[MUD-Dev] [Meta] chest puffing (fwd)

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Thu, 18 May 2000, Par Winzell wrote:

> On the Mud where I spent my admin years, we did not have a self-serve
> destruction station; players had to ask an admin if they wanted to get
> nuked. I received countless of these requests, and in 80% of cases, 
> the nukee was very obviously eager to tell me precisely why he or she
> (very even gender ratio in these requests) was choosing to burn out
> rather than to fade away.

We used to have things set up that way, but there were too many newbies
that wanted to be deleted so they could start over. In the interests of
reducing customer service load, we let anyone who has never purchased
anything from us suicide (the reason we don't let customers suicide is
that we don't want someone stealing their password and doing it, etc).

 
> Indeed, that became the first question I asked (and still do); why not
> just stop playing, why the drama? Just stop playing. In many cases the
> reason would be addiction, which is fair enough (though I have no great
> fondness for being discipline-by-proxy) but in all others, the response
> was incredulous -- the drama was clearly the point and simply bringing
> that fact into the open would often irritate the person.

Yes, it's quite often the drama. I've got no patience for that sort of
thing. It's generally accompanied by heaps of self-pity, which I find a
bit sickening.

 
> I very quickly turned into an automated service center -- I would get
> the request, ask my question; if the drama urge was there I would say,
> "OK." and nuke them before they had their chance at the martyr speech.
> Now this is partly due to my own personality quirks, but those operate
> only with this much determination when my subconscious has its teeth
> in something real... and what I felt, and feel, is that following down
> the road of your paragraph, taking even that fraction of a step in the
> direction of Jerry Springer, is such a bad idea as to be morally wrong.

Well, do keep in mind that not all of us are moral objectivists. I have no
problem with Jerry Springer or any of those shows. I think they suck, but
clearly a lot of people do not think they suck. All the people are on his
show voluntarily, and that's all that matters to my personal sense of
morality.

 
> I did have one player who was clearly genuinely suicidal. Tragically
> he used this fact to enormous manipulative "advantage", giving actual
> blow-by-blow descriptions of his preparations to whatever girl he felt
> was not paying him enough attention that night. Believe me, I'm not
> being cynical here -- this went on for years. We ended up having to
> delete his character.

I think generally I would have removed said player's voice quite quickly
after he started making a pain of himself. If it was a major player, I
might try to talk to him, etc, but if it went on for years (actually, days
would be plenty for me to lose patience), he'd just lose his voice. To me,
your suicidal player was being a real bastard by traumatizing the girls he
was talking to about it. I see no reason to allow someone like that to
upset my other players in such a real manner.

> So I would like to turn your (rather loaded) assumption into a question;
> is "gentle" good? Ask a social worker and they will tell you that while
> people who are feeling messed up may have an enormous craving for (and
> deficit of) love in their lives, what they need more than anything are
> boundaries; clearly defined, unapologetic, nearly inhuman authority
> figures. An admin is a wall; if you push the wall, it should not give.

Quite right.

 
> When somebody is feeling that life is unstable, structure is absolutely
> vital; they should be able to adress the administration of a Mud and be
> sure they will get a response free of malice but also of great integrity.

I don't see what this has to do with their lives being unstable.
Personally, I'm essentially not interested in the personal problems of my
players. I run a business, not a counseling service. 

> Being an admin is an inhuman job. If you want to save somebody's life,
> you have to be a person, which is a very different matter -- and I have
> some experiences with doing that too, some successful, some not.

Yes, and the two do not mix that well in any decent-sized mud.

--matt




_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev