Guild Launch Blog

3/17/2007 12:30pm

Building Better Guilds: 5 Ways to Handle Guild Drama

By Stephen Johnston

Every guild has their fair share of drama. There is something about the combination of text based chat and high energy gaming that brings out the drama queen in us all at some point. I’ve been helping to manage guilds for over 5 years now and I’ve learned a few things about managing drama. So here they are in no particular order:

1. Drama Happens
   No matter what you do, drama will happen. Take it in stride and move forward. Getting hung up on drama breeds more drama. Just admit that drama is human nature and you will get over it faster.

2. Clear Rules Decrease Drama
   You don’t have to treat all of your guild mates like kids, but if you are going to have rules, (and you should have some rules), you need to enforce them like a parent would. Spell out the rules clearly and enforce them appropriately. However, it is also important to realize that creating rules for the sake of creating rules is sure to create drama. People have an innate understanding of fairness and they will pick up on rules that were created just to screw people over.

3. Give People a Place to Vent
   Sometimes all it takes to reduce drama is giving people some place to blow off some steam. In my guild we have a forum on our website called “Drama Here” with a funny tagline like “Need to create drama? Do it here!” The point is that people know this is the drama forum. The people posting know it’s the drama forum, and the people reading know it’s the drama forum, so they both take it just a little less seriously.
   
   Simply giving people a place to vent frustration where they know they are essentially holding up a sign saying “I’m A Drama Queen” can go a long way towards reducing the drama factor of an exchange.

4. The Person on the other end of a conversation is a person like you
   Drama happens sometimes because people don’t consider that the other guy is in the same situation as you. He is playing a game. He is reading the same text on the screen as you. He is just as clueless about your personality and your style of communication as you are about his. He or she is playing a game just like you.

5. When in doubt, use an emoticon!

I tell people to end every sentence that has the potential to create drama with a smiley face. J You’d be surprised how that simple emoticon changes the tone of sentence.

The most important thing to remember is that we are all just gamers trying to have fun. Drama happens, but in the end drama is what you make of it. If you let it roll off you and keep smiling then you’ll do just fine… *and* you won’t be contributing to the drama escalation.