Community Chest

As games evolve from being products to being services, the management of the relationship between company and customer is becoming one of the core functions of any games firm - whether they like it or not. Companies have understood for some time that a strong community can be an excellent PR and marketing tool. Some of the more enlightened firms are now realising that in the age of games as a service, a community isn't nice-to-have; your community is your game, it's your revenue stream, it's your lifeblood.

That means that cultivating, nurturing and ultimately, policing that community is a central function for any firm operating a game service. At present, it's a function which is generally swept to the side. "Community manager" is a job title which has sprung up in the past five or six years at a host of companies, but few developers or publishers afford that role any importance beyond being, essentially, a low-level combination of PR and customer support.

That approach is both short-sighted and foolish. World of Warcraft is an extreme example, of course, but it's always been fascinating to note the combination of pride and discomfort in Blizzard's executives when you point out that their fantasy world has a much larger population than many decent-sized countries - over three times the size of Ireland, for example.

A population that size, interacting with one another, is an immense responsibility. Blizzard tackle it far better than most; they think about how their community works, where problems lie and how the company can change the structure of its community tools and services to improve things. Many other companies in the industry seem to believe that a few off-the-shelf forums and some low-paid staff members answering questions is sufficient. It is, quite patently, not.

As we evolve our understanding of games as service, one thing which will be crucial for progress is bringing community management closer to the core of game development and operation. A "community manager" needs to be much more than a PR flack for fansites and a forum moderator - while that role is still required, a much higher level role is also necessary, someone who works with the design team to flesh out the objectives of the community, how it integrates with the game, how it is managed and policed, and so on. The era of community as an afterthought must come to an end - any game which is to be operated as a service needs to have community planning right from the outset, integrated into its earliest design documents.