Player Perspectives columnist Jaime Skelton writes this latest article looking back on the history of GM interactions with players and how they can no longer be as cool as they once were.
GMs used to be cool. I don't mean that the current GMs across the world of MMOs are all dull, lifeless drones in small cubicles with no love for gaming. I mean that, in the majority of cases, game masters have been stripped of the ability to have fun and do the things that players can love them for. While the people behind the specially marked names may be awesome gamers, often they must suppress their inner geek and put on a suit of cold professionalism.
It didn't used to be this way. There were days when GMs were generally loved by a server's populace because the greatest among them were able to do great, fun things for their server's and game's community. GMs had the ability to run in-game events unsupervised, the ability to teleport at will, to chat with players outside of problem solving, to have a public presence to let their personalities shine and offer a new dimension to the game. There were, of course, the spoil-sports of the GM world: the cold professionals who played by the rules and wanted nothing to do with “the customers.” There were many more, however, who made names for themselves.
Read I Can't Be Cool.
