- You are speaking, live and in person, with someone. He says something vaguely off-color. You react with faux-outrage and say aloud “LALALALA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” And you cover your eyes.
- You find yourself rephrasing other people’s downtime announcements.
- You find yourself rephrasing White House announcements… and damn if you didn’t do a better job.
- You cannot play MMO video games without noticing the places where the developers clearly meant to put in content/systems/quests and then pulled the material at the last moment.
- You refer to your Christmas party, held in your own private home, as the denomination- and protest-free “Winter Festival.”
- You file questions from your relatives because they’d be good fodder for a Q&A.
- You look for the moderator tools on boards you don’t run.
- You twitch during patch days for other companies.
- You don’t even notice breathtaking rudeness from store clerks, and it wouldn’t ruin your day if you did.
- The keys on your keyboard are mostly blank after six months.
- You don’t have a keyboard longer than eight months thanks to all the diet soda you spill on it.
- You own a lot of toy weapons.
- Well, people assume they’re toys.
- (Via Cuppa Jo) You have constructed a drinking game based on typical player forum postings.
- (Via Pete) You can spot a mile away the kind of thing that will bring out the anonymous internet vigilante squad with the pitchforks and porn.
- The only person with a bigger liquor stash is the producer.
I dunno. Is that actually “too long,” or “just right?”
Okay, well then 6 months is “too long” because I already do a LOT of the things on this list!
Great list Sanya!
ROFL. Awesome!
DIET SODA?
What is this evil you speak of. I must have pure sugar (ok corn syrup) with my caffeine!!
You Have Been In Community Too Long When:
-You have constructed a drinking game based on typical player forum postings.
Or, people that don’t even play the game you used to work for, are still reading what you write…to see if you say anything about that game.
/wave Sanya
double plus liquor stash since 2005
- You find yourself rephrasing other people’s downtime announcements.
that is so accurate, but it also applies to patch announcements, explanations about nerfs, event announcements, forum responses, really any statement from any other MMO. fun list
CuppaJo, is it available online anywhere?
halffin, amen, but not just MMOs. They just get the limelight because they did official gaming communities first(ish).
I spent almost five years on some other big gaming communities for a major publisher and it’s the same thing. Creative options, persistent stats or sheer weight of numbers get you players just as rabid (or just passionate, if you’re lucky and do your job well). Bless ‘em, but my god, an old boss of mine said two years is the most CM anyone can/should take. Sounds about right, sadly it’s about as long as you need to get a fair grip on this crazy role.
Another thing I’ve noticed is you can spot a mile away the kind of thing that will set an official forum ablaze. The recent Eidos/Gertsman thing, for instance. Popped over to the Eidos forums and, yup, sure enough, anonymous internet vigilante squad was already there with the pitchforks and porn.
I sent the drinking game to Sanya – she has permission to repost it if she wants.
“- You are speaking, live and in person, with someone. He says something vaguely off-color. You react with faux-outrage and say aloud “LALALALA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” And you cover your eyes.”
*innocent whistle*
I’m not sure I know an MMO gamer who doesn’t twitch reflexively on patch days.
Guilty – and I haven’t actually been employed in Community yet.
Oh, except we don’t say Winter Festival, because it’s in Summer, and we don’t say Summer Festival because people on the other side of the equator complain. Several people also object to the use of ‘festival’ on technical correctness grounds – so.. we don’t actually call it anything.
I *do* wish people “a joyous non-denominational festive season”, though. Half of them can’t seem to figure out what I’m saying, exactly.
“- You don’t even notice breathtaking rudeness from store clerks, and it wouldn’t ruin your day if you did.”
You also gain this ability when you work retail for longer than a month.
I was going to point out that many of these things apply to producers as well, but then you trumped me with the last one. Good job!
“You find yourself rephrasing other people’s downtime announcements.”
This was a sickness I thought only I was afflicted with!
a vigilante squad with porn?
J., I can’t count the number of times a player got pissed off and relentlessly spammed my boards with gay porn. I assume that’s what was meant.