Membership Is Roleplaying Harder than it Used to Be?

[Uaithne 543]

I propose to you this question:  Is roleplaying harder than it used to be?

 

This can, of course, have a variety of meanings.  What I'm more specifically looking at is that I've seen people post many places on the Initiative (myself included) about how things are more challenging or more time consuming or more intensive than they used to be back when most of us started roleplaying 5, 10, 15+ years ago.  This has been said about being a member and about running a site, so although I had to choose a prefix for the topic title, it could apply to either.

 

In my opinion, I believe it is more difficult than it was previously, and I believe that this perception stems from the overall aging of the roleplay community combined with the onslaught of labor-intensive trends upon which people place so much value.

 

Maybe it's because I myself am getting older (I'm 30 now and I was 18 when I started RPing), but the general age and "maturity" of roleplayers has shifted noticeably on this part of the internet.  Those who were 15, 16, 17 are now closing in on thirty.  The genres and topics that captivated the attention and interest of teenagers and early 20-somethings are now something of the past, replaced by more mature themes and premium boards and roleplays that don't accept people under 18.  Things don't appear to be as "lighthearted" as they were.  That's not to say that lighthearted roleplay doesn't exist or that more mature and darker roleplays weren't around before.  But the proportion of each has changed, and it seems that there are higher standards held in place for people in order to join and be a part of communities.

 

Due to the fact that we are aging, people's IRL schedules have had to adjust to make way for adult commitments and relationships.  Writing a few posts between classes has translated to trying to squeeze time between coming home from work and putting the kids to bed.  People are more considerate of their time constraints and are less likely to jump into new sites.  This means that they want to know with more certainty that they really want to be a part of the community they join rather than just joining to see how it goes and ending up sticking around because it turns out that they like it.  Historically speaking, I used to get a fair number of people who joined because they weren't certain but they had the time, energy, and interest to take a risk by trying something new.

 

Similarly, around RP community discussion forums, I see topics about flakiness and how to handle people who go MIA and how irritated people are when members vanish.  Quite understandably, this can be very irritating for a staff member.  But at the same time, if you're not certain you want to join a site, you don't have tons of time, you have matured a little bit over the years, and now you are also aware of the impact that hit-and-run members can make on a site, you're probably going to be less likely to join because you don't want to be that person.

 

People have also become much pickier.  Which might be somewhat subjective, especially because people have always been pretty picky to some extent.  To some extent, I think it goes hand-in-hand with what I've already mentioned.  People have matured, they know what they want, and they don't have the same amount of time that they used to.  However, I think there is another component in here, in that people really have become finicky about what they want, and they're not going to settle.  Instead, they search and search and search in order to find something that caters to whatever long list of stuff they desire in a roleplay, which means that overall they're joining fewer sites to try things out.  Compromising and trying new things is becoming less of an option, which is a pity because sometimes you end up missing out on cool opportunities.

 

The trends, as mentioned, have become more labor intensive.  We used to know basic skinning, but now that people have extended their skills, the few elite have set new standards and now we need to have super cool fancy skinning skills.  The amount of time and energy that goes into making all of the fancy codes and html templates and whatever else is absolutely insane, and though I don't think anyone is actually insane for doing it, I do think it's a bit silly that all sites are expected to be fancy to the extreme in order to be competitive.  Even if you use a pre-made skin, the installation process is quite intense.  It used to be that you could drop in the HTML/CSS and a few graphics and you were good.  But now you also have those things plus mini-profile templates, HTML templates, do-HTML / BB code post templates, etc.

 

And that's just for getting the board started.  Members need to now sift through do-HTML applications and other coding, provide a plethora of images for their character (which may or may not include moving gifs), use templates on sites for just regular posts, etc.  It's so time consuming in order to get involved in a site, that if you were uncertain about a board, you might not join just because you don't want to slog through all of this crap.

 

It would be easy for someone to say, "If you don't like the trends, don't do it," but I also don't think it's a realistic mindset if you want to capture people's attention.  People have become used to seeing the visuals and judging sites based on their visuals . . . it's hard to turn off that part of the brain that has been trained to "judge a book by it's cover" because that's what covers are for - to give you insight into the book you're about to read.

 

Further, I find that when previous trends were going around, it was easier to say no to them.  For example, word counts used to be all the rage.  Sure, people might pass your site up if you didn't attach a word count, but there were still plenty of people willing to join said sites.  Nowadays, you find fewer people making "non-pretty" sites than you used to find people making "no word count" sites back in the heyday of word counts. 

 

Possibly things will change, and I hope they do.

 

(After writing all that, I should probably switch my major and write my thesis about the rise and fall of roleplay communities or something.)

[Huskerdust 625]

I see a lot of people long for the "good old days" when there were just short little bios (not APPS) and people would role-play together and there would be something happening all the time. People talk all the time about how they wish they didn't have to deal with apps or templates or worrying about cboxes but they always feel pushed and pressured to be "as good" as everybody else. 

 

I don't think it's necessary to be able to create a simple skin and to drop apps and just let people RP. I think the crowd that doesn't want to use faces or worry about graphics and templates need a place to go, too. Who knows? Maybe some of that old "retro" stuff will come back into style but the only way it can is if a few brave people do it first. 

[Heirloom 6]

I personally started RPing on boards right about the time people started making the change from basic code to more complicated in-depth and aesthetically pleasing forums, so I personally don't hold any sort of nostalgia for the simpler days. To me, simple was combing endless lists of 1x1 rpers looking for something 'original' and sending dozens of 'Hey how are you, saw your ad on livejournal' starters to an email that may or may not reply. 

 

I do think there's something to be said for the time and effort that now goes in to making what would be considered a 'beautiful' board. To me at least, it often implies (and this is certainly not the rule) a certain amount of dedication from the staff. As if to say 'We put all this time and effort in to making it visually appealing for people, we're not just going to abandon it'. Especially because I feel like nowadays boards that are more basic template in style tend to be dropped faster and easier and die out more frequently.

 

For the labor intensive parts on the writer's side, I do think there is a current trend of admins who are making post templates and turning them in to straightforward bbcode, thereby removing the potential confusion of fighting with doHTML, which, lets face it, is beautiful but a MESS. 

 

I was also thinking, because you mentioned how picky people are now, about how I feel like a lot of that has come from the slow progression of fandom into the public eye. It used to be that when you were looking for something fandom related you threw out a net and would take anything you could get. Now there's a panfandom board or a specific fandom board around every corner, so people already know they're walking in to a situation where there are potentially dozens of other people who want to write the same thing as them. Hence the era of applications, because if I'm running a fandom site I want to know that the person who wants to play, say Captain America, can actually do Steve justice, since chances are there's another person waiting in the wings who can. Now, I'm not saying this is necessarily a fair way to do things, but it definitely holds writers accountable to a certain expectation and level of understanding for that given fandom, whatever it may be.

 

Anyway, my point with fandom is that I think the tendencies that arose for it in the beginning have slowly worked themselves into the rest of the roleplay community, so now it doesn't matter if your board is an original concept populated by only original characters, there's still going to be an app because its what people have come to expect. 

 

Long story short, I think roleplaying is both harder in some ways and easier in others than it used to be.