Free free to close down this topic if it’s redundant or just wishful thinking. So we’ll start with a 2 part question (with various sub-clauses and sub-questions)
Question 1: What would be the best method for opening lines of communication with FFG OP about recognizing and rewarding Community Organizers? Does contacting FFG Op on twitter actually do anything–I see people tweet to them a good bit, but only seldom see them respond.
My friend (CatOwl on JNet) wondered if FFG OP would ever be willing to do more to support the local community. As we all know, the lifeblood of the In Real Life Communities are the folks who take the time to run the events. Oh and cards. Having new cards shipped out on time keep folks excited.
In my experience, the stores are happy to host events, however, in my area, no one working in the store is familiar enough with the game to run the GNK events. Everything (often) comes down to a veteran player carrying that load.
As it appears that we are seeing a new wave of newer players show some interest, I think this is a good opportunity to fire off even more GNKs, Open Play Nights, New Player Events, etc. and it would be nice to see FFG recognize/incentivize folks for taking charge in doing so.
Which Leads to Question 2: If such a thing were possible, what would be an appropriate incentive? And if such a thing were possible, how would FFG verify that the Community Organizer wasn’t just trying to get some free swag? What would qualify as “enough” done for FFG to consider someone a CO?
I’d love to see something as cheesey/awesome as a Community Organizer pin/patch or as cool as an Alt-Art Card. Whatever it might be, it would be great to see some support to the folks who are stepping up and helping maintain/care-take/grow their local groups.
It’s not quite the same, and hasn’t been formally announced, but on the L5R side in a interview with a rep it sounds like their quarterly kits will have patronage cards for stores to hand out to people who shop there. Probably special alt-arts. I don’t see why something similar couldn’t be done for organizers, as long as they’re ACTUALLY running the events and not just selling the kits on eBay.
They currently do add extra cards and mats for organizers in their kits, but I’ve just given those away with the rest of the prizes anyway. But something more distinct would be nice. I’m not sure if anyone that isn’t an organizer already would do it for the swag, but it sure won’t hurt to appreciate the incentivizers.
This is a non-starter, as far as I can see. FFG is a 1980s style company, sort of like Palo Alto-era Xerox, the DeLorean Motor Company, and post-AD&D TSR all rolled into one. Pre-internet thinking, bad leadership, cronyism, paranoia, and arguable competence are recurring themes. From stories I’ve heard—and not just one—FFG OP has been resistant to the idea of engaging with the Netrunner player base on any level other than the terms set out by FFG OP itself (a group who, to be frank, often feel like they’re actively working against the player base rather than in partnership).
My ultimate answer: Fine, who gives a shit, we’ve got a great game and a great community!! I love what our people do for Netrunner because we’re not constrained by FFG in some some ways.
FFG may take absolutely no input whatever on what should constitute attractive prize support, but personally I’d rather have a fan-made alt art ID that reflects how colourful and determined our community is over a… Fisk Investment Seminar anyway. (Please contact me to arrange for to send me all fan-made alt arts, thanks! )
Let’s do our own thing, play good games of Netrunner, organize our own shit, and keep on sending me alt arts! Is the bottom line!
It’s depressing, but the evidence does support you. When I see the amount of freebies that videogame streamers get from the developers of games they stream (craploads of swag, free trips to conventions, invitatiosn to come to their studio and play the next version/expansion/whatever), and compare that to Dan Spinosa stresing out because he wasn’t sure he’d get a ticket to worlds, I get very disappointed in FFG.
I appreciate the input (feel free to send me some of those sweet alt-art-fan-made-cards too )
This is where I want to make sure I’m not grinding navels or staring at my axes, but possibly reaching out to them. Rather than write them a ten page treatise on the value of Community Organizers–if that would just get deleted, then I’d want to do something different.
That said, whatever that something “different” is, I imagine Community Organizers on here have already made several attempts already to close that divide, offer feedback, suggestions, etc. On a few different podcasts, I’ve heard the Boggfather state (if I recall correctly) that FFG OP is an entity unto itself and he can’t offer suggestions to them either.
Personally, I’d like to think that FFGOP is really just one guy named Frank and he’s in charge of putting all those playmats in all the boxes. At least that would explain his grumpy attitude. Come on Frank, we’re all friends here!
Realistically, the OP department is probably a team of, what, 6 to 8 folks somewhere in middle management of FFG? I’d love to know how the decision making process works so perhaps that could be navigated.
I’ll head over to the FFG website a bit later on and see if I can find any specific e-mail addresses or names. Specifically for Frank. I bet it’s FrankfromOP@don’te-mailme.com; Oh Frank, how did you fall this far upward?
Thanks @HiddenAway! I sent them a message via that link. The one thing I didn’t like about it was the little check box at the bottom that basically says, “If this message has nothing to do with stuff we are doing, then we may delete it.”
So I spun it as a possible “Initiative for Organized Play.” Since that is both an agenda subtype and part of the language of that little check box. Oh, I also signed up for the OP newsletter to see if at any point they have names of FFG OP people on there.
The FFG OP team is a well known group of people. Jaffer, Stuart, Zach, Brendan, Alex etc. are all public faces and active in the community, on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube, at events, and so forth.
Hey @nutritionalzero, thanks for checking in; since I reached out to FFGOP (via the form letter on the FFG website) I haven’t heard back from them.
That said, I haven’t personally reached out to the folks @jakodrako named in his post; I’ll can dig around a bit, but if by chance anyone happens to know their first/last names, I could probably reach them faster (though I doubt it would take me long to find that out, too)–I just don’t know their full names off the top of my mind.
If the goal is to keep community organizers organizing, I think more important than incentives is removing barriers. In other words:
Make it easier to organize events.
Make it easier to promote events.
Make it easier to summon the mental energy to bother.
I have a few thoughts on how to do that, though I would like to brainstorm ideas with the group. Here is what I am thinking:
I would like FFG to restart writing hype articles about GNK kits. I think all prize support, whether it was well-selected or not, looks more appealing in a hype article than in a badly photographed imgur album.
I would like the windows to apply for GNKs, store champs and up to be a lot more transparent. I only just now signed up for the FFG OP newsletter so maybe that is part of the problem?
Re-examine the process by which cards are selected for alt-art treatment. I can imagine the process is difficult because in order to commission art you are going to have to have some lead time, and perceptions of cards change over time. Though we’ve had some recent high profile alt arts that are pretty hard to get excited about, and I would there to be more community involvement in that process.
Any thoughts you all have on this? What would help you organize better? What would help make it easier?
I completely agree. I’ve been subscribing to the OP Community Newsletter for a year and a half. The disappointing thing is they often just give 1-2 weeks for the store to sign up for a kit that’s 2-6 months out in the future. So if your a new store or miss out on signing up you have to wait for a long time to get support.I wish they had kits in reserve for stores to request them.
This would be amazing and get more players subscribing to their social media feeds if they had polls for which cards get alt-arts. They could even choose one out of the top 3/5 if they wanted control and/or surprise. Instead of what currently seems to be the case where they have extra art lying around and flip through a stack of recent cards to decide which one fits the best.
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