MacDougall wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 3:36 am
G-Man wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 5:05 pm
Other: In X number of games, I plan on retiring from playing mafia altogether. I have a vague sense of the value of X, but it’s not locked in just yet.
Reasons for retiring:
1) I’m busy.
2a) I can’t keep pace with the game as it is currently played.
2b) I don’t derive as much joy from playing as I used to.
2c) I’m nostalgic for a style, tempo, and tone of play that is never coming back.
Because my number of games are limited to X, I’m even choosier than I used to be. Full-size Jobs are out due to 2a. Those games tend to be the ‘most creative’ in that they typically have the most appealing combination of interesting roles and interesting flavor. I seek both in the games that I play when possible.
That leaves me with Heists and Rackets. Sometimes it’s just bad timing that keeps me from signing up for a Heist or Racket that I would otherwise like to. Sometimes I have availability, but the games in sign-ups aren’t my thing for whatever reason. I also will not play while I am hosting.
@G-Man can you articulate the bolded? I am sure that we can accommodate this.
In the days of Lostpedia and SpoilerTV (my first two or three years playing online), mafia was a secondary attraction on broader sites. It was played for funsies in between episodes and seasons of Lost and there was a lot of emphasis on flavor and storytelling because we all wanted to write fan fiction. Eventually the smaller and shorter games stayed entirely for funsies, where we would just shoot the breeze and laugh at ourselves when we failed spectacularly. There was no ‘correct’ way to play or host the game then.
As that mafia group broke away from Lostpedia and merged with other small pockets of the mafiaverse, mafia became the main attraction. As such, the nature of playing and hosting changed from an artful pursuit to more of a discriminating taste kind of thing, and then further onto becoming more of a serious scientific endeavor in which one’s intent is to hone their skills to play or host with exacting precision.
That’s not to say that this gradual shift is a bad thing. For a lot of folks, it’s exciting and what they need and want out of the game. It just happens to nudge someone like me more to the sidelines as a player as the game evolves away from me. I’m at a point in my life where I just want to have those kinds of breezy, laugh-it-off kind of games like I cut my teeth on over a decade ago. Given the state of progression, I really don’t think that can be accommodated.
The recent desire for more basic game structure also nudges me to the sidelines as a host. I never let go of those weird experimental roots, and that seems to be more of a liability right now than an asset. I had to cancel one game this year out of apparent lack of interest (and looming work responsibilities). When aifaM sign-ups stalled out, I was worried that I would have to cancel it too, and perhaps that cancelling two games in one year meant that my games were no longer desired, which by extension might mean I was no longer needed as a host. It’s silly to draw validation from how quickly your games fill up, but I think a lot of us would admit that it happens.
In the ‘old days’ (and even here), we would run a hosting poll and those games that landed in the top five would be scheduled to run, and those games would all get run because that was one of the community values we shared- everyone gets their chance. It’s much more of a free market now. I worry that putting a hard deadline on sign-ups will result in potential hosts from feeling like they don’t have a place to shine because they couldn’t fill up a game fast enough. Once is embarrassing enough, but twice (especially consecutively) can be interpreted a lot of different ways inside your mind.
Sorry, I meant to write two paragraphs, which turned into three, which then became five. End ramble.
