Great Expectations, Part Two: Communication Frequency

By Sanya Weathers

When you post on your blog five times a day, you create the expectation that you will continue to do so. So don’t post five times a day.

For “blog,” you can substitute “forum, official website, twitter, Facebook, MySpace, announcement section on the patcher.” (Side note: If you aren’t posting content in all of those places, you are missing out on some segment of users. Even Myspace – research has shown that MySpace has a totally different demographic than Facebook with nearly no overlap, and ignoring MySpace means you’re leaving money on the table.)

MMO players often joke… okay, they aren’t really joking… that those of us who love these games are all basically rats in a Skinner box. Whack the bar, get the pellet. Kill the monster, get the loot. Do the quest, get the gold.

Click the link, get some words.

How often do you think a player would do quests if every other quest resulted in no reward?

Fortunately, with outreach you can set the frequency from the beginning. You need to remember, in the first flush of game development, that over the long term you will not be able to sustain a quick pace. When a new channel opens, developers, community, and marketing staff alike are enthusiastic with dozens of ideas for content. Write it all down, and pace yourself. The devs will eventually have their noses against the grindstone, and will not want to hear the words “dev diary” for weeks. But if you post a dev diary every Thursday for three weeks running, your first missed Thursday will be greeted with cries of “Vaporware!”

The real challenge is the forums. Have you heard the old saw about newlyweds and jelly beans? They say that a newly married couple should get a jar, and put in one jellybean for each act of marital affection shared during the first year of marriage. After that first year, the couple removes one jellybean for each act.

The joke, of course, is that the jar will never be empty. If you substitute “developer post” for “marital affection” and “pre-launch” for “first year of marriage,” the same joke applies all too often.

A community professional’s goal is to make sure that the jar empties out in the same amount of time that it took to fill the jar. Developer posts should be limited, and doled out on a regular schedule. Most posting should be in the hands of those who will be responsible for posting post-launch. Those people can be held accountable a lot more readily than someone who will have other tasks.

But most importantly, players should be able to set their clocks by your posting regularity – because that sense of dependability and trust will transfer to the product. Just don’t post five times a day, because you’re in it for the long haul.