Being seen and heard. Turning an angry player into an ally.
Sometimes you have bad days, that's how it is. Sometimes those days turn into weeks, which turn into months. There is, deep inside us, this latent languor, this insidious fatigue and this untamed anger. You know these moments. Silence annoys us; noise is intolerable. Loved ones have to be distant from us for fear of retaliation. Some colleagues tell us that there is burnout somewhere, but we know it is not precisely that. It has no definition; we are just like that, angry.
What's the link with community work, would you say?
The MAU and DAU turn into statistics. Consistently, these statistics turn into players, which turn into people a community manager will talk to.
On the negative player side, I like to separate the troll and the hurt customer.
For the troll, it doesn't matter how much they participate in the discussion or gives the impression of keeping the comments/Discord alive. They will repel new players and, more importantly, influence other players, giving you biased results for your sentiment reports. Those you warn three times, strike with the banhammer and return them to the void.
But angry players are something else.
01 Your product is assuredly a hobby for this other human
Sometimes I forget, between two reports, two strategies and two meetings, that the product I am working on is a hobby for other people. A hobby in which this person will indeed have invested a lot of time and become an expert. And the more expert you become, the more you notice the minor flaws and hiccups that can make you grumpy. Couple that with a period of anger mentioned above, and you end up with a salvo of snarky comments.
When I first came to the French part of Skyforge, and then later the English part, players were throwing their comments into a silent wall. And although I was making regular sentimental reports, there was nothing to show this audience that I was interested in what they had to say.
So I decided to dive in and apply what I call, in my personal pantheon, the Anna Akana technique.
In one of her videos, YouTuber Anna Akana bumps into another person before receiving a torrent of insults. Before holding the mirror, using anger, she asks a simple question — are you okay?
She quickly realizes that the other person has just suffered a death in their family and has overreacted. This information allows the situation to be calmed and discussed.
Angry players on Discord can be mad for an infinite number of reasons. Still, aside from the liberation of anonymity, I like to think that there may be invisible issues that cause people to go down the path of negativity. IRL issues that can ignite and spark anger are set free by how you talk to your community.
Often the root of this is a lack of communication from the publisher or developers. Deprived of accurate information, the brain looks for ways to create logical parallels between situations. On Facebook groups, this leads to conspiracy theories; on Discord, it leads to the famous idea of developers who are only interested in money without any interest in their game.
So it's about showing angry players that they are seen and heard.
02 Deploy, rinse and repeat
To turn angry players into allies, especially when they become experts on the game, I used to raid the #general_discussion channels at set times. From 3 pm to 4 pm, I would take a whole hour to focus on negative comments. I'd pop into the Discord, pick a random snarky comment, and always use the same technique.
I would say hello, thank the person for the feedback and ask for more details.
Usually, the first response was negative and consisted of a paragraph that was half very general feedback and half passive-aggressive.
I would come back a second time and describe how I was getting feedback and appreciate more detail using technical gaming jargon.
At this point, there were usually three things going on. After 15 minutes of silence, I would get detailed bullet points, and beneficial feedback. Other players jumped the bandwagon and gave me detailed feedback too.
Or I never saw the angry player again.
If I received detailed feedback, it was often time to go to PM. I would take the information provided and make a list of what I would pass on to the developers, what had already come up, and the ETA for each topic.
I had no doubt that my answers would be sent as screenshots to many other players, which was the goal.
03 Result
This little stunt had come in handy. By telling the players that I was compiling my sentiment report on Tuesday morning, I received a dozen extremely detailed PMs on Monday evening. All I had to do was cross-reference the data with my own readings to provide a more accurate NPS to my producer, based on a cohort of core members I had turned into allies.
In public on Discord, I would find these players defending me from negativity and inviting others to give full feedback because, and I quote, “Tyrell reads everything”. When I had time, I would respond with a simple “yep” in public to confirm that I was there.
Finally, when I received too many PMs, I would ask players to post their feedback in public to encourage other players to do the same. This final phase turned discussions into an exchange of ideas that made the discussions cordial and limited the toxicity.
Muted a troll for 1 day, announced it, but reminded everyone of the importance of creating constructive feedback. Received positive reaction from community.
04 Conclusion
The older a game gets, the more toxic the community becomes and the easier it to get overwhelmed. Although this solution seems ideal, it has several drawbacks. It is time-consuming, requires a bit of resistance to negativity. I've caught myself several times starting to write passive-aggressive comments. And it doesn't stand the test of huge communities unless you have an extensive team.
But in medium-sized communities, it has allowed me to control the external communication on Skyforge, engage our core audience and not drive away new people. I never measured exactly whether some of these players who became allies revised their Steam reviews or whether their in-game negativity dropped, but one thing is sure, the Discord became a way more friendly working tool.
