My ideal community manager

Noiserating

To put it simply, community managers are the player-facing component of a game studio. 

They are the mouthpiece of the community, acting as both a conduit for feedback between the players and the developers of a game, as well as deciding on the messaging of updates, patches, and general brand communications. It’s a community manager’s mission to grow a community, make it the best place it can possibly be, and ensure their voice is heard by the wider development team.

Something that is present in nearly all community management jobs is, you guessed it, managing the company’s community. But what does that actually mean? Well, your players want to feel connected to the game they’re playing, as well as the team behind it. They want the option to meet other players, discuss the game, suggest updates, air grievances, feel part of something — they want a community.

It’ll be the role of the community manager to make it an enjoyable place to be, from moderating it to be free of nasty characters to community-focused initiatives like game nights, fun events like costume competitions, or anything else that brings players closer to the in-game world.

Madeleine Gray, Senior Community Manager at Brace Yourself Games, counts the following as her primary responsibilities:

• Player support and moderation

• Content creation and engagement

• Influencer outreach/relations and press

• Platform management, sales, and marketing

• Website management and patch notes

• Feedback, reporting, and analytics

• Events! (whenever those start up again)

Monitoring community feedback is a key part of the job. If an update that the devs push receives predominantly negative feedback from the community, this is important to highlight to them. It might be that the update becomes more-liked over time, but failure to listen to the community can kill a game.

And for you, what will be a good community manager?

Lexia

Hey @Noiserating,

And thank you for sharing these thoughts and feedback!

I very much agree on many of the points you brought up, and have also already discussed a bit with the team on what sort of activities we could bring to the Forum and game (and potentially other platforms depending on the topic or theme).

I was originally planning to have some polls and/or questions here on the Forum on certain things a bit later, but since this already kinda opened up the subject, I’d be happy to read some suggestions already on potential events, activities, statistics etc. that would be interesting to participate in or read/discuss about.

Depending on the activity or topic, some might require a bit more time and planning, but let’s first see what sort of things would spark interest in the community. General ideas are more than welcome, don’t have to go too much into detail yet, as we can potentially look into something a bit more on certain topics later

Thank you again for bringing this up, and I’m eager to read some suggestions!

Governator

I used to love the community events and the forum badges that came with them. Does anyone remember the Valentine’s Day poems or the Jack-o-Lantern pics we would post? That made it fun to come here. That’s been missing for way too long.

Plus, bring back more of the community events where we work together to kill walkers. Those have dropped off significantly. 

And any opportunity to vote on what Challenge to see next or Star Hero to use would be awesome. I would feel more engaged with the game then. 

FuriousMoldovan

Polling on the coming up major Holiday Calls would be great, similar to what we had in the past 💯

ATLAS-Z

Guardian!

I'll take new Carol in a nice group radios call, heroes only, 40-fest reroll x4

Yikes

How about letting us see the prioritized list of enhancements and bug fixes that is on the dev team’s backlog?  The enhancements doesn’t have to be super specific and can be something at a high level like “Adding a new tool” or “Reworking Jerry’s leader trait”.  We understand that things on the list are not promises of delivery but the community can at least provide input on the priority and you can take a poll and report the results back to the dev team.

IcePeter

Wow, we’re keeping it positive and constructive! Nice ideas! I’m curious whether there are areas where NextGames genuinely wants our thoughts and feedback. We can be a whiney bunch, but underneath that is a genuine desire to help make/keep a game we enjoy entertaining, and we’ve shown that we have plenty of thoughts for achieving that, even if some are more realistic than others. 

ghost_pepper

While I like the idea of community voting for the heros in the holiday call to spend our saved up radios, it seems like the high end smart brainy players always know who everyone should be voting for and then it inevitably turns out differently. I was one of several players requesting to have all mele for the holiday deal in one call and all ranged in a second holiday call. I was really glad to see that happen. 

It would have been nice to see a post, anywhere, saying "excellent idea, we will discuss it later this week". Then the public voice for the players has informed us that something is happening. Mostly, ideas exist here in what feels like a vacuum. "We'll discuss the technical possibility of a  2nd holiday call" post would've gone such a long way. I was genuinely surprised when it actually happened. (Thank you Santa.)

Silence isn't an option. It creates the exact opposite impression you want. Post more. Ask a question where possible so that players can elaborate on their ideas. Confirm you've heard them and that their idea was communicated and understood. Ask for specific ideas about specific things so players can discuss them and the links to the older versions of those ideas. This is the engagement we don't have and we need.

Example, if you're thinking about reworking Jerry, ask us what outfit might look best. I would say as much purple as possible, make him look like a pimp. There's that fuzzy purple blanket he wears, or maybe it's just dirty? Maybe I can find a screenshot of it.

MrLucky

@Lexia
#makehunterdarylgreatagain 

ATLAS-Z

@ghost_pepper Me and Busta pushed for the separate melee ranged calls for the birthday call. It didn't happen and they did a community vote instead. Lame. But it's what people wanted... And then it happened for the holiday so that was great anyway. 

marroba2000

I miss Nation Wars. It was a good way to join players of different guilds. But the girls who do it possible got tired of blames and shouts. Part of this was discussions about banned players, things that NG can control better than any player. 
So, my proposal is NW with NG taking part of the organization

ATLAS-Z

5 way tie between US, Germany, Russia, Korea and Rotting in hell? 

Ok let's say it happened and next? 

ghost_pepper

Ty for addressing my question in the best way possible @Lexia by making a wider post everyone can see.