OverModerated: The Virtues As Applied to Community Management
Over at OverModerated (a blog dealing exclusively with community management issues in online games), there’s this nifty article entitled The Virtues As Applied to Community Management. Overall, a solid overview of key lessons learned presented in the pithy bulleted way that gets a blog links. 🙂
But there’s a weird undercurrent in there that I can only term developer resentment!
The industry forums and blogs are filled with drive-by developer posts from aloof luminaries more concerned with high-level vision than they are with the day-to-day concerns of their gamers.
Hmm, is GreyPawn talking about here? 😉
unlike the developer vocations of Production, Art, Design, Programming and QA, Community Management is never actually “finished”
It’s not finished for anyone — that pesky “live service” thing keeps getting in the way.
There’s also a consistent reference to “your developers” as if the dev team were a sort of unruly pet that you have to keep happy. Right at the end, though, it does become “your fellow developers.”
Mind you, every single piece of advice in the article is advice that ought ot be followed by everyone on the team — not just the community manager. Everyone should be playing the game; everyone should be upfront and honest; everyone should think about how they want to be treated as a gamer; everyone should have integrity, empathy for communities, and so on. In fact, many problems can arise by compartmentalizing all this to be solely the job of the community folks — that’s a sure way to earn the resentment honestly.
PS, surely any article giving credit to pioneers in community relations at UO must give a nod to LadyMOI and Calandryll?
11 Responses to “OverModerated: The Virtues As Applied to Community Management”
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One thing that article doesn’t touch on is Community Managers being tied into a games decision makers. Both in the video game world and in other business, often the PR/Community folks are looked at as almost a seperate entity instead of a vital member of the larger team.
If you go out there and find what you think is the best PR/CM department in your industry, I guarantee the head of that department is constantly bumping elbows with the companies decision makers and not just an afterthought.
This is vital for two big reasons.
First, they are in the position to bring potential issues to the eyes of those making the final decision before it blows up in their face. There are a ton of decisions that look great on paper, but are PR nightmares and not worth attempting. (The NGE in general, and the decision to release an expansion pack the day before announcing the drastic altering of your game are two good examples).
Second, they allow the PR/CM contact to have first hand knowledge of what is going on so they can speak truthfully to the community. If you know what is going in behind closed doors, you are better positioned to never lie outright to your community.
There is no quicker way for your community to lose faith in your company and your product than the feeling they’ve been lied to. And IMO a person charged with being a liason between the company an its customers can’t have “sorry I didnt know about that” in its bag of excuses.
This might seem like common sense, but sadly it isn’t always.
I couldn’t agree more. At SOE, I pushed for the CMs being one of the leads on the team, as opposed to being a mouthpiece.
[…] Community Management originated well before Ultima Online, but didn�t quite emerge until the first few MMOs arrived on the scene and began to necessitate it. The need for ongoing attention paid to the burgeoning communities of subscription-paying inhabitants of these persistent worlds is still relatively new, and has gradually been extending out to encompass games with multiplayer aspects (RTS and FPSs). Ultima Online was the first big one however, and being my first experience with MMO communities, it shaped much of how I view community management and the challenges that go along with it. From Leilo to Sannio to Nomad, UO has had its fair share of CM pioneers. In that light, I thought it�d be nifty to assemble a collection of guide points for CMing, based around the old Virtues of Ultima lore. So, in no particular order, I give you the Virtues as Applied to Community Management- Thanks to Raph for the link! […]
hehe.
I kind of liked the article, it seemed like it was very sympathetic towards gamers.
Yea they might want to rethink that statement.
Well I will say, its better than thinking the fanbase is the unruly pet that needs to be kept happy =)
World of Warcraft is a wonder of community management. There game might not be that innovative, but there CM’s do amazing feats.
6 million players or whatever, its a big community to manage.
I most certainly agree with Mnemon, and would add another three vital reasons why the CM staff need to be one of the team leads.
Firstly, it is now fairly common for non-CM staff to have direct interaction with the customers. It’s all too easy when making a post on a forum to say things that you shouldn’t have. I was lucky enough to witness a certain art team member’s original rather personal reply in a thread, which they later edited out, but this is far more important in terms of game development. I’m sure we’ve all known the eager sort of developer who evangelises over their latest idea but rarely gets it implimented. Having the CM as a lead helps to create the idea that CM is vitial, and everyone should think before they type. Although being a lead may not given them power over others, it still helps to foster an atmosphere of allowing the CM person to be in charge of managing the community.
Secondly, somewhere down the line there will be a need for marketing. Traditionally, from what I am aware of, this is often delt with by an external marketing team. However with development costs rising and consumer expectations of community involvement increasing, an early focus on marketing is doubtless becoming more and more important. If you look at other sectors, there are ample examples of products designed to sell first and perform well second (IPOD, for example). With respect to the modern gaming market, community involvement is becoming more and more important, and the marketing should be made to excite the community further.
Ok, I’ll be honest. I don’t have enough real industry experience to say what I’m trying to say with the above. But I’m certain the theory holds. An integrated production model is best, and community relations is growing in it’s importance to marketing.
And thirdly, the best CM people are often not made of the same stuff as the developers. What an experienced (aloof? :P) developer may take as obvious, a CM person may consider very strange. The closer you bring them to the decision making process, the more they come to understand the decisions that are being made, and so the better able they become to answer community queries.
The comment with respect to “aloof devs” and “day-to-day concerns” did make me snort, I’ll be frank. I used to moderate the “ideas den” back over on a certain MMO’s now-official forums, and thanks to that I know that your average gamer has issues with considering the game-worthiness of their concerns. This is made worse by the fact that management from within a sub-community often results in skewed messages.
Whilst the author intended for the message to be for day-to-day concerns to be raised and fixed, that isn’t what the community itself needs, but rather purely wants. I’ve addressed this before on forums, where people have cried that because their thread didn’t get a dev reply, it obviously was not read. Posters may start by demanding action, but they are almost always placated by just an answer. It’s basic psycology, really, that’s become twisted by the medium. The only way to know you’ve been heard online is to get a reply. The message here should not be to automatically seek redress for the day-to-day concerns, but to always respond to them in an open and honest manner.
The actons of the community are further made difficult by the average gamer’s poor model of the development process. To a gamer (or in a small company), the developer simply adds stuff and that is that. Educating the players on the development process should be another core part of CM, as part of the openness and honesty.
Developers, of course are not without fault. I am absolutely certain that the mental game model most MMORPG developers have is smaller, more co-operative and more lacking in ‘hardcore’ than that you find in most MMORPGS. I would love for Nick Yee to be able to do a comparitive study of the models of development and play held by players and delevopers. I have a feeling that it would be quite insightful.
I found the post smarmy, condescending, and MMORPEGy. It reminded me of the infamous Tigger of The Sims Online, squeezed between angry clamouring gamerz and indifferent and silent game devs. Ultimately, I think she moved to SWG where I believe she was eaten alive there, too — CMs always are.
The CM is a girl’s job. It’s the lowest, dirtiest, most disliked job on the totem pole in games, and devs *always* feel superior to it. The idea that there are just drive-by devs concerned with high-level vision misses all the cynical guffaws of the devs in the back room who scorn the bling-fascinated consumers out in front saying “oooo shiny” about stuff the devs know doesn’t work or will break in the next patch.
And speaking of patches, it’s the devs’ work that is never done because they are the ones constantly putting out these things called 1.2, 1.21, 1.21(10) — it’s like they are endlessly writing Bible verses and never getting to the birth of Jesus, let along the Second Coming. This thing has always begat that thing.
Re: “On the flip side, if a member of your community is actively harming it with sour commentary, doomsayer-style prophecies or outright exploitation, don’t hesitate to marginalize that community member.
See, this is why this is so MMORPGy and not about more mature social communities. Prophets of doom may well be telling the truth. Games and worlds do die. Some people are just early in forecasting it. And games and worlds take wrong directions, and naysayers are right to say their nays. How are the game gods going to be called to account if the expression of doomsayers is suppressed and even becomes a TOS offense.
What’s awful about this statement is that it sees no difference between robust critical discussion and exploitation. And that’s just plain wrong. Speech should never be equated or even on a scale with property damage and loss of business.
If there are groups of customers who are negative, let them talk. If they’re wrong, they can’t possibly get a following…right? Sometimes they might be wrong about this or that technical issue, but their perceptions and expectations still count and should still be heeded.
No, I don’t like the game school of community management, it’s retarted. The very fact that they put the word “management” in the concept lets us know who they view as boss — themselves — and how they treat us — not even as customers to be respecetd but as server loads to be “managed”.
Very good point about the “management” aspect of their title. They should really be something like “Community Relations Representative.”
IMO, generally speaking, developers also shouldn’t be talking to customers in any kind of public, official forum. It will usually be a recipe for disaster, as you have people not trained to deal with the masses jumping feet first into the fire.
I work at a utility, and I know the last thing we’d ever want is one of our System Engineers showing up at a town meeting to answer questions from pissed off customers. Its like throwing gasoline on a fire.
Another thing that sometimes goes overlooked is moderating forums. Personally I think a lot of companies are WAY too quick with the ban/censor/edit stick. Certainly in some situations its justified, but if it gets out of control it hurts the overall image of the game and the company producing it. There is no quicker way to have your gamers lose faith in you than to think you’re hiding something. No matter how crazy a statement might be, having it deleted or censored lends credibility to the original post – and many will think they were onto something the developers don’t want people to see.
Dialogue goes both ways. And as nobody crosses the line, discussion should be allowed to go back and forth (even if the devs don’t particularly like the point).
Now where that line is would be a topic for another discussion 😉
With respect to the title, there’s an aspect of conflict between the role of the job, and the impression the title gives. Community management is the actual role being performed, but the name can sound insensitive. Community relations representative is actually more commonly used, but it implies a far lower status than such a person may deserve, and customers habitually assume that unless the title is grand, they are talking to someone without any power.
Whilst from a purely procedural point of view, I agree that developers (who are usually not trained in community relations) should be kept away from direct communications with the community, I also know this to be potentially dangerous. Studies on helpdesk management have shown that users deeply appreciate an intimate support environment, being able to deal with only a few people, get to know them, and know that said person is dealing with their issue. On the other hand, the same survey showed that the more distant and disconected you made the help, the worse the helpdesk was rated. That’s entirely aside from the fact that it is becoming simply expected to have whole-team community involvement within the development of virtual worlds.
Business roles are changing throughout the entire information technology sector. I have a friend who works for a major teleco, and she tells me that they are finding that they can no longer seperate those who deal with clients and those who impliment solutions. The entire team is having to develop the ability to interact both with clients and with the technical tools. She has said that they simply would not employ someone now who could not perform both roles, and bridge between the two effectively. With the virtual world market being as pressured as it is, the same applies to them. You need to make sure the entire team has community relations training to some degree, just to cover potential accidents (Even if you may only be a lowly support technician, you need to be able to deal with when a journalist contacts you). Then those who are able to work with the community should get the support and structure they need.
With regards to moderating forums, it is a horribly fine line. There are three generalised groups of people who get banned from game forums:
Firstly, you have those who talk openly about dangerous breaks in the game, such as means to circumvent the game’s rules. It is for this group that it is essential that forums are not the only means for players to communicate problems to the developers, as such posts cannot be allowed for the good of the game.
Secondly, you have those who critise the development team. This is obviously a dangerous reason to ban people from a forum, as often this can reveal real issues and problems
Finally, you have those people who act in an incivil manner. Forums often define this act quite differently, and to an enraged player, a ban for not showing respect to others can seem like a ban for critising the development team.
Having had the experience of the use of a well-written Rules of Conduct, I am of the opinion that most forums do not actually enforce the last reason to ban, incivility, strongly enough. It also creates a bad image in my mind about the company that runs the forums (or has them run on it’s behalf), and as forums are a rough indicator of a game’s community, provides a bad impression of the game.
Forms made more sense to me once I came to understand that only a small vocal minority of players posted, and that forums are ultimately another game, poster verses poster. The blogsphere in reality is also similar in many regards. As I mentioned previously, the nature of the medium really does not help, either.
OK – Customer Relations Overlord then 😉
I largely don’t agree with your points about having everybody interact with the community. Take your example about tech support getting a call from a journalist. Well their response to the journalist should be “please hold on – I’ll transfer you to our Media Relations department – they can answer any questions for you.”
Simply put there are a lot of very skilled techincal people who have no business speaking to the community. Sure there might be some exceptions – the CEO/Head honcho of the project, for instance, or perhaps a lead developer who speaks on behalf of the dev team.
But generally speaking you do not want too many hands in the pot. The biggest reason is the more people you have out there speaking officially for the team, the greater the chance you’re not all singing from the same sheet music. It makes it a lot harder to control the message you’re sending to the community, and IMO it’ll breed confusion among the players.
Now there might be a couple of different philosophies on this, but I don’t think MMOs moving toward the “all hands in the pot” model necessarily means its a great idea. IMO no MMO i’ve played has nailed the community building aspect.
Btw lets also not blur the line between mass Customer communications versus a more one-on-one situation. Your telco engineer friend is presumably working with a single customer to try and design a solution to some sort of problem.
In that case he is acting more like a consultant. His role and skills are very different from a Community Relations Overlord.
[…] Community Management originated well before Ultima Online, but didn�t quite emerge until the first few MMOs arrived on the scene and began to necessitate it. The need for ongoing attention paid to the burgeoning communities of subscription-paying inhabitants of these persistent worlds is still relatively new, and has gradually been extending out to encompass games with multiplayer aspects (RTS and FPSs). Ultima Online was the first big one however, and being my first experience with MMO communities, it shaped much of how I view community management and the challenges that go along with it. From Leilo to Sannio to Nomad, UO has had its fair share of CM pioneers. In that light, I thought it�d be nifty to assemble a collection of guide points for CMing, based around the old Virtues of Ultima lore. So, in no particular order, I give you the Virtues as Applied to Community Management- Thanks to Raph for the link! […]