Prerequisite checklist:
- Have you been a regular player on MunchyMC for at least one month?: Yes, I have been playing on MunchyMC since last year (mostly Survival and Event about once a week), and I am a regular player (mostly Game Maker) since May 2024.
- Do you have Discord downloaded and are competent with the software?: Yes. I have used Discord regularly since 2017 and I am competent with owner/moderation tools.
Application
IGN: LorianIsNotReal
Age: 28
Timezone: EST (UTC−05:00) / EDT (UTC−04:00)
Languages spoken: Portuguese (native), English, and I can understand Spanish pretty well. I can also understand written Italian and French to a basic level, and some basic written Swedish as well.
Server(s) you are interested in moderating: Game Maker
How active can you be per week? I don’t think I have missed a single day of Game Maker since I was added to the whitelist back in April (except for times when the server was closed). I am on the server daily, usually from 6PM to 3-4AM EDT/EST (I believe I currently spend about 50-70 hours on the server a week). Those hours will change soon, as classes return with the end of Summer break, but I will still spend around 3 hours a day on the server during weekdays, and more time on weekends. Realistically, I expect to be active for a minimum of 15 hours a week, but probably closer to 20-30 hours on average.
A few days/weeks where I will be less active due to classes/work are expected once in a while. It is possible I will have to miss an entire week due to traveling for work about once or twice a year, or decrease my hours on the server for a few days due to school/work commitments (finals week for example). Coincidentally, next week will be one of those weeks, as my PhD Qualifying Exam will happen on August 16th, which will decrease my activity on the server for the next few days and I will possibly miss a couple of days for the first time since I joined Game Maker, but I will be back to full activity on August 17th.
Do you have any punishments on our network? If so, please describe the steps you have taken to improve as a community member since your punishments: No, I do not have any punishments.
Have you applied for a role on Munchy before? If so, please explain the steps you have taken to improve as an applicant since your last application: I have not applied for a role on Munchy before.
What do you think your reputation is like within the community? I believe I have a positive reputation within the community, and I am friends with many of the regular players. I have helped a lot of people with coding their games/maps when they were starting out through the Minecraft chat/whispers and Discord/DMs, especially in the early days of the server as most people were still very unfamiliar with how everything works. While I may not be the most known of the Game Maker regulars, I believe people see me as someone friendly who they can count on for help.
Why are you interested in the role and what motivated you to apply? While I don’t have any experience with helping in Minecraft servers, I believe some of my life/work skills are transferable into good qualities for a Helper. I have teacher training, many hours of in-person and online tutoring experience, and have taught three intro level Physics laboratory sections (~60 college students in total) at the University where I am doing my PhD. I have always made an effort to pay close attention to my students’ progress, and I am good at spotting those who need help, confirmed by the many students who come up to me after their last lecture/lab of a semester to thank me for actually caring if they were learning and for helping them during the semester. I believe that looking our for those who could need help but are not reaching out to anyone about it, and figuring out the best way to be approachable to them and guide them, is a very effective way to help others.
And how does all of that relate to Game Maker? People can feel isolated or unable to reach out for many reasons. Maybe they don’t want to bother anyone by asking questions, especially if they don’t know anybody as that could feel intimidating. Maybe, they’re so confused they wouldn’t even know exactly what to ask. I’ve seen this last one a lot teaching Physics, and I expect a similar situation in Game Maker as most players are not familiar with programming. Being there since the server was still whitelist only, I have seen Game Maker’s player base grow from a small tight-knit community of testers, where I would constantly be one of about 3-5 people on, to what is currently one of the most popular servers in MunchyMC. For much of the past two months, the Game Maker player base was small enough that it was easy for newcomers to integrate with the existing community. Now, with so many people on, I have been seeing quieter players having some trouble integrating, which also means they are not naturally learning from other players, and learning from other, more experienced players is a big part of the Game Maker experience for many. As someone who in the past would have felt overwhelmed joining a big community like this, and would have probably felt intimidated talking to “popular” players (and with that I just mean the very social/active in chat ones) if I had a question or if I needed help with learning how anything in the server works, I would appreciate if I had someone looking out for people like me.
All of that was enough motivation for me to apply, but there is another thing I want to mention: Many of the struggles of joining a big community are intensified when your first language is not English. I am Brazilian and my first language is Portuguese, so I have an extra motivation of wanting to help Game Maker’s international non-English speaking community, as someone who is part of it. Having helpers/staff that can relate to this experience is essential at this moment when so many new players are joining, not only to help players, but also to make sure Game Maker/Munchy rules are being followed to make the environment safe for everybody.
Out of 10 (with 10 being very knowledgeable), how would you rate your knowledge on moderating a community? 6/10. The closest experience I have to moderating a gaming community happened many years ago, when I owned a moderately popular Club Penguin blog/website which, at its peak, reached over 1 million monthly visits. During the ~2.5 years the blog existed, I had to moderate the comments and live chat.
Most recently, I am a moderator of a small discord server for Game Maker players, and was also mod of an academic community of about ~130 members for a few months last year. That is the extent of my experience with moderating an online community. I do believe that, from my current and past jobs, I have at least moderate experience dealing with people and enforcing rules, but I have never had the chance to moderate an online community before.
Out of 10 (with 10 being very knowledgeable), what would you rate your knowledge on MunchyMC’s GameMaker? 10/10. I believe I know everything (that is accessible for me to know as non-staff) about the server currently. I know how to use all existing features, and always learn how to use every new feature very soon after it’s released. Some of the maps I coded or was a main coder on include Rainbow Road, Andy’s Room Hide & Seek, Red Rover (the Brazilian one), and THE SPACE RACE (Teaser Trailer). Game Maker “coding” is usually very straightforward to me but, even when it isn’t, I can always figure it out as I have a lot of experience with finding problems in code (years of MATLAB/Python applied to scientific research), so I believe my knowledge will remain 10/10 as new features are added.
I am currently planning out a series of tutorials (in video format) to help Game Maker players learn more about how functions/properties/regions/etc work. I believe this would give more people confidence that coding a more complex map is not something out of their reach, and even if they still have questions, they’ll now have a better idea of what they don’t understand.
Thank you for reading my application!