Where is the Camaraderie?

Happy Tuesday, fellow Redstone players.

I come to you with a question: Why are there so many people in this game who look out only for themselves, and would rather step on those below them to get ahead instead of bring them along with them? Too often I've witnessed bullying and sneers than fellowship and kindness. 

Of course, I've witnessed the latter, not only in my guild (where most of the cases I've seen happen) but also in the rest of the gaming community, but these occurrences seem to happen few and far between. The guild seems to work generally as a cohesive unit and rarely do I see this power struggle happen within my own ranks, but I cannot say we are perfect. We do, however, seem to generally look out for each other and we motivate and help each other whenever possible.

In the rest of the gaming community, though, it seems to be every man for himself all too often. You even have people who wage attacks on others, whether it's insults, bullying (this happened to me personally but I don't want to call the person out since this was just an one time occurrence), or the most recent one I've witnessed, blatantly stealing someone's name and trying to get them kicked out of the game.

That last one actually happened to my Guild Master, Klien, where you can see his take on it at his blog. If you don't wish to click through, I'll sum up what happened. Apparently, in this game a capital "I" and lowercase "L" are virtually indistinguishable. Thus "Klien" and "KIien", "Palidor" and "PaIidor" look the same when shown in the chat box (and apparently in this blog, so you can see where it could get tricky). So this fake Klien and Palidor were shouting obscenities in town, bashing fellow players and in general, being rude and impudent. 

If you know anything about Redstone or general gaming communities, you would know that this sort of behavior has the potential of getting your account banned, and since the font makes those two letters indiscernible, our innocent Guild Master could very well be punished for actions that were not his own. 

Of course, he was informed by other players about what was going on and sent a ticket to the GMs and I haven't seen any trouble since, but this just makes my point ever clearer. 

On the surface, this community seems helpful, kind, and honest, but delve further, and you will find a dark underbelly of malice, liars, and selfishness. The community has shown its true colors, and to say I'm but a little discouraged because of this would be an understatement. 

This however, does not mean I will not stop playing and enjoying this game. It, in fact, seems to push me further, to be the change I wish to see in the community, which is the same ideal I hold in real life.

As one of my favorite Mahatma Gandhi quotes goes,“It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."

Maybe if more people thought like that, and not for their own self-preservation, than maybe, slowly but surely, the community would not be a toxic environment but one of nurturing and health.