“Family Guild”: Safe Haven from Drama?

I always find it terribly interesting to read the ideas posted by players who have lead guilds and contrast it against players who admit to not really enjoying the idea of guilds or guild leadership. 

Over at Voyages in Eternity, Damianov posts his “Musing on Guilds“, where he discusses his thoughts on the subject of guilds,  and he cites experiences he’s had in guilds throughout games such as Shadowbane and Everquest as examples.  He points to drama as a key problem for many players in dealing with guilds. 

In my experience, most players who bring up “drama” as a problem with guilds are often players who have simply (and unfortunately) only belonged to guilds which seem prone to drama.  In my dealings with guilds over the past decade, it seems that players have this inherent and built-in expectation that guilds which are more militaristic must be somehow “bad” whereas guilds which are more familial or casual are somehow “good” – and yet these players can often regale you at length with dramatic tales of interpersonal angst and frustration.

I could quote dozens of posts from as far back as the late ’90’s where players in various online games discussed the inherent “evil” in larger, more militaristic guilds.  I could probably embarass myself by posting some of my arrogant posts from those heady days, where I compared “uber guilds” to soulless corporations, devoid of emotion and concern for the drones of members within their ranks.  I’d like to think that I’ve learned a bit since then.   

I’ve come to realize that drama is a necessary part of life for human relations.  I  accept this.  Any time you put individuals in the same basic space for any amount of time, you end up with drama.  Remove rigid roles and expectations from the relationship, and you end up with considerably more drama – not less. 

For many players, this seems a particularly hard pill to swallow.  After all, the players in “hard core” guilds seem to be loud mouthed, insulting, and just plain obnoxious to many players.  The stereotype is that members of large or structured guilds are all followers of some cult-like, meglomanical, control freak guild leader who’s on a power trip.  Why would any sane player subject oneself to belonging to such an organization online, right? 

This is where the utopian ideal of a “family guild” comes in.  Obviously this is the better choice, right?  It has the word “family” right there in the title, so joining this type of guild means you’re practically treated like someone’s brother or sister, right?  It means they’ll listen to your jokes and share recipes with you, right?  If you’re having a bad night online, they’ll drop what they’re doing to help you out, right?

Why would anyone think that? 

Frequently I heard statements like the following: “Family guilds are more accepting than other types of guilds.  A lot of these family guilds are pretty open with recruiting, after all.” 

Response:  First of all, this idea that “family guilds” are all accepting is skewed at best.  Sure, they accepted you.  They also often accept just about anyone with a pulse, a connection, and the ability to click “accept” when the guild invitation pops up. 

I’m not a fan of open recruiting.  Oh, I’m a fan of casual, laid back, voluntary guild structures…but to have absolutely no standards or application process what-so-ever? Well, you get what you pay for, right?

Think about this a moment before dismissing my response as elitist.  The first test of membership is and always will be related to recruiting.  When you receive an invitation to join a guild, ask yourself what it was that earned that invitation in the first place.  If you can’t think of a reason, then ask yourself why you want to belong to a guild that invites members for no reason.

Groucho Marx once joked, “I do not care to belong to a club that would accept me as a member.”

Though obviously told to get a laugh, there’s more than a little truth to the statement.  When you join a guild, it’s probably for a variety of reasons, but in the back of your mind, you want to know that the guild wanted you – and probably for a reason.

That’s a basic human need to find a place to fit in.  Guilds can accomplish that in online games, but there needs to be more to it than just throwing out guild invites.  It’s like trying to build a successful company based on the first 10 people you meet on the train. 

To flip this around though, I think this is also a reason that many players are turned off by guilds which have application processes or standards.  Because we have this instinctual, basic desire to belong, we also have this underlying and often overwhelming fear of rejection. 

Applying to join a guild is an uncertain process.  You have to go through the act of presenting yourself in some fashion for judgement, which can result in a positive or negative outcome.  Even if you don’t really care about joining the guild all that much, you might care about being turned down.

I see this all the time, actually.  My own guild does have a strict application process.  We’re not some uberguild taking down contested targets 7 nights a week, either.  But we have standards.  Often, I receive messages in-game from players who want to join our guild for a variety of reasons.  When I mention the application process, they balk…or we simply never hear from them again. 

Should I worry?  From my perspective, the application process just weeded out players that wouldn’t likely be good additions for my guild in the first place, which itself is based on a fairly rigid structure. 

Even with players who do file applications, we often turn down candidates for a variety of reasons.  On occasion this leads to some fairly angry responses.  Like spurned suitors, these players aren’t really angry about not gaining membership with us, but rather are livid about being turned down and probably don’t know how to deal with the feelings of rejection. 

Some of the most familial guilds I’ve met are actually seen as “hard core” or “uber” or what not.  Many players see rigid ranks and applications on web forums, and immediately file the guild under “get a life”.   They ask to join a guild and receive any answer other than a guild invite and don’t know how to respond. 

In my mind, it comes back to the strange pairing of those basic human tribalistic nesting instincts and a desire to remain relatively anonymous online.  For myself, it’s almost self-contradictory:  How can you join a “family” online when you don’t really know anyone.  I can imagine a reality show where everyone is required to live with each other for months – all while wearing disguises, and being keeping all of your most private information hidden from everyone else.  See how long that takes before there’s drama.

In real families, we annoy each other over holidays, we pull each other’s hair, we make inappropriate comments about each other at public events, and we share our deepest pains. 

That’s drama.  It’s also family. 

Now, to a certain extent, all guilds have drama.  Then again, every human relationship comes with forcefed drama built right on in.  Don’t want any drama at all?  Don’t interact with people. 

Of course, here’s where I believe family guilds often have it worse.  In most family guilds, one of the defining factors which marks a “family” guild is a relative lack of rules and requirements.  You don’t have to go through an application process most of the time.  There’s no required attendance or events.  There’s no DKP system for loot typically.  Usually the rank structure is fairly small or lax. 

Ok, these don’t sound like bad things to most players, right?  Great.  So, how do these guilds handle drama?  Are there rules against drama?  Do the leaders jump in and privately confront the persons creating the drama?  No, of course not – or you wouldn’t hear about the drama! 

Seems to me that the biggest common problem many self-proclaimed “families” online suffer from is either an ill-defined set of rules, or inconsistent enforcement of said rules (or both).  Even real world families have rules, and typically the most functional ones have some pretty solid enforcement.  If Dad says do your homework before you go play and he catches you playing while your Math books sit closed in your backpack, you’ve got to know something bad is coming when he finds out, right?  If the “bad” is bigger than your desire to play right now, chances are you’re not going to risk it.  It works in real families…so why not “family guilds”?

What’s the stigma regarding rules and structure in online games?  Is it because it’s “just a game” and players don’t want to deal with structure and rigid rulesets in order to enjoy the “game”?  How do these people enjoy sports then?  Or board games?  Or game shows?  How do they even enjoy the MMO they’re playing if they don’t like structure and rigid rulesets in their entertainment?

Too many aspriring guild leaders out there seem to think that leading a guild is easier without structure or defined rulesets.  They’ll learn soon enough that’s just plain erroneous thinking.  Set up a guild if you want, but without structure, rules, and an underlying focus, there’s little way to prevent, contain, or minimize drama.  At that point, you’re not really forming a guild or a family, but really just rallying a mob to your cause of the moment…and most of the time, that “cause” itself is defined only in the minds of those followers.  If leaders don’t set the expectations up front, then the members will fill in the blanks with whatever comes to mind. 

Want to mimimize guild drama?  It’s not going to come from more laxness and less obligations.  It’s going to come from setting expectations, touching on those those expectations from time to time, and good old fashioned communications.  So, by all means, continue to run a “family guild”…but just add in some more structure, standards, processes, and expectations.  If that doesn’t sound like a family guild to you, then let me know how well you’re doing at preventing drama (and let me know how many members you have while you’re at it).