Pandora’s Box of gaming community
As a former Captain of a gaming community there are a lot of flaws, these topics are just somethings that I have noticed as my time in the community. This is a bias look without my personal experience that made me think twice and leave the community. There are two types of gaming communities the competition type and the social type, the community I was in is more social since none are pro gamer level.
The social clans fatal flaw is rank,they take ranks seriously, and seem to crave the structure. They push rank structure as one of the main components trying to convince members that there are people over them and can get in trouble for breaking a social non binding contract called a code of conduct.
A general is in charge of the clan and the captain is suppose to run the squad but is often left out when discussing issues with higher leaders, making a captain useless. The basic thing that all gaming communities need to learn is to forget rank and just bring people together to game or paid them and add rank structure, like the old saying goes you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
A code of conduct is a good concept to cut down on drama agreeing to not using racists slang,hacks, or mods. There is a downside to this because you are telling adults what they can and cannot do with games they paid for. For this to work members would need to be paid by the community to be a member. Social communities also push weekly meetings.
Meetings should be held to bring others together to play games, not discuss pointless nonsense. People who join want to make lifetime friendships and some seek to date.These are the type of gamers who don’t like solitude, and reach out to clans to find a family. While there is nothing wrong with this for some, it poses many risks Social clans thrive on drama. Breakups, fights, and jealousy are just the beginning. This is found even more commonly in clans with forums and websites.
The website “social clan” much like the community I was part of, has forums and it can be a good and bad thing. They give others a chance to post ideas about clan nights not so much as in venting, when it comes to venting leadership in this community really doesn’t care although they say they care. The administrators of the website/forums needs to work silently, giving the warnings when necessary, but avoiding the discipline at all costs. Disciplining a member for clan bullshit too harshly and they’ll leave. Once they begin to realize that they are not paid to be a member and the codes are as worthless as used toilet paper, leader will begin to lose the respect from members and losing members. This is why gaming clans always fail. That and poor leaders acting like they are something special when they’re not.
when it comes to leadership this is a downfall by telling non paid adults that you have to answer to a “boss”. A great way to keep leaders humble and active is for the clan and square to caste votes every six months to keep them as a leader or replace them.
