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ENCORE Aislinn McDivitt: Unveiling the World of Player Engagement
50 Plays9 months ago
In this engaging episode of the Player Engage podcast, Greg sits down with Aislinn McDivitt, the Global Engagement Specialist at Hyper Hippo. Aislinn shares her intriguing journey from aspiring to be a teacher to diving into the gaming industry, highlighting her transition through various roles and how her background in media and cultural studies influenced her career path. The discussion delves into the nuances of global player engagement, exploring how Hyper Hippo tailors experiences for diverse player bases, especially focusing on non-English speaking markets.
Key takeaways from the episode include:
- Insights into the role and challenges of a Global Engagement Specialist in the gaming industry.
- The impact of cultural and linguistic considerations in game development and player support.
- Aislinn's personal journey and the unexpected paths that led her to her current role in the gaming sector.
For a deeper understanding of how cultural nuances influence game development and to hear more about Aislinn's unique career journey, tune into this episode of Player Engage. Discover the behind-the-scenes efforts that go into creating inclusive and engaging player experiences across global markets. Listen now to gain more insights!
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Transcript
Replay Announcement
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is the second week of our two week break, so we're going to be playing an on-care episode for you, but we will be live again next week with some fresh new episodes, so don't go far. This week we are going to be going to be replaying our most popular episode to date, which is starring Ashlyn McDivitt from Hyper Hippo.
Role of Global Engagement Specialist
00:00:25
Speaker
She is a global engagement specialist and would be talking about the role of a global engagement specialist, the importance of community feedback, and the challenges and opportunities in localization. So enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to talking to you again next week. Welcome to the Player Engage podcast, where we dive into the biggest challenges, technologies, trends, and best practices for creating unforgettable player experiences. Player Engage is brought to you as a collaboration between Keyword Studios and HelpShift. Here is your host, Greg Posner.
00:00:53
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. Today we're joined by Ashlyn McDivitt, the global engagement specialist at Hyper Hippo. Ashlyn, I'm very excited to have you here. I usually do a different type of intro, but I want to try something new with you and I didn't quite warn you about this today. So first off, hi, anything you want to say to introduce yourself? Hi, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
00:01:14
Speaker
I'm excited to because just a high level thing about Ashlyn is that she is a media and cultural studies degree at Okanagan. I studied that word and I practiced it. I think I nailed it. Ashlyn will be there.
00:01:30
Speaker
I want to understand how people have gotten into gaming. And I think it's a very important thing. And we take a look at your history and we see that your media and cultural studies degree, which is great. And today you're
Player Experience in Global Markets
00:01:42
Speaker
in gaming. So I want to kind of work this off as first, what exactly does a global engagement specialist do?
00:01:49
Speaker
Oh, great question. So I started off at Hyper Hippo in the Player Experience Department, and I'm now in a bit of a hybrid role between Player Experience and our new Global Markets Department.
00:02:05
Speaker
So both of those departments, the name says it all, player experience department focuses on our players, that encompasses player support, community management, dealing with any questions and community events. And the new global markets department focuses on not just new global markets, but also non-English speaking markets that we're currently based in.
Understanding Non-North American Players
00:02:32
Speaker
So
00:02:33
Speaker
Our game was developed by primarily English speakers. We are based in Canada, so we do have quite a few French speakers as well. But while we're creating the game and creating these experiences for our players, we're coming at it with an English speaking lens and specifically a North American lens.
00:02:52
Speaker
So the NGM department really focuses on our players outside of North America, what their needs are and how we can best support them. So right now I'm focusing on what we need to do to help our non-English speaking players and our non-North American players to make their experience just as good as any others. Interesting. So let's kind of wrap that up, right? It's still very much
00:03:21
Speaker
player experience. You're just now taking a look at that and how do you expand that, have that same experience, whether someone's from Germany or from Korea or from Singapore compared to how the people in the United States or Canada might, might be experiencing it. So. Yeah, exactly. That's very cool. I think, I think the player experience is one of the most things that excite me and Ashlyn and I spoke
00:03:46
Speaker
couple weeks ago about our favorite games, right? And games that she's interested in. And I think when you start at a young age, you want to be immersed in this gaming experience. And I think when someone can come in and say, Hey, I want to help make this the same experience, no matter where they live, where they are, it's the same experience, right? But I think that's noble. So with that being said, right, I'm assuming you didn't grow up dreaming to be
00:04:09
Speaker
a player engagement specialist. So what did you want to be when you grew up? And how did you make this journey from what you wanted to be to a writing and studies major to where
Career Path: Teaching to Gaming
00:04:25
Speaker
you are? So I my entire life wanted to be a teacher.
00:04:30
Speaker
That was my dream. My mom as a teacher, my grandma as a teacher. No, they both retired now, but they both were teachers. And that's what I wanted to do from as long as I can remember up until about grade 11. And I'm based in British Columbia, Canada. And at the time when I was starting to look into post-secondary education and really focus in on what my future would be, it really wasn't a great time to be a teacher in BC.
00:05:00
Speaker
There were constant strikes. What else was happening at the time? There were lots of strikes. The pay really wasn't great compared to teaching in other parts of Canada. I just wasn't sure if that was exactly what I wanted to do.
00:05:17
Speaker
Or if that would be the best, let me rephrase that actually, I just wasn't sure if that was going to be a sustainable future. I still will say that I do think teachers in BC are underpaid compared to how much they work and everything they put up with. But I went in for my Media and Cultural Studies diploma
00:05:40
Speaker
thinking that I could get a teaching bachelor's on top of that. So I would start off with the diploma, see where that took me, and then if I wanted to go into teaching, I could just add that on top and it wouldn't be too much of an extra commitment. And during that time, I went a completely different route and I started working in fashion, which was not something that I planned. And when that ended,
00:06:09
Speaker
I really wasn't sure what to do with myself. I was kind of at a crossroads. I was pretty young still, and yeah, just not sure what to do with myself. I don't know if you've ever been in that position, but I think a lot of young people get kind of, oh, Luna, sorry, my cat, Luna. Just digging in my plants. People love cats, they're good.
00:06:39
Speaker
I love her too, but, um, Oh my God, could you not? My poor plant is dying over there in the corner. Mine's it, but I can't blame a cat. Um, where was I? You're in fashion and then you just got to your kind of, what do I do when I grow up? Yeah. Yeah.
Entry into Gaming Industry and Imposter Syndrome
00:07:00
Speaker
I, um, I was really stuck on exactly what I wanted to do. So I went back to school, uh, finished up my diploma.
00:07:08
Speaker
And when I graduated, I didn't want to go into teaching anymore. It was just a huge departure from where I was in my life. And I think that ship had kind of sailed. So I saw a, I was recommended a job posting for the player experience rep just part-time at Hyper Hippo, which is a support role.
00:07:30
Speaker
And so I thought, yeah, I can do that. I was working retail, so I could just add another part time job on top of that, see where it took me while I really wasn't sure what to do with my life.
00:07:41
Speaker
And then I never worked part time. I immediately went into full time and the rest is history. Sweet. And player experience, like I think to myself when it comes to player experience, I'd probably need experience for that. How am I going to jump into a role? Like maybe you were a gamer and we could talk about that, but like, how do you prep yourself saying I'm going to be ready for a player experience role at a gaming company?
00:08:05
Speaker
Oh, really good question. I didn't prepare for these questions either. So no, I'm sweating it out. No, that's a really good one. It was, you know, I did have a bit of imposter syndrome at first thinking I was not prepared. It's a very male dominated industry. And so I was coming in, I was the youngest person at the company at the time. And I was, I didn't identify with the word gamer, not because I didn't play games.
00:08:35
Speaker
But because when you think of a gamer, you typically think of like a Call of Duty, Diablo players, typically a man or a boy. And I was playing like The Sims, Animal Crossing, Minecraft. I play a ton of games on my phone.
00:08:53
Speaker
typically puzzle or time management ones and you just don't really see that represented under the word gamer. So I felt very out of place at first, but like I said I've always played games, specifically mobile games. When I worked in fashion I traveled a lot and I was traveling for months at a time in one suitcase. There really wasn't
00:09:16
Speaker
an opportunity to have a lot of hobbies, even things like I love reading, couldn't bring a lot of books with you because we've got one suitcase for sometimes six or seven months of travel. But my phone was always there. So I did have some books on my phone.
00:09:35
Speaker
But I was constantly playing games while in airports, waiting for a train, waiting for a meeting to start. So I felt very familiar with what it's like to be a mobile game player.
00:09:51
Speaker
and also to not see yourself represented under the title of gamer. So while I was very nervous at first, I had a really great team who taught me everything I needed to know and give me the confidence to stop feeling nervous. Yeah, I think there's a lot of power in just being a gamer. You know what you like and you know what you don't like. And yeah, you're not an expert, but I can know. I play The Sims and I hate the fact that there's one button here, and why is this one button here? And it drives you mad.
00:10:20
Speaker
Not to say you're qualified for the job, but you know the experience, you know what you're doing, you can talk about what you're doing. And it's funny because when I imagine kind of a player experience, when you're taking a look at the player experience, right? I imagine, and I'm making this up in my mind as I go, so keep me honest, it's not that far off from teaching because teaching, you're trying to get people to understand their curriculum. This is how things go. And when you're looking at player experience, you want the players to do specific things in game.
00:10:48
Speaker
Have you ever made any connections between, and I know you didn't go to school for all the teaching, you went for some of it, right? But like, from your mom and your grandma, like, do you ever relate anything from teaching to what you're doing with player experience? Absolutely. That's a really interesting question. But a lot of the things that drew me toward teaching are the things I enjoy in my current job as well. I mean, there's the obvious of training new reps.
00:11:16
Speaker
going through the hiring process is a lot of actual teaching and that. But when you're working with the player too, there's a lot of, yeah, teaching them how things work. If there's a question that comes in, I think it's very similar to a teacher discussing with a student. And something that I like more about my current job is I think it's quite collaborative. You know, we collaborate with players in lots of ways that I don't know I would be able to experience if I were a teacher.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. It's fun that that's the stuff you enjoy most. It shows that maybe you were born to be this teacher, but you're able to expand that knowledge and apply the skills that you love to something else. And I just kind of loved how you do that because even to this day, I have friends that are in teaching and they maybe want to try and get out of it. They're like, but my only skill set is teaching. I'm like, no, but that's a huge skill set that you can apply to anything else in any industry. Like,
00:12:10
Speaker
know, almost anywhere you go from one industry to another, you can connect the lines on how things can match it. Maybe KPIs are different. Maybe the skill sets are named something different. But you still learn these things that can translate over. And I think people don't look with an open mind to say, hey, these things can be related, even though they're completely different types of jobs. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I also know a few people who went into teaching and are looking for a change in career. And it's quite daunting because you do have
00:12:37
Speaker
your education is for education, but it is a really important skill set that I think is a lot of people would benefit in having somebody with those skills in their organization.
00:12:50
Speaker
And something you said earlier, just to kind of double down on it is, I think teachers are the most underpaid people in almost every, I mean, one thing we can all say about each other is that we've all had a teacher, someone to help inspire us and get us to where we're going to go. And teachers deserve nothing but the best compared to everyone else, but they definitely deserve the best. Absolutely. I completely agree with that, especially with the rising cost of living.
00:13:17
Speaker
Yep, teachers more. Seriously, I'm down for that.
Hyper Hippo's Game Focus
00:13:21
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about hyper hippo. Can you give our audience kind of that may not be familiar with the types of games that you create? Who is hyper hippo? Yeah, absolutely. So hyper hippo, we create
00:13:33
Speaker
Actually, let me restart that. So Hyper Hippo focuses on the idle genre. So games that play themselves even while you're gone. Our big title is our adventure capitalist and adventure communist, which are both satirical, a bit controversial in theme, but it's all it's all in good fun. It's all satire. Cool. And these are primarily all mobile, right? Are you creating on any other platforms?
00:14:01
Speaker
So Adventure Capitalist actually started off on Steam and PlayStation. And this is when Hippo was trying out a bunch of things, trying out new platforms and seeing where the audience was. And it was clear that our audience is mainly on mobile. Adventure Capitalist still has a thriving Steam community, but we focus for our future titles primarily on mobile for right now. So you have Adventure Capitalist, Adventure Communist, I know there's a whole bunch of them and interesting
00:14:31
Speaker
podcast I had the other day, I can't quite remember which one, but he talked about kind of cannibalizing players when you have multiple games in the same genre. Do you see your player base? And I'm not sure if you measure this. Do they adopt all the games? Do you understand who's a player of adventure, capitalist versus communist versus mechanized, right? Some of the other games as well.
00:14:53
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. I would not be the best person to answer that because I don't have that data on the top of my head. But we do see different player profiles across our games. A lot of that is based on genre. So if you're somebody who or theme, I should say a lot of it is based on theme.
00:15:14
Speaker
So somebody who is drawn to adventure communist, for example, may not be the same type of person who's drawn to adventure agents, which is a time traveling theme. However, we do, I would say that a lot of our players try out all of our games and see which one they identify with the most, or perhaps there's multiple titles that they identify with.
00:15:41
Speaker
Do you keep a common player experience from within the game? So just from start to tutorial to playing the game, if I pick up one game, I'm not going to know the rest.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yes and no. Our games do have different mechanics. Adventure Ages and Adventure Communists are the most similar. But our other games, primarily Vacation Tycoon and Adventure Capitalists, or our other main titles, do have different mechanics. So it's not exactly a one for one. However, we do try to keep a lot of the hippo branding.
00:16:19
Speaker
alive in the games. So if you're playing one game, we hope that you can identify, oh, this is a hyper hippo game. And that would be based on things like the art, the humor, and of course the PX, the actual support that you get from within the game.
00:16:34
Speaker
I love that about those genres of games where you can, with the artwork alone, just know this is the same style of game. I immediately think of games like Bioshock, where there's a few different Bioshocks that took place in different worlds, but just the artwork alone just kind of always brought you back to this is the type of game I'm playing. And I think that's important for players, especially when they love a game that it's all part of that immersive experience. And it's just the stuff that you're taking a look at as a player experience manager when you're in that role.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I want to know what the players are identifying as a hippo trademark and what they're liking. An unexpected one, I shouldn't say unexpected exactly, but we
00:17:15
Speaker
have a reputation for good OSTs. Our music is now made entirely in-house and players love our music. Right when I first started, we would get people emailing in asking, is your music on SoundCloud? Is it on Spotify? I just want to listen to it as I'm working. And so now we do have all of our music up on YouTube.
00:17:41
Speaker
And whenever a new event comes out for Adventure Communist specifically, we get people asking, okay, where's the music? Can you upload the music? Which I love hearing that. It wasn't something that we necessarily intended to do, but we do take pride in our OSTs. And it was delightful to hear that players were appreciating that. It's little things like that.
00:18:08
Speaker
when you hear about the dominance of generative AI coming out, like these little things make your game special, right? And it's fun. Yeah, you probably can eventually have an AI make that, but just complimenting the music of the game, like that would just take me so off guard and get me so excited about some little thing. Like, oh, that's awesome that you love. Like, I'd love to be able to like, I have a friend that just plays different music soundtracks.
00:18:33
Speaker
throughout his working day. I'm like, that would drive me mad personally, because I want to just go start playing a game. But it's awesome that you have the ability to attract the audience and keep people just based on the soundtrack. I think that's special. That makes something special there. Especially with us being a mobile game company, a lot of players will play with the sound off as they listen to their own music or their own podcast. So we've had people write in saying, I usually turn the music off, but I always keep it on for your game.
00:19:02
Speaker
That's really special to hear. Tell them they can even turn it off and load it up on Spotify and just run the whole soundtrack as they're playing. But that is special, right? I mean, again, on the podcast, I asked you what you did when you were growing up, right? Some people are artists. Like, there's roles for art people, there's roles for music people, there's roles for everyone. I think that's the most exciting thing to have.
00:19:22
Speaker
When it comes to player experience, how do decisions you make happen? Are you getting feedback from people? Are you talking with your team eternally? Is it everyone raises their hand or plays 7-up or something like that? I would love if we played 7-up. I don't know how we would do that remotely.
00:19:39
Speaker
I will be talking to my team about that. We have two values. One of our company values is being player first. That means always putting the player
00:19:56
Speaker
and the player's best interests above anything else.
Player-First Approach and Feedback
00:20:00
Speaker
And the other value that would be relevant here is transparency. Internally, I would say those two values guide the PXT more than anything else. So when we are talking to the developers about a new feature site that's coming out or we've gotten some feedback from the community,
00:20:22
Speaker
Uh, it's very collaborative. We are very transparent with the devs about exactly what the players are saying. And they are transparent back to us about, uh, you know, any limitations. Um, sometimes, you know, we, we have a request for them that just, uh, did you do some, uh, you know, it's access sentence. I love where you go.
00:20:44
Speaker
There are some times where we might provide feedback or suggestions and we don't understand the technical limitations or perhaps we just have, you know, manpower limitations. So, where am I going with this?
00:21:03
Speaker
well as you go and it's gonna lead to this next question right which is good right because i'm i'd like to ask about i asked about the philosophy that your team files and you're saying that you follow your core values which are fantastic and what's fun the national as mentioned in the other side if you go to the hyper have a website which we will have on our webpage a they'll call themselves hippos which is just fun in general but there's also a video that will go through each different individual or at least i think there are seven core values that each person talking about a core value and i
00:21:32
Speaker
Ashlyn, I had yours written down. I probably erased it when I was taking notes here during the thing here, but Ashlyn's one of her core values, of course, people first. Yes, I think people first. Player first. Sorry. I think it's exciting and I like your communication with your engineering team. A lot of times we hear about a lot of disconnect between a support team and engineering teams. How does that communication happen?
00:21:59
Speaker
Okay, so I'm very lucky that we have a very player first development team and engineering team who are very interested in hearing from the PX team. So we have a community manager and he is constantly in our socials, our Discord, our Reddit, our Facebook, Twitter, paying attention to what people are saying and communicating with them directly as well.
00:22:28
Speaker
and then compiling that very neatly and in a way that's digestible for the development team.
00:22:35
Speaker
That could include screenshots, links to different posts across the web, direct feedback from the players. And in return, the dev team will very transparently tell us exactly what's going on on their end. If there are any delays due to limitations, especially during the summer, a lot of people are off on vacation.
00:22:59
Speaker
So that can cause some delays as well. And then give us something that we can go back to the players with. And we do try to be as transparent as we can be. Obviously we can't give every detail about the happenings at our company, but we really do try to give as many details as we can about why a decision was made, why a feature was implemented the way that it was, what changes are coming.
00:23:24
Speaker
When they're coming you know we might decide based on player feedback okay this event maybe it was too hard or too easy or the players aren't liking this particular mission we want to change that.
00:23:37
Speaker
we might not be able to change it right away. And so we do try to tell the players an expected timeline for when that might happen. But it's very collaborative within our studio. There isn't really a hierarchy of who gets to make the final decision. It really is a conversation between the PX team and the production team. I think that's very
00:24:01
Speaker
cool the way it's done. I think it's not often again, like I said, you find a team that's collaborative, like between engineering support, it's usually kind of acting as a middleman between the player and sometimes it gets frustrating, which it still does, I'm sure. But I also like the, I know I wouldn't call it publishing your roadmap, right? But I like the idea of being able to share a good amount of stuff, right? And the problem is, and I think a lot of people don't always realize this, is that when you're talking about engineering,
00:24:27
Speaker
for a sass tool or a game right like it's hard to give hard deadlines stuff happens stuff breaks and some players most players maybe understand that a lot of vocal ones also don't understand that
00:24:39
Speaker
That's why broken games often get released and then patched afterwards. But I like that idea. And it got me thinking, like, when your players, you run a season pass or a season event, how are you getting that feedback from the players? Is it from social, like you mentioned, or is it from in-game or how do you work towards collecting that feedback from your players?
00:25:00
Speaker
So it's a combination of both. We do have our community manager who is often, especially in the Discord and Reddit, but our player experience reps, who you can think of them as support reps, they're also in Discord, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and they're always listening.
00:25:21
Speaker
It's really important to us to get this feedback. So oftentimes it'll be collected via screenshot or direct link. We'll send things over real time in Slack, but we also have frequent meetings with the production team and which is really
00:25:40
Speaker
The purpose of the meeting is really to listen to what the players are saying, as well as to, you know, of course, update our PX team with any changes in the production roadmap. So we collect things via social. We also collect feedback from within the game. So we use Helpshift, which we love. And yeah, it's made a huge difference in the way that we support our players.
00:26:07
Speaker
We can collect feedback very efficiently using Help Shift. We do have a feedback bot that players can use. Everything is tagged, so we can easily sift through any new feedback from the week. And we can actually use that to give our production team hard numbers, which of course
00:26:29
Speaker
Producers love data. Developers love data. And so we can say we have X amount of tags from the most recent event. X amount are positive, X amount are negative. This is the mission in particular that players don't really like or that they're struggling with. And here is supplemental data from Discord and Twitter and Reddit with more player feedback.
00:26:54
Speaker
So great information. Thank you for plugging HelpShift. That's better than I could ever do. And it's good to hear that it makes a difference because I love it, obviously. I work there, but I love to be able to hear other people just understanding, hey, I can collect feedback because feedback, I think, is one of the most important parts. And it's funny how many game companies don't necessarily collect feedback and just always boggles my mind.
00:27:17
Speaker
How are you not collecting feedback? It's how you learn how to update the game and pivot the game. We briefly, well, we didn't talk about it in the podcast, but we talked about segmentation and segmentation for our listeners who don't know. It's just be able to segment groups of players. Some are influencers or maybe some are streamers or some are VIPs. I'm not sure if you do that today and maybe we don't have to dig into that. But when you're collecting feedback, do specific voices from the community
00:27:45
Speaker
Are they louder than others when you're taking notes? I mean, of course we do have our community influencers.
00:27:55
Speaker
Of course, their opinion is very influential. And we do have the people who basically after every new event will give us their feedback and we really value that. But I wouldn't say that we would value it any more than anyone else. It's really interesting when people who don't normally speak up start speaking up.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's when you know either something was really wrong or it's really good. So when we were talking about the music, for example, I personally really noticed it when people we don't normally hear from and places we don't normally hear from players started mentioning the music.
00:28:40
Speaker
That is not to say that the people who give us consistent feedback, we don't take that just as seriously. These are our most engaged players. They know the game better than anyone else, really, because they're actively playing it. So that isn't to say that their consistent feedback isn't also very, very helpful. It really is. But it's interesting when you start hearing from people who don't normally speak up.
00:29:06
Speaker
I love that. I really do because I like to think of myself as a more of actually a quiet person. And I think people who are quiet, especially if you can see that they're playing the game a lot, I think when a quiet person that is engaged in the game speaks, that carries a very big stick. And that means, oh, this longtime player who I've never heard from has a problem. And if I want this person to keep playing who I never have to hear from,
00:29:28
Speaker
Let's see what's going on and investigate this. I mean, that's, influencers are great for a game because they're going to spread the word, but you need these players that are just continuously grinding in the game and playing in the game and giving the game use, right? And listening to them, I think is essential.
00:29:44
Speaker
It's especially, Igor is a really good point. I think that most players don't write in. I think for most people, if they're playing a game and there's an issue, they'll just delete the game. So for every
00:29:59
Speaker
person who writes in, we can imagine there are 10, 20, 30 who have the same opinion, the same problem, or the same critique who just deleted the game or didn't write in. I mean, how many times have you written into a mobile games support team?
00:30:16
Speaker
Me personally, Molly, you're asking maybe the wrong person who has to test it out a lot with our customers. I am asking the wrong person. Oh darn. And then you think. No, I get it. You're right. It's a funny thing about the internet because you have communities like Reddit where when you're hidden behind a username, you're going to be a completely different individual than when you see them in the streets, right? Like people online who I think are the loudest probably when you see them in real life are probably quiet and just going to be sitting there, right? So it's an interesting
00:30:46
Speaker
Think about being able to be online but when you're playing a game and you want to give your honest opinion Right if you're not trolling anyone that it's still gonna be that important thing that you hear from Yeah, I have personally written in not just for my own testing but for for genuine reasons I've written into two companies one was a gaming company and one was a different app I was having issues in both and
00:31:15
Speaker
It really took a lot for me to write in, to be honest. In the game, I was very displeased with a glitch that ruined my save. And in the app, there was a glitch that basically made the app unusable for me.
00:31:35
Speaker
But I've had issues in other games too. They were minor issues or I had minor critiques or I had feedback of something I really liked and I didn't write in. I'm not the kind of person who would typically do that unless there's a big issue. So we can imagine every time somebody does give us feedback, there are so many more people with the same opinion.
00:31:59
Speaker
It's a great dilemma. Years ago, I was on a call with a prospect and they created an Xbox game that I actually played every night. I loved it. Me and my buddies would play it. It was going well and I said, yeah, every time I log on, I get a network error. I just hit A and it retries and it works. They're like, well, have you reported the problem? I said, no. I mean, just hit A and it works. It's like, well, that's the problem.
00:32:22
Speaker
If you have a problem, you got to let us know like how I think that's an interesting thing is like you play these games and you have an error. Maybe you just reloaded and it worked. But someone else had that problem and probably quit the game and installed it. Or maybe it happens a few times like.
00:32:37
Speaker
as an engagement manager at a certain point, right? Do you even think about like, how can I start proactively reaching out? How can I get this information from players who aren't talking to me to understand their insight? And I know it's a tough question that may not even have an answer. But is it something you've thought through? It is. And you're right, it's a really tough dilemma of being proactive. But for a lot of it,
00:33:04
Speaker
For a lot of issues right now, we're really relying on hearing from our players. There are things that people in the industry are working on so that we can be more proactive in detecting issues.
00:33:18
Speaker
And a lot of those I can't really speak on, but something that I would like to highlight is the relationship building between our community manager and all of our other PX reps and our community members. People feel more comfortable coming to you with a minor issue if they know you have a username that they're familiar with.
00:33:40
Speaker
They've seen me joking around and sending gifts and the discord. They know who you are. You have a personality to them. You're not just a nameless support bot, right? So that's one of the ways that we have been, we've been seeing some success of catching, especially minor issues early on.
00:34:00
Speaker
The other thing too is going through the reviews. We pay very close attention to the reviews, not just one stars, but five stars, not just English language ones, all languages, because if a player has a problem, they might delete the app and just say, didn't work for me because of X, Y, Z. And you're more likely to catch
00:34:25
Speaker
minor issues that are causing players to delete the game through the reviews from players who aren't
00:34:33
Speaker
engaged enough yet to actually send in a support ticket. They have no real feelings towards the game yet. Maybe they've just downloaded it, encountered an error, and deleted it. So we respond to as many reviews as we can, asking people to write to us with more details or giving them support instructions through the review if that's what's needed there. And we also really analyze the reviews to see if there is an uptick in
00:35:01
Speaker
Certain problems or that's actually another way we collect feedback Players will sometimes leave it just in their reviews Yeah, we see that quite a bit often. I'm not sure if you're pulling rear views into help shift, but
00:35:14
Speaker
It's interesting when customers decide to do that because there is, I mean, there's some people that don't work review as well, but people leave some good information in there, right? And just being able to analyze it is kind of essential. And, you know, we've talked about Reddit, we've talked about Discord, we've talked about the iOS and Play Store, and as I am getting older, I'm finding that it's tougher for me to understand what are the more popular channels these days, but where do you see most of your community living these days and engaging on?
00:35:39
Speaker
Oh, good question. We're getting a lot from Discord and Reddit. I would say our most engaged players are there, but it really depends on the product. Adventure Capitalist, for example, is very appealing to people of all ages, from very young players to more senior players. And Facebook is quite popular with those age groups.
00:36:05
Speaker
For some of our products, we have a more active Facebook page, but Reddit and Discord, I would say, are the two biggest, and then I would add reviews in there as well because you get a very nice sampling of people who are not so engaged and very engaged. It's interesting that it makes sense now that I think about it. I used to work for a social networking company.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, the older demographics are still on Facebook. They're not necessarily going to always be on Reddit or Discord, but they might be. But yeah, if you're marketing a game for an older demographic or a more experienced demographic, Facebook is probably the place to do that. Whereas for everything else, I could see Discord being a younger demographic.
00:36:51
Speaker
Right, it's probably binding those two a little bit. Yeah, and we're experimenting with other channels as well. I know doing some experiments with Twitter, with TikTok and YouTube Shorts. And something that I'm specifically looking into is where are our international players?
00:37:11
Speaker
and how do we communicate with them effectively. I think one of the things that we really do well at Hippo is communicating with our players through social channels, so responding to tweets, responding to Facebook comments and Facebook messages and engaging with players in the Discord. But right now we are an English-speaking team and
00:37:38
Speaker
by nature that just happens to attract English speaking users, which makes sense. I play a game that is from a Korean studio.
00:37:50
Speaker
And I probably wouldn't follow them on Twitter just for Korean tweets. Now, actually, Twitter has a really good autotranslate function. But if they were posting Korean language TikToks, I don't understand that. I probably wouldn't follow it. I wouldn't comment because I don't speak Korean. So one thing that I'm looking at is where are our players who don't speak English? Where do we need to go? And then how do we also communicate with them?
Challenges of Translation and Localization
00:38:20
Speaker
Google Translate is... it's fine. It does the trick, but especially for languages like Korean.
00:38:31
Speaker
Mandarin Chinese, Japanese Thai, it causes some funky errors. So an example that I think is kind of funny is a tweet from a Japanese player who is saying, this is really good for a neglected game.
00:38:50
Speaker
And I thought, oh, that's not fair. They're thinking we abandon our game, maybe. We're still coming up with updates for it. I need to look farther into this. And it turns out that they were trying to say, this is a really good idle game. And idle was being translated into neglected.
00:39:17
Speaker
But that's something that we need to think about is, you know, what do we need to do to actually communicate with these players? Because what are we sending off to them in English? They're translating and going, Oh, hey, that support rep was kind of mean. Yeah, it's such a good point, because I'm not going to push any of my services. We often see companies think I'm just gonna throw my FAQs in Google Translate.
00:39:45
Speaker
and just copy and paste the FAQs into Google Translate. And we're like, that's not a good idea because me and you talking real quick right now, yeah, maybe Google Translate will be good enough. But it's something about the Japanese. We've seen that Japanese are the highest in app spenders when it comes to actually
00:40:04
Speaker
engaging with online games and you want to make sure that you're close to perfect when it comes, especially in Japanese, but all the, all the languages, right? Because again, like you, you rolled with it being a thing like the game, but what are you going to do? But like, that's not what they even meant. And you only know that because you looked at how many other times does this happen and no one even looks it up. So I think, yeah, it's a fun, fun thought of like, how do you do that when it's time? How do you know what channels, how do you know the appropriate way to communicate with them?
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, and you raise a really good point about just the importance of high quality localization. If I was playing a game that was translated into English from another language, and the translation was poor,
00:40:51
Speaker
I wouldn't want to be playing the game. And that goes not just for the translation. I think a lot of studios focus on really good game translations and then let everything else kind of slide. Support needs to be well translated too, as best as it can be. Your FAQs have to be translated properly. And so our social channels now is the next
00:41:20
Speaker
challenge for me or a challenge for me for the future. How are we going to, we are an English speaking team right now. How are we going to engage in the same way we engage in English and support in the same way without turning players off because the translations are horrendous. Yeah. It's going to be an interesting one. You got the WeChat's of the world, the VK's of the world, all the other social giants that live outside of the States or North America.
00:41:50
Speaker
So one of my last questions for you, Ashley McDivitt of Hyper Hippo, Global Engagement Specialist. What is the favorite part of your day? Favorite part of my day? I guess more than any favorite part of the day.
00:42:03
Speaker
I'm going to be controversial. I like a lot of my meetings. I know people are sick of meetings and I agree. There are too many. There are simply too many. However, I am an extrovert working from home. Right now I'm in my living room. I'm typically in my office, which is a glorified closet with no windows.
00:42:29
Speaker
I really like collaborating with people. I like hearing their feedback and passing along feedback and creating something together. And I'm not saying we need a calendar full of meetings, but I get a lot of value from having my current meeting schedule is glorious. I have, you know, usually an hour and a half to two hours of meetings per day.
00:42:57
Speaker
And that's perfect for me. I have a lot of time to get work done, but if I have a day with no meetings, I am noticeably more agitated at the end of the day. And I need to go out and actually see people.
00:43:12
Speaker
Well, we've always heard in videos that people like meetings. We thought it was fake, but it is promoting the meetings. No, I get it, right? You want us to be able to see people. There's that fine line between too many meetings. It's that whole, can you just do this with an email?
00:43:28
Speaker
Yes, and I have had too many meetings before. So when I was a player experience rep, my people leader went on maternity leave. So I took over for her role. And then her people leader went on paternity leave. And it was too short of a time where it really made sense to
00:43:48
Speaker
to hire for that role. So I took that on as well. And my calendar was stacked and there was simply too many meetings. I really did become a meeting hater in that time. You know, you have an eight hour a day and nine of those are full of meetings, some of which did not need to exist. I get where people are coming from when they hate them. But if you tone it down, just do the essentials. Then I think it can be quite nice.
00:44:18
Speaker
Fair. I have two last questions for you and I'll let you go, but they're in the form of one, well, it's all going to come out at once. What Ashlyn didn't share with everyone is that growing up, she loved Barbie Detective on Game Boy Color. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I mean, who doesn't? The Barbie games are fantastic. So the first question is, are you going to go see the Barbie movie this weekend? This is opening weekend. And the second question is, what game or technology are you most excited about in the near term future?
00:44:47
Speaker
I loved, it was Barbie's Secret Agent, I believe is what it was called, and that game transformed me. And I'm absolutely seeing the Barbie movie. Thank you for asking. I have my outfit picked out. I am painting my nails pink. I am painting my boyfriend's nails pink. I am painting our friend's nails pink. We are all going
00:45:13
Speaker
dressed up ready for I think it's going to be the movie of the decade. I'm convinced that I can go with Oppenheimer stuff afterwards as well. So you could quickly change and just go around to Oppenheimer.
00:45:27
Speaker
I thought about it. I really, really did. I hear a lot of people are doing Oppenheimer first and then Barbie to cheer up. I get that. That makes sense. And the reviews for Oppenheimer are great. I think it debuted with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is insane, but I'm not in the mood to be depressed. Sir, I get it. There's a lot of depressing things in the world. We don't need more.
Excitement for Coral Island and AI in Gaming
00:45:52
Speaker
We don't need more. As for technology or games I'm excited about, I will answer both. For game, I'm really excited about Coral Island, which is a Stardew Valley-esque game with incredible art. I believe it's an Indonesian company that's creating it, and so I love the cultural aspects that are coming through. It is released, but I believe it is the
00:46:20
Speaker
beta version, and I did just recently get a Steam Deck, so I'm considering getting it on Steam Deck or I might wait for its release on Switch.
00:46:34
Speaker
I am a handheld player generally. I do like some PC games, but I grew up with my Game Boy and my DS, so I prefer the handheld generally. As for technology, I am very excited about AI. I know a lot of people in my industry are terrified it's going to replace our jobs.
00:46:56
Speaker
And maybe I'm being a little too optimistic, but I'm really excited to see how it can work alongside our teams to make things easier. I'm really interested in how it could help us with the challenge of communicating with players
00:47:14
Speaker
on social media who don't speak English, how it can help us go into these different social media platforms and also just communicate where we already are. That example I gave earlier with the idol genre being translated to neglected,
00:47:31
Speaker
I know that there are some AI models, if I may plug Canton AI, that Keywords has, I know that would be a solution for something like that. Because the AI can recognize that this word in this context should be translated this way. We also have Adventure Communist released in
00:47:52
Speaker
Spanish from Spain, Spain, Spanish, European Spanish, European Spanish, and Latin American Spanish. And there are some words that would be translated differently. Most notably for adventure communists, the word potato is translated differently. And the game is potatoes are a very key aspect. So I'm interested in using AI to help us differentiate when
00:48:21
Speaker
when the word should be translated into European Spanish or Latin American Spanish. I also think from a localization and an NGM standpoint, it could help us reach players in languages that we can't currently afford to support. Translation, high quality translations and localizations are really
00:48:42
Speaker
expensive and time-consuming, and we just can't translate into every language that there is, even if we'd like to. But I'm interested, how can AI help us speed things up? Obviously with the help of real translators still, because their wisdom and their empathy is really unparalleled. I don't think AI is there quite yet. But working together with translators and AI, what languages can we expand into that right now
00:49:10
Speaker
just isn't feasible for us. Yeah, I think that's well said. I think I agree. I mean, we're like seven months into maybe seven months into chat GPT becoming really mainstream and already the spin offs and the new technologies that have spurred from it. I mean, it's early days this technology where it's pedal to the metal and it's exciting to see where things go. And I think being able to, and we talked about this a lot, but being able to learn how to use these tools
00:49:37
Speaker
They're not meant to necessarily replace people, but it's helped to enable you to get your work done more efficiently, more effectively, smarter. And yes, to your point, you'll be able to communicate with these people in Korea, in Japan, in Singapore, in Germany, without knowing that language. And you can feel a little more confident knowing, all right, this is going to come out the right way because this is how it's designed. This is how it's built. So I think it's cool stuff.
00:50:00
Speaker
Yeah, and maybe in the next three years, I will look back at this podcast with tears in my eyes because I have been completely replaced by the robots. But I genuinely think there is a future where AI and real humans are happily living alongside each other.
00:50:21
Speaker
singing lovely songs and dancing and getting work done. There are certain jobs I do not like doing. They are boring. Nobody likes doing them. They're very mundane.
00:50:32
Speaker
I'm interested in how AI can help with that and everyone on my team can focus on the more important, more exciting aspects of our job, specifically the areas that do still require the empathy that I don't think AI has and I don't see it having for a little while. Agreed. But you know what? You never know how quickly this is going to move these days.
00:50:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. That's true. We'll just have to see. I'm excited to see where it goes. And I think it can be really good. Again, if I lose my job to AI, I'll come to you crying. Well, Ashlyn, I am so happy you came. I really enjoyed this conversation. And I think it went really well. And I'd love for you just anything else, anything you want, plug, share, talk to. Stage is yours.
00:51:27
Speaker
Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for having me. If anyone is listening and they would like to try an idle game, I have to plug, of course, Hyper Hippo's games. My current favorite is our newest game, Vacation Tycoon, and I'm also a die-hard ad-com fan, adventure communist.
00:51:46
Speaker
But of course, if you want to try any of our games, please do. And I got to plug Helpshift as well. We use Helpshift. It made a huge difference in my job when we switched over. And I'm Helpshift's number one fan. So thank you for helping. I'm not even making her say that. But thank you for those kind words. And it's been great. I really enjoyed just hearing about you wanting to become a teacher, followed by working in fashion, followed by now being in gaming. I think this is going to be a
00:52:16
Speaker
kind of an inspiration to some people that are out there wondering how I can get from here to there. So I really appreciate hearing your story. And we will have all the information about Ashton on our player engage as well as Hyper Hippo. And we'll even we'll even find the Barbie game to link it up there. But I really enjoyed this. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Yeah, thanks for listening, everybody. Have a great rest of your day.