Does Anyone Even Care?
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@bear_necessities said in Does Anyone Even Care?:
What’s stopping you from being a stay to the end person? Or, alternatively, what makes/made you a stay to the end person?
I am a “stay until it stops being fun person”.
When the something-other-than-fun to fun ratio tips to a certain amount, I leave.
There are a million factors involved in that, and honestly a game runner couldn’t hope to manage them all. I don’t expect them to try.
Just run a good game, try to keep it as interesting as you can, and if you need help, find smart people of proven skill to help you keep the players engaged. Have a clearly defined code of conduct for your game and be fair, public and predictable in how you enforce it.
Beyond that, there’s not much you can do. Of the games I’ve left, few were because I didn’t like how the game was run or the community. I lose interest in playing my own character and that’s mostly on me and my willingness and/or availability to breathe life into an idea that is only entertaining and not otherwise contributive to my existence on this planet.
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The ADHD me wants to flit from one new thing to another. The autistic in me stays until the ship sinks.
I counter-act this largely by trying to build not only a game, but also a community around that game. That way, I find it easier to stay focused and interested because I’m not only playing the game, I’m also spending time with my friends and my tribe.
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I either stick forever or flake and wander off. I’m not sure the conditions around these things are definable even to me.
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I’m split on it.
Sometimes I will stick around until a game dies (and in a few cases, still log on well after the staff has left, but the server is still up until the end of the month or whatever). Other times I’ll just bounce.
It has absolutely nothing to do with how bored or entertained I am either. I have sat on games until they died that absolutely bored me to tears, and I don’t honestly have an explanation for it. I’ve also bounced on games that entertained me immensely, but that’s usually at the first sign of stuff I just don’t want to deal with. (A recent example was the introduction on a game of a person who showed up with a character that had the disclaimer: “My character’s IC racism is not a reflection of my OOC beliefs.”, which usually isn’t true.)
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I have closed down four games and dwindled but never left until it closed on one game. Either I stick it out, even if just occasionally popping on until the end, or I leave within 3 months of joining.
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The most difficult lesson I learned (hopefully learned lol) on my last staffing venture was what I said earlier and what everyone in the thread is saying: people just leave. You won’t always know why. They don’t even always know why. As hard as it is to swallow it, you can’t make a game so good and effort so perfect and a story so great that they stay. There is no amount of correct staff behavior that makes people stay, though there’s quite a lot of incorrect staff behavior that can make them leave.
At this point I just plan that the ending of the next game will be me and like 7 people and that’s alright.
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If I stick around long enough to get invested (probably past that 3 month mark we talk about), I’m more likely than not to stick to the bitter end.
Heck, I still login to some games now and then that have been closed for 5+ (crap, 10+ now for one) years, just to see if there’s any activity. I’m not the only one that lurks about those graveyards either.
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@Ashkuri said in Does Anyone Even Care?:
At this point I just plan that the ending of the next game will be me and like 7 people and that’s alright.
I’ve found that planning for a game of me and 4 turned out to be me and a hell of a lot more people – but if we someday end back at me and a handful of others, that’s fine, too. Bigger isn’t better.
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@L-B-Heuschkel although not the original four. I’m still to this day touched to be invited. Even to be invited annually when I sigh that I miss RP.
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If I make it past the first 10 scenes on a game, I’m usually a lifer though I will have episodes of getting punched in the face by RL so there have been many times that things went down during that time or shortly after.
I can’t think of a time where I’ve been upset. Sometimes I’ve had a little epilogue dialog with players of PCs who were really close knit with mine, and that has been super fun and appreciated. But even if it doesn’t happen, that is fine too. I try to express my appreciation for staff even if I’ve been absent for most of the final months, because I always have such wonderful memories and enjoyment.
When I think about it broadly, most of time time staff has wandered off or lost steam before I did (or there was some massive staff explosion/implosion). Sometimes the game continues after that, most of the time it doesn’t. I’m glad that at least in the last handful of years, we seem to have moved on from people getting super mad and demanding and rude to staff when they close a game for whatever reason. I don’t necessarily think that it’s because nobody cares so much as perhaps they don’t get as worked up about it enough to be abusive to acquaintances? I hope, anyway.
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@RightMeow said in Does Anyone Even Care?:
@L-B-Heuschkel although not the original four. I’m still to this day touched to be invited. Even to be invited annually when I sigh that I miss RP.
Then let me hurry to invite you once again.
