There are two polar opposite views on success within a community. One is that one person’s success may bring up everyone’s success. This is summarized in the phrase: a rise tide lifts all boats. Another view is that one person’s success is the only success to be had. This is actually summarized as crabs in a bucket, where a crab pulls down any crab making its way out of a bucket, as if to spite each other’s progress.
As my guild reaches maximum capacity, we are in a pivotal position to either gain momentum and form many groups or to stagnate and slowly bleed out members. I say the latter with such pessimism because I have witnessed other guilds and have experienced pick up groups that have failed to launch or took large efforts in forming, taking away from precious raiding time. Lots of guilds and raids are competing with each other at similar time slots, allowing the free market to fully work, which will inevitably result in some collateral damage, i.e. the entrepreneur or business that fails.
What’s difficult about small communities is that while the free market is an impersonal law of economics, player bases are not rational, organized, or adherent to normal laws of economics. Some players will fantasize about being the best and will bootlick their way into any competent organization. Some players overinflate their egos and demand whatever they can out of whoever they can, regardless of equal value exchange. In many ways, opportunities, products, and services are incredibly limited in small communities which could easily cause insecurity and crab mentality. When success is scarce, any personal success feels that much more delicate.
Unlike the real world, digital communities and small communities that have yet to sunset have almost unlimited potential to grow. Prosperity and abundance are so easily practiced in the real world where things are finite, yet within small communities we become blind to this mentality. I was guilty as such when I first started hosting Super Smash Bros. tournaments. I thought I had competitors or adversaries that I had to manage or coordinate against. In reality, they had the same goals as myself and it was much better to collaborate and coordinate together with them. I experimented with many different solutions, from working together, to hiring them, to working for them, and to contracting them. All of those solutions were much more favorable than closed communication. It was difficult for me to see this at first, because I thought of compromise as a loss of integrity. But any communication and collaboration can go a long way and that potential is worth more than a lonely path with missing bridges behind you.
My top goal for my guild at this point is to create several raid leaders and organizers that can sustain the guild without my personal presence. As I reach out to other guilds and teach my own members how to raid lead, I hope to create a network of strong leaders than can organize and maintain the large social group we’ve created.
Writing, Design, Poetry 