{"id":28390,"date":"2018-06-26T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/320692"},"modified":"2018-06-26T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T17:00:00","slug":"blog-how-can-you-understand-players-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/26\/blog-how-can-you-understand-players-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: How can you understand players better?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u2019s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

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Gaming communities are full of surprises. Pleasant ones, mostly.<\/p>\n

Speaking to your players is always rewarding \u2014 rewarding both to your project (in terms of brand trust and product insights you get from communication with actual people) and to yourself as a person. 2 years of community management for War Robots taught me thousands of things I never realized before.<\/p>\n

For example, think about this: do people raging on game X\u2019s forum actually<\/em> hate the said game? Or it is, in fact, completely opposite? Let this question breathe for a bit \u2014 we\u2019ll get back to it in a minute.<\/p>\n

Nothing changes the fact, that speaking to people on the internet can be rather strenuous at times. And it will eat you alive if you don\u2019t approach it properly.<\/p>\n

When you take a quick glance at the community page of any established game, the first thing you\u2019ll likely see is people being very upset over something. New community managers are often hit by that really hard (well, I certainly was<\/em>). The knee-jerk response to that is to try fixing the situation as promptly as possible. Asking development team to implement features X and Z people are asking of right now<\/em> sounds like the best bet. It clearly seems like project\u2019s life and death depends on those… Or does it?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I thought at first, and soon I had to face reality.<\/p>\n

Reality is always the same: let these Xs and Zs go live today, and tomorrow something entirely new will take their place. Fulfilling everyone\u2019s<\/em> expectations is impossible, as there are literally thousands of contradicting \u201cwants\u201d and \u201cneeds\u201d flying around.<\/p>\n

So what a person handling dev-to-player communications (let\u2019s call this person a community manager, CM for simplicity) should do to remain sane and helpful to all parties?<\/p>\n

One way to handle this is to restrict CMs working field to simply showing<\/em> care. On social media or forums, steered by strict guidelines with inflexible directions like \u2018in case of [this<\/em>] say [that<\/em>]\u201c. Is it a good idea? Depending on what you\u2019re looking for. This approach basically turns CMs into another line of customer support service, surely simplifying things a great deal… but also making developer-player interactions boring and mechanistic, throwing away all chances of something special emerging.<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t huge fans that approach. Here in War Robots team community managers are all on their own. We, too, are decision makers, working both in players\u2019 and product\u2019s interests. We know many things others don\u2019t. We have key product metrics on our hands while providing tons of data by ourselves.<\/p>\n

For all of it to work, we have to stick \u00a0to certain principles. In this article, I\u2019ll attempt to outline a general framework that will help you not only finding common ground with a multi-million player base but actually turning your back-and-forth communication into a healthy process from which everyone can benefit.<\/p>\n

Negativity is hard to avoid. Even the abstract Best Game Ever would have to face hateful speech in social media over, supposedly, pettiest things. And the further the project goes, the more you\u2019ll have to withstand.<\/p>\n

After years working with different communities, I didn\u2019t find anything better than to change the way I look at the hate itself. Let\u2019s get back to the question from the beginning. Do haters actually hate?\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one paradoxical, yet game-changing insight:<\/p>\n

Those berating you, care about your game more than anyone else.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

They care so much, they just cannot contain themselves \u2014 and they aren\u2019t to blame. Try putting yourself in their shoes. Would you be happy if the game where you spent your best years was going in a direction you don\u2019t agree with? I definitely wouldn’t.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s use a trite-yet-illustrative human relationships parallel. People change, and whether or not you and your partner will accept each other exactly as you became \u2014 on that depends if you will stay together. The difference is, with human-human relationships you can break up if things don\u2019t work out. It will be painful, it will be hard, but nobody will die (most likely<\/em>). But if you break up with your community, your game is usually doomed as there is no one else to bother.<\/p>\n

Good news? You will never please every single side of your multifaceted player base anyway. So just accept this and go with the flow.<\/p>\n

Resiliency is the trait you have to develop as a CM. Take into account what I said above: people on the internet are unhappy, but only because they love your game, not because they want to make your life at work miserable.<\/p>\n

Sometimes this will make them say horrible things. False things. You might want to call them out for that. To prove them wrong, to make them feel bad for what they\u2019re saying, to literally demolish them…<\/p>\n

Hush now, hold your horses. Before acting, take a moment and observe the situation through player\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

One general rule that will make a difference: never argue. You\u2019ve been told this many times perhaps, but I\u2019ll still emphasize it. Passive aggressiveness doesn’t\u00a0cut it either \u2014 you won\u2019t make the situation better if you try to fight back in any form. Even if you win, if you prove someone wrong \u2014 it won\u2019t make anyone feel better.<\/p>\n

Instead, listen. Ask questions. Understand what is the actual driver of people\u2019s unhappiness.<\/p>\n

When we are upset, we all struggle to find out what makes us feel this way. By getting to the core of the issue you can find that precious tiny straw in players rationale, pulling which will help you steer the conversation onto the constructive course.<\/p>\n

Most importantly: when talking to players, ask for feels and causes, not the solutions. The solution is up for developers and designers to figure out, as only they have the whole picture on their hands. Your job is to expand this picture with your insights into players\u2019 minds. The Mom\u2019s Test (http:\/\/momtestbook.com) by Rob Fitzpatrick is probably the best book on that matter: clear, concise and helps to ask the right questions. I strongly suggest you read it.<\/p>\n

Empathy helps you to address the right things at \u00a0the right time. But it works even better if it is supported by data.<\/p>\n

Data allows us to translate everything from the language of a player to the language of a product. We don\u2019t just come to the producer all like \u201cuhh some people don\u2019t like it so you have to change it\u201d. Such claims only worth something when we can support them with a clear idea of who these people are.\u00a0<\/p>\n