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Published as part of our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz's widely-read weekly newsletter, the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial, is a weekly dissection of an issue weighing on the minds of the people at the top of the games business. It appears on Eurogamer after it goes out to GI.biz newsletter subscribers.

(Editor's note: Since this editorial was written, Blizzard has reversed its decision to force gamers to use Real ID on its forums.)

Game companies are no strangers to strong opinions from their customers, but even Blizzard - a firm accustomed to howls of outrage whenever it makes a change to World of Warcraft - may have been taken aback by the speed and passion of the response to its plans to enforce "Real ID" on WOW's community forums.

The company's intention is to try to drag discourse on the forum back to some measure of civility by attaching everyone's real names - which Blizzard has access to thanks to their billing relationships with their customers - to their posts.

The company's intentions are obvious, and unquestionably good. At present, posters on the Blizzard forums use their in-game names, which creates some semblance of a reputation for each poster - but it's an imperfect system, at best, as evidenced by the speed with which many topics can descend into abuse and unpleasantness.

Changing to a real name system would, at a stroke, ensure that players are attached to a single identity, removing their ability to anonymously abuse or troll other users. It would force people to think about the possible consequences of what they were writing, now that it was attached to their real names - to ask themselves whether they really wanted a future employer, doing a quick Google search, to turn up abusive tirades on a gaming forum, or worse, racist, sexist or homophobic statements.

The operator of a popular BBS I used well over a decade ago employed a simple phrase as the basis for many of his moderation decisions - "you own your own words". It was simultaneously a refusal of unnecessary censorship, and a warning to those who might otherwise be censored; with permission to speak, comes responsibility for the consequences of your speech.

Blizzard's intent, no doubt, is to bring that fact home to its posters, stripping them of the anonymity which seems to bring out the worst in many gamers and internet users in general - as summed up rudely, but depressingly accurately, in a famous Penny Arcade comic strip some years ago.

This may seem like a bit of a storm in a teacup to many in the games business - an interesting footnote to the slow and tortuous development of the relationship between game companies and their customers, at most. It is, however, indicative of a much wider issue which the industry has, so far, shown little enthusiasm for tackling.

As games evolve from being products to being services, the management of the relationship between company and customer is becoming one of the core functions of any games firm - whether they like it or not. Companies have understood for some time that a strong community can be an excellent PR and marketing tool. Some of the more enlightened firms are now realising that in the age of games as a service, a community isn't nice-to-have; your community is your game, it's your revenue stream, it's your lifeblood.

That means that cultivating, nurturing and ultimately policing that community is a central function for any firm operating a game service. At present, it's a function which is generally swept to the side. "Community manager" is a job title which has sprung up in the past five or six years at a host of companies, but few developers or publishers afford that role any importance beyond being, essentially, a low-level combination of PR and customer support.

That approach is both short-sighted and foolish. World of Warcraft is an extreme example, of course, but it's always been fascinating to note the combination of pride and discomfort in Blizzard's executives when you point out that their fantasy world has a much larger population than many decent-sized countries - over three times the size of Ireland, for example.

A population that size, interacting with one another, is an immense responsibility. Blizzard tackles it far better than most; it thinks about how its community works, where problems lie and how the company can change the structure of its community tools and services to improve things. Many other companies in the industry seem to believe that a few off-the-shelf forums and some low-paid staff members answering questions is sufficient. It is quite patently not.

As we evolve our understanding of games as service, one thing which will be crucial for progress is bringing community management closer to the core of game development and operation. A "community manager" needs to be much more than a PR flack for fansites and a forum moderator - while that role is still required, a much higher-level role is also necessary, someone who works with the design team to flesh out the objectives of the community, how it integrates with the game, how it is managed and policed, and so on.

The era of community as an afterthought must come to an end - any game which is to be operated as a service needs to have community planning right from the outset, integrated into its earliest design documents.

In this specific instance, Blizzard is struggling with inadequate community features, largely since thinking on community has moved on hugely since WOW's launch - and, of course, since the firm never imagined WOW growing quite this big.

It's those issues which have tripped the firm up, because despite its good intentions, Blizzard is making a huge mistake with Real ID. There is significant value to enforcing real names online, but only in very specific contexts - GamesIndustry.biz, to choose a relevant example, being a site where commenting and discourse is hugely improved by insisting on real identities.

Online games are not one of those contexts. While real names have their advantages, we must not forget that anonymity - or at least, pseudonymity - is also an extremely powerful and useful part of the internet, whose use is by no means limited to trolls and miscreants.

There are many, many people who wish to be able to participate in game communities but have excellent reasons for not revealing their real names. Women are a good example; many find the gender-free environment of online games liberating, and view with horror the idea of being "unmasked" (as indeed do a smaller but nonetheless important group of men). They are keenly aware that using their real identities online can create offline risks - the internet, for all its positive traits, has made stalking and harassment easier than ever.

Similarly, many people find self-expression in online games which they feel that they cannot enjoy in real life. The ability to create an identity for yourself which can be very far from the person you are in real life is often regarded with a certain morbid horror by mainstream society - the most common anecdote being the beautiful girl in a chat-room who turns out to be a retired builder called Jeff, or similar.

Yet when that person is a deeply repressed gay teenager from a conservative religious background who can express himself freely with his guild-mates in WOW, it becomes much more serious and much more important. When it's a young woman in an arranged marriage who can play games for a few days online and open up to people who will never know her true identity, just as she will never know theirs, anonymity becomes a lifeline.

These aren't examples off the top of my head, by the way - they're both people I have personally known and played online with. I never knew their real names, and I'm certain that had there been a risk of their real names being revealed, they would never have played the game.

With the enormous power and profitability of a thriving community comes a great sense of responsibility which few companies seem willing to shoulder. Many firms, even huge ones like Microsoft and Blizzard, struggle with the fact that their community - unlike their companies, perhaps - is no longer the sole preserve of straight white males. Huge numbers of women play online games. Their appeal spans every ethnic minority and even religious group. Anecdotally, I suspect that the percentage of gay people and other such minorities playing online is much higher than their percentage within wider society, perhaps directly because of the ability to be anonymous and avoid pre-judgement within game worlds.

Although the original decision Blizzard made with regard to Real ID is absolutely the wrong one, the company must be applauded simply on the basis that it is thinking about these issues and trying to come up with solutions. Most of its rivals are either ignoring this challenge, or making only a token effort to solve it - a poor showing for an issue which is already one of the key defining factors in a game's success.