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From Neopets to Now: Catherine Litvaitis on Community Management
48 Plays2 months ago
Greg sits down with Catherine Litvaitis, a seasoned community manager with experience at Mouldbreaker Interactive, Armor Games Studios, and Paradox Interactive. Catherine shares her journey from being a player on Neopets to managing communities for various gaming companies. She delves into the importance of community guidelines, the role of a community manager, and best practices for building and nurturing gaming communities.
Listen Here: Community Management and Guidelines with Catherine Litvaitis
Timestamps & Key Takeaways:
- 01:49.48 - 02:33.94: The Role of a Community Manager Catherine explains the role of a community manager as a liaison between players and developers, emphasizing the importance of translating feedback and fostering player engagement.
- 04:01.80 - 05:18.35: Neopets Influence Catherine discusses how her experience with Neopets shaped her interest in community management and her understanding of player-driven content and engagement.
- 11:05.35 - 12:37.01: Building a Community from Scratch Catherine shares strategies for starting a community from scratch, including understanding your audience and creating spaces for creativity and engagement.
- 24:52.62 - 26:21.20: Tools for Community Management Catherine talks about the tools she uses for community management, including Slack, Discord, ClickUp, and Notion, and how they help streamline communication and task management.
Key Concepts:
- The Role of a Community Manager: Community managers serve as the bridge between players and developers, translating feedback into actionable insights and ensuring that player voices are heard.
- Influence of Early Online Communities: Early experiences on platforms like Neopets and Club Penguin can inspire and shape one's career in community management by highlighting the importance of player-driven content and engagement.
- Starting a Community: Understanding your audience, creating spaces for fan art and discussions, and engaging with players are crucial steps in building a successful community from scratch.
- Community Guidelines: Customized community guidelines are essential for each game and company, focusing on inclusivity and protection against scams and harmful behavior.
- Tools for Effective Management: Utilizing tools like Slack, Discord, ClickUp, and Notion can help community managers streamline their tasks, communicate effectively, and maintain organized documentation.
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to today's Player Engaged podcast. Today we're talking to the wonderful Catherine Litvitus. Let me tell you what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about what a community manager does for your game, how how they influence the community, work with the community, how do they start a community, the community guidelines, and how do you use different tools to effectively manage your community. It's full of great insight on today's episode, so I hope you enjoy it. Now let's get to the show.
00:00:32
Speaker
Good morning or good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Player Engage podcast. Greg here. Today we are joined by Catherine Litvaitis from a number of companies, Moldbreaker Games, Armor Games, Paradox. She's a community manager, and I'm excited to be able to start ah diving it down into her background. um She's been doing community management for a number of years, for a number of studios, more than I just named. So we're going to learn about what community managers do, why guidelines are important, all these nuances that I don't even know to ask you.
00:01:00
Speaker
Catherine, thank you so much for joining me today. Would you like to do an introduction of yourself? Yeah, thanks for having me here. so My name is Catherine Lefitis, as already said. um I'm a community manager. I've been working in community, social media, marketing, ah all throughout that realm for the past six or so years now. um Again working for a number of companies I think most notably working on games like bear and breakfast and in starts in time and actually at the beginning of my career i worked on battle tech which was really exciting. um So it's been fun to kind of get my hands on a lot of different communities and help get games the audiences that they deserve because games are cool and the people who make them deserve to have people play them.
00:01:40
Speaker
I agree. And not only that, communities are a big reason why these games succeed. So I'd love to learn kind of why it's important to foster and nurture, make sure the community is fully enabled. I think, I love your background. I first came across kind of your work when you posted something on LinkedIn about community guidelines. And it kind of blew my mind thinking like, this makes so much sense. How come I never really thought of kind of the importance of guidelines in a community? I'm in a bunch of Discord servers and I see all these guidelines when you log in, I'm thinking like someone must have created those and here we are.
00:02:09
Speaker
but not Before we even get there, right? I know we only have so much time on the podcast, but can you give me a high level in your perspective? What is the role of a community manager? Community management, I feel like the most high level I can get is it's the care and keeping of the people who actually play your game and not just that, but connecting those people to the people actually making the game. You're kind of like a fun little liaison between the two parties trying to ah Translate what the developers are saying about their game. um ah What they want to talk about the things that are most pressing to them and finding ways to translate that and into speak that the players will be able to understand. And then vice versa taking what the players are saying and quantifying that into data that you can bring back to the development team and be like hey this is what the the players are saying.
00:02:57
Speaker
But also it's about creating spaces for the people who are playing your game, really investing in them because they're the people investing in you. um And it's a very important part of the development process in that sense.
00:03:10
Speaker
You got your start, or at least what drew you to the the concept of it was things like Neopets, and you also mentioned kind of Twitch creative streams to kind of influence your career path. Can you explain kind of what you mean by like, I know Neopets, I feel like it was a little after my generation, but like how how did Neopets as a platform help you get interested in community management? God, I've been playing. I feel like a lot of my career has been defined by Neopets because I keep ending up finding excuses to talk about Neopets on a professional stage. I love, you know, a lot of people I talked to actually also worked at Club Penguin. So it's like, oh man, old school. apartment there's that one Yeah. Right. like How many people stick around? Like it's awesome to hear about that stuff. Sorry. I kind of interrupted you there. Oh yeah. glad That stuff.
00:03:54
Speaker
God, I also really loved to Club Penguin, but Neopets, I feel like, has been a mainstay. I've actually... I have... I'm still actively playing. I haven't been playing since I was eight years old. I think it was like my cousin introduced me to it or something, and I just kind of have been playing since. I remember going through and, like, getting my mom to sign the ah ah parental consent form so that I could talk on the Neobores before I turned 13 and stuff like that, and... Um, I was very straight-laced kid. Uh, I feel like sometimes when I talk about Neopets with people, they tell me about stories about how they scam people. And I'm like, oh no this is so funny that people are volunteering this information to me, but I love hearing about it. But, um, yeah, I mean, Neopets was the first online community that I was really a part of. I mean, again, I've been playing since I was so young and active in the community since technically before it was supposed to be, but I had, I had the.
00:04:47
Speaker
the form faxed in, so it was fine. I was legally allowed to be on the Neo boards at that time. But um yeah, I mean, a big part of it was a big part of that site is investment in the community because the community drives a lot of things from everything from the economy to ah site A lot like the plots and stuff so like events that they do where it's like story driven events that the community participates in that kind of help influence the narrative of the larger site and stuff. um To the new boards i I remember when I was young I used to spend a lot of time in this one thread that would be ongoing in the neoprene times.
00:05:26
Speaker
forum subtopic, um where I was just talking to people who wrote stuff for the Neopian times um and joining guilds and stuff. I mean, guilds were another big part of the site, especially in the more active days of the site. um But um it's kind of been a mainstay. And I feel like even before I knew what community management was as a job, it kind of got me Like I guess it kind of planted the seeds in that way where it's it kind of reminded me of all the things that I really liked about how they took care of their players ah that I think once I started realizing this could be a career for me, it's like I feel like the desire to do this kind of stuff has always been latent in me.
00:06:06
Speaker
but with twitch creative specifically that was later that was when i that section started when i was in college um i think it was like sophomore junior year of college that part of twitch started where you could stream arts and crafts and illustrations and things that you were working on that weren't strictly just playing games um And I was pretty active in the early days of that and I remember specifically there was one guy monkey on strike who would do these kind of like Bob Ross, very spiritual ah like painting live streams and stuff. He kind of became a pretty big figure in the community and he ended up getting hired to be their community manager.
00:06:46
Speaker
which i think was the first time i realized that community management was a career that people could do when you go to i went to game development school they don't really teach you roles outside of like art and programming so for me that was really big because i but i was just studying or i didn't think that i could see myself in another part of the development pipeline outside of that at the time. And it was funny because I graduated from art school, well, game school more like, graduated from game school. And I realized that um community management kind of aligned better with what I was really interested in. um I realized art was something I enjoyed doing, but more so for fun rather than for something to do to make money.
00:07:29
Speaker
Um, but community management felt really fulfilling to me as a career path. I really loved the idea of, you know, supporting the players and the people invested in our communities, giving back to them, creating spaces that make like that are safe for them. I mean, gaming communities are not usually very safe for marginalized people, such as myself and others. So, you know, creating those spaces that I wanted to see online and be able to let everybody enjoy the games that they love. So that's kind of how I ended up in community management.
00:07:59
Speaker
I love the fact that you you went to, I think Rensselaer, right? Yeah. to To do art, right? And you've realized through, the not through Neopets, but from your experience in Neopets that like, you liked community, you liked community. You didn't realize that was a job. And that's just something I really like to talk about online is like, you know, I wanted to be in gaming too. And I took a C++ plus plus course and I failed. I'm just like, oh, I'm never going to go into gaming now. Cause I failed C++. plus plus Like I didn't realize there's another path.
00:08:27
Speaker
into gaming and you realize that and that's awesome that you figured that out. And I also love the fact that just on Neopets, right? I mean, it was forum based, right? ah And that's a question I have now is like the transition from forums to, I'm not sure if every game has a discord now, if they don't, they probably should versus how many people are still in forums. Like when you're doing community management, is there a platform you prefer? Is there a platform that if I were to start my own studio, you'd be like, Greg, we're going to come on board and we're going to start a discord right away. Like,
00:08:56
Speaker
What's the strategy on getting started? What's the best place to get in front of an audience? Yeah, I mean, I think I'd say that Discord's a pretty standard choice for communities, especially in the gaming sphere. I mean, it was a platform that was originally built specifically for gaming, um but also it's got some nice functionality. It's a pretty widely used platform um that I personally have really enjoyed using and a lot of other people I know.
00:09:23
Speaker
have had success in building spaces on there. So I think Discord is usually my go-to. Sometimes you'll see like people build communities on Reddit, even Facebook. Actually, a lot of the Neopets community is on Facebook, if you believe it, um which I guess makes sense with the demographics because it's a lot of you know millennials in particular that are in that community these days. So like, uh, discord's usually a pretty, uh, best practice kind of platform to be on, but there are other places where people congregate and sometimes people build their communities on there too. Any new communities I should be aware of? Just, uh, check it out. Um, like specific company, i um you know, I don't know what these young kids are into these days, but I feel like an old man here. So I'm just like, all right,
00:10:12
Speaker
I like Discord, but people using other things now. I mean, I know WhatsApp has a big following, but I don't think people have communities on WhatsApp as much, at least in the States. I like, I don't think I've ever really used WhatsApp. a Like I hear people do stuff on there sometimes and I'm just like, i none of my friends and I really use it. So I've never had a reason to be on there. A lot of my communities are on Discord. I mean, everything from like smaller community management spaces to like games that I'm a fan of to just like servers for my friends and I. So I spent a lot of time on Discord specifically.
00:10:44
Speaker
And yeah, I've also been spending time on Facebook because of the Neopets community because they're all in there and they're all very entertaining. So when it comes to community building, it's something that's always been fascinating to me because we even had our own header community at Keyword Studios. And he's like, it took us a while to build our own community internally. Like it's hard to do it yourself. Like sometimes you're so good at building it for other people that you don't think about building it for yourself. So one of the things I was curious about is when you build a community, right? Finding those first few users is a tough thing to do. And I'm not sure if you've ever come into a company where it's kind of starting from scratch, but like,
00:11:20
Speaker
How do you and you as a Neopets advocate, right? Like, how do you attract like minded people to a community? How do you start a community with a brand new game? Like, I know it's a weird question to ask, but like, what's the best practices to getting started? I think this is where my because I've been an indie, like my cross-disciplinary background in marketing comes from. um Just because, I mean, a big part of marketing is figuring out what kinds of people will play your game. um And I do think that kind of extends to figuring out how to build communities. So ah when I was ah first signed on to work on it in Stars and Time when I was at Armor,
00:12:03
Speaker
um The community's changed a lot since I worked there, but ah originally like a big part of it was we were establishing this community from scratch so that when we announced the game, ah we had an entire space for people to come in and congregate. I mean, the developer already came in with a pre-existing following. um And I also came into that knowing these kinds of games very well. I really like indie RPGs.
00:12:29
Speaker
So that was it was fun coming in with that understanding of what that community generally likes because I was able to use that to inform how I built that server. So a big part of that when I was building this from the ground up was I know that people really like fan art.
00:12:45
Speaker
I know that people really like theorizing about plot elements and stuff, even if they don't have much to work off of. I mean, this game actually did have a bit to work off of because in Stars and Time, they kind of have a prologue tech demo sort of game that came out before it that incorporated a lot of the same elements, story elements and stuff.
00:13:08
Speaker
um going into the the new game so like people were already theorizing about like you know what are these characters gonna do or what do you think that this means and stuff what are we gonna see in the full game so create a carving out spaces just for people to theorize things also just like a general section for people to make things together I find those communities are very creatively driven ah sharing a lot of fan art sharing a lot of um fan works of all kinds, like stories and and things, even playlists at some point, um which was something else I wrote into the strategy for that game. But um it was kind of from that place of like narrative and creativity at the forefront that I think ended up doing really well. And I don't think I've ever worked at a game where we've gotten so much fan art. ah I mean, even right after we announced, I was like, wow, every day I'm seeing like several new pieces of fan art in here and they're all really fun and good. I loved that community. They were really sweet.
00:14:05
Speaker
Um, yeah, I like, you know, you a because you kind of had the early access type of thing, right? Or the debt, the tech build, right? You kind of got to understand what the audience likes, and then you can build content around those likes to draw people in. I've heard a lot of things about fan art and music as well over time. It kind of.
00:14:23
Speaker
boggles my mind how how deep people get into some of this, but it's so respectful. I know when I started playing Starfield, right, I got really big into the, the linking of different bases to send resources. I was so lost and I found a forum where people just went to insane details, just just like, who is building this stuff out? Like, are they doing it for free? Are they doing it just for the love of the game? And it's just like,
00:14:46
Speaker
I don't think if unless you really pay attention to it, people understand how deep people fall in love with these games and what they want to do to see these games succeed, whether it be building their own guides, building their own things. And it's it's awesome to see that as a player that needs that help it a lot. Right. I could Google it. I can figure out the forum and best place to be. I think it's awesome. Yeah, it's actually funny because um Adrian and I, before we started working together on their game, um like years and years ago, ah we were both very active in the Undertale community at the same time. Adrian in particular was pretty well known in that space, but there was like a, there was, when I started working on it, there was a time I was like,
00:15:25
Speaker
Why do I feel like I know this developer? Like I feel like I've been, I had known that I had been following Adrian for a while. So I was like, why do I know this developer? Um, and then I just like sat down and I like looked back at my own, like art Tumblr and stuff. And I realized that I had actually, um,
00:15:42
Speaker
So there was like a series of fan albums in the Undertale community where they had artists come in and draw covers and stuff. And Adrian did the, but the cover for the first volume. And I did one of the individual song covers for the second volume, which I think is how I first started following Adrian. It was so funny, like messaging her in Slack, like, Oh my God, we worked on the same fan project, sort of. Um, it's just, it's such a small world there, but I mean, again, like.
00:16:11
Speaker
things that I really love about communities, that ability to bring people together over the things they love, you know. Yeah. Do you find yourself, I spoke to someone in trust and safety that mentioned that they'd be, they get, it's not a relationship, but they formed like this bond with this player online because the player was always, and this person was bullying people. But then when they formed that bond, he realized like, he shouldn't be a bully. But like, when you create these communities, do you see these regulars that might jump into one community or another community? Like, I guess, are there familiar faces like you're mentioning now that you see all around?
00:16:44
Speaker
That's a harder question because I work on such small games that like I don't feel like that's as common of at least of my experience. um um But I mean like there's always regulars in those spaces that you're moderating and stuff to like.
00:17:00
Speaker
you kind of get to a point where you're working with a community and you start to recognize, oh, I realize like, I know this person, that I've seen them comment a lot, and I've seen these two people interact, and I've seen this person post a lot of fan art and stuff, or this person is very helpful around the space, which ends up also informing my work, but also like, i you know, I like knowing that they're like, i I like seeing like engaged people like sharing what they love with each other.
00:17:28
Speaker
and in our spaces. So it's nice to see regulars in there. Yeah. As a community manager, what skill sets do you say you tap into a lot? You mentioned your marketing side, right? And that type of stuff. Are there other skill sets that when you went to school, you either picked up on or you think to yourself, I wish I studied this more when I was back back there. Yeah, so college was interesting. I mean, like a lot of my skills, I've personally self taught over time. ah Thankfully, there's a lot of really good resources. And even when I was starting, there were some really good resources. Like I read so much of Victoria Tran's blog, even like starting out and stuff. um But um I think like the biggest skills for me that have been helpful have been copywriting, like just being able to have strong communication and writing skills, I think are probably the most important skills because so much of working with people is communicating with them.
00:18:21
Speaker
and knowing the right way to communicate with them and understanding how they like to be communicated with. um So those are skills that, I mean, I've always really enjoyed exercising over time. I mean, even like as far back as Lake High School and before that, I've always really enjoyed writing and I've always been kind of a bit of a people person. So those skills kind of came more naturally to me. And then over time, especially when I was in art school, I did a lot of practicing graphic design skills and stuff, which never was intentional. I feel like I feel like something that happens a lot when you're an artist is people see that you're an artist and then without figuring out what kind of art you do, they're like, oh, you can do graphic design for me, right? And I'm like, I guess, ah which for better or for worse has actually helped me become pretty comfortable with my graphic design skills, which is really great on indie teams because you don't usually have someone helping you make assets and stuff like you would in a large team.
00:19:15
Speaker
Um, gives me a lot of creative flexibility over the content I'm posting and stuff. Um, so that, and also video editing on the same vein, ah something else I was exercising a lot throughout my life, but especially in college and especially since like, I mean, it's been very helpful in creating stuff for social media channels. And I don't know, I like the skills too.
00:19:37
Speaker
It's funny. I'm going to come back to this, but usually about halfway through the podcast, I'd like to do a fireball round where I'm going to throw some questions at you. No need. You ready for it? Maybe. yeah There we go. Best response. All right, question one. What did you have for breakfast? I had hard-boiled eggs and then some turkey sausage, some toast, some buttered toast, you know, and tea. I love tea so much. um I drink so much tea in this house.
00:20:06
Speaker
There you go. Um, what is your dream vacation? Um, I've always wanted to go to Japan, like many, uh, game developers. I, I've been part of it because I'm a huge foodie. I want to try the food there so bad. Um, but also like for sightseeing and stuff, I just like going places and looking at things and taking in the surroundings.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, architecture, love it. ah This is a two-part question, right? ah Maybe the answer here is Neopets, but what game really made it click saying, I want to go into gaming? And what game are you playing now?
00:20:43
Speaker
Believe it or not, it was actually Portal 2. I first played Portal 2, I think maybe junior year of ah high school. and I was like ah like and that was like looking at colleges around the same time and then a lot of them had games programs because that was kind of when we started seeing more colleges like introducing these sort of degree programs to their course loads and stuff. and I was like,
00:21:09
Speaker
oh like something between those two like made my brain click and made me realize i could make something like this someday um i think at the time it was funny i think i wanted to go into programming and then it was kind of like what you said before i took a programming class and i realized like oh i i don't know about programming uh but um yeah i mean i still think that like portals here was probably the most instrumental in getting me into a place where i could be here now right now what am i Uh, a lot of Bellatro. A lot of... I'm not very good at it, but I really like that game. It's like, I don't really play roguelikes. I don't really play deck builders. But I play so much Bellatro. Um, it's... That one's been, like, such a sleeper hit for me. Um... Was not expecting to love that one that much. I've also been dabbling in Final Fantasy XIV.
00:22:03
Speaker
Um, I play ah play a player warrior. Uh, that's been, I'm still in ARR, so I'm pretty early, but, um, I've been playing that on and off with the help of some friends who are a little bit further along, giving me advice and stuff. There you go. You're off the hot seat, but I will.
00:22:19
Speaker
say that Bellatro took over my life for about three months and it was ah maybe the greatest three months of the year so far. it It is such a great game and my friends joke around because they don't play it. I just always tell them I'm playing Bellatro and they don't understand the the, I don't know, the addiction to it. It is amazing. so well designed i you know it's good when it's just like even when you lose you're like okay I know what I could do better next time I'm gonna hit the button again and start another run yeah exactly it's just so and like when you actually get like a good flow going it's so satisfying watching all your combos pop off and it's also very punchy like graphically
00:23:03
Speaker
which is so, again, satisfying. It's just such a satisfying game to play. I love Bellatro. So good. Not only that, they have a giant community on Discord. I joined their Discord. I was like, I'm going to try and message the creator and see if I can get them on the podcast. And their Discord's gigantic. And the creator has no private messaging turned on. I was like, oh, that's a bummer. That's smart. Great community out there. I feel like if I made a game that big, I'd be like, yeah, I understand if you don't have your DMs on.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So all right. So I want to go back to what you were talking about. um um What did I write down? I wrote a whole bunch of notes here. um So you mentioned to yourself that you kind of have all these skills that you like tapping into, right? you You've learned about video editing, you've learned about graphic artists and all the different types of art you can do. Is there a skill that I'm going to use the word hate, and I don't like to use the word hate, that you hate having to tap into? Like when you wake up in the morning and you know you're gonna have to do that, you're like, Oh God, I have to do this today.
00:24:04
Speaker
ah Wow, this is a hard one. There's so much about what I do that I like that I've never had to think about the things I don't really like. It shows all the way to the back of your mind.
00:24:16
Speaker
Yeah, I really can't think of anything that I like distinctly hate off of the top of my head. um I mean, sometimes it'd be nice if I didn't have to do content creation so I could focus on all the other stuff, but I don't hate content creation. I find that part of it also fun at times, especially when I get to exercise my creative of muscles like that. But yeah, I mean, I don't think there's anything I distinctly hate. Okay, that's great.
00:24:41
Speaker
um But on that note, right, one of the things you mentioned earlier in the review is you you talked about kind of where you said as a community manager, you kind of feel like you're a liaison from like developers to community to other aspects. What are the other tools that you might be tapping into? Like, do you find yourself going to tools like Jira or Trello to add notes to developers? Are you just messaging them on Slack? like And it might be different from Studio to Studio, right? But like, what are the common trends you see on how you communicate with the rest of your teams?
00:25:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Slack is always a go-to for a lot of projects, and I'm on Slack, or actually, Vault Breaker, we use Discord. Um, which has been fun because I get all of my custom emojis in there. Um, but, um, yeah, I mean, like having that direct line of communication through a direct messaging system, like Slack or discord has been really helpful. Um, something I've been finding useful for, I mean, working with team, like embedded in teams and stuff and also working with clients is like, I've been really liking ClickUp lately.
00:25:40
Speaker
um We actually, I feel like I started using it more because Moldbreaker, we use it for our production system. um So, I mean, it was something I um was using a lot for task management stuff. And then when I started doing freelancing on top of that, um I found it really useful to organize things like marketing priorities or content calendars. I've actually been building content calendars in there, one of my gigs. So it's like, it's been really handy in that sense where it's,
00:26:06
Speaker
flexible and a free tool that's pretty widely easy to use. um that are Also, I learned that you can embed ClickUp boards inside of Notion, which is fascinating because that also is really nice for kind of like encouraging a line of communication, like being able to be more transparent with the kind of stuff that I'm working on with my clients. um Also, Notion has been something I've been using a lot more lately.
00:26:33
Speaker
ah even like outside of work. but you give us ah I love that. you know I've been looking into Notion. I've been looking into another tool that replaces Excel or something like that. I forgot what I can't think of it. I'm going to think of it while you're talking. But like what's a good use case on why I should start looking into Notion?
00:26:51
Speaker
Notion's really good for documentation. And I wish that when I was still at Armor Game Studios, I did all of my documentation in Notion. Because let me tell you, Notion is actually built for that kind of stuff. And I was using Google Drive, which is not built for that kind of stuff. But ah yeah, I mean, like and I've been using it a lot um for documenting on the teams that I work on progress on.
00:27:17
Speaker
Certain things like retrospectives on like, you know, doing data analysis for previous months on social media kind of analyzing what worked what didn't work and stuff and the numbers that resulted from that.
00:27:31
Speaker
Uh, it's been good for like storing marketing plans and social media strategies and notes for meetings. I mean, it's again, it's built for documentation, I feel like. So it's really good for historically outlining the stuff that you have done, the stuff you are doing.
00:27:49
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. The other one was air table. That's why I was thinking of. So I'm trying to get people mixing together notion and air table to build something. I'm just like, I want to do that. I just don't know the use case to do for you. And I just want to play around and see what I can make and break. I have less experience with air table. I've used it a little bit, but, um, yeah, I know a lot of people like that one too, for building dashboards and stuff.
00:28:10
Speaker
All right. Dashboard. Let's go there. um KPIs. That's how I thought of KPIs through dashboards. I feel like that's tangentially related. Sort of, right? It's a good segue. ah but what are As a community manager, are there KPIs that you pay attention to, things that that maybe your executives are looking at for you to provide to them as well?
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, so it depends on community versus social media. So on social media, the three big ones that I would say are engagement rates. So basically, the percentage at which the people who are seeing your content are actually doing meaningful actions on that content. So they're responding or they're liking or they're sharing with their friends or they're bookmarking.
00:28:55
Speaker
um impressions, which is ah kind of like the people who are actually seeing the content on their feeds and stuff, um which can be used to calculate engagement rate very accurately. um Sometimes you can also use followers to calculate the engagement rate formula, but followers um I find it's not as accurate because sometimes people will see your stuff outside of your followers or sometimes your followers won't see things and impressions kind of gives a more realistic view of who's actually seeing your content.
00:29:28
Speaker
um But followers are also really good because like if our content is doing well, we're seeing consistent growth or we're finding that, like oh, we got a lot of growth after this event that we participated in, et cetera, et cetera. Followers kind of help us not just gauge the health, like kind of just help us like gauge the health of our ah the online spaces that we're building.
00:29:50
Speaker
um showing us if like our efforts are worth it, but more importantly, like that informed with impressions and engagement rate kind of help us paint a larger picture of like ah is our content actually resonating with people? Are we seeing people actually converting over to wish lists and stuff? Also, I guess it's another one like being able to cross-reference with wish listing and other actions through UTM tracking can be helpful too.
00:30:16
Speaker
But at the end of the day, I mean, virality alone doesn't make a marketing plan. It's like virality can help, but it's about making sure that people are consistently showing up for you after you've posted things that really ah hit the spot with them and figuring out like, how do I keep them coming back? It's consistency. It sounds like you're trying to say consistency is key. make three Consistency is so important.
00:30:43
Speaker
um But on the discord side of things, ah I'd say the three big ones are kind of like growth or tension and conversion. So basically, are people joining? Are those people staying? And are they actually hanging out with each other? Are they interacting? um Are they becoming real members of your space and not just lurkers? Not that lurkers are not valuable because lurkers are like the backbone of our just discord communities I feel like in some ways. um But it's kind of like social media in the sense that those three metrics really need to be studied together to paint that larger picture.
00:31:20
Speaker
Um, which thankfully, I mean, on the discord side of things, you've got like discords built in metrics tools for those kinds of things. And there are also some supplementary bots that help you, uh, collect that data further. So, um, yeah, it's your question.
00:31:36
Speaker
It's, you know, it's, I'm very good at the social media side. I used to work for a social media listening company and we used to measure all this stuff for our customers. And, you know, I never really thought about discord and how people do it. And it sounds like it's very much similar to gaming itself. The discord itself must be a game or a community where you want to make sure people come in and they want to make sure their conversions. And yeah, right. Who's a lurker who's not lurkers are just as important, if not more important than the the social people. Cause I believe almost at least on like Reddit, 90% of the people are lurkers, 10% of the people are actual content creators. So without the lurkers, the platform's got no.
00:32:07
Speaker
yeah because like Those people are going to be the kinds of people where it's like they're clearly in there because they're getting something out of being in that space or maybe they just haven't had their opportunity to really become part of the server proper. um But some people will get like their information and stuff from there and you still have to kind of like, they're they're definitely useful.
00:32:28
Speaker
in that sense where, you know, there's a chance that they could end up becoming part of the community and ah things like that. But I mean, making sure that people actually are like coming and staying and spending time with each other is also really important because like, why else would the community be there if not to create that sort of space for them?
00:32:48
Speaker
So with social media side of things, right, the the numbers you're monitoring there, do you use any tools to help you with that things like a Hootsuite or a Sprinkler or a Afogata?
00:33:00
Speaker
Um, I mean, I've used a bunch of different tools over the years. I mean, one that I haven't been able to have access to just because it's been so expensive to sprout social. I remember really liking that when I use it in some of my earlier roles and stuff. I've also used stuff like Agora Pulse. Most recently I've been using Buffer actually, which seems to be very on top of creating integrations for some of the more up and coming program are like social media sites that have been coming out since so all the change of the big shake up at Twitter. um So like, ah they just recently added blue sky integration, which blew my mind because
00:33:37
Speaker
I was like, it made my life so much easier. Cause it's like, I'd love to be able to experiment with this platform. It's so much more annoying to get content on there because I have to like go in there separately and there's no way to schedule on the back end inside of blue sky and stuff. So having something that'll do that for me is like, Oh, great. You keep everything consistent and get everything out at the same time.
00:33:59
Speaker
um Yeah, I love that. You know, this is all clicking for me very well. and I love the way it all connects, right? You build a good social media campaign, and you bring people to your Discord. In Discord, you can keep nurturing them and growing them, and you can keep the cycle growing to make the community grow.
00:34:15
Speaker
um I guess now that you're building a community, right we're building a community, it's time to come up with community guidelines. um I imagine you have community guidelines right out the gate. um And if I'm wrong, you can let me know. But like, how do you start building community guidelines? Is it just a basic template you use over and over again? Or or how do you go about that process? Yeah, I think it kind of like depends. I mean, like,
00:34:40
Speaker
i i I like rewriting them for each company that I go to just because I feel every game is different. Every company's values are different. And sometimes you and like sometimes like you go to a different space and you realize, well, maybe there are some things that I am realizing could have been good that I could have done in other spaces that I'm doing here. um So I like to start from the the beginning.
00:35:06
Speaker
um if I'm working for a larger company or a company with a larger portfolio, sometimes I'll write more standardized guidelines, but I'm still writing those from scratch every time I go somewhere. um So something I like to do is kind of like consider stuff I've written in the past, also kind of like get a pulse on what communities are including now in case maybe there's, you know, something really good that I never would have thought of including in murals that like another space has been including or ah just kind of like getting a pulse for the state of community now and then going in and doing my own take on my guidelines where I'm covering the things that are really important to our company, the things that are really important to me and the things that are really important to keep in this space healthy.
00:35:49
Speaker
Um, so, uh, yeah, I mean, a lot of that is writing, uh, guidelines that are very intentionally, inclusively minded to protect like the more vulnerable members of our community. Uh, stuff in the past that I've included is like, uh, I remember when I worked on, uh, some games at armor game studios, like a big thing that we were noticing is an increase in like discord scams and stuff. So.
00:36:16
Speaker
Like, i tried I codified something in there for like, hey, if you're getting scammed and stuff, like, ah be careful. Let us know. we'll We'll look into it for you and stuff to kind of take that burden off of the people in our space and keep them from getting hurt by stuff completely out of their control. um But yeah, I mean, like, i I like to kind of customize them depending on the space that I'm in. Like, I went with a little bit more of a fun approach with moldbreakers guidelines just because of the kind of tone that we were setting for our space and stuff, but still trying to keep them very focused and like, we mean business.
00:36:53
Speaker
the The discord scams is the one you bring up because at help shift, we offer discord, a bot for discord for support, and it's usually done via DM. And one of our customers was like, Oh, we can't use DMs. We've prohibited people from DMs and we educate our users that most scams are done via DM. So if we DM you, it's not going to be us. It's like, Oh, I didn't realize that DMs are the source of, uh, of fraud or, or, or,
00:37:20
Speaker
things like that online, and that was kind of an eye-opening moment to me. um It's so funny you mentioned that because the more that I think of it, the more that that's probably right. Yeah. I feel like a lot of the big ones that I see on Discord are things like someone DMA, like someone hacked an account and is DMing their friend and is make all someone on their friend's list. And they're trying to make it sound like they are the friend of this person and like, hey, I have this game. Can you download it and play it and tell me what you think of it? That turns out to be a Trojan horse.
00:37:51
Speaker
ah Yeah, like that one's a really big one. I had a friend who got hit by that and like they had to go through hell to get it off of their computer. Um, but there's stuff like that and like, Hey, join my discord server, which sometimes people do just like blatantly post that in the server. And I'm like, you're not kidding anybody, buddy. Um, but yeah, I mean, a lot of them do happen over DM. That's a good point.
00:38:15
Speaker
Do you find that you have yourself tools to help enforce these policies? how do you How do you go about doing that? Because there's so much happening on some of these channels at once. Yeah. So something that has been really helpful on Discord specifically is they've introduced over time, auto moderation tools that help with a lot of things. Like I think they even have stuff that like helps with bot raids. So that's really nice. So trying to help minimize the impact that stuff like scam links and fake accounts and bot raids and stuff could have on your moderation teams.
00:38:51
Speaker
which I think does a lot. There's also additional tools, like I know there's one called BMO that does ah kind of also bot raid prevention sort of stuff. um And in terms of moderating and stuff, like I've seen success in servers that I've worked in with a mod mail for like larger servers where it's kind of funneling all moderation stuff, like all reports and things like that into one, a bot that kind of like,
00:39:20
Speaker
aggregates all of the responses you're getting from people, all the inquiries you're getting so that your moderators can look at them inside of the server. they're Their inboxes aren't getting bombarded or anything. They're able to kind of more easily track. like Everyone's able to see the same messages and stuff and discuss moderation decisions together, which is really nice. and I think that helps too.
00:39:42
Speaker
But there's a lot of different things you can use. I mean, the nice thing about Discord is it has such a wide bot integration community and a lot of developers making stuff to help make things like this easier. Yeah, I love that about Discord, but it also worries me about Discord. You know, when you're starting to look up different tools and you see 10 to 15 different options, it's like, all right, how am I going to get going here? How am I going to get started? ah I love it and I hate it at the same time, but I have nowhere near the same amount of experience as you do.
00:40:11
Speaker
Let's talk about, again, getting started because it's something that always kind of boggles my mind. If you can give anywhere from, let's say, one to three tips and tricks to someone who's trying to get started, maybe it's an indie game that has very little budget and they want to start doing this, what are what are some tips and tricks to getting started?
00:40:29
Speaker
I guess like the first one is like think of marketing as soon as possible is probably like if I could put anything on a billboard and be like this is the most important thing that I would like to impart on indie devs is yeah I mean start thinking of marketing early and think about it often because I mean It'll help you understand, you know, like, what are the challenges of getting this game to market and stuff? What kinds of people are actually going to play your game? What kind of things do people actually like about these games, which can inform the way you actually make the game itself? um Marketing is not just something you do six to 12 months before launch. It's something that you passively do to some degree throughout the entirety of development. So that's the biggest one that I can think of. um
00:41:19
Speaker
I guess second is ah pick a social media platform and stick with that. um It doesn't have to be Twitter. It can be. Keep in mind that if you do choose Twitter, I mean, they if you're not careful, you could end up marketing to developers, which can be good, but also you could be missing out in large parts of your audience by only marketing to other developers.
00:41:40
Speaker
But ah pick one platform, stick with it, and try to post on there somewhat regularly. The content doesn't have to be super big or complex. And things might not be excited on so exciting on social media for a while, but at least get the roots planted so that you can start telling people about your game when you feel like you actually have something you could show off. um And I guess, like,
00:42:04
Speaker
Honestly, I feel like that also goes into my third one, which is don't just market to developers. ah but's I think that's a really big one for. uh what I'm thinking like a big piece of advice I'd like to impart is that it's so easy on in game development spaces in particular to only market towards other developers and other developers are great I honestly like I think my favorite part about working in indie indie is how supportive everybody is of each other and uh the focus on you know uplifting and honestly indie itself is very community driven because
00:42:37
Speaker
It's by necessity. I mean, we don't have the same support structures that a big AAA company will have. Um, so that's really good, but also again, you could be missing out on large parts of your audience who'd be really excited about your game. If you're only, you know, only focused on things like wishlist Wednesday and other hashtags that are very commonly seen by other people in the games community or game development community. So, uh, make sure that you're not pigeonholing yourself. I love it. So just running that back step one would be market, market, market.
00:43:06
Speaker
Marketing, marketing, marketing. Never forget that, marketing. ah Number two is pick a platform and stick with it. I like that. There's so many out there just trying to juggle them all. I tried doing that with the podcast. I'm just like, I can't do all these networks. There's way too much going on. It's so hard for a small team to do everything. You can't realistically do everything. yeah It's just you or a few other people, you know? I've learned that.
00:43:28
Speaker
Very, the hard way. And then don't just market to developers, which I find this a fascinating one, because I do I'm speaking for my own self, I'm sorry, I find myself doing that a lot on LinkedIn. And I think LinkedIn is going to be almost 100% developers with some gamers here and there. But then you have Twitter, which you mentioned is still full of developers. And there's Facebook, I guess you also need to know your demographic to understand where would they hang out.
00:43:51
Speaker
Yeah. And that's, uh, that's always the fun one. Cause like Twitter is still even hilariously, despite how, according to the state of the industry report from this year, that most game developers do not like Twitter. Most of us are still on Twitter. It is effectively our LinkedIn in a lot of ways. So it's so easy to accidentally fall down that rabbit hole, of only marketing towards other people who are making games and not the specific type of people who will play your game.
00:44:19
Speaker
What's your logical next step in what you want to do for your career? And this is a two-part question again. One would be for you specific, Catherine. The second one would be for someone who's just a community manager, because I think there's a lot of different places you can go. But curiosity is where would you like to see yourself go from here? And what are some other options people might have?
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like part of the things that I want to keep doing or the things that I've been doing is I really am passionate about supporting, especially independent teams, but really any kinds of games and finding their audience and finding their people and taking care of those people and making sure that they can feel included in the spaces that they're invested in. um ah But I'm also very passionate about, you know, kind of like growing more into like,
00:45:08
Speaker
ah helping grow teams and, you know, ah offering greater levels of support to these developers and leading strategy and stuff. And it's something that I've like dipped my toes into and something I want to continue being able to do in my career as a community manager and a marketing professional. um And what was the other half of the question? For others in the industry, right? Not everyone might want to take the same path as you. So as a community manager, what does that what doors can that open open up for you in which direction you want to go?
00:45:36
Speaker
Yeah. And that's a difficult question because community management's and an and interesting place where our career path is still pretty much in its infancy. I mean, I don't even think like CM roles really widely existed at all. Like.
00:45:51
Speaker
before the past like 1520 years so I mean we're still figuring out as a discipline what growth looks like for us. um And I think a lot of it depends on you know companies really being able to invest in their community people and understand like what.
00:46:09
Speaker
pathways are for them, you know, like having making that an open conversation being like, how can we help these people grow so that they can take on more ownership, but also be able to take care of ah of the people that are investing in us better. um So I guess it's kind of a vague answer, but that's the the best I can give.
00:46:29
Speaker
No, I love it. you know My first job ever was a support rep, like a tier one support rep. And I felt the same way as like, once all your customers or gamers or players, whatever vertical you're in, like you're you're the you're the barrier between your company and then you're learning what they see. You're learning from them. And I feel like it opens your eyes. You can learn to say, hey, I want to stay in customer support and I want to keep going up the customer support and be technical. You can say, you know what, I love community management and marketing aspect of it. I want to go towards marketing or all these players complain about the game being broken. I want to test QA and see what QA is like. I think community managers have like, they're sitting in the driver's seat of where they want to go. And I would agree with you, it's probably that first step out of university that they may go, but then the and the options are endless and from where you do go from there. And I think it's an awesome place to start your career and get that full visibility of the spectrum of what is available out there. I think that's all I have for you today, Catherine. So
00:47:24
Speaker
First off, I am so excited you came on today and we got to talk about all this stuff. Is there anything you want to talk about, anything you want to just mention or or where the people can find you? Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you for having me. I mean, this has been really fun um being able to chat more about the things that I love the most, which is you know supporting developers and communities. But um yeah, you can find me on Twitter. I am l-i-t-v-a-c-art, all one word on Twitter. um You can also find me at my website. I have a portfolio at litvac.com. um
00:48:02
Speaker
and I'm obviously on LinkedIn where you found me, but I feel like I'm everywhere at some point. um man You gotta be a finder in every Discord possible. I know, right? um But I think those are the the three most important places you can find me um doing things and sharing the stuff that I'm working on.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. And again, this is a immensely educational episode for me. So thank you for that. ah We'll have all of Catherine's information on our player engaged website. We'll talk about it. We'll have access or we'll send have yeah URLs to her Twitter, her website directly. Again, Catherine, thank you so much for coming out today and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Yeah, thanks for having me. I hope you have a great day too.