Goals are important, says Tran; if you don\u2019t set clear goals (in collaboration with your team) for your community, you won\u2019t be able to achieve it.<\/p>\n
Decisiveness: \u201cDo I make decisions quickly?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Building a healthy community means being willing to act quickly and decisively, and it will sometimes require you to ban some people. <\/p>\n Clarity: \u201cAre my community expectations expressed and consistent?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Tran emphasized the importance of \u201csoft skills\u201d in community development, noting that clear expectations are vital and must be communicated to your community in an effective, consistent manner. <\/p>\n Collaboration: \u201cAm I working with my community?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n You\u2019re not a lone wolf, even if you do happen to be a lone developer; Tran encourages devs to keep in mind that the community is their collaborator, and should be respected as such.<\/p>\n Energy: \u201cDo I bring positivity to my community and lead by example?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Leading by example and bringing the energy you want to foster among your community is key to Tran\u2019s methodology. <\/p>\n Since the goal of her talk was to raise awareness about how to create kinder communities she focused on kindness as the example you want to put forth, defining \u201ckindness\u201d as a verb (not a noun) that requires continual practice and effort.<\/p>\n \u201cKind community design doesn\u2019t mean chanting positive aphorisms into your community every day (though you can if you want to),\u201d she said. \u201cWhat it really means is creating a safe, low-pressure, helpful, and encouraging interactive space among the players, who in turn want to help each other.\u201d<\/p>\n Tran is clear that kindness doesn\u2019t mean thoughtlessly forgiving bad behavior or saying \u201cwe just need to be kind to each other\u201d when a player does something offensive like use a slur; it means we \u201cneed to hold people accountable, think of the realities of the world, and set up our spaces to be both warm and progressive.\u201d <\/p>\n She also pointed out that effectively designing your game\u2019s community for kindness won\u2019t necessarily be easy, quick, or a guaranteed path to big KPI growth and a huge fanbase; it will probably be hard and frightening at times, but the goal is to create a safer, more welcoming space for your players. <\/p>\n To achieve that goal, she again laid out five steps you can take to design social systems optimized for what she sees as kindness.<\/p>\n Rules: Social systems that shape and influence behavior<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cRules that aren’t as helpful you think they are are things like don\u2019t be a dick, or just be nice, just be respectful, et cetera,\u201d says Tran. \u201cThese aren\u2019t really that productive or informative, and often result in people disputing the rule\u2019s meaning when they break it.\u201d<\/p>\n To build a better rule, says Tran, understand what social systems are: the relationships between individuals, groups, and institutions. Social systems in place at libraries, hospitals, and workplaces have their own sets of unique rules which help everything function smoothly, and game communities are very similar.<\/p>\n You can see how rules flow out from a game\u2019s stated goal by looking at a classic like Monopoly: greed is what Monopoly wants its players to cultivate, and all the game\u2019s rules are designed to encourage players to compete for the most money. If someone breaks the rules, they\u2019re out of the game, and the game continues to flow smoothly.<\/p>\n So what makes a good rule? Tran recommends five principles, taken from the World Justice Project\u2019s expectations for the rule of law: rules should be clearly defined, publicized, stable, just, and applied evenly and quickly.<\/p>\n If someone breaks a rule, Tran recommends you contact them privately first with a warning; a public remonstration can often <\/p>\n \u201cShame and embarassment in public is usually more effective for making the person feel defensive, rather than receptive to change,\u201d said Tran. \u201cGive people a chance to improve and learn.\u201d<\/p>\n If they just don\u2019t understand, Tran encourages you to think of membership in your community as a conditional privilege that can be revoked. If they\u2019re not getting the message, or they\u2019re just a toxic troll, ban them.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, just nip toxic members in the bud; don\u2019t keep toxic members around because they talk and contribute to a space, and you\u2019re afraid of silence,\u201d said Tran. \u201cThey actually take up more space and drive away more genuinely interested members.\u201d<\/p>\n Respect: Foster respect for boundaries between you, the players, the devs, and more<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cA good community shouldn\u2019t collapse because you\u2019re not around,\u201d said Tran. \u201cSo the next step in community design is creating a baseline of respect of you as a person in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Tran recommends that first, you be offline whenever you need to be so you create a communal expectation that you have off hours and won\u2019t always be able to respond immediately. <\/p>\n Also, cultivate a culture of respect in your community; on Discord and in forums, allow yourself to be called out (politely) for your mistakes, and make sure that when others in the community disagree with or criticize each other, they do so respectfully. <\/p>\n \u201cYou need to separate people from their behaviors,\u201d said Tran. \u201cAddress what they\u2019re doing, and not who they actually are.\u201d<\/p>\n Basically, try not to hold bad behavior against people; Tran recommends trying to offer community members who voice something undesirable a \u201cgolden bridge\u201d which lets them get out of a conversation or your community entirely, without rancor. We all make mistakes.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, just don\u2019t be petty,\u201d said Tran. \u201cBe someone they can look up to.\u201d <\/p>\n Norms: Acceptable ways of communication<\/strong><\/p>\n Establishing acceptable ways of communicating in your community is key to long-term success. Tran laid out two ways of thinking about this: mores and folkways. Mores are the expectations about important communications, and folkways are how people behave in casual, daily interaction.<\/p>\n \u201cMores we understand really well: rules should not be broken,\u201d said Tran. \u201cFolkways distinguish what we think is rude or polite, and often in community development that\u2019s overlooked, but can plant the seed of unkindness when broken.\u201d <\/p>\n As a community dev, says Tran, you have to decide what are the acceptable mores and folkways your community uses when talking to each other. Folkways are especially hard to define through anything other than example, so think through how you speak and chat<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll become the de facto leader for setting the folkways, even if you don\u2019t feel like you are,\u201d Tran said. \u201cSo keep in mind how you interact and the jokes you make, because this will automatically be seen as the acceptable way to communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n The better your fans understand the mores and folkways of your community, argues Tran, the better they\u2019ll interact with each other.<\/p>\n Trust: Facilitating cooperation<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m a perfect community developer; far from it,\u201d said Tran. \u201cBut what matters is that your community trusts that you\u2019re doing your best with the resources you have.\u201d<\/p>\n Often, you are the primary and perhaps only window inside your game and your studio. So you need to build and keep trust; to do that, Tran recommends you stick to the core tenets of integrity, openness, action, and intimacy.<\/p>\n To show integrity, admit your mistakes when you make them, be honest (even when you\u2019d rather not be), and keep promises. To demonstrate action, show a willingness to follow through on your promises and do things for your community. Show compassion and share your thoughts to be more open with your community, and try to find common ground with your community to build rapport and establish intimacy.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is partly dependent on your own studio acting responsibly; some things are out of your control,\u201d said Tran. \u201cAlso, this will take time; you cannot rush this. This is a continual circle of events that needs to happen constantly.\u201d<\/p>\n Home: Coziness for warm, personal experiences among members<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSay it with me: soft skills are valuable, they are so valuable<\/em>,\u201d Tran said. \u201cEspecially online when you\u2019re missing most of the non-verbal cues that give context to how a person is feeling, your soft skills are imperative to creating a warm, relaxing space. Home, if you will.\u201d<\/p>\n She acknowledges it\u2019s hard to do this in one-way communications like email; forums and Discords are a better place, but they can be overwhelming. <\/p>\n Communication with others doesn\u2019t actually guarantee connection; to create cozy spaces where community members can build a sense of home, Tran recommends you create small areas where fans with similar goals or interests can build community through repeated interaction.<\/p>\n She points to Kitfox\u2019s own Discord as a good example: it has pronoun rolls, offshoot rooms for smaller groups to chat about a variety of topics (like what\u2019s cute and good, or what\u2019s yummy), and little servers and secrets for community members to discover and enjoy.<\/p>\n \u201cYou may find other ways to foster a kinder space in your places; this is by no means the only way to create home-like feelings,\u201d said Tran, suggesting fun themes, metagames, or whatever your community enjoys.<\/p>\n \u201cAs you solidify your community pillars and uphold your community to the standards you set, the better their reputation becomes,\u201d she added. \u201cWe\u2019ve had people join Kitfox purely because people said it was a positive place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, \u201cKitfox and any other studio exists to sell products,\u201d concluded Tran. \u201cBut while we\u2019re at it, we might as well do our best to make the places we touch a little bit more positive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cEven if we don\u2019t want to, we need to start asking ourselves: what kinds of communities are we building?\u201d With that Kitfox Games communications director Victoria Tran opened her talk at GDC Summer this week about how game devs can better design game communities for kindness. 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