01 Jul How to Survive in the Gaming Community: Tips for Users and Businesses

The fact that you are reading this means that you consider yourself to be a part of at least one gaming community. If so, then you have probably noticed that, aside from calling everything gay, gamers randomly start talking about important stuff as well. Completely unprovoked and unrelated to whatever may be happening within the game, people start sharing opinions and every so often, they start making sense and actually agree upon something. We’ve all witnessed and been a part of these marvellous conversations with random people while some guy spams “Noooooob!” in between every message whilst he continues to feed. In these small moments lies the power of the collective experience that the gaming community has.

It also includes a lot of randomness, misunderstandings, outbursts of rage, creativity and generally, a lot of good humour.

Understanding the power of the community

First thing’s first – the gaming community is a self-created entity which can’t be forced. The fact is that the tables have turned and now, different game developing companies live around one big community instead of small communities living around their releases and platforms. Large companies have established a face and an attitude, which you can clearly see from this year’s E3 press conferences. You can’t watch Ubisoft’s presentation and say that they don’t pay attention to the community and its wishes.

• The user mind-set

The gaming community is a tremendously large entity and it is probably one of the better informed and most active communities on the planet. A large part of them actively participates in the creation of content in one way or another. Members as both a global entity and as separate communities that live around different games, feel that they have an equal right to say into which direction the games should develop. It is important that people generally don’t feel pride as part of the community, they just are. They do different things but they are active, each and every one in some way and they don’t see it as an obligation – they enjoy doing it.

• The business aspect

From a business aspect, it has developed into a very powerful and rapidly growing market. According to Gartner, video game market revenue is in constant and steady and it is anticipated to continue with this trend. These are their numbers in millions of dollars.

It is also not a very easy market to stay afloat in if you do not know how to communicate with your community and have an open ear for suggestions. A lot of big corporate developers and consoles have done wrong and have been punished for it, the latest being Microsoft and the whole Xbox game sharing and recording our conversations thing which they later rectified.  They are still losing to PS4 in most parts of the world in their next-gen console contest.

It is no wonder developers tend to give a lot of freedom to their players, even during the development period. SOE’s EverQuest Landmark is the prime example of this respect for the players’ wishes and the inclusion of the players into the game’s history. This is actually a closed beta of their next MMO sequel in the EverQuest series, EverQuest Next, in which the players build the world. They are also included through various polls dealing with different types of visual decisions. At the moment, you can vote at their round table to contribute to the visual design of the Dark Elves.

Things you should know as a member

There are very few boarded down rules when it comes to the gaming community. In all honesty, we are very tolerant people and we tend to put up with a lot of BM from other community members. You really need to do evil things to be permanently excluded and severely punished. There are some things you should be aware though.

• Racism

I’m proud to say that racism isn’t tolerated a single bit within the community. Rudeness is something we experience on a daily basis but racial flaming is something that is diligently stepped upon by the vast majority of gamers as well as developers.

• Know who to take seriously

Being a part of the gaming community can cause occasional blackouts in which you will get angry and toxic from time to time. In retrospect, we all remember these moments as something similar to temporary insanity but they still happen. Don’t lose your nerves because you keep running into trolls and don’t feed the trolls.

• Devotion and respect

A gamer knows to respect when a developer makes him a part of the game developing process and to not make a mockery out of it. You are not required to participate but you should definitely respect it.

• The whole community isn’t in one place

While the developer will almost always provide some way of networking between the players, a healthy community is spread out over more than one platform. Social networks like Reddit, Facebook and Tumblr are popular places but communities have even gone further than that. Websites like MOBA Fire are examples of user generated gathering places with content created by the users. In the case of MOBA Fire, the content comes in the form of useful (or not so useful) guides and tips for playing League of Legend, DOTA 2 and SMITE.

Dealing with the community

Some would call this part controlling the community but you can never actually do this. Gamers speak out when they are not satisfied and developers and publishers feel their reaction on their end whether they like it or not. A lot of the community is a self-governing body and it resolves issues within itself. Riot has made a splendid decision when they put the power of resolving disputes between players through the Tribunal.

Communication between the two sides needs to exist and there needs to be someone to function as a mediator between the two sides.

The Community Manager

This position is hard to fill, especially in situations when the community is large and diverse. There are just too few people with the necessary skills to handle this position, let alone the necessary experience. The obligations of a CM range from somewhere between public relations and customer support. A CM is the face and the voice of the game developer/publisher and therefore his behaviour needs to be pristine.

Desirable skills a CM should have are:

• Communication (preferably multilingual)
• Patience
• Competent
• Confident (not overly so)
• Experienced
• Understands all aspect of the game from development to playing

Conclusion

From a business perspective, the gaming community is a crowd to be reckoned with and if you don’t show it the respect it deserves, it will fight you back. It will fight you back in the worst ways possible, by spreading negative publicity and by ignoring you. On the other hand, If you have a healthy relationship with your community, you will get positive publicity, quality feedback, new original content, fan art and much more. You should give them the room to do their thing and have an open ear for their suggestions.

As far as other useful tips for gamers go, who am I to tell you what to do? The community has always done what the community wants and it should remain so. When the game developers respect you, pay them back in kind words and keep making games better, noobs!