Community Relations: Processes

"Less is more. What I mean by this is that communication with players should be clear, consistent, and focused. A larger quantity of unfocused communication is inferior to consistent delivery of focused messages. I'm a big believer in memorializing information in a single place that is easily accessible to the player base. Duplicated information is error-prone ."

” Gordon Walton

"Tell them less than you are initially inclined to, but never be dishonest. Treat them like adults. Reach out to people who will happily build community sites and be cheerleaders for you. Be sure you let them know when you change something due to their input. And, most of all, be sure that you never let them feel like your communication with them has grown stagnant."

” Damion Schubert

Managing the expectations of players starts with and revolves around the community relations team. They have the primary responsibility to ensure that a consistent, focused, honest message is presented to the community, and that the concerns of the community are relayed back to the other members of the live team for comment and consideration.

However, they can't do that without the cooperation of the live development and player relations teams . In that sense, customer relations is a consensus-builder within the live team and between the live team and the player base. They drive the processes that keep information flowing .

The Three Principles

The processes of managing a game community start with the three principles discussed in the next three sections.

Constantly Design for Growth and Change

If an online game is successful in building a subscriber base, participation in both the in-game and web communities will grow over time. Features and support not required at launch will be required months down the line. As much as possible, those features need to be planned at the outset to allow for a graceful , structured growth. It also means there have to be regular reviews of the community relations features set and changes made to ensure that growth and change within the community are being met successfully.

This also means that there has to be open communication among the player relations team, community relations team, development team, and the publisher, so everyone knows about and buys into the plan developed to support the game over time.

Create and Maintain Feedback Loops

As discussed earlier, the communication among the players, community relations team, developers, and the publisher needs to be carefully managed to protect the reputation of the game and the company and to keep even small incidents or rumors from being blown out of proportion and creating a mess. At the same time, the players want unfettered access and input to the game developers.

Creating and effectively maintaining feedback loops between the players and community relations and between community relations and the developers and back again is vital to creating an atmosphere of contribution, while at the same time protecting the developers from having to answer every question or comment the players might make on message boards or in chat.

Empower the Players over Time

Players change their own roles over time. Some become leaders and need tools to help them lead their people; others become opinion- makers in the out-of-game community; while other players create roles they find interesting for themselves . Each requires different tools and capabilities; if they have them, they'll help you increase the size and role of your game community over time. It is necessary to ensure that this is tracked carefully and that players are empowered at the proper times.

The Cult of Personality

The point person on these principles and processes is your community management, specifically the lead CRM.

If there is one thing players hate to see on message board postings, it is a communiqu from the developers or company signed "From the <game name > Live Team." Nothing is quite so impersonal or noninteractive as a faceless, human-less message. This whole industry is based on interactivity, with the game and between the people who play it, make it, and publish it. With the human touch so important a factor, why would anyone go out of his/her way to de- humanize the process?

Amazingly, that is exactly what many online game publishers and developers do, in spite of the abundance of publicly available evidence that it does not work and that the players dislike it. You need the human touch.

One effective way to keep the human touch is to set up one person as your contact point with the community and create a cult of personality around him/her. If you pick the right person as the lead, day-to-day CRM, this won't be a problem; it will happen naturally. For example, take Jonathan "Calandryl" Hanna. Jonathan began as a player of UO and, over time, became an influential opinion-maker in the forums. When Origin Systems began looking for someone to come in and take over community relations for their sloppy and disliked public face, he applied for and got the job.

Within weeks, he had the players eating out of his hand. Not only was he one of them, but he also made a concerted effort to take player questions, track down the answers, and post them. He also took the time to post chatty messages and dealt with the players with respect and humor.

This is the perfect type of community relations person ”a gamer who knows the player base, likes them, and considers himself/herself their advocate to the live team, without losing sight of the fact that he/she still works for the company. This minor kind of cult of personality, when the right person experienced with the product is the center of the cult, serves a number of functions:

• It enhances player comfort and trust in the game and company. Having a real, live person interacting with the players, instead of a faceless corporation, creates the human connection that Internet game players live for.

• It makes insulating the rest of the live team from daily player pressure easier and more amenable to both sides. Developers worry about losing contact with the player community and understanding their issues, and players worry that they won't get the straight skinny from the developers. A trusted intermediary can negotiate these waters and satisfy both sides.

• It provides a control mechanism when problems develop. It is not unusual for the patching and publishing process to create temporary problems due to bugs or balancing issues. This also causes a temporary spike in complaints and a rising swell of player dissatisfaction, confusion, and anger. If not handled correctly and in a timely manner, this can quickly get out of hand. A trusted and effective CRM can ride the swell and control it, keeping the players appeased with a constant flow of information on the web, in message forums, and through " Letters from the Developers," and reining in the natural inclination of the developers to get out there and defend themselves (that is, argue with the players).

This takes a person of particular qualities. It isn't enough to just drag someone out of the community and throw them into place. All too often, the loudest supporter running a fan site is picked for this duty, in a modern-day demonstration of, "He who raises his hand first gets the job." While this is certain to get a loyal "wannabe" on the staff, one who will not often question the developers, it might or might not get you the person with the qualities you actually need.

The qualities you need include the following:

• A person who can see both sides of the issue and isn't afraid to challenge the developers ”Live team developers tend to get too close to the game and forget that proposed changes won't just alter the game, but also affect the experience of the players. If the players are a vocal and not particularly complimentary lot, the developers may actually come to resent the players and unconsciously make changes designed to irritate them further.

• A good CRM knows the game inside and out and is willing to take a stand for or against changes that will affect gameplay, both publicly to the players and privately to the live team. This doesn't mean the CRM denigrates the live team to the players; it does mean the CRM is willing to be vocal privately about proposed changes and, if overruled, still "owns" the change publicly with the players.

• Someone who understands the unique sense of humor of online gamers ”Players have a somewhat twisted and dark sense of humor, full of sarcasm and innuendo. If your frontline CRM doesn't understand the humor, it will be impossible to make a connection with the players.

• Someone who understands the power of the word "us" ”The players want to be involved in the game as members of the community, not just as anonymous players who send in $10 each month to get access. As such, they want inclusion, and responding to them with the word "we," meaning the live team, just draws a line in the sand that some of them are more than willing to cross. A CRM who can include the whole player base by making the whole into "us" already has half of the potential "bad actor" problems solved .

• A person who understands that you don't argue or get snappy with the players ”Some players are barracks-house lawyers and will endlessly debate the fine points, if you let them. To them, this is just part of the game and part of the fun. Nothing pleases them more than trolling for a CRM on the message boards, getting the CRM to take the bait, and then making a fool out of him/her by frustrating him/her to the point where he/she snaps .

• The CRM should be a person who maintains an even keel, remains polite in the face of the most horrid or derogatory posts, and knows when and when not to continue a debate and how to close one off gracefully. This is someone who understands that expressing disappointment over a rude message and apologizing for not being able to satisfy the offender sends a far stronger message than lashing out and getting into a fight.

• Someone who understands the player bias on issues and can sort his/her player contacts accordingly ”The vocal minority of any PW tends to come with built-in biases. Some are self-serving; everything they say or do will be focused on improving their personal role in the game. Others are subject matter experts; they know the subject (the game) in minute detail and will continually argue for more hard- core game mechanics and options at the expense of other players.

• A CRM needs to be able to identify and track the bias in discussions and posts and weigh and respond to them accordingly.

Daily Activities

The daily activities of the community relations team will revolve around the message boards, email, and maintaining the community relations portion of the web site.

Message Boards

Message boards, often called forums, are a vital part of the community relations team's online presence. Much of the team's daily interaction with the players comes through this medium. There are pros and cons to offering open message boards to your subscriber base. On the pro side, having open forums gives the team access to a broad range of player opinions and affords them the opportunity to build compromises and consensus around sticky issues.

On the con side, less than 15% of a subscriber base ever posts on forums, and that <15% represents the vocal minority of the game. They have their own agenda and, by answering their concerns publicly, you tend to get more of the same, a sort of vicious positive feedback loop on the concerns of the biased few.

Even facing these potential pitfalls, if you don't have open forums, how can you expect to communicate effectively with the players or correctly manage their expectations? Even rude or uncomplimentary message posts can contain a grain of truth; it is important to acknowledge those and make certain they get into the right hands on the live team for consideration.

The community relations team's daily activity surrounding the message boards mainly consists of reading the new messages, responding to them, and collating and forwarding interesting or important threads to the various members of the team for answers to questions or clarifications.

At some point, the community relations team collates those answers from the live team and posts them in the proper message board threads. Unless you want the live development team spending a couple hours a day just responding to posts, you'll want to establish a regular routine of one or two days per week in which those answers to player inquiries are posted. If the response days are clearly noted, the players' expectations of answers will be managed to those days. It also makes sense to have a dedicated forum category or thread titled "Answers from the Team" or something similar, so players know where to go to get the responses.

The community relations team should not necessarily limit itself to just those message board activities. Players like to banter with team members and know that they are human and have senses of humor. Indulging in some of this goes a long way toward keeping the vocal minority under wraps.

Email

Another major portion of the day will be spent reading and replying to community relations-specific email. Some of this will come directly to the community relations mailbox and some will be forwarded from the player relations team. For the most part, this email will deal with in-game balance issues that require answers from someone else on the live team, or will need to be forwarded to player relations for action on account management, harassment , or billing.

It is easy for the email load to community relations to get out of hand. The more you answer specific concerns or inquiries, the more they'll send. The best use of the community relations team's time is to get as many of the emailers as possible using the web site and forums. The team should "push" as many answers as they can to the web site or forums by referring the emailer to a FAQ sheet, knowledge base entry, or specific forum thread.

Whether responding or referring to email, it is important to follow the 24- hour response rule. You don't want to get a reputation for "ignoring" emailers.

Web Site Maintenance

The community relations team is responsible for maintaining the content on the web site, which includes maintaining the front page of the site to draw readers in to important information, adding new content such as news, links to interesting forum threads, regular articles, letters from the team, and archiving older content.

As a general rule, the community relations team should put up some new piece of content on a daily basis, even if it is just a link to an interesting forum thread. With careful organization of features such as "Letters from the Team" and new content to go into the four-step player notification system, this won't be difficult to accomplish. The important thing is to keep the site fresh and new; it is as much a living organism as the game itself and needs to reflect that.

Player-Run Communities

A PW's subscriber base isn't just a great big blob of a community. Imagine 100,000 or 200,000 subscribers trying to organize activities around the whole group ; it would be virtually impossible. Rather, player-run communities consist of smaller, more easily managed micro-communities. Variously called guilds , teams, squadrons, fellowships, and allegiances, these micro-communities band together to provide the members with in-game assistance and a regular social group within the world. There is safety and power in numbers , after all.

The activities of player-run communities encompass not only the in-game actions of micro-communities such as teams and guilds, but also the web-based interaction of these teams and other interest groups based around the game. Many of your player teams will host web sites for their members, complete with message boards, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) chat rooms, and news areas. Moreover, more general communities based on character classes, specific server clusters ( especially if they are specialized clusters, such as PvP or role-playing-only servers), factions, or character skills are also likely to spring up.

While much of what goes on in appealing to these leaders will have to do with maintaining the illusion of immersion with the game ("in-character"), there will also be plenty of out-of-character (OOC) exchanges to discuss game changes, policies, and the like. These communities can be a live team's best resource for helping to set opinions and gain support for game changes, additions, and what might otherwise be unpopular policies and procedures.

Supporting these communities with in-game and web resources is becoming a must for publishers. Figures 11.7 ^[7] and 11.8 ^[8] show one method, using the web, which Sony Online and EA use to support player teams and create a sense of inclusion.

^[7] Sony Online Entertainment's EQ has begun supporting micro-communities of their premium-priced servers, called Legends , by providing them guild pages. This is a good example of outreach to potential opinion-makers.

^[8] Note that the guild names are hyperlinks to further information about the guild and specific members, including hyperlinks to private guild web sites not hosted by EA.

Figure 11.7. A guild page for Sony's EQ Legends premium server.

Figure 11.8. UO 's guild page.

Leadership Roles for Micro-communities

There is no particular average population size for a microunity; it can be anywhere from a couple friends to several dozen . Some micro-communities become quite sizable , recruiting hundreds of members and organizing several team- related activities each week. Many are highly organized, with a motivated leader or leader council, and are operated like a going concern, with an internal ranking hierarchy and members required to support the team on-call. They usually write and distribute a team charter to the members, laying out the mission of the micro-community and the requirements to join and remain in good standing. Some of these teams are so organized they make organizations like the Shriners look positively chaotic , as shown in the AO player guild training screenshot in Figure 11.9.

Figure 11.9. An AO guild in group training.

These communities communicate constantly among themselves and with other communities via message boards and email, creating and resolving conflicts and reaching consensus on important in-game issues. These activities are normally left to the team leaders and the members go along with their dictates. Like every group, there are leaders and followers.

The leaders of these player-run communities are among the influential opinion-makers of your overall community. There may be 200,000, 400,000, or more subscribers to the game, but probably fewer than 1,000 of them are setting or managing the opinion for many of those subscribers. The leaders of the larger groups probably represent a number of sub-groups within the game and have regular contact with other community leaders.

Keying into these leaders and "massaging" that relationship is the job of the Community Relations team. It will be somewhat symbiotic; the leaders will derive more authority over their own groups from their contact with the team, and the team will be able to have greater influence over the leaders, who wish to continue siphoning off some of that power. They will also be something like amateur politicians , used to the process of give and take to reach a compromise within their own groups and with other factions.

The Policy of Inclusion

There are a number of ways to include the leaders in your strategy, but they all depend on drawing them into the decision-making process. This allows them to cement their authority over their own people and, in the best of times, makes them advocates for you with a large segment of the game population.

The best approach is probably a combination of some of the following elements:

• Email lists ” The simplest way is to set up one or more email lists of the micro-community leaders and send regular updates and messages to them, drawing them deeper into the storyline with in-character messages or delivering timely OOC news for inclusion on their team web sites.

  The lists can be derived from the game's own list of guilds/teams. If your particular game doesn't make provisions for such lists, it isn't hard to set up a web page to allow the leaders to register for one.

• Guild leader web site ” In addition to a standard news area, this should include forums and a chat area, as well as in-character and OOC posting forums and pages.

  If possible, this should also be password-protected or accessible via invited accounts only, if just to add to the feeling of inclusion and "specialness." You can bet money that the password won't stay secret for long or that someone will allow another player access to their account to check out the area; that's not the point. The point is to recognize the leaders.

• Council of leaders ” Banding the leaders together into a council and holding regular chat room meetings will help seal the bonds of loyalty. This is most useful for helping push a storyline or series of important in-game events forward. However, it can also be used to help set a player consensus on items posted to the four-step notification program discussed earlier or to allow leaders to bring forward concerns from their own micro-communities. On controversial issues where the player base is up in arms, the council can be the spearpoint of keeping a lid on the situation while the issue is discussed.

  There will probably be too many such leaders to pull them all into one large council; a smaller council of 10 “20 chairs, with leaders rotating in and out of the chairs at set periods between 30 days and 3 months, is more doable.

  It is important to understand that, if you choose to use the council method, you have to listen to them and take their suggestions and recommendations whenever feasible . If the leaders ever get the idea that they have no influence (that is, they are not truly included in the process), the council will fall apart amid loud complaints and loss of trust from the player base as a whole. Only go into this if you're serious about the policy of inclusion and are willing to let the council have a bit of power and influence.

  This doesn't mean you have to let them vote on every little feature or change; if most of the leaders ”and, through them, their constituencies ”are opposed to some proposed change or feature, it bears looking into.

• In-game meetings ” The leaders can be included in the process by conducting in-game meetings in which their power and influence within the "world" is acknowledged and demonstrated to other players. For example, the event GMs of Funcom's AO regularly host in-game, in-character meetings with organization heads ( AO 's version of guilds). The GMs pose as main characters from ongoing storylines and consult leaders from the various organizations about in-game events and actions to be taken in response to them.

What You Are Really Doing

Appealing to micro-communities through their leaders doesn't mean just including them in the process and enhancing overall player satisfaction. What you are really doing is practicing self-defense and creating goodwill by somewhat Machiavellian means. These folks are very passionate about what they do; that's why they are playing your game in the first place. In effect, what you are trying to do is get them to buy off on dreams they are already in the market for and then help fulfill them.

What the community relations team has to be careful to avoid is not trying to sell them its dreams outright or too forcefully . The team may believe that the background story is the greatest piece of literature in the history of mankind, but if the players are insistent about taking it in a direction not conceived of by the writers, then you have a problem. Trying to force such ideas down their throats will only cause dissension and bad feelings. Using the leaders to create a consensus and following through, however, creates a tremendous store of goodwill.

And you may need that goodwill later on, in case you screw up in heroic proportions and need all the goodwill and patience you can get from your players.