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You know what you guys really need, Riot?

mi ramfan·3/19/2014, 2:21:04 AM·11 votes·1,858 views

A press secretary for the community.

No, I'm serious. I know it sounds like The Beard 2.0, but hear me out.

There's a reason President Obama doesn't come out every other hour and give a press conference in the White House Press Room. The obvious reason is that he's got a big job, what with running the country and all. Another big reason, and the reason I'm talking about here, is that people, when improvising or working from a sheet of information that they've been handed, sometimes have trouble saying things that are politically correct on the spots. Sometimes they misspeak, and when they do, it's in all the newspapers (or all over GD) the next day. That's why most large companies and most politicians have somebody to talk to the press for them, who's trained in how to respond properly without implying anything they shouldn't or making a massive splash that derails the discussion.

You guys need someone to sit on the community website (and maybe on GD until it's fully phased out) and just...answer questions. Keep whoever you choose up to date on what all the different teams are working on (that obviously isn't NDA restricted stuff like internal playtesting reworks), so they can answer questions reliably and accurately. The end result: there'll be no leaks from developers on stuff you don't want leaked (because presumably team heads will control what info the community secretary has access to) and the community will feel more like you guys are promptly responding to concerns.

In fact, not only will having someone filling the "community secretary" role make you appear more open to the community, it'll make appearances from the higher up Rioters more special. People will be more willing to hear out Rioters who aren't the community representative (who may end up tanking community aggro for a while if you don't give them info to respond to questions) and maybe won't rain downvotes upon them if they say something they don't like, because if the community secretary is doing their job very little will just be dropped on the community. We'll know what's going on enough to have patience, and if there's a consistent balance problem (like pre 4.4 Kassadin), we'll know that you are actually working on nerfing them instead of it looking from the outside like you aren't doing anything and are letting a champion be banned in 99% of matches because of LCS stability.

It's not as if you've never done this before, Riot. A while ago you had the infamous Beard, who generally only posted canned responses that only served to inflame the community. The Beard was essentially this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0GGNAbFU5M (4:30 long, you'll live GD)

What you guys need is someone like Griftrix, RiotDamiya, or IronStylus in this role. They've got senses of humor, they're familiar, and they're fairly popular with the community because of both the former traits and their openness with the community in what they knew was going on. Now, obviously, they have important jobs to be doing...but find someone like them. Find somebody who's the closest thing to IronStylus who's not in a leadership role, and start them doing this instead.

The community (and Morello, who seems to be Riot's tank at the moment) will thank you.

EDIT: RiotGradius' post on the GD version of the thread:

That's the thing though, this goes against what we believe in as Rioters. We're supposed to be the ones on the forums chatting with our players. We're supposed to feel empowered to make posts about the subjects we're knowledgable on. I agree it feels like there are times when we're not talking as much as we should, but this is an iterative process, and we're trying to get better at it. I personally am trying to talk more on the NA/EU/OCE forums when I feel like I can provide valuable insight or enjoy a playful post with you all.

Rioters posting on the forums should not be viewed as something super special that only happens every now and then. It should be a common event. Those at Riot who post on the forums do it because they love to talk to you, and genuinely care about the community. We do it because we are aiming to be the most player focused gaming company, we want this to be about you guys.

In terms of leaks and NDAs, every Rioter goes through various classes to learn to distinguish between what should be said and what should not be said. It's up to us as a team to prevent leaks from happening internally. Sometimes things slip, and that sucks, but it's better than not being able to post on the forums except for "approved posts."

tl;dr - Rioters should be posting on forums, not some talking head that's approved by the communication manager. We're all empowered to say whatever we feel is reasonable, and this is better than restricting that communication.

My response:

If anyone at Riot didn't want to post on the forums for whatever reason (scared of internet backdraft, too busy, whatever) but there's a pressing issue related to their department, the Community Secretary could follow up instead of them. This has no impact on the ability of other Rioters to come on the forums and talk with us whatsoever, other then allowing Rioters who would rather have no interaction with the community (come on, you guys are a big company, there's at least 10 or so of you if not more that are introverted or just don't want to come on GD) to not interact with the community, while allowing the people who really do enjoy interacting with the community to do so.

12 Comments

MrMilkManiac3/19/2014, 8:15:24 PM6 votes

So let me weigh in my two cents...

What if I told you insert morpheus face here that there are lots of Rioters who browse the forums every day looking for places to engage with the community and answer questions.

Its not so much that we dont have people who want to answer every question, its that a lot of the questions can't be answered for various reasons:

  • No definitive answer. A lot of the questions that are asked, we're still trying to figure out ourselves.
  • Sensitive information. Often times for security purposes we can't cue you into what's going on. Its not that we're ignoring you, its that sometimes its actually in the best interest of the community to not have certain information available to the general public.
  • Expertise. A lot of information we provide should come from the people who work the closest with it. If we did have one person whose job it was to ask the "experts" to provide answers for the community, they would be a jack of all information, expert of none. They could provide a basic answer, but not a satisfying conversation. If a person cannot hold up a conversation about what they post about, they are doing the community a disservice (imo).
  • Commitment. If we say on the forums that something is going to happen, and things change, it sucks for everyone (Think magma chamber). Sometimes we wont answer questions because any answer we give cannot be 100% accurate, and we cannot commit to anything.
RiotPWYFF3/20/2014, 7:41:52 PM6 votes

I just realized how difficult it is to have group-focused discussions on here, but I'll bite. I'll be approaching this from a personal stance! Rather than specifically talking about your suggestion (sorry!), I'd like to highlight the difficulties (or problem space) of communication.

Specifically, communication that scales is probably one of the most difficult things we face, especially given our constantly growing player base.

Where before you could hop into a Ventrilo channel to talk with the devs about your latest grievances, these days our players are so spread out that it's hard to have a personal conversation that doesn't exclude the 99.9999%. That said, Riot's relationship with their players was what initially attracted me to the scene, and it's something I love as a concept.

MilkManiac hits some great points about subject matter expertise and sensitive information, but I think ongoing commitment is a fun topic, so I'll just dive into that. The fact is, we're dealing with players and player communication on such a scope that the 'edge' cases go to the hundreds of thousands of players who can take control of the conversation. If a hundred thousand players are passionate about one single topic, and you magnify that times a thousand more, you end up with huge mobs of players who are rarely, if ever, satisfied by singular question and answers.

There's also the problem of global scale where a majority of our players actually don't speak English as a first language, and one of player relations' (the team I'm a part of) jobs is to develop a globally scalable form of communication. Scale is insane though, and it's a huge pain point for us. I find myself constantly saying this: if our player base was 100, you'd have the most communication ever. If our player base was 100,000 I still think that'd be manageable. But our player base is... big. Very big.

Final point: people can get very mean very quick, and it drowns out any form of logical discussion. The problem with public rhetoric is that it very rarely defaults to who has better points - it's usually who can appeal to the masses faster. This requires some incredible levels of discussion moderation expertise and it's usually a "born with it" concept rather than a trained up one.

But at the end of the day, none of this is an excuse. I agree with you that our communications have gotten so high-level that we can't communicate nuance and we're losing connection with the ground floor. Granted, there are millions of players on the ground floor and sometimes you wonder if it has an effect, but it's an ideal that Riot (and I) embrace.

I disagree with the idea of creating a communications middle-man who is only a messenger - I think the core ideal of Riot (and a lot of Rioters will say this is what attracted them to the company) is that those who work on the project should also be allowed to talk about it. Game Design is probably the most nuanced and minefielded discussion forum, but I think we're committed (now more than ever, trust me) to figuring out how to work with it on a less "globally scalable communications solution" level. Be patient, but I hope you trust us.

Hinagiku333/19/2014, 3:10:14 AM3 votes

I suggested this a looong time ago. They still need someone like this. And it isn't just a person who knows absolutely everything that's going on, it's more than that.

Community: Hey Riot, what's up with Kassadin? We're banning him every game because he's ridiculous.

PR Guy: I've been seeing this a lot. Can you tell me what specifically you're having problems with while I find out if someone is already working on him?

See? Not too painful. Even though he/she didn't know if Kassadin was being worked on, they opened a dialogue to get feedback and bought some time to find out the answer and get back to the thread after finding it.

There are a lot of excellent Public Relations people out there who know how to handle people, and more importantly the public. Come on Riot, all the cool corporations are doing it!

Sir ArmaMalum3/19/2014, 3:35:39 AM2 votes

If such a guy existed/comes along I would have the utmost respect for him if he does even slightly well. I think we can all agree that the LoL community has it's (somewhat large amount of) bad apples. Anyone who takes a stab at tackling the LoL community directly and as a whole would have his/her work cut out for them.

Unfortunately one issue I can see with this (still agree overall) is that this can create a sheeple effect. i.e. users going to hypothetical guy/gal instead of looking for an answer themselves. I myself have had some experience of trying to make a post answering questions (DDoS attacks, yada yada) and showing it around to help, but there are still people who jump to immediate questioning and expecting an immediate answer before even thinking. Not a dealbreaker, and there are ways around this, but food for thought. :)

Dragonheart NA3/19/2014, 5:53:49 PM1 votes

Here is a list of all the jobs at Riot --> http://www.riotgames.com/careers

Seriously, I totally agree. Having one voice and coordinating the teams to bring one consistent message would do a lot for the company in my opinion. I would add more but I totally agree with everything you said. When you have a community as large as this such a popular game, having one or more people acting as a community liaison will bring tons or benefits and much more respect as a company. I have worked in IT and project management for 25 years and know how frustrating things can be for people when they feel they are not being heard or understood. Communication is 'key'.

GhastlyGhoulMan3/19/2014, 4:48:23 AM1 votes

I agree with this idea. It would definitely help keep things (possibly) from spiraling out of control from hate all the time. :P

Grandmaster IMI3/21/2014, 7:21:18 AM1 votes

Have you considered this idea, anyone? http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/site-feedback/mFtRxFln-idea-developer-support

ViCanFistMe3/21/2014, 8:50:12 PM1 votes

I volunteer as tribute for this place of honor for Riot. Riot, hire me and use me as fodder!

ParinoidPanda3/23/2014, 3:26:13 PM1 votes

I concur that Riot should have a dedicated representative on the forums. As much as Rioters are indeed on the forums, there is no way you each individually can catch and respond to the numerous discussions, questions, and complaints, much less do so repeatedly when multiple threads get launched with already released info. You guys are indeed on the forums a lot, but there are times when having a mediator on hand would alleviate some tension.

Case in point, the recent Skarner disaster. Scruffy did good in staying on the forums, but the big disconnect was that he didn't really address concerns. A mediator would have been appreciated in this case to let us know our concerns were being reviewed, but couldn't be considered. This would have relieved Scruffy of having to respond to every post.