I started running events because it’s what the people around me did. I continued because I enjoy it. It’s not necessarily fun. Or at least, it’s not constantly fun. The things that keep me going back are a mix of curiosity, a desire to achieve more and run something better, and the feeling of having achieved something. The last one is a big deal. Even during the event you get to watch the players interacting with the tasks you’ve given them. You know that you’re the one making them think, fight and interact with whatever you’ve put in front of them.
We like to run immersive and engaging events. Enabling people to experience that is a massive achievement. It helps tie you together with the other attendees.
We don’t run events to explore complex emotions. We run events to have fun and achieve something. If that fun is achieved by the constant tension of knowing you’re locked underground and being stalked by aliens, then so be it. We also run the events we want to run. Quite often we run the events we would like to play. There are some things that aren’t that important to us with regards to our events. Whilst we are more than happy to have players there, and they are as important a part of the event as any other, we’re not running our events specifically for them. I like to think we’re fairly upfront about this.
We are aware that we do need players to run events and we collect their feedback to ensure that we know what they think. When it’s appropriate we act on it (most of our events use sleep deprivation, lighting effects and other techniques to add to the atmosphere and to the stress that players feel. We get feedback saying that the events would be better without it, but that’s typically not the event we’re interested in running and so it’s not something we’re going to change). We do quite like our players. We just also like putting them into unpleasant situations.
I like being part of something awesome, and I like that when running events we get to build things and make things that I could never do on my own. I run events because it’s interesting. It’s a great sense of achievement, and I enjoy the company of the people I spend time with because I am running events.
(Via: Mandala’s Minion)
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