If your desire is to have a successful and thriving team, you need to read this article through to its conclusion. Much of the content in here is common sense, but I've tried to organize it in a way that is (hopefully) fresh and with some new insights. My hope is that this article transmits the true sense of weight behind the concept.
In my previous article in this series I talked about the law that governs every clan, guild, or esports team. It is the Law of Diminishing Players. It affects all teams at all times, even teams that have been around for ages and seem to have a large stable member base like The Art of Warfare. All teams are subject to The Law.
Thus far, man can never truly break free of the earth's gravity while on the surface or in the atmosphere. But man has developed a tool to counteract the force of gravity and in fact uses gravity with the atmosphere to take flight. It's called an airfoil. I'm hoping that this article coupled with your determination and action will be your airfoil. Because no team can ever truly break free of the Law of Diminishing Players, you can only counteract against it. The moment you stop caring about the effects of the Law is the moment your team stagnates and begins to decline.
The tool I am presenting is no surprise, its called recruiting. Duh. I know, sounds stupid to say this right? It's completely obvious. But mark my words, recruiting new members onto your roster can have the potential not only to counteract the Law, but also to remedy a host of maladies that can often plague teams that are in the latter stages of the game cycle. On the average team, only 1% - 2% of members actively recruit, if at all. If it is substantially more, then you are an anomaly and I'd like to know your secret.
The first dose of reality is that you may be one of the only people on your team who is the most interested in recruiting new members. More succinctly, you're probably one of the only ones who will do the things necessary to recruit new members consistently over an extended period of time. So if you have trouble getting other members to take your orders, or your request to recruit new members, don't feel alone. I'm right there with you and so is 99% of all the other team leaders out there.
I have established teams where I found members who were very passionate about recruiting new teammates… and one team in particular I had an individual whose passion for recruiting new members surpassed mine… we had to run 4 servers to contain all our members.. but he and people like him are an anomaly.
At the end of Part 1 I talked about what you need to do to start taking positive action. You need to have your mission/vision/goals established and you need to know who your ideal teammate is.
In marketing this is called identifying your customer. Who is she? Is she an adult? Is he a beginning player, or is he a top-of-server raider?
Does this person need to have disposable income to support a server or some other infrastructure? Who ever that person is you need to figure it out. Because you will attract exactly who you put the call out for.
If your call for players is not precise, you will get aimless players (no pun intended!). If you appear like a clan-noob, like you are a beginner, then you will attract beginners or no one at all, or maybe possibly people who will try to take advantage of you.
This leads me to another concept that I want to bring to you that you may be familiar with. Either way, you may already have this concept down even if you don't realize it, or you may not even be aware of it. In embarking on establishing or running your team, as the leader, you must have the correct posture. I'm not talking about how you sit in your chair, or how you stand, etc.. I'm talking about your mental or spiritual attitude.
When you are recruiting new members the correct posture to have is that you will take the people on to your roster that you are specifically looking for, you know exactly who it is you're looking for, and no matter what an individual claims they bring to the table, you don't need any one individual. Does that make sense? I'll repeat that last bit: You don't need any one individual.
A key ingredient of the correct posture is to have a healthy dose of skepticism at your command. Be skeptical of words, but pay close attention to actions. If your in-game recruiting messages or your forum posts sound whiny or like you are desperate for members, you're opportunities to attract quality players is much lower.
BE SKEPTICAL OF WORDS, BUT PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO ACTIONS.
I used to believe that the success or failure of my team would hinge on certain people. I thought that my success hinged on an in-game pilot who owned the skies and really helped my team achieve key victories, or a maxed out healer that brought all the right gear and had a massive amount of gold at her disposal. You know what I found out over time? After those people left the team, we carried on and had a great time.
All the things that I got stressed about that wouldn't happen when they left didn't come true. There were others that eventually came onboard and filled their roles either immediately or over time… but only because I persevered to counteract against The Law of Diminishing Players.
Whether you are recruiting in game or on a forum don't chase after players. If you chase after players you are in a state where you believe yourself desperate. And, by “chasing players” I don’t mean to not actively try and engage potential teammates. On the contrary, my greatest personal successes in terms of team building have come from when I personally engaged players and worked to become their friend.
I am talking about stalking after players to join your team after you have delivered your message. Remember, if you have a mission or goal, and you know what your ideal teammate is, then all you need do is conduct the search and your message will draw in the players you are after.
In-game recruiting is your bread-and-butter medium for finding new players. There are so many games and so many variations of in-game interfaces and mechanisms that I cannot go into the details in this article. Each game could probably contain its own article full of information. But, there is one key principle that applies to all games that I can speak about with total authority. The principle that applies to all games is very simple, it's activity. I know, another "duh!" moment… you're probably saying, "like why are you wasting my time with this? It's common sense!" But, like most "common" sense it is not commonly practiced.
If you want people to be interested in what you are doing to the point that they sign up with you, then you must have mucho activity. Every game has different types of activities. Some universal teamwork-based activities are:
Be online playing and logged into the Teamspeak server.
Work together with other players whenever possible.
Compliment other players when they do well.
Help others freely and without expectation of recompense. (Particularly lower-level or newer players)
Give players items they need without expectation of recompense.
When people see you doing these types of things, it will attract them to you. Most players are only out for number one. i.e. themselves. They never think about or care about what other players are dealing with. It is most players' chief goal to level-up or rank-up their player and that is usually all they care about. Will people take advantage of you for behaving in an open and helpful manner like this? Of course. People are selfish by nature, but when you provide help to a person who recognizes your helpful posture and is not so selfish, they will become your friend, and maybe a teammate.
Throughout my many years of gaming I have always enjoyed helping newer players who were cool, and friendly versus getting a teammate that is totally absorbed in their leet-ness and only looks to see who worships the ground they walk on. These latter primmadonnas really repulse me.
One more point on this… think about the person looking at your team. Typically, people join a team to be a part of something bigger than him or her self. They are looking for an experience that will provide entertainment, and camaraderie beyond what they can find running around by themselves in-game. If they come to a team where there is no activity or very little activity they will most likely not join or won't be there for long if they did join.
I have ran several teams in the past where this method of recruiting was actually my most successful path. For my Battlefield 2 & 3 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars teams I had forum posts out that I bumped (posted on) daily and they produced hundreds of members for each team. (Bumping is simply replying to your own forum posts so that they remain near the top of the forum topic listing.)
For each game-team I had well over 200 members each at any given time. Over the life of the team this number ran into the thousands. And, in each case there was primarily one forum for each game that produced the vast majority of the members.
In the third installment of this article I will dig a bit deeper into recruiting in forums, but before I get into that, let me point out a few areas you can recruit new members that you may or may not have thought of…
Maxim #25 - The most important activity for all new units is to focus on the first game-cycle phase, Spin-up. The second most important activity is to prepare for the Critical Mass phase.
Maxim #53 - The chance of losing a recruit for good increases exponentially every day they have to wait for a bootcamp.
This is really, really good.
These are crucial ideas and thoughts put into a written context that anyone and everyone should keep in mind. It's true that it's all a selling act, it's just the marketing that counts. Please continue with this series, it's something I'd recommend to anyone to read over even to potentially gain new perspectives.
Thank you so much for your kind words and I am glad you found this helpful, insightful, or both...
This gives me some ideas I had not thought about. Thank you.
Great. Thanks for the feedback Mexicobob. Glad it gave you some ideas.
PRESENTS... The Law of Diminishing Players CRAFTING YOUR PITCH In the first article of this series, I
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