Actual TLDW: Without care to how a community is managed, members of a community will trend to becoming "detractors" as the community begins to misalign with the "identity promise" it originally offered. Typical community management does not often work to fight against that trend. The speaker offers "purpose led communities" as a potential way to make more sustainable communities. I found the first half of the talk really interesting, especially with relating the hype cycle of technology to lifecycle of a community. Though I had a couple issues with the latter half of the talk: * Web3 is a touchy subject, was crashing when this talk was given, and probably wasn't worth 6 minutes of a 30 minute minute talk or the repeated references in the description of the talk. Especially since the entire point of that section was to say "commodifying your community can set it up to becoming toxic". * It didn't really provide any actionable guidance. It would've been way more helpful to provide concrete examples of purpose led communities. Had it not been for the question at 32:04, I would've been completely in the dark for what they actually meant by "purpose".
The tldw is "don't put out bad games, and don't scam people with NFTs, because if you do, people will hate and distrust your company." It's obvious to all of us, but the stupid CEOs still don't seem to understand it. No community manager can get people to like being scammed by NFT scams.
They've been scamming players with game prices for decades and some players still defend it to this day just go have a look at the steam forums of cities skylines 2 LOL. NFTs have the potential to be amazing, better than Steam market. But they have to be implemented correctly, not to slap the marketing term in their promo and ride a stupid hype.
The video isn't about that at all. It talks about much more than games or even game communities and actually gives a ton of insights towards how all social media works nowadays.
@@leolightfellowI guess you weren't listening carefully, nfts are far from being her only experience. She literally made a comparison between 1 nft project and the rest of her work in the game industry. I'm not a fan of nfts either, but it's not the subject of the talk, she just picked the most extreme example because it's much easier to show her point that way.
Toxicity didn't raise I grew up with 4chan like 20 years ago, i played a lot of warcraft3 and wow and I can tell you first hand that the internet was always toxic.
It's how it's always been, toxicity decreases and peoples standards against toxicity increases even more. Which is in fact a good thing in long run to get rid of toxicity.
> I can tell you first hand that the internet was always toxic. I think a lot of people grow-up with so-called 'toxic' family dynamics. And that carries into the larger world, Internet included. These conversations always lead back to family-life.
@@artemisDev I think that's just a byproduct of the child proofing of our civilization. People want grown adults limited by child settings and security limitations. It's one thing to child proof my medicine bottles. It's another to design a card game where you cannot communicate with other players, or trade cards like Blizzard's hearthstone. Blizzard will say removing the ability to talk removes toxicity. But it also removes agency. And often times that is how systemically toxicity is removed, by removing the ability to communicate.
So, relating only to the "game development" side of the talk, as I understand nothing in regards to Web3, I'm a little confused on this... So my main takeaway was: "We are seeing an increasing unbalance of less *Engaged members* and more *Detractors* in a given community, due to *Identity Misalignments* for new members joining with high expectations" It would be nicer if there were some more specific examples on the talk, (maybe people in this comment section will share some before it gets disabled) but the answer as to why seemed obvious, and during the whole talk I was expecting it to get mentioned, but it was just slighty brushed off at 23:28 - 25:02 Communities are getting worse because they are being forced to exist on platforms (the games) that wouldn't organically develop one. This whole process happens naturally when the game experience allows for it to happen, but if the game sucks it's obvious people will see right through this corporate façade and focus their efforts on dogpilling on it instead. In other words, and I think they try to express this in the video. This job would be a lot nicer if the communities themselves happened naturally
If you don't know, "Web3" mainly refers to the Crypto and NFT space in general. LOOOONG story short, Web3 products like Crypto & NFTs are virtual tokens that people can invest in and trade. The problem with these is that their actual value is only as much as someone is willing to buy them for, creating a giant game of hot potato until someone's left losing money. Web3 businesses knew this, so they devised a plan: Get people to invest, and they will naturally want to start marketing your Web3 product so that they get a return on their investment. Almost like a pyramid scheme (but not quite). This reason is why these communities being "supercharged" was a bad thing, because the entire community wasn't built on any trust and was only centered around extrinsic motivation. Thankfully, most Web3 businesses fail due to their poor public perception, but due to their large impact, other companies have started taking notes.
I'd really be interested in some data regarding toxicity in videogames. I totally agree with every point in the talk. And I'd argue that toxicity wasn't that big of a deal "back then". Old MMOs like Everquest or Star Wars: Galaxies etc. put the emphasis on player status and player agency. Players had a purpose defined by their class etc. nowadays it's obviously more competition based and "progression is everything", which (imo) always leads to toxicity, because you're starting to compare yourself to others etc. But that's just one example. I'd also argue that a lot of game devs "back then" had intrinsic motivation in mind while developing than today. If I think of games like Arx Fatalis or System Shock, the whole design philosophy was completely different compared to today. If you're not intrinsically motivated to explore the world and read some notes ingame or talk to other NPCs etc, you will never manage to play through the game without a guide. Well... in modern games, every relevant NPC has a marker above their head or in the compass or whatever and the guide is embedded in the game, which converted the intrinsic motivations into extrinsic ones. That's really critical, because the player doesn't has to think anymore (Bioshock Infinite - Elizabeth solves puzzles for you, compared to Bioshock 1 - one type of hacking puzzle all over the place, compared to System Shock - multiple types of puzzles that even introduce new mechanics as you progress through the game) aaaaand on the other hand: the developer stops thinking about stuff like that, too. It was "best practice" in "old games", that you could ask a NPC for direction for your next quest or whatever. In modern games, most NPCs don't even tell you crucial information about your next quest. Like the location or sometimes even what the actual problem is. Why? Because there's a marker. Boring. The problem with that is, that you had a bunch of different "purpose groups" back then. People would help each other solve a puzzle in System Shock or help each other in a dungeon in Everquest or whatever. But today, all those groups are not needed anymore, because everything was dumbed down for the sake of accessibility, which leads to more people in less groups. And that always causes friction and leads to toxicity. For me it's more like a: "Let's return back to purpose-driven communities". I grew up with forums etc and it was a completely different internet culture, nowadays we have a cult around every influencer basically. Thanks for your talk :)!
I feel like her stance on "detractors" and "misalignment" is just plain wrong. What she refers to as "misalignment" and "detractors" generally constitutes as "passionate players" voicing their "purpose". It is not the players' fault if the developers and community managers don't listen. A message for Kelsey: About "misalignment" A player will try a game, enjoy it with friends, and then judge how the game feels to them compared with games they've played in the past. If they enjoy the game, they'll continue to play it because they enjoy it. Over the course of time, they might find out they "don't like" certain things about the game, or changes might happen to the game that they "don't like". When this dislike happens, the player will usually be vocal about it towards the company because they are passionate about the game, and hope to see it improve. They have become a "passionate player". They are not "misaligned", they have purpose (to see the game improve) and since they are not a staff member at the company, the best they can do is make a complaint/suggestion. If a player likes your game, they will play your game. If a player doesn't like your game, they will stop playing. There is a difference, and this is where "detractors" come in. *TL;DR:* people who complain about the game, are not misaligned, they are passionate and purposeful. About "detractors" A player who goes from "playing" your game to "not playing" your game, or a player who outright refuses to play your game, is a detractor. These are the people who are not in/have left your community and are talking to their friends within the community, trying to justify their reason for staying away/leaving; yet simultaneously providing a reason (subconsciously) for their friends, within your community, to leave; or a reason for their friends outside of your community, to not join. "detractors" are *not* a part of your community. They are the people outside it, who are trying to take other people out of it. *TL;DR:* a "detractor" is someone who quits your game, and tells others to stop playing (and many more examples). About "community" Someone who is "aware" of your community, is *NOT* a part of your community. They are outside of it. They know your community exists, but they do not seek information about it. Perhaps you've misnamed the category? Someone who is "passive" in your community, is everything you described for "aware". They know the community exists, occasionally partake in reading things about the game online, and might be thinking about playing it. Someone who is "engaged" is someone who has downloaded/purchased your game, and has played it at least once, and intends to play it again. Someone who is "active" is someone who plays your game regularly and generally talks to other players outside the game. Someone who is "advocate" yeah umm... that's 100% *not* the right word for that tier. Maybe "veteran" or "pro" or "passionate" would work better? These are the players who know everything going on within the game. They know you didn't make very much money last month. They know you are/aren't trying to make it better. They know the community's feelings across the board on various topics. They are most-likely to quit your game once they've done everything they needed to do, unless there's a replayability factor at play. *TL;DR:*/closing statement This lady either has no idea what she's talking about, or came up with a bunch of bogus names instead of accurately portraying a gaming community. The way she talks about members of a community like they're pawns in the game company's plan to make money sickens me. "advocates" ? The community aren't the people trying to sell the game. If the game isn't appealing to a large audience, blame your marketing team. "detractors" ? Your community isn't trying to kick people out either (exception: League of Legends community). Generally speaking, communities want to help each other out and boost each other up so they can all enjoy the game together. All in all, this talk makes very little sense and butchers the concept of what a community is within gaming as a whole. Absolutely disgusting narrative. PS: Long-term trust of your players is FAR FAR FAR better than short-term goals to appease your investors. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Tale as old as time, there is a huge difference between constructive and destructive criticism, and also between how either of them is served. I personally feel like what she's calling "toxic" is "****** you, your game is broken" rather than "this feature is bugged, it needs to be fixed asap cause it's affecting everyone". Both fall under "voicing complaints" and "trying to make the game better", but I have 0 idea as a developer how to make use of the first comment. Yes, frustration makes it much more likely to pop up, but her point is that this frustration comes from misalignment of player's expectations and the experience they actually get. The rest of your comment seems to focus on terminology, but tbh I don't think it was that bad. Plus it looks like she's not even the one who came up with that terminology, she references that graph as a general material that people in her sphere use. And league is far from the only game toxic to new players, let's be real. Finally, your p.s. is exactly the same as her main point at the end of the talk, so it looks like you both agree about the topic, you just call the parts different names.
@@leochangesnames Regarding the first and second point: these are true, but incorrect use of words (aka terrminology) can lead to confusion, especially among people who speak English as a second language. Leading people down false paths helps no one. Regarding League, you're right. I used it as an example. Regarding PS: Correct. I agree with her point. I'm just opposed to the delivery, due to the possibility of it being misunderstood and potentially misleading. PS regarding an "f u" type of comment: generally speaking, people with this type of attitude aren't usually mad at the developer when they say this. It can be any number of things, but it generally narrows down to "This mechanic doesn't work the way I think it does, so I'm going to react as if it's not working the way I think it should" or; "(I have no idea what I'm doing but) I'm clicking the buttons and they're not working" (the player doesn't realize they got stunned) or; "This enemy player attacked me and now I hate them because I didn't want to die" or just general other complaints, usually having nothing to do with the design of the game. As far as responding to these comments, I recommend directing the person to Customer Service unless your company has an alternate place to accept complaints/criticism, in which case, you can direct them there. Very rarely does the player actually hate the way the game is designed, and on a majority of those rare circumstances, it's the fault of the marketing team for allowing things like "in-game cash shops", "RMT", or just generally appealing to investors to have bad things added or used as a "band-aid" fix for other problems. or; they got unlucky on a gacha roll and they're mad at the game being so good at giving them dopamine that they "wasted" money on it. They'll probably do it again too.
I'm not sure if I agree that marching for holmes to return is detractor behavior, I can think of a lot of worse things, this seems more like they are just really engaged. Unless they were being assholes about it
If you're curious about what purpose-led communities exist that you can actually apply to your game, stuff like content creation and speedruns have been proven to work. If you already knew of those, do you know of any others?
Well what do you mean by "content creation". Do you mean people streaming the game? Do you mean Bethesda style modding for singleplayer games? Do you mean community servers with mods, and something like Minecraft Hunger Games?
@@bobbinsthethird It depends on the scale and type of your games I guess. I'm a solo dev making simple games, so stuff like guides or lets play is often enough. Bigger games like say Darkest Dungeon benefit more from a modding community or even lore enthusiasts. While even bigger games like Minecraft apply all of them. Anything you can apply and players enjoy is good to build a community around. Remember that something as simple as a timer at the end of each level gave birth to Doom's speedrunning community.
seems like some people didn't watch the video or turned off their brains when they heard the words: Fallout76 and NFT. The speaker didn't develop any of the games y'all mad at. She's just an employee doing her job. Most of the time, the Community managers are just the fall guys for every terrible decisions made by the devs/companies. It's literally their job to do damage control. Even in bad situations, maybe even more so in bad situations, there is a lot of lessons to be learned and she is just sharing what she has learned. She isn't excusing any of the games she listed. She's just offering a model of community management that could benefit future indie game devs.
This entire 30 minute talk can quite literally be summarized in "if you want to build a better community, find an actual purpose for it". And that's literally it, it's not leaving anything out. 30 minutes of talking. And the whole concept of "community management" as discussed here is just so bizarre. It's like aliens desperately trying to understand basic human behavior and failing. What purpose your "management" has? What are you trying to achieve by "managing" the community? The entire talk comes off like they have absolutely no idea, they just want to "manage communities" for the sake of managing communities. Communities are something that happens fairly organically, you don't really have to "manage" them. Most of the time, you'll just be getting in the way of your fans. Moderate the communities, sure, support them, of course, respond to them, but don't manage them, because there's no real need to if your product is engaging enough.
In the context of how games have been trying to control their communities more and more over the last decade, it makes sense for her to do this talk. She can't just say "stop what you're doing and do something else instead" without showing why, especially since it's basically an industry standard at this point.
@@leochangesnames And so she spends 30 minutes on vaguely and long-windedly (and with awkward anecdotes and jokes) alluding to why without actually *saying* why and, more importantly, without suggesting any actual solutions. Like I said, the talk can be summarized in "if you want to build a better community, find an actual purpose for it" and that's actually more specific than anything she says in her entire non-talk. Nobody is going to leave her talk thinking "wow, she had some really good points, now I know what I was doing wrong and what I'm supposed to do", because there were no real points and no real answers in the entire 30 minutes. She just did a talk for the sake of doing a talk.
@@Case_I do agree she could have been more specific with examples, but I still walked away thinking "oh the thing I was planning to do was a bad idea, and I now also know where to look for what I should do instead"
Why do you need to fight toxicity? Just embrace it, lol. Will not look as artificial as "stay positive pc bs, also buy our nft". This only leads to hiding kill count, cause when one people are better than others it's toxic and noninclusive XD, ofc people will hate when their better performance is ignored
@@mykoladavydenko3578 because toxicity makes people’s lives measurably worse, worsens the experience for the player, and makes it not fun to be a part of the community.
Examples of groups for people that are stuck on a women being on screen: Destiny 2's Long Term community talk about how they hate the game, tell new people not to play it. In destiny 2 those purpose led groups would be the: Lore heads, pvp'ers, casual pve / questing, "hardcore" raiders/dungeon groups. I played destiny 2 a bit and got into that hardcore group and almost all of them could not stop talking about how much they hated the game. Those are your detractors, most destiny youtubers are detractors as well as they are rewarded in views for hating on the game. Another game example is Elder Scrolls Online, the purpose groups in that are even more obvious: role players, questers, housing, pvp, and end game pve. All of those purpose led groups for the most part get some love from the ESO community team, if youre deep into ESO you already know whuch ones dont. Detractors come from Toxic Casuals, people that hate players that only like to do the end game content. And hardcore players that hate the casuals for joining content they cant complete. Non mmo example: Halo infinite: casual pvp (big team battle, fiesta, social, etc), forge/custom games, hardcore pvp, play ranked and may follow the esports seen. Etc When she is talking about engaging in the purpose led groups those are the groups she is talking about. Also i do agree 100% with her, game communities get more and more toxic and they dont need to be. I think the only game that is known for not being toxic is The space dwarf mining game. Of course there are always going to be toxic elements in communities but your goal is to minimize that.
Thanks for the great talk! Yeah, most problems in any given community arise from the fact that, the common denominator for all the members, e.g. the game, is not strong enough to unify the members, because they are too different on all other aspects. They need to find more shared interests, ideally in the context of the game, to form a stronger bond and keep them engaged. Dividing the community into smaller subgroups is the only way to do that effectively, and the those subgroups' reason for existence must be something actionable in order for them to last a long time.
When I hear the word "community manager" I think "troublesome woman". I really didn't know what to expect with this video, but I understood community managers see the fans as rats and they need to direct the behavior of rats. Talking about "dopamine" and "engagement" cycles the way mobile game devs and scum bag marketers do. In her vocabulary you can tell they don't see this as art or passion. So yeah, troublesome woman. And like all women she blames all her problems on men.
Kelsey and other community managers can't control the fact that we live in a world where hype and engagement are important for games' success. And community management isn't the only game development role to deal with player psychology, that's what game design is all about too. In your rat metaphor, the job of level designers is to guide rats through a maze - do you find their work irritating as well? As for your second point, it's hard for community managers to act passionately about their job because they are the defense between the development team and the community when things don't go well. They have to be reserved and have thick skin because people like you will burn them with misogynistic comments.
@@xThemczombiex I'm sure the PR people who worked at cigerate companies had similar feelings when they had to shield the company from accusations that they market to children. Hell part of her job is to shield the company for marketing gambling to children. Yeah calling them scumbags makes their job a lot harder. I don't give a shit. Maybe you shouldn't pick a job that naturally leads to being the enemy of gamers and than complain when spears get thrown at you. I get that they are the enemy of gamers because the company itself is becoming an enemy of gamers as well as White men who don't hate their race and men that won't be intimidated by accusations of SeXisM. Yeah I got that SOMEBODY has to do the job and maybe they didn't know what they were getting into and have bills to pay. Doesn't change the fact that the job is more offensive to me than the tobaco marketers.
gaming is a male dominated space and you're worried about "toxicity" lmfao. maybe just don't piss off your customers and they won't hate you for it in return.
So what should developers do if two parts of the community of roughly equal size ask for opposite, mutually exclusive things? Someone is going to get pissed off either way.
Okay, why Amino app isn't taking off giants as a social platform for gamers ? maybe linking to backlog games and achievement? not web 3 thing ? steam community is enough? but consoles have their own pool ? Twitter is the goat place? Idk
Actual TLDW: Without care to how a community is managed, members of a community will trend to becoming "detractors" as the community begins to misalign with the "identity promise" it originally offered. Typical community management does not often work to fight against that trend. The speaker offers "purpose led communities" as a potential way to make more sustainable communities.
I found the first half of the talk really interesting, especially with relating the hype cycle of technology to lifecycle of a community. Though I had a couple issues with the latter half of the talk:
* Web3 is a touchy subject, was crashing when this talk was given, and probably wasn't worth 6 minutes of a 30 minute minute talk or the repeated references in the description of the talk. Especially since the entire point of that section was to say "commodifying your community can set it up to becoming toxic".
* It didn't really provide any actionable guidance. It would've been way more helpful to provide concrete examples of purpose led communities. Had it not been for the question at 32:04, I would've been completely in the dark for what they actually meant by "purpose".
well, thanks for this one, the other tldr is funny though
The tldw is "don't put out bad games, and don't scam people with NFTs, because if you do, people will hate and distrust your company." It's obvious to all of us, but the stupid CEOs still don't seem to understand it. No community manager can get people to like being scammed by NFT scams.
FACTS
They've been scamming players with game prices for decades and some players still defend it to this day just go have a look at the steam forums of cities skylines 2 LOL.
NFTs have the potential to be amazing, better than Steam market. But they have to be implemented correctly, not to slap the marketing term in their promo and ride a stupid hype.
@@metasamsarawait there's a second game?
oof
The video isn't about that at all. It talks about much more than games or even game communities and actually gives a ton of insights towards how all social media works nowadays.
@@leolightfellowI guess you weren't listening carefully, nfts are far from being her only experience. She literally made a comparison between 1 nft project and the rest of her work in the game industry. I'm not a fan of nfts either, but it's not the subject of the talk, she just picked the most extreme example because it's much easier to show her point that way.
Toxicity didn't raise
I grew up with 4chan like 20 years ago, i played a lot of warcraft3 and wow and I can tell you first hand that the internet was always toxic.
It's how it's always been, toxicity decreases and peoples standards against toxicity increases even more. Which is in fact a good thing in long run to get rid of toxicity.
> I can tell you first hand that the internet was always toxic.
I think a lot of people grow-up with so-called 'toxic' family dynamics. And that carries into the larger world, Internet included. These conversations always lead back to family-life.
@@artemisDev I think that's just a byproduct of the child proofing of our civilization. People want grown adults limited by child settings and security limitations. It's one thing to child proof my medicine bottles. It's another to design a card game where you cannot communicate with other players, or trade cards like Blizzard's hearthstone. Blizzard will say removing the ability to talk removes toxicity. But it also removes agency. And often times that is how systemically toxicity is removed, by removing the ability to communicate.
So, relating only to the "game development" side of the talk, as I understand nothing in regards to Web3, I'm a little confused on this... So my main takeaway was:
"We are seeing an increasing unbalance of less *Engaged members* and more *Detractors* in a given community, due to *Identity Misalignments* for new members joining with high expectations"
It would be nicer if there were some more specific examples on the talk, (maybe people in this comment section will share some before it gets disabled) but the answer as to why seemed obvious, and during the whole talk I was expecting it to get mentioned, but it was just slighty brushed off at 23:28 - 25:02
Communities are getting worse because they are being forced to exist on platforms (the games) that wouldn't organically develop one.
This whole process happens naturally when the game experience allows for it to happen, but if the game sucks it's obvious people will see right through this corporate façade and focus their efforts on dogpilling on it instead.
In other words, and I think they try to express this in the video. This job would be a lot nicer if the communities themselves happened naturally
If you don't know, "Web3" mainly refers to the Crypto and NFT space in general. LOOOONG story short, Web3 products like Crypto & NFTs are virtual tokens that people can invest in and trade. The problem with these is that their actual value is only as much as someone is willing to buy them for, creating a giant game of hot potato until someone's left losing money.
Web3 businesses knew this, so they devised a plan: Get people to invest, and they will naturally want to start marketing your Web3 product so that they get a return on their investment. Almost like a pyramid scheme (but not quite). This reason is why these communities being "supercharged" was a bad thing, because the entire community wasn't built on any trust and was only centered around extrinsic motivation.
Thankfully, most Web3 businesses fail due to their poor public perception, but due to their large impact, other companies have started taking notes.
Have you consider making a good product? or maybe not destroy a loved franchise?
I'd really be interested in some data regarding toxicity in videogames. I totally agree with every point in the talk. And I'd argue that toxicity wasn't that big of a deal "back then". Old MMOs like Everquest or Star Wars: Galaxies etc. put the emphasis on player status and player agency. Players had a purpose defined by their class etc. nowadays it's obviously more competition based and "progression is everything", which (imo) always leads to toxicity, because you're starting to compare yourself to others etc.
But that's just one example. I'd also argue that a lot of game devs "back then" had intrinsic motivation in mind while developing than today. If I think of games like Arx Fatalis or System Shock, the whole design philosophy was completely different compared to today. If you're not intrinsically motivated to explore the world and read some notes ingame or talk to other NPCs etc, you will never manage to play through the game without a guide. Well... in modern games, every relevant NPC has a marker above their head or in the compass or whatever and the guide is embedded in the game, which converted the intrinsic motivations into extrinsic ones. That's really critical, because the player doesn't has to think anymore (Bioshock Infinite - Elizabeth solves puzzles for you, compared to Bioshock 1 - one type of hacking puzzle all over the place, compared to System Shock - multiple types of puzzles that even introduce new mechanics as you progress through the game) aaaaand on the other hand: the developer stops thinking about stuff like that, too.
It was "best practice" in "old games", that you could ask a NPC for direction for your next quest or whatever. In modern games, most NPCs don't even tell you crucial information about your next quest. Like the location or sometimes even what the actual problem is. Why? Because there's a marker. Boring.
The problem with that is, that you had a bunch of different "purpose groups" back then. People would help each other solve a puzzle in System Shock or help each other in a dungeon in Everquest or whatever. But today, all those groups are not needed anymore, because everything was dumbed down for the sake of accessibility, which leads to more people in less groups. And that always causes friction and leads to toxicity.
For me it's more like a: "Let's return back to purpose-driven communities". I grew up with forums etc and it was a completely different internet culture, nowadays we have a cult around every influencer basically.
Thanks for your talk :)!
Really insightful great talk! I absolutely loved it. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I feel like her stance on "detractors" and "misalignment" is just plain wrong. What she refers to as "misalignment" and "detractors" generally constitutes as "passionate players" voicing their "purpose". It is not the players' fault if the developers and community managers don't listen.
A message for Kelsey:
About "misalignment"
A player will try a game, enjoy it with friends, and then judge how the game feels to them compared with games they've played in the past. If they enjoy the game, they'll continue to play it because they enjoy it. Over the course of time, they might find out they "don't like" certain things about the game, or changes might happen to the game that they "don't like". When this dislike happens, the player will usually be vocal about it towards the company because they are passionate about the game, and hope to see it improve. They have become a "passionate player". They are not "misaligned", they have purpose (to see the game improve) and since they are not a staff member at the company, the best they can do is make a complaint/suggestion. If a player likes your game, they will play your game. If a player doesn't like your game, they will stop playing. There is a difference, and this is where "detractors" come in.
*TL;DR:* people who complain about the game, are not misaligned, they are passionate and purposeful.
About "detractors"
A player who goes from "playing" your game to "not playing" your game, or a player who outright refuses to play your game, is a detractor. These are the people who are not in/have left your community and are talking to their friends within the community, trying to justify their reason for staying away/leaving; yet simultaneously providing a reason (subconsciously) for their friends, within your community, to leave; or a reason for their friends outside of your community, to not join. "detractors" are *not* a part of your community. They are the people outside it, who are trying to take other people out of it.
*TL;DR:* a "detractor" is someone who quits your game, and tells others to stop playing (and many more examples).
About "community"
Someone who is "aware" of your community, is *NOT* a part of your community. They are outside of it. They know your community exists, but they do not seek information about it. Perhaps you've misnamed the category?
Someone who is "passive" in your community, is everything you described for "aware". They know the community exists, occasionally partake in reading things about the game online, and might be thinking about playing it.
Someone who is "engaged" is someone who has downloaded/purchased your game, and has played it at least once, and intends to play it again.
Someone who is "active" is someone who plays your game regularly and generally talks to other players outside the game.
Someone who is "advocate" yeah umm... that's 100% *not* the right word for that tier. Maybe "veteran" or "pro" or "passionate" would work better? These are the players who know everything going on within the game. They know you didn't make very much money last month. They know you are/aren't trying to make it better. They know the community's feelings across the board on various topics. They are most-likely to quit your game once they've done everything they needed to do, unless there's a replayability factor at play.
*TL;DR:*/closing statement This lady either has no idea what she's talking about, or came up with a bunch of bogus names instead of accurately portraying a gaming community. The way she talks about members of a community like they're pawns in the game company's plan to make money sickens me. "advocates" ? The community aren't the people trying to sell the game. If the game isn't appealing to a large audience, blame your marketing team. "detractors" ? Your community isn't trying to kick people out either (exception: League of Legends community). Generally speaking, communities want to help each other out and boost each other up so they can all enjoy the game together. All in all, this talk makes very little sense and butchers the concept of what a community is within gaming as a whole. Absolutely disgusting narrative.
PS: Long-term trust of your players is FAR FAR FAR better than short-term goals to appease your investors. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Tale as old as time, there is a huge difference between constructive and destructive criticism, and also between how either of them is served. I personally feel like what she's calling "toxic" is "****** you, your game is broken" rather than "this feature is bugged, it needs to be fixed asap cause it's affecting everyone". Both fall under "voicing complaints" and "trying to make the game better", but I have 0 idea as a developer how to make use of the first comment. Yes, frustration makes it much more likely to pop up, but her point is that this frustration comes from misalignment of player's expectations and the experience they actually get.
The rest of your comment seems to focus on terminology, but tbh I don't think it was that bad. Plus it looks like she's not even the one who came up with that terminology, she references that graph as a general material that people in her sphere use.
And league is far from the only game toxic to new players, let's be real.
Finally, your p.s. is exactly the same as her main point at the end of the talk, so it looks like you both agree about the topic, you just call the parts different names.
@@leochangesnames Regarding the first and second point: these are true, but incorrect use of words (aka terrminology) can lead to confusion, especially among people who speak English as a second language. Leading people down false paths helps no one.
Regarding League, you're right. I used it as an example.
Regarding PS: Correct. I agree with her point. I'm just opposed to the delivery, due to the possibility of it being misunderstood and potentially misleading.
PS regarding an "f u" type of comment: generally speaking, people with this type of attitude aren't usually mad at the developer when they say this. It can be any number of things, but it generally narrows down to "This mechanic doesn't work the way I think it does, so I'm going to react as if it's not working the way I think it should" or; "(I have no idea what I'm doing but) I'm clicking the buttons and they're not working" (the player doesn't realize they got stunned) or; "This enemy player attacked me and now I hate them because I didn't want to die" or just general other complaints, usually having nothing to do with the design of the game. As far as responding to these comments, I recommend directing the person to Customer Service unless your company has an alternate place to accept complaints/criticism, in which case, you can direct them there. Very rarely does the player actually hate the way the game is designed, and on a majority of those rare circumstances, it's the fault of the marketing team for allowing things like "in-game cash shops", "RMT", or just generally appealing to investors to have bad things added or used as a "band-aid" fix for other problems. or; they got unlucky on a gacha roll and they're mad at the game being so good at giving them dopamine that they "wasted" money on it. They'll probably do it again too.
Corporate discord mod demonstrates why big game devs are out of touch
I'm not sure if I agree that marching for holmes to return is detractor behavior, I can think of a lot of worse things, this seems more like they are just really engaged. Unless they were being assholes about it
I'd say it was an edge case, it did cause a bit of public disturbance iirc
If you're curious about what purpose-led communities exist that you can actually apply to your game, stuff like content creation and speedruns have been proven to work. If you already knew of those, do you know of any others?
Well what do you mean by "content creation". Do you mean people streaming the game? Do you mean Bethesda style modding for singleplayer games? Do you mean community servers with mods, and something like Minecraft Hunger Games?
@@bobbinsthethird
It depends on the scale and type of your games I guess.
I'm a solo dev making simple games, so stuff like guides or lets play is often enough.
Bigger games like say Darkest Dungeon benefit more from a modding community or even lore enthusiasts.
While even bigger games like Minecraft apply all of them.
Anything you can apply and players enjoy is good to build a community around. Remember that something as simple as a timer at the end of each level gave birth to Doom's speedrunning community.
seems like some people didn't watch the video or turned off their brains when they heard the words: Fallout76 and NFT.
The speaker didn't develop any of the games y'all mad at. She's just an employee doing her job. Most of the time, the Community managers are just the fall guys for every terrible decisions made by the devs/companies. It's literally their job to do damage control. Even in bad situations, maybe even more so in bad situations, there is a lot of lessons to be learned and she is just sharing what she has learned.
She isn't excusing any of the games she listed. She's just offering a model of community management that could benefit future indie game devs.
This entire 30 minute talk can quite literally be summarized in "if you want to build a better community, find an actual purpose for it". And that's literally it, it's not leaving anything out. 30 minutes of talking.
And the whole concept of "community management" as discussed here is just so bizarre. It's like aliens desperately trying to understand basic human behavior and failing. What purpose your "management" has? What are you trying to achieve by "managing" the community? The entire talk comes off like they have absolutely no idea, they just want to "manage communities" for the sake of managing communities. Communities are something that happens fairly organically, you don't really have to "manage" them. Most of the time, you'll just be getting in the way of your fans. Moderate the communities, sure, support them, of course, respond to them, but don't manage them, because there's no real need to if your product is engaging enough.
In the context of how games have been trying to control their communities more and more over the last decade, it makes sense for her to do this talk. She can't just say "stop what you're doing and do something else instead" without showing why, especially since it's basically an industry standard at this point.
@@leochangesnames And so she spends 30 minutes on vaguely and long-windedly (and with awkward anecdotes and jokes) alluding to why without actually *saying* why and, more importantly, without suggesting any actual solutions. Like I said, the talk can be summarized in "if you want to build a better community, find an actual purpose for it" and that's actually more specific than anything she says in her entire non-talk. Nobody is going to leave her talk thinking "wow, she had some really good points, now I know what I was doing wrong and what I'm supposed to do", because there were no real points and no real answers in the entire 30 minutes. She just did a talk for the sake of doing a talk.
@@Case_I do agree she could have been more specific with examples, but I still walked away thinking "oh the thing I was planning to do was a bad idea, and I now also know where to look for what I should do instead"
@@leochangesnames I guess I stand corrected and even something as useless as this has its target audience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Excellent talk, thank you very much for sharing!
Why do you need to fight toxicity? Just embrace it, lol. Will not look as artificial as "stay positive pc bs, also buy our nft". This only leads to hiding kill count, cause when one people are better than others it's toxic and noninclusive XD, ofc people will hate when their better performance is ignored
@@mykoladavydenko3578 because toxicity makes people’s lives measurably worse, worsens the experience for the player, and makes it not fun to be a part of the community.
Examples of groups for people that are stuck on a women being on screen:
Destiny 2's Long Term community talk about how they hate the game, tell new people not to play it. In destiny 2 those purpose led groups would be the: Lore heads, pvp'ers, casual pve / questing, "hardcore" raiders/dungeon groups.
I played destiny 2 a bit and got into that hardcore group and almost all of them could not stop talking about how much they hated the game. Those are your detractors, most destiny youtubers are detractors as well as they are rewarded in views for hating on the game.
Another game example is Elder Scrolls Online, the purpose groups in that are even more obvious: role players, questers, housing, pvp, and end game pve. All of those purpose led groups for the most part get some love from the ESO community team, if youre deep into ESO you already know whuch ones dont.
Detractors come from Toxic Casuals, people that hate players that only like to do the end game content. And hardcore players that hate the casuals for joining content they cant complete.
Non mmo example: Halo infinite: casual pvp (big team battle, fiesta, social, etc), forge/custom games, hardcore pvp, play ranked and may follow the esports seen. Etc
When she is talking about engaging in the purpose led groups those are the groups she is talking about.
Also i do agree 100% with her, game communities get more and more toxic and they dont need to be. I think the only game that is known for not being toxic is The space dwarf mining game. Of course there are always going to be toxic elements in communities but your goal is to minimize that.
Embrace the chaos! 🤪
"How We Avoid It" lmfao what
Thanks for the great talk! Yeah, most problems in any given community arise from the fact that, the common denominator for all the members, e.g. the game, is not strong enough to unify the members, because they are too different on all other aspects. They need to find more shared interests, ideally in the context of the game, to form a stronger bond and keep them engaged. Dividing the community into smaller subgroups is the only way to do that effectively, and the those subgroups' reason for existence must be something actionable in order for them to last a long time.
Thank you for this talk, I found it really informative and giving food for thought.
"Fascinating"... as Spock would say... :o) For Star Cit by CIG the Advocate Whales are defo also Detractors too! PS "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!"
When I hear the word "community manager" I think "troublesome woman". I really didn't know what to expect with this video, but I understood community managers see the fans as rats and they need to direct the behavior of rats. Talking about "dopamine" and "engagement" cycles the way mobile game devs and scum bag marketers do.
In her vocabulary you can tell they don't see this as art or passion. So yeah, troublesome woman. And like all women she blames all her problems on men.
jesus fucking christ dude
Kelsey and other community managers can't control the fact that we live in a world where hype and engagement are important for games' success. And community management isn't the only game development role to deal with player psychology, that's what game design is all about too. In your rat metaphor, the job of level designers is to guide rats through a maze - do you find their work irritating as well?
As for your second point, it's hard for community managers to act passionately about their job because they are the defense between the development team and the community when things don't go well. They have to be reserved and have thick skin because people like you will burn them with misogynistic comments.
@@xThemczombiex I'm sure the PR people who worked at cigerate companies had similar feelings when they had to shield the company from accusations that they market to children. Hell part of her job is to shield the company for marketing gambling to children. Yeah calling them scumbags makes their job a lot harder. I don't give a shit. Maybe you shouldn't pick a job that naturally leads to being the enemy of gamers and than complain when spears get thrown at you. I get that they are the enemy of gamers because the company itself is becoming an enemy of gamers as well as White men who don't hate their race and men that won't be intimidated by accusations of SeXisM. Yeah I got that SOMEBODY has to do the job and maybe they didn't know what they were getting into and have bills to pay. Doesn't change the fact that the job is more offensive to me than the tobaco marketers.
@@NotRegret crazy take xdd i guess it all depends on how you look at it, but i dont get what her being a women has to do with it
gaming is a male dominated space and you're worried about "toxicity" lmfao.
maybe just don't piss off your customers and they won't hate you for it in return.
So what should developers do if two parts of the community of roughly equal size ask for opposite, mutually exclusive things? Someone is going to get pissed off either way.
Okay, why Amino app isn't taking off giants as a social platform for gamers ? maybe linking to backlog games and achievement? not web 3 thing ? steam community is enough? but consoles have their own pool ? Twitter is the goat place? Idk