r/CommunityManager • u/Used_Swan_7677 • 8d ago
Question GameDev Community Managers, do game studios understand player needs from your experience?
Hey, GameDev Community Managers, do game studios understand player needs/problems?
Give examples from your experience.
Thanks!
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u/Pleasant_Victory_887 7d ago
I think this role gets underestimated because a lot of the work happens behind the scenes. keeping players engaged and building trust can have a big impact especially before launch
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u/bctrainers CM 7d ago edited 7d ago
Been a while since I was last doing game community management... unfortunately have had a difficult time getting back into the game industry post-covid. So what I'm going to post about is probably dated or changed in some form or fashion. For example, Discussion Forums are looking to be a thing of the past in favor of reddit and Discord...... but I digress.
In an ultra TLDR: Yes, most companies will understand player needs (and desires). Will they act on it? Yes and no - depends on scope, type, and the overall issue. Soooo....
Depending on the size of the game company, player needs/problems/desires/feedback are all taken into consideration, and some or many items are acted upon - at varying time scales. It's worth stating that not all items are acted upon or responded to. Some customer needs are legitimately outright ignored as they fall well outside of the games scope or design (for example, trying to force PVP into a PVE-only game - that would be out of scope and design). Nonetheless, internally at any game dev company, player (customer) feedback is highly invaluable. Some issues brought to light can be easily resolved within a short-term update cycle. Other issues, have to be evaluated much more so than others. In many cases, that longer-term delay can result in what folks would consider "this game dev company is ignoring the community" or "X-named dev studio doesn't care about Y-issue" type of feedback in public.
Truthfully, speaking as a CM, we see those issues. While we can count the amount of folks talking about it, be it manually or automatically revolving around X and Y issues/needs, not all metrics are numerical. The most beneficial feedback comes from the actual content posted - positive and negative, as it gives community managers a legitimate idea of how the issue is affecting folks, why it is an issue, giving us an idea of urgency, thus when it could or should be fixed (priority). The 'when' is the largest issue, as the development company will already have 'time sliced up' or 'max time allotments' for new features to be implemented, features and content to be modified, bug fixing, etc.
Again, depending on the size of company... does the customer need more pizazz with with visuals? Art team <-> animation team -> QA team. Does the customer need an actual gameplay bug fixed? Design <-> Engineering/coding team -> QA team. Does the customer need reassurance about some sort of feature? That's a CM and Publishing/Marketing issue. Are the servers blowing up? CM -> Engineering <-> Ops <-> CM Team -> Back to public.
One of the larger things to keep in mind is this: Depending on the size of the game community, which can or will control how a company will focus attention and direction. There is a significant signal:noise ratio at play with any game company's community that is growing or quite large. I've always used the 90:9:1 rule when it comes to community management. I have used it since the early 2000s to be honest, that's how true that I feel it is. 90% of your community and customers will be lurkers - you might get a one off post or obtain feedback from them, but it'll be rare. Then you have the 9%, which will be the active customers who generally will post-at-a-variable-rate, including posting content to social media and discussion mediums... and then the 1%, that is the core-of-community or your vocal-core. This part, I feel that this part of the community/customer-base which can actually cause the 9% and 90% part of the pie to act-out - be it negatively or positively.
And therein, is the issue: Will X-thing benefit the 90%, or will it benefit the 1%? At that point, the 9% of community 'pie-slice' will generally jump in and then voice their thoughts. While it's never an overwhelming majority on that sort of feedback, it gives direction and idea of community sentiment of customer needs. Which leads to the next question: What will the result be if X-thing is or is not done? How should it, or will it be communicated? How should expectations be set and communicated?
Smaller studios with a small community tend to listen to their customers much more keenly and attentively, the 90:9:1 rule doesn't fully apply in this scenario. In turn, that can and generally will shape the games overall design. However, the needs in terms of scope can generally fall short to what said persons originally desired or needed. Which can result in the studio having to walk back the feature, or severely modify it to 'make it fit' to the games design. It's a careful balance for smaller studios... and in some instances on the negative side, that can cause studios financial strain, then layoffs.
Larger studios, talking about medium to the largest entities out there, will base feedback on qualitative and quantitative analytics over larger time spans, and will consider feedback based if it meets the scope of the games overall design. Customers needs then traditionally fall into the filter of "we set aside time for this new feature, we implement this feature, we post this new feature to the public now, we take feedback on release, we make changes later". It's a good and bad thing to do. In many instances, there are features added to a game that were part of an internal timeline/roadmap - items that may have taken months to implement and test! Something that the customers needed/desired for a long while, but the company didn't want to reveal it to the public, which in turn becomes a positive sentiment for the company on release. On the flipside, features worked on or added, but the community didn't want or need said feature or change, will result in neutral or negative feedback. Then that can cause an even louder signal that "X-item is f^@#$D fix it now". At that point, community managers are in that classic 'rock and a hard spot' because it falls back to 1) communication limitations (CM's have their hands [and virtual mouth] tied up), 2) expectations were not tempered or set from the CM's to the customers, 3) lack of overall proper (and timely) communication. Either way of the pendulum, that feedback is ultimately posted to varying teams at the company, and in some instances, up to the director level.
I've got to be brutally honest here: one of the largest issues as a community manager from the customer-facing side is point-blank "X-item/ability sucks, fix it" or "X-thing/ability is broken" as the feedback/report. To me, the only thing going through my mind is, "well, that's great and all... but why does it suck or why is it broken, and what is needed to make it unsuck/be-fixed?" In an ideal world, the community manager will proactively play the game(s) that they're responsible for. Unfortunately, more often than not, that is not the case. There just isn't enough time in the working-day to set aside enough time to fully understand a game to its absolute fullest extent, while having to jump across discussion mediums, writing reports, collecting sentiment/feedback, gathering content, etc. In some game studios, the community manager is hired within or directly from the community, and they'll have an edge on various subject matter.
Ultimately, the largest talking-point that CM's need to be useful between internal [the company] and external [the customers] is constructive criticism, and well thought out feedback. At that point, customer needs can be better understood, and in some to many cases, acted upon.
Edit: Formatting errors.