3 Key Areas of Focus for Community Growth Making Your Community Your Best Friend To continue our report series on ​
How Gamers Impact Product​
, Red Fox Insights wanted to find a game structured around community involvement. A perfect example of this, is the location based,​
augmented­reality MMO, ​
Ingress​
. Ingress is “foursquare meets strategy”, with a goal to hold and maintain portals around the world. Portals are real world landmarks, pieces of art, or human achievement. Ingress is about exploring the world and experiencing the story of the Enlightened and the Resistance. How to Create a Community? Ingress is radically different from what players have come to expect from traditional and mobile gaming. It combines real world places of interest and has two sides fighting to control them. It’s as much a game that encourages exploration, as it does collaboration. One that encourages physical activity outside, rather than in being locked in front of a screen. This style of play appeals to a broad audience, including both gamers and non gamers. With its broad appeal, Ingress introduces a new challenges around creating and sustaining a healthy community. To help establish and grow a player base, Olga Garcia created and managed community focused efforts. Some of these included: ● Sponsoring and holding public events in cities throughout the world. ● Reaching out to the community “several times a day”, talking about things that mattered to them, like story and mechanics. ● Creating newsletters as a way to directly address frequent questions or areas of concern. These letters were seen all over the world and celebrated dedicated players or noteworthy events. These plans quickly paid off. Olga claims, “If you build a strong user base, even if it’s small, they will tell their friends it [Ingress] is worth their investment. We focused on the community, because that’s how the game grew.” With millions of players playing across the globe, battling for Portal control, describing the user base as “strong” seems accurate. How to Strengthen Community Relationships? Now, the world of Ingress has grown. Its gameplay is deep and the community; vast. However, talk of the Enlightened, capturing Portals and Exotic Matter can be overwhelming to new audiences and players. The new challenge shifts from growing a player base, into how to include a broader audience, using the community you already have. Olga describes her mentality while tackling this challenge, saying: “Our community was always our strongest asset...How do you involve your community? You have to talk to them, it's like having a friend who becomes a ​
best friend​
. You’re not going to become their best friend if you just occasionally reach out to them and say ‘Hey what’s up, I hope you’re well’. You have to make a concerted effort, an investment in that individual so you can go from the ​
Friend Zone to the ​
Best Friend Zone.​
The same thing goes with the way we approached our community.” Creating Instructors and Educators Members of Ingress’ community, with assistance from the team at Niantics, assumed specialty roles of ​
instructors​
or ​
educators​
. The encouragement, and efforts from the team made these players feel comfortable giving back. Early community efforts allowed Niantics to delegate a portion of the work involved in growing a community ­ into the hands of their players. These instructors and educators are established agents, that while playing Ingress, would take it upon themselves to create and host events in their home towns, or dedicate themselves to teaching new players how to get involved. The Ingress community was equipped to grow their own player base based on the conversations and frequency at which they engaged with the Niantics team. For example, Niantics ran Saturday Events. These are held on the first Saturday’s of the month and are dedicated to helping new players get acclimated with Ingress and its community. Growing this confidence allows new players to work towards attending events and tournaments, and being more comfortable integrating with the player base. 3 Keys to Community Growth People of all ages, gamers and non­gamers flocked to this new experience. Members of the Niantics team, and veterans of the game would ensure these new Agents were brought up to speed. A focus on growing and supporting a community is important to any experience, particularly Ingress, which is unplayable without one. The keys that empower and sustain community growth are: ● Engagement ● Instruction ● Recognition These three areas leverage community and help cement long term success. Various tools are needed to execute on the ideas of community growth and support. Olga described some of these tools, and the ways they were leveraged during her time with Ingress. Google+:​
Was used by community organizers and instructors. This platform also more easily introduced new player to other local Ingress Agents in their hometown. Management Material:​
Olga would often provide materials on how to host an event. In the material, she would answer logistical questions about crowd size, location and even vending. These materials were beneficial internally, but flourished as they were shared with the Ingress community. This knowledge allowed the community to learn how Niantics ran events, and answered questions that prevented them from doing their own. Leaderboards​
: Niantics created leaderboards for community members and events. An important part of community driven games, leaderboards ensured that the Agent’s efforts didn’t exist in a vacuum. This visibility encourage competitiveness that can drive a community to engage more heavily. By engaging, instructing and recognizing their fans, Ingress was able to take a new game idea and cultivate a community of gamers and non gamers from it. As Olga describes it, “It’s about their[fans] experience. The more you invest in their experience, the more they’re going to invest in playing your game, as well as bringing their friends.” Understanding these three keys will ensure that gamers invest as much in your game, as you’ve invested in them. As a result, their influence over the product will help guide the game into a long, healthy life.