Community Dev Newsletter

Hi!

We're diving straight into The Content™ today because it's a long one, but a note that you're going to get another email from me this month. 😳👉👈 Please pay attention to it when it arrives!

This month's newsletter dives into:

Tips on dealing with player expectations
New community activity: how to avoid spoilers without running out of content?
Several related marketing/community resources and job posts

Last week's question:

How do you deal with the weight of community expectations?

In particular, when you have a community that's really excited about the game, but you don't have the dev power to keep up with everything. I've tried my best to post roadmaps and keep the community informed of what's coming, but I still find the "finish the game faster" and "add [impossible thing]" comments draining.

Ahhh, yeah. So far warning - this (the constant asks for updates) tends to never stop, no matter where you go. That being said, there are strategies for dealing with this!

Regulate yourself. Especially because you noted it draining you, we need to start with making sure you're okay. Find out what helps you feel better, even with a deluge of demands. We want to tackle this with a clear head! For further tips, I wrote about mental health and community management here.
Find the common ground, then share realistic details. Despite the demands, it's likely you and the players have similar goals. At the end of the day, their demands are because they want more of the game, and that's a good thing! Acknowledge what that is, and once you've established you're on the same side, you can explain the actual situation. But if you've already done that, then:
Filter out the noise. Give people a more productive space to submit their requests. If it's starting to flood the community spaces, streamline it elsewhere and set rules on how people can properly communicate their wants and needs. You'll still need to ensure the feedback is being tracked, but this should make it an easier thing to handle. And of course, for things like "finish that game faster", you may just need to set a rule against people constantly demanding this, set boundaries, and/or simply ignore them if after repeated attempts, they're not listening. Instead, focus on responding to the people who properly follow your rules and encourage that kind of communication instead. It helps for people to know what to do too, not just what NOT to do.
Ensure you're communicating properly. Part of this is on you too! We don't want to just brush off wants as ridiculous and become jaded. Make sure you're understanding the core ask and responding to it appropriately. Every community is different, so the explanation they require may change!
Utilize your community. If people are making demands, I'm assuming you also have people in your community that can help disseminate information! Find those in the community that are trying to help and encourage that as much as you can. Make it easier for them to help you.

Community Response:

Chris at Camshaft Software sent in a great answer that I wanted to share here (shortened/edited a bit). You can find the game he works on @automationgame on Instagram and/or their game's new Bluesky account.

With Automation, this is absolutely a huge issue for us; there are only twelve of us in the company in total [...] The constant calls of "diesel when" and "rotary engines when" are definitely tiring, but [direct] these commenters to our FAQ (or in some cases, just letting the community regulars handle it - they generally do a pretty good job of self-policing!), or if we've got a spare moment, giving them a longer explanation as to why the thing that they so desperately want isn't going to be in the game.

Meanwhile, the extent of my car knowledge is: Ah yes. The car is red.

[On radical empathy]: What I'll try to do is say something to the effect of, "yeah, rotary engines are really cool, all of us on the Dev team really love and enjoy them too, but you have to understand that it's an 18-24 month project to build the simulation for them, do all the art, test and validate them, just to get them working in the game. We'd like to spend the time on it, but we have a whole community who are waiting on the features we've already promised in our roadmap." 90% of the time the response to that is, "well that's disappointing, but I understand!"

In summary:

A well-informed community, kept up to date with update progress and an overall picture of the direction of development, can do the work for you in many cases in this regard (because they tire of it just as much as we do, if not more).
Adopting a policy of clear, honest and consistent communication with the community removes any ambiguity over the said update progress and the direction of development.
Being radically empathetic towards suggestions made by the community when necessary.
On the development side, doing everything you can to keep scope creep under control, because that causes all kinds of problems in this regard (e.g. "you added this feature out of the blue, so what I'm suggesting should be added too!")

Thanks for the thoughts on this topic, Chris! Always love seeing how different community managers thing through problems.

Community Activity 📝

Every month we do a skill testing exercise or discussion question together. This month's question is submitted by a community member! Thank you!!

Have an activity idea or want to ask a question? Submit one anonymously.

The question:

I'm working on a very linear, walking-sim narrative game. I find that I don't have anything to share because 'everything is a spoiler'. How can I share things with my community without kind of ruining some parts of the game?

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