Twitter has been a good home for the games industry. Not just for gaming companies and brands to directly communicate with fans but also more generally for developers, journalists, and gamers to simply keep in touch. But at this time of seismic change on the platform, it’s a good time to evaluate and re-evaluate the other channels that play a key role in game industry communities.
When I first started thinking about this piece, ‘X’ as a social media platform didn’t exist. Indeed, this gets straight to the heart of my point: social media is changing. It’s fair to say that Twitte- sorry, X… hasn’t been the most stable platform in recent months. With the ‘whack-a-mole’ appearance of each competitor comes rumors of a mass community exodus to a rival. Although there is still much to learn about the impact platforms like Mastodon, Blue Sky, and Threads will have on community building, change is certainly happening.
That’s not to say I desire a collapse of Twitter/X by any means. At Ultra, we continue to use it as a core marketing channel: a valued method of keeping our community members (and new users) informed of our latest updates and launches. It’s also important for Ultra as a conduit to crypto-curious communities, as our ecosystem straddles the games industry and Web3. Nevertheless, I want to talk about some additional platforms beyond X and its peers that we can use to further engage our communities.
Community Cohesion
Forum platforms such as Discord remain a reassuringly stable counter to the ever-changing algorithms, policies, and rebrands of thread-based social media platforms. As a community manager, I work on four basic principles: ‘Engage,’ ‘Grow,’ ‘Moderate,’ and ‘Mediate.’ For me, Discord supports each one brilliantly. We currently have more than 11,000 Discord members on our own server, and every individual has made an active decision to participate in our community. But why do Discord servers succeed? They’re a hub of like-minded individuals who can engage in conversations not only around your own game or platform but also wider topics; indeed, we’ve seen our own community discuss upcoming game releases outside of our own PC gaming ecosystem. Encourage these conversations, and your community members will keep coming back not only to speak with each other but also to be first in line to hear new announcements or exclusive community offerings.
Indeed, these communities are immensely valuable in generating ‘hype’ for your company. There’s no set way to measure it, but the number of emoji reactions on a game reveal or platform announcement can give a pretty good ballpark of how excited your audience is. In fact, this excited frenzy can be a great way to encourage your members to ‘evangelize’ outside of your own server. Certain members of your community may have the ability to share custom-branded emojis across Discord servers. We’ve incorporated a bunch of custom reactions into our own server, including the faces of our co-founders (yes, really), to be used in emoji form. Having your community share your brand’s logo or iconography with new communities is a great way to reach new audiences.
Keeping Connected (within reason)
In addition to Discord, Telegram is another effective channel to keep communities updated and bring players together. But being hyper-connected to your community has its challenges, too. A community manager’s identity is intrinsically tied to their employer. They’re the face of an organization, no matter the time zone. But there are ways to manage this dilemma. First of all, remember to ‘switch off’. Community managers have a temptation to make sure all is well at all hours of the day – but community management needn’t be a solo effort. By introducing helpful bots to a channel, automation can be a great initial barrier to reducing offensive language and spam. For international teams, consider bringing in other members of your marketing team as an admin to monitor any potential issues within a community. And finally, trusted members of your community can become valuable moderators to make sure the conversation is friendly and on-topic. This sense of responsibility will be met with pride by moderators during community and product growth. But in turn, be sure to reciprocate the appreciation – moderators are volunteers, but there are still ways to offer a token of thanks. At Ultra, we offer our moderators beta game access, exclusive giveaways, and bonus referral commissions. We also recently introduced our official ambassador programme to help make the communities of creators and influencers more familiar with Ultra.
Supporting Fan-Driven Communities
It’s also worth keeping an eye open for fan engagement outside of official brand channels. Anyone has the ability to create a subreddit or fan page. Whilst Reddit has limits to the level of activity a company can have in a subreddit, there are still ways to get involved. Countless brands have offered giveaways or question-and-answer AMAs on their fan-run subreddits. For a growing fan site, the opportunity to interview a member of a company’s team could mean a lot for a site owner and be seen by an engaged fanbase. For us, it’s been an honor to see fan-run communities such as Ultra Times, Ultraislife, and Ultra4Life spring up and show their never-ending support and passion for Ultra!
And finally, remember the importance of directly establishing a community within your own game or project. Whether it’s a AAA high-budget MMO or an up-and-coming Minecraft server, initiatives such as ranks and leaderboards can be used to celebrate and reward long-standing players. That’s something Ultra is building out with its ‘Ultra Prime’ app, keeping our community firmly in the loop with news and events.
There’s a plethora of ways to expand your brand’s audience and create personal connections with your community. Exploring new avenues of community growth doesn’t mean that existing channels need to be neglected. Quite the opposite. Building up various communities is a great way to encourage cross-platform growth, and they needn’t be siloed. For instance, a social post on ‘X’ can direct your audience to your Discord community. In contrast, a subreddit post from a trusted community influencer may prompt new users to explore your platform. It’s a virtuous cycle that continues to build momentum and growth for your brand.
Patrick Walbaum
Lead Community Manager at Ultra
