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Online Game Community Manager?

There’s a belief that I have had for a while that I recently mentioned when talking about using WoW to learn about community building and teamwork.

I honestly believe that games have the potential to be so much more than just about fun. A young fox cub chasing a butterfly through a field is more than just having fun. It is learning how to hunt. So too do games have the opportunity to teach us more about ourselves, which we can then take back into the real world.

With this thought in mind and while visiting Raph Koster’s website today, I was reminded of a profession that might just possibly be the next stepping stone that I’m looking for. Raph mentioned that his game company is looking to hire more people and one of those people is a senior community manager. Now while I don’t think I can apply for their position, primarily because it looks like you need to work in San Diego (although I’m still not 100% sure), it still seems like I’m seeing a lot of connections between what I’ve done in the past and the requirements for a community manager. For example, let me go over some of the points in the job posting for Areae’s Senior Community Manager to show you what I mean.

The Senior Online Community Manager will have proven experience in building, growing and nurturing a strong, positive community.

Even though this wasn’t my “official” job description while developing and maintaining sites for Sierra and other publishers, this was always my internal goal. I was basically first and foremost a strong user advocate. I believed that for a community to truly exist, you needed two way communication. Therefore, it’s not just about you as a company communicating your message to your customers but you should be actively gathering the input of your customers as well. Yes via emails but more importantly by just observing and listening to the community on an active basis (i.e. reading forums, in game chatter, etc).

  • Develop information roll-out plans to foster community growth through the regular release of product features.

I believe this is critical before a game is even released. You should have a plan to build up prior to release and a plan after release as well. All of it is critical to the overall game experience (which happens inside and outside the game). Did this happen with the community sites I built? Not often. Why? Because we often didn’t get the final say, even though the team I worked with knew more about their customers than they did (and one exec even mentioned this once to us).

  • Build positive relationships with key community leaders and product advocates.

This is actually one of the beliefs of my In Giving You Make Yourself Stronger approach which is why I’ve always disliked the “exclusive” route that game magazines take with game publishers. You should be giving and supporting to the whole community around you as much as possible, not just one exclusive group. The more you give and draw attention to those who truly love your games and products, the more they will give and draw attention to you in return.

  • Help provide development direction by being the voice of the player community.

Indeed! And this is what I meant above about a two way communication for a community relationship to work. The funny thing that I’ve noticed in these situations is often times those who the complain the most in the communities around you are often the ones who truly love your product the most. Of course, while it’s important to listen to the feedback of your customers, it also important to ensure the original vision of the game, therefore you can’t listen to everyone if they start suggesting things that will dilute the primary focus of the game (i.e. “Ya we should have dragons and rocket launchers!”).

  • 3+ years of experience managing large online communities
  • Previous experience launching and building new online communities

Yes to both of these. I worked for a firm in town for 3 years and we built and maintained community sites around various large gaming publishers (with Sierra/Vivendi being the largest). These community sites were often a combination of product sites (with frequent content updates) and moderated forums.

Now funnily enough, I’ve actually been posting my resume online at Craigslist over the past few months looking specifically for an online community “developer” position (you can see my cover letter shown below) but maybe what I should be looking for is an online community manager position, since it would allow me to focus on more of the things I love (i.e. communities, culture, interacting, connecting, etc) rather than the backend coding stuff.

Experienced Online Community Developer Seeking Startup To Help

What I’ve Done

I’m a professional web developer with over 10 years of experience developing online websites and communities. Most notably I previously worked as the Senior Web Developer for a small web firm in Vancouver that assisted in the development of online communities for some of the largest computer gaming publishers in the world such as Sierra/Vivendi, Activision, and Konami on some of their biggest brands, such as Half Life, Star Trek, and ESPN. I was also a focal point within this small company, assisting and providing advice in a wide variety of operational areas and roles, be it with web development, community development, standards/process development, information architecture, usability, branding, proposal writing, computer support, business advice, and more.

What I’m Looking For

I’m looking for a full-time position within a Vancouver startup company, or a small established company with a startup culture, with which I can pass on my knowledge and experience on a company wide level. Of particular note, I’m looking for a company that has a very open, sharing, and caring culture within it whereby all team members can actively participate and contribute towards the development of the company. I am not, however, interested in startups which are looking to ‘flip’ or ‘sellout’ quickly but instead are committed to building a product or service with which a long term sustainable community can be built around.

What I Can Offer

If you’re a startup looking for an individual who can assist your company in a diverse variety of roles, including business advice, than I believe I’m that person. If you’re a company looking for an expert / specialist / rocket scientist with unbelievable skills in one specific area then I’m most definitely not that person. If you’ve read 37 Signals book called Getting Real, I’m what they would define as a “quick learning generalist”. Therefore I rapidly learn skills whenever I need them, usually to the point that I have an above average working knowledge when utilizing them. It is this ability which allowed me to be so effective as a team lead, since it allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the various professional roles that I was leading (i.e. graphic designers, web developers, web programmers, etc) similar to how an orchestra conductor must have fairly good understanding of the various instrumentalists he is conducting.

Therefore, in closing, if you’re looking for someone who is part web developer, part company evangelist, part community manager, and part startup business advisor, I believe I can most definitely help you.

Nollind Whachell
nollind@whachell.com

PS. If you’d like to get a better feel for me and learn more about my community and cultural interests, feel free to visit my web site at the address below.

http://nollind.whachell.com/

Hmm, and a final note to self, maybe I should be categorizing a lot of my previous posts that relate to community and culture development. That way when people come to my site, they can easily see a train of thought focused around a specific subject (i.e. gaming, community, culture, etc).

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General

What Do You Want To Do?

Dave seemed to be a little down this weekend and I understand how he feels. The questions he asks himself are often the same questions I ask myself.

In thinking about what he had to say though, I reflected back on a few things. I thought about two recent posts. One being Touching The World and another entitled Inspired where I said the following.

I don’t want to be informed or entertained. I want to be inspired.

And I also glanced at my About page, particularly the following quote.

I’m passionate about changing the world and making it a better place through the propagation of positive cultural values within the communities and/or organizations we are immersed within, be they online or off.

When I put this all together, I realized what I wanted to do (and it’s small enough to be a mantra of sorts).

I want to touch the world and inspire people.

Now as for the exact details of this work, I’ll still have to figure out that next step. However as Dave said in his post and something I’ve spoken about before, I believe this has a lot to do with stirring meaningful emotions within people and making them feel connected to something larger than themselves, yet something that they themselves are an integral part of.

One thing I do know for sure though is that the direction I’m wanting to go in seems to tie in much more closely with a creative artist, poet, writer, or musician than a technical developer or consultant. It’s funny because I used to draw, write stories, compose music, and write lyrics when I was younger. Yet I haven’t done any of these things in many many years.

Is this my inner self trying to pull me back on a path that I deviated from long ago? I think it might be.

PS. I want my work to not only inspire others but in turn to inspire me as well. Therefore if I can find some way to cumulatively gather this new creative work around me (online and offline), it should hopefully inspire and motivate me daily (as well as others around me).

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Touching The World

I’ve actually seen this video before but I was just recently reminded of it by a friend, thus I’ve decided to share it this time. Enjoy (and crank the volume up as the music with it is great)!

Update: Also check out the Free Hugs Campaign website! 

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Earth Day

My little yearly tribute to Earth Day using photos from the amazing photographer Phitar.

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Living Deliberately

Sailing off into the sunset, tiarescott, Flickr

I was doing some research on how to define a lifestyle when something reminded me of a book I had read a while ago entitled The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs. In scanning the introduction, I saw the following quote which jumped out at me.

“Simple living is about living deliberately. That’s all. You choose your existence rather than sailing through life on automatic pilot.”

This touch a chord in me because just yesterday I had said the following about the importance of reflection in storytelling.

“Without these moments of reflection, it would be like a captain of a ship that never checks his position or heading during the voyage.”

I’m not sure if it’s just a coincidence that both quotes relate to sailing but what resonated within me was that you should be deliberately choosing your directions and destinations in life instead of just drifting with the wind or current. More importantly, it’s necessary that you constantly check where you are (i.e. time to reflect) so that you can be sure you are going in the deliberate direction that you want to be.

Hmm, coincidence again? I just looked at the word “deliberately” and notice the word “liberate” within it.

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Character Development in MMO Games

Click For Full Size
Gitanos the Gypsy, Outside Ironforge, The World of Warcraft

Speaking of storytelling, character development is one of the things that I really love doing (probably originating from my role playing game days as a kid) and can never seem to get enough of it. Seriously, I’ve even considered creating a site just focused on MMO character development for the World of Warcraft (and potentially for EVE Online as well) to show players how they can create a really well rounded character to personify within the game. This can involve everything from how they speak, their mannerisms, their flaws, to even how they dress.

It’s not as easy as it sounds though because games like the World of Warcraft can make this quite difficult to achieve since your wardrobe is often limited by your level (and I’m not talking armor types here). Portraying a young noble hero is one thing but trying to look like an evil villain can be downright depressing until you reach some of the higher character levels in the game. I’m totally against this limited approach to the game and I wish Blizzard would add something to the game to allow for at least equipment colorization (similar to how you could dye your character’s clothing and armor in Neverwinter Nights).

I mean no wonder people in the game have very little interest in role playing a diverse community with unique characters (even on RP servers) because it’s extremely difficult to visually represent the personality of your character. Even if you do finally achieve a level where you can get the right equipment, it’s a lost cause anyways. Why? Because as soon as you obtain a few more levels, you’ll need to replace your armor and equipment to be able to handle the higher level creatures and dungeons. For example, here’s a couple of pictures below of my character, Malavar, around 40th level, when I felt his outfit fully captured his villainous nature. Of course, levels later he had to give it up if he wanted to continue forward with higher levels.

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Malavar, Inside Orgrimmar, The World of Warcraft

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Malavar, Crossing Deadwind Pass, The World of Warcraft

The only way around this problem that I can see at the moment is to set out to create a social character from the very start. For example, I’ve got one character I’m fooling around with now that basically has no ambitions to get above 15th level (since it’s fairly easy to obtain this level quite quickly). Instead the goal of the character is to be like an NPC near the town of Goldshire in Elwynn Forest who acts like a sage or guide. Boring you say? Well not really, as you’re always interacting with an ever changing flow of people who are new to the area and people seem to enjoy seeing a regular face all the time (i.e. “Norm!” from Cheers). In effect, the unique experiences you have with these people becomes its own reward.

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Soulless Corporations

Here’s a quote from Ars Technica’s article on Yahoo’s involvement in the violation of human rights.

“Yahoo claims that it is simply following local law and that it has no choice but to comply with legal requests from the Chinese government if it wants to keep doing business in that country.”

Nothing like putting your profit and business agenda over human rights. It somewhat sad considering that larger companies like these are the ones who have the ability to truly help change the world. Unfortunately it seems the bigger a company gets, the more likely the chance to lose its soul in the blinding pursuit of the almighty dollar.

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Creative Storytelling

Dave just mentioned he enjoyed watching some videos of Ira Glass talking about storytelling, so I decided to take a look at them myself. Dave’s right. The advice passed along in these videos is priceless and I’d recommend them to any creative individual, no matter what they do. I’ve included them below for your viewing pleasure, as I wanted to add my own comments afterwards relating to each video.

First Video: On The Basics

It’s interesting that he talks about two basic building blocks to a story. An anecdote and a moment of reflection. I find this approach has an almost mythical presence to it in that we’re talking about a cyclic motion here (i.e. the wheel of life, the seasons, the constellations). More importantly this cyclic pattern has a ying and yang balance to it like life itself (i.e. day/night, asleep/awake, etc).

Why I find this interesting is that it relates to me particularly in that I dislike the continuous momentum that everyone tells you must have in a blog. I disagree with this approach vehemently because it feels like I’m a dancer who has to keep dancing to stay alive. Instead I believe in an approach where downtime is critically important because, as Ira notes, it allows for these moments of reflection which give us a deeper understanding of the events/actions unfolding within our lives. Without these moments of reflection, it would be like a captain of a ship that never checks his position or heading during the voyage.

Second Video: On Finding Great Stories

Again I’m seeing a pattern here when he mentions that most of the work in producing a “decent story” doesn’t relate to the production of it but actually in finding the right story. This is exactly the same with web development. Most of the time the work you put in the discovery and planning stages should equal (or even be more) than the time it takes to produce the website. This also relates directly to creativity as well. Often times, you may spend hours researching or experimenting with something until everything clicks (again usually when you step away from it) and that creative energy is released creating something wonderful. Without that downtime or exploration though, the discovery or creation doesn’t reveal itself.

I also find his description of knowing when to kill a story very important in relationship to blogging. You hear people saying that you need to continually have content, even daily, to get the attention and interest of people. I disagree. To me, having meaningful content (my idea of a decent story) is what it’s all about. There needs to be an emotional connection in some way (which Ira describes as the “feeling you had about”). If it’s not there then its just feels empty somehow and you’re writing just ends up being “filler” with no real substance to it. I think it’s one reason why I like continually breaking things apart, so I can re-examine them, and then rebuild them from scratch in a different way to make something better.

When he stresses the importance of continually “propping up” your work, this to me is exactly what design is really about. It’s about constantly working at something daily to make it better than the day before (like life itself). Therefore these moments of reflection give us a deeper understanding of our lives or the design we’re working on, so that we can make changes constantly to evolve our life or our designs.

Luck is having the persistence to continually persevere through failure to finally achieve success. Therefore if you’re not failing often, then something’s wrong. It is failure that makes us question and reflect which in turn allows us to discover and achieve success. It’s funny though because even though various people have told me they enjoy what I’ve written on my site, I still find a lot of it mediocre. Yet this is what I was getting at before about having different types of writing areas. You need areas where you can just throw ideas into a sandbox and see what happens to them. These areas are critical because they allow you to keep your “flow”, otherwise you’d continually be worrying and spending hours trying to perfect everything before releasing it. You need areas to experiment, to let go, and to get dirty. When you do, that’s when you’ll find the raw gem hidden in the dirt that you can then start polishing.

Third Video: On Good Taste

Hahaha! So true about your good taste exceeding your craft (and I’ll raise my hand as well like Dave because I feel that way too). Again, as I mentioned above, he recommends the best way to get out of this phase is to do a lot of work which will allow you to continually experiment and hone your craft (with a strong emphasis on rejecting things that you feel aren’t up to par because it’s about quality not quantity when presenting it to others). Thus don’t expect things to change and improve overnight. Small changes daily make a big effect over time.

Fourth Video – On Two Common Pitfalls

Be yourself. So true and it’s the one golden rule I always mention to people who are interested in blogging. If you don’t feel like you’re talking naturally (say like how you would with
a friend) then others will probably pick up on it as well.

Now when he mentions people with “horrible personalities” who are only interested in talking about themselves, this really hit a chord with me because I’ve been thinking about this for a while due to a pattern I’ve been noticing in my own life. Basically when I’m focused inwards on myself, I don’t like what I create and things feel unnatural to me. However when I’m focused outwards on others and trying to help them with their problems, I feel really good and things seem to flow. Thus I’m at my best when thinking of others rather than thinking of myself.

And finally his mention of people interacting and providing different viewpoints to help create a good story is so true. Interaction or conflict between two people is what makes us stop and reflect on things because when life’s going smoothly, we rarely question things because everything we do seems perfect. That’s probably why the most enjoyable stories that I’ve read are the ones which involve a great conflict or struggle (either externally in the world or internally within the mind/soul) that usually lead to the discovery of a new perspective or outlook on life…

…as he says as he looks in the mirror and sees the story unfold another step.

Related: Storyboard Your Life

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General

The Hurting

Imagine, MaO, Flickr

Longfellow Deeds: “What puzzles me is why people seem to get so much pleasure out of hurting each other. Why don’t they try liking each other once in a while?”

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Remember To Live

Zombie Photo Shoot, Scurzuzu, Flickr

Longfellow Deeds: “People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live.”