Post by leunas on Jan 2, 2007 3:24:01 GMT -5
Game companies’ community support is better than anyone gives it credit.
They actually do it so well that I have complained before about how Official Community Sites stifle fan-made community sites.
So when I predict that community support will dramatically improve within the next year or two, I don’t mean that as a criticism of how it is now.
Also not a criticism, but I don’t think this will be the result of game companies dramatically improving their community support.
I believe it will instead be the result of 3rd party companies coming to support online communities for gamers. Companies that are not in the game industry that is, but are in the online community support industry.
And I don’t mean the 3rd party MMORPG community support companies. Though I’m sure they are excellent at what they do, they just do the same thing game companies do. Maybe they even do it better. But in this context, they’re also in the game industry, rather than the online community support industry.
There is an online community support industry. It creates online communities, and supports them.
Game developers are not in the online community support business. They create an online community for each game, support it very well, but – for example – will delete it if that game is canceled. It’s just not their thing. Supporting online communities costs game developers, they have other interests.
Ever notice how official community sites also host advertising for the game which everyone in the community is already playing? Community versus Marketing, over the official site’s purpose. Just a “Try It Now!” link on something called “The Community Site” is a hint, game companies have different internal and sometimes contrary interests. Sometimes selling games conflicts with community support.
Many game devs won’t shy away from stating it, either: Game development is what they get paid to do. That is the top-priority, number one. Everything else is number next. They are not in the business of creating and supporting online communities.
Another thing about announcements on community sites, is that they’re always generic and broad: game-wide news. Not usually very important to the communities which actually exist in-game. In-game events that are important to in-game communities are rarely mentioned. Though very important to some people, the number of those people is too small to broadcast globally – the event in question likely only happened on one server. Official Community sites can only aim a broadcast at everybody, and still mostly miss.
That is a very basic tool of community support. Yet this generally hasn’t been viewed as important enough to even build. “Our software doesn’t have that functionality.” and “We don’t know what important events happened in-game.” seem problems that can be solved. Outside the game industry, they have been.
But the MMO game industry has always done server-level community support pretty poorly (except for single-world games which get it right by default).
Typically there is greatest support, developer participation and such, for that game-wide level community. Other special interest groups are also supported at the game-wide level: If there’s a druid forum, it is for all druids regardless which server they play on. Maybe that is appropriate, but I don’t think game-wide forums otherwise are, because people don’t play the game that way.
Another level of in-game community is the guild-level, which some game companies do a better job of supporting, others not so much, often on a per-game basis. If under-supported, guilds will do it themselves anyway: maintaining forums, rosters, news, teamspeak or ventrilo servers, game reviews, recommendations, and partners/opponents for other games. More than any official site gives anyone, in other words. And if you quit the game, they don’t kick you out of the guild. Half the guild is playing something new? They’ll set up a forum and support that, too.
These can thrive in direct competition with official community sites, proving it can be done. They confirm that players want more than they are getting, and that if you give them what they want, they’ll come. Most importantly, it shows what they want: a more personal out-of-game version of their in-game community, at one level, and meta-game support at another.
Their guild isn’t their whole in-game community, however. Typically, much of their news and discussion topics fall midway between their guild and the whole game. They’ll announce events at the server-level. Things are of interest to none but players on that server. Their guild site links to other guild sites, of guilds on their server. They structure the out-of-game support for their in-game community to fit their in-game community.
The out-of-game online community support should be structured so as to support the in-game communities, rather than creating new online communities for each game.
Imagine, a news update is posted on the front page with a link to discuss it on the forums. You follow the link, log into the forums, and you are sent to the discussion forum for your preferred server. Discuss it with the players who also play on that server. Developers’ replies are posted as front-page additions to the update, the link there still leads back to your server forum.
Would a server-level community be better than a thousand screaming strangers?
I don’t know, either. I just ask loaded questions.
How about customizing the announcements, so you get what is important to you? In feeds, so you get it where you want it? You’d really want a server-level front-page too. Game-wide news could still be automatically fed there, along with server-level news.
Imagine in addition to this server-level news, your guild’s news is posted there too. You’re able to configure it to deliver any news you want to see. How about auto-generated feeds for individual character accomplishments? So maybe the guild-feed includes guild mates’ level-ups and highest-in-guild achievements, new members and guild-resignations. There’s still a game-wide news feed aggregated there too, of course, but also accomplishments of your un-guilded buddy, because you wanted it. All on the official site or via RSS to your reader, or your “guild alliance” website, where many of your servers guild-feeds are aggregated. Or automatically posted to your blog. Because they’re just RSS feeds and you can do whatever you like with them.
Look at the customization options on Google News. When I go there, I get a news page with world, national, state and city news, plus “online game”, and “jeff freeman” news search results. News of decreasing importance to everyone else, but of increasing interest to me. Via RSS feed, because we are not savages.
I do believe those dramatic improvements in online community will at least start with this very sort of thing. What you want, where you want it. Personal. Customized for you, by you. Not just “mySpace for WoW” and not a “Official Blog with links to players’ blogs” either, but an online community site with the features we’ve seen everywhere that good people go.
I’m sure some game companies will compete against a 3rd party company, to retain their communities on their official community websites. The companies’ main advantage is substantial: developer access. Players want to holler at the devs, and if the devs are only at the official site, then that’s where the players have to go.
The disadvantages facing developers are also significant. The developer is always a game development company first, with online community support just a part of that. Developers do not support sub-communities well, nor meta-communities at all. So the community that the developers are supporting, isn’t the one you’re in-game with. They definitely lose you as soon as you unsubscribe, push you out the door generally. So although the official site can keep you in touch with developers, it can’t keep you in touch with your friends.
Here’s the multi-billion dollar bet: If given the choice between developers or friends, you will choose your friends.
Community support companies are betting they can provide whatever support and services are necessary for their site to be more appealing than any official one. If they can’t convince you, then they can get all of your friends so you join anyway. If they can’t get your friends, then they’ll offer more. More of whatever you want. Whatever you need to spend your time on their community site rather than the official one.
Because to them, we’re worth billions of dollars.
mythicalblog.com/blog/2006/12/31/community-support-20/
They actually do it so well that I have complained before about how Official Community Sites stifle fan-made community sites.
So when I predict that community support will dramatically improve within the next year or two, I don’t mean that as a criticism of how it is now.
Also not a criticism, but I don’t think this will be the result of game companies dramatically improving their community support.
I believe it will instead be the result of 3rd party companies coming to support online communities for gamers. Companies that are not in the game industry that is, but are in the online community support industry.
And I don’t mean the 3rd party MMORPG community support companies. Though I’m sure they are excellent at what they do, they just do the same thing game companies do. Maybe they even do it better. But in this context, they’re also in the game industry, rather than the online community support industry.
There is an online community support industry. It creates online communities, and supports them.
Game developers are not in the online community support business. They create an online community for each game, support it very well, but – for example – will delete it if that game is canceled. It’s just not their thing. Supporting online communities costs game developers, they have other interests.
Ever notice how official community sites also host advertising for the game which everyone in the community is already playing? Community versus Marketing, over the official site’s purpose. Just a “Try It Now!” link on something called “The Community Site” is a hint, game companies have different internal and sometimes contrary interests. Sometimes selling games conflicts with community support.
Many game devs won’t shy away from stating it, either: Game development is what they get paid to do. That is the top-priority, number one. Everything else is number next. They are not in the business of creating and supporting online communities.
Another thing about announcements on community sites, is that they’re always generic and broad: game-wide news. Not usually very important to the communities which actually exist in-game. In-game events that are important to in-game communities are rarely mentioned. Though very important to some people, the number of those people is too small to broadcast globally – the event in question likely only happened on one server. Official Community sites can only aim a broadcast at everybody, and still mostly miss.
That is a very basic tool of community support. Yet this generally hasn’t been viewed as important enough to even build. “Our software doesn’t have that functionality.” and “We don’t know what important events happened in-game.” seem problems that can be solved. Outside the game industry, they have been.
But the MMO game industry has always done server-level community support pretty poorly (except for single-world games which get it right by default).
Typically there is greatest support, developer participation and such, for that game-wide level community. Other special interest groups are also supported at the game-wide level: If there’s a druid forum, it is for all druids regardless which server they play on. Maybe that is appropriate, but I don’t think game-wide forums otherwise are, because people don’t play the game that way.
Another level of in-game community is the guild-level, which some game companies do a better job of supporting, others not so much, often on a per-game basis. If under-supported, guilds will do it themselves anyway: maintaining forums, rosters, news, teamspeak or ventrilo servers, game reviews, recommendations, and partners/opponents for other games. More than any official site gives anyone, in other words. And if you quit the game, they don’t kick you out of the guild. Half the guild is playing something new? They’ll set up a forum and support that, too.
These can thrive in direct competition with official community sites, proving it can be done. They confirm that players want more than they are getting, and that if you give them what they want, they’ll come. Most importantly, it shows what they want: a more personal out-of-game version of their in-game community, at one level, and meta-game support at another.
Their guild isn’t their whole in-game community, however. Typically, much of their news and discussion topics fall midway between their guild and the whole game. They’ll announce events at the server-level. Things are of interest to none but players on that server. Their guild site links to other guild sites, of guilds on their server. They structure the out-of-game support for their in-game community to fit their in-game community.
The out-of-game online community support should be structured so as to support the in-game communities, rather than creating new online communities for each game.
Imagine, a news update is posted on the front page with a link to discuss it on the forums. You follow the link, log into the forums, and you are sent to the discussion forum for your preferred server. Discuss it with the players who also play on that server. Developers’ replies are posted as front-page additions to the update, the link there still leads back to your server forum.
Would a server-level community be better than a thousand screaming strangers?
I don’t know, either. I just ask loaded questions.
How about customizing the announcements, so you get what is important to you? In feeds, so you get it where you want it? You’d really want a server-level front-page too. Game-wide news could still be automatically fed there, along with server-level news.
Imagine in addition to this server-level news, your guild’s news is posted there too. You’re able to configure it to deliver any news you want to see. How about auto-generated feeds for individual character accomplishments? So maybe the guild-feed includes guild mates’ level-ups and highest-in-guild achievements, new members and guild-resignations. There’s still a game-wide news feed aggregated there too, of course, but also accomplishments of your un-guilded buddy, because you wanted it. All on the official site or via RSS to your reader, or your “guild alliance” website, where many of your servers guild-feeds are aggregated. Or automatically posted to your blog. Because they’re just RSS feeds and you can do whatever you like with them.
Look at the customization options on Google News. When I go there, I get a news page with world, national, state and city news, plus “online game”, and “jeff freeman” news search results. News of decreasing importance to everyone else, but of increasing interest to me. Via RSS feed, because we are not savages.
I do believe those dramatic improvements in online community will at least start with this very sort of thing. What you want, where you want it. Personal. Customized for you, by you. Not just “mySpace for WoW” and not a “Official Blog with links to players’ blogs” either, but an online community site with the features we’ve seen everywhere that good people go.
I’m sure some game companies will compete against a 3rd party company, to retain their communities on their official community websites. The companies’ main advantage is substantial: developer access. Players want to holler at the devs, and if the devs are only at the official site, then that’s where the players have to go.
The disadvantages facing developers are also significant. The developer is always a game development company first, with online community support just a part of that. Developers do not support sub-communities well, nor meta-communities at all. So the community that the developers are supporting, isn’t the one you’re in-game with. They definitely lose you as soon as you unsubscribe, push you out the door generally. So although the official site can keep you in touch with developers, it can’t keep you in touch with your friends.
Here’s the multi-billion dollar bet: If given the choice between developers or friends, you will choose your friends.
Community support companies are betting they can provide whatever support and services are necessary for their site to be more appealing than any official one. If they can’t convince you, then they can get all of your friends so you join anyway. If they can’t get your friends, then they’ll offer more. More of whatever you want. Whatever you need to spend your time on their community site rather than the official one.
Because to them, we’re worth billions of dollars.
mythicalblog.com/blog/2006/12/31/community-support-20/