Community Chest

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.