If the community is on board with your game and/or message, they will help propel your game toward success. That success can be temporary, however, because if they're not on board, they may turn on you quickly and sharply. Word of mouth travels fast, especially on the Internet and the primary job of the community management team is to keep that voice with you, not against you.

How do they do this? BioWare Austin Community Manager, Sean Dahlberg gives us some insight after ten years in the field. The SW:TOR CM explains that in the past, community management mostly entailed administrating game forums and passing developer messages along to the players. Because the job wasn't taken as seriously as it is today, CMs were often the last to know about major game changes or the rationale behind them, which made the job very difficult.

While the job is still difficult today, community managers are now informed of major changes in advance and actually given a voice with upper management. They are essentially the liaison between fans, consumers, developers, and the publisher. They also facilitate communication, help retain customers, and even gain new ones. Sean says the field of community management is still in its infancy and that he's interested to see where it will go from here.

BioWare CM on community management then and now originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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