Community Dev Diary: Striking a Balance

[Omali]

The Community Has Spoken: How MMO Creators Balance Development Plans with Player Feedback

 

Community and player involvement are the backbone of any good MMO. One of the huge issues we face as a Community Management team, and as a game developer and publisher, is that all of our players have an opinion on pretty much every aspect of our games...and they're not afraid to let us know about it! What's the issue, then? Well, when you have the largest free MMO in the world in your game catalogue with millions of players, that's one hell of a lot of opinion to attempt to digest, respond to and factor into game development.

 

Here at Jagex Games Studio, we place a great deal of value on community satisfaction and player response to our games. We genuinely believe in our loyal community, and very much want to give them what they desperately desire, demand, deserve, even dream of...but that's not that easy to accomplish. As a game developer with a huge community, we have multiple aims: to continually produce interesting, challenging and playable content, as well as respond to player feedback, and, where possible, to incorporate player feedback and opinion into our development schedule.

 

Maybe it goes without saying, but we value our players and their opinions more than anything. They are our dedicated heroes who care about the game and the company a lot, and let's face it, they provide the funds to enable us to invest both in current games as well as develop new ones. Without our players, we vanish.

 

So what's the issue? The problem is that the content teams have plans, ideas and designs of their own. After all, shouldn't they as professional game developers? Don't forget, too, that the owner and CEO has an overriding strategy for each game.

 

The crux of this then becomes how does Jagex as a company (and specifically the Community Management Teams) sift through the hundreds of thousands of suggestions made every year in order to ensure that the Content Teams are taking on board player feedback so that the game is relevant for all players? More importantly, how can we ensure that players know that they are actually listened to, and that their opinions, suggestions and feedback do make a difference to the game they know and love?

 

Sheer Scale

 

In 2009, RuneScape players made 21 million posts on our forums. This means that players were writing in at a rate of 2,300 posts per hour, 24/7. Of these, 124,799 suggestion threads were created with an average of 3,284 suggestions posted per week!

 

The most important thing to Jagex is to make sure our players don't feel like just another number in the crowd of fans and players, and for them to keep coming back with enthusiasm and excitement for our games. So, over the years, we have adapted our approach to try to elicit feedback and suggestions from groups of players, such as clans, high level players and volunteer moderators.

 

While not perfect, we feel we are on the way to striking a balance between being able to hear relevant feedback, and responding to them by including suggestions into actual game development. Unfortunately, we simply can't incorporate every suggestion and idea that players send us. From time to time, we even have to turn down ideas that we all really like.

 

 

We want to involve our players in the decision making process, and also give them a chance to speak to our top decision makers directly. In the last year, since Mark Gerhard became CEO, we've really opened up channels of communication with players, as well as adopting a much more direct, honest and frank approach with the information we give out. With regular updates coming out every couple weeks or so, we're able to act quickly on feedback and suggestions.

 

There's a ton of activity that goes on behind the scenes that most players may not know about – so here's an idea of the things we do to listen to player feedback, and how we actually feed that through to the content development teams:

 

Listening to specific communities, such as clans, language communities, fan sites, volunteer moderators and high level players. We have dedicated staff members for each of these communities to work with them to help them grow, and understand their needs – we're also looking to restructure our forums to facilitate discussions between groups of like-minded players.

Direct interaction with players through game update feedback threads, live Q&As with Jagex decision makers and community managers, developer blogs and in-game chat channels. By opening the lines of communication and making sure the community has access to our top leadership within the company, we've created a dialogue where players can ask any question they want and feel a sense of personal interaction with the people behind the scenes of their favorite game.

Listening to opinions on game updates, polls and suggestion threads. We're increasingly establishing new ways for players to give us their input. These include asking for suggestions on specific development areas in the suggestions threads, polling players so we can gauge popular opinion, and processing all feedback that comes in regarding game updates to help content teams determine if they need to tweak an update.

Striking a Balance

 

Our teams make big efforts to incorporate as much player feedback as possible into our games, even though we have our own thoughts and plans. We strive to ensure that the voices, opinions, feedback and suggestions of our huge player base are heard.

 

We all need to keep this into perspective, however. Players may suggest something which would cause balancing issues, limit future content, or benefit cheaters and real world traders. When players make suggestions of this type, we have to have in mind the overall game and what's best for that.

 

Despite all of this, we have a nagging doubt that players in general still feel that their suggestions and opinions are ignored and not considered. There's more for us to do to ensure that this is not the case, but at the end of the day it's simply not feasible for us to take note of, and respond to, every single suggestion given the sheer size of our playing community.

 

Where we can do more is to be more open and honest with our communities about what works and what doesn't. We can also be more transparent about how we ensure that Community Managers and developers get to hear about the best and most popular suggestions made for our games.

 

Finally, let me leave you with this: many of our Jagex staff play RuneScape and our other games, and they are just as committed to gameplay as the majority of our players. A great many of their suggestions are echoed by the content development teams all of the time. As a result, the game is often shaped by players, which is also a major part of our success.

 

Part of why we've been able to build games that appeal to such large audiences is the fact that we have put player satisfaction at the top of our priorities, and have invested increasing energy and focus to this area in the last year. The community management approach we have at Jagex is constantly evolving, but always with the player at the forefront of what we do.

[tortilliachp]

we didn't know any of that, sure.... no details, no nothing. This is a plastic, botoxed facade of Jagex that they project, chemically removed of personality and honesty.

[Me_Hate_Libs]

If they want to save the forums, the first thing they should do is to limit posting to members and past members. Sorry, but letting f2p is one of the thing that destroyed the chance those forums had.

[deathhead154]

The thing I'm more interested in is...

 

Creepybacon has to be one of the Jagex staff's normal accounts :o

[Racheya]

Nah, the forums never had a chance tbh.

What's better, a 12 year old whiny kid or a 12 year old whiny kid who feels a sense of entitlement because his mummy pays £3.50 a month!

 

 

^ Also I don't know, that's a really old picture. Could be, though.

[Ronan]

The thing I'm more interested in is...

 

Creepybacon has to be one of the Jagex staff's normal accounts :o

From checking the Adventurer's Log:

 

This account either does not exist or has never logged in to RuneScape. Please check the account name and try again.

Strange?

[Omali]

The thing I'm more interested in is...

 

Creepybacon has to be one of the Jagex staff's normal accounts :o

From checking the Adventurer's Log:

 

This account either does not exist or has never logged in to RuneScape. Please check the account name and try again.

Strange?

 

That picture looks like it may be quite old, it was taken before the UI upgrades (The blank summoning icon is still there). Perhaps the person changed names since then?

[Neohero1972]

we didn't know any of that, sure.... no details, no nothing. This is a plastic, botoxed facade of Jagex that they project, chemically removed of personality and honesty.

 

Would you be so kind to elaborate a bit more on your views - ie. do you mean that Jagex is dishonest ? - please explain !

[Beaumonde]

Just a bunch of PR talk from Jagex. If they wanted someone to read their wall-o-text they should have included at least some info about a new project.

[Rien]

we didn't know any of that, sure.... no details, no nothing. This is a plastic, botoxed facade of Jagex that they project, chemically removed of personality and honesty.

 

Would you be so kind to elaborate a bit more on your views - ie. do you mean that Jagex is dishonest ? - please explain !

He's probably referring to the tone of the writing; I imagine he sees this as something of a "gilded" post.

 

It's all very endearing/flattering, but little of substance was said. Jagex laid it on a bit thick with this, heh, and so their message comes across as condescendingly false (to a degree).

 

 

Just a bunch of PR talk from Jagex. If they wanted someone to read their wall-o-text they should have included at least some info about a new project.

Mhm, I'm of the same opinion. :mellow:

[Neohero1972]

we didn't know any of that, sure.... no details, no nothing. This is a plastic, botoxed facade of Jagex that they project, chemically removed of personality and honesty.

 

Would you be so kind to elaborate a bit more on your views - ie. do you mean that Jagex is dishonest ? - please explain !

He's probably referring to the tone of the writing; I imagine he sees this as something of a "gilded" post.

 

It's all very endearing/flattering, but little of substance was said. Jagex laid it on a bit thick with this, heh, and so their message comes across as condescendingly false (to a degree).

 

Yes, your interpretation of my comment is correct and the little "explanation" you provided clearifies what @tortilliachp meant - at least i understand it better now

[tortilliachp]

we didn't know any of that, sure.... no details, no nothing. This is a plastic, botoxed facade of Jagex that they project, chemically removed of personality and honesty.

 

Would you be so kind to elaborate a bit more on your views - ie. do you mean that Jagex is dishonest ? - please explain !

He's probably referring to the tone of the writing; I imagine he sees this as something of a "gilded" post.

 

It's all very endearing/flattering, but little of substance was said. Jagex laid it on a bit thick with this, heh, and so their message comes across as condescendingly false (to a degree).

 

 

Just a bunch of PR talk from Jagex. If they wanted someone to read their wall-o-text they should have included at least some info about a new project.

Mhm, I'm of the same opinion. :mellow:

I'll quote something i posted on the issue somewhere, i don't remmeber where though:

It looks foreign, un-Jagex-like today, the days where Jagex posted about an ingame couple getting married are long gone. Today it would clash horribly with the Jagex Public Relations Strategy. The fact that they have developed a specific strategy and style is telling in its own right: although we often forget it, Jagex has become a corporate giant, and a large employer.

 

Where does this leave us, the individual player, who now have relations with a heavy-weight? The cosy Mod names of first name and possibly an initial are a thing of the past. Now Mod MMG is CEO of a company, not a passionate game developer.

 

What is the Jagex PR strategy? This is probably a new question to many. Who spends their time thinking about those things, and not playing the game in their spare time? The answer is the long-time player who remembers the past and thinks gosh, how things have changed - markedly for the worse".

 

And so they have indeed, long gone are the days of personal thanks from the Creators of the Game when a new record of simultaneous runsecapians was set. Now these things have been streamlined and coordinated, so Jagex look like happy campers, smiling and enjoying themselves as frugally singing oopa-loompas, relishing in the Willy Wonka style paradise Workplace of the real world: Jagex HQ. Because, clearly every single mod loves every single aspect of their jobs. That's the image Jagex are projecting onto us.

 

Gladly, there are cracks in the Jagex facade: their youtube channel. Just read a transcript of what Mod Mark H says in his iCould interview:

I'm mark Hulmes. I'm a community management representative, and I work here at Jagex game studios. A community management representative is kindof like a games industry odd jobs man in the sense that we do lots of little things that make up a big part. We're very customer and player related, so we sortof act like the frontlines between our players and customers, and everybody else in the company. Part of our job involves managing our online forums which are these big like messageboards, and we go on there and sortof like help people out, answer questions, chat with people, get their ideas, get their feedback, and then we often take what we find there and pass it on to the relevant departments. Much of my job involves me talking to the players or having fun with our players - playing games with our players and that's really the best thing ever. my job is basically getting to hang out with a bunch of people, very much like me, like the same stuff as me, and i get to sortof hang out with them and have a good time and help them out [here: note the unchanging, bland tone. It doesn't seem in any way that these are his true feelings, but if it were not an interview, but a live Q and A, he would definately get top marks from the PR strategy team]

 

Jagex is definately, definately a home to everybody who works here I think. When you join it and you sortof get involved and for a lot of people, it's people who are moving away from home or they are moving away from places where they've lived for a very long period of time, to start anew. And i think that's one of the things why Jagex is so great, because it makes that transition so much easier. [read: adjusting to working for jagex was hard. It was not what i expected]

 

My dream job in jagex is - would probably be somewhat more related to designing and writing. I would love to do that on a full time basis. I'm a creative person, i like the idea of sortof like creating these grand adventures for our players and stuff like that. That's definately something I'd like to do. [read: I'm only using this job as a stepping stone. It's not what i want to do, but youhave to start somewhere, as the oddjob's boy]

 

Just watch the video: the strategy is clear: Mod Mark H is very limited in what he can say, and is directly insincere. My insertations are marked by square parenthesis [] as I interperate what is said, versus what he means.

 

This image of paradise shows positivism gone awry. I do not mean the positivism that spurred the area of enlightenment in the 1750s, no I mean the Joyous Manifestation that everything has a bright side that may be projected onto the public. This may be a reaction to the barrage of rants and negativism that so completely dominates the Runescape Official Forums: It may be the moral high-ground as a reaction to the cynics of youth, or reality. You complain? we'll show you everything is as if it were paradise, we'll fake it real good.

 

These are not smart PR strategies to continue with, looking at the bigger picture of a bigger company. What companies do we know that have a PR branch that are not positivist to a degree? None. Every company has much to gain from hyping up their own products - obviously they directly earn from positive reviews etc. The degree of how positively inclined a company is to their own product is meticulously calculated, in many cases. In the case of Jagex, it seems to be mis-calculated. Their image, for them, needs to be positive, but critically not too positive, but still as positive as possible while retaining their credibility. That credibility is what Jagex has eroded with an image showing a stance of its all good that they are inadvertently projecting. They seem fake, because what they are telling us are small white lies, one after the other, which combine to form a distorted image of the situation jagex and runescape is in.

 

For that is the danger of a public image in a closed company, especially one with dealings primarily online: your clientele see you as the image you project. You show them fake, they see you as fake. Once that image has fastened, it becomes your public identity, because we have no other sources of information, it's all "secret" -visitors not allowed to talk.

 

Where did the positivism of Jagex go over the top, and how can we really see this fake attitude? That is the beauty of modern social networking. Many of us had Mods on our friends-lists, back when we were few, and they were independent to do what they wished in-game. As Jagex have grown, the personal relationships with mods have withered away, as a deseased papaya tree no gardener is taking care of. How could it have been avoided? It probably couldnt have been, and shouldnt have been. But as Jagex lost its humanity, its image has become superficial.

 

With a YouTube channel, Jagex have given a unique insight into how mods really are. They are not Oompa-loompas, as we would expect by their over-positive image on Runescape.com. The veil of the Jagex façade has been lifted for all those interested to see. And see we do. There are people behind the plastic mask, the faked beauty of Jagex HQ. at least one of them is discontent, but says something else. Can we trust Jagex?

 

Probably not. But we can trust the humans that represent jagex which we see, if they are convincing. They need to be allowed arenas where they express themselves honestly, and tell things as it is. As Jagex has adapted its image to becoming a large employer and heavy-weight company, social networking necessitates a new reworking of the Jagex image, back into the personal and the refined honesty that has been lacking. As mod MMG notes in his interview, he was head-hunted to the company as a slick leader figure - because he can lead a major company and earn loads of money for jagex, not because he understands players.

 

Will Jagex take this reinvigorating second chance of interviews and use of their youtube channel to regain our trust? Let us dearly hope so, to avoid further embarrassment in insincere positivist announcements. The 'year of Awsome?' We have called your bluff, now show your cards.

 

This diary was another step in the wrong direction. We are all smart enough to see that what Jagex says, and what they true opinions are, are worlds appart.

[Central_Keeper]

If they want to save the forums, the first thing they should do is to limit posting to members and past members. Sorry, but letting f2p is one of the thing that destroyed the chance those forums had.

 

 

I do hope you mean a portion of F2P, not all the F2P out there. Granted, with bigger population of F2P, there are ones that tend to act immature on forum (if that's what you were referring to). Still, to generalize it to that degree would be saying F2P have no manners overall. I have been F2P for long time, I used to use RS forum just to sell and buy stuff with pm made by members on forum in the past. Even after they released the forum to higher xp F2P, I am not sure if lots of players use it. I don't really think Jagex should let F2P use the forum just because I think it should remain a member feature, but not used as a tool of excuse to make all F2P looked bad.

 

In regard to the overall statement mentioned at the top of the forum, every company has to put some sort of thought into the things they released into the public. RS was a lot smaller back then which is easier to manage, as the game grows bigger, they will run into various management issues just like any other companies out there. I think in the end, you either stick with what you tolerate and continue playing the game, or simply walk away if you think the game is not worth your while anymore. Or Jagex could capped their player database at certain point, and never let anyone join again plus hire enough staffs to answer questions as humanly fast as possible. Then again, what company would do that?

 

Personally, currently I think there is a plateau in terms of new players playing the game, F2P and member wise. As a company, they have to break that saturation point to retain and attract new players out there. I don't know what Andrew and other original developer would think of this whole new change to the game they once put so much effort into, but I wouldn't want to place myself in their shoes due to possible stress level coming from it. It all looks good on the outside until you step in, then you know how deep and sticky the whole mess are.

 

If you ever study how real world business go, or any other related topics out there, its pretty brutal out there. You have people working on the front line taking all the heavy fire even if they didn't start anything, then you have supervisors working overtime without pay trying to fix mistakes other departments made. Sometimes CEO and higher up have to risk their neck if the company goes down. (of course, most people won't care because it's none of their business if something happen to someone else, human nature FTW) Higher position and pay you are, the more risk it involves, unless you decide its all good and give the job to someone else and retire. Just my two cents here

[pulli23]

If you ever study how real world business go, or any other related topics out there, its pretty brutal out there. You have people working on the front line taking all the heavy fire even if they didn't start anything, then you have supervisors working overtime without pay trying to fix mistakes other departments made. Sometimes CEO and higher up have to risk their neck if the company goes down. (of course, most people won't care because it's none of their business if something happen to someone else, human nature FTW) Higher position and pay you are, the more risk it involves, unless you decide its all good and give the job to someone else and retire. Just my two cents here

 

Lol this is so wrong.....

Higher in rank people only shove the problems away to the people who do the real work for a company.. The top-managers (only the word "manager", it shows void of activities and unnecessity) of any company are often only people with a fast tongue who don't feel anything for their company, and only feel their pockets. And once it goes a bit bad with a company, they simply vanish, with the only help they give to the company is a demand for a "reward".. The only thing they can is blow their own ego up and talk about how important they are! Yet they're often so dumb, and know nothing about a subject they work for - But how can they? - They only have a short-term (<10 years) profit in mind and are even planning to leave the company in that time again, how can they ever become knowlenged in such a short time?

[warlordsagan]

we didn't know any of that, sure.... no details, no nothing. This is a plastic, botoxed facade of Jagex that they project, chemically removed of personality and honesty.

 

Yes, that's pretty much what I was thinking. The whole speal did sound like a lot of hogwash and pr talk. Nothing really useful besides the forum suggestion posting stats.

[Central_Keeper]

If you ever study how real world business go, or any other related topics out there, its pretty brutal out there. You have people working on the front line taking all the heavy fire even if they didn't start anything, then you have supervisors working overtime without pay trying to fix mistakes other departments made. Sometimes CEO and higher up have to risk their neck if the company goes down. (of course, most people won't care because it's none of their business if something happen to someone else, human nature FTW) Higher position and pay you are, the more risk it involves, unless you decide its all good and give the job to someone else and retire. Just my two cents here

 

Lol this is so wrong.....

Higher in rank people only shove the problems away to the people who do the real work for a company.. The top-managers (only the word "manager", it shows void of activities and unnecessary) of any company are often only people with a fast tongue who don't feel anything for their company, and only feel their pockets. And once it goes a bit bad with a company, they simply vanish, with the only help they give to the company is a demand for a "reward".. The only thing they can is blow their own ego up and talk about how important they are! Yet they're often so dumb, and know nothing about a subject they work for - But how can they? - They only have a short-term (<10 years) profit in mind and are even planning to leave the company in that time again, how can they ever become knowledge in such a short time?

 

That's just my personal experience since my profession allows me talk to different kind of people, from doctors, lawyers, accountants, to CEOs. When you are in your late 50s close near 60s, your life will throw you a lot of curve balls (work and personal life). There are probably some hints of truth what you were saying, the top brass makes bunch of money and disappear when company is in trouble, we seen that too much of big companies on the news today. But if you build your company from the ground up, or start from a lower position, that would be a totally different story. If you ever trying to start a business, its pretty darn hard to do everything yourself. As you start out small and hire one person at a time, people tend to know each other, as companies grow bigger, issues will come rolling in. Try not to generalize it to a point that you automatically assume everyone in a higher up position only think for themselves, because not all of them do. After all, they are also humans too.