Hi! Happy start of spooky month! 👻

I've been learning how to play League of Legends. Cue the chrous of "NOOOO VICTORIA" etc. WELL IT'S TOO LATE. HERE WE ARE.

I only started a month ago, so everything is very new (and very fun!). The thing that's been resonating with me is just how much etiquette, vocabulary, and norms there are that have NOT been conveyed to me in the tutorial. (And has made a stranger very snippy with me in one of my first PvP games lol.)

Here's what the tutorial hasn't taught me so far, for example:

• Norms: At the start of a game, people will yell out what position ("lane") in the game they want. (I didn't even know you were supposed to pick a lane.) If you're a good team player, even if your position is taken, you'll choose something different even though nothing REALLY is preventing you from taking it anyway.
• Vocabulary: Gank?????? Jungle???????? Vis in bushes near Blue??? Fed??
• Etiquette: You only get gold when you are the person that deals the killing blow to minions. If you don't play politely you could technically try to take the last hit kills from other players.

League has been around for so long that it's not surprising all these in-community norms have popped up, but what fascinates me is how there is NO way I could've learned this within the game on my own. (Or if there is, I haven't found it.)

What I love about longstanding games is figuring out the "culture" as a newbie. How have these games encouraged teamwork? How have they not? How has the community taught each other how to play? Where do you go for information as a newbie? What are the friction points? What is the process that moves you deeper and deeper into the norms of the game? What makes sense to everyone, but not to you, and why?

With all that being said, here are some preliminary learnings I've had:

• The removal of common knowledge. There is no real thing as common knowledge - I was in a game where someone was left with the "Jungle" role, which meant they needed to equip a very specific skill called "Smite". However, they didn't know that, and the game didn't indicate to them they were supposed to. They struggled throughout the entire game and it was not a great experience for them.
• The role of shame. When I played my first PvP game, I typed in chat "apologies in advance, this is my first PvP game!!" and had a chrous of nice words from my teammates. In my second PvP game, I did not type this in chat. One person got particularly annoyed at me for not being in the proper positioning and would harp on me in chat, and I felt so bad about it I almost quit.
• The role of having a buddy. I would've definitely stopped playing if I didn't have people to play with, but social connection is a hell of a drug. Having someone to teach you the game and encourage you to play is the strongest motivator to stick with something even after a bad initial experience - they can flip the negative into something much more useful and constructive.

None of these learnings are groundbreaking, but it IS different experiencing it in real time and reflecting. Community management can so tied so closely to things like UX and retention, so being able to identify the problems within the game's experience itself is an important part of the role. Our jobs are not just limited to places outside of the game like a Discord, but knowing exactly what people go through when they are in the game.

I love asking myself "How would I fix this if I had unlimited resources and time?" because it opens up a lot of design choices and paths to follow in my own day job. So yeah! I'll play more and learn more. Hope this was interesting!

Community Activity 📝

Every month we do a new community together. Here's the new one!

The question:

Feel free to email me back with your answer - I always respond to them! My answer will be in the next newsletter.

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Previous Community Activity 📫

Here was the question from last month.

Question refresher:

This is a big one! So it'll depend on what your management values in their reports and what they're looking for (it's always worth asking them!) but in general, here are ways in which value can be conveyed:

• Sentiment Reports. While these reports focus on a feature or event, being able to gather a holistic view of what the community feels or talks about is an important way to show the importance of community tracking things that the team might have missed.
• Metrics. The metrics you track will depend on what your goals for the campaign were. For instance, if it was to increase game wishlists, you would track things like traffic, clicks, conversions, or sign ups to a newsletter. If you were tracking brand awareness, then reach, impressions, followers, mentions.
• User Generated Content (UGC)/Conversation. Track the ways in which your work has contributed or helped others in your community create content - whether that was providing information for a wiki, FAQs, or other ways that help users enjoy your game's content to its fullest.
• Next steps. One of the nicest ways you can show community impact is being able to show the team what exactly it is the community is excited for and what they're requesting. But not just thrown together, but showing priority and frequency in which these things are asked.

Showing community success is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures!

Community Chatter 💬

Here are the interesting and helpful things I've seen this month.

General News

• ​Hootsuite stats: 2023 Average Engagement Rates for 13 Industries
• ​PEN America & Meedan released a research/a guide "Why Reporting Abuse to Social Media Platforms Is So Hard and How to Fix It"
• ​Latin American Games Showcase - Oct 13
• ​IndieLand 2023 - Oct 20

Games Resources

• ​Journal of Games Criticism releases Volume 5 of their articles "Surviving Whiteness in Games"
• ​Slay the Princess maps the journey to 100k wishlists

Community & Marketing Game Jobs​
​These are not endorsements.

• ​100 Thieves - Marketing Manager Esports (Culver City, CA)
• ​Bandai Namco - Associate Manager, Public Relations (Irvine, CA)
• ​Bandai Namco - Sr. Brand Manager, GUNDAM (Irvine, CA)
• ​CCP - Community Developer (Reykjavík, Iceland)
• ​Cult Games - Head of Fanbase & Community (Remote/London, UK)
• ​Cult Games - In-House Content Creator (Remote/London, UK)
• ​EA - Global Social Media Manager EA SPORTS FC (Vancouver, BC)
• ​Firewalk Studios - Global Social Media Lead (Bellevue, WA)
• ​Hi-Rez Ventures - SMITE Brand Specialist (Alpharetta, GA)
• ​HoYoverse - Various Community/Brand/Marketing positions (Various locations)
• ​Junkfish - Social Media & Community Associate (Remote/Dundee, Scotland)
• ​Mob Entertainment - Community Manager (Remote)
• ​Mojang Studios - Senior Creative Writer & Communication Manager (Stockholm, Sweden)
• ​No Brakes Games - Community & Social Media Manager - No job description available yet? (EU/UK)
• ​Offworld Industries - Community Manager (New Westminster, BC)
• ​Raw Fury - Performance Marketer (Remote)
• ​Sports Interactive - Community and Customer Experience Assistant (Remote/Stratford, UK)
• ​Square Enix America - Director, Marketing (El Segundo, CA)
• ​Starbreeze Studios - Lead Community Manager (Stockholm, Sweden)
• ​The Pokémon Company International - Associate Social Media Manager, German Market, English & German Bilingual (London, UK)
• ​Vinci Games - Social Media Intern, VR Basketball (Remote)

I still have not added my newsletters to an RSS feed because I Googled it and it takes more than like 2 steps to integrate it with my mailing service so I closed the window. I WILL GET TO IT.

To those who have experienced layoffs this past month - I'm so sorry. I hope you have the time and space to recover, and if not, that you're able to find something that treats you better soon. It's been a rough year.

❤️

Victoria

Ⓜ️ert @mertcentury Ah, I see, “serving” is a bit like our concept of “going beast mode”. Our cultures share so much 7:38 AM • Aug 15, 2023 4344 Retweets 33850 Likes Read 21 replies

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