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Maybe you need to play better games then...
WarGaming Developers are always in WarGaming Steam Forums... World of Warships, World of Tanks, etc.
Maybe not "Large" ( and I don't know what you mean by "small" )
Heroes & Generals,
VRChat
Developers are often seen in their respective Steam Forums as well... In fact Heroes & Generals which started online and only then moved to Steam shut down their "official" Forums and now only is on Steam Forums...
I guess it depends on the Developer... some Developers just don't want to correspond I guess.
lol, I unintentionally forgot Facebook.
The two games you mentioned I looked up
RETO MOTO has 25 employees, based in Denmark
Playful Corp has 21 employees, based in USA
vs just 2 examples from my experience; and nothing against these studios, they're amazing
FromSoftware has 332 employees, based in Japan
Guerrilla Games has 360 employees, based in Netherlands
That's probably it. Once they hit a certain number of devs in their studio.
The problem then becomes... ( and I agree ) bigger doesn't mean better doesn't it... like I said,
"it depends on the Developer... some Developers just don't want to correspond I guess." but then again that's with any big company from Disney, Nike, YouTube, McDonald's, etc....
The more a Developer has to lose the more they pay attention... bigger Developers don't care if they lose hundreds if not thousands of players by not corresponding and "smaller" ones do.
Small devs I feel like use the steam forums like 50% of the time. Although in general I feel like the steam forums are horribly underused by the community in general (dev/gamer alike).
Playful Corp has their own game hub moderator, JoJo.
Retro Moto just handed Development off to TLM... but Developers Hadies and Umbra were always around from Reto Moto in the Steam Forums.
Playful Corp just handed Development off to.... someone... but Developer PlayfulDavid was always around, as far as JoJo goes, she's been MIA for months now and was only a Mod not a Developer... Entuland is actually a Developer and is in almost every Thread posted.
Smaller devs and indies tend to have smaller fanbases and appearing approachable and interacting with their fans is, proportionately, very effective.
However...
The honest truth is that the larger or more popular a game gets, the more likely open, direct, interaction with the fanbase can create a minefield. Properly handling communication between developers and their customers is the specialty of the Community Manager's position.
(Added:) If a developer stumbles into a situation on the forums where they end up being exposed to some bloodthirsty crazy person that is so very angry their favorite idea isn't yet in the game, what do they then have to do? Ban them? Well, that'll go over well, huh? Talk to them? That's not going to work. Tell they why they are wrong? That's just going to result in crap-show. It's a no-win scenario. It's a trap.
If an indie gets online with their smaller fanbase, their risk is lower because they have proportionately more ability to affect a change in disposition. Five fans can diffuse one irate gamer by showing support. But, if a AAA design lead gets online and says one thing that they believe is true, but may not actually be in the final release, that's fifty-eleven hundreds of fans rushing out to quote them and then throw poo...
Also - Any "Roadmap-like" thing any developer communicates to their fanbase is not a list of planned features. It's a list of Failure Points that will be tracked by every fan that reads them. I think any detailed Roadmap any developer puts out is a risk they've created themselves.
This presentation is outstanding and is from the much beloved indie "home garage" developer type that gamers often love: Spiderworks Software developer Jeff Vogel. (The equivalent of the wise-man on the mountain coming down to advise neophyte game developers just starting out.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs
Look at 29:00 thru 32:30 for the pertinent bit.
Who posts on forums? Do all customers post on forums? What percent and who... posts?
Most of the time, it's the vocal minority of game owners that post on game forums. Despite the bajillions of posts in a game forum, they're mostly just those who can't contain themselves and must absolutely tell everyone about it.
Some are technical issues that they've found no guide for. Those are legit reasons and they have no other place to go. But, the rest? A huge number of complaints that may or may not be valid, some compliments, some strategy talk and advice to others and... that's about it.
Forums are there to satisfy the need of a select few game fans to feel as if they have "connected" with the developer and/or "community." That "community" bit is an important inducement for a gamer to become a "fan." But, it's not really that important, overall, when weighed against a developer's image in the wild.
One thread headed by an irate fan who is upset because the developer changed the color of a pair of shoes in the game can turn into a crapstorm that ignites a fire that spreads out into the wild, hits reddit, births five other similar complaint threads, then makes it to the front-page of Kotaku. If a developer had stepped into that initial thread and had debated the matter with the OP, it'd have spread faster.
The most active threads are rarely complimentary. How many innocent indie devs can withstand the constant assault against the project they truly love because some adolescent is so angry their favorite character, which nobody else ever liked, has had their facetime cut? Someone's angry at the Universe because can't get the game to run because they feed their mouse cheese?
Indie devs often feel the need for supportive engagement from their fans. That's fine. And, they can grow their fanbase because of that. But, they can also be crushed, too. A certain amount of distance needs to be kept between fans and a developer in order for them to be able to work effectively.
Larger studios don't read their forums. They've got better, literally, things to do than parse posts in forums looking for something meaningful. They hire CMs to do that. And, that's how it should be. If they have 100+ employees, they need to be devoting their times towards making an efficient work environment and keeping a good development schedule, ironing out problems as they can. It's largely a waste of time for them to interact on game forums.
Most forum contributions, suggestions, and developer content requests are worthless from the point of view of a developer.
Fans rarely have the faintest clue how the game works, what the mechanics are, how the code is structured, or what the actual intent is of a developer working on a game. They will, however, think their contribution is the most important thing, ever. Why? Because they felt so very strongly about it that they showed up on the forums and created a thread about it... There can be very rare occasions where a gamer does come up with something worthy to say. But, finding it? Hunting through fifty tons of complaints and useless suggestions? That's a lot of time and requires a very thick skin.
Take a look at how many players are playing a popular game. Go look at that game's Steam Forums. What threads do you see and what are the most active ones about?
That is why developers don't directly interact on forums unless they absolutely have to or feel a personal need to do so.
Note: Some games are different in this respect. MMOs and heavy online games, for instance, already have those people logged in or they're used to doing so. And, developers there want those fans playing the game because "players are content." They'll cultivate that "always online" audience to keep their game alive and to solidify the feeling of "community."
PS: I interact on game forums for games I like. And, I still agree with all of the above. :)
It's not that those bigger studios aren't 'up with the times' of things like Web2.0, reddit or Steam Forums -- they actively choose not to for reasons I'll probably never know.
wow. i'm floored. this isn't an ad, I prevented all free to play games from showing up on Steam so this is my first experience with them: https://www.reto.dk/
That's too bad...
There are some great free to play games out there... they get a bad rep and get grouped together but some are quite awesome.
https://i.imgur.com/WMmLBFQ.png
Thanks. Not clipping out of disrespect, but to indicate who I'm replying to.
He's right. The one thing I thought about, why are some devs in reddit but not steam forums, why does steam forums have the rap that it does. Anyone can figure it out if they asked those questions. Look at Elden Ring, most popular steam forum atm I believe, a couple weeks ago I saw 15 threads on page 1 that were "Just Now", and that "Just Now" continued onto page 2.
That could be too much in order to get your post read, and it might take a dozen or so to read it before it's replied to. Then the patterns learned for that poster of what's needed to get their thread being discussed. The patterns those that participate in that thread become invested in the issue and will want to discuss it further. It creates like a culture around the popular threads. Then, in order to get attention and replies is exactly how he states near the end of that clip you mentioned.
These people getting banned, might not be who you think would be bannable, perhaps they just wanted someone to talk about what they wanted to talk about, nobody did, so they learned what's needed to get people to talk about what they want to talk about, found what people are talking about and finally was able to talk to others regarding what they posted. It might not have been what they originally wanted to talk about, but they've learned, and "beat that game's first boss". Over time they'll learn how to create threads to start conversations about what they originally wanted to talk about and will eventually "beat that game".
reddit. in some sub-reddits it's like a functional meme pinterest, like you have to create a meme in order to start a conversation. For game sub-reddits, are the meme's more centered around gameplay when compared to steam forum threads? yes they are. for that reason, i originally thought that's why a dev would favor reddit over steam forums. (to add, some sub-reddits are bad, like r/eldenring. if you want to discuss gameplay or get info, you really have to create a meme)
A lot of what you said is why I love the 2017 Devolver @ E3 (clip starts at 11:02, the jokes make sense by watching the whole thing and remembering 2016/7 E3's meme was saying 4K over and over).
Thanks for that courtesy! You're doing "internetz forumz" right! (Kudos on your edit note in the OP, too - That's the way!)
Honestly, Steam is filled with children and adolescents in high volume. That's it in a nutshell when comparing these forums to a lot of other social media. "Restraint" is not included as a forum switch in the Steam Dev Kit...
I don't visit a lot of "official" subreddits. They're largely just canned public announcements with very heavy-handed moderation, as they should be. A properly managed one won't have a lot worth reading, though some very "high profile" posts may get attention. Why? Ignoring or silencing them could be worse.
That was awesome. :) She's good! She came out like the standard "Crowd Fluffer" and then nailed it. Is she on the dev team or an actor? Whatever position, she's not getting paid enough. 10/10 :)
Something that has to be acknowledged: The game developers, publishers, and distributors created this whole thing... It's their monster.
"Community" is "$$$$". Everyone used to talk about a player becoming engaged with the game or their character, but now it's about extending that to "real life." That's where the big money is, after all, so publishers/devs/distributors push the "Community" thing and do so only to promote player attachment to the product, the developer, the platform and sometimes the "game."
This is how "whales" felt about their favorite addiction. It wasn't a game, it was some real-life connection they felt with it. "Whales," very high spenders first really discovered in gaming with things like Zynga games and the like designed to predate on them, got special treatment. They had their own little groups, heavily supported by the developers, and just like in Vegas, felt they got their own special perks that made them feel special... 'Cause money.
A game forum serves much the same purpose. The gamer posts, sees their post on the forum of their favorite game and all the graphics and visuals that tell everyone that their post was an "official fan's pro-gamer awesomesauce post directly supported by their awesomesauce game developer." Aaand, they're hooked. They'll be buying the next game. :)
Development has already taken 70% of the budget that by the release most companies want put a plug on the drain.