’s both, for sure. And this leads to the danger: some people will want to be staff because they want to help a game they love, or because they just really get enjoyment out of the hard work when it causes player joy.
Some people will want to be staff because it gives them power over others and opens avenues for them to take personal advantage. Just take a look at the AOA thread for an example of that.
I’d add that there’s a third kind of person: Some people will want to be staff because they see that work needs to be done. So it’s less about a game they love, or power over others, and more just “well someone has to do it.”
I dunno whether that’s a good or bad perspective, though.
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The only game I ever staffed on that I didn’t make myself was an IRE MUD. Originally it was like “oh hey cool I get to have all these powers and AUTHORITAAAHHHH” and it was a privilege and then I had to deal with players and it was definitely, definitely a punishment lol
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I have never staffed on a game I’ve made (beyond a sandbox or two), but I have staffed on quite a few and whether it is a burden or a gift depends on the boundaries you set up between you and ‘the work’. In my early staffing days, I wanted to be the biggest help - take the most on. And that’s incredibly burnout inducing.
I think it’s unbelievably necessary to work as a team, set out tasks to peoples skills, and delegate and communicate what is going on with the team. If you see a problem, address it, and it persists - get out. You’re only losing a game.
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@junipersky said in Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?:
I really, desperately, completely want to tell stories. I’m at the stage in my life where I want to tell stories for others, because //I// want to be surprised by the endings also. Being able to do this really is something that ends up smacking hard because those endings sometimes clash into theme. If you’re staff, you’re golden (mostly) and can make decisions on how to move forward with those stories. (Insert a bit here about communicating with fellow staffers, staying in theme, being ‘realistic’ etc.) If you’re not, then at times the story comes to a crashing halt so you can rope in someone else for that permission to go.
I like that side of staff privilage.
Dealing with the OOC side of staffing? I feel like that’s the cost of being able to drive story. It’s sure as fuck not always worth it. I was in the same staff group as @tsar and @KarmaBum and it fucking //sucked//. People were convinced we were attacking them personally over what felt like every little thing. It was exhausting. In that case, the cost way way outweighed the story benefits.
This is all a good point.
I’m an enthusiastic (if scattered) GM. I’m a reasonably good one, too, with decades of experience at this point. I like being a GM.
But I do not like staffing. And a whole lot of it comes down to the OOC side of things. I don’t have patience for players who look at me as the enemy because I tell them no - even for incredibly minor things. I don’t consider myself a ‘customer service representative’ and I don’t want to be, especially in my hobby time. I want everyone to have fun - including myself - and I don’t have the energy to wrangle people whose fun seems to only come at the expense of others. And no one lets me kick players who aren’t necessarily doing anything WRONG, but who are just exhausting and unpleasant to deal with.
And they probably shouldn’t. I’m just not cut out for staffing.
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@Pyrephox I actually disagree that you shouldn’t be allowed to kick people for being exhausting. But, the notion certainly meets with pushback. And no small amount of vitriol from non staff, lol
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@Pyrephox said in Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?:
But I do not like staffing. And a whole lot of it comes down to the OOC side of things. I don’t have patience for players who look at me as the enemy because I tell them no - even for incredibly minor things. I don’t consider myself a ‘customer service representative’ and I don’t want to be, especially in my hobby time. I want everyone to have fun - including myself - and I don’t have the energy to wrangle people whose fun seems to only come at the expense of others.
Uggghhhhhhh, 100% this.
I can’t even say how many times I’ve gotten extremely excited about a game concept, written tons of documentation and even gotten the basics done for hosting a game, before remembering…oh yeah, I fuckin’ hate management. I did it for six years as part of my job and I was okay at it but absolutely miserable the entire time.
Imagining doing it alone, in my free time, stops me every single time. It just holds no appeal at all, and that’s a hurdle I genuinely don’t know how to overcome.
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But I do not like staffing. And a whole lot of it comes down to the OOC side of things. I don’t have patience for players who look at me as the enemy because I tell them no - even for incredibly minor things. I don’t consider myself a ‘customer service representative’ and I don’t want to be, especially in my hobby time. I want everyone to have fun - including myself - and I don’t have the energy to wrangle people whose fun seems to only come at the expense of others.
@Pyrephox This, all of this.
And no one lets me kick players who aren’t necessarily doing anything WRONG, but who are just exhausting and unpleasant to deal with.
I think they should. It’s a game, it’s your free time, you’re doing a little extra work with your game free time for the sake of everyone else’s fun. You don’t have to suffer on behalf of someone else. It’s okay to say, “I don’t enjoy this communicative dynamic, and I regret how difficult it might be to hear, but I’ve chosen to address this directly rather than risk resentment or burnout.”
I’ve had direct conversations like that with players where I’ve just candidly explained to them how what they were doing and the manner in which they were going about it put a psych drain on Staff, and it’s about 50/50: sometimes people take umbrage and let themselves out the door, which is fine, the problem has solved itself, and others have taken a step back and gone “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize” and made an earnest effort to course correct their behavior. No one’s a mind reader and this hobby doesn’t exactly attract people who are over-invested in social stats.
The point is, it should be okay to advocate for your own fun and general mental wellness as Staff, and I think one of the main reasons people groan at the prospect of Staffing a game is because that’s not the baseline. People too quickly expect and adopt a customer service mindset. If you treat your game like a product, expect your players to act like customers, and come with all of the attendant entitlements and bad behaviors as well.
Imagining doing it alone, in my free time, stops me every single time. It just holds no appeal at all, and that’s a hurdle I genuinely don’t know how to overcome.
@Wizz Alone is the operative word here. And I don’t know if there is a way to overcome that hurdle alone. I hate doing HR. I am occasionally, randomly blessed with the disposition of being great at it (probably after taking no less than three-quarters of a joint directly to the dome when I am in a flow-state of calm and ego death), but in general, I feel that stewarding OOC problems, player issues, conflicting personalities, and all of the administrative human-work that comes up just eats away at my bandwidth at an accelerated rate.
At one game, we lucked out and had a designated person who Had the Hard Talks because she had an extremely capybara, zen-like disposition, she was good at de-escalation, and it didn’t sap her energy. Amazing! But obviously those people are few and far between, and that sucks, because it’s not like the issues are few and far between. Managing people is a grind. But if you find a capybara, that’s like, better than having a coder.
tldr: The idea of facilitating other people’s fun is exciting to me. The idea of managing other people’s problems is draining to me. So I don’t prefer Staffing, because at any game of size, it seems to be more of the latter than the former.
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@Pyrephox said in Becoming Staff: Privilege or Punishment?:
And no one lets me kick players who aren’t necessarily doing anything WRONG, but who are just exhausting and unpleasant to deal with.
In the magical world where I’ve got enough core people to start the heavily-GMed MU I’d like to make, I want to set it up so that GMing has a lot less of the admin-type tasks and more player-like rightsish-things, and you can.
Tentative scheme: There are GMs for Player-driven stuff, you’re assigned one when you’re approved, this is your ‘homeroom’ who handles it when you do ‘+request My character is going to try to break into the zoo’. There are GMs who run outside-forces driven stuff, you sign up for the plot, they deal with your actions regarding it. No doubt some people do both. If you, as a player, don’t like your home-room GM, you can switch to another if they’ve got an open slot. If you, as a GM, don’t like one of your home-room players, you can reassign them. And you can switch around for the hell of it, so long as it isn’t too frequent. You can also assign a -list status to a player (GMs included) — I never want to deal with this person, I’m okay to play alongside this person but want to avoid most direct interaction, I want this person on my team, I want intense RP partnership with this person. Something along those lines. To prevent people passing along a difficult player to somebody else who doesn’t want them, and to help GMs facilitate great playgroups and spend more of their time with the players who are fun for them.
I wonder if it wouldn’t also nip a lot of traditional MU problems in the bud, if admin monitors it well. “It’s not fair, but so many people here don’t want to deal with you or want to deal with you only on a superficial level that it’s hard to fit you into anything. You’re not likely to have fun,” is a legitimate and honest reason to show somebody the door, as is “You appear to actively dislike most of the people here.”
