Kings of Chaos

I wonder what readers expect to find in this essay. That’s actually often part of the fun of writing for me, because I enjoy weaving and twisting things around. Kings of Chaos—who would know this game?

First, let me tell you a little about myself. My attention span averages two years. That means that every two years I want to do something new, because the old stuff bores me and I’m curious about other things. At work, this meant that I had a new job about every two years. And if my job didn’t change, I made sure I had something else to put my energy into.

I enjoy building, setting things up, and making things better. Maintenance is not what I aspire to; it bores me. I prefer to build something and hand it over to someone who enjoys managing. I love creativity and building something together. Teamwork is great fun because I enjoy building something with others. I’m also curious about other people.

Who is that other person and what are they good at? What is going on in that other person’s mind and what motivates them? Because I am intuitive, I can often say something that is useful to someone else – personally. I quickly took on leadership and coaching roles. I also like to take the lead because I have a vision and want things to be done right. Everyone can participate, but I am not democratic.

As a manager, I am open to everyone’s opinion, but I decide what happens. In my experience, employees really appreciate this, because they have a say but also clarity. I am also very direct—if someone acts stupidly, I let them know. If someone doesn’t want to learn, they will have a very hard time with me. I don’t allow one person to ruin it for the group.

Employee satisfaction in my team was always excellent. They knew what they had in me as a manager. A friendly relationship but also clarity. Open communication and transparent decision-making. Saying yes also means doing yes. No beating around the bush and no scheming, not from me and not from others. My order of priority: first the employees, then the customers, and only then the director.

Kings of Chaos

Kings of Chaos (KoC) is a browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). It is an online computer game in which the player must reach the top with his own built-up army. The game was released in 2003, and that’s when I started playing it. I felt like trying something new, and I thought it would be fun to build something in a virtual world.

I won’t give a full explanation of the game, but basically, you can regularly add new army units by clicking, and you can attack other armies with your army to grow bigger and climb higher in the rankings. When you find other people willing to serve under your army, you grow faster as a leader. You can then attack other armies and leaders together.

So you achieve a high ranking by being active every day and getting lots of people under your leadership. I found that challenging, because at that time KoC was being played by 10 million users worldwide. I quickly formed my own alliance, gathered fellow players around me, found a programmer for my own website with tools, and Stormsky’s Alliance was a fact.

The alliance grew rapidly, and I made many friends online and persuaded other leaders to join me. Our own forum was very popular, and in two years we grew to number 17 in the world. I had given many people roles and actually built a whole team of friends who had a lot of fun together. When our website was hacked in 2005, I quit; two years had passed

The best memories of that time were the friendships and the people who told me they had learned from teamwork. At the time, our alliance had over 2,000 active users from 48 different countries. I thought that was incredibly cool, and it showed that culture determines everything. Working together to achieve something has everything to do with culture. That’s why I’m writing about it here.

Culture

Whether we are talking about a country, a sports team, a company, or GlobalSouth.co, the degree of genuine togetherness depends entirely on a shared culture. We are only one when we speak the same language, literally and figuratively. When we trust the same leader and that leader is there for us. We are one and at the same time we are unique. We participate voluntarily because we believe and are respected.

We grow and we are given the time to grow. Everyone has a path to follow. We are challenged, but we are also given responsibility. We hold each other accountable, but we know that we ourselves have things to learn. A leader is not always right and will also have to learn from mistakes. We enjoy our own journey of discovery and find satisfaction in our shared journey.

Do you feel connected here—with us? How does that feel? How would you like it to feel? How do you participate? Reading. Passing on. Responding. Interacting. Feeling. The latter is an exchange of energy—the invisible bond that exists between like-minded people and friends. We are passers-by, but we can also be friends. We have something in common, namely a better world.

We are developing ourselves, with knowledge, insights, and personally. But we are also building that better world. We need that world, and that world needs us. There is much to do. This is culture. A team that grows organically. We can be aware of this because it is all about awareness. We are all leaders in a sense—of our own lives as a whole.

Many people feel that they are alone in their vision, because few in their environment have come that far. This is often because there is too little substantive and in-depth discussion about the things that really matter. But here we are together, yet not yet the team we can be. We can be much more powerful. Together. Especially in feeling – something we can all develop further.

Nico Cost