I know it’s hard to be in your position taking some heat from the community over choices you may not have insight into.
I just wanted to say I appreciate the fact this community even exists and that I have a place to go where I can share feedback and feel heard by someone at the studio.
You’re doing the best you can given that you’re individuals speaking for 100+ employees, and I think a lot of people lose sight of that or underestimate how difficult it can be to communicate with 100% clarity over the internet, much less as the middleman for an organization.
The CMs deserve everyone’s common decency and respect, not scorn for things that they likely had no influence over.
I agree that there’s no reason for personal attacks, but I don’t think there’s a reason to pretend like there’s currently good community management happening.
And I don’t blame the CMs themselves, necessarily, I understand that they may be bound to the “company line”, but it’s also their job to talk to the responsible staff to change that company line.
There are dozens of promises that were made up until launch that now turn out to be empty shells (crafting) or just not present (weapon mods, weekly content updates).
Pretending otherwise to make it easy on the CMs isn’t gonna help this game, or community managers in general, because it will reinforce the thinking that one can get away with this sort of behaviour among people like the guy that lied to us about 2.1k Aquila packs always having been planned, and force CMs to defend that type of BS in the future.
As someone who used to work in video game PR and community management, I feel for the CMs. I really do. It’s stressful, thankless, but necessary work that is often more about mitigating crises than preventing them. It never gets the respect it deserves because it’s an ‘easy’ job. I mean, how hard could copy and pasting a corporate boilerplate be, right???
Often, you’re at the whims of your superiors (and they’re at the mercy of their clients or investors). You know the community update you’re about to post is going to start wildfires, yet you have to post it because it’s what the managers approved. You want to give players an update on the state of Toughness changes or balance passes or missing features or whatever, but you can’t because those features aren’t ready yet and the team doesn’t want to make promises that they will likely ‘break’ as they develop those features. You’re the one taking the heat, yet you had no say over the design decisions and cash shops that players are - sometimes justifiably - upset over. You’re caught between two hells: the horde of angry players, and the limbo of company mandates. It sucks.
It’s perfectly fine to be upset at the state of the game. There are plenty of things to be upset about right now. And I agree, Fatshark CM historically is pretty tepid. But man, a lot of people here have never been in this kind of position or even thought about what goes into public relations, and it shows.
I’ve worked in direct public relations before and am an attorney now so I have to work with people fairly regularly. I understand its a thankless job and they’re subjected to a bunch of misdirected abuse.
That being said, most criticism I’ve seen hasn’t been of the Community Managers except when Hedge puts his foot in his mouth, its for the promises the company failed to live up to before they released a half built janky mess.
True, true. Though from what I’ve seen over in the Announcements threads, people end up attacking Aqshy herself for whatever she’s announcing. Not that people need to append a “tell management that I’m upset” clause to every post, of course. But the general public isn’t willing to take a nuanced look at who’s delivering the message and who’s responsible for the grief in the first place. You can even see it further down in this very thread!
I’m sure Hedge tries his best, but he is not… the most effective communicator lol. He comes off as very blunt and standoffish, even when he probably means well. Not quite John Romero “suck it down” tier of bad communicator, thankfully, but yeah.
I agree with OP. And I also agree/understand the backlash from people. I mean, most people that are complaining about something are doing it because they like the game and want it to succeed. So they spend a lot of their time in the forums trying to provide valuable feedback so things can improve. When they feel they are not being heard/valued, things tend to heat up.
On the other hand, we have the CM’s, responsible to manage all that and keep things under control and the community well informed about the development of the game. They are professionals, trained to do that, and as such, should have a high level of patience, and mitigate things the best way possible, while controlling their emotions. Granted, that is difficult to do, but then again, it’s the job.
Now, the key to a good relationship between the community and CM’s are the same as anywhere else. Respect each other, be understanding, and try to make your thoughts heard in such a way that won’t offend anyone. At the end of the day, for us it’s a game, entertainment, for them a job, livelihood, and everyone should step in each others shoes and act accordingly. Wishful thinking, I know, but should be said nonetheless.
I agree, compared to a lot of other games we are getting a ton of interaction with the community managers. They are doing a good job despite having a tough time right now.
As someone who does not have any experience in customer service or pr I am content with not appreciating the situation from any cm or former cm’s perspective.
People thanked because they are doing what they should do by default.
Are you becoming all Italians? (I’m Italian living in Italy btw so don’t play the racism card otherwise you can eat the whole deck )
Their job is not to tolerate abuse from mouthbreathers. I see people here that literally personify the CMs as the entirety of Fatshark and attack them. It’s not acceptable. But go off trying to defend being uncivil and how their role means they have to suffer abuse. Aqshy has even said she’s needed to step away and take breathers. A CM shouldn’t be feeling that. A community should be better than that.
I have full empathy for the CMs, that doesn’t mean the community should stfu when the company is screwing up time after time. What needs to happen is the company not forcing their employees into a position where they have to take this amount of shite for the decisions they keep on making.
Mr “We always wanted to be 1:1 on cosmetic packs and currency” should step up to the plate.
Peak liberal dream, take on community interaction job, blogpost about how hard it is to talk to people on the internet because they’re mean. Tell that to literally any physical labor worker, I’m sure they’ll have a laugh. I abhor this snot nosed baby philosophy that people should be making fat money off of easy jobs. Plenty of people endure worse abuse on the internet without even getting paid for it. Want to talk about entitlement? Entitlement is being a community manager and having to step away from the community because it’s ooohhh so haaaard and working for a studio without even living in the country that studio is in. Wish I could get diversity hired to do nothing but respond to some cherry picked “Nice” people all day, what a job. Wait no I don’t wish that, that sounds embarrassing.
I’m really hoping you get banned from this forum, because you are the paragon example of the worst kind of forum members. Your lack of self-awareness for how toxic you come across is astounding. You sound like you have a bad job and you’re just projecting it at the community here like it’s somehow our fault you don’t have a CM-type role.
When did politics or blue-collar/white-collar even come into the picture? You’re going off-topic wildly and being hateful in the process of doing so.
Seriously, dude, go back to 4chan, or whatever internet platform has you red-pilled so strongly.
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