During my time in Too Cute To Be Real, the NL community slowly but surely grew and with that the forum community also grew. Having more time on my hands than before, I actively engaged into discussions regarding the game and the community. Making more friends along the way, at one point I was encouraged to apply to become a staff member for the NL community. I had never thought I would get the opportunity to help out in an online game, and I could never imagine what it was like to witness a game behind the scenes.

This brings us to the second period in my Transformice experience. The best thing of being a member of staff is that you actually can make a difference. I was given the powers to direct the community and try to make it a fun place for all. At the time, the NL community was infested with hate speech and constant fighting (which totally doesn’t happen in any other community, cough). I am proud to say that slowly but surely the community changed. Troublemakers were taken care of, and the NL community became an example of what a community could be with a fully functioning moderation team. Of course I didn’t do this all by myself. I enjoyed working together with people like Pkj, Minniemoussy, Gogoninja, Jeroenm and Xaemus to make Transformice a fun game to play. During this time, I had always been a member of Too Cute To Be Real. However, an incident lead the entire NL moderation team to resign from its position, and together with this transition I moved to the tribe Crossing Borders. Being in the same tribe for so long, I had to adjust to this new tribe. Again, I got to know more (Dutch) players, but it didn’t feel the same as Too Cute To Be Real. Slowly I realized Too Cute To Be Real was my family, which made me decide to go back where I belonged.

After we had collectively resigned from our staff positions, I remained active and committed to the NL community. I felt like I could still contribute to the community like I did before, which made me apply to be a member of staff once again. Thankfully I was accepted back into the staff team, and together with Pkj, Jeroenm and Lemodile we rebuilt the staff team to what it is today. As I got more accustomed to being a moderator, I took on more responsibilities and became more involved with the organization behind the scenes, as the staff team kept growing as new communities were opened. A personal highlight in this was the organization of a community-wide Christmas event, in which staff members from several communities worked together to bring a unique Christmas event to as many communities as possible. At the same time, being a member of staff started to take more and more of my time. As much as I enjoyed working with the team and solving problems, I realized that more often than not it was impossible to overcome certain problems. It started to become more and more of a burden to log in, having to face all these unsolvable problems. Ultimately I had decided for myself to resign from all staff positions. As much as I liked helping the game as a staff member, resigning helped me find new joy in playing the game in its simplest form.