Empowering Your Community to Evangelize for You

Why You Should Listen

• More than 15 years of business development, marketing and strategic communications experience

• Former head of international product PR for Sony Online Entertainment

• Was third-party for Ubisoft• Launched more the 460 titles• More than 20 MMO titles

A few facts

If they talk about your game, they’re passionate and care

If they are talking on forums, they aren’t likely in the game at

that time

And they become a voice for or against you anytime they speak,

or post, or comment

Everyone is part of your community

Curt Schilling and Ralf Steinenger

So how do we get people to be positive and supportive?

It’s harder to say bad things about people you’ve met

Give them good things to talk about

Coming up – new patchWe nerfed Beastmasters, but gave

them an in-game item

Like a house, you first need to build the foundation

Foundation for Positive Community

• You must provide a place for them to interact with you – Forums

• You need to listen and respond – dialogue• Identify the people that post intelligent,

articulate and accurate answers, or diffusers in the group

• Reward positive behavior (later)

Foundation for Positive Community

• Mitigate negative behavior• Always try to make the relationship positive• If all is failing:

– Timeouts – Session timeouts– Remove from groups– Remove from game– Remove from planet

Foundation for Positive Community

• Give the community ways to express themselves internally – Dev chats– Fan art contests– Lore

Foundation for Positive Community

• …and externally – Fansite kits– Cosplay– Video contests (Like their videos and promote)– Facebook, Twitter (Native language!)

Reduce Barriers

• Let them tell others about your game and their achievements – make it easy to share (Facebook, etc.) – Champions Online

• Reward their friends for knowing them (friends of Lothar get 2 weeks free, an awesome mount)

• Give them positive things to talk about

Let Them Meet In-Game

• Housing• Guild halls• Open spaces • Have GMs in central areas• Train your GMs!!!

Let Them Meet in Person

• FanFaire/FanFest• Official (EverQuest) - Brittney• Unofficial (PlanetSide) – Georgeson• Personal relationships in the game and

outside of the game strengthen community• Developer Roundtable• Community council to represent players

Stuff that is basically free

A special forum tag

I am Uber and Special

In-game trophies/non-stat items that can be shown to others

Items that are instantly recognizable as special

Fireworks, Glow Around Character, Wings

Acknowledgement and validation from the development

team

Hire from your community!

You too could be in the game industry!

It’s about attention and respect

Facebook and Twitter are great

Build from (competitors)#YOURGAME

Everyone in your organization should care

John Smedley takes your calls

My Answers to Questions from Before

Small Company

• – Identify guilds that play similar games– What do you differently than their current games– Find people that voice interest in your features

• Build from MMORPG.com, Online Welten, Mondespersistants, etc.

• Facebook and Twitter

Hardware Company

• Identify 26 different community representatives and an agency to manage it

• Hold regular (quarterly roundtables – host dinners)

Thank You