Scott Hartsman - Off the Record

When I got my first computer, the games were cool and all, but the even better part was going online.

I’ve been a part of online communities ever since. My second job involved community management by default, long before there was any weight being given to it as an important part of game development. A lot of my thoughts on how best to work in those communities from the development side boiled down to knowing how I’d want to be treated, and then trying to do exactly that.

After getting into the larger scale MMOs, that sense grew into a sincere belief that keeping intangibles (such as “the relationship with your community”) as positive as you can is more than just the right thing to do — it’s also one of the best things you can do for your bottom line.

Since we were trying to maintain a highly dev-interactive beta community on EQ2, and had a reasonable number of developers who’d yet to interact with Real Live (future) Customers, I wrote these down.

These were never an official document and have long since been obsoleted by the fact that the game isn’t in beta anymore, and that we now have a full on Community Relations department. The industry has evolved quite a bit in even the past three years, and it’s all right if professional community folk find things to laugh at in here. I get asked about them every now and again, usually by people who tilt their heads to the side and appear highly perplexed that developers could possibly have interests in this direction.

On reflection, a lot of them really can be summarized as: “Genuinely give a damn about people, and don’t even come close to sounding like a patronizing know-it-all.”

A couple current comments are inlined below in italics. Here’s the post:

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I’ve noticed a few others posting on the beta boards, and it’s been great seeing the overall tone remaining as one of wanting to be genuinely helpful. In the long run, as long as we continue to shine here, we should be in great shape. Now that we’re about to have a larger audience, I wanted to pass around a few guidelines that I’ve found helpful when posting (or doing chats) in public. I consider these a set of ideals, and ones that I’m far from perfect with, myself.

Every so often, it’s useful to look back at some guidelines as a reminder of how the things we say can affect people. None of this is about giving (or caving) in to people’s desires for what they want in a game. We’re the ones who get paid to make those decisions. It’s about ways to present both positive and negative information (from the point of view of the reader) in as good of a light as possible. As this is a pet topic of mine, if you have your own guidelines, I’d definitely enjoy hearing about them.

1) Character or Person - never Player.

- Don’t refer to people as Players when addressing them. Either address something about the Character or have a conversation with a Person.

- Referring to people as “The Players” when addressing them in public reads like mom and dad talking about “The Kids” in front of them, when it should instead come off as if you’re having a conversation with a Person.

- Referring to people as “Our players” when addressing the media is subtly different, as it can be used to present the people who play our games with a certain amount of pride.

(2007: This one is a little odd. I really disliked the 1999-2000 uses of “Player” that I’d occasionally see, where certain dev posts would use the word in an almost contemptful way, as if talking down to someone. “You players,” “Those players,” etc.

These days, more often than not, I find myself using “Customer.” They are nice enough to pay my salary, after all. I figure the least I can do in return is to use a word that implies I have a basic understanding of that relationship.)

2) Assume that our stuff is broken. Chances are–it is.

- Taking pride in what you’ve (probably) stayed up all night working on is great. Just don’t let that pride be your downfall.

- It may not be working as we wanted it to, or the way that we wanted it to work isn’t making sense to people, or someone found a way to break it. In EQ2 in particular, the last seems to be the case moreso than on any game I’ve yet worked.

- None of these are generally our users’ fault, especially at this stage in testing.

- The reputation of “Working As Intended (except for the fact that it’s totally broken),” is nearly impossible to escape. We have to avoid this.

- If you had to figure something out in order to make something work - Don’t be overly confident that you figured out all the nuances on the first try. This is a very common newbie mistake, and it can be avoided just by being aware of it.

- Repeating it using different words, because it’s just that important: If you needed to learn something in the act of implementing something, it is too early to trust your knowledge. This overconfidence is the very definition of the phrase “knows just enough to be dangerous.” Don’t be a victim.

3) Most of the time there is no need to hurry. Don’t feel compelled to respond.

- If your first thought is that you need to rush to defend a given thing when posting. Do. Not. Post. Wait until later.

- If you have any doubts or are feeling particularly charged up about a topic (which is perfectly normal, and usually a good thing) you may want to consider waiting until later, when you’ve had a chance to re-read your words or show them to others.

4) Post to help someone through a problem, not to defend what is causing their problem. Even if there is no problem.

- What if the thing in question is known to be working?

- Presenting yourself as someone who is desperately trying to help someone fix a problem will make you appear sympathetic. That, in turn, will cause other readers to jump in and defend you in cases where things actually are working. You avoid being the bad guy. Leave that for others.

- As soon as someone thinks of you as “the bad guy” once, that perception will color other things they hear you say in the future. Worse yet, the proof of your appearing in this light will be available and searchable on the internet forever.

- No one ever made a friend by proving to someone just exactly how much smarter they were. (This is my personal weak spot. Something about enjoying the act of arguing. It just doesn’t belong in public.)

5) Communicate in terms that are important to the listener

- When we tell people things, they want to know about it in the terms of what it is doing for them, not in terms of what it does for us.

- One example of this would be the recent discussions of the encounter locking system. Telling people “It lets us control who attacks a given encounter” isn’t helpful. People are not paying us to make our own lives easier, and the notion that we are primarily trying to control their actions is very off-putting.

- Telling people “It lets us make difficult encounters more rewarding, and here is why…” is equally true, and communicates the end beneficial result to the reader as the primary goal.

(2007: I really hated having to use that example. In retrospect, that example is better suited for, “If you can’t explain a game mechanic with a straight face, you should probably rethink the mechanic.” Suffice it to say that I’m glad we made locking largely go away.)

6) Do not lift the curtain unless necessary to explain something important

- Don’t communicate things in terms of internal mechanics that are not visibly a part of the player’s experience.

- You may up creating a specific type of jargon that only those in the know are aware of, which then becomes a barrier to those who don’t.

- E.g. “Tier” (as we use it internally) with respect to NPCs. As it’s never referred to anywhere in the user experience, referring to them isn’t going to help the average user, despite the fact that it may help explain to that one person.

- If things are confusing, it is more beneficial to find a way to communicate them to everyone as a part of the overall user experience.

7) If I haven’t played it, don’t talk about it as if I have. Find someone else who has.

- Obvious one, but attempting to be authoritative on something that is counter to what is actually happening in game reflects poorly on the speaker.

- Speaking in questions helps this some, even in areas that you are familiar with.

- If I haven’t played it legally, or have only played it using artificial test commands or buffed characters, I do not know exactly what the poster has gone through. Definitely speak in questions in this case. My artificially generated observations may not line up with their reality.

- Look for areas where your experience and theirs differ. Most people are smart enough to understand what they’re observing. We need to ask the right questions to get the important information from them.

8 ) Sympathize, but only if you can do so sincerely.

- Especially when pointing out flaws in what we have.

- A sympathetic figure is more likely to have others come to their defense.

9) Do not refer to The Intent, The Plan, The Design, The Vision as a nameless, faceless entity with opinions of its own, if it is used to justify disagreement with someone.

- It isn’t unmalleable and should never be presented as such. At its core, it’s a large pile of opinions of many different people. Some of it may be based on old assumptions that are no longer valid.

- If you have opinions on a subject, state that they’re your opinions. If you don’t have an opinion, don’t hide behind a fictitious entity in order to use it as justification. All that does is make the reader feel even more powerless than they already do.

- If something is the way it is because of your particular opinion, own up to it. If you can’t own up to it in public, it probably shouldn’t exist.

- If you don’t believe in something enough to opine about it in public in a positive light, do not comment on it. Your attempts will appear transparent.

- I generally assume that the people reading what I write are smarter than me, and will have more time to critically analyze it than I will.

10) Even ranting has value.

- Whatever you do, do not take it personally. Our customers get to do that — We don’t have that privilege.

- People who do this usually do so because they feel powerless. Helplessness is one of the biggest sources of frustration and anger.

- In their eyes you are the one with all the power. Be beneficient. Assume that we are doing something that is causing this frustration and approach the issue from that direction.

- Do not respond in a way that will make them feel even more powerless. If you’re not going to respond to a rant with sympathy, do not respond to the rant.

- Rants tend to be indicative of a larger problem, and are valuable in the sense of measuring the strength of a person’s feelings on a given subject.

11) Corollary to the above: Bitter users are sometimes made, not born.

- Online games are unique. We ask people to stay for thousands of hours. That level of commitment comes with an inescapable emotional attachment. We count on that attachment to stay in business.

- That level of attachment causes people set the same kinds of expectations for us that they would for a spouse or significant other, as opposed to a dispassionate company that provides a service. We’re a lot more like someone’s fiancee than the Cable Company.

- When we (or the games that we make) disappoint them, whether or not that disappointment is justified in our eyes, it is justified in theirs, much like any relationship. Highly emotional reactions are inevitable. Dismissing them as somehow less than valid is a mistake.

- The dilemma is that the people who are the most attached can also be the largest forces for good by creating social bonds with many others in the game. If they’re content, they can have a positive impact on many other people. If they’re upset at us, that too spreads through their social circles very quickly.

- Highly emotional reactions also spread to other topics quickly. If a person feels strongly negative toward something that we have said or done to one facet of the game, it more rapidly carries over into other completely unrelated aspects.

- Summary: Help to not make bitter users by sympathizing and truly attempting to be helpful wherever possible.

12) It’s best not to speak to what’s supposed to be happening unless you’ve recently been involved with what’s supposed to be happening.

- Things change far too quickly around here, and I’ve seen a few spots where we’re already disagreeing with each other.

- It’s always been well intentioned people just trying to help, but it makes it appear as if our right and left hands have yet to run into each other.

13) The moment you post something in public, you are no longer in the business of just developing games.

- You are also acting as Customer Service, Public Relations, and Community Relations, regardless of your actual title. Act accordingly with those roles as well as your primary role.

- Don’t say anything that you don’t want printed on the cover of PC Gamer, with your name, EverQuest II, and SOE associated with it.

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There were more in there about making sure to stay sufficiently evil, tips on the most expedient means of taking candy from babies, and all that, but I obviously couldn’t post those parts. Trade secret, you know.

- Scott