Bob Holtzman is a consultant in the video game industry. He's worked with a variety of teams, including Riot Games, Kerbal Space Program, and Nexon doing communications, PR and community management.
Bob joins Crystin to chat about the importance of media coverage for live service games; why game developers need to involve influencers and streamers in their development process; and how to manage difficult conversations with your players. He also provides 5 important guidelines for effective community management.
This episode is brought to you by Azure PlayFab.
Visit https://www.playfab.com for all your LiveOps needs.
Bob Holtzman is a consultant in the video game industry. He's worked with a variety of teams, including Riot Games, Kerbal Space Program, and Nexon doing communications, PR and community management.
Bob joins Crystin to chat about the importance of media coverage for live service games; why game developers need to involve influencers and streamers in their development process; and how to manage difficult conversations with your players. He also provides 5 important guidelines for effective community management.
This episode is brought to you by Azure PlayFab.
Visit https://www.playfab.com for all your LiveOps needs.
00;00;05;00 - 00;00;06;14
James Gwertzman
Hello. I'm James Gwertzman.
00;00;06;14 - 00;00;09;23
Crystin Cox
I'm Crystin Cox. Welcome to The Art of LiveOps podcast.
00;00;14;13 - 00;00;16;24
Crystin Cox
Today we're going to be talking to Bob Holtzman.
00;00;16;25 - 00;00;36;04
Bob Holtzman
I'm Bob Holtzman. I am a communications person in the video game industry. I've worked with a variety of teams, including Riot Games. I got to work on Kerbal Space Program, worked at Nexon, currently am consulting with Timi Studio Group, Azureus, Aftershock Media Group and Nexters.
00;00;36;04 - 00;01;01;25
Bob Holtzman
Bob and I actually worked together many, many moons ago at Nexon, but he spent the last 15 years doing communications, PR, community management and anything really that involves talking about games to a variety of audiences. Bob's been doing it, and he spent his whole career really working in LiveOps games for companies like Nexon and Riot, and now he actually does consulting for a number of different companies.
00;01;01;27 - 00;01;05;03
Crystin Cox
I'm excited to get to chat with Bob, so let's get right to it.
00;01;10;26 - 00;01;42;07
Crystin Cox
I was excited to have you come on, because we don't actually get to hear that much from people who work in communications, even though that's such a huge part of the LiveOps space and such a big component of what it means to sort of operate a live game. So I wanted to start just giving hearing a little bit about how you ended up working on live games and LiveOps games and what that experience was like sort of getting into that space.
00;01;42;25 - 00;02;09;12
Bob Holtzman
So I'm a little bit different than a lot of the people in our industry because I've almost only worked on live games. My first job in the industry was at Nexon back in the late 2000s. And when I first kind of heard about their business model, which if you're not familiar, is, Hey, we're going to offer the game for free and then you can buy stuff in the game.
00;02;09;13 - 00;02;31;15
Bob Holtzman
Sometimes it's called free to play, sometimes it's called the microtransaction model, but it's generally this idea that you're going to kind of build up an affinity for a game and then choose to spend money. It really clicked with me because I grew up in the arcade era, and I remember what it was like to say, Okay, I've got $5 worth of tokens or quarters and you know, I'm going to pick and choose some games.
00;02;31;15 - 00;02;45;00
Bob Holtzman
And then if a game really like draws my attention, I'll stick with it and I'll spend a lot more of my tokens on that game. Free to play was like one better. It was like, I don't even have to put the token in. I can just try it, and if I like it, then I can choose to spend money on it.
00;02;45;00 - 00;03;15;01
Bob Holtzman
So for me, I didn't have this like preconceived notion of boxed product or spend a bunch of money on a game. And it was really just this idea that, you know, if a game's good, you'll probably want to spend money on it. And if they're going to let you try it, that's a pretty great value for players. And then, of course, I learned about what it meant to run that model, and I think that's where live services comes in.
00;03;15;15 - 00;03;53;16
Bob Holtzman
And, and that is a little bit of a different communications cadence. Now, I tend to work on public relations, media relations, and community management, but there's also player support. Some of the production teams get really involved in communications depending on how a team is set up on the development side. And you know, in places like Riot, we worked you know, I spent at least half of my time there supporting developers who wanted to talk directly to players about their questions and sometimes even proactively communicating stuff that mattered to players.
00;03;54;09 - 00;04;27;24
Crystin Cox
And I remember you know, back working at Nexon, how challenging it often was to figure out how to talk about this experience we were creating with people who were maybe not active players because it really felt like we didn't fit in to the established cadence of what it meant to talk to press or talk to potential players, where there was this idea that, well, first you like build up the idea of a new game and then you get excited about it.
00;04;27;24 - 00;04;49;01
Crystin Cox
And there's this big moment where it launches. And we were like, Well, we're always launching. We're always putting new things in like, how in the world do we get people to understand this story? And I remember it being really challenging when in there in the 2000, early 2000 when we were a Nexon has it. Has that gotten better?
00;04;49;02 - 00;04;56;09
Crystin Cox
Do you think there's a better understanding at this point of all you had to talk about it ongoing experience like a LiveOps game.
00;04;56;21 - 00;05;37;13
Bob Holtzman
So this is something that I've been kind of toiling over in the last couple weeks, and I don't want to sound too negative, but I think it depends on your audience. I think players get it, you know, especially players who spend a lot of time in games. I think the media get it. I don't think they always know how to integrate it into their work and so you still have a situation where you'll have these live operations games and they're going to get maybe a fraction of the attention of, say, like a big single player experience.
00;05;37;13 - 00;05;58;07
Bob Holtzman
Like Elden Ring is super popular with media right now, and I'm sure it's I haven't touched it yet. But I'm sure it's a phenomenal game and deserves every bit of coverage. But the media tend to take kind of the opposite approach with live services still, in my opinion, they kind of wait. And then if the game's really big, they'll start to figure out, well, how can we cover this?
00;05;59;19 - 00;06;23;20
Bob Holtzman
You know, I always think about League of Legends is a great example of that, where the media kind of panned it when it came out. You know, this is before I worked there, but they put it in a box. They launched a box product. I think through THQ, if I remember correctly. And a lot of the people that I worked with at Riot, you know, still kind of remembered how the media they didn't feel like the media really understood the game and mistreated it.
00;06;24;02 - 00;06;52;00
Bob Holtzman
So you have like almost two frames, two mindsets that you'll see people take in live service games and games as a service. And the first is this idea that, you know, well, we need to get the press because they're going to like help validate us and help us build trust. And so we're going to like just, we're going to keep pushing that boulder up the hill no matter what, you know, by hell or high water sort of.
00;06;52;16 - 00;07;13;17
Bob Holtzman
And then there's the other group that's like we're just going to focus on players. And when the media are ready to pay attention to us, it'll be because they have no choice. And that's a great place to be. But for most game developers, they need to be in the first camp and they need to kind of just continually try to impress on the media how important it is to cover their game.
00;07;13;24 - 00;07;30;17
Bob Holtzman
And that's a tough place to be. It can be very challenging. So I don't think it's changed a lot. You know, even in the 15 years I've been in the industry, I think the one thing that's changed is the media understands this is the most important model now for the industry as a whole.
00;07;31;01 - 00;07;47;20
Crystin Cox
Yeah. And so there's a little bit of a weight there because of it. But then I think that also makes me think a lot about and we worked on games that were sort of the second route, what I would call like the grassroots route that just says let's just build a grassroots support for the game and then the media will come.
00;07;48;01 - 00;08;24;25
Crystin Cox
To be honest, often the media did not come even with great success. It just didn't really fit into that cycle. But what did come was a sort of different kind of communication vector, which was streaming and influencers, which really was a huge pivot over the last ten years and certainly on some games I was working on at the time, we really did go from Oh you know, at some point, once we're really successful enough, media will notice us to Oh, never mind actually influencers notice us. Let's just go spend a bunch of time with them and figure out how to support what they're doing.
00;08;25;08 - 00;08;52;15
Bob Holtzman
So I remember we were doing stuff at Nexon. There was, gosh, I can't remember the name of it right now, but there was a specific channel on this like collective of Internet TV. How do I put they basically had a studio. Let me, let me just start from the top here. They had a studio in Hollywood or in L.A. on Wilshire, and they would record all these different shows.
00;08;52;15 - 00;09;09;05
Bob Holtzman
It was before YouTube and it was before Twitch, and they would record these shows and you could go watch the shows on the channel. I think it's called like Stream TV or something fun like that. And one of them was Coin-Op TV, and it was this guy who covered games. A lot of the shows were not about games.
00;09;09;05 - 00;09;32;02
Bob Holtzman
They were about all sorts of stuff. And some of them were just kind of just weird, wacky. What you'd expect to see from that sort of like DIY. We're going to make a video. Let's have some fun. And so we worked with Coin-Op at Nexon because I think he understood there's something here. I don't know that I like these games.
00;09;32;02 - 00;09;53;21
Bob Holtzman
I don't know that I play these games. But, you know, he likes Min Kim, who at the time was kind of the evangelist for free to play for all of North America. He, you know, someone I'm sure you and I both enjoyed working with And so Robert Welkner, who was the head of Coin-Op TV, the host would like bring Min on.
00;09;53;22 - 00;10;24;28
Bob Holtzman
I remember going to the studio and having Min interviewed and so I always kind of understood, like there were these, like, weird, nontraditional media outlets, even nontraditional endemic outlets. But I didn't realize how powerful and meaningful it was, especially for games that are going to be like trying to persist over five, ten, twenty years. Until I went to work on Kerbal Space Program. Kerbal followed Minecraft's business model.
00;10;24;28 - 00;10;50;20
Bob Holtzman
For those that don't remember, they came out in early access. They had a small game. They introduced it to a community. The community loved it. They said, Will you donate money? People donated money. Then they said, Okay, we're going to charge a little bit and they raised their price over time. And they ended up being one of the original early access games on Steam, which was, you know, from a business perspective, massive for them.
00;10;51;02 - 00;11;16;20
Bob Holtzman
And we started to really understand that Twitch. And this was back in like maybe 2013, 2014, somewhere in there. We really realized, Hey, this Twitch thing matters. And we didn't have huge numbers, you know, Kerbal was never like a top five game on Twitch, but we saw that players cared, you know, the existing community cared, and it was bringing people to the game.
00;11;17;01 - 00;11;36;15
Bob Holtzman
So, you know, there would be nights where I would just sit working at night after the kids and had gone to bed and my family had gone to bed and I would do work and I would watch. You know, there was one particular Kerbal streamer I really liked, you know, and this was back when there was like, music didn't pay attention.
00;11;36;15 - 00;11;55;05
Bob Holtzman
So he was always playing like AC/DC and like this great rock music. So I liked it half for that because I could work and listen to him and he had this encyclopedic knowledge of space programs. Like, he would start talking about the Russian space program as well as NASA and other space programs. I think he's like a Twitch partner now.
00;11;56;06 - 00;12;26;05
Bob Holtzman
And so that was when we really saw like that impacted in a different way. That brought trust to players And what we started to learn a little bit was that media brought trust to streamers. Streamers would say, hey, this is a game and a studio and a team I can trust because the media is validating that they're for real, that they're not going to be a fly by night operation and just shut things down or they're not going to mistreat their community.
00;12;26;05 - 00;12;40;08
Bob Holtzman
And that became really, I think, kind of an important two pronged approach. But you're right, some games and some teams could never get the media's attention, just like I'm sure some games don't get the streaming attention.
00;12;40;11 - 00;13;03;05
Crystin Cox
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I will say that was something that was really interesting to me. Working with streamers you just mentioned was it's really a two way street. You know, they are also looking understand, can I have a good relationship with this developer? Can I have a good relationship with this game? Will it be good for me to be associated with this game?
00;13;03;16 - 00;13;28;00
Crystin Cox
Like, what is the sort of community feel around the game? Does it kind of align with what I'm trying to do? And that was something that was really interesting in one of the last games that I worked on where we got very close with our streamers and sort of came to understand that they really also had a lot of concerns on their side about whether or not that's really worth their time and energy because they really have to kind of roll the dice on games.
00;13;28;00 - 00;13;51;09
Crystin Cox
Like a lot of times when they start looking at games, they might stream. Yes. It's sort of low risk to just start streaming something. But at some point, especially if you get very popular, you only have so much attention to give and you do have to kind of make those choices. How have you seen that relationship between developers and influencers change and like how do you sort of advise teams
00;13;51;09 - 00;13;55;21
Crystin Cox
you work on to try to build that kind of relationship with influencers?
00;13;56;11 - 00;14;38;13
Bob Holtzman
Well, it's changed a lot. You know, Kerbal was doing stuff completely organically. You know, streamers were coming to them saying, we like your game. We built a whole like... we built actually like a whole program where we would allow them early access to builds so they could create content and they could show it off before it went live to players and I got to be honest, I think today streamers have recognized their value and are now much, much more interested in having a marketing campaign approach to games, especially new games.
00;14;38;24 - 00;15;02;06
Bob Holtzman
And so you see on occasion when you know, there's like incredibly talented, smart, savvy influencer managers out there, you know, like, it's funny, I've never actually worked with her, but our, you know, our paths have kind of just missed. But like, you know, Ali Miller at Riot, she did the whole campaign for Valorant And you know, she's great.
00;15;02;06 - 00;15;29;20
Bob Holtzman
But, you know, I think that's a great example of where you can still do an organic campaign. But to your point and one of the things that she would probably talk a lot more deeply about than maybe I would because she worked on this campaign. But I think one of the things that you're trying to accomplish now with streamers and content creators is how do you bring them in earlier into the process?
00;15;29;26 - 00;15;56;02
Bob Holtzman
To gather their feedback. And that is your best organic approach. You know, Valorant did a great job. Apex Legends is a really well-known example where they kind of like surprise launch the game for the global audience that played it. But they had streamers testing the game, giving them feedback, playing with them, helping them improve the game for many months in advance.
00;15;56;11 - 00;16;21;11
Bob Holtzman
And so I do think there is this kind of interesting opportunity still on the organic side to build relationships with the right group of streamers in terms of what kind of game you're making. Valorant was kind of a perfect fit for what they did because it's a game that prides itself on being like the best tactical shooter from like a...what's the word I'm looking for here?
00;16;21;11 - 00;16;50;19
Bob Holtzman
Like. it is an opt... They're trying to optimize for the most competitive players. So things like tick rate and the art style of the game is very specific to what will make it most competitive and most, you know, competitive integrity, which is a classical Riot catch phrase about League. Same thing for Valorant. So that's one where it really made sense. Apex, different, you know, really fast and twitchy like I struggle to play Apex.
00;16;50;20 - 00;17;15;12
Bob Holtzman
I gave up quickly because I knew it would never be...I was never going to be fast enough to play it. But to answer your question, there's much more of a push on the influencer side to get paid. And for game developers who want to do it right, they have to get in very early with these streamers and content creators and really make them feel like they have an input and a say on the game before it goes live.
00;17;15;22 - 00;17;20;03
Crystin Cox
Yeah. And build that relationship right And that longevity is so important.
00;17;20;03 - 00;17;57;23
Crystin Cox
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00;17;57;23 - 00;18;26;08
Crystin Cox
Welcome back. You're listening to the Art of LiveOps podcast. Today, we're talking with Bob Holtzman. We're talking about everything having to do with communicates, from influencers to community management to how to navigate difficult conversations with your players. It's been an interesting conversation so far, and I'm excited to dive right back in.
00;18;26;08 - 00;18;53;01
Crystin Cox
And influencers are also such a huge part of community at this point, right? Like, you know, watching people play the game that you love is now also such a huge part of being involved in the community. And so there's an element to it that's also about your community growth strategy and like how you want to build community and what kind of, what kind of community you want to have for your game.
00;18;53;05 - 00;19;25;01
Bob Holtzman
That's a great point, right? Streamers all have kind of their own little attitude and, and you know, they're going to attract different types of people. So I'm not I'm not playing a ton right now just because, you know, life busy, but I'm a very... I'm a pretty passionate PUBG player on PC. I think I have like right at 1100 hours played it's by far the most I've ever played a video game and I play a lot of solo, but I'll play with friends if they're willing to play it.
00;19;25;16 - 00;19;39;22
Bob Holtzman
And I always think about when the game was at its peak in terms of popularity. I would watch Shroud play because for me it was like watching somebody do something in that game that I can't do myself,
00;19;39;22 - 00;19;40;11
Crystin Cox
Right.
00;19;40;11 - 00;19;51;26
Bob Holtzman
And so I was less engaged with his community and more engaged with just his talent. I do think most people watching streams are the opposite of me.
00;19;51;26 - 00;20;12;00
Bob Holtzman
I think they are like watching for funzies, but really they're more for like the collective moment and games have to be careful, I think, because, you know, you talked about what kind of community you want. The kind of community that you want for your game is just different than what a streamer will want for his or her community.
00;20;12;01 - 00;20;39;24
Bob Holtzman
Some of that is the nature of what is a streamer and what is a game as especially game as a service. They both want long lasting communities, but it's kind of like, you know, I'm a big music fan, you know, kind of grew up in that Gen X where rock bands mattered age group. And so it's kind of like you have your punk band that's your streamer, and then you have like your arena rock band that's like your game as a service.
00;20;40;03 - 00;21;04;03
Bob Holtzman
Do they have overlapping communities? Absolutely. I listen to, you know, a lot of DIY punk bands and I listen to, you know, some bigger arena rock bands as well. But how you want to be perceived is very different. You know, the band that's going to get up on stage, you know, at the Rose Bowl wants to be seen as these like technically talented musicians, whereas the DIY band doesn't really care.
00;21;04;03 - 00;21;06;17
Bob Holtzman
They just want you to have a really good time at their rock show.
00;21;06;17 - 00;21;06;29
Crystin Cox
Right
00;21;06;29 - 00;21;41;00
Bob Holtzman
So you know, I think that's something that you have to keep in mind as you're working with streamers where their community will sometimes take on some of your community's habits, and sometimes to the detriment of your community and sometimes vice versa. The other part that I think is really important to remember is that for streamers and for content creators to really be effective parts of your broader community, strategy, you have to let them be who they are.
00;21;41;01 - 00;22;00;04
Bob Holtzman
You can't try to like impose upon them the way you would a marketing agency or an advertising like traditional advertising. So that means you're giving up a little bit of your control and it means you're giving up a little bit of the voice that you may want to have towards your audience.
00;22;00;04 - 00;22;25;16
Crystin Cox
Yeah. And that, I think, feeds into the larger question about how to do community management for ongoing games. Because when you have something that is not a service, like when you have something that's sort of a consumable piece of entertainment, you really can construct this like very beautiful, intricate narrative that has a beginning, middle and end for like launching it and talking about it and releasing it out into the world.
00;22;26;06 - 00;22;44;05
Crystin Cox
And for LiveOps games, I often when I work with my teams now, I'm always talking to them about You have to let youself let go a little bit of your perfect picture of exactly what's going to happen because your community is going to form. You have influence over it. You have quite a lot of influence over it, but you don't control it.
00;22;44;05 - 00;23;20;22
Crystin Cox
It might go in a number of different directions. And I still think you see some tension here. I still see some developers like get upset if, you know, like a streaming audience is enjoying like you, maybe some bugs or some unintentional things that are happening inside of their game. But it gets pretty complicated, I think, when we start talking about where you want your game to go and what kind of updates and changes you're going to make to your game and how much you should let the community, whether it's part of streamers communities or just your community that's existing on your Discord channels and your forums guide you.
00;23;20;27 - 00;23;49;18
Bob Holtzman
So it's really funny. Somebody I worked with at Riot, we worked pretty closely together, and he was a big believer in frameworks. And I remember like I had to kind of have him just be like, Yeah, I've heard that word, but what does that mean? And, you know, he and I kind of would talk about it and and once he kind of like just like refresh me on a definition of frameworks, it's like this broader structure that you can kind of apply to whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.
00;23;50;01 - 00;24;15;20
Bob Holtzman
It really helped me better understand what I like to do and when I approach community management and community strategy and more broadly, communications, you know, for me, I have kind of a framework for what I think of modern communications. I think there's kind of five things that you should try to hit, and it's that, you know, you need to be fluid because that's just the way we are today.
00;24;16;13 - 00;24;36;25
Bob Holtzman
Yes. I worked at a newspaper once upon a time. No, that is not how people accept communications any longer. Right. Like the newspaper is static. It's in your hands and it lasts for a day. That's just not how it works anymore. I mean, most stories on the Internet get edited maybe several times in the course of a day. There needs to be transparency.
00;24;36;26 - 00;24;58;00
Bob Holtzman
I think that is, you know, part and parcel for community management. You know, if you are not being transparent, your community will know and they will hold your feet to the fire for it. And that is not comfortable. You know, I can think about the first time I had to try to write like an apology letter for a developer who I will not name.
00;24;58;14 - 00;25;16;07
Bob Holtzman
It was hard and it was unfun and no one liked it. No one knew the right tone. And it's because well, there was a lack of transparency up to that point. And if there had been transparency, it becomes easy. Hey, this is what we've been doing. You knew about this, we messed up. This is what we're going do to fix it.
00;25;16;08 - 00;25;36;05
Bob Holtzman
But we couldn't be transparent. The third, which is one, you know, back to my newspaper roots, it's hard for me still to this day. It's one of my biggest challenges is being visual. We are just much more visual today than ever before. And I think one that developers struggle with is and this is what I try to push a lot is consistent.
00;25;36;10 - 00;25;48;10
Bob Holtzman
Yeah. Modern communications are really consistent. And if you don't have that consistency, it creates these gaps and your audience will fill them in how they want to fill them in.
00;25;48;11 - 00;25;49;03
Crystin Cox
Yes. Oh yeah.
00;25;50;07 - 00;26;13;02
Bob Holtzman
And nobody wants that. The audience doesn't even want to do that. They just they have no choice. So be consistent. And then the last one is be empathic, right? Like you have to, you have to be open minded. And that is just, you know, I think something that for some people is really intuitive. For some people, it's hard. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.
00;26;13;09 - 00;26;39;09
Bob Holtzman
But the more you can use your empathy and put yourself in the shoes of a player, the better, you know? Riot's taken a lot of heat for some of their cultural missteps. But one thing I always appreciated and respected and I learned even before Riot was you've got to put yourself in the shoes of a player and try your best to understand why something is frustrating them or making them happy.
00;26;39;09 - 00;26;43;02
Bob Holtzman
And that empathy component, you have to show that in your communications.
00;26;43;11 - 00;27;13;13
Crystin Cox
And I think people who work with community and communications have such a tough challenge here because, you know you have to do that but your developers also have their own things that they're worried about, scared about, upset about. And sometimes those things really run counter to each other in ways. You know, one thing that comes up a lot with teams I've worked with is anxiety about talking about monetization and we can say, I totally agree with your tenets, right?
00;27;13;24 - 00;27;27;28
Crystin Cox
We should be transparent. We shouldn't leave gaps for people to fill in is the big pet peeve of mine. Don't come out and say, we're going to do something with monetization. We're not going, but you can't see it. You don't know that we can trust us. It'll be great. It's just going to turn into a lot of speculation.
00;27;29;16 - 00;27;54;27
Crystin Cox
But you can say that you got to be transparent, you got to be empathetic. But also the developer is also thinking, Well, but I have my things that I'm scared about and worried about, and I need these things and I see so often how hard it is for people who work in communications to try to navigate. Okay, yes, you have all these valid concerns, developer, but the player isn't necessarily going to share those concerns. How are we going to deliver this message to them?
00;27;55;05 - 00;28;38;12
Bob Holtzman
It's such a great point. That is, and you're really touching on something that I think is kind of a carryover from the old ways of our industry, and that is that developers kind of get to release something when it's done. I'm using air quotes here. And even on the communications side, it's easy to fall into that trap. One of the things that games as a service like one of the benefits of games as a service, if you allow it and you're and you are being fluid and you're listening and you're being consistent, is that if you make a mistake, you can correct it.
00;28;38;12 - 00;28;59;25
Bob Holtzman
It's not like, you know, like let's use Cyberpunk as an example, right? Like if Cyberpunk was a service game, it probably wouldn't have mattered that, you know, it took them a year and a half to make it good. They would have marketed the game differently, they would have talked about it differently. They would have let people know, Hey, we're going to be buggy but they didn't.
00;28;59;26 - 00;29;22;05
Bob Holtzman
Right. They're like, we're this big iconic blockbuster triple-A game. And when you sit down to play it, you're going to get, you know, you have that expectation. But I think sometimes developers and communicators forget that all it takes is another blog post, another tweet to course, correct. All it takes is a patch to fix the problem.
00;29;22;17 - 00;29;43;29
Bob Holtzman
And the sooner and the better you get at accepting that not everything you say will be beloved and not everything you say will be right, the better off you are. And that's a hard... that's a hard one. And I don't think it's just for developers and I've been in the role consulting now for, gosh, you know, four years.
00;29;44;12 - 00;30;01;20
Bob Holtzman
And that's one of the things that I have to remind myself because sometimes you know, you get in the room with a client and it's really easy to tell them all the things that they shouldn't do or should do and why. And sometimes they come to you and they're open and they're honest, like you said, and they share their fears.
00;30;02;00 - 00;30;21;17
Bob Holtzman
And you...you're being empathic. You now feel their fears and you go, Oh, my gosh, how are we going to manage that? You kind of have to, like, step away from that and say, look, I get it. It's going to be scary. It's going to be tough, but we're going to go in this path. We're going to say, these things, and if we're wrong, then we're going to course correct.
00;30;21;17 - 00;30;54;21
Bob Holtzman
And it's almost when you don't course correct and you kind of get stubborn that's where you really run into problem with games as a service. There's a couple examples from my career where I've had to kind of, you know, hold the line, you know, and it's hard. And the one I use all the time and you know, I don't think it's pretty old, so I don't think I'm like breaking any NDAs or anything was Kerbal Space Program moved their mod repository from kind of a website to a service that was provided by a third party.
00;30;54;26 - 00;31;34;20
Bob Holtzman
And that third party wasn't super popular with the community, but we believed it would be better overall for modders to have it there. They had better tools, you know, long term it would be better. That third party just had some some lack of trust. And so now here we were fighting for this third party and literally fighting. There was like a good two weeks where I had to go into IRQ with, you know, with some of the biggest modders in the space into the forums onto well, I don't think Reddit was picked... was caught up too much, but, you know, and I had to sit there and kind of defend this decision that we'd made
00;31;34;20 - 00;31;58;08
Bob Holtzman
as a team. And you know, and I doubled down on it. I made the mistake of like, here's an infographic showing how popular it is. And it was like, you know, the rage that I got back for that. And looking back, I thought that was a terrible idea. Why am I trying to, like, promote this, this idea that this is so great when I know there's this really vocal core part of this community that's very unhappy about it?
00;31;58;08 - 00;32;12;02
Bob Holtzman
You know, hindsight, 20/20. I would have never done that. I would have maybe shared those numbers internally with that group and said, hey, look, this is why we're doing it. I want you to see these numbers. I'm going to share them with you. You know, we're going to listen to your concerns. We're going to keep supporting you.
00;32;12;11 - 00;32;29;19
Bob Holtzman
But, you know, I kind of made it like a public thing. Yeah. You know, thinking kind of like a PR person, right? Like, oh, we got to promote how successful this new project is and not respecting the community, not being empathic and, you know, being transparent, but maybe in not the best way.
00;32;29;22 - 00;32;53;23
Crystin Cox
Yeah, that's so hard, though, right? Like oftentimes with LiveOps games in your community, any conversation you have with your community, you just don't want to ever be on the defense. You don't want to be defending because it's so hard to remember this though, but you really have all the power in this relationship. It doesn't feel that way. It feels like players have tons of power.
00;32;53;23 - 00;33;16;18
Crystin Cox
We say some, sometimes we complain and say they're entitled. But the truth is, you make this thing that's an important part of their lives. It may be a part of their identity. It's incredibly important to them, and they have no direct control over it. And they really live in a world where you can make decisions that destroy that part of their lives and they don't really all they can do is complain.
00;33;16;28 - 00;33;38;26
Crystin Cox
It's the only, their voice is the only thing they have. And so I try to remind people to frame it that way when they want to get defensive. You realize, like, how is this going to come off being defensive to people who are really who feel very powerless if you come out so strong and say, no, you're wrong, I'm going to like debate you like this is we're in a courtroom and prove that you're wrong.
00;33;39;06 - 00;34;08;12
Bob Holtzman
It's just a...It's kind of a futile approach, right? Because even though you're going to win the argument, you lose and your team loses and your game loses and your community loses. And so when things like that happen, you know, my approach these days is much more to be open minded about it, right? Like to go back to this idea of, hey, look, this is a service and if this is not working, we'll change it.
00;34;09;05 - 00;34;41;03
Bob Holtzman
League of Legends, champions are like the passion around them is so palatable. People spend thousands and thousands of hours playing one champion. Right. And trying to master this champion. And when, you know, somebody on the development team decides that they're going to just nerf that champion, it can be crushing. And so it's important to remember, like, hey, these things have to happen and you as a player have to respect that.
00;34;41;09 - 00;34;45;11
Bob Holtzman
But if you're not transparent about that, that's really, really hard for players to accept.
00;34;45;11 - 00;34;55;24
Crystin Cox
Yeah. So they were running out of time here. But I have our last question. A question we ask everybody on the show, can you share a LiveOps disaster with us?
00;34;56;05 - 00;34;58;22
Bob Holtzman
Well, I feel like I kind of just did.
00;34;58;27 - 00;35;08;10
Crystin Cox
You kind of did. Yeah. Like I will say that that one is a good one for communications, just, you know, getting in there and being like, nah, we're doing this.
00;35;08;17 - 00;35;29;13
Bob Holtzman
Yeah, it was I mean, it was something that I still think back on. As, you know, I tend to be a believer that you actually learn more from wins than losses, but that's and, you know, depending on how you look at it, you can argue, oh, it was a win because the numbers were better and the product worked really well, but it was a loss.
00;35;29;13 - 00;35;45;17
Bob Holtzman
And I do look at it as a good learning for a loss. I'm trying to think of another example. You know, I mean, I think the other big one that I was involved with a little bit at Riot was they changed how queuing worked.
00;35;46;09 - 00;35;47;04
Crystin Cox
I remember this.
00;35;47;08 - 00;36;14;02
Bob Holtzman
Yeah. And so I was working on the player relations team at the time. And another great example of where you're like trying to tell players the way things are when they are experiencing something very different and queuing and the way people expected to queue and become, I think pretty entrenched. And so trying to make a big change had very good intentions.
00;36;14;02 - 00;36;40;05
Bob Holtzman
Like the idea was, hey, people like to queue with friends and the idea was trying to encourage more play with friends. But what happened was at like the really high levels of play. Like, you know, you're talking like that challenger level, they're queue times got absurdly long because the way the matchmaking had been changed was preventing them from finding good matches for them to play.
00;36;40;06 - 00;36;40;15
Crystin Cox
Right.
00;36;40;15 - 00;37;07;20
Bob Holtzman
And I think that was ultimately what triggered the realization that they had to roll back that change and full credit to that team I was involved in the hard part early on where we were trying to explain the why and, and what and why we were going to keep with it. You know, full credit to that team on the development production side for going through the pain of that and, you know, really affecting how players felt at the time.
00;37;07;27 - 00;37;24;24
Bob Holtzman
And saying, okay, we're going to roll it back, which they ultimately did. And I think players were not happy that it took as long as it did. But you know, hindsight, 20/20 there probably would have been more of a this is a trial and less of a this is a promotion, right?
00;37;24;29 - 00;37;44;16
Crystin Cox
Yeah. I mean so many things in LiveOps. I'm always talking to people and saying, can you do it as an event? Can we do it as a limited time thing first just to see how it goes? Because we can always make it permanent later. But it's a hard lesson right, because you get to the point where you're like, I know it's going to be so great,
00;37;44;16 - 00;37;46;09
Bob Holtzman
Right. Yeah.
00;37;46;09 - 00;37;53;12
Crystin Cox
This has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing these insights, especially about a topic that I think we just don't hear enough about.
00;37;53;14 - 00;38;01;09
Bob Holtzman
Thank you for having me on. It's like any time I get a chance to chat with you, it's like a huge learning opportunity. The podcast is great.
00;38;01;14 - 00;38;02;18
Crystin Cox
Do you want to plug yours?
00;38;03;01 - 00;38;27;24
Bob Holtzman
Yeah. I also host the Community Feedback Loop, which is a podcast that really digs into these communications and community issues. Great having you on it to talk about some of the live service elements last year and we're looking forward to getting a second season, you know, talking to different people in the industry about what are the challenges that we're facing with communities and different communications opportunities.
00;38;28;00 - 00;38;37;26
Crystin Cox
Yeah, it's such a great podcast and I definitely recommend people checking it out because, you know, it's so awesome to listen to people who are really experts in that area just talk craft.
00;38;38;03 - 00;38;58;20
Bob Holtzman
It's definitely like talking shop inside video games instead of inside baseball, but it's a lot of fun if you're interested in community management, public relations, media relations, influencer relations. We've been really fortunate to have some phenomenal people, you know, share their experiences and their thoughts in this space.
00;39;03;03 - 00;39;05;17
Crystin Cox
Thanks for listening to the Art of Live podcast.
00;39;05;17 - 00;39;10;24
James Gwertzman
If you liked what you heard, remember to rate, review, and subscribe so others can find us.
00;39;10;24 - 00;39;15;13
Crystin Cox
and visit PlayFab.com for more information on solutions for all your LiveOps needs.
00;39;15;22 - 00;39;16;17
James Gwertzman
Thanks for tuning in.