The bulk of a community manager’s job, once the community is set up and running, is expectation management. When you invite people to ask questions, you create an expectation that you’ll answer them all, not cherry pick the easy ones. When you post five times a day, you create the expectation that you will continue to do so. When you moderate gently and lightly, you create the expectation that it will be always thus. When you respond to a user’s feedback with an immediate change in the game, you create an expectation that you’ll do that forever.
This is all very simple stuff. I am not sure the explosion of community-style jobs has been a good thing for the industry, because these basics don’t seem to have been learned.
But enough of my cranky old person’s ranting. I actually came in to post something interesting that I’ve noticed over my last few gigs. And then I realized I didn’t have an Examiner post up for today, and decided to experiment with posting it there. It’s obvious truth, to some extent, but the seven of you are a little more informed than the average bear.
Just how much more informed you are is the subject of another post.
Has there been some recent event that’s subconciously prompted us to talk about expectation management? I put a post up at KTR about the very same thing today.
Either way, I enjoyed your alternate approach to it.
Hammer, meet head of nail.
Most of the big MMO PR plunders I can think of over the last few years come down largely to “managing customer expectations poorly.” See Cryptic’s behavior over the last year for some good examples (though their behavior does at least reflect their name well). You’d think little things like those you mention would be common sense, but in practice…apparently not.
Expectations are the root of all evil
Really.
Everyone is guilty of it at some point. Hell the more MMOs that I play the more I tend to expect.
I think the fact that Asheron’s Call is my favorite MMO even considering the amount of EQ, DAOC and WoW that I’ve played kinda proves it. Long live Darktide!
(quote from examiner.com) Did you go and talk to them as a community manager or as a random player? I’m not sure, but I think there can be a difference.
It’s obvious that AAA MMOG need to create a buzz and give glimpses about their crazy/new/unsuspected stuff. After all, marketing is one third of the success of a game, right? But players do not make the difference between an MMOG from a private company (like Turbine, cf comments on examiner.com) or from a publisher/with-shareholders. So should this undifferentiation be maintained by to the PR/CM? Caricature (of really bad CM): “Sorry, this feature you expected so much is quite botched because our shareholders thought it would cost too many resources for too little ROI”.
To my mind, there should be a marked difference between PR and CM roles. You surely have a broader view of the industry than me. How is it in practice?
And finally, OK, your post is a rant. But how do you solve the problem? Should a CM be as inconsistent and unpredictable as possible? I guess not.
You know, that first paragraph is a rather simple, short, and straightforward with some information that probably should be pretty much common knowledge and common sense. Yet, I can’t help but feel that it needs to somehow be required reading.
Heck, I’m happy I read it for the reminder….
How much of the early hype and spin is really targeted at consumers, and how much is building interest to attract investors?
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