I am the CEO of an online corporation in the MMO game EVE Online. I hope to use this blog to chronicle my experiences, both failures and successes. Perhaps this log will someday provide some insight or perspective on how leadership has evolved in this digital frontier.
I formed the corporation on May 13th, 2010, though I will not be disclosing the name of the corporation or any members throughout the course of this log as it may become public at some point, and I would rather leave the individuals involved anonymous.
Having previous experience with the difficulties involved in starting an online group out of nothing, I resolved myself to at least attempt to get some real life friends interested in the game as well. Of the 3 that were interested enough to shell out $20 for a subscription, only one stuck with it for any length of time. During that time, I found myself involved in other things that drew me away from the game, however my friend continued to play, and eventually became more knowledgeable than me in some areas. When I finally did return with a serious intent to play again, I found I had a friend that could genuinely help with what I wanted to do in game, and so we began to chart out a strategy for building a corp from the ground up. As this individual is now the second in command for the corp, I will refer to him as #2.
#2 and I accrued assets, grinding away at monotonous level 4 missions, sometimes falling asleep at the keyboard in the process. We accumulated blueprints, we read guides, and we talked to other players. We built our knowledge right alongside our physical assets. After all, both gave us more versatility and thus power. When you're in the game of attracting potential recruits, appearing powerful is key. This is not to say that one can't easily have that appearance of power backfire on them should they be seen abusing it. Knowing this is half the battle, and I insisted that the community always come first. We would not welcome individuals who wanted to act elitist or who got their jollies by insulting others, causing distraction, or behaving immaturely in general. To be blunt about this, it's much harder than one might think. In an ocean full of guppies, it's quite a task to find a full grown fish that has it's gills in a row and isn't jaded by the suffocating mass of archaea. Yes, it's that bad. To say we accomplished this 100% right off the bat, would be a lie, plain and simple. I would honestly say our first round of recruitment got us mostly crap, that didn't last longer than a month in the corp. But, at such an early stage, you have to take what you get, and weed out the bad stuff. So weed I did.
More next time...
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