So, I happened to have lunch recently with one of the head honchos of a popular MMO, and he mentioned a community management problem that I'd actually been thinking about for years, without solution. But thinking about his situation has led me to a (totally obvious) solution. NOTE: I'm being a most-time dad these days, and it's hugely good and rewarding and exhausting. Apologies in advance...
So the issue is the twin currents of marketing conflict and competition, and managing a productive, positive community. I'd run into this several times, notably when I was working on Splinter Cell (and I dodged the bullet, so to speak, there, by having Morgan Romine, aka Rhoulette of the Frag Dolls, work with me - her charisma drove the community effort). In a conflict-based game, the effort is to enhance
the conflict, a key aspect of a game (ie., most of them). The problem arises when the developers want to interface with the community, or the community management team wants to foster a more respectful and congenial atmosphere. The two immediately collide, leaving debris everywhere. A skilled, competitive, charismatic community manager can sort of guide things, but the intention of competitors is winning and losing... no win/win there. Or, to put it another way, the brand becomes an element in the conflict oriented competition: by definition it's gonna get slammed. My lunch companion's complaint was about the personal nature of those slams, the flames stung (CMs know all about this, and should get paid more... but I digress). He didn't really want the players' ferocity aimed at him and his team... even though the branding of the title has a fair amount of blood and guts.
So the solution I'd like to propose is one that I've actually seen at least partially work, back in the old Mplayer.com days. Mplayer was a huge and very diverse community, and it was able to easily segment into chat rooms of whatever flavor was desired. Without going into too much detail, there was a really impressive range of behavior: everything from prayer meetings and 24/7 AA meetings to fight rooms (no kids allowed, they'd do a voice check). And today, the awareness of multiple social identities, and employment of same (are you the same on Facebook and Barrens Chat? well, I am, but I'm boring), is even more pronounced than in 1999. We know very well that our social identities need to be malleable, that our behavior needs to suit the circumstances. Why not create separate segments of the forums or other community media, to encourage different behaviors? Create a "battle zone" where talk is less restricted, and a "guild hall" that's meant as a place for respectful discussion. Clarify the difference for the players, enforce the rules, and, I think, you'd find the problem solved. Players know these kinds of behavior types already, just point them to the right places to engage in them and step back.
Simple eh? I haven't actully tried this... but it sure seems like it should work. Comments welcome...
This is an interesting idea. In the good old days, I played (and later helped administrate) a MUD. At one point, a Flame chat channel was implemented to help let players vent in a way similar to your breaking out different rooms. It did work, to a degree. At the very least, it gave the admin staff somewhere to tell the players to take their offensive or aggressive language- which was much better than telling them just to watch their language, or immediately taking away their chat privileges. But, we had a relatively small community, and even then we occasionally had players that just "had to be heard".
In fact, in larger communities, I think you'll find that you have more of these players (especially among the lower age groups). Generally with a greater number of people on a forum, it takes a bit more to stand out and get attention. These people generally also want to target their complaints and attacks. In games like MMOs with sharded servers, they may be content to stay to their server's particular forum and complain about an issue. But, if the issue is a technical one global to all shards, or a feature of the game itself, and there is a global forum or tech issue forum, they will go there.
What I'm trying to get at, is that separating out the groups can have a limited degree of conflict isolation, but angry players still want a voice and feedback. Now, this can be settled, by keeping these separate places moderated – by the most diplomatic and leather-skinned moderators you have available.
The other ideas available are forms of meta-moderation – where players themselves moderate the community to a degree. This could be done Slashdot-style where individual posts are moderated and hidden if they get "modded down" enough. Or, don't automatically hide them at all. Instead, have the value apply to a ranking of the user account. This could be an "invisible" value that no one can see – but, users could have the option to hide any posts made by people who have been modded down several times without contributing anything useful (effectively, hiding the Flame channel). Moderators could potentially still see the comments and respond, but the conflict would (at least partially) be isolated and wouldn't spread and incite other users.
An interesting study might be some sort of combination between specialized forums and meta-moderation to get the best of both worlds. Maybe creating ranked / tagged threads within the forum itself (or moving threads automatically if they get tagged a certain way). I'll have to give this more thought.
Great idea in principle though – and I really miss the MPlayer days. I still have my beta CD floating around somewhere.
Posted by: J Lothian | September 20, 2009 at 08:42 AM
Sorry to have missed this earlier! Great comments and yah, a hybrid solution would be really interesting...
As you point out, currently the "loudest" voice gets attention... what would a good reputation system do to the rankings, and expressive forms, of a competitive forum? Fun... and yah, highly moderated... or at least, clearly an active moderator in such a forum would be needed.
Anyway, great comment, and thanks.
Posted by: ronmeiners | October 14, 2009 at 01:08 PM
f you were a parent or teacher, how would you support a childs development when he has displayed conflict. I guess what I am asking is. If a child constantly has conflict with other child, how would you support his development/ what would you do to fix the problem?? I want to know other openions.( the conflict could be a child disturbing his older siblings while playing video games) snatching their controllers and running. thanks community.......
Posted by: generic karma | November 18, 2009 at 08:49 AM
I love the idea of different forums. One of the biggest complaints I have heard from players is having a bad day and being "warned" by a forum moderator. It just sours you on the whole experience and the forum's moderators' shouldn't feel they have to "protect the honor" of the game developers/publishers' by defending every single inconsistency of the game, even the justified criticism. Thanks for the great article.
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Posted by: RX-order | November 19, 2010 at 11:22 AM
That may be a great solution to your problem. You already figured out how it is as i can see.
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