Voices of the Gods
Cuppy posted some thoughts on the recent debate concerning whether or not Mythic’s Mark Jacobs should have posted the response he did to the EU beta issues on his blog. Her points are correct and reasonable, and I agree with them in spirit just as I do with Amber’s rant in the comments section.
However, in many cases the realities of community management are different from the ideals of it. The simple fact is that CEOs and execs get to say what they want whenever they want, and community managers just have to deal with it.
Believe me, it makes any CM crazy when he or she spends hours slaving over the exact wording of a post on a touchy subject only to have an Unstoppable Force leap onto the forums and drop a bomb that stirs up a hornets nest. It’s especially frustrating when you know that, no matter how well-intentioned the post was, the Unstoppable Force will only be personally engaged with the subject in question until he tires of it, at which point it becomes entirely the community manager’s mess to clean up.
(You might be assuming that I have found myself in such situations in the past. Perhaps this is true; I refuse to name names. Instead, we’ll just use hypothetical initials for this fictitious Unstoppable Force. Let’s randomly choose the initials “JS.”)
When it’s a fellow team member or even a producer who makes a post you wish they wouldn’t have, you can (and should) call them on it and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. When it’s someone way up the food chain that does it, you should still call them on it. But be prepared for the fact that, no matter how positively they respond to your feedback, nothing will stop them from doing the same thing again.
This is the reality in this age where it’s easy for anyone to post their thoughts directly to the player base. Part of the job of the community manager is to remind the Unstoppable Force of the consequences of his posts, even if it doesn’t seem to do any good at the time. Eventually, you hope, something will sink in.
But the would-be community manager should have no illusions; this WILL happen to you, and you’re being paid to deal with it. You’re only in control until someone higher up the food chain swoops in and poops all over your picnic. It is in no small part how you deal with such situations that defines how well you do your job.
Nice to see you posting under Mobhunter.com again….good times
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“Let’s randomly choose the initials”
Made me lol
The thing I like about the industry is that what holds true for the developers often holds true for the players. I can relate to your experience because when I was just an officer in Iniquity our guild leader was an Unstoppable Force (of idiocy). On a daily basis the other officers and I worked to build our positive reputation. Weeks of work would go in and he would swoop in and tear it all down.
Ultimately we pink slipped him and some other jerk took over (me) but that doesn’t tend to be a valid option in an employment situation. If only it were! I suppose if you owned enough stock in the company… anyway.
I think management can always hinder a game. The creatives want to do X and the accountants want to make Y money. Tough situation.
In my less than professional opinion everyone who works on a game should have to be the community manager for a few weeks. It creates a different kind of developer. It tends to force them out of the “this is MY content” box. Its the same method by which I became a guild leader. I was a recruit (for 11 months, which was standard back in EQ1), then a member, then a class leader, then a member again and finally an officer. After that I got the God complex and became a leader. Woe is the world!
It all relates to experiences though. If you haven’t shoveled poo before you have no business mucking with the chap who has to do it these days!