More Detail as to "Why"

[Halaster]

I posted the following to Reddit in response to a post about Arm temporarily shutting down.  As someone suggested, it does go a bit deeper than what we said here, so I'll put it here as a cross post.

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As one of the two Producers of ArmageddonMUD we made the decision for a few reasons.

    Staff turnover was increasingly making it more and more difficult to maintain the staffing levels needed to support everything we wanted to support. There are a lot of reasons for staff turnover, but one that I believe is high on the list is Bureaucracy. Over the many years the staff team painted themselves (and us, as future staff) into corners by creating so much red tape. Processes and rules were put in place responsively and there were layers upon layers of them. Players wanted to run a clan, they had to play for a RL year. Staff wanted to run a plot, they had to fill out forms and submit them to groups. It's difficult to describe unless you've run something like that where there's many, many years of process built up. All Hail the Process! Even as one of three (at the time) Producers, I couldn't just unilaterally do a lot of things. Our staffing model was failing and we were a bloated mess. It was hard and slow to get anything done, even when we wanted to. This was definitely a big factor in driving off staff in numbers faster than we could recruit new ones. It further made it far too easy to tell players "No", because it was so often easier to just do nothing than to try and tackle actually getting things done. There's a lot more to this topic, but that's a good summary.

    A toxic culture among staff. The other big reason for staff turnover. We're aware that ArmageddonMUD has a reputation on par with Telemarketers or Tax Collectors. Over the years we've had some staff who were terrible for the game, who treated players poorly. For that we apologize, and if we could take it back somehow, we would. But this culture often affected other staff as well, driving some away. A lot of negativity could be generated among staff at times, and that bled out into how players were treated. It drove down morale among staff, which then had an impact on the community. There was a downward spiral of the relationship between staff and players that we could not pull up and out of and that started long before this iteration of the team came on board. It was damaging to both sides.

    ArmageddonMUD was dying due to the reasons above and a historical bad reputation, exacerbated in recent years by a couple of scandals. We reached the conclusion that the game simply could not continue on its (at the time) current course, and would be gone within the year, in no small part due to staff burnout. So we had to make a decision: Let it close, or really shake things up and try something new - while retaining our history and lore.

So how do these things relate to resetting the game into a seasonal model? In terms of in-game geography, Armageddon is fairly big. Once upon a time we had the playerbase to support that, but we don't now, and we haven't for years. So we're changing it to focus on a smaller area of the game. Nearly the entire world will still be open in the sense players can go to them and explore, but they will be unsupported by staff. Area of focus will shift each Season. We won't be running plots or storylines there, we won't have clans in those areas open. This allows us to have more depth on plots and stories in the areas we're focusing on, and it enables us to get by with fewer staff. Just to address a couple of the points in the original post that might be slightly incorrect, we envision most Seasons being 18-36 months (probably towards the longer end) and while we have brainstormed 'big' shifts in time, generally the game is likely to follow the 'main timeline' with smaller jumps. E.g. Season One will be the South 52 years from now, Season Two is likely to be the North a small jump ahead of when we close Season One.

We're also putting in a lot of effort focusing internally on ourselves and changing our culture from within. We can try and blame others for things, but ultimately, it starts with us. One of the ways we're addressing this is changing the staff structure and hierarchy. Organizational culture can be influenced by structure. For a better explanation on this, see these articles:

https://humanyze.com/blog-what-is-organizational-behavior-and-why-is-it-important/

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/effects-organizational-structure-behavior-65759.html

We're flattening our structure so that most everyone is a Storyteller, getting rid of middle management and giving more autonomy and trust to individual staff. This will mean a greater percentage of our staff are on the ground telling stories, running plots, and organizing clans. We're trying to eliminate a lot of our red tape and make it easier for players (and staff) to get things done. We're trying to refocus our efforts on more storytelling, and less (self-made) bullshit.

We're pushing to change staff attitudes, taking a new approach of greater collaboration with players. We are going to adopt a "No, but" attitude instead of just "No", when asked for certain things. We are aiming for a greater bespoke experience for players, where we can. We want to say "yes and" as much as we can. We want the game to be an experience that players and staff enjoy together.

We are drawing a hard line on negative staff behavior and attitude will no longer tolerate repeated bad behavior, abusiveness or the like. While this primarily is directed at staff, it will be expected of our community too. With the help of our moderation team, we will be adopting a stance that is far less tolerant of nasty, unpleasant, bigoted, discriminatory or abusive behavior towards one another, in the community or between staff and players. Our goal will be to have a community that new and old players feel welcome in.

Why close for a couple of months? It's a Big Reset, a time away for everyone. Sometimes that break in the flow is the only way to stop the momentum and disrupt things in the way they need to be disrupted. But even more importantly, it gives staff un-distracted time to focus on the changes we need to make to convert to the Seasons model. We are advancing the game 52 in-game years, so we have to make the necessary changes to the world to get that done. We have a number of code changes we want to coincide with this. Despite some opinions to the contrary, there's work that has to be done running a MUD with players in it like ours, even if we wanted to try and run it barebones. Characters have to be approved, complaints have to be addressed, reimbursements have to happen, disputes have to be settled etc.

We recognize that we're not perfect, and we're guaranteed to make mistakes along the way. But I believe that we have an amazing group of staff who have decided to stay around for the Seasons model, all of them with positive, generous attitudes who want to create a great game and a fun, storytelling environment. From a personal standpoint, I acknowledge that this new approach is a gamble, that it's ours to fail. But, I'm optimistic about the future of the game and excited to be a part of it.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Beautiful.

I'm watching.

[Fredd]

I look forward to Seasons.

[Riev]

Thanks, Hal. It feels good to know that staff have noticed these things and SOMEONE is admitting that there is fault not just in players, or staff, but in the bureaucratic nightmare we've all created.

On a personal note, I've often felt like the Staff Organization refused to take responsibility. Its nice to see.

[Halaster]

Thanks, Hal. It feels good to know that staff have noticed these things and SOMEONE is admitting that there is fault not just in players, or staff, but in the bureaucratic nightmare we've all created.

On a personal note, I've often felt like the Staff Organization refused to take responsibility. Its nice to see.

It's kinda fascinating to me to see how it reflect RL and work culture, too.  Generally speaking, these sorts of policies and bureaucracy come with good intentions.  They're meant to fix an issue, prevent a problem, make things fair and consistent.  But over time they pile on and then one day they're more of a hindrance than a benefit and you realize you're the Vogons.  I've seen it happen in multiple companies I've worked with over the years.

[Riev]

... Sure sounds like SOMEONE is the common variable. 

[Armaddict]

They're meant to fix an issue, prevent a problem, make things fair and consistent.

This is why it's easily dismissed when people try to describe it as heads buried in sand, ignoring the problem, blah blah.

Not speaking for specific events, but a lot of the time, trying to avoid creating a red-tape nightmare is why people say we don't need more rules or regulations or monitoring or blah blah blah.  One of my favorite quotes from Civilization games was always 'The bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.'

Not everything needs a rule or procedure in place, especially not in a free-time activity.  Sooner or later, all the good intentions pile up into a tremendous amount of bloat.

[Classclown]

Not for me, but will staff consider lifting previous bans for Season 1? Everyone start with a clean slate, kind of thing. Obviously, egregious offenses might not warrant a ban being lifted.

[Dresan]

I recommend people look into the No Man's sky developer story.

Sad to say but its really just a time where actions speak louder than words.

Your words while heart-felt and sincere will probably fall on deaf ears until you prove them wrong with your actions.

I am looking forward to season one.

[Bast]

I really look forward to this! I love our Staff and I know they try very hard. I really hope to have more time to play when the game comes back.