Dealing with complaint

While I have left MUSHing as a hobby, much of my thought over the past two years, as it relates to gaming, has been centred on MUSHes. They were my primary means of entertainment during the two-month+ Great Wuhan Lockdown of 2020-01-23 and they've been part of my life since about 1999.

And in that time I've made observations.

One of those observations (and the one that led to my final exit) is that they're incredibly toxic places. When not polluted by cliques, they're staffed by psychos or filled to the brim with them in the player base. In fact the reason I dropped the MUSHing is that the final place I played at, where I'd seen evidence of it not being this bad at the staff level, turned out to be that bad (though I hold the staff largely blameless; mostly just clueless).

There is, however, one pattern I've seen over and over and over again in MUSHes that triggers most subsequent problems, even when the staff is largely well-intentioned. It's the trust cycle: players don't trust staff to solve a problem, staff finds out about problem too late, staff's attempts to fix an out-of-control problem breeds more player mistrust. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So here's my solution

Ombuds

From Wikipedia:

An ombudsman, ombudsperson, ombud, ombuds, or public advocate is an official who is usually appointed by the government or by parliament but with a significant degree of independence. ... The typical duties of an ombudsman are to investigate complaints and attempt to resolve them, usually through recommendations (binding or not) or mediation. Ombudsmen sometimes also aim to identify systemic issues leading to poor service or breaches of people's rights.

In my view of things, a game's ombuds (there should likely be more than one for reasons which q.v. below) should be explicitly NON-staff. They are player advocates, not staff. They would work on behalf of the players to resolve issues between players or between players and staff. They would deal with problems anonymously at need, openly with permission, and would generally strive to be as trustworthy as possible. Sometimes they would write up recommendations to staff which have no actual weight, ruling-wise, but which would be published publicly (ideally both on- and off-game) thus ensuring that staff will have to at least address the contents (even if addressing them is a “no”).

Who would be ombuds?

Picking ombuds is a tricky business. If they're selected by staff fiat (which is the traditional way government-wise) there will always be the perception that they're just the staff mouthpiece. If they're picked by players there's a risk that they'll be brigaded in by an in-game clique as a ringer. Overall I think the ombuds should be staff-selected, but after that the staff would need to be very hands-off if they wished to retain credibility.

Ombuds need to be active players, but not overactive. They need to be players so that they have a vested interest in improving the game, but overly active players tend to have vested interest in pieces of the game (cliques) and can thus be a source of corruption.

Whoever is selected needs to understand that their actions—all of them—go straight to their credibility in their role. If they're untrustworthy as players, their effectiveness as ombuds falls flat. This will require a degree of openness that includes a mandatory 100% exposure of any alts and group affiliations, among other things.

What would the ombuds do?

They would have several key tasks.

  1. LISTEN. Find out about problems and start addressing them before they become all-encompassing. Listen, too, to individual players bringing up grievances and gripes related to staff or other players. Be open. Be ready to hear. Listen.
  2. INVESTIGATE. Sometimes complaints are based on incorrect perceptions. Ombuds can help correct these perceptions by talking to both parties and gathering information from other sources.
  3. MEDIATE. Having talked to both sides of an issue, the ombud can offer to act as a mediating influence in solving issues without them snowballing.
  4. RECOMMEND. Problems are sometimes systemic. Such systemic problems can be discovered through the previous steps. If they are, solutions can be publicly recommended to staff.

LISTEN

Problems in games do not come out of nowhere. For example in the last MUSH I played before quitting there was a constant undercurrent among a large set of players that they couldn't find RP opportunities because of cliques who only ever RPed with each other, ignoring others who were even nominally part of the same team. It should never have been a surprise for staff to hear that people felt this way, yet it always seemed to come as a surprise when that brewed up. (It brewed up at least five times in the time I spent there.)

A good ombud would have heard about these issues (and indeed if trust had been established, would have likely been someone the players went to for dealing with it!) and either assisted the players having problems getting RP or made public recommendations to staff for changes before the problem brewed up into loud complaint and people quitting.

INVESTIGATE

Very rarely is there a single, clear “right” and “wrong” person or group in an altercation. Upon receiving a complaint (or getting wind of one) one of the jobs of an ombud is to talk to all involved parties to get to the truth of the matter.

Doing this right is where a good ombud shows her chops. Without consent there can be no exposing, for example, of the person complaining. Yet the situation needs to be explored. Perhaps the complaining party needs to be convinced to be named, or perhaps the situation needs to be addressed more broadly as a hypothetical question that has broader implications.

Whatever the situation, using tact, diplomacy, and a bit of stealth, the ombud has to get a fuller picture of what is going on before moving on to later stages. It is critical that the ombud try not to take sides and is never perceived as having done so.

MEDIATE

Players often don't want to directly address someone they're feuding with because they don't feel they'll be treated well. (The fact that they rarely are when conflicts arise adds fuel to that particular fire. An ombud can act as go-between (at least to start) to find out and share complaints and negotiate possible resolutions. Ideally they should be able to act as a moderator in a direct conversation between the aggrieved parties, keeping tempers cool and heads level. The best handling, after all, of player strife is for the players involved to end that strife mutually.

RECOMMEND

If player strife cannot be ended via mediation, or if there is something systemically wrong in the game that led to the issue, the final recourse of an ombud is to write a report outlining the issue and making a recommendation.

Interpersonal issues

In the case of interpersonal strife, the recommendation should be made privately to staff with all stakeholders involved receiving it. (In rare cases where interpersonal strife suggests a structural problem—like a problem player sowing strife across several groups—even this can be a public recommendation, for which q.v. below.) Staff can take this report and recommendation and use it as a jumping off point for their own investigation and/or mediation, or they can just implement the recommendation. All parties involved, however, shall be kept in the loop, including by this point the ombud.

Systemic issues

In the case of more systemic issues (or in the case of multiple interpersonal issues suggesting a destructive player) the report and recommendation of the ombud shall be made publicly both in the game and off the game for all players and staff to read. Making this public means that staff will have significant moral pressure to either implement the recommendation (if it's deemed possible and desirable) or to explain why they've chosen not to implement it (and perhaps the alternative they're going with instead).

The chief reason for this public handling is, again, to increase trust, both in the ombud (a public report lets all interested parties see that the ombud hasn't straw-manned one side or the other) and in the staff. Transparency is key to trust in an environment that has historically been untrusted.