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"A day in the life" launch recap β¨ Community Dev Newsletter #21
Published 6 months agoΒ β’Β 6 min read
Community Dev Newsletter
VICTORIA TRAN
HELLO!!!?!?!?!?!
October was BUSY for me! We launched a new Among Us map which went super well... Suspiciously well. Makes me think I've missed something haha.
Oh the joy of being Young Man Celebrating Victory Isolated
Anywho, one of the most common questions I get is "what does a typical day look like for you?" And while a launch day is far from typical, I did my best to track what my schedule looked like as I was going through it.
Keep in mind this is *one* day, and one where launch has gone well (AKA no game breaking bugs, server issues, and overall good vibes.) This doesn't include the weeks/months of prep work that went into making launch day go smoothly! Big shout out to my team and Innersloth. We did it!!! WOOO!!!!
8:00am - Start! I typically start my day the same way. Open up social, quick Twitter scroll, check for Discord pings on the public server. Checked that the scheduled posts on our social media management tool were looking good, as well as the dev log on the website. Even if they're scheduled, I do a check during the day just in case 1) I decide that small wording tweaks would be beneficial, 2) there are grammatical errors I missed in my other checks and 3) there was big news overnight in the real world that would reflect poorly on our announcement.
8:30am - Checking emails. I would talk about them here but all of them are private. Often they involve third party partners, asks for approval/feedback, etc. For this day in particular, there were some last minute requests for assets that I quickly edited together.
9:30am - Chatting with fans in the YouTube livechat for our trailer. (It was on Premiere and we had a lot of folks coming in waiting.) Making sure my community team is good to go too!
9:50am - Nervous triple checking everything is ready to go - dev log on the website goes live first as everything will link to that.
9:59am - OMG ONE MORE MINUTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
10:00am - Go go go!!!! Pushing all the buttons and checking all scheduled posts have gone live. Reading and responding to initial comments and hype on social, particularly checking to make sure there are no massive waves of complaints that would indicate the game or the servers are broken or not working due to the update. I do have help with this! I split the tracking and responding on social media platforms with Dors, our community manager, while Mike, our player support lead, handles any incoming support emails, tickets, and bug reports on Discord. (Shout out to our Discord mods too!!!)
10:30am - Wow!! So far so good!! Nothing game breaking so far and the numbers are doing well.
11am - Weekly meeting with my community team. Celebrating launch, making sure there are no questions, everyone is feeling good, etc.
11:45am - Big smattering of various jobs! More social responding, helped with a moderation decision on Discord, ensuring nice comments about the map are being gathered in real time for the team (we do a more formal sentiment report after, but during the time of I find it's nice to have more informal live reactions/celebrations). Helped clarify some bugs people were facing/issues, checking on some items that partners said they would do for promotion and ensuring it happens.
1:22pm - OOPS EATING TIME. Forgot to update this in real time but got distracted doing some last minute updates to the Steam page that I thought was already done but didn't save, oops. Am doing the bad thing and eating and working at the same time (take a proper lunchbreak people!!) but having fun chatting with community.
1:45pm - Oops needed to update the dev log - realized there were some clarifications that needed to be made based off of reading initial community discussion. Always learning!
2pm - Had my 1:1 with one of the cofounders.
2:30pm - Playing some public lobbies and taking notes. But overall so much excitement!!!
3:00pm - Got distracted by social and answering some questions/responses. Obsessed with checking the streamer numbers on YouTube and Twitch, and popping in randomly to some to lurk and see their reactions to the map.
4:23pm - Oh no got really distracted. Handled some press emails/requests, still watching streamers on the side, answering questions from our Discord moderators. Plying some more lobbies. Checked backend player numbers hehe.
4:42pm - AHHH it's past the end of my workday already, didn't realize it. Gotta set a good example and leave.
5:04pm - Oops got distracted with fun philosophical money and business dev discussions with some members of the team. Hopping off now!
And that was the day! Not sure if it's helpful for anything per se, but maybe nice context for the curious. :) If launch does not go as smoothly, I tend to stay later trying to manage any fires that pop up and answer more community questions.
Community Activity π
Every month we do a new community together. Here's the new one!
The question:
Do you think community managers need to have a personal brand or online presence to be successful? Why or why not?
Feel free to email me back with your answer - I always respond to them! My answer will be in the next newsletter. If you have future questions you'd like to ask the community, let me know!
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Previous Community Activity π«
Here was the question from last month.
Question refresher:
Was there a game's community that surprised you? (Positive or negative.) Why?
This was answered in my last newsletter, but the League of Legends community!
Don't get me wrong - the game has its own extremely prevelant and massive issues when it comes to toxicity, but similar to how we can lose a lot of insight in binaries, there were PLENTY of open and lovely people too! Especially when I dug further into the community resources (particularly ones that are NOT monetized and trying to sell a League of Legends course, lol), people were helpful and newbie friendly.
Also the biggest shout out to everyone that offered to help me with questions I had about LoL after the newsletter went out! π So nice!!!
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Community Chatter π¬
Here are the interesting and helpful things I've seen this month.
General News
βTwitch now allows creators to block people from watching their stream
βUncapped Games - Senior Community Manager (Los Angeles, USA)
Anddddd another month, another huge round of layoffs in the games industry. Heart goes out to everyone who has been affected. I hope you find something soon, but also that you can take time to process such an overwhelming situation. If you need some resources, TakeThis released an article about Mental Health and Layoffs in Games. It's not a successful year for games when the people who make them are being laid off in massive waves.
Sending everyone reading this newsletter lots of love, whether you're going through something or not. Thanks for reading and I hope November treats you well.
Success through shenanigans with community management.
Hi, I'm Victoria! Join my Community Dev Newsletter for insight into games marketing, social, and community management. Get actionable tips, a skill testing question, and a roundup of resources straight to your inbox every month.
