Fanbase entitlement

[Ganymede]

@Kanye-Qwest said in Fanbase entitlement:

No no, see. First Blade shows up, and kills all the pretty teenage vampires. Then the Winchesters show up and kill Blade. Best series finale ever.

#DaywalkerLivesMatter

[FiranSurvivor]

I think in the realm of MUSHing players can be more entitled (deservingly I believe) because of the time and effort spent in the game.

Comparing an entitled player on a MU* to a fan of a TV show is apples and oranges.

There is a much tighter and more intimate social contract involved in playing on a MU then there is sitting on your couch once a week and watching a show, or reading a book. While there are obviously investments involved with the two latter, I dont believe the investment is as intricate or intimate as the former.

[Coin]

@FiranSurvivor said in Fanbase entitlement:

I think in the realm of MUSHing players can be more entitled (deservingly I believe) because of the time and effort spent in the game.

Comparing an entitled player on a MU* to a fan of a TV show is apples and oranges.

There is a much tighter and more intimate social contract involved in playing on a MU then there is sitting on your couch once a week and watching a show, or reading a book. While there are obviously investments involved with the two latter, I dont believe the investment is as intricate or intimate as the former.

I disagree entirely. I spend more dedicated time watching TV or reading than I do RPing at this point. Also, my choosing to invest in something does not, actually, entitle me to anything regarding that thing, regardless of how much I choose to invest.

[lordbelh]

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

I disagree entirely. I spend more dedicated time watching TV or reading than I do RPing at this point. Also, my choosing to invest in something does not, actually, entitle me to anything regarding that thing, regardless of how much I choose to invest.

On a Mu, players are participants, not passive consumers. That makes the difference. The stories set in the game are written by the players by and large.

[Coin]

@lordbelh said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

I disagree entirely. I spend more dedicated time watching TV or reading than I do RPing at this point. Also, my choosing to invest in something does not, actually, entitle me to anything regarding that thing, regardless of how much I choose to invest.

On a Mu, players are participants, not passive consumers. That makes the difference. The stories set in the game are written by the players by and large.

It makes a difference in experience, but it doesn't really make a difference in investment. You can't arbitrarily decide that people deserve to be more entitled in one medium or another just because of that, especially not in today's world where fandom is such a huge, huge, huge part of people's lives, to the point where being a fan of a TV show or book series is a hobby unto itself.

I've seen fans of shows on twitter or Facebook put in more hours and being way more invested in their shows and fandom than most of the MUers I know are in whatever game they're playing.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:
, especially not in today's world where fandom is such a huge, huge, huge part of people's lives, to the point where being a fan of a TV show or book series is a hobby unto itself.

I've seen fans of shows on twitter or Facebook put in more hours and being way more invested in their shows and fandom than most of the MUers I know are in whatever game they're playing.

While these folks exist and I sadly know a few, I do think that if liking any entertainment property counts as a huge part of your life, priorities really need to be reassessed.
There are plenty of TV shows, movies, books, etc that I love and will argue passionately about but I don't think any of them or even all of them put together reach the point where I think they are important.

[Cupcake]

@ThatGuyThere said in Fanbase entitlement:

While these folks exist and I sadly know a few, I do think that if liking any entertainment property counts as a huge part of your life, priorities really need to be reassessed.

I don't know, man. I've come to a point in life where I kind of feel like judging someone else's quality of life based on my personal sense of what's acceptable and normal just falls into the realm of "none of my beeswax" save when it comes to issues of harm and consent and the like. Like...if these people are happy dressing in their Starfleet uniform to work every day or can only function if they tell themselves that "someday my Doctor will come", who am I to tell them that they can't be happy in their self-created paradigm as long as they're not harming themselves or anyone else?

[il-volpe]

@FiranSurvivor said in Fanbase entitlement:

Comparing an entitled player on a MU* to a fan of a TV show is apples and oranges.

Indeed. Unless the game is utter fucking crap and undeserving of the name of 'role playing game' then players have, and are owed, a level of creative control.

[Apos]

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

@FiranSurvivor said in Fanbase entitlement:

I think in the realm of MUSHing players can be more entitled (deservingly I believe) because of the time and effort spent in the game.

Comparing an entitled player on a MU* to a fan of a TV show is apples and oranges.

There is a much tighter and more intimate social contract involved in playing on a MU then there is sitting on your couch once a week and watching a show, or reading a book. While there are obviously investments involved with the two latter, I dont believe the investment is as intricate or intimate as the former.

I disagree entirely. I spend more dedicated time watching TV or reading than I do RPing at this point. Also, my choosing to invest in something does not, actually, entitle me to anything regarding that thing, regardless of how much I choose to invest.

I get what you're saying, but if you take that to the logical conclusion then it would be okay for people to take advantage of others' work on MUs. I don't think any of us would disagree that is a bad thing to do, so I'd say there's a difference between contributions when it's basically asked for and just doing something alone in a sandbox of their own investment, and MUs really blur the line between the two.

[Ganymede]

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

You can't arbitrarily decide that people deserve to be more entitled in one medium or another just because of that, especially not in today's world where fandom is such a huge, huge, huge part of people's lives, to the point where being a fan of a TV show or book series is a hobby unto itself.

I don't think @lordbelh arbitrarily decided anything. He made a valid point regarding the difference between TV shows and MU*s.

You are an active participant in a MU*. Games live and die on the participation of players. Players invest time into games. The difference between watching a season of Jessica Jones and playing on a MU* on which you make the choices for Jessica Jones isn't thin. The difference between how TV shows are produced and how MU*s are produced is also not thin.

I have less sympathy for folks that watch the Harry Potter movies and bitch about its deviation from the books than for players that are playing Vampire: the Requiem by the book rules and have to deal with staff house ruling 50% of it, or staff that are favoring one Covenant blatantly over another.

I mean, you know @Sunny's story with Kushiel's Debut. Are you going to say that, as a fan of the game, she had no right to be pissed off when the game's staff starting screwing over the players that she personally invited over there?

[mietze]

My only real foray into fandom was when I was 12-14 and I was involved in a play by mail Star Trek (the original, there were no new series yet) rpg + fan club fusion organization. You got ranks you could move up! There were meet ups. Thank god that I did not run across any true weirdos since I was a very isolated girl and some of those meet ups could have gone very VERY badly. (It happened in the pre-Internet days too, kids).

Anyway. While yes, some of the people were rabid fans of the original content (and mega fans of the paperback series that was mostly originalish), and would debate about stuff, the real drama happened within the organization because that's where the people mingling happened.

I do not think mushers are like tv show fans. I think mushing entitlement tends to be much more like what happens in a fan club or PTA--where people decide to treat each other like shit, crusty old people can't stand the thought of new blood OMFG might change something that I put into place with my PC that I've changed over 2 times since, unable to disagree without making the other person out to be Wrong!Bad!

Add in the at least one eeyore personality, the passive aggressive folks, the habitually helpless, the control freaks, ect--yeah, I'd say the entitlement stuff on a mush plays out more like a local fan club or small community organization than a more diffuse group. There is a perceived intimacy involved, but many times the loudest people and the most obnoxious folks (staff or player) tend to inflate their own investment/importance while being rather blind to anyone else's, especially when it comes to a question of them "winning" or getting what they want.

It's human nature, as anyone who has been part of a pta/booster club/social org can tell you.

[Ashen-Shugar]

@Apos said in Fanbase entitlement:

I get what you're saying, but if you take that to the logical conclusion then it would be okay for people to take advantage of others' work on MUs. I don't think any of us would disagree that is a bad thing to do, so I'd say there's a difference between contributions when it's basically asked for and just doing something alone in a sandbox of their own investment, and MUs really blur the line between the two.

Pretty much this.

My personal belief is there is no such thing as entitlement at all in mushing. Frankly, we're not really entitled to anything. Ever. At all.

We work to invest time, patience, energy, and effort into something. In this case that something happens to be mushing.

We take out of it enjoyment, a feeling of accomplishment, co-work with others and hopefully advancement and achievement of self and the help of the same with others.

But that's not entitlement. That's reward for effort put in.

I think the lines of entitlement and justification got blurred over the years to work, effort, and reward.

Somewhere, along the time, people woke up and felt that they were entitled, because of.. I don't know... whatever. I don't get it now, and I don't get it then.

We are what we put into things, even if that's as simple as day to day breathing. If you want a rewarding experience, you work for it.

If the staff or players on a game are buttclowns and are of the 'me mentality' and have no desire to work with you or reward you for work you invest, then you need to ask yourself if the fun you get out of the game is worth staying, or to go somewhere else.

You're not entitled for the rewards, they're rewards for a reason, and usually a gift.

I'm not entitled to a paycheck, it's frankly a reward of my long and productive hours of work. The fact it's not an entitlement means I can be laid off for any or no reason what so ever. Mushing is a lot of the same way. Regardless of the work you put in, while rewards is a nice thing, it'll never be guarenteed, nor is it entitled to you. It'd be darn nice if you got it, and likely keep the game successful if it is, and likely crash and burn like we have seen many if you don't, but, there you go.

[rebekahse]

@lordbelh said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

I disagree entirely. I spend more dedicated time watching TV or reading than I do RPing at this point. Also, my choosing to invest in something does not, actually, entitle me to anything regarding that thing, regardless of how much I choose to invest.

On a Mu, players are participants, not passive consumers. That makes the difference. The stories set in the game are written by the players by and large.

While I agree with you, and definitely loathe the trend of fans rending their garments on social media over a piece of media that doesn't suit their exact preferences, I wonder if we're short-changing the amount of agency they have in the age of Twitter and Facebook. If you can rally enough like-minded way-too-passionate people to your cause on social media, you can at least pretend to represent a lot of potential money to content creators, and in that sense a mob of angry fans may just be another layer of interfering "I get a say!" like a production company or a publisher.

[Coin]

I said it made a difference in experience but not investment. I did not say fandom and roleplaying were the same thing, just that we shouldn't assume one requires more investment than another.

Also, lulz at "reassess your priorities" regarding fandom. Because fandom is somehow less of a priority pitfall than pretending to be a vampire on a text-based game? Come on, man.

You all know my stance on entitlement and what players deserve. I have stated it time and time again all over these forums.

But at this point, this conversation is just a bunch of people either agreeing or disagreeing on what the term entitlement means. It's circular. Like, I get Ashen-Sugar's point, but at the same time, "I am entitled to fair wage for my hard work" doesn't seem like it goes against what he's saying, so in the end, we're never going to get anywhere unless we all agree on which definition and how we define the term...

... and getting us all to agree on anything is like pulling teeth, so. XD

[surreality]

There's some 'apples vs. oranges' going on here from what I can tell.

Mostly, different kinds of investment are being discussed. In either, there can be an investment of emotional energy, attention, and time.

On a M*, there is also the element of a labor requirement. People can take or leave that as passive consumers of media; you can't really passively consume M* content as a player. (There are potential exceptions to this on both ends of the spectrum, but they are atypical.)

Expecting some return on an investment in labor isn't unreasonable.

It may not be the return people want or are hoping to get -- and that's where it starts to get sticky.

A lot of it comes down to expectations. Are people expecting to get matched effort? Get more out than they put in? Get more sometimes and less others? Are they content with less than what they put in? Do they have an inflated idea of what they're putting in, or undervalue what they're getting back? All of these things are potential factors, and many of them exist in the same head at the same time, and some of these things are more reasonable than others.

If the expectation doesn't match the perception of the return, problems can easily arise, and they may, or may not, have anything to do with the objective reality of the situation.

[Arkandel]

@surreality I'd say there's a very strong correlation in hobbies between the time invested and the expected 'returns' even if no such scaled returns were ever promised.

It has historically been quite easy to notice this trend on WoW - recurringly so, and with completely different players involved. Some simply put ("invested") way more time and effort than others; I'm not talking the difference between hardcore and filthy casual levels here but compared to real, tangible but not extreme investments; so while an otherwise perfectly reasonable player might have done their dailies and farmed their pre-raid gear but no more than that then showed up for the raid with flasks and knowledge of the fights could have been considered more than adequate, others who had done three times as much - who farmed the same content with LFR first to learn and get a small equipment edge, number crunched very carefully to squeeze that extra 5% for their DPS expected the same - and if the guild raid disbanded after three hours of wipes on the same boss while learning the fights, they'd be quite upset.

To a certain degree this is to be expected. You sink real-job hours into a hobby and it's only human to think... something will come out of it. Who hasn't seen the MU* player who practically lives online 24/7 be upset if they don't get all of the ranks that they want? Who's gonna get it, the person who plays every couple of days? If they do, what does it say about their time investment? There's some sort of projection happening there that's not reasonable but it's still... natural. Such situations might not be normal or even healthy but the expectations are perfectly natural.

So yes, the above all deal with extreme cases but they still showcase a correlation... and it starts with how involved - as measured in quite real hours per day - we sink into our past-times. The more we put in the more we want back, even if no one has ever promised such returns.

[Ganymede]

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

... and getting us all to agree on anything is like pulling teeth, so. XD

This is probably true, but I'll take a crack at it.

Entitlement in the context of a MU* should include having and the right to express feelings and emotions related thereto by virtue of one's participation therein or in the hobby in general.

Entitlement in the context of a MU* does not include having the operators of a MU* complying with every demand a participant may have regarding policies, the direction of the game, or other players on the same complying with another player's demands regarding their participation, which includes their PCs.

I think this covers most of what we're getting at.

[Thenomain]

@Ganymede

I'll boil this down even further:

Staff should show respect for the time and effort given to a game.

Everything about this is up in the air.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Ashen-Shugar said in Fanbase entitlement:

I'm not entitled to a paycheck, it's frankly a reward of my long and productive hours of work. The fact it's not an entitlement means I can be laid off for any or no reason what so ever.

Have to live up to the Thatguy name, You are entitled to a paycheck if you have worked the hours, even in employment at will states once the hours are worked if you don't get the green you can and (in my non-legal professional opinion) should sue. You are correct in that no one is entitled to a job.
Now in the absence of on an employment contract the employee/employer relationship can be terminated at any time but the employee is still legally entitled to the pay for any hours he has worked.

[surreality]

@Thenomain Swap staff to 'everyone' and it's perfect.