Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Leading by Leading

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that public debate about radical new game features is seldom a good thing. It's not the players don't have good ideas; it's that vocal minority groups serve to deadlock and kill otherwise good ideas.

This reminds me of the Knesset in Israel. They have so many fanatic fringe groups that it's virtually impossible to get anything done.

On March 16, I globally removed and disabled permanent player killing. I didn't post about it, I didn't request for comments; I simply did it, and waited for the fallout.

There wasn't any. Or rather, the people who would have made a big deal of it were unable to do so - there was no way to invoke righteous indignation from the population by blowing things out of proportion. Propaganda doesn't work when people can try it for themselves and say, "no, that's not true".

The next day, I changed the way magic resistance works for players. I've been wanting to do this for over a decade, but never felt like it would be appropriate. Fallout level? Again, very little. Again, largely because the bullshit espoused by the vocal minority was quickly killed by players simply trying things for themselves.

I like this idea of leading by leading instead of leading by consensus. Decide what to do, make it happen, just be prepared to clean up the mess afterward. It's not that I'll never mess up, but it's definitely easier to apologize and fix it than to debate it up front.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it very telling that you decided to attach the label "assholes" to this post.

1. That "vocal minority" is what makes up the core mudders here. They're in it for the long haul. That's why they're vocal. They're been led to believe that they're in this project with you as partners. Not as outsiders.

2. There wasn't a large out-pouring of protest because, in my opinion, they felt like it would have been futile. Why spend the energy writing a long well-thought-out post that's just going to be ignored? When you didn't open the floor for debate about the change to begin with and just did it without consensus the message was, "I'm a dictator and I don't give a shit about your opinions." Now if that's what you believe then that's fine, but that's why there wasn't a huge uproar. We've given up.

3. The Chinese run their country like a dictatorship because it works well for them. There is no wasted energy on debate. Things get accomplished. If you want to run the mud like that because that's a successful model then go ahead. Just don't be shocked when your core mudders get disgruntled and fed up.

Dennis Towne said...

I used the 'assholes' label because a lot of the behaviour I see regarding changes fits that category.

I specifically did what I did to prevent the outpouring of protest. The basic reason for that is that yes, I'd made up my mind, and no, I really didn't give a shit about people's opinions. Or rather, I'd already spent years going over said opinions and discussing it yet again would be pointless.

You can't always get consensus. Being a leader sometimes means saying, 'we're going to do it anyway, even after taking into account your opinion'. This was one of those times.

This is not a democracy, and I have no intention of making it one. This is a dictatorship, but one where the people have the ultimate voice: the dictator needs them more than they need the dictator.

The core mudders are welcome to leave if they feel they have reason to. They voluntarily follow me by playing, and that implies some amount of trust in the directions I pick. For my part, I try not to breach that trust and listen to them.

Anonymous said...

Good luck trying to automate success.