How you dooooooin… Hello everyone reading this. This is an open letter to GODs, anyone that belongs to any clan/guild/club/etc, and people that do raids on any game, any console/platform. This is gonna be a long one. I feel like talking about how I think as a clan leader, how I think of clan members, and the hopes and wishes I have for them. I’ve been a clan leader for a little over a year, and it’s a pretty rough job, at least in my opinion. I went through major up and downs, #rollercoaster. I have been accused of favoritism, being two-faced, elitist, disgustingly unfair, bitchy, and self-victimization (playing the victim). On the other end, I have been seen as a Queen, a patient saint, the lifeblood of GODs, fierce, and even a mom. I’m not here to convince you one way or the other, but understand this. I protect myself, I protect what’s mine, and I protect those who want to be part of what’s mine. My clan has a very central theme, and a specific audience, or at least that’s what it’s set out to attract and gather. At first, I thought of it as a public space for anyone to come and go as they please. However, I started really understanding that everyone needs more than just a public space and environment. People in the clan wanted to be put in groups, people wanted to reach out and meet others because they are too shy to initiate contact, some people want to be put in groups who do raids, and some people want to be in groups for raiding with people who can pass and beat it. This goes far beyond the audience that GODs calls for, because at the end of the day, if you’re a gaymer, you’re still a gamer and you just want to be with people on the same wavelength as you, especially when it comes to maturity level and how you talk to other people, but more importantly, how people talk to you. As a leader, this is an impossible feat. You can’t please everyone, and there are many clan members and only one founder. It’s not easy, and after a while it becomes stressful and demanding. There’s no way to have these demands be met in a fun, public, open, come and go type of clan, and because of this, I decided to make the clan closed and a bit more intimate. I went about it several different ways, and even entrusted others who said they really wanted to help out, giving them the power and a title as they volunteered their time. Shortly after, it became a power struggle. Accusations fly when things don’t happen fast enough, or if there’s effort put in and no results show. It’s even worse when an event was planned out and no one really cares or participates. I went through several break-ups because of this. When it comes down to it, my appointed leaders and I had separate ideas and clan goals, which eventually lead to an inevitable split. It’s just like divorce, because people take sides and leave together. I had some of my favorite people along with people that I know would be good for the clan just straight up leave. I miss those individuals to this day, but everyone has choices, I just hate when they make them and they’re not in my favor, lol. Essentially, I have what I have, I have who I have, and I do what I can with the time I’m given. I work, I sleep, I cook, I clean, I try to go to the gym, I don’t have a social life (thanks to gaming), I face life just like anybody else, but I devote a huge chunk of time (the thing I don’t have much of) to gaming with my clan, and not get paid for it. I volunteer my time for this. It’s not really a noble thing because it’s just a video game, but to some extent, I understand that running this clan means that people are getting together and doing something they would rather not do alone. That has become the quintessential reason I have defined for myself for why I am a clan leader. It’s because you don’t have to be alone. I was gaming alone for a really long time. I had become “awoken”, heh heh. There’s a universe of gaymers out there. You can find your crew and people on your same gaming level to tackle raids, move on to different games, or simply just hang out. And here it is, “Gaming Level”. Why does GODs have the “Clutch Purse” group and why do they think they are so special, and why don’t they play with the rest of the GODs? Well, I don’t like openly admitting it because of the drama that ensues, but they are special. Not because I hang out with them often, not because they are awesome gamers who complete the raid often, and not because they cater to all my wishes, because they don’t, lol, they give me the most shit even when I’m doing good in-game, and make fun of me even worse when I screw up. The Clutch Purse were all random GODs. All of them just fell into GODs one way or the other. They met someone who was in it, they were searching for an LGBT group, or someone wanted to find a cutie to get to know, etc., they all came to GODs for all their own separate reasons. Not a single person in Clutch was someone I knew beforehand or anything like that. We all met in GODs, we liked each other, our personalities matched, we started to play together often, we started to have inside jokes, we began raiding together, WE GOT GOOD TOGETHER, we started chatting outside of GODs and in Facebook together, we dedicated time to each other, we convinced each other to play different games together, we became GODs who were more than just GODs when we came together. We were people who were gaming alone until we found each other, and we found each other in GODs. Clutch Purse is special, not because I said so, but it’s because the members of it make it special, all of them having the same united goal as a group, and it’s along the lines of playing Destiny, killing it in the raid, and having a KiKi in-game through it all. This is the opposite of how my previous admins and I were. We didn’t have the same ideals and goals and that’s exactly why those sub-groups fell apart and away from GODs, however, Clutch Purse still wears their title as “GODs Clutch Purse”. They all understand it happened because they are GODs and they made the decision to stay together and take it to another level. They are elevated not because they think they are elite, or favored by me, or have awesome gamers in it, but they hold themselves to their own standards, they devote their attention to each other, they learn each other as teammates and participate in each other’s gaming experiences and social media experiences. And frankly, anyone that shows any sign of malice towards the Clutch Purse really pumps up their ego, because that malice just translates into envy or jealousy. This is not my homage to Clutch Purse. This is, however, a wake-up call to my GODs. It’s new content, a new season of Destiny, a new era and generation of GODs, a new group for me to find, and most importantly, a brand new raid, because raiding is essential = ) Let me emphasize that I said a “New Group to Find”. I already branded a new raid group, “Cinched for the GODs”. I tried to let previous admin form their own groups naturally, and naturally they formed something on their own outside of GODs. I want to find Clutch Purse’s rival within the GODs. I want to find this season’s Wrath of the Machine all-star team. I’m not trying to recreate “Clutch Purse 2”, because essentially, I can’t, it’s just not possible or even necessary, it would take away from what will make “Cinched” it’s own special individual thing. I’m not doing this in efforts to break people up or elevate a certain group of people, but as a clan leader, I do realize that I have to place peers with each other. Some people are looking for the ones that are not casual gamers and are ready to jump straight into Hard Mode when it drops. Isn’t it wrong to hold them back because others in the clan aren’t ready? I think so. I do not believe in “no child left behind” as the means where no one moves on until everyone is on the same playing field. I have to believe in the fairness of equity in relation to gaming level and player ability. Also, I want the hardcore gamers to learn as much as they can from beating the raid constantly to pass on tips and tricks to me and the GODs to help us beat the raid. If I keep holding them back by constantly placing them with people who aren’t ready, I’m doing them a disservice and not really giving them what GODs has to offer. Ideally, I want everyone to be hardcore and have at it in the raid on Hard Mode, but the truth is, not everyone can take it on. I hold raid schools and can only teach from my perspective and point of view. However, it’s not a catch-all, I’m not a professor, I’m not a game developer, and I’m not MLG (major league gaming). I can only help you the way I think people can be helped, but I’m always down to try, that’s why I do all of this in the first place. So when I pluck certain people and arrange them in raid teams, please don’t get mad, I do it because there’s a difference between success rate and learning curve. Continued in PART 2