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[Ken]

Corps are born and eventually die.  Somewhere in between this they live.  Most live for a few months, but some endure for many years.  I think much like restaurants, MMO guilds/corps that survive their infancy (1-2 years in the restaurant world, probably 6 months or so in MMOs) end up lasting for a long while.  There is no hard and fast rule about it, but anecdotal evidence leads me to believe this generally holds true, especially in single-shards like EVE.

Unlike restaurants, however, guilds/corps are basically just hobby groups.  There is no essential need to remain invested in them if you aren't having fun, and real life obligations often get in the way of spending time with corpmates.  As members come and go and activity cycles from high to low, corps go through a process I'd call "breathing".  Group activity, events, and energy follow a rhythm.  Creative or novel interaction between members and successes in the game send these things up.  Repetitive or stale interactions and in-game setbacks send  them down again.  The challenge of corp leadership is to ride this waveform and control it.  This is more important in EVE than other games because I think a central aspect of EVE's entertainment value for a majority of players is based on social connections.  This is a consequence of being a sandbox rather than a theme park.

A lot of us have at one time or another gone through with founding a corp based on an RP idea we wanted to pursue.  And I think it's fair to say everyone's mileage varies in that endeavor.  I tried it for about three months before RL and disillusionment with CCP forced me to stop.  Over three years, I've toyed with the idea a lot more than I've acted on it.  And now I find myself a member of an active young corp that will certainly face the challenge of riding those highs and lows.  So, I'd like to discuss experiences in RP corp membership and leadership in EVE.

When you've joined a corp:
What attracts you to a corporation?  What are your expectations of the leadership when you join a corp?  What makes you want to stay in a corp?  What makes you want to leave a corp?  How long has one RP character in one corp held your attention before you felt the pull of other ideas?  Have/do you run RP alts in addition to a main character?  If you've been playing MMOs for at least several years, have your expectations for guild/corp dynamics changed in that time?  What was the best leadership/organizational/event idea you ever saw used in a corp?

When/if you've founded or lead a corp:
What techniques have you used to steer a guild or corp through its energetic but quite turbulent youth?  If you faced recruiting challenges, why do you think attracting the right people (or just people in general) was difficult?  Is highly selective recruiting a bad thing for a new corp?  If it's happened for you, at what point did you feel the corp had gotten over "the hump", by which I mean when did you realize that it was going to survive for a long time?  Is there a critical mass of (active) members for ensuring a corp's longevity?  How did you delegate responsibility within the corp?  How much time do you spend planning and organizing compared to time spent executing/playing?  How/did you manage to still play the game and have fun while performing a leadership role?

[John Revenent]

When/if you've founded or lead a corp:
What techniques have you used to steer a guild or corp through its energetic but quite turbulent youth?  If you faced recruiting challenges, why do you think attracting the right people (or just people in general) was difficult?  Is highly selective recruiting a bad thing for a new corp?  If it's happened for you, at what point did you feel the corp had gotten over "the hump", by which I mean when did you realize that it was going to survive for a long time?  Is there a critical mass of (active) members for ensuring a corp's longevity?  How did you delegate responsibility within the corp?  How much time do you spend planning and organizing compared to time spent executing/playing?  How/did you manage to still play the game and have fun while performing a leadership role?

When leading RDC/I-RED I found that our youth was quite easy, though I would just go with the flow of things. We started with a open recruitment policy allowing almost everyone to join our corp with no limitations. This of course caused issues when we went to war as we would lose a good majority of membership, though over time I found that the ones who truly wish to build something would stay these are my old guard, the ones who will look past setbacks then continue to push forward for the corporation, these types of people are truly a blessing for any CEO the ones who hold the corporation together. It has only been recently that we have started selective recruitment but even then its just a longer application process not based on skills. The way I see it is if a corporation limits their recruitment to say a SP limitation you are stopping the newer pilots from having a chance, these new pilots with no experience I find are much easier to mold into what your corporation requires, in my experience older players have already found their play style and can be very.. very disruptive. (Recruiting is not easy but not as hard as people think, I used to dedicate a week every month to recruitment for RDC and other corps in I-RED. I could recruit about 10 people a day by sitting in the noob system private convoing people.. this is how I started, now we are at the point where people come to us.)

Stubborn. I am a very stubborn person I have found that this is the main reason why my corporation has lasted so long, and others have not. My corporation has risen and died 4 times, I view letting my corporation turning into dust a failure on my part so I continue to rebuild when others would give up. The member base allows your corporation to have more capabilities but how committed your CEO is determines how long your corporation will last, upon realizing this is when I knew RDC/I-RED would last as long as I wanted.

For the last question, I am a very poor planner, many people know this, and when I get an idea I act on it right away. I have more fun leading people then any other aspect of this game it is like gardening you get to watch it grow into something you were not quite expecting, and the outcome is always different.

[Lyn Farel]

From a CEO point of view :

For the first series of questions, it can drastically vary between individuals. Some want operations every night, others want something else. But I would still say that most want activity, though, in general. It is less true in our RP milieu, but still is.

But when you create a RP corp, you will often have to walk on the edge of the razor between gameplay and RP, sadly. When you can conciliate both, it is the best that can happen to you. RP wardecs and the likes. Otherwise, if it is not a problem in the lines of "respect the RP policy vs fuck you I do what I want", it will be something else in the same vein. RP brings rules, and the most hardcore the RP is, the most rules generally. All the times I have been in a RP entity with low recruitement standards bringing all sorts of people and not only RP dedicated poeple, it has inevitably lead the corp to its end from my own little experience. The first time I encountered that was in AM when the RP core of the alliance eventually vanished to let place to Bat Country and other non RP people, which leaded to a clash between our leadership and their people at the alliance council. Different goals, different personnalities. Then the non RP took over, but the alliance survived, at least. The next RP corp was the same, I was a mere member but in the center of the RP vs non RP crysis. The non RP won again.

Then I created my own new RP corp (my second one), and we did not let anyone enter. It worked almost fine, but another issue came in : not enough members. Our small group were already players with 2 or 3 years behind them. When you get confronted to new members and noobs - even RP - that bounce everywhere and want eagerly to do something each night, it starts to become hard to manage for people that want to breath from time to time. It is one of the hardest things when you are CEO to keep a realy synergy inside the corp, and you have to be the motivator behind it, or everything falls apart. This is why it is best to quickly find a lot of "lieutenants", to delegate to people that can also dynamise the corp and organize things. The more the better, to allow everyone to breath. But with minimal membership, it is not easy. You can rarely delegate to noobs, too. Some things, but not everything. I would say that passed 10 active members or so, your corp should start running smoothly if people are motivated enough and start to get habits "hey, when are we going to roam tonight ?". That kind of things. But when you recruit very strictly it is hard to find RPers. Especially RPers fitting to your corp. So what you gain in stability and cohesion, you lose it in manpower. The unstability comes from the fact that the single member that leaves for X reason can cripple your entire little structure.

I would say however, that a corp never really dies if the leader(s) do not quit. It is always possible to rebuild. Most of the long lived corps that I know have all more or less collapsed to some points of their history. They just managed not to get totally drown and their leaders waited for a new day for their corp to take off again.

Another key thing is to keep a close, strong core of people that share the same goals and ideals and that will go together everywhere. It helps a lot.

These two things, I have always more or less been able to validate them. What makes me always fail, though, is that I really suck at PR and especially recruitement. Keeping contacts, socializing, etc. This is my third important point that a corp director should be able to do. Keep contacts, spread the word and make your corp visible. This was especially a strong feature of KotMC, to a point where the corp almost became the new trend of the moment.

________________

To answer to your questions with a little more specificities, though :

- What attracts me to a corporation is always its strong RP feature. It has to be dramatically serious, well though, and original. But the most important thing is for it to have a real atmosphere, something that stands out and that everyone can feel at the first glimpse.

- My expectations of the leadership are usually pretty low. I am casual. I do not reclaim for a roam every night. I just look for RP, but the corp is not the only source of RP. The only real thing I always ask for the leadership to do is to remain true to the corp foundation ideals and keep the RP serious. Otherwise, it will inevitably end up in a latent war between RPers and non RPers, if you let the latter enter the corp. I have always had very little patience towards non RPers that come in a RP corp and somehow start to spit on its RP principles.

- RP makes me want to stay in a corp. The more the better. And secondarily, spaceship stuff, yes. A total mess, people that I consider as part of the 90% of morons in eve, people sharing obvious differences in goals, the corp straying from its original statement, all of this can make me leave a corp pretty quickly. I am probably a very difficult member to handle, and keep, and probably a prick about a lot of things.

- I always have one single main character. My only alt was my old cyno/transport alt that now use very little, and have always very little used ICly, even if he has his own related background. And my alt that I used as a CEO once. But all my attention is focused on the same character, and it has always been the case. I do not feel the need to change of RP flavor or anything if I find enjoyment where I am, either through RP or gameplay, or both. On that, I am very easy to deal with as I do not ask for a lot.

- I have not really changed at the core for all these years, though I was certainly less bitter and a lot more motivated on my meery way of life when I started.

Other questions, I couldnt tell like that. Difficult questions to answer now I am not in it anymore. I hope the first part of my message answered at least to a bit of them.

[Gessenier]

I suppose I'll add my own thoughts on creating and leading an RP corp:

Vision, Purpose and Identity: I have always felt that when starting an RP organization it's vital to construct a very clear idea of the RP you want and that you're comfortable with pursuing long-term. Defining things early creates a vision and a sense of purpose that members can buy into even if they may not initially consider themselves roleplayers. The background should also mesh into the sort of activities you want to pursue in the game, it's pointless I find creating a background that limits potential conflict if the primary goal of the corp is PvP for example. A solid RP background also provides a very strong sense of identity that promotes cohesion and unity of action, that you're doing something "more" in the game. Once you have that original vision however it's vital to remain consistent to it and seek to continuously reaffirm it otherwise it's useless. Having a dream to sell is always good but most importantly, the CEO/Leader has to believe in their own dream too.

Forming a Cadre: This I think is where success or failure will always lie. You need to have a solid core group of people who are invested in the corp and its vision. People you can rely upon to get things done and who will form the future leadership and directorate. This is why initial recruitment is so important and you should always be on the lookout for talented and motivated people whilst being ruthless enough to purge people who are drama queens, lazy or just generally useless. The first six months of a corp I think should be dedicated solely to getting something like 10 really solid people to act as leadership and 20-30 others who are all generally on during the same TZ and who work well together. If you manage that, I think success is practically guaranteed. It's the foundation that you build upon into the future.

Recruitment: I've found that passive recruitment methods like ads and the like generally ineffective in comparison to active recruitment methods like cold mailing/convoing. Recruiting new players also means you can mould them within the corp and they tend to be far more invested and loyal to the organization if you show them that you're also willing to invest in them. What a new player may lack in SP and experience they will always make up for in motivation and eagerness and that's always important I think in starting a new RP project. Newbies also tend to prevent the creep of elitism in a corp and general spinning ship syndromes.

Camaraderie/Team Building: A corp that kills together, stays together. It doesn't just have to be pvp but any sort of group activity creates a sense of comradeship and allows people to get to know each other. A corp is first and foremost a social environment and people tend to stick with one if they feel part of a team with people they know and their efforts are valued. Everything else is just window dressing.

Leadership: I think it's all about burnout prevention and not worrying about having to micromanage everything. Being :zen: about things and just accepting that there are things you cannot change prevents frustration when things don't work out according to plan - just go with a flow. As for leadership styles, I think it's all about inculcating respect by getting to know people in the corp and maintaining an open door policy. The best corp leaders I think are those that know what they need to put effort into and what they can step back from and delegate. Talking softly but carrying a big stick also works in that it's important not to distance yourself in a bubble by allowing people to feel they can have a beer with you but that at the end of the day you are the boss guy and you will beat people down if you have to.

Patience: Building a solid RP corp is something that takes years of effort and dedication. Things will fall into place so long as you have a good group of people, maintain recruitment, and are willing to remain consistent to the original vision and plan. Don't panic and go have a beer or something.

[Ken]

Absolutely awesome responses.

[Casiella]

When I join a corp

I usually have written out in advance my expectations in my personal notse. Some of them are general, based on personal lessons I've learned over the years, including things like "social, enjoyable people to play with" and "adult-friendly (e.g. RL > EVE if stuff comes up with my kids)". Some of them are specific to my goals at the time, like "located in nullsec so I can help munch huge rocks and build cool stuff" or "support the Angel Cartel as a capsuleer in the Curse region". Leadership should, generally speaking, set the tone and remove obstacles. So if a CEO does her best to make sure the corp is growing / thriving and that everyone understands what we are trying to do, then that's 90% of what I want.

But when it seems to me that leadership either isn't making even remotely useful decisions or making entirely valid ones that go in a different direction than what I originally understood, then I start thinking about jumping ship. When activity drops because we're not bringing people in to replace the inevitable attrition that gaming groups suffer, that's another signal that something is wrong.

I do run RP alts, but I really wish I didn't. I should stop, mostly because I greatly enjoy the RP that comes from developing one character. But gameplay considerations often preclude that, not to mention distractions from new character concepts. (I always have new character or corp concepts floating around in my head.) My expectations from RP corps and guilds have changed, mostly in the sense that I have sharpened them. I recognize good concepts more effectively, for example, and I have learned to run from excessive organization when it seems more about establishing power hierarchies than actual efficiency. Generally speaking, I love flat organizations / adhocracies, where the leadership (whether or not I'm in it) mostly provides resources and then gets out of the way while we all do our thing.

When I've led a corp

The best summary I've ever read of my leadership style was written by someone else - not that Shae Tiann and I ever shared a corp (to my knowledge, at least), but her post on Typecasting is spot-on. Reading that gave me a whole new perspective on IG leadership.

I try to be the sort of leader I want: supportive and not interfering. If members want to do some new project, as long as it doesn't contradict what we've been trying to build then I'm onboard. However, I am absolutely the worst recruiter ever. Well, that's not true: I'm happy to run ads (whether IG or forum), sit in a channel and answer questions, interview people, etc. But "cold convoing" or anything like that is completely anathema to me, even if I know how effective it can be.

Appropriate sizes vary by game. In SWG, I liked corps that had around a dozen players, maybe a few less. In EVE, that's incredibly tiny and only works for certain activity types (say, trading or RP or very very small gang PVP), and even then can be problematic if timezones and activity levels among the member base vary. Members should be able to create their own content, as it were: I'll do it, too, but I see a good CEO / guild leader as a coordinator helping people find what they want rather than a general telling them what they need to do.

[Khloe]

I ran a corporation/alliance (Glamour Bunnies / Glamour Syndicate) years ago that got as high as forty members. It was a freelance outfit that generally let its members do as they please, with very little intervention on my part beyond settling internal disputes and handling diplomacy with other corporations. We were an NRDS outfit who did very little actual PVP, but you might find some useful information to glean from my experience as a project leader.

What techniques have you used to steer a guild or corp through its energetic but quite turbulent youth?
Organizing group events that benefit everyone. Missions, exploration, pvp roams, whatever gets people together consistently. The key is building a relationship and camaraderie between members. When they spend enough time together they'll take the initiative themselves in pursuing group activities with each other. It's like teaching a kid how to ride a bike, then letting go and watching them pedal and steer on their own. It's a good feeling. 

If you faced recruiting challenges, why do you think attracting the right people (or just people in general) was difficult? 
Early on, the challenge of recruiting is just getting bodies in the corporation. Ideally, you want people who are willing to participate and display an interest in contributing rather than just ask for handouts, but you don't really get to know most people without playing with them and interacting over time, and interviews only go so far in displaying the content of an individual's character. If someone sets off obvious red flags early in the interview process, then go with your gut and don't hire them. Monitor activity of those you do hire, and watch how they progress over the first two to four weeks.

Is highly selective recruiting a bad thing for a new corp? 
Once you're established and your corporation has earned a reputation, people will come to you. The challenge then became separating those who would be reliable/suitable from the corp thieves, glory hounds, and adrenaline junkies. Corp thieves are obvious reasons to be careful, but the glory hounds and adrenaline junkies can be just as hazardous to a corp's health.

In a roleplay corporation, glory hounds are those who want to use the corporation's name and reputation to propel their own status and name without giving anything back to the community that accepted them. Adrenaline Junkies generally have an employment miles long, only join when things are hot and active in the media, and then depart when things flare up elsewhere. In a game like EVE, effort has to be made ...even for fun.

Also, don't ever accept known alts unless they are willing to put the time in to help your corporation (20+ hrs.). Inactive corp members are useless and simply keeping them to make it look like you have lots of actives only leads to disappointment when newbies realize only half of the characters are regulars.

If it's happened for you, at what point did you feel the corp had gotten over "the hump", by which I mean when did you realize that it was going to survive for a long time?
For me, it was when we had members in every timezone, and I could login anytime and find someone online in my corporation. It meant no one was isolated, and people had opportunities to play together if desired.

Is there a critical mass of (active) members for ensuring a corp's longevity?
Depending on how strict your timezone recruitment standards are, it could be anywhere from 20-40 depending on what your goals are. I felt pretty good about the corporation when there were 12-15 people in corp chat at once. When you build a community and see it through a few scrapes (spies, corp thefts, wars), the ones that make it through the hard times will stay for good. Those are the keepers!

How did you delegate responsibility within the corp?
I think I'm a fairly decent judge of character, so when I see someone with a good attitude and a willingness to help out I generally ask them if they are interested in taking on additional responsibility in the corporation. They either say no, or give it their best and sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes I just make a task official that they've been unofficially doing anyway (basically, I'm acknowledging their work for all to see) I generally don't give it out to those who ask for it without intense supervision.

How much time do you spend planning and organizing compared to time spent executing/playing? 
Ugh. When the corporation was in its prime, most of my time I did nothing but handle the macro-scale activities of the corporation. Recruiting, public relations events, organizing activities, and getting feedback from my members on various happenings in the world of EVE. Not to mention interacting with the public! I had very little time on my own to actually play the game, but oddly enough I didn't mind.

How/did you manage to still play the game and have fun while performing a leadership role?
I am and always will be a sandbox world creator. I set the parameters, build the corporation, and populate it with my loyal minions. Molding the corporation and watching it develop was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had on the internet, and I wouldn't trade it for any other experience.


Running the Racing League for several years had its own share of challenges, not unlike that of a CEO. I hope this is what you were looking for!

[Malcolm Khross]

Joining a Corp:

From an RP perspective, joining a corporation requires that the corporate ideas be something that appeals to my character and provides or flows with my character's long time goals. Leadership doesn't need to know everything, but it does need to be involved, absentee leadership isn't fun for anyone. I find that I prefer RP corps that are out in space doing things to match their RP. A solid community within the corp is important as well, if people in the corp can't get along or you're basically just a group of individuals doing your own thing while wearing the same corp logo, I find it a lot less fun.

Leading a corp:

WHG is my first attempt at leadership in a corp and it's been a mixed experience. We got off to a great start because we had an influx of good, solid members with a lot of great talents and ideas to contribute; this is a lot more than most corps could ask for.

What I tried to do is create an environment like the one I wanted; a strong social community within the corp that focused on doing things together as a group and doing things in-space that matched our RP.

However, I've discovered that I do not particularly care for the CEO position. I don't like the interface tedium that comes along with being a CEO and RL seems to get in the way of things when you're trying to organize and lead.

Recruiting challenges are primarily that I've restricted the recruiting to a very small group of people - roleplayers interested in PvP. The biggest challenge is finding people that roleplay and are interested in flying in space and shooting at people while sticking to a strict RP RoE.

The biggest challenge I've faced as a corp leader is that I prefer to be in-space and actively playing the game or roleplaying and spending the majority of my time managing the interface or corp activities while sitting in a station is not nearly as enjoyable for me as it is for some. I suppose it could be said that I'm a good field leader and right-hand man but I'm a terrible manager.

[Lyn Farel]

As a sidenote, I don't really understand CEOs that complain about not finding the time to play the game. I guess it is different for everyone, but in my case I have never had something time consuming enough to make me unable to play the game. Actually, all of this has always been pretty light for me, even when I was co executor of the Aegis Militia (with a lot of CVA Holder stuff to do, and diplomatic stuff...). In my last worp it was even the opposite, members and new players were always asking for me to undock and go FC... And I never had the excuse of "the CEO is busy" to use if I was lazy 

And yet I always find CEOs that complain about that, and well, I think they may well be overwhelmed by that kind of stuff, but I never managed to understand what caused that.

[Milo Caman]

As a sidenote, I don't really understand CEOs that complain about not finding the time to play the game.

Early on, when you have 10-12 new players, and you can't really delegate, it is very easy to become swamped with applications, requests, tutoring, server maintenance (If you run your own site) as well as actually coaxing people into things.

Up until recently (and still to some extent) I've lost motivation to log on, simply because at times, EVE feels like a second job. It gets a lot easier once you can pick some good 'Lieutenants' to help organize and run things.

[Lyn Farel]

Especially on the last corp I created I had to take care of 10++ people at its best, requests, tutoring, server maintenance, and all the things you mention. Never really took a huge amount of time, quite the contrary actually.

When Eve feels like a second job for me is when farming comes into the equation.

[ArtOfLight]

Especially on the last corp I created I had to take care of 10++ people at its best, requests, tutoring, server maintenance, and all the things you mention. Never really took a huge amount of time, quite the contrary actually.

When Eve feels like a second job for me is when farming comes into the equation.

I believe this is a matter of differences in preference and aptitudes, Lyn. Whereas tedious management and administration seems to come easily to you and is enjoyable (on some level), not everyone has the same experience. For some people, tedium becomes very overwhelming and time consuming, administration becomes difficult as it piles up.

That's not to say that you're wrong or anyone else is wrong, it just serves as an example of different people and different preferences.