This is a long post because it starts with a story. If you don't want the story, skip halfway down and just look at the red flags.

Last year, I started playing another game, Sunshine Island. I love digging through the mechanics of game design and how things work, so this was a nice refreshing change of pace where everything was shiny and new again. Sunshine Island is made by the same studio that manages Big Farm, Big Farm Mobile Harvest, and Big Farm Homestead, so many of the elements were the same.

I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t get sucked into Co-op / Guild leadership because it takes a lot of time to do it well. I wanted to be able to just enjoy the game at my own pace without responsibility or anyone depending on me.

At level 12 you can join a Guild. I dragged my heals till level 15, and after applying to a bunch of guilds and hearing nothing back, I hopped into an open guild. 

My brain was already screaming WARNING, DANGER. One level 30+ member as the leader, no co-leader, no officers (deputies), and the highest member was level 20. It was self described as a ‘place to grow’ type of guild, and was high level in tournaments. 

The leader was fairly organized with a list of projects on the message board, and stern warnings that if you didn’t participate in projects, you were gone. I could work with that.

An hour after I joined, a long list of tips appeared on the chat. I realized that this person wanted you to build your farm purely for the Guild, not for growth or how you wanted it. There were strict requirements hidden as tips about what to build. This is not the way I operate, but I was on their turf, so I sort of followed along.  

For context - the key morning project in Sunshine Island is Carrots (Sunflowers - 6 hours) and Wheat (Corn - 1.5 mins) in the morning. Wheat is brutal for people getting ready for work or trying to get kids ready for school.

The next morning, I hopped onto the game to find the leader was warning players by name to put in wheat or they will be booted. I studied the overview and realized you couldn’t tell the difference between Carrot and Wheat contributions, so I messaged the leader and asked how they knew: they scanned every farm every minute to monitor fields. Wow! 

And hold your Coffee (Chili - 2 hours) and Feathers (6 hours) until the projects start. I was losing 4-6 hours holding while waiting on projects. I once harvested my Coffee figuring it would be ready in time for the project and was sternly warned. The leader was intense. I privately messaged other team members to find I was not the only person with this opinion.

I was there to experience the game and realized how important the Guild tournament was to this person, so I figured I could hold and build my farm Player Tournament Week.

On the final day of the Tournament, I got a message form the leader. They were going to be away for an hour and made me an Officer to start 1 project, and one project only.  

I could do that.

The tournament ended with us in first, promoted to the next tier. There were no words of encouragement from the Leader in chat.

The next day I hopped onto the game to find an unthinkable surprise - the Leader wasn’t online. Since the leader did half the heavy lifting on the projects, I started a low level morning project and exchanged some pleasantries with new members after the Guild Tournament ending purge.

I came back online to a slew of messages about how I didn’t hold for projects that morning, had messed up the project levels, couldn’t be trusted and was demoted so I couldn’t screw anything up. I calmly asked why she wasn’t allowing or encouraging her team to build their farms. I explained that holding on player weeks only hurts farms and will weaken the Guild over time because the players aren’t growing.

The response was that I may make a great leader somewhere else, but this was the way she ran her Guild. 

I, of course, was Guild-less.

I joined another Guild, run by a social person that had been burned by multiple leaders. Despite my ‘no’, she made me a co-leader, and then disappeared a week later.  

We had a lot of fun as a team. I focused on building a good culture, had 10 people that could have run the place, had a good structure so people weren't left wondering what to do, and everyone was an Officer.

The problem was that the game was being pumped as an Offer Wall, so I would get these amazing players that would play hard, and then disappear. I didn’t have the time or energy to train a new group every month, so I just rode the month out, and hung up my pitchfork.

During my time as a leader, I chuckled that everything she said came true. I had an amazing vibrant group that was growing together and putting up more tournament points than hers, without pushing anyone or monitoring farms. People played because they loved it (or needed level 30 in 30 days).  Her guild kept going, but I don't think a player lasted past 2 weeks.

I tell you this story because Guilds / Co-ops have great power to hurt people. Most of us in this gaming genre just want a place to belong or a distraction from life. We don’t need a stressful guild or people watching our every move and yelling at us to perform better, trying to control our game for their purposes.

Red Flags: When to Leave a Guild

My first guild experience provided a masterclass in unsustainable, toxic leadership. If your guild raises any of these flags, it may be time to start looking around:

1. Lone Wolf Leader with No Supporting Team

• The Issue: A single leader with no co-leaders or officers screams of a super-controlling personality or an inability to delegate.
• The Result: Leaders burn out and abandon ship when they have to do all the heavy lifting. They also resent those that don't help. Good teams are built with many voices, and many hands make light work. The team can't function without the leader online.

2. "Hold Everything or You're Booted"

• The Issue: Demanding that players hold crucial resources (like Coffee or Feathers) for hours, waiting for a project to start, is extremely short-sighted.
• The Result: This shows the leader is focused only on short-term project completion and has no concern for your personal farm's growth or your long-term experience in the game. The will stunt the success of their guild by hindering player growth.

3. Publicly Calling Out Players

• The Issue: The leader called out players by name in the chat to warn them about missing a 90-second Wheat contribution. Worse, they monitored this by scanning every farm, every minute.
• The Result: The only thing that keeps players playing is engagement and safety. Every time you publicly chastise a person, everyone listening applies that criticism to themselves. Leading with fear doesn't work; players slowly play less and less until they quit.

4. "Build for the Guild," Not the Player

• The Issue: The leader wanted farms built her way to quickly complete the guild's current project list, not for growth.
• The Result: Guilds are made up of players. The guild can only be as good as the sum of its players. If players are happy and feel supported, they will naturally build towards the Guild's goals because they want to help.

5. Not Understanding the Demands of a Project

• The Issue: Threatening to boot someone for not putting in a 90-second crop early in the morning displays a clear disconnect between the leader's vision and how their players function while getting ready for work or school.
• The Result: I saw at least 1 player booted every morning leading to a continual revolving door of day old players.

6. Player Week is Not for the Player

• The Issue: There is a crucial difference between a team goal (e.g., opening a project) and building the Guild during a Player Tournament Week.
• The Result: Player Week is the player's time to shine, build, and grow their own farm. A leader who doesn't encourage this growth signals they only care about what you can do for them, which ultimately weakens the guild over time. Really. leaders should be focused on building their team's farms every single day.

7. Chat Dynamics are Dominated by Orders

• The Issue: If the chat is dominated by the leader barking orders and there is little to no socializing (not even a "good morning"), it probably isn't a safe, supportive place to be.
• The Result: You could tell this was a guild that wasn't engaged and no one felt safe saying anything. In Homestead, someone in my Guild said a silent chat is a dead Guild.

If you are in a Guild or Co-op that raises any of these flags, it may be time to start looking around. Good Guilds are hard to find, but that doesn’t mean you should be stuck in a bad one.  

Leaders

A few of you may have read this and are now mad at me. Is that because you have made some of these mistakes? That is OK. Mistakes are not the issue; it's what you do after you make them. If you want to experience authentic leadership, tell your team you're sorry and right the ship. You may just find they buy in and play a little more.

If you want to start a Guild, know that you won’t succeed unless you genuinely like people and want to see them excel.