MMOG Industry Community Vet Speaks Out

Sanya Weathers, known for many years as Tweety, was the Community Manager for Dark Age of Camelot essentially since that game's launch. Known throughout the games industry as truthful, caring, and innovative, she almost created the position of Community Manager out of whole cloth. Many elements of Massively Multiplayer communities we take for granted today originated at Mythic in Sanya's hands. Now doing work freelance, she has time to blog about her experiences keeping Massive gamers happy. It is entitled Eating Bees, after a Penny Arcade strip on the subject of forum management. So far she has two posts up, one looking at what professionalism looks like in the position, and a hilarious fictional day in the life for a CM. "Bob forwards Gertrude's email to Jake, a programmer. Jake is not the one who coded the original element on which Gertrude's system is based. THAT guy, Wayne, is somewhere in the Caribbean coked up along with a bunch of strippers, where he has been ever since he cashed his FunFactory stock options, opened his own studio, and sold THAT one to MegaCorp for millions of dollars. Wayne was also a self-taught genius who adhered to no known coding formalities and whose comments were in haiku. Since Wayne left, approximately two dozen programmers of various levels of ability have added layers of complexity. Jake is very young and enthusiastic, but his joy at finally being in the gaming industry is starting to dim from coping with a ten year old pile of what is called "spaghetti code.""

Comments

Community Management 101 = Pop Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that Community Management for MMOG's and the game industry has suddenly hit the pop-culture wave and is gaining a lot of attention.

Sanya's posts are somewhat lacking, but entertaining. Whereas, Terra Nova's Lisa Galarneau has repeatedly taken on tough topics that stand out against the miasma of current trends.

On the other hand, blogs like Virtual Cultures take on the Gamer's motivations and explore the society that forms through these communities.

It surprises me what in the chaff is separated from the wheat.

Re:Tseric

[LaXaTiVeDK]

You can read all about it here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Tseric

Re:Tseric

[ajs]

More info, please? He finally said exactly what he felt, which is that a small percentage of posters to the forums were subverting the morale of the majority. He said it rather pointedly, and in a very insulting and condescending tone. He was right, of course, but that's not how you interact with the public. He didn't really melt down. The people on those forums, for the most part, don't know what melting down in public is. He just lost his cool, and said what I'm sure every other CM thinks.

As it is, when you tell someone that they're an idiot, and in the same breath prove that you have no fucking idea what you're talking about, it will slaughter the community's opinion of you. That's why the forums ate him alive. The need to be constructive goes both ways. Sadly, you can never get a large audience of random posters to be completely constructive. I think WoW would do much better if it had a moderation system like Slash does. The first-pass moderation should be done by the community. After that, the majority will no longer be drowned out by the screaming minority.