Thinking of starting an MMO guild? Do you also have experience as a corporate drone? Lots of transferable skills! Let's go through how you can take an idea and start your guild with a bang with my own story and some specific tips.
Chapter four of my guild memoir covers this topic specifically, read the full story at https://docs.google.com/document/d/19INsv8xt7gnrY7kD5d8db88KtuJ26uNnGxrv0acHTV4/edit.
The Modern Guild Leader's Toolkit
In 2020, mobiles were already at the centre of the professional workspace and running a guild turned out to be no different. From your mobile phone, hooked into communication + productivity apps (and the internet), there is not much you can't do.
Starting From Scratch
Now that 4Glory was officially a guild, there were a lot of decisions to make. Having started from scratch, there was no structure, no coverage for disaster and no growth plan; risking the chance to get off the ground, particularly within a game that others would play casually.
I remembered a document written by an over-eager friend of mine, a "Guild Rules" document that he'd written over a decade ago. It had the skeleton of what I wanted to be the groundwork of the guild — some guidelines around structure and purpose.
I made this the first Google Doc and etched in our first cultural definitions.
Google Docs hosted document for easy editing and sharing
Crafting the Mission Statement
I hoped that this would give our new co-founders confidence in my ability and seriousness, such that they would similarly take the challenge seriously. The mission statement written in the document was purposeful:
- Become and maintain a consistent, major presence in WoE on Ragnarok: Project Zero.
- Uphold the fair contribution and distribution system as well as culture that set us apart from the start.
- Truly understand that we are greater than the sum of our parts.
- Have fun and be competitive.
These would allow us to make quick decisions early on ie. if an idea supports the mission statement, invest in it.
Establishing Guild Rules
The rules would also serve a greater purpose:
- Settle your differences
- All members should find themselves represented by a group leader
- You must have your character(s) logged on the roles list
- Do not spread rumours or defame other players or guilds. This means not engaging in or escalating negative exchanges with others.
The general theme of the rules was also to provide structure to the social aspect of the guild; an attempt to minimise the risk of internal conflict as well as risk of tarnishing the guild brand.
Particularly poignant was rule 4, which is all too easy to break in a competitive, online environment.
The Reporting Structure
Rule 2 was important to me because I wanted each member to feel looked after and the only way I would be able to guarantee that was by implementing a tiered "reporting" structure.
After all, even in the workplace it's understood that having more than 7 or 8 direct reports lends the leader to being spread too thin.
Workplace Parallels
The parallels to organisational psychology and the workplace became overt. There's a famous quote "culture eats strategy for breakfast", something I believed but wanted to trial with my own hands, hence the initial focus of groundwork on culture.
Yes — this very much was an outlet for me to trial directorship and test management theories at the risk of being too serious for an online game!
Building Culture First
Once the core team was established, it became obvious how important culture was to building a team. Culture:
- Allows for details to go unsaid
- Allows for alignment to a common goal, and
- Gives individuals a sense of belonging or purpose through their own interpretation of their place within the cultural bounds
Our Differentiating Culture
4G was quite differentiated from other guilds through this culture alone:
- Near zero tolerance of trash talking of the competition regardless of public or internally, reducing ego from the competitive mindset
- Work hard mentality, driven by small goals and continuous improvement, allowing individuals to work well on their own
- Sense of responsibility that filters down from leadership to squads
What then mattered most, were the people building out the vision.