Welcome once again to the Mummer's Dance. This week, I'm going to cover something near and dear to my heart as a long-time online prose gamer: player-staff relations.
Fava Beans
From the smallest free text-based MUD to the largest MMORPG on the net, the backbone of all online gaming to date has been a large corps of volunteer administrators who come from the ranks of the players with a desire to help out and participate in the building of the overall game world. Not all of them are selfless paragons of human virtue, to be sure — many's the time folks have volunteered for staff positions solely to either benefit their friends or learn exploits for themselves. By and large, however, volunteer staffers, by whatever name they go by, are donating their free time to help other players more fully experience whatever game system they're playing in.
They also happen to be in one of the most stressful jobs I've ever encountered, paid or unpaid — and that includes front-line phone-support for an ISP. Caught between the policies of their superiors and the needs (and desires) of the players, these volunteers get the brunt of all the ire and anger that players can throw at them. They're a convenient sounding board and an easy target, much more accessible than the policymakers. Even when the policymakers or designers aren't at fault — when the player is simply complaining about something pertaining to the system, the parser, their character's development, a plot, the weather — the volunteers get the brunt of it. Volunteers on online prose games are called upon to fill many different roles: psychologist, mother, storyteller, policeman, handyman, judge... the list goes on.
Most people have what I call "back of mind" knowledge of this. That's the kind of understanding that goes: "Yes, I know they're volunteers and all that, /but/ they're the only available conduit for my issue, which takes precedence over the stress they feel generally." The overall situation of the volunteer's role in the game is less important than the issue at hand. It often seems that way, from the point of view of a player who doesn't spend a great deal of time bothering volunteers for things — they figure, well, I don't ask for much, but if I bother someone about this issue once in a month I'm not adding to the stress all that much. What they miss, of course, is that volunteers deal in volume.
The stress is compounded by the fact that, unlike in real life, there are no real perceivable boundaries between a volunteer staffer and a normal player that are effortless to maintain. In the real world, when you see a policeman, or a priest, or someone wearing a uniform or working in a location that denotes position, there's a clear dividing line that's seen and understood. Folks aren't (normally) overtly rude or snippish to policemen or even Burger King clerks — they are aware, in the front of their minds, because of the uniform, that the person is there to do a job, that they're working hard to serve, and that tends to dampen ire somewhat. That tends to make relations much more polite in such a situation. Online, however, aside from the occasional title before the name, such designators are not "top of mind" evident, and are easily forgotten.
Stressed-out volunteers do strange things, from time to time. They'll get snippy, they'll yell, they'll be overly punitive towards players who're pissing them off. They'll seem distant. Sometimes they'll make decisions or comments which strike the player petitioning them as rude or uncalled for. This last most often happens when you're the 45th player that day to ask the volunteer why the rules on appropriate fashionwear for the next big party were changed two days before the event by its planner, and the volunteer is so sick of answering the question (whose answer is posted on the appropriate forum for party-related questions but which you have not yet read) and explodes at you in all caps: "READ THE DAMN POST ABOUT IT!"
And A Nice Chianti
Ultimately, the nature of the relations between volunteer staff and players is a balancing act. The volunteer is responsible for representing the entire game, forwarding the theme and increasing the quality of the experience for the entire playerbase. The individual player's concerns must be balanced in relation to the breadth of knowledge of similar situations and the welfare of the game as a whole. Walking this tightrope between wanting to make sure an individual player is getting his or her needs met and the limitations imposed upon the volunteer is stressful in even the most polite of interchanges; when it's made more stressful by anger, frustration, or impoliteness on the part of the player, it becomes worse — and often spirals into concomitant anger or impoliteness on the part of the volunteer.
The majority of the burden to maintain a polite and professional demeanor is on the volunteer; they are expected to be understanding of the frustrations and issues experienced by the players whom they volunteer to serve. Yet there is also an obligation on the player's part to be polite and understanding of the volunteer staffer's role in the game. When the balancing act I mention above has been weighed in public and private forums in the past, I've often seen it said that this is what the volunteers 'signed up to do', that it's 'their job', and that they need to just 'deal with it'.
At what point did the requirement of basic human politeness get tossed out the window as far as online prose games are concerned? I am often amazed and pleased by the number of bright, intelligent, analytical, logical people I run into on a daily basis in the online prose game world. Unfortunately, I am also sometimes appalled by the bad manners, impoliteness, and poor handling of conflict displayed by these same brilliant people.
Two very simple things, if practiced by online prose gamers, would go a very long way towards making everyone's experience on these games a lot better: politeness and patience. While a volunteer must be polite and understanding of the situation that the player is coming from, the player also has an obligation to not be overly angry or provocative in his or her raising of an issue or a question. The player should also endeavor not to get too frustrated if the answer they receive is different from the one they're expecting. Additionally, everyone involved in staff-player relations on online prose games needs to realize that, except in /extremely/ rare situations, there is never a need to rush to a decision. The world, virtual or otherwise — or even a specific player's issue — rarely hinges on an immediate response to a question, issue, or complaint. Impatience is a huge contributor to an escalation of rudeness on both sides of the coin, and it should always be placed in perspective.
Also: don't ever take it personally, though this goes more for the volunteer than the player. Attacking an issue, policy, or venting frustrations about a player's situation is hardly ever meant as a personal attack on the volunteer responding to such a player request. Yet I've seen good volunteer staffers explode at players, thinking they were being personally attacked. If you start to feel that's the case, ask for a clarification or just walk away.
I'd love to stay and chat, but I'm having an old friend for dinner.
Look for the next one in two weeks — and until then, be polite, and check out the forums!
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