As we talked about awhile back, if you’re a customer, and like your MMORPG, you shouldn’t visit the forums. But what if you’re one of the developers running said forums?
Well, that’s where it gets tricky. You could try this approach:
But, at the same time, these boards are constantly cluttered by the reverse. Posters who play. They use these forums to lash out at others, criticize wantonly, and generally feed their own egos. They regularly attack devs and moderators, clinging to past wrongs and imagined slights. They focus on themselves instead of the game. To them, the boards are the real game.
As devs, we aren’t here to play the board game. We’re here to play, and to make, SWG.
That approach being, telling your forum goers that you’ll listen to what you consider useful input and the rest of you can bugger off. Not quite the approach I’d suggest it might come across as a bit assholish. Really.
You might do as Lum suggests and treat it as necessary feedback:
Necessary feedback? Probably. Filtering it may be more of an art than a science, but it’s something that a developer has to be aware of. If a good portion of their users feel disenfranchised, then that perception can become self-perpetuating, beyond any measure of reality.
This is a good approach, but doesn’t really cover everything, imho. Customer service is a very important part of the forums and needs to be taken very seriously, even if it’s only 10-20% of your user base that actually visits them.
Mining the data is also a good idea:
Let’s talk instead about how you use signal-rich but informationally-poor environments to your advantage. I’m a historian by training, and I think this is one of the basic methodological arts of history. We’re data miners who know how to rapidly assess the probable worth of an archive, how to rapidly work through huge bodies of documentation to find what we need, how to read through, in and around sprawling mounds of information.
A very good idea. As a matter of fact, if you’re aren’t doing this, you’re losing out on a big resource. More on this later.
You’d also do good to keep in mind that the posters that visit your forums often consider that as much a part of the game as the quests:
Just don’t ever forget that the quality of the content these subcommunities provide is only variable from your perspective as an operator. From their own perspective, it’s all top-notch. Yes, even that of the folks who do nothing but flame — they are playing their game using your toys, and they probably feel quite good about it as they do it. In their mind, they are just as important as any other constituency, and they won’t let you forget it.
I really like some of the ideas in Raph’s comments and he brings up a really good point:
In some ways it is actually astonishing that we still have these discussions, because there have been several extremely successful community relations programs run and the positive effect on the bottom line has been easy to see.
I don’t know I’d agree we’ve had any extremely successful examples in the past, we can learn a lot from the past and quite hashing out the same problems over and over. This is an epidemic in the game industry in general, though it’s lessening, new games don’t learn from previous games mistakes. Blizzard did a great job in terms of taking what was and making it Blizzardtacular in the game, but their forum support leaves a LOT to desired.
Here’s some tips from your uncle Matt on how to run successful game forums. Any game, not just MMORPGs.
- Don’t do what the Sword of Stars guys do. That is, don’t delete/muzzle people that don’t agree with you. Don’t whine and moan that the world is against you and don’t create a place that is completely useless for actual debate and thought. Unless of course, you’re insane. Maybe they are.
- Care. Plain and simple, right? Well not really. You need to care about in two ways.
- You need to data mine your forums, as Terra Nova suggested. Have someone whose main job is to keep a pulse on the online community (preferably not just your forums) and find where the people consider the issues to be. Even if they aren’t right, it’s very important to know. You can’t solve problems, perceived or real, if you don’t know what they are.
- You need show you care. You need to have people whose job it is to make your opinions on the game known. Who have the knowledge to answer questions in an intelligent way. Who can relate developers point reasons for doing things (those you choose share) and who can log/test possible bugs that turn up on the forums. Sure, you shouldn’t test all the things people list, but if it’s a bug, it will be posted more than one in lots of cases. Also, have someone higher up in the company, preferably the CEO or the like, give monthly/quarterly address to the people. Sum up what you’re trying to do, when you’re guesstimating it might be done and how much you love the peoples. Funny enough, Mythic did all of this pretty well without ever having their own forums.
- Do as Raph says and realize everyone plays your game differently. To some, it’s a diversion, to other it’s a way of life and everything in between for others. Don’t discourage people from playing the game they want, be grateful they are playing your game. Sure, you have impose the rules and not allowing cheating and exploits and so on, but really, be grateful even if the players aren’t playing the The Way It Was Intended™.
Those are the big points. I believe a successfully run game forum can completely alter the perception of your game, not just to the 10-20% of people that post on that forum, but to the entire internet gaming community and hence is incredibly valuable. The perception of your game will drive how people playing your game feel about it and will drive how long they play the game. People that feel better about the developers play longer. That can’t be a bad thing.
What Would Matt Do: Show you care about your customers through a well run online presence. Your image is as or more important as your code. Ask any marketing company.