Talkin’ about Recruitment (..for Theme Week)

[DarkSpyro 939]

It’s finally theme week! It’s been a long time since I’ve written any Media Spots, but I’ll do my best to keep it related to Recruitment. Here’s some ideas that could hopefully not only give us more members, but maybe give them even more of a reason to stay engaged.

 

Gaining new members is always great, but sometimes this hobby isn’t for everyone. We can’t really do much about that, but that’s okay! Sim leagues are very niche, and most members of our community are here for many different reasons. 

 

A bunch of people who sign up, have almost no idea what a sim league like this even is. The ability to expressive creativity or even have an imagination here, is a core reason why they stayed. This is the case from my personal experience since I joined the league, and maybe some of you can relate to that while others are here for totally different reasons. No matter what reasons we have for being here, we all accept (for the most part) each other for enjoying the league in our own ways. 

 

I joined the league just after the S68 trade deadline, not long after the massive boom of First Gens we got in S66. There was a fairly popular YouTuber who was a part of our community and he promoted the VHL on a few of his videos. This resulted in a couple hundred sign ups, the likes of which the league has never seen again. Sadly he was already on the way out the door by the time it was S70, and was losing activity very quickly only after 2 and a half seasons. Why did someone who was willing to promote our community for free to a massive audience, suddenly leave after such a short time? 

I hate to break it to you but if you still need this bubble bursted, then you need to go look in the mirror and do some self-reflecting. He left for the same reasons most people end up leaving: League bias. This is probably the biggest culprit to killing members engagement and results in a lot of First Gens leaving with a sour taste. Typically this is usually after being fucked from either an award ceremony, or other members acting stuck up towards them. 

 

Not everyone leaves for those reasons, like I said earlier “some people just don’t like the hobby itself” which is understandable. Losing members after a couple seasons is the absolute worst and 9/10 times could have been avoided. Not everyone is going to get along, but there have been times that I’ve seen cliques around here get away with shit that they shouldn’t even be doing. We can’t just ban everyone and I don’t think changing the “old guard” around would do much either, but I believe that there are issues that should be addressed to make this a more welcoming and fair community for anyone and everyone who joins. 

 

To end this media spot, I’m just gunna clarify that I’m not saying the community is super toxic or one-sided.. but there are some minor tweaks that can be made with the aforementioned problems. I know for a fact it would have a positive impact on the league’s retention, instead of just advertising more and being left with the exact same issues that we presently face.

 

(560 words)