Charm Your Communities

[Music] hi everyone welcome to my talk about charming your communities i'm super jazzed to be here presenting to you online today um charming your communities is something that i've been doing throughout my career so being able to share this with you right now is really cool to me so let's get started um as a brief introduction my name is victoria tran i'm the community director at inner sloth we make a game called among us and also the henry stickman collection uh previously i was the communications director at kickfox games and they make games like boyfriend dungeon publishing dwarf fortress paparazzi mondo museum a ton of things and i think one of the things that i want to point out is that in all these games charming your communities is something that i try to do in any single thing i touch but yeah so you can find me on twitter at the vtran i'm always there i am too online as we all are but you know we move on

so can you pet the dog basically created an entire cultural revolution in games in 2019 um it's a twitter account made to answer one simple question in this video game can you pet the dog unless it's casual friday then it's about petting various other creatures but you know it's a simple account all about the charm and joy about finding a petable creature in a game so what is it about this like tiny moment that has garnered over 480 000 followers and inspired various video games to include dog pads in their system it's that the pat is a joyful yet often overlooked or missed point in the game experience and it's charming as heck so my work often involves throwing around a lot of words that i realize sound like huge lofty ideals right so kindness compassion connection positivity belonging etc i get it i get that these words seem amorphous and frivolous like how are you actually supposed to do that and is it even practical

well arguably yes i don't know what i'm doing but the work that goes behind creating kinder better communities aren't grand gestures of glamorously paraded moments or anything they're really small daily activities and experiences that trigger larger change over time so unlike things like straight follower numbers or more you know more metric based things these are closer more personal moments and remember like what's easy to measure doesn't always mean it's actually super important so let's talk about delightful moments in games and online communities so these aren't the huge integral main stage moments i'm talking about not the subversion of the stanley parable or the satisfying gunplay mechanics of destiny 2. uh these are small moments kind of similar to east egg but not quite that can charm your communities in and outside of the games themselves so really quick agenda we go into the what the why the how of charming your community so you you know get a better sense of it and then a little bit of a

conclusion so what so what does charming a community even mean in this case so if you've worked in marketing you've probably seen the marketing funnel or something very similar to this uh and it's basically a funnel that shows how people uh take a desired action so whether that's buying your game wish listing on steam signing up to your newsletter that sort of thing it all goes from this and it's very audience based basically it's very top-down approach right you you spread your net as far and wide as possible and then you kind of narrow it down charming communities is about community first building and that kind of means flipping that funnel on its head or on its bottom it means flipping them it means flipping the funnel so it's starting small and focusing on creating a truly integrative environment and place that cares about each other which in turn helps your studio scale and sustain itself so what we want is to create groups of people who keep coming together over what they care about with member to member

interactions so this is versus just building an audience so audiences like while these individuals may all share an interest in your content they don't actually have a relationship with each other there's no mutual concern and there's no real coming together and that's that's kind of different from when we charm communities and when we go community first approaches so charming communities is purposefully creating a warm vibrant experience that people will associate with your studio the specific feelings can vary but i'm usually referring to qualities like playfulness delight positivity earnestness attention to detail and charming your communities involves staying aware of community sentiment and member experiences putting time and energy into finding special moments worth a little bit of extra investment all right all right but we've heard we've heard that why why does this even matter and for one creating intentional authentic and warm community spaces is always something that we should aspire to as community developers and as people

who have the privilege of creating the kind of tone and environment that we have that people gather in because that's a very that's a very cool thing that we get to do the sense of connection that stems from feeling included and welcome creates a true sense of togetherness which is something that community doves all work really hard for and charming communities isn't just about that though if you're like not into all the like you know touchy-feely positive things it really helps integrate individuals into the community when people first hear about your game and you it doesn't mean they're part of your community yet or that they even want to participate in it it just means that they know who you are they may share an interest in your game but they have no relationship with each other no connection and again that's not what a community is that's just an audience one of the core responsibilities of community developers is to figure out how to welcome strangers into their spaces and i think of this as the community integration journey so we can split up the community journey

into four stages there's new members regular members loyal supporters and advocates so new members these are the people that have just discovered your game maybe just plopped into your discord or are curiously scrolling through your steam page or website after hearing about it uh they can kind of be characterized by it's like it's really difficult to actually make them take an action so buying your game joining your community getting invested in the studio and they can be completely turned off by your studio the developers or your games if they have a first bad experience and when you know once they're gone gone forever next you have the regular members so these are people who stick to who choose to stick around for a bit after playing your game so if your game is still in development maybe they hang around your community spaces passively or throw your follow to casually be kept up to date so they come more than once but there's no reason to really choose your game over another or get it if another similar game comes out or if it's not on sale or something and it's not particularly attached to your community space over another place

next you have your loyal supporters and they're invested in your community and the game's development which is great and these community members have invested a significant amount of time into your game and are committed to being a part of the game's journey even if there's other competition out there they're still likely to come back to your game or still have a certain place in your heart for their for in their heart for your work so their main characteristics is that they'll usually choose your game or community space over another um but they can be whisked away if another studio comes around with a better game and they get dragged into the hype and you know the point here is that when you have a community and you create a community around your studio is that they'll be around for more than one game and you know they'll want to support you as much comes out and all that kind of thing and then next next you have the advocates these are members who are active participants contributors and helpers and they are everything in communities you know they're the future mods they're they're they're just they're gold they help us create the communities that

we strive for help other members become healthier wiser and more autonomous um their main characteristics really consist of word of mouth they tell their friends to join they tell their friends about your game and that they should play it um they're more credible to any friends and contacts when it comes to game recommendations vouching for decisions or you know helping you out within the community they provide a lot of feedback and empower you to do better and they really importantly they welcome people into the community and actively want to help them having people who can actively you know integrate peop other community members you know further along the journey amazing fantastic so as a community director developer manager we need to ask ourselves how do we move community members along in this process so there are a number of ways to do this right the game experience itself the community surrounding it merchandising marketing etc but one of the most meaningful ways to garner goodwill and also pretty cheap sometimes towards your studio is by charming them with positive

experiences which all explain how to do further down more importantly it'll make your community a healthier and more pleasant place to be in a community where members feel listened to heard and like they truly interact with the developers and each other's really helps create a deeper sense of trust and understanding so game development is wrought with issues for sure but a community that supports each other through it is everything and a great motivator creating charming communities are charming moments not only deepens bonds but can be a way we community managers and developers reflect back to our players that we appreciate them and want to put some extra effort in to show that all right we've gone we've gone through all that and now we finally get into the how which is how do we charm communities so many people falsely assume that more time spent in your community equates to a better relationship but time is really vague and shaky you know how much is enough time does more time automatically equal better quality relationships basically time isn't a

great indicator of how much you actually have positive feelings towards someone so as an example think of a relative that you may dislike but you've known all your life versus someone that you just met that you felt instantly connected to many relationships don't grow predictably so the best way to so we need to think about the best way to encourage positive community connections and that's by creating meaningful moments i don't know why i'm doing these hand actions and the best part is we can design for these moments right we don't have to just hope that these moments happen by chance and honestly we shouldn't wait for it but community managers and developers in particular are well suited for this because we're the ones that are closest to community their needs their wants and inside jokes and we can help make those few seconds or minutes that elevate and experience and connect the players being part of an exceptional moment makes being a part of the community meaningful and that makes a truly strong

community so side note here charming your communities must still be backed up by actually fulfilling at least their core needs so players can forgive small problems small bugs but no amount of charming moments can necessarily save a game that you know completely disappoints breaks entirely has shady studio practices disappointing customer servers that kind of thing good relationships are always built on trust and respect all right so now how do we actually create moments that are joyful and transformational so in the book the power of moments by chip heath and dan heath they outlined the three main ways moments you know kind of stand out to us and that's peaks pits and transitions um for now i'll focus on how we create peaks which are the delightful positive emotions that are associated with a moment and as far as chime in your communities go this is probably the moment that you'll be consistently aiming for so generally peak moments are created when you make one or more of these

experiences in an interaction according to the book so there's elevation which are surprising events and extraordinary experiences there's insight which is kind of shaping the way someone sees the world connection creating meaning or deepening ties with others and finally pride which are significant milestones or being recognized by others that you know you respect um so when building a community you don't want just a neutral community experience with no complaints we want to elevate our communities to feel engaged and motivated to participate that's when your players start to feel like a true community and begin to encourage support and connect with each other so i'm going to die dive into ways i've created moments uh but keep in mind that everyone's personality game genre studio vibe values humor and you know community are just completely different and contextual uh what works for me might not work for you and vice versa it's all about finding your own voice and also remember that these examples may include one or more of the experiences listed here within them you

know it's not just mutually exclusive all right so elevation is all about surprising events creating extraordinary experiences and or breaking out of like a prescribed expectation of how things should be um i like really silly chaotic kind of inconsequential jokes in my work so moments of elevation are one of my favorite things to do so when i'm trying to elevate i think what are people expecting me to do how are things usually done and how do i break past that routine and i guess less professionally you could consider this what is something super like dumb that would bring me the most enjoyment right now so some examples of this breaking routines um this is when i was sending out a newsletter uh when i was working on boyfriend dungeon and there is basically a cat as one of the playable characters in the game and in the newsletter i normally send these newsletters out in the voice of the characters and when it became the cat's time to send it i was like why don't i just send an email marketing

newsletter full of meowing and not actual words and there's no real marketing put into it um and that's that that was like the marketing message which was meowing and it really worked it plopped a ton of meows into the text and a lot of people expected a typical marketing newsletter and instead i just filled their inboxes with meows and if you can't read the text on here it says hey kid fox just wanted to say i love this mail i've been enjoying these mails every time they came in but this just subverted my expectations amazingly keep up the amazing work that was really nice uh another way i like to elevate moments is community spotlights so spotlighting community members as part of the game or outward-facing communications is a ton of fun even more so if you spice it up in like normally overlooked areas of your communications i think of it as like a fun award reward for paying attention to something that people often scroll past so as an example these are the among us steam reviews that i took um just from people talking about it like it's great 10 out of 10 among us is

a game there's also fun details i love adding small little corkstone to anything i do the reason this works so well is it shows off a little bit of personality right highly specific details bring a little bit of spice to the table whether that's yours specifically or the entire studios so in boyfriend dungeon for example the healing item is bubble tea because we just we all love bubble tea and if you scroll through the paparazzi store page i added an entire section at the bottom just for dogs very exciting um there's also a secret role in the among us discord that opens up a pretzel stand channel born from an inside joke between the moderators you can't do anything in it it just has a picture of a pretzel it's there it's just there um also shout out to xbox for the way they handled the leak of their xbox series x uh they sort of just owned their own leak which was extremely amusing and when we go into insight like world shaping moments of insight are harder to create as these are deeply personal um

these may also work with certain games too depending on the subject matter um for instance i'm not entirely sure what kind of self-actualizations people are having when they play among us um unless we count you know some people realizing they're really good at murder and betrayal um but i do have another example from a past experience with boyfriend dungeon when we were running a booth at a convention and i got this email a few days later um and i got permission to share it um but it's basically uh someone who is really happy that we use their correct pronouns during the convention and that was really that was really sweet to to see it's an email that i i love very much hold deep in my heart um purely thinking of charming communities and creating special moments as a marketing ploy is a huge disservice to the underlying principle of what i'm trying to convey by the way um that caring about others and creating true connections has meaning to it if we can create kinder spaces in the in the places in the spaces we create and work

in people can form real bonds they couldn't otherwise and i really hope those connections help them face the outside world too so when we talk about experiences of connection i think of them as having direct ties or routes to the community so inside jokes right so lucifer within us another game i worked on has a collectible achievement named devil's herb which is a running gag in the kit fox games discord over the fact that i really hate cilantro uh and other people loved it so it became this whole like battle between the discord and the community it's really fun because the community knows they had a tiny hand in the part of the game which was the devil's weed achievement um the good thing about the cilantro trope 2 was it delighted others who haven't participated in the community and it really pulls in an element of unexpected levity i've also talked about the among us twitter account um in previous things i've done uh but this is all about connection and responding frequently i try to respond as much as possible to um any like you know random tweets and this

is one of the quickest ways i've created charming moments and i do it because i know how strong those moments of recognition have been for me um way back before i got my starting games i tweeted at juicybeast that i loved their game and they liked my tweet but somehow even knowing they saw my tweet made me really happy and i still remember it now years later um and these moments of insight can also form when we ground parts of our work in reality and common moments that many of us have experienced such as in hitman 3 and having you know talking about relationship troubles creating moments of pride is about recognizing the work and effort people have invested into you and the community so the simplest way i do this is to again like you know comment on as many pieces of fan art or usually generate content that i see um whether that's on twitter tik tok that sort of thing it can be simple as a kids drawing or 3d short animation supporting and lifting up the community is a great way to charm them and sometimes it doesn't even need to be directly related to fan art right so um i interacted with twitter users

regardless a follower account and a particular funny reply from one usually got me roping an xbox into the jokes and it really spawned a really amusing thread for the whole community to take part in and the best part was seeing the posters reaction to it all think about moments in your own life outside of games feeling like you matter or seen is charming in practically any context and it's a big idea of you know charming communities if that can brighten someone's day i'm happy to do it and to be perfectly clear not all peak moments have to be funny in order to be charming or meaningful remember it's all about finding your own voice and one that fits your community in game for example co-op mode has a wonderfully sweet tone in their communications which fits their playful cinematic games such as goodbye volcano high and darkest dungeon leverages their thematic dark undertones in their communications to match the game perfectly and truly respecting caring and being a part of your community will better set you up to be able to connect with them all right i talked a lot um and now we're now

we're in the conclusion i forgot sorry i just i just noticed that i forgot to change that slide subtext but we move on so charming your communities isn't about better marketing um thinking of it that way completely eradicates the core idea of why we as community builders want to make moments matter to connect delight and foster a true sense of meaning in being together and one reason it is so hard to build a peak or to make moments or to charm communities is that it's actually really no one's job to do it and it's a hassle and it's never urgent but putting in that time really does matter and pays off eliminate the values and you'll get the cold kind of silence brand moments that we all hate so much and community-led growth is all about investing time cultivating and caring for the members that join early on and charming them into loving what their community stands for and spreading that to others this rings true for communities of all sizes as far as i know as far as i've worked on and

there's no point no sustainability and no joy in having a community you don't particularly enjoy interacting with or that you feel don't care about you by creating moments we as developers can build stronger ties a mature community and grow together basically i really love communities i love these spaces because i see them as true places to find genuine love and understanding and connection sorry i've said that word so many times with others there is a space where compassion and ethics can fuse with technology and i hope we can continue to give more consideration to it and i think a good way to start is to think of how we can make delightful little memories for each other thank you so much for listening to my talk i hope you enjoyed it i will probably be in chat to answer any questions and yeah i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day week month year etc bye