Serious Stress in Gmod communities

[Powley]

I'm genuinely sorry, I didn't imagine any of my actions to cause anyone undue stress.

Joking bro you actually gave me good insight and affected my decisions as a leader x

 

[Tinbe]

How common is it for people in the scene to feel stressed or anxious or frustrated?

Plenty. When I was younger (Jesus, I've been around for six-ish years), it was mostly IC things that were stressful, but nowadays? It's the OOC things. Drama is something that neb has OD'd on several times, and it keeps becoming more and more frustrating to witness - or be part of - with every new instance of it.

Does this have a negative impact on the scene?

At the very least, it makes playing less appealing. If not because the stress weighs on your mind, but the fact you may have to interact with those who cause you stress to begin with in-server.

Has stress ever been a factor in making you leave, or want to leave?

Yes, yes, and absolutely yes. @Dan can attest to me venting to him about my feelings to leave time and time again whenever neb goes through another salt cramp. Funnily enough, the only time I really announced I was leaving was because of bootcamp - which lasted very briefly because I was back in less than two months due to minor health issues. Ever since then, I didn't really announce when I just dipped out of the scene - no use since it's not like my absence is really anything noteworthy. But now, since I've got CAB whitelist, I don't really have a reason to leave for the time being.

Does stress/anxiety keep you away from certain things

Eyyyup. The main reason I never applied for any UU factions was the fear of stress from having to complete IC obligations - but lo and behold, so far so good since I've joined CAB.

Do you find that anything helps to handle stress?

Talking to someone you can confine your stress to, and moving away from the stress as soon as humanely possible to take a breather. I can't count the amount of times I've read - or had to take part in - something absolutely mind-wrangling that I need to make a conscious effort not to respond while I'm still in a worked-up state.

 

[Aleks]

I think its comes down to the culture of the server you're playing and the people you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with toxic individuals you'll probably turn into one yourself just to fit in. Personally I've never felt stress while on this community but I was also never involved either. I'd get on rarely play for a bit then not play for a month or two and repeat. But now that i'm more actively participating, albeit waiting for WW3rp, I do see some of the issues that have sprung up in the community.

 

[tera]

I remember Dallas making a post about stress which I found illuminating, and I felt like this was a topic that doesn't really get talked about much, so I just wanted to see if it was worth opening the discussion.

From my experience years ago it's been a total disaster where people didn't care at all, and in some cases didn't even take staff abuse seriously, so you'd keep having straws placed on your back until you reached breaking point (if you didn't slowly burn out before that point).

How common is it for people in the scene to feel stressed or anxious or frustrated? Is it only people in staff positions working on big things that might have this issue?

Does this have a negative impact on the scene? Has stress ever been a factor in making you leave, or want to leave? Does stress/anxiety keep you away from certain things, like being staff/running events?

Do you find that anything helps to handle stress? Should people in stressful roles take breaks? What could high-ranking staff do to help lower-ranking staff that might be stressed out? Should headstaff care about things like that? Could the community as a whole do anything to help the issue? How important is it for a community to be a friendly place?

This could also just be a place to vent. When I take onboard the montage video projects I tend to get stressed from a fear that they're going to end up bad, but then feel relieved when they turn out okay, and everyone's always been grateful when I post them.

I think its rather common for the new members to feel more stressed/anxious/frustrated, the ones I mean who have more a decent/genuine cause of joining nebulous as a member wanting to contribute and hang around. I definitely felt that way when I started to join WW3RP and it was made worse when like I thought people who were prominent started to degrade me for being a new player (then i realize that i was essentially mixing around with those PFC meme jerks who go out of their way to make new players like shit). Over time, it got less and less once I started to understand more of the community and hang out with it generally. Staff is more likely to get stressed I suppose, considering I was admin for WW3RP and some ppl I had to deal with. Hence why I immediately resigned once I knew I was going to be in med school.

Nevertheless though in medschool today in which I just come to the forums from time to time to see the current affairs or just general stuff in threads, I realize that whatever anxious/stress feeling I ever had when posting around wasn't really there anymore. And I usually come in just to see the big memes being posted around and have a bit of a laughter and banter with folks from around the world. I am more stressed about real life priorities at this point and any sort of conflicts I have with people on this forums, I really don't give a shit or a personal grudge about it anymore since I am really just a member rather than of anyone important. Though, stress or anxiety never made me want to leave the forums, real life priorities does. At most, in my times of being an admin for WW3RP, I'd just change factions for a bit or take a break if the stress of players or managing is getting up to me. Sometimes, I am also the type to be 'Ah screw it, let's just go all the way, don't care man, don't care', though I would more irritable and agitated in this process.

I once lost my cool, not in this community but in a previous Australian community where people were not taking me seriously enough and was turning everything I say into a joke to the point where I just lost my shit and start raging at one of them, hurling all sorts of insults to them. In the end I apologise though, as I was in the wrong to do that to them and I realize that they were just joking around as they didn't realize how stressed I was at the time.

Peoples with staff roles or just members in general should take a break anytime they require if the stress or anxiety is getting to them. It's not a healthy thing for them to pursue when they are far more irritable or agitated with other people which then often leads into a big argument and as such. I know I have a problem with this but most of the time I just walk away from it or I discuss with other admins/seniors on what to do. Senior management would have the role of ensuring that the admins are up to par with their role standards and ought to encourage them to take a break from administrative duties if they're feeling too stressed about it.

Anyways, at this point, I dont think I feel any sort of stress or anxiety coming off from here (maybe a little bit at times but its nothing compared to a lot of other shit I have today) as I enjoy some parts of this community along with the friendships I've made with some people from here to this day.


TLDR
I used to be anxious/stressed as fuck because I wanted to get approval of my fellow roleplayers and peers in this forum. I want to be like that guy who's able to fit in and stuff. Now I rarely feel that way because I made memorable friendships and times with some members here and I have bigger things to be stressed about e.g real life priorities as compared to an online forum which I just treat it as a platform for me to have some good laughs and memery banter.

 

[avralwobniar]

as sad as it is to admit, it's definitely a real issue that exists outside of games/communities like gmod

back when i got my first REAL staff rank on just about anything, it was in Shockcore Gaming when it was probably in it's most dead state it's ever been in. i spent hours and hours on and off server working at trying to get players back with little help outside the 1-2 active members there were left in the team at the time (most schools were going through their finals around this time too). eventually i got fed up with missing marks and hitting dead ends that i think an unconscious part of me snapped. i hate to say a video game caused me so much stress i had a breakdown, but everyone has some embarrassing part of their life that they've grown to learn from. that's just my own story, you can imagine how crazy things can get for others, especially in a huge community like neb.

no matter how much you enjoy something, it can easily come collapsing on top of you when you start to get serious about it.

as for dealing with the stress, anxiety, what have you: there's infinite explanations for why it happens and how to deal with it, but at the end of the day you gotta learn to walk away. there's a lot to life, don't let anything keep you down. just learn to accept things as they are and keep moving, someday none of this will matter and the only thing you'll be walking away with is what you developed from those days.

I think it may have been arguably worse in SCG though. With how little people it had the retards and toxic players were way more apparent, but at the same time more effective and wide spread due to how little players the community had left.

When I was staffing there I cooled off by doing other things and forgetting about whatever happened that day, going outside for a while or talking to some buddies. Ultimately resigning was the best stress relief. If anyone here is staff and they're feeling frustrated or annoyed on a regular basis, take a break or resign, not in a rude way but that's the only actual way to handle that bit.

 

[alex]

Hudson wants to understand how communites work, archive a lot of this stuff and just have a good discussion, let's not derail it into people getting at eachother's throats.

 

[bubblegum]

Most of the stress comes from people doxing you, ddosing you, or just plain being rude. I don’t really buy people saying “just ignore it and have fun” because no one deserves unsolicitated trolling.

 

[Akula]

Most of the stress comes from people doxing you, ddosing you, or just plain being rude. I don’t really buy people saying “just ignore it and have fun” because no one deserves unsolicitated trolling.

"just ignore it" is an easy thing to say when you're not the target or you don't have a personal soft spot people can attack

 

['77 East]

Some of these lunatics that I used to play with either got shot dead (in stuff like armed robberies) or are in jail.

wasn't someone killed in their graduation after ripping off a drug dealer?

 

[alex]

wasn't someone killed in their graduation after ripping off a drug dealer?

A friend of mine who was named freeze that I knew for years was shot and killed when robbing a store... with a shotgun.

Experiment can really fuck you up apparently. RIP David

 

['77 East]

Experiment can really fuck you up apparently. RIP David

looks like the conspiracy types have their work cut out for them

violent roleplay schemas - one minute you're talking to your friends about hitting a store for cash, and then you're doing it in the real

 

[Sil]

Although in this community, and many like ours, we can have people who are essentially the scum of the earth trying to get in their ePoints to look big, authoritarian and cool, that doesn't mean we're all shit.

Roleplaying is something that's brought all of us, from all walks of life and almost all countries, together.

And it's something we all (at least in the past) enjoy.

I'm thankful for nebulous. I wasn't around when Lemonpunch existed, but nebulous is just a far better Lemonpunch, with better staff and a better community.

Thanks, epic gamers. You make my roleplaying experience, and my forum browsing, a hell of a good time.

 

[slick]

hottake: Hudson is an AI collecting info on communities to make a super community with all the information he has gathered. The end is nigh.

 

[PandaCG]

hottake: Hudson is an AI collecting info on communities to make a super community with all the information he has gathered. The end is nigh.

valid and extremely possible prediction. i agree

 

[Señor Jaggles]

I've had stressful moments - In fact during the whole WI/UIRD/UIL/D22 stuff I had to do quite the amount of work and I was worried constantly. Maybe it had a tiny impact in my daily life, but in the end it's rewarding, as I mentioned in my resignation post. The stress is there wherever you go if you care at least a bit, you just have to make sure it's worth your time and effort, and of course handle it properly.

As an SA, if active, you often will get most of the people come to you to ask you things - It can be tiring and stressful at times specially if sometimes you're inquired about stuff you're unsure you can authorise or simply not too confident authorising. I've had to join the server at times to do stuff, but in the end these tiny sacrifices have a rewarding result.

To work alongside many others from all over the world to have fun and enjoy a game shouldn't be something frowned upon or laughed at, but praised. There's limits to everything, obviously, but here we're all doing our best.

 

[Bossdodo Gaming]

in regards to my own stress i had to drop hl2rp completely due to my overattachment to characters as a whole

if even a 1 day old character gets PK'd i tend to enter a bout of depression

Yeah, whenever my hl2rp character dies I get mad and sad and then depressed.

 

[Knight]

Gmod made me go full doomer

 

[Hudson]

I wanted to make a conclusion post here (despite the fact that I'm obviously not qualified to) and I'm running the risk of sounding condescending. But I've been in the Gmod scene on and off for 10 years and I think this is an important subject that deserves to be explored.

Causes of stress
"I don't think gmod rp causes stress so much as it elevates or adds onto things going on IRL with you at the time." I can attest to there being a link between how stressed you can feel outside the scene and stress within it. I don't know if this applies to everyone, but years ago it's something that crept up on me without realising.

A general culture of bitterness in the wider scene makes it a somewhat uncomfortable environment that can slowly eat away at you. With 10,000 hours in CS:GO; people might think that I love it, but really I'm sick of the rampant cheating and hostility that gets in the way of teamwork and rewarding sportsmanship. These days I tend to just do trading, but even then I stick to the market because I'm sick of traders that just see other people as nothing more than potential profit, and as soon as (if not before) they don't think they can get anything from you they might treat you rudely. Communities are a place I can get away from that bitterness and find people that are excited about positive player/player interactions.

Drama is obviously a cause of stress, and one of the avoidable parts of that are simply misunderstandings. I try not to presume the worst case scenario or second guess someones motivations or intent. One example that comes to mind is on WW3RP when there had been an explosion which killed a fireteam that I was trying to roleplay with, and from what I had seen it looked like an admin must have abused their power to blow the players up. So I asked the admin about it (framing it as an inquiry, not an accusation) and it turned out that the explosion was just from a mine that one character had stepped on, and the explosion on my client made it look like it had happened somewhere that the players weren't even stepping. So it turned out that it wasn't abuse, and I'd stopped myself from sparking a mini-drama.

People have their own motivations and their own idea of what's normal. I think this is especially true in an open space like Garry's Mod, where people from all over the world come together to try and realise their ideas. That clash of ideas could be an endless source of drama if the way they all fit together wasn't moderated.

Effects of stress
Stress can make the idea of playing on the server less appealing. People have outright left the scene over stress, even if it wasn't the primary cause, it's certainly a factor in why they left (and the expectation of future stress being a factor in making them not want to return later.) Players can feel a level of anxiety that takes the fun away from the experience, which is obviously completely backwards because the whole thing was supposed to be about having fun in the first place.

I don't know how common it is for staff to feel stressed, but I imagine that if I asked around I'd find that the majority of them do feel stressed. One in particular said to me "I'm never doing this again" before they left, so clearly stress can demotivate staff members, which I think is particularly concerning for the future because I've seen plenty of skilled staff members walk out over the years.

When I was making wordclouds out of community history articles one thing that jumped out at me was that two of the most common words in all of them were staff and players. It was almost like the ying and yang symbol, as both of them were about the same size as eachother in every wordcloud. You can't have one without the other right? So in that sense if stress was affecting staff then the players would end up being affected by that too somewhere along the line, and vice versa.

I don't know if new players get stressed, but I imagine it's an uncomfortable thing trying to join a new scene. I remember when I was new on WW3RP and the only person I knew was Powley, but by the time I'd accepted his invite he wasn't there anymore. So I was alone, and I'd been sending out friend requests but really struggling to make any friends at all. Felgroove was the one that made me feel welcome and made sure I (and many others) were engaged in things. I've often felt like that engagement is missing for new players, where they just need to be shown what the roleplay is like and how/where to get it.

Dealing with stress
"Let things happen and accept that there are many things in life you can't and shouldn't have complete control over - and that applies to events, don't script every detail, mind that the players are the ones making choices here." Taking a step back or focusing on your own enjoyment rather than worrying about other players too much might be a good thing to try if you're feeling a particular type of stress by trying to provide for players.

On the first few days on my experience of WW3RP I remember seeing players openly discussing things in OOC, and I had the sense of being glad that they weren't being told to shut up, because if the incidents they were talking about was swept under the rug then it would just be pressure that they weren't allowed to vent. I tend to vent privately, or channel pressure into idea threads. I think venting privately must be very common, and I'd even say it's a healthy thing to do. Venting privately I think is especially important if you're feeling like you're nearing a point where you'd snap and just walkout.

I also imagine that it's common for people to take breaks, mostly when they're not having fun, perhaps due to reasons like stress or frustration. I know there are people that left years ago and didn't come back, but a lot of people do come back from breaks. Its probably one of the best options, and time certainly helps to heal wounds and gives space to reflect and change. What I've noticed too is that after a break, the environment you return to might have changed.

Breaks might not feel like an ideal fix, because if you're invested in the scene then you might not want to walk away. In which case perhaps taking a lesser role and playing less overall for awhile might make sense.

I do wonder if being made to feel appreciated would help, which is something I would have thought that staff could help with, but at the same time I don't think it's their role to worry about things like that. Nonetheless, who knows how much impact a simple "great job, thanks for helping out by the way" could have.

As for dealing with stress as staff, my only experience was when someone of a higher rank was abusing their power, and because there was no staff abuse report system I had zero options, so I think having that system alone is a huge benefit. If a staff abuse report system isn't seen being used, then perhaps it's doing its job by deterring abuse, so it's being a healthy component of a community. If it was the case that a staff abuse report system was working like that, I think that's a very positive thing, and I've always said that that's one of the encouraging things about nebulous, that if someone was found to be abusing their position then it would actually be dealt with, so it's not something I'd have to stress over as much compared to past communities I've been in.

Preventing stress in future
One of the things I've mentioned through the years is the idea of making a chain of positive change. If I did one good thing, then that might inspire someone else to also do a good thing, and the ball gets rolling where one good thing inspires another. It might not feel like my efforts did much, but that one good thing I tried to do might have had a significant impact the culture of the community through that chain. Sometimes a dramatic moment is a golden opportunity to inspire positive change, because that's when you can show emotional intelligence - an important part of maturity. I believe that reacting positively (or just constructively) to negative experiences (no matter how difficult) is important and always worth trying.

One time in WW3RP when the levels of deathmatching was making the idea of passive roleplay outside of protected bases difficult, someone posted a suggestion for shoot-to-miss. The post was met with hostility, but the problem it was trying to fix turned out to be an important one, and I rewrote the basic goal of the idea to fit a more realistic implementation for a large server. So even if people don't appreciate an original idea, there may be space for polite discussion to modify it or look at an alternative, if for no other reason than engaging in polite discussion can make the original poster feel welcome.

If there was a subject of heated discussion then two things I actually took from Formula One come to mind. The first was Jackie Stewart talking about racing, where he said that when you're in the car; to take the emotion out of it, and just drive in a very mechanical way, and that made sense to me atleast in a way that if you drive angry then you'll probably fuck things up, so take that negative emotion out of it. So in that same sense if I discuss something where I'm eager to get my point across then I'll take my emotion out of it and just lay out my idea.

On the flipside of taking the emotion out of an idea I'm sharing, I'll also take other peoples ideas onboard and filter out any emotion they've put behind it. Like if someone said "Hudson your YouTube videos are too fucking quiet you idiot", rather than focus on the rudeness I'm just going to listen to some popular YouTube videos and then listen some of mine and judge if the idea they were sharing had any merit.

The second idea I heard from F1 that resonated with me I think was the one about Ross Brawn bringing a team together in 2009 (hopefully I'm remembering this correctly). Many of the teams only put the car together, and then get an engine manufacturer to supply the engine. If a team has trouble with an engine then they might just place the blame on that engine manufacturer (in this case Mercedes-Benz), but what Brawn would do when they had engine trouble was say "we were having trouble" rather than "Mercedes-Benz" was having trouble. By including Mercedes-Benz as part of the team (rather than throwing them under the bus) he was helping motivate them - getting them included and perhaps finding more teamwork as a result. Brawn GP won that 2009 season.

I've often found that communities have groups of players that share a certain common interest, even if it's just things like they're developing characters on a certain faction in that moment in time, it paints them as a group at that moment, and it can easily result in an 'us and them' framework, which can quickly become 'us vs them.' But using the "we" model can bring everyone onto the same page, like in the WW3RP montages where all the characters from different factions appear listed together, in the view that they're not characters of a certain faction, but just characters of that story.

I dont want to make the scene a sterile place where we can't express ourselves or banter, but at the same time I know I've seen unnecessary hate and jokes that crossed the line. I know it's possible to write a joke that doesn't offend people, and if my jokes were ever personal then I'd try to make it obvious that it was sarcastic. I've seen people get stressed by jabs that people have tried to disguise as jokes, and I don't think it's good for the scene if things like that are normalised.

Staff service
I don't know if this is a real trend, but the idea of the experience in Garry's Mod shifting from improv to service is one I can certainly imagine. Where players used to take what little content they had and make gameplay out of it for themselves, and donations were made out of altruism, eventually became about servers being funded by selling products that catered to the players experience (and players expecting gameplay as a service, rather than making it for themselves). This later model stifles serious roleplay in particular, as players sit around and wait for a roleplay event rather than improvise amongst themselves.

The problem with this is the pressure it places on staff members to keep running events and implenting exciting new features (that the players don't critically need), and if the staff cater to the events and new features then they're almost encouraging that culture. Players could make a conscious effort to shift back to improv roleplay, reducing the demand on staff, and thus reducing that (perhaps stressful) pressure. The worst part of the problem is when players rudely demand (or complain that there aren't enough) new things. Staff are nearly always volunteers, so that constant pressure could just be wearing on them to the point of burning out. Even if a staff member was somehow being paid, they're still only human at the end of the day. Perhaps everyone feels stress, from the new players right up to the founders?

Forgiveness
In regards to the extreme cases like harassment where people need to be blocked or banned, it's not a reflection on you, these people have their own issues. Personally I wish them the best, even if I never intend to communicate with them again. I've told this particular story of forgiveness before:

Arthur Caiger was a Probation Officer that one day was blinded by having acid thrown in his face by someone that had knocked on his door. He forgave the person that did it, and I knew Arthur Caiger when I was very young. One day I was crawling around and he accidentally stepped on my hand which broke one of my nails, and the last thing I remember of it was of me being rushed away (to hospital I presume). Obviously I didn't hold anything against him because he obviously didn't do it on purpose, but whenever I think of forgiveness I remember him because he forgave someone for doing deliberately worse.

Hope
In the early days I remember it being difficult to get any kind of community going. In 2001 I had a clan of 50 players, but after a couple of weeks in hospital the clan fell apart. I had developed a couple of chronic illnesses (one of them went undiagnosed for a frustrating 12 years) and gaming was my escape. When I get chatting to other players in various scenes I very often find that they too use gaming is an outlet.

When Half-Life rolled around and I went around playing the mods there was a clan scene in one of them called Zombie Panic! but of the two clans I remember; one was accused of being Nazis and was literally called SS, and the other was an exclusive club that didn't accept my application...

The idea that we'd end up with a large community like this one where people stick around for years and can easily share all their creative works is a godsend. Steam has so many features now, YouTube is a great tool, and all these things are accessible on mobile devices. When you're stressed it might feel like everything's turned to rubbish, but I look around and see progress and effort and hope.

One thing I read recently that I thought was cool was the quote "Happiness is a direction on the compass, not your destination." While we can't fix all the problems in the scene, spending a little effort here or there feels good to me, and sometimes that's all you can do. I don't know if that helps with stress, but it feels good either way.

I don't know whether this comment was helpful or not, but I know this thread in general has broadened my perspective, and hopefully at the least been a place to vent some of the pressure anyone was feeling. I know it's made me feel like I wasn't alone in the frustration I've felt over the years in the scene.

Some people might say the old phrase "it's just a game", but a decade later and thousands of hours invested, if this is our outlet, our hobby, our passion, then we're allowed to take it seriously, and who knows, maybe take the opportunity to use this space for personal growth.

 

[Postal]

most people I know have left communitys to not deal with bullshit from the community itself
or the owner or admin team

 

[jarodine]

if you stress in a video game and not in real life then you are a virgin mate simple as