I did sound kind of formal and nervous in the first one, didn’t I. So I reverted to my actual tone in this one. The seven of you give awesome feedback

It was hard to not go off on a tangent about leaderboards, and how the original Camelot leaderboards were pretty much entirely Scott Jennings going rogue and me going, “Ooh! Ooh! What about this?” and Scott saying please stop touching stuff on my desk.

Also, we crashed the game servers because we were complete effing n00bs.

But we had fun.

That last point about designing/building a back door into the system from the start… there aren’t many things in my career that I’d like to do over, believe it or not, but that point I’d take back in time and scream DO THIS! at myself at three different jobs.

You can read me trying to sound erudite three times a week at Metaverse Mod Squad’s blog.

The seven of you will probably not see any really new material, but hey, getting paid to blog is always ten kinds of awesome, so I thought I’d mention it here.

The Friday feature, BTW, is going to be Pro Tips From CMs. The MMS team is composed of a lot of terrific people who will no doubt have great material, but if any of you have a tip you’d like to see included, gimme a holler. I’ll post anon or with name and game link, as you choose.

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.

There was once a repairman called in to fix a big, expensive machine. He examined it for a few minutes, whacked it with a hammer, and the machine started right up. He presented his bill for $400. “But all you did was hit it with a hammer!” complained the customer.  The repairman said “Oh, I only billed you $5 for that. The other $395 was for my knowing where to hit it.”

I am still with Quick Hit, but I’m back on the terms where I was over the summer – part time, and non-exclusive. Ain’t nobody going away mad, now. Dunno if you all have noticed, but the economy is in free fall, and venture capitalists are telling their projects to spend every dollar like it’s their last. A community manager retains customers. A community manager acquires customers. Community managers can help you prioritize your to-do list, even. What a CM can’t do is build features out of raw code. For that, you need a programmer, and headcount budgets are what they are.

I don’t have to like it in order to understand it. I love the Quick Hit team, and I really love the Quick Hit community. I’m honored to still be associated with the project, but I am, once again, consulting, writing, and raising hell.

I have mentioned before that one of the obvious truths of community management is respecting your players.

The fact that it has to be said is a little disgusting.

Don’t get me wrong, at industry events I was just as likely as the next CM to sit around participating in the Crazy Player Olympics. (The judges once gave me all 10s for the guy who flew out to Virginia from Illinois to demand his lost hammer back.) But the nuts are the outliers. If you do not genuinely care for your players, and think of them with respect, you are going to burn out like a White House press secretary.

Having respect for players means caring about the things that are important to them, both in the game itself and with the influences that shape their response to your product. So, in a traditional sword and board game, you should both care about the game, and at least respect the RPG mentality that leads people to your game.

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It’s hard to write a blog about community when you are working community, and my hat is off to those who do it. Me, I find myself writing posts that cross all kinds of lines. I had two paragraphs of a rant about people who pick inappropriate names just to try and be all shocking, and that the only thing worse than that kind of asshole is the guy who isn’t doing it to be shocking, but actually believes the stuff he’s spewing. Then I realized I shouldn’t post.

The trouble is, examples are what make rants worthwhile, and I simply won’t use examples from a job I’m actively performing. I lack filters, and the only way for me to stay out of trouble is to not get in a position where filters are necessary.

But here’s a PSA: “Jokes” about raping, lynching, or genocidal maniacs are never actually funny, even when they involve people you don’t like! Okay, I take back the bit about genocidal maniacs. “Springtime for Hitler” was hilarious. But unless you are Mel Brooks, you are not allowed to make those jokes with your avatar name. And if you ARE Mel Brooks, and playing a casual online football name… call me!

Anyway, just wanted to dust the blog off to post a fascinating link from the NYT, one that I, ahem, think might apply to lots of game companies suffering growing pains: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html?em

1. The work you do is on the game, not endless rounds of “executive demos” and “press event demos” and other assorted Potemkin villages that ultimately accomplish nothing but make the team feel like hamsters running on a wheel.

2. Pre-launch expectations aren’t skyhigh (that is to say… delusional).

3. There are few conventions/features that you have to include lest everyone cry, “why,” and die.

4. There’s an assumption among users that “launch” is not the starting point, but rather a milestone on a multi-year plan.

“We’re community – we SURF the catastrophe curve.”

My last column at MMORPG just went up.

Now you know why I’ve been so quiet. Closed beta! New websites! Designing tools! Forums! Slipped milestones and understandably cranky players!

God, I missed it. I feel like I’m home.

More when I’m not so crazed.

I started to write this somewhat wonky piece for this blog, and realized that I had a column due at MMORPG. That happens to me a lot, lately. I got the kernel of the piece – that bit of research – from my friend and former minion Jeremy, who also wrote a blog post about it.

The article ended up being a little different from my intended writeup, because the audience there is more general than the seven of you, who read, presumably, because you care about community stuff.

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