The Future of Game Communities, and How We Avoid It

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

the future of game communities is a gay troon? great idea guys, go on like this

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.

Corporate discord mod demonstrates why big game devs are out of touch

Have you consider making a good product? or maybe not destroy a loved franchise?

How can you be taken serious with that hair?
Looks like a mossy toupee.

End censorship in video games. Censoring politics is only reinforcing fascism. The truth is the new generations spend their free time online, not in the street. If we end debates and freedom of speech online just because "it makes a nicer environment", we take away the power to organize and resist from socially conscious people. How many times did I get muted or banned in games for speaking up against fascism, racism, etc just because of the "no politics" rule. Let's not make video games and the internet a prison of numbness to real world issues! It is a public place and should belong to everyone!

Embrace the chaos! 🤪

"Fascinating"... as Spock would say... :o) For Star Cit by CIG the Advocate Whales are defo also Detractors too! PS "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!"

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.

Thank you for this talk, I found it really informative and giving food for thought.

honestly at this point gdc should just disable the comments on any talk given by a woman or person of color, just nip that one in the bud

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.

Toxic communities are the result of toxic business models? Shocking.

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 :)!

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.

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.

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?

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.

Excellent talk, thank you very much for sharing!

"How We Avoid It" lmfao what

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

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.