[dark acacia]

Ever try out an enforced roleplay game that boasts excellent plots and campaigns, and then you join and are told to present yourself in a scene, only to discover that no one really wants you around or pays attention to your character when you try to interact?

This is something at the other end of problematic roleplay environments. I've already said elsewhere that a sure sign of a stagnating roleplay environment is when people pair up and retreat into private romance roleplay; or, in a PK game get into semi-in-character bickering over pointless drama that never gets anywhere; or, in a PvE game just start chit-chatting in party channel while tanking mobs. A game with an already thriving environment might turn instead into a situation where the players are just so comfortable with each other that it is assumed that new players can't possibly live up to their expectations, and are just not given a chance to participate.

I see this most often in games where the action of a scene is contained in one room where @emits are used to narrate location changes and people pose their actions, where people don't actually type N to go north in order to continue the story. Sending an introductory pose is mandatory for participation, but that does not mean that the other people who see the pose will respond. In games with room exits, people will just get up and go someplace else if they don't want to bother with you.

I've had it happen to me twice in the same game, on two separate occasions and characters, where I'd be told to go to location X where a scene would soon start; the three-pose rule would be in force, I'd make my introductory pose, and perhaps 30 minutes later I'd get to pose again and be stuck on how to proceed after my first pose was ignored until I finally managed to choke something out (what do you do when you go to a party and people pretend that you're not there?). Later I was asked why I bothered showing up if I wasn't going to participate.

I think another sign that this kind of situation exists is when someone posts on the announcement board that they're leaving because their friends no longer play, even though there still are other people actively involved (or trying to be involved) in the game. Again, it's an unwillingness on someone's part to include new people to their comfortable and familiar environment and a fear that things won't be as good as in the "old days."

While newbie exclusion is unhelpful for boosting participation and retaining newbies, it seems to me that it's just a natural reaction for some people. They have a circle of friends, the circle has had a lot of experiences together, and after a while a newcomer just can't seem to fit because they won't ever have the same experiences as the group. It would be interesting to take a look at a game's record for a certain period of time to see how many new people managed to get involved and become part of the community, and how many people looked like they just puttered around for a while and never really seemed to have a place.