There will be drama

Life is full of drama.

I’m not talking the Shakespearean “Is this a dagger I see before me?” sort of drama. No, I’m talking about the small, more intimate drama we find in gaming groups, on game forums and blogs. The Uru communities are no exception to that. In fact, a number of people I’ve talked to have said that sometimes the amount of drama in the community is overwhelming. Heck, Uru nearly ground to a halt during the DRC Liaison elections, or during the kerfluffle over Sydney Austin.

This has lead to the belief that the community can’t handle itself. Sometimes it’s explicitly stated, but more often, it’s an undercurrent in almost everything these communities do. Most attempts to organize are met with suspicion or out-right hostility. Honestly, I’ve even caught a hint of it in some of the messages and post Cyan has made. There’s a feeling that there are people out there in the community taht are just waiting for anyone to make a misstep so they can be jumped on, or waiting for an excuse to get in an argument. People view the community as a powder keg.

While browsing the City of Heroes forums (I’m polyrecreational – yes, I’ve been seeing another MMO), I came across some very heated threads. People were flaming away, insulting each other, questioning the developer’s integrity and honor and even their right to their paychecks. And I came away with an important revelation.

Here it is, Lakem’s First Law of Communities: Drama adores a vacuum.

These people were nasty and yelling and all sorts of things. The same sort of things that happened in the DRCL elections. The same sort of thing that happens when cliques in Uru decide they have pissed each other off (and yes, I’ve been in a few of those flame wars myself). But it didn’t affect the rest of the CoH gaming community all that much. Why? They were too busy playing the game. The drama was there, but they had better things to do. Uru communities have had to wait a lot – wait for Cyan, wait for content or episodes, etc. And in those lulls, there isn’t anything else to pay attention to, except the drama. Uru doesn’t have more drama, it just has less of everything else.

That might seem depressing. But to me, there is a ray of hope there. There’s a solution here. The key to a better set of communities is to find other things to do besides focus on the inevitable frictions that happen in any community. Whether it be forum games, side projects, whatever, finding things to do drowns out the drama. And, the more things people find ways to entertain themselves, the more likely that others will find something to interest them as well. Not only do you drown out the drama, you are making the community stronger by enjoying yourself. It’s a solution that kills two squees with one stone.

Now, I can hear the ‘we shouldn’t have entertain ourselves – I want to be entertained by Cyan’ argument lurking out there. Yes, we all want more from Cyan – some of us are even willing to pay for it. But a lot of the time, we’re all just hanging around with each other on forums and in chat rooms. If we are all going to be here anyway, why not do something with it that you’ll enjoy? Think of it in this D’ni sort of way: you have a rock before you – you can carve it either into a stumbling block or a stepping stone.

I think this idea has merit, and precedent. Over the break between MOUL and MORE, most of the Uru forums died down. There were arguments as well as drama thrown in, as well. But the Guild of Writers forum stayed pretty active and, despite arguments on that forum, productive. I think a good part of that was that they had other things to focus on. They had another purpose. And now with MORE on the way (are we ever going to get tired of puns on that name?), the Guilds are emerging with purpose.

I think there are other things we can look at in our communities that cause problems (for example, see the Five Geek Social Fallacies and think about where they apply in Uru). There will be fights and drama. But it seems to me that the best thing way to counter that is just pile on more good stuff.