@faraday said in Managing Player Expectations:
Players need to be more willing to realize that a game just isn't for them. All too often, they'll instead choose to stick around and whine endlessly about how the game isn't meeting their needs. That sort of attitude is toxic and discouraging. We need to get away from this idea that all games need to be everything for everyone. First off, it's impossible, but secondly, when it inevitably fails, all it does is discourage new game development.
The flip side to this is that it's possible to get around this.
For example, when Lotherio was running Fifth Kingdom, there were people that would run the occasional scenes during the evening. That kept activity going there. I can attest to efforts on that end, mostly pushed by players and approved by staff. I never had a problem finding things to do on that game in the evening, despite the fact that Lotherio was mostly active during the daytime.
And the active daytime crowd liked it. GMTers especially.
As another example, on BSG:U, we had player-run plots that occurred during daytime hours, even when you were mostly running things in the evening.
While I concur that it's not possible for a game to meet everyone's needs, I would posit that, with the right set-up and players, you can fill in some of those gaps. It's not going to happen all the time, but it can be done.