Well, I guess you'd call it a mission statement. It's the thing that appears in the web page descriptions and at the top of the index page. It needs rewriting. "The Phoenyx is an Internet listserver dedicated to serving the roleplaying community online. It offers free mailing lists and archive areas for gamemasters wishing to run online (play-by-email) roleplaying games." This is the blurb that appears on a lot of search engines (like Yahoo, if they ever update our entries... feel free to submit us eighty-leven times each, but I don't think it'll do any good, I've been trying for over a year). I'd really like to get rid of "Internet listserver" and "mailing list" without getting too much into marketspeak. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net The Dog Ate My Sketchbook: http://silver.phoenyx.net/ -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
On Fri, 31 Dec 1999, Karen Cravens wrote: > Well, I guess you'd call it a mission statement. It's the thing that > appears in the web page descriptions and at the top of the index page. It > needs rewriting. > > "The Phoenyx is an Internet listserver dedicated to serving the > roleplaying community online. It offers free mailing lists and archive > areas for gamemasters wishing to run online (play-by-email) roleplaying > games." How's this for keeping something in my mailbox for a long time before replying? I've been thinking a lot about the Phoenyx "mission." A few GM's and prospective GM's have heard my refined philosophy about what the Phoenyx is trying to accomplish, but I thought I'd share it with all the gamemasters, see if we can refine it some more, and then incorporate it into the stuff our prospective GM's read. Here's the way I view the Phoenyx... Our "customer" is the player. The service we provide is a selection of high-quality games to play in, with the technical benefits of the Phoenyx software being secondary. This might be confusing to the gamemaster, who sees the Phoenyx as a service that provides him with tools to host his game... that is, sees himself as the customer. While the Phoenyx does provide a lot of handy features for the GM and a venue of good repute to showcase his game, the gamemaster isn't our customer... he's our partner. The Phoenyx has no life without gamemasters. We need you, but that need is as a business partner and not as a customer. We are, of course, highly dedicated to supporting our gamemasters... we want you to have the right tools and knowledge to provide the customer the best game possible. In return for the support we give, we expect a level of commitment and dedication from our gamemasters in serving our customers. It is by that criteria of player-as-customer that we choose gamemasters and games. That's why we generally reject games that are already full... if there are no openings for new players, that game has nothing to offer our customer. (A really good game may be worth offering to lurkers.) It's why condescending attutudes get otherwise talented gamemasters rejected... we don't want a condescending business partner annoying our customers. And it's why we reject certain kinds of games... we serve a specific segment, not the entire player populace. We want a reputation for certain kinds of games, and those games emphasis story and character over game mechanics and combat. I think it's important for GM's to understand this view and see their position in the Phoenyx as one of partner, not customer. Thoughts? -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
> I think it's important for GM's to understand this view and see their > position in the Phoenyx as one of partner, not customer. > > Thoughts? Make sense to me. If you want to provide a service to the most people possible, it's the players you have to please. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
> I think it's important for GM's to understand this view and see their
> position in the Phoenyx as one of partner, not customer.
>
> Thoughts?
I wish I had some enlightened wisdom to add to this thread, but I don't.
:-) I agree with everything Carl's said with a couple of provisos: Are GMs
allowed/supposed to enjoy their GMing, and where do all the Lurkers fit?
FWIW, my mental image of the Phoenix puts the Lurkers more in the
customer
position, with the Players in partnership with the GMs.
Silk Kendiron
GM and Webmaster
Red Snow - They attack at nightfall
http://www.geocities.com/silk_kendiron/red_snow.htm
"Waking a person unnecessarily should be considered a capital crime. For a
first offense, that is."
-- Lazarus Long
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Steve Almond wrote: > I wish I had some enlightened wisdom to add to this thread, but I don't. > :-) I agree with everything Carl's said with a couple of provisos: Are GMs > allowed/supposed to enjoy their GMing, and where do all the Lurkers fit? The GM has to enjoy what he's doing, or there isn't a lot of point to doing it. We wouldn't provide the Phoenyx services if we didn't enjoy doing it. > FWIW, my mental image of the Phoenix puts the Lurkers more in the > customer position, with the Players in partnership with the GMs. The players are more consumer... they're looking for a particular thing, a game they'll enjoy playing in. A huge part of the service we provide them isn't just a game to play in, but a selection of games that are among the best on the net. That is, in a way, our primary service... matching up players with good games. Lurkers are kind of like window shoppers... the Phoenyx wouldn't change if the lurkers went away because they're not really consumers. They're just looking at the product, not buying it. (Not that anybody's buying anything around here.) While, yes, you can't have a game without players, the point of playing the game isn't to entertain the lurkers... that's just a side-effect. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>Phoenyx wouldn't change if the lurkers went away because they're not CDC>really consumers. They're just looking at the product, not buying CDC>it. (Not that anybody's buying anything around here.) The Phoenyx would change for me. Operation wouldn't, but my incentive to do it would. Otherwise I'd accept games that didn't allow lurkers, which I don't currently do. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
