It has been a few weeks since the last blog post, so lot’s of crew matters to report on!

First of all, an extremely warm welcome to all the new crew members: sush1, BeardSB, roofstone, foxiestahri, and jeffrey895! It’s very nice having you all on board, and each of you has proven to be a real credit to the crew!! We have two more very recent members, katsoekske and aligator42731: I hope to see you engaging with the crew very soon as well.

As we are growing, more and more languages are spoken in the crew – Norwegian, German, Dutch, French, just to mention a few. With such international presence, a reoccurring issue on discord is that not everybody can express themselves very well in English. I don’t think we can do very much about this except to be aware of it, perhaps to speak slower, maybe to switch to another language temporarily if there is a better common choice of language in the current group, or simply to have someone translate (at the expense of immediacy). Above all, be not shy to speak a language badly: the best way to learn a language is to use it. I hope to be working on my Turkish very soon.

A second afterthought on our growth of the last few weeks: we have grown quite a bit, and it certainly exceeded my expectations! Many thanks to Nopitch, Kassz, and HonkiPonkiTorino in particular for their help with recruitment (I apologize if I am missing someone, do leave a comment below in that case!). Especially pleasing is that we manage to integrate new members very well. We must remain careful however to keep focusing on quality and therefore we should be careful not to grow too much too quickly. It’s not that we have to pause recruiting activities, but we’re doing clearly enough already. Keep our recruitment motto in mind: “Good recruiting is like good sex: talk about it, and take your time.” Please make sure to read our recruitment guidelines before approaching a player. This said, everybody has done so far a splendid job, and I really appreciate every single effort!

On crew activities, what has been going on?

Some of us have been trying the first person heist challenge. It’s really great fun, and I recommend everyone to try it out! It’s completely different from normal gameplay,way more immersive, besides being also a bit more difficult. Some in the crew have also continued working on their Elite challenges. Congratulations to everyone who got their new Elite shirt! We will keep helping everyone who wants it but doesn’t have it yet.

On another note, the previous crew party did not go ahead despite the doodle; perhaps people are tired of them and want to do something else? HonkiPonkiTorino has suggested that we set up some crew playlists. It can be quite fun to have playlists with a large number of people, and maybe we can plan slightly more focused group activities in this way. If you have any thoughts on this, leave a comment below or discuss it on the forums!

Finally, a healthy discussion about the crew logo was initiated by 83427 on our forums, with ideas being put forward by 83427, sush1, HonkiPonkiTorino, and BeardSB. Do you have a good feeling for the visual arts? Or do you want to scratch that creative itch? Please chime in!

As usual, let’s end this post with a few crew pictures. Enjoy!