Introduction

Greetings gamers and members of the club.

I would like to thank Evant and the council for placing their trust in me. I am deeply humbled. I would also like to acknowledge that starting out, I am standing on the shoulders of giants, Fists and members of the Fist staff past and present who have shaped our gaming systems into what they are today. In particular, I would like to thank Drac not only for giving me a chance on the Fist staff and encouraging my ideas to expand the gaming experience but also for informally serving as a source of frank and thoughtful advice over the years.

Gaming has always been a core part of my experience in the club. Chances are if you have gamed in the past few years I submitted a screenshot with you and I in it. I came to this club initially seeking a SWTOR guild but in the course of my journey, I have found so much more. Even as I dove into other things like the ACC, serving in the COJ, and being a unit leader, I have always been a gamer at heart. While I am mostly known for my time in Odan-Urr with stints in Arcona and Vizsla, I have made friends throughout the club through gaming.

I firmly believe that gaming, at its best, brings members of the club together and breaks down barriers in ways that few other avenues of activity can. Where else can you hop on for some late-night Halo and end up playing on the same team with clanned members, rogue members and dark councilors?

Core Philosophy

I believe the goal of every DB leader from a battleteam leader to the Grand Master should be to create the best member experience possible so members:

1) want to stay engaged with the club and
2) want to bring their friends.

This is my core ideal that guides every decision I make. Content, systems, communication channels; it doesn’t matter, all of it should be tailored toward making an environment that makes people want to stay and bring their friends into. This is essential to the long-term health and growth of the club.

What does that mean for gaming?

My vision for gaming in the club is to build a community of gamers who play together, freely share their interests and accomplishments and most importantly have fun together. I want to reach out to every unit and corner of the club to offer a welcoming hand to all those who may have tapered off in their gaming submissions or not thought about club gaming in a while. I want to reach those who may have felt excluded in the past or felt that the club didn’t have anything to offer them in the gaming realm. Experience shows that when members form connections with other members they are more likely to stay engaged and invite people from their real life into the club.

The social and community aspects of gaming are important but they are only parts of the equation. Engaging content is also part of my vision for gaming. Some of my most fond memories of gaming in the club involved working with my fellow members to achieve a goal. Some of those were tournament-type experiences but most were chasing some milestone in a game that may or may not have been recognized in the club. I am still proud of the club first pendants of blood I was able to be a part of in Diablo 3, Destiny and SWTOR. I want to foster that sense of competition and cooperation that came with the club recognizing excellence and achievement in a given game. Gamers are social but we also like our achievements and shiny things to show off our accomplishments. I want to expand our existing systems to not only incentivize being social but also to recognize excellence and teamwork.

In short if you’re the type of gamer who’s casual and wants to chill with friends, I want to help you make new friends. If you’re more on the competitive side or enjoy working on challenging gaming goals cooperatively, I want to create systems and content to foster that as well. If you like making gaming content, I want to lift that up and showcase your efforts to the community.

The “Whiteboard”

So you’re probably thinking “that’s a nice philosophy and all, but what will you actually change?” The answer in the short term, with the GJW taking focus right away, is not much. Ideas need to be workshopped and approved prior to implementation. I did want to share some of the ideas contained in my application. These are just “whiteboard” level ideas that need approval and may never see the light of day. I’d love to hear from you whether you think it’s a good change or if you have some concerns.

• Hosting live events using the Discord events feature and supporting member/clan events.
• Re-thinking Magistrate and Praetor duties - I will look at redefining the duties of the Fist staff to include things like hosting events and being more visible community ambassadors. This would apply to future terms likely starting with those hired after the GJW.
• “Annual Fist Challenge Board” - As I’ve said I want to encourage the competitive and higher level forms of gaming, in addition to the more casual social type. I’m leaning toward this being a separate thing from the existing GMRG board but the final version might be a combined board. The Fist staff would post-challenge competitions on a monthly basis that were difficult to even get a qualifying entry for by design. Beat a level in a certain amount of time, take down a raid boss, and get a certain score in a certain activity. The kinds of things that games would award achievements for. One would get challenge points for meeting the threshold and additional challenge points for being the fastest/best in the club for that challenge. This board would also give points for things like achieving club firsts. The fun part is I’d like this board to have its own incentives like a dossier title for the annual board or a “cool” possessions item like a ship or powerful upgrade (whatever I can get the Regent to buy off on :P ). The GMRG board has long struggled with a balance between awarding quantity vs quality of gaming and having separate systems for both is something worth exploring in my opinion.
• Continue to explore ways the staff can host and support SWTOR activity, including stewardship of the Imperial side guild.
• Implementing a cluster multiplier for members using the groupfinder tool - This is something I’ve kicked around as a nice little bonus to encourage people to advertise their games and game with new people. Use of the groupfinder will never be mandatory (outside of any vendetta-specific rules) so rest assured you can always just pick up and play with your friends.
• Exploring asynchronous forms of team/solo competition during vendettas to replace the old PVP brackets. This would go in an event-long bin of a vendetta alongside more accessible for participation competitions, just like the pvp brackets of old were. My working name for this is a “gaming decathlon” and it would need some beta testing before going primetime in a vendetta so it’s certainly not something you’ll see this GJW. The idea is that members/teams sign up for the decathlon knowing what possible game/platforms the challenges will come from but not what the specific challenges will be. It would have set "rounds" for each challenge with scoring updates. Kind of like a gaming goblet of fire for those who grew up on Harry Potter.

I want to hear from you

One of the first things I will do is to reach out one on one to every unit leader and then to the more prolific gamers. Surveys are good tools and I will certainly use them, but I think a listening tour of sorts to try to catch all corners of the club will yield some insights on how to take gaming to the next level. I particularly want to connect with those who’s club gaming might have tapered off for one reason or another and those who may have felt excluded or underserved in the past by club gaming. My primary goal is to bring people together and create that welcoming community experience with club gaming that will keep people coming back and bringing their friends.

I have set up a Fist comment box for you to share your thoughts and request follow-up contact if you would like it. A #askthenewFist thread is also up in the db gaming channel.

Until next time!

Turel