Community Management – Vivendi Games – 2005-2006

Learning from the players.

My stints as Interactive Marketing intern and coordinator included some time as the company’s community manager. Mind you, this included keeping an eye on communities that spanned back to games released by Sierra Entertainment in the eighties. Sierra was simply a brand and logo for Vivendi Games in the mid-aughts, but they still tried to support the legacy of the brand and the many games that came before.

Although I made some effort to engage with our communities and regularly posted, this was only a part-time role, and I was not as engaged as I could have been. If I had to do it again I would have initiated more chats, more developer Q&As, and even just MP contests or giveaways. Activities to help the community feel more involved.

Another critical aspect of this role was customer support. We had a dedicated customer support department, but as the primary online voice I was often deep in the forums, particularly after a game released. Console games were light on technical support but those PC games sure needed a lot of attention. This was the first time I’d had to help on this side of a product release and it was certainly an education in organizing huge influxes of user reports.