An article at GamePro caused a bit of a stir in the gaming industry yesterday, sparking discussion on a topic covered at this year's PAX East -- namely, that of the history of Community Managers and what their jobs entail.
Now, there is a fair amount of background to AJ Glasser's article that we won't delve into, because the comment that many readers focused on was this one: "Before Xbox Live's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb -- who holds the ambiguous title director of programming for Xbox Live -- community managers were mostly forum moderators, people whose job entailed monitoring message boards and weeding out trolls. "
Not so, said many current CMs. Familiar names such as Daeke and Aether began popping up in the comments section of the article, contending that Community Managers were much more than forum mods before Major Nelson came on the scene. The conversation began in the article's comments section and continued via Twitter with quite a few people in the industry lining up to join the debate. The discussion offers several varying opinions and is definitely worth following if you've got an interest in the role of community management.
Reader Comments (4)
Posted: May 5th 2010 3:02PM (Unverified) said
Even beyond this Community Management is a role no longer unique to gaming. I run the community for an open API. I'm from the gaming world, so I know both worlds.
I'd say outside of the gaming world Community Managers mostly get pidgenholed into 'social media' type things and away from actual supporting the community. The thing that everyone needs to get away from is just plain assumptions.
A company might hire a community manager simply to run a forum, no joke. Others think all you do is Twitter, Facebook and 'next big social media plaform'. Other all they do is local 'go have a drink with clients' type stuff. For some is more marketing, others more communication.
When people try to generalize it AND over-complicate it, I get really upset. :-)
I'd say outside of the gaming world Community Managers mostly get pidgenholed into 'social media' type things and away from actual supporting the community. The thing that everyone needs to get away from is just plain assumptions.
A company might hire a community manager simply to run a forum, no joke. Others think all you do is Twitter, Facebook and 'next big social media plaform'. Other all they do is local 'go have a drink with clients' type stuff. For some is more marketing, others more communication.
When people try to generalize it AND over-complicate it, I get really upset. :-)
Posted: May 5th 2010 4:19PM Malgayne said
I mention this in some detail on Alpha-Build.net (the post is at http://alpha-build.net/2010/05/05/the-evolution-of-the-community-manager/), but one of the interesting things I noticed is this: A lot of what community managers were doing, even way back in the day, are things that fansites were doing first. A community manager's role has always been to take the ideas and the behavior of the game's fans and present it to the rest of the studio in a way that makes sense. Community management itself is a discipline that began with fans and was adopted by studios.
Considering the MMO industry's dependence on its fans for long-term revenue generation, it's no surprise that MMOs picked up on these concepts first—but community management is about the FANS, first and foremost. :)
Considering the MMO industry's dependence on its fans for long-term revenue generation, it's no surprise that MMOs picked up on these concepts first—but community management is about the FANS, first and foremost. :)
Posted: May 6th 2010 12:32AM (Unverified) said
Fans, customers, developers, etc etc etc
"but community management is about the FANS, first and foremost."
Yep. Best tl;dr for a job ever?
Reply
"but community management is about the FANS, first and foremost."
Yep. Best tl;dr for a job ever?
Posted: May 6th 2010 3:07PM Malgayne said
Damn right.







