Today’s post over at ModSquad: Physical World Bonds
This is another dead horse I keep flogging, even though most companies do events in the physical world. My complaint is that the reasons for those events are usually aimed at marketing, aka sales and promotion.
I want to see more events aimed at community, aka retention. The motivation matters.
I agree completely. I mean when bloggers disavowing any Mythic game start talking about Mythic inviting bloggers to the HQ… I think that’s a lot of bang for the buck.
/snicker
Just wanted to say how completely I agree with your opening paragraph in the article at ModSquad. For years I’ve wondered why all these other guys get TWO lives when I just get the one where everything is “real”.
I’m going to start saying “physical world”. Or maybe just “meatspace”.
I could not agree more. Honestly, I found the small fan driven events a lot more valuable, and enjoyable, than the big Fan Faires/Shows. Working a show like PAX or the SOE Fan Faire as a company rep (especially for a small company) is exhausting. You spend 6-12 hours on your feet, having the same 10 minute conversation 60 times. You shake the hands of 100 people who have been god knows where and almost inevitably end up with the Con Crud, and by the end of the day all you want to do is get drunk with the friends from game company X who you exchanged knowing pained looks with across the conference hall all day. It’s not to say these events aren’t valuable, it’s just that they suck your soul out as a developer.
Smaller events are a lot nicer. You get to sit down with one to two dozen dedicated fans of your game, you usually have a beer in your hand, and you get to really talk about your game, something you love, for a couple hours. You don’t have one 10 minute conversation 12 times, you get to have 2 one hour conversations. You also, from the design perspective, get to hear nuanced and detailed feedback from players. In 10 minutes you can’t explain to players why you nerfed Druids, but in an hour you usually can, and you can also get a chance to hear what their complaints are stripped of venom because they’re relating to you as this friendly guy drinking a beer with them, not the faceless bastard who nerfed them.
On Pirates we had a player (who later became an employee) who organized fan meet-ups local to us, and they were great. When we traveled for various events we’d often do fan meet-ups outside the event, and I always thought they were better than the event we were travelling for. Having a booth on the floor or PAX lets a lot of people see your game, but sending a Designer to a bar with 20 fans gets 20 people really excited about your game. Also, if the company agrees to buy the designer’s first round, he will probably be excited to go.
I’ll also chime in agreement. The players and developers up close and personal helps everyone keep perspective when they are yelling how much that (well deserved) berserker nerf was a slap in the face and a nail in the coffin of the game. I can personally say meeting the Mythic people in person gave me a better rapport with them even if they may not have felt the same way about me….
I’d be more wordy, but I need to head to my parents and help my brother clear zlob off his laptop. Excuse me while I sob a little inside.
I wrote about that in November.
However, you gotta tell me how you “train” developers to be community-friendly (and not community-clumsy or get a swollen head).
Sandwiches are cheap and very cool (see what I wrote about “DS in Paris”). But to my mind, the execs who take the decision to send the sandwiches believe that it’s not worth the hassle. Am I wrong?
I totally agree with everything said here.
One problem to bring up though, is proving that small activities outside of the interwebs are worth the time and resources. There is an obvious gap between using those resources to attend the big convention and then using more resources to invite people to Europe from North America.
When it’s all said and done. You still run into the problem of measuring the outcome to justify the same activities for the future.
Glen: Here’s how I did it, honestly. I made a note of player names and guild names of people who attended meatspace meetups. I knew what our average subscriber data was already.
Compare and contrast.
At the time I did this, there wasn’t a significant amount of difference between people who showed up for nachos at a casual player function and people who attended the two days in Vegas, but YMMV.
But there was a measurable difference, and we’re talking months, in typical subscription length, between people who’d met up in person and people who never attended any event at all.
I couldn’t convince my boss at the time that my results were significant, because I only tracked a few dozen people. But all of my anecdotal evidence backed up the result I saw from tracking.
I agree too! While obviously the players will likely never have things as up close and personal with the devs/community teams as they’d like, my experience with the folks at Mythic kept me playing DAoC far longer than I might otherwise have played. I attended a couple roadshow events, and had the opportunity to visit Mythic HQ (and got personal tours from you, Sanya, both times). I will say that we invited you to a guild gathering we had in Alexandria and you didn’t make it, though! :p But in all seriousness, my personal playing experience was significantly affected/enhanced by the “attention” I perceived from the community team, at least.
This is definately a good read, and one any company that focuses on recurring customerbase (or monthly subscriptions) should look into.
I remember when Mythic was doing their Camelot roadtrip and I went out to the one in Seattle. I got to meet a ton of other players in the area (and quietly be amused by how everyone IMMEDIATELY split up into their own faction groups) see / meet a couple devs, and even get a photo with Sanya
Even though I’ve long LONG since given up Mythic and DAoC for dead, I still remember the camelot roadtrip event fondly, and think of mythic just a TINY bit better for it
~Ash
Good articles! (General comment for here and all the other ones.. no need to spam comment.)
As an anecdotal evidence, I have found this to be very true. I’m still in a UO guild simply because I met the GM once back in 1999.
However, I often think you can extend meetings in the physical world to matter in the virtual one – One that would further encourage this activity and strengthening of community bonds.
Blizzard sort of had the right idea when they gave away those vanity pets for attending Blizzcon. I think an MMO developer who comes up with lots of “fluff” stuff to give to players in the virtual world when they meet in the physical one, and find reasons to give them out liberally, would find themselves at a distinct advantage over other developers.
Had a guild meeting in person and people came? Call our rep, verify who showed up (Or better yet, try to get a rep there), get a magical widget in the game with your guild emblem on it. As any old UO player will tell you, true “rare” items like that can really help people get attached to your virtual world before they think about moving elsewhere.
Face it.. We’re all loot whores.
Thanks for the tip Sanya.