This is a topic that comes up quite frequently in community management circles - should online games always have official forums? Are they necessary? Should they always be expected as a basic necessity?
IMHO it depends, and it depends on many, many factors. Once everything has been considered I think it is up to the producer to decide which course of action best suits his or hers team's needs. The community person is there to primarily serve two sides: the needs of the developers (getting them the feedback they need) and the needs of the community (getting their feedback TO the dev team.) As long as those needs are met then things are heading in the right direction. Because in the long run, just having official forums isn't enough to meet those needs. "Official" certainly doesn't mean it's better. Anyone can have forums if they just want to give players a place to post back and forth with one another. It's also easy to assume that you can't meet these needs WITHOUT official forums, but that isn't necessarily true either. Several community reps live without official forums, and this in turn gives them the extra time they need for several unofficial forums.
When I accepted this position, 2 out of 3 of my games hadn't even been launched yet. Beta forums are a MUST, but what about after launch? I sat down with the Dungeon Runners and Exteel producers and I asked them for their input. Now, keep in mind that no product has an infinite about of resources and time. Would they prefer I manage official forums, or would they prefer I spend that time working on other community related matters? In the end, forums won out, and I agreed with them. Both of these communities were very small when starting out (and at the time, they were receiving very little attention) and they both needed a central location for that extra focus. Every product is different, so I'm not a big fan of saying that official forums are needed for every online game out there.
What else should be considered?
Money and resources - I'm not just talking about purchasing forum software or basic technical maintenance. No matter what ESRB rating a game may hold living without any type of moderation is next to impossible. Of course the amount of work varies from community to community, and going into it you may not know exactly how much. In many situations MMOs can use volunteers, but it's important to check into the legalities of that in addition to any company policies. In some situations you need 24/7 coverage, even in holidays, depending on your influx of new users. Many out there have made a career just with moderation, and they do have families to feed.
Now I don't see this often, but I sometimes see individuals who think it is "okay" to act up because they see there is a moderation team already present. Having a system in place to handle such problems is not our way of saying "we expect this out of you". We frankly don't. The truth is, no one wants to have more moderation than they absolutely require. It's a waste of a good resource because every employee is an asset. Time is money, friend. Moderators *can* do a lot more than just moderate, if they have the time!
I sometimes see that same mentality in "well I can cuss because there's a profanity filter there to stop it" statements. It's there to absolutely stop it in any case that it can, but it isn't there to ALLOW cussing.
Okay, I derailed there. Back on topic.
Another factor: does the game already have a well established presence? If yes, perhaps the idea of going without official forums should be considered. (Money and resources have to be considered in this, obviously.) But be forewarned that you are leaving everything about forums in THEIR hands. The community person will still be as official as ever in their posts/announcements, but if any drama breaks out it is up to forum owners on how to handle it. This can be a curse and a blessing, so the MMO should already have a good pre-existing relationship with a forum fansite before they even think of going without official forums.
Official Forums: the official madness!
Some say official forums are "breeding grounds for negativity" simply because they are official. Perhaps this is a tad bit pessimistic, but there may be some truth in this. When a poster expresses him or herself he or she keeps their target audience in mind. Official forums, naturally, tend to have more posts that are directly aimed towards staff members. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but sometimes it's nice to sneak on "unofficial" forums and see what people are saying when the target audience involves other players. It can be just as brutal, but the perspective is different - and usually easier to analyze.
The forums can show an ugly side to any game.
I know, this is breaking news to you all. People sometimes wonder why we allow people to use our resources to say BAD things about us. A negative post by itself is not against the rules, of course. If we only heard good things it would be extremely difficult to even know what on earth is really going on.
Forums can get heated - arguments do break out. And when people see all that stuff in the bugs and technical forums section all stuck together like that...yikes, it can look bad. It can make ANY MMO can look broke, even if that MMO happens to have a pristine reputation.
Do we really want all of that negativity on OUR site? Do we want people who are having zero problems with the game, folks who just forum registered to say "hello" to others, seeing all this stuff on our message boards?
When you go with official forums you are saying "yes" to that. But I'm okay with it. All those problems people read about on the forums may not be commonplace, but forcing them all on a "unofficial" forum doesn't make those problems any less real.
There are other things to consider, of course, but I think I've babbled on enough for now :)
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2 comments:
Going back to my first experiences with Everquest and the VNs back in 1999, I've always believed an MMO is best enjoyed by never visiting its fora. Official or not, almost all the MMO fora I have visited over the past 9 years have been, as you put it, "a breeding ground for negativity". From numbers I've seen, most MMO fora are populated by less than 5% of the game playing population. Too often, in my opinion, game developers will read and digest what's written by this super-minority and change the game (in sometimes fundamental ways) in reaction to what's posted. Many times I have found myself wishing the developers were locked away in an ivory tower with very little input from the community to guide them.
On the other hand, DR's forum is nothing like most MMO fora, in my opinion. Though it's very sparsely populated, there's not a whole lot of negativity towards the game. There's a complete lack of "sense of community" in the DR forum, in my opinion, but at least it's not a whine fest. The Player Questions and Player Guides sections are immeasurably helpful to newer players, too.
In the end, you can count me in the "no official forum!" camp for MMOs. Community managers can interact with fansites and third-party fora, and in turn, provide well-rounded feedback to the producers.
I can't really say whether MMO's need official forums. Most of the MMO forums I've seen is some helpful bits and a lot of the same questions over and over.
Or worse...a bunch of people arguing about who is better. Maybe they are advanced video game mechanics majors or something.
However, I do think a game like Exteel needs an official forum. I might be biased, but without some input to the devs, Exteel would probably be a very different game and I do appreciate that weapon balancing had some input from the players.
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