ReneeM
10-05-2000, 11:28 AM
Hey,
Usually I don’t represent myself as anything other than one of the Customer Experience (CE) Hosts. I have a strong belief that the CE department along with the rest of the company is a team and our voice should be as one. And face it CE jobs are not usually considered glamorous (at least until you work here). But I also understand a need for accountability when a company – especially a CE area of a company expresses a point of view or stance on a behavior/policy that we believe in. This is going to be one of those things.
Tonight, someone paged a CE person in StoryHost persona with a suggestion to tone down one of our StoryHosted antagonist’s behavior. The reason was because this person saw a fellow player’s character behaving in a very upset manner and perceived that the StoryHost may have gone too far, and that we as a company should not StoryHost antagonistic characters. I’d like to let this person know I was sorry they left earlier than I could finish speaking with them because I appreciated the fact this person thought to let us know where they saw a problem and that they were trying to look out for a friend. I think that it's cool on both counts, and I’m glad that we have a community building of people that care enough about their experiences with us and each other to want to say when they feel something isn’t right, in a calm and reasonable way. Thank you.
Fortunately, this person was taken in by the fellow roleplayer’s fabulous RP skills, because when the second party was paged to find out specifics, it was learned the RP and emotions were misunderstood. This person said that they really enjoyed the drama of interacting with the StoryHosted antagonistic character and that the first person I mentioned got a noble, but mistaken idea of the interaction.
That said, it still is a good idea to let everyone know what our stance is on roleplay, abuse and antagonists. Because next time this may not be a misunderstanding and I want everyone who may be involved in such a thing to know where we stand and what we expect from you and ourselves.
Roleplay is easy - have fun! Respect yourself and others. You want to be hero go for it! You want to be a villain? Be the best you know how – but in saying this it is never meant to imply or give license to abusive behavior to others. Abusive behavior in this day and age is a cagey thing to define, especially as there can be IC (In Character) and OOC (Out Of Character) definitions and these may overlap. Equally, since we (Skotos) voluntarily rate our games as mature some people may wrongly assume that by mature we mean abusive behavior is okay for the sake of roleplay. It is not. Being abusive in roleplay is NOT an excuse ever for you – or for us.
So what is abusive? It isn’t just some nasty curse words or hostile adverbs, though those can be part of it. ICly, we define abusive as when you as a player feel the line between your character and yourself is blurring because of what another player/character has said or done and you are personally feeling hurt or upset about it. Or, somehow you are in a situation or scene that is just not comfortable for you on a personal level. When that feeling begins to happen, that is a warning and as a player it is your responsibility to let the other player know that you are feeling this way unequivocally and in an OOC fashion so that the intent is not mistaken.
If you are on the receiving end of such a message, it is your responsibility to acknowledge that you heard what this person has said and to act upon it by respecting the other person’s wishes. I believe that most people aren’t really out to upset other players and that if told that their behavior is out of line they will adapt accordingly. Most. For those that don’t, it is part of a StoryHost’s job to help nurture our community and enforce those precedents we have set for all of us. So in such instances, where a request to stop has been ignored, please don’t hesitate to ask us to help.
OOCly, there is abuse that can happen when being stalked, harassed and/or humiliated online. We have no tolerance for this behavior. Ever. And we will assist any authorities in anyway we are able, should it be requested of us to do so. We will also enforce that the proven perpetrator be permanently excluded from our community.
In our effort to be sensitive to our players, our game designers and engineers designed our consent system. We think you should choose who you want to allow or not allow to be near your characters, or to interact with your characters in whatever manner you choose. Tools such as this can help to make your online gaming experience more of what you want it to be, and not what someone else may try to force upon you.
All of this applies to our StoryHosted characters too. We feel the need to be respectful in our interactions with our players, not because we have to, or we’ll lose you if we don’t - we know that we would – but because it’s the human thing to do. Even when playing our nastiest of villains (who I have to say you haven’t met yet) our goal is never to "turn folks off" or "push you away". Our goal is to provide conflict, adversity and strife in an IC way for you to RP with, explore and hopefully overcome.
You should feel free to page a StoryHosted character to let the person inhabiting them know in a calm and respectful fashion how you liked or disliked their roleplay – frequently many of you do let us know and for that we are grateful. We cater to what you respond positively to and ask us for in our scenes with you.
Enough said? We pride ourselves on our mature and passionate roleplay and we work hard to help sustain player motivated plots as well as StoryHosted plots. As stated earlier, these things outlined above apply to everyone in our growing community.
Thanks if you read all this, I’ll try not to be so long-winded in the future. And thanks to the two who inspired this. It needed to be said. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/wink.gif
Yours,
Renee Middleton
Director Customer Experience
Usually I don’t represent myself as anything other than one of the Customer Experience (CE) Hosts. I have a strong belief that the CE department along with the rest of the company is a team and our voice should be as one. And face it CE jobs are not usually considered glamorous (at least until you work here). But I also understand a need for accountability when a company – especially a CE area of a company expresses a point of view or stance on a behavior/policy that we believe in. This is going to be one of those things.
Tonight, someone paged a CE person in StoryHost persona with a suggestion to tone down one of our StoryHosted antagonist’s behavior. The reason was because this person saw a fellow player’s character behaving in a very upset manner and perceived that the StoryHost may have gone too far, and that we as a company should not StoryHost antagonistic characters. I’d like to let this person know I was sorry they left earlier than I could finish speaking with them because I appreciated the fact this person thought to let us know where they saw a problem and that they were trying to look out for a friend. I think that it's cool on both counts, and I’m glad that we have a community building of people that care enough about their experiences with us and each other to want to say when they feel something isn’t right, in a calm and reasonable way. Thank you.
Fortunately, this person was taken in by the fellow roleplayer’s fabulous RP skills, because when the second party was paged to find out specifics, it was learned the RP and emotions were misunderstood. This person said that they really enjoyed the drama of interacting with the StoryHosted antagonistic character and that the first person I mentioned got a noble, but mistaken idea of the interaction.
That said, it still is a good idea to let everyone know what our stance is on roleplay, abuse and antagonists. Because next time this may not be a misunderstanding and I want everyone who may be involved in such a thing to know where we stand and what we expect from you and ourselves.
Roleplay is easy - have fun! Respect yourself and others. You want to be hero go for it! You want to be a villain? Be the best you know how – but in saying this it is never meant to imply or give license to abusive behavior to others. Abusive behavior in this day and age is a cagey thing to define, especially as there can be IC (In Character) and OOC (Out Of Character) definitions and these may overlap. Equally, since we (Skotos) voluntarily rate our games as mature some people may wrongly assume that by mature we mean abusive behavior is okay for the sake of roleplay. It is not. Being abusive in roleplay is NOT an excuse ever for you – or for us.
So what is abusive? It isn’t just some nasty curse words or hostile adverbs, though those can be part of it. ICly, we define abusive as when you as a player feel the line between your character and yourself is blurring because of what another player/character has said or done and you are personally feeling hurt or upset about it. Or, somehow you are in a situation or scene that is just not comfortable for you on a personal level. When that feeling begins to happen, that is a warning and as a player it is your responsibility to let the other player know that you are feeling this way unequivocally and in an OOC fashion so that the intent is not mistaken.
If you are on the receiving end of such a message, it is your responsibility to acknowledge that you heard what this person has said and to act upon it by respecting the other person’s wishes. I believe that most people aren’t really out to upset other players and that if told that their behavior is out of line they will adapt accordingly. Most. For those that don’t, it is part of a StoryHost’s job to help nurture our community and enforce those precedents we have set for all of us. So in such instances, where a request to stop has been ignored, please don’t hesitate to ask us to help.
OOCly, there is abuse that can happen when being stalked, harassed and/or humiliated online. We have no tolerance for this behavior. Ever. And we will assist any authorities in anyway we are able, should it be requested of us to do so. We will also enforce that the proven perpetrator be permanently excluded from our community.
In our effort to be sensitive to our players, our game designers and engineers designed our consent system. We think you should choose who you want to allow or not allow to be near your characters, or to interact with your characters in whatever manner you choose. Tools such as this can help to make your online gaming experience more of what you want it to be, and not what someone else may try to force upon you.
All of this applies to our StoryHosted characters too. We feel the need to be respectful in our interactions with our players, not because we have to, or we’ll lose you if we don’t - we know that we would – but because it’s the human thing to do. Even when playing our nastiest of villains (who I have to say you haven’t met yet) our goal is never to "turn folks off" or "push you away". Our goal is to provide conflict, adversity and strife in an IC way for you to RP with, explore and hopefully overcome.
You should feel free to page a StoryHosted character to let the person inhabiting them know in a calm and respectful fashion how you liked or disliked their roleplay – frequently many of you do let us know and for that we are grateful. We cater to what you respond positively to and ask us for in our scenes with you.
Enough said? We pride ourselves on our mature and passionate roleplay and we work hard to help sustain player motivated plots as well as StoryHosted plots. As stated earlier, these things outlined above apply to everyone in our growing community.
Thanks if you read all this, I’ll try not to be so long-winded in the future. And thanks to the two who inspired this. It needed to be said. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/wink.gif
Yours,
Renee Middleton
Director Customer Experience