I’ve been playing a game on my iPad for almost two years. Those who know me are already well aware that I’m a geek, and although I don’t have the constitution to play God of War or Mortal Kombat, I can get into slower paced games that involve teamwork, building, and collecting. In this case, I play The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth.

As part of the growth of the game, I built a city and joined an alliance. Alliances are important, because when you are part of an alliance, you can share resources that are necessary to build cities and train soldiers, you work together to defend each other or attack enemies, and you can send your resources and gold over to another ally if another player is coming to attack you. Aside from that, members of an alliance often talk, strategize, and enjoy a certain level of camaraderie and friendship. In my case, I have belonged to several alliances. In each case, I quickly moved up the ranks to serve in an Officer role, and in some cases, Vice Regent and Regent, which are the top leadership positions available in an alliance. I have always attributed this to my tendency to teach and encourage. In each case, my alliance merged with another alliance to form a bigger, more powerful, more competitive alliance, where I learned more advanced game techniques, made more friends, and rose up through the ranks again.

A few months ago, many of the members of my alliance felt that we had stopped growing, and were carrying a lot of players who really were not participating and contributing. We had grown big enough to be one of the top 15 alliances on our “world.” (If this is going over your head because you aren’t a gamer, top 15 is pretty good.) And then, the worlds merged. What this means is that the game company had too many bogged down servers, so they set up new servers and combined all of the active players on several “worlds” together. This completely changed the game dynamics. Instead of being top 15, we were now ranked around 35. It’s a lot harder to be competitive at that level. So, the leadership team voted for an alliance merge. A suitable alliance was found, and we moved.

Our new alliance, with our help, moved up to top 15 again. But the level of play had changed. We needed to grow bigger, play more, and play differently. For the most part, this was good. We were stretched to accomplish more. We learned how to properly gear up our heroes, and how to collect tokens, gems, and more resources. We gained new friends.

And then it fell apart. Not for everybody, but for some. As we had experienced in our original alliance, higher level players became resentful of lower level players, accusing them of not participating enough while they gave their all. Swearing, bickering, and nastiness ensued, and eventually bullying. (This latter behavior is where our alliances differed. My original alliance discussed, strategized, encouraged.) All this happened right when I was up for a leadership position. Vice Regent was within my grasp; I had enough friends, and I was pretty sure I had enough votes. It could have been a pretty sweet deal.

But, I will always choose people over the prizes. Ultimately, the game stopped being fun. I realized that I was in it for the camaraderie and the honestly earned accomplishments. I told the leadership team that I planned to leave, and that it was because of the bullying. The bullies bullied me more. A couple of officers stood up, but mostly, I could see that change was unlikely. I left to return to the shell of my previous alliance. My farewell letter was friendly, citing “a difference in leadership style preference” as the reason.

So far, seven of my original alliance have moved back with me. Over the next 24 hours, I expect that I’ll probably see more friends coming back home. A few had already preceded me; those with even less tolerance for lack of respect than I have. I feel like the prodigal child, and am hoping that we are welcomed back. But this is a good group, and I expect we will be.

This is a long post, but the actual activity has taken up a large chunk of my last 48 hours. I think it’s worth recording and remembering. In the long run, it’s just a game… no cash prizes even. As for the players, I know many of them by first name, and I have learned details about their lives, their families, their struggles and accomplishments. And I care. Real life takes precedence.

Ultimately, it’s about what is really important. For some, it’s winning. And that’s okay – those people are in the other alliance, and I sincerely hope they are happy. But for those who value people over prizes, and who believe that respect and encouragement will take you further than threats and complaints, welcome home.

You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
The ends justify the means.