While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses
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Terrance888
Discord Reigns
Pretty sure non-Wikipedia link=source.
erez87
Lord of Random
Oh I didn't notice there was a link. Thanks.
Arrow Gamer
America's Dictator
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
It was cancelled? 
I wouldn't have played it but too bad. I know a lot of you would eat grubs to get your grubs on the grub.
I wouldn't have played it but too bad. I know a lot of you would eat grubs to get your grubs on the grub.
big sloppy cry-tears.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Quintessence of Trust: Retrospectives on an Unsuccessful NES
Abstract:
A brief discussion of the reasons behind my recent (and longstanding) lack of success in NES moderating in order to better understand the causes of failure and rebuild a modicum of trust in me as a moderator for my next effort. To make you, the reader, aware that I'm trying to engage with the problem of my personal failures as a moderator in a productive and systematic way that I have not done before.
Introduction:
AFSNES II: Quintessence of Dust was my last attempt at moderating a NES. It achieved only one update and then summarily died. What I'm here to do is ask, "Why?" And then, armed with answers to that question, figure out how to avoid that happening again.
Was it the Genre's Fault?
Probably not. AFSNES II aimed to be a historical "fresh start" NES with a reasonably high resolution of plausibility. This definitely resulted in a moderate workload for me in order to update, what I'd estimate as an investment of at least ten hours of planning, writing and map editing per update. Maybe add a few extra hours for polish.
But I've also failed to have a lasting NES in a number of different "easier" formats. My other recent attempts included a Story NES based around piracy (which was dead on arrival,) and a pseudo-boardgamey NES based around an interactive Civ4 LP (which achieved four updates). This leaves my recent NES update average at 1.66 updates, which is not very impressive. I suspect my long-term average is probably pretty close to this as well, though I won't count.
Obviously this is unacceptable. But I can conclude that given my propensity to fail in a wide range of formats, the type of NES I chose to run was not the root cause behind NES failure.
Was it the Playerbase's Fault?
Maybe in part. My playerbase ran the gamut from extremely hyperactive individuals who produced a lot of interesting content but constantly nagged me, to those who didn't even bother to send orders or fulfill basic player obligations. I won't name any names. Overall, however, I would say that there were some great players who I owed more to, some okay players who satisfied their obligations but didn't increase my engagement with the NES, and some sub-par players who actively made it more difficult for me to update, mostly those who joined and quit.
So, overall, the uneven quality and contributions of the playerbase given what had been asked of them might have made it more difficult for me to update, but they were not the root cause of the problem. Blaming the playerbase for AFSNES II's failure would be like blaming pneumonia for killing the patient who had developed full blown untreated AIDS.
I can conclude that the playerbase was a secondary but not primary cause of NES failure.
Was It Your Fault, Thlayli, Yes You?
Yes. It was my fault. The workload to update AFSNES II was not crushing, and the players were not horrible. While the players not doing everything I had hoped they would do was somewhat demoralizing, and reduced my desire to update, my personal lack of desire as well as my lack of discipline were the harbingers of death both for this NES and every NES I have ever run. There are examples of NESes, like SysNES 2, which have crushed their mods under the exhaustive weight of stats, and other NESes, like PerfNES, which collapsed in the wake of particularly primadonna-ish key players quitting, but those genre and playerbase situations are not *my* main problem. My main problem is me.
I have noticed that my NESes tend to fall into a pattern whereby I reach an initial burst of enthusiasm and activity, then tend to level off slightly, and finally go completely dark until my playerbase assumes that the NES has failed. I can conclude that this pattern of behavior is the primary cause behind my failure to achieve moderating success, and future success lies in breaking free from said pattern.
How Will You Fix This?
Some of the most well-known work in academic NESing theory states that the longer a NES continues, the less likely it is to fail after each successive update. My personal goal is to get over the "NESing hump" so that my next NES achieves addictive mental permanence in the minds of its players and its mods; ie, is fun. The cited work is just a restatement of the law of averages, albeit an important and necessary one. Albeit too lazy to tabulate any official data, I'd like to state a corollary which relates to the inertia of a NES.
The longer a NES (or any game thread, for that matter) goes without consistent engagement in the form of daily or near-daily posting by either its players or its mod, the more likely it is to die. It seems like a basic and obvious fact that we all know, but it's important for a playerbase, and for mods, to remember. If a NES starts to slip into inactivity for more than a few days, it will most likely continue to slip, and then inevitably go fully inactive and die. Even if mods and players aren't updating or posting epic stories every day, the best thing they can do is bump the thread with minor content to keep the playerbase engaged, especially in the fragile early stages of a NES before it achieves the mental permanency and addictive status that 'great' NESes are known for. I'd further posit that this kind of "fun" is a natural evolution of almost any NES that breaks through the Hump, but the reaction requires a high amount of energy to become self-sustaining.
So, my future efforts to succeed will rely on the following:
Conclusions:
It is true that the moderator is performing a certain amount of dedicated 'work' to update, receiving no compensation for what they do but appreciation; however the entire community is an ecosystem of NESes, and when individuals are engaged as players, they tend to be more likely to start NESes of their own, and obviously less likely to leave our community. Successful mods reap the benefit of sustaining the community and inspiring others to start new games that they themselves will enjoy as players; this mutualism cannot be discounted as a benefit for the prospective moderator who has previously lacked the motivation to take the lead and launch a NES.
By no means do I propose a common approach to NES failure for all individuals; their personal abilities and circumstances are their own, and just copying my advice without alteration for one's own psychological constraints may not bear fruit.
But, I hope that other NES mods considering their own lack of past success will take heart from my self-critiques here listed, and having internalized them, go forward to make a new wave of successful NESes that both evokes and exceeds the most productive and exciting NESes of the past.
Thanks for reading.
---
1. Rare are the long-standing NESes whose playerbase and recruitment issues do not tend to resolve themselves; see the consistent recruitment of quality new players to N3S as the classic example, and equally rare is the long-standing post-Hump NES which fails due to lack of consistent player engagement; see GalaxyNES as an outlier in this regard.
Abstract:
A brief discussion of the reasons behind my recent (and longstanding) lack of success in NES moderating in order to better understand the causes of failure and rebuild a modicum of trust in me as a moderator for my next effort. To make you, the reader, aware that I'm trying to engage with the problem of my personal failures as a moderator in a productive and systematic way that I have not done before.
Introduction:
AFSNES II: Quintessence of Dust was my last attempt at moderating a NES. It achieved only one update and then summarily died. What I'm here to do is ask, "Why?" And then, armed with answers to that question, figure out how to avoid that happening again.
Was it the Genre's Fault?
Probably not. AFSNES II aimed to be a historical "fresh start" NES with a reasonably high resolution of plausibility. This definitely resulted in a moderate workload for me in order to update, what I'd estimate as an investment of at least ten hours of planning, writing and map editing per update. Maybe add a few extra hours for polish.
But I've also failed to have a lasting NES in a number of different "easier" formats. My other recent attempts included a Story NES based around piracy (which was dead on arrival,) and a pseudo-boardgamey NES based around an interactive Civ4 LP (which achieved four updates). This leaves my recent NES update average at 1.66 updates, which is not very impressive. I suspect my long-term average is probably pretty close to this as well, though I won't count.
Obviously this is unacceptable. But I can conclude that given my propensity to fail in a wide range of formats, the type of NES I chose to run was not the root cause behind NES failure.
Was it the Playerbase's Fault?
Maybe in part. My playerbase ran the gamut from extremely hyperactive individuals who produced a lot of interesting content but constantly nagged me, to those who didn't even bother to send orders or fulfill basic player obligations. I won't name any names. Overall, however, I would say that there were some great players who I owed more to, some okay players who satisfied their obligations but didn't increase my engagement with the NES, and some sub-par players who actively made it more difficult for me to update, mostly those who joined and quit.
So, overall, the uneven quality and contributions of the playerbase given what had been asked of them might have made it more difficult for me to update, but they were not the root cause of the problem. Blaming the playerbase for AFSNES II's failure would be like blaming pneumonia for killing the patient who had developed full blown untreated AIDS.
I can conclude that the playerbase was a secondary but not primary cause of NES failure.
Was It Your Fault, Thlayli, Yes You?
Yes. It was my fault. The workload to update AFSNES II was not crushing, and the players were not horrible. While the players not doing everything I had hoped they would do was somewhat demoralizing, and reduced my desire to update, my personal lack of desire as well as my lack of discipline were the harbingers of death both for this NES and every NES I have ever run. There are examples of NESes, like SysNES 2, which have crushed their mods under the exhaustive weight of stats, and other NESes, like PerfNES, which collapsed in the wake of particularly primadonna-ish key players quitting, but those genre and playerbase situations are not *my* main problem. My main problem is me.
I have noticed that my NESes tend to fall into a pattern whereby I reach an initial burst of enthusiasm and activity, then tend to level off slightly, and finally go completely dark until my playerbase assumes that the NES has failed. I can conclude that this pattern of behavior is the primary cause behind my failure to achieve moderating success, and future success lies in breaking free from said pattern.
How Will You Fix This?
Some of the most well-known work in academic NESing theory states that the longer a NES continues, the less likely it is to fail after each successive update. My personal goal is to get over the "NESing hump" so that my next NES achieves addictive mental permanence in the minds of its players and its mods; ie, is fun. The cited work is just a restatement of the law of averages, albeit an important and necessary one. Albeit too lazy to tabulate any official data, I'd like to state a corollary which relates to the inertia of a NES.
The longer a NES (or any game thread, for that matter) goes without consistent engagement in the form of daily or near-daily posting by either its players or its mod, the more likely it is to die. It seems like a basic and obvious fact that we all know, but it's important for a playerbase, and for mods, to remember. If a NES starts to slip into inactivity for more than a few days, it will most likely continue to slip, and then inevitably go fully inactive and die. Even if mods and players aren't updating or posting epic stories every day, the best thing they can do is bump the thread with minor content to keep the playerbase engaged, especially in the fragile early stages of a NES before it achieves the mental permanency and addictive status that 'great' NESes are known for. I'd further posit that this kind of "fun" is a natural evolution of almost any NES that breaks through the Hump, but the reaction requires a high amount of energy to become self-sustaining.
So, my future efforts to succeed will rely on the following:
- Strict enforcement of personal discipline when updating, i.e. eliminating outside distractions where possible and pursuing the work of updating as a *dedicated* pursuit, not a sporadic one, with inviolate blocks of worktime set aside in advance.
- Building and maintaining hype through a combination of preview threads to provide high levels of early interest, and heightened personal engagement to continue producing low levels of content to sustain the NES early on and reassure the playerbase I am engaged.
- More positive encouragement for players to increase their quantity and quality of posted content via incentives (specifics forthcoming).
Conclusions:
It is true that the moderator is performing a certain amount of dedicated 'work' to update, receiving no compensation for what they do but appreciation; however the entire community is an ecosystem of NESes, and when individuals are engaged as players, they tend to be more likely to start NESes of their own, and obviously less likely to leave our community. Successful mods reap the benefit of sustaining the community and inspiring others to start new games that they themselves will enjoy as players; this mutualism cannot be discounted as a benefit for the prospective moderator who has previously lacked the motivation to take the lead and launch a NES.
By no means do I propose a common approach to NES failure for all individuals; their personal abilities and circumstances are their own, and just copying my advice without alteration for one's own psychological constraints may not bear fruit.
But, I hope that other NES mods considering their own lack of past success will take heart from my self-critiques here listed, and having internalized them, go forward to make a new wave of successful NESes that both evokes and exceeds the most productive and exciting NESes of the past.
Thanks for reading.
---
1. Rare are the long-standing NESes whose playerbase and recruitment issues do not tend to resolve themselves; see the consistent recruitment of quality new players to N3S as the classic example, and equally rare is the long-standing post-Hump NES which fails due to lack of consistent player engagement; see GalaxyNES as an outlier in this regard.
Arrow Gamer
America's Dictator
Personally, I don't think it's the length of an NES that affects the chance of it continuing, but rather the fact that if a mod is not cut out for running an NES it'll die early, and if they're made for running an NES it'll last a long time, thereby explaining why there's such a gap between successful NES lengths and the usual length.
I don't know if that made sense. /shrugs
I don't know if that made sense. /shrugs
erez87
Lord of Random
It kind of sounds like there are some people who can mod and some others who can't, which may demoralize possible moders.
I don't think a failing NES is because the MOD was horrible (or the players). It's probably combination of all sorts of reasons. My own NESes died because I was bored with them. It's really that simple. I didn't want to give up my free time to do something that bores me. Which is kind of why I don't mod anymore, I have demoralized myself in that regard into thinking all NESes I may run will be boring for me so I will kill them. (It's also the reason it's so hard for me to study to tests, let alone update games on the internet that have nothing to do with my future...)
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
It really didn't. "cut out," "made for," there's no logical underpinning for these statements. Human behavior isn't set in stone, anyways. That idea denies our agency over our ability to change.
Also, the data disagrees with you.
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2009
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Luckymoose
The World is Mine
My NES will be better.
Tycho
AFK Forum Warrior
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2011
- Messages
- 3,240
I would say that a person making content for a NES (i.e. a player making stories and brokering deals with others) also contributes to a NES's survival odds, considering that those players have a vested interest in their stories and their goals getting fulfilled. For some NESes, I like making quite a few stories to the point that I need to dial it back for fear of spamming the thread and earning the ire of others as well, and I find that those NESes I am more attached to rather than the ones where I read updates, roll orders out, and then go away until the next update comes out. In the end though, the NES needs an active and dedicated mod willing to do the thankless task of updating the thread, piecing together the organizing the herd of cats that is the player list, as well as active and engaged players who want to contribute to the NES.
Good post as well, Thlyali, gave some nice insight into the mind of mods for NESes.
Good post as well, Thlyali, gave some nice insight into the mind of mods for NESes.
Arrow Gamer
America's Dictator
Perhaps a better way to say it is that it takes a good mod and players to make it to the "hump" update, and if you have those aspects of the game then they'll continue to push it to more updates. So the hump update is more of a sign than a cause.
It's not like forcing your way through to that "hump" update will magically make the game more successful. It's better to strive for a good game, community, lore, update schedule, etc. rather than aim for that one key tipping point where the game, because it has reached that "must succeed because of what the data says".
That might be what your writeup was getting at, but this is just how I look at it.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
I have this thing with drawing maps and wanting to do NESes simply but whenever I start I get too perfectionist and never manage to get very far with it, usually resulting in very disappointing results for the players.
It doesn't help that I'm well aware that I suck at anything but cultural affairs.
But I guess I'm ok at drawing maps. What do people think of this map style?
edit: it was whipped up in like a minute or so. Does it show?
Also, uh, for anyone thinking about it; I'd have GodNES continued if my PC didn't die at the time.
It doesn't help that I'm well aware that I suck at anything but cultural affairs.
But I guess I'm ok at drawing maps. What do people think of this map style?
edit: it was whipped up in like a minute or so. Does it show?
Also, uh, for anyone thinking about it; I'd have GodNES continued if my PC didn't die at the time.
Terrance888
Discord Reigns
My main issues with moderating in general comes in three flavors.
1) a Pavlovian mental block where I simply get an irrational fear when I establish facts, such as stats or NPC actions or rule set rulings, or war results. I tried to escape this with the various experiments. Not naming names here.
2) my mother owns my time, not me. 'Nuff said
3) a fear of disappointing players. This is different from 1 in that while 1 is instinctual and subconscious, this one I consciously bring upon myself and is probably the most controllable
That said, it's mainly 2 preventing the next update right now.
1) a Pavlovian mental block where I simply get an irrational fear when I establish facts, such as stats or NPC actions or rule set rulings, or war results. I tried to escape this with the various experiments. Not naming names here.
2) my mother owns my time, not me. 'Nuff said
3) a fear of disappointing players. This is different from 1 in that while 1 is instinctual and subconscious, this one I consciously bring upon myself and is probably the most controllable
That said, it's mainly 2 preventing the next update right now.
J.K. Stockholme
Right Opposition
I sympathize with that anxiety.
Symphony D.
Deity
There's no accuracy in this example.
It is, however, mostly consistent, not infinitely or easily malleable, and generally naturally changes in a notable fashion on time-scales approximating the half-life of this forum. Certain people are not inclined to moderate for one reason or another and sitting there and saying "Well, they could change," is about as profound as saying "Well, they could become astronauts and go to Mars."
erez87
Lord of Random
So you're saying MODing a NES is as hard as becoming an astronaut?
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