[PATV] Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 11: Community Management

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Posts

  • teknoarcanistteknoarcanist Registered User regular
    CM of the decade has to go to Jessica Merizan of Bioware, who held the front lines when the ME3 ending controversy hit, and was so pleasant, attentive, and on-the-ball with the literally THOUSANDS of tweets rolling in every hour, you'd think she had to be some kind of purpose-built AI.

  • TheHentaiChristTheHentaiChrist Registered User regular
    edited November 2013
    This *so* hard. One thing that didn't get mentioned was that, with smaller games, community managers are frequently volunteers from the community. I can't tell you how many times I've had a complaint that I didn't feel was handled properly and, when I bring it up the inevitable that the first response is 'we're volunteers! it's not like we get paid!'. Not getting paid isn't an excuse for a lack of professionalism. People working at soup kitchens don't get to make bitchy remarks at their patrons, just because they aren't getting paid to do it. But, so often in these smaller settings, this is the pervasive attitude which slides, almost without exception, into the staff abusing their own rule-set. In online gaming, rules aren't rules. They're guidelines and must be observed, by the user and the staff, as to intent. A simple example is that it's phenomenally easy to write something that's sexually explicit, without being overtly vulgar. Similarly, it's easy for staff to interpret the rule-set, such to include a particular players behavior, actively ignoring the intent of the rules or the player.

    TheHentaiChrist on
  • MauzelMauzel Registered User new member
    Looking to the recent Rome II TW game, I feel as if the only group that actually did a decent job in the company are the community managers, with the events and such... and every other group are pretty much targeted by lynch mobs given the state of the game's release.

  • QuQuasarQuQuasar Overlord Brisbane, AustraliaRegistered User new member
    I'm learning from experience as dev lead on Species ALRE that Community Management is the hardest part of making a game. Designing, programming, arting... these are easy. There are logical answers to be had in these fields: what looks best, what's most efficient or easiest, even just "what I personally prefer" is a valid, rational answer to the questions in these fields.

    But dealing with people? Always being positive, carefully choosing your words, replying to as many threads as you can? So much more complicated, so much more time consuming, and soooo much more exhausting. There's no way to know if you're dealing with a situation or a person in the right way and there's always the lingering doubt that you're doing it in the worst way possible.

    But sometimes, you take a step backward and take a good hard look at the community supporting you, and realise... "hey, I have this entire community of INCREDIBLE people, all of who actually genuinely *care* about something I'm making"...

    Yeah. No matter how you measure it, that sort of realisation makes all of it worthwhile. :)

  • SpeculaSpecula Registered User regular
    edited November 2013
    Seriously, the only part of this video I agree with is how easy it is to screw community management up. I've lost count of the number of games and communities I've left because management of said community is one-sided, opaque, bias and generally done in the sloppiest, 'easiest to fix' way. Any attempt to question their decisions is usually met with a 'we are the law' attitude and an instant ban.

    That includes when a large group of people single someone out and get stuck into them, most community managers will just ban the person being singled out because it means less work for them, less feathers ruffled, less people booted out of the game and less potential customers lost, regardless of the fact the group were using racial, sexual, gender or other slurs repeatedly. It's pathetic.

    Specula on
  • MrJadeMrJade Registered User new member
    I can say that the Rome II forums are a great example of community management gone wrong. The moderators are often arbitrary in what they do, and offer no explanations. Worse still are the Creative Assembly employees, who average less than a post per day on the forums, yet their full time job is to "manage the community". Even if you add in the rest of the social-media world, like the Facebooks groups, and the Twitter handles, and the Reddit AMAs, they still only average about 1 post a day! And this is a full time job? Where do I sign up for a single post/tweet a day and get paid?

  • SinvoidSinvoid Registered User new member
    Just gonna say i've finally caught up to the latest episode of Extra Credits. This just took 1 1/2 weeks but was so worth it. As for this community management episode, i agree with many parts except for where Community Management is paid less than QA. In Fact what i'm accustomed to CM seems to be paid well above QA. I'm happy they are paid well i'm just surprised to hear it is common for them to be paid less. I've also seen them work a lot with QA when it comes to interacting with the community.

  • LordfireiceLordfireice Registered User new member
    dude u got to send this shit to some big companies so they can see the ideas you guys got (just dont think they will give u credit 4 it)

  • RyDiggsRyDiggs Registered User new member
    edited November 2013
    As an Ex Community Manager, I would have to agree with this all the way through.

    Ultimately, I found my job as the Community Manager was to do one thing... over and over and in new and creative ways:

    Manage player expectations.


    Players who LOVE your game and players who HATE your game need the same care and attention and most of all...

    1. To know they are being heard.
    2. To have their expectations managed.

    That's the job, and it's NOT easy and it NEVER ends and you can ALWAYS do better.

    And it is SEVERELY under appreciated.


    My new hire tests were:

    "The game just had a catastrophic fail where players lost items. We don't have information on the error yet, what steps / messaging would you create?


    Describe a time when you turned a Zero into a Hero.

    A highly valued (monetized player) is asking for preferential treatment (free items, access to limited quantity items, individual sale prices). What is your process, and how would you respond?

    Describe a time when you handled a major crisis and what did you learn.

    Describe a successful social/community event you managed.

    Describe your ideal event if resources were no object.

    Show a forum or company Terms of Service that you like and describe why.

    Describe a time you were able to successfully convey customer feedback into a positive game feature/bug fix/game improvement."




    Almost all of these were soft skill questions, as we could teach SQL, CSS, HTML or any other hard skills to Community Managers as necessary for their roles. Hard skills were mostly tie breakers among those who display competency in the soft skills.

    It's not uncommon at all for Community Managers to come from or be blended with Support Managers, as they both require much of the same soft communication / organization skills and a very 'Player Centric' perspective.

    Sadly, I'll agree, Community Managers are not as recognized as they could/should be in the game development cycles in many companies.

    They are seen as an after thought, and not necessarily as a development resource.

    Most often this is because of the VERY new phase of Community Managers as a whole in this and other industries.

    The concept of PAYING a super fan to be a liaison between players and developers NOT in the Support feedback cycle is relatively new.

    The crucible of social media metrics and game satisfactions will boil this position and it's contributions down to a quantifiable metric soon enough I think. THEN more standards will be applied to the discipline.

    Food for thought from the font ranks

    ~RyDiggs

    RyDiggs on
  • RatherDashingRatherDashing Registered User regular
    If I were hiring CMs, I'd be much harsher. I'd ensure they could describe a time when they turned a Zero into a Hero in the form of a song.

  • twistedmetalheadtwistedmetalhead Registered User new member
    I think that this is one of the cases where, if you do your job right, it'll look like you didn't do anything at all. For example, banning players left and right sucks the freedom out of the game, but letting anarchy reign, creates a hostile environment. CMs have to walk a fine line to make sure everybody gets the best possible experience from the game.

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