See my resume here!
What is a Community manager anyway??
I get this a lot from both players and developers! It’s an absolutely fair question. Community management is a relatively new field, and a lot of fields that focus on soft skills can be a bit obtuse if you don’t do it yourself. If you’re an astronaut, it’s clear your job is to go to space! There’s an obvious, visible action with obvious, visual payoff associated with it. If you’re a business person, your job is, like, talking to people or something? What does that even do???? (Obviously, I know the answer to this question, but it’s an easy example of a career that’s confusing to a layperson. Love you, business people <3)
To start us off: community management is under the marketing & communications umbrella.
Marketing
Let’s talk about the marketing side of things first. Here’s a couple other job titles under that umbrella: PR, influencer relations, marketing manager. These bad boys tend to be more on the acquisitions side. What does that mean?
These jobs tend to be more about bringing in new potential players. Usually, in these roles, you’re talking to people who don’t know that much about the game & probably haven’t played it. It’s about selling folks on the coolest elements of your game so they try it!
Here’s some signs you need to work on acquisitions!
Low sales numbers
Few follows or views on your socials
People in your target audience demographic (who you’d reasonably expect to hear about you) don’t know about your game!
Community management is about retaining the people that these other roles are bringing in. Here’s some signs you need to work on retention!
High turnover rates (people are following you, or joining your social spaces, or buying your game, but they don’t stick with it long-term. If you can’t figure out who the big names are in the community, there’s a good chance turnover is the problem!)
Low engagement (you’re not getting many likes or comments on things related to your game. This will obviously be proportional to how many folks you have in your spaces. For this stat, you’re looking for percentages.)
Drama! In-fighting is a sign of bigger issues related to expectations or communication with your audience.
Communications
Now let’s talk about communication! What does that mean in terms of games, and why does anyone need me here?? There’s three important categories of communication that I deal with:
Player to developer
Developer to player
Player to player
Player to developer
Gathering feedback is really hard
Harsh feedback is not inherently bad or useless. It is, however, hard to read all the time. Developers pour their hearts into their work. It can really kill your self-esteem to read a million ways your work needs improvement all day. Making art every day is hard if you feel like you suck at it!
Does that mean feedback is bad?? Absolutely not! Feedback is how you improve. One of the things I most love about games as a medium: they’re a collaboration between the developers and the players. Hearing what people think about your game is how you make something cool. You just need to have a good balance.
That’s where I come in! I care a lot, but I didn’t personally create the game. I have a greater degree of separation from the product that makes it a lot easier to parse feedback. I can distill out the important details from even the meanest or most inane critiques.
Usually, players give feedback when they’re frustrated with something. That can often come across in their tone! The players aren't awful for this, but if you’re not experienced in protecting your mental health, it can be really exhausting. If your game just actually sucked, you’re not gonna get much critique. No one would care enough to give particularly long or in-depth feedback.
In-depth feedback is much more useful! But it can also hurt worse. If someone says your game is just overall terrible, that’s easier to write off. If someone points out a bunch of specific ways they think your game is terrible (especially if you agree that those parts of the game aren’t great), that one hurts!
People are more likely to track you down for something actionable! If they’re just really enjoying your game, they’re probably talking about it to their friends, but it’s less likely they’ll go through the effort to find you. Something like a bug report or a critique is more likely to get folks to put in that effort. Because of this, you’re gonna hear more bad than good even though you’re probably making something good!
Not properly parsing feedback comes across like you don’t care about your players. Games where the players don’t feel heard don’t tend to succeed long-term. Gamers have options–they’ll eventually head to somewhere where they feel respected.
Parsing feedback is really hard
What even is “good” feedback? That’s where I come in! I care a lot about turning feedback into something usable–I did my whole college senior thesis on artistic critique back in the day. Players are there to have fun, so it’s not their job to write up a whole long, formal thing when they wanna discuss a game. (Shout-out to my players who do, though! I love you all more than words can express). Almost every review or complaint tells you something though, and I can tell you what! Nothing’s said in a vacuum, and that context tells us more than the words themselves sometimes. (Especially if those words are something vague, like “game bad.”)
Factors I consider when reading feedback:
Who’s saying it? What are their preferences, and how could that affect what they’re saying?
A couple easy examples of this:
You will always hear (proportionally) more from folks who speak the same native language as you. There’s less barrier to entry to speak to you!
Do you have both multiplayer & single player modes? That matters! From most to least, here’s my rankings for which types of game modes you’ll get the most feedback on:
competitive ← cooperative ← single player
Fairness matters most in competitive modes (where you’re pitted against other humans!). If you’re having issues with the game (anything from a dislike for certain design choices to an encounter with a bug), it feels unfair. It feels more pressing to talk about them. It can feel like the game is judging your skill level incorrectly, and you get direct, in-game punishments for it. As well, generally, some of people's hesitation to critique games comes from being less comfortable interacting publicly on the internet or a distaste for coming across as “too negative.” Competitive gamers are more used to talking bluntly, and—by virtue of the fact that they’re not only talking but playing a game publicly—are overall more comfortable being publicly perceived.
It still doesn’t feel great to have issues in cooperative modes. You’re working with another human, not against them, so it doesn’t feel as much like you’re being cheated. It can still feel like your teammate is being let down though if you’re not having what you think would be the optimal experience.
In single player modes, there’s much less of an element of public pressure to talk about the issues with the game. There’s also often more workarounds to the problems you may encounter. As an example: if you think Skyrim combat sucks, you can just download (or create) a mod to get rid of it. You couldn’t do that (as easily, or maybe at all) if you were playing an online game mode.
When are they saying it?
An easy example of this:
Are you hearing from these players during / right after a sale? Generally, a lot of that feedback is from folks who picked up the game at a discount—i.e. people who already had less attachment to the game. That isn’t inherently a bad thing! It’s important to hear from more than just your superfans—having wider appeal keeps your game alive and growing. You can, however, generally expect some genre conventions or elements with more friction will get harsher critique from this portion of your audience.
Why are they saying it now?
An easy example of this:
Sometimes you’re getting feedback on things people didn’t care enough to comment on before because they’re mad at you for unrelated reasons
if they saw someone else say it, they may feel more validated in their view and post it! If a content creator or big name in the community said that recently, you’ll get more of em at once! This is important for tracking trends / how comms spread. Perception vs reality.
developer to Player
Connotation, denotation, and context, Oh MY!
These are words.
Tone
International
Drama-aware (past and future)
Player to Player
Connotation, denotation, and context, Oh MY!
Visible minorities are your canaries in the coal mine.
If you made a game whose primary audience is queer folks, and you have a lot of people openly talking about being gay, that’s awesome! But that’s not what I’m talking about right now.
How much your community prioritizes conformity.
Can they coexist? Can they respect people different to them? To be clear: different does not mean bigoted here. Your community can (and should) take a harsh stance against bigotry, no matter who they are. See the paradox of tolerance for this.
If your primary audience is women, do you have any visible men? How are they treated?
There will always be folks that don’t fit the mold of your “typical” player. The question is: how comfortable are they with being public about it?
Does your community have decent emotional intelligence? We don’t want them scaring off new players! We also don’t want them getting insanely mad at us for everything!