作者：Howard Tsao

三年前，当我们发行了名为《伊卡罗斯之炮》这款在线团队协作蒸汽朋克式飞船战斗多人游戏时，我们并未想到到今天我们还会继续更新并支持这款游戏。当时的发行遇到了非常强烈的飓风天气，并且我们还遭遇了服务器坍塌且我们都不知道该如何去管理在线游戏社区。当时我们的游戏已经离Steam畅销游戏榜单的顶端很近，但是突然间许多人都不能通过Steam的认证（游戏邦注：因为飓风Steam出现了严重的服务器问题）更别说连接到我们的服务器上了，所以这场飓风带给了我们巨大的重创。我们甚至不知道还能否撑过第一周。

Guns of Icarus(from verycd)

在过去三年里，我们的服务器充斥着TotalBiscuit等youtuber。在某种程度看来我的睡眠时间真的很少，我总是处于一种半意识状态。但在这一过程中我们也学到了一些有帮助的东西。

我们从第一次粗糙的发行中学到的第一件事便是，玩家会注意到除那些与游戏相关的直接问题外的其它开发问题。不管这是否是局域网设置，防火墙，反病毒程序，VPN，恶意软件，ISP或者其它与Unity或Steam相关的问题，玩家都会因为无处可去而找到我们。作为开发者，我们总是希望将游戏发行作为重点。但结果证明我们与游戏的预期交互时间与玩家的交互时间是不相符的。这便是我们作为一支团队必须感受到的第一种心态变化。即我们意识到游戏发行后的过程比发行前和发行时更加重要。

一旦玩家来到游戏中，我们便不再只是开发者。我们也将变成服务代表，不管我们是否愿意。一旦我们意识到这点，我们便需要快速去做两件事。首先我们需要明确服务对于我们来说意味着什么—-我们该如何提供服务，我们该提供什么程度的服务以及我们需要遵守什么原则。还有一件事便是创造一个进程，一个支持库以及一个信息基础。

服务模式

对于一款付费下载游戏，玩家将一次性付完钱并且想玩多久就玩多久。Steam上的独立游戏的价格通常是在10美元至25美元之间。通常情况下如果游戏价格越高，游戏服务就会更优质。举个例子来说吧，如果我我花钱使用FedEx去运送包裹，我便会期待能获得比USPS更棒的服务（及不需要太久的等待，运送更可靠，方式更有效，包装更好看等等）。所以这里的挑战就变成我们该如何在玩家不希望花太多钱的前提下提供给他们优质服务呢？

于是我们便开始着眼于不同服务产业中的业务。我想到了台湾的一家小笼包店鼎泰丰。过去它还只是巷子入口处的一家典型的社区饭店。但在几年后他们经过不断扩展，集中业务并系统化服务而摇身一变成为一家国际性连锁餐厅。从定价来看，他们家的价格是人们能够接受的，但同时又比快餐店或路边小吃定价更高。从食物来看，他们家的料理远比其他竞争餐馆更美味。他们家也是台湾唯一一家获得米其林评级的餐馆。

去鼎泰丰吃饭通常都要排很长的队，但是你可以在排队的时候点餐。当你有位置时食物便会在几分钟内出现在你的桌上。而你所提出的任何需求，包括儿童餐椅和餐具等都会得到包括餐馆工和经理在内的所有员工的满足。

在研究了他们餐厅的管理和服务后，我们发现一件重要的事—-他们只遵守着一些原则而并未被大把的规则所束缚。他们的管理很灵活也很人性化。没有人是躲在规则背后的，所有人都需要行动起来。总之比起束缚于规则，他们主要是基于原则办事。如果要总结他们服务的原则的话，我们想到的便是速度，友善和赋权这些词。所以下一个问题便是我们该如何将这种类型的服务应用到自己身上。

速度对于我们来说便是玩家提供反馈的周转时间。我们决定尽量在36小时内回复玩家，如此我们才能长时间坚持这一目标。我们同样也决定以适当的速度去浏览每个玩家的评论和反馈。而不管多难或多受挫，友善都是一项必要元素。但是这会随着玩家反馈数量的增加而变得更加困难。所以我们要想办法去给予那些能够帮助我们的人奖励。为此我们将与玩家维持积极的合作关系。

社交系统

为了提高速度，我们需要一个系统和一个过程。游戏设计和系统本身需要支持我们的社区管理和服务原则。而《伊卡罗斯之炮》是一款需要团队协作的游戏。因此交流系统将是重中之重。除了能够促进船员和船长以及船长间交流的分层语音聊天频道外，我们还添加了国际性语音指令。即在我们的服务器结构中，来自世界各地的所有人都可以处于同一场比赛中。我们拥有一个全球性聊天功能能让所有人在游戏中看到彼此并展开交流，这一功能可以帮助我们提供给玩家有效支持并呈现给他们全新的社区活动。

我们创造的另一个系统是Applaud。我想到了被当成多样社区的高中。但是我发现它虽然具有多样性，但却不能算是真正的社区。人们自成派系，在这里很难将大家聚集在一起。还有像我女儿所上的小学。这里没有太多社交经济多样性，所以算是一个和谐的社区。而我注意到这里存在的区别便在于那些通过深思熟虑所做出的事。举个例子来说吧，在我女儿的小学中每周都会有次小礼拜，即关于宗教与文化的庆祝仪式。在礼拜期间，孩子们可以自愿上台并向大家分享带给自己积极影响的同学或朋友。这种小小的行为很重要。我们便可以从中获取灵感去设计一个让玩家能够提名其他具有运动精神和资格的玩家。而我们每周会选择被赞赏的人并将其公布在论坛上。不管是“被赞山的人”还是“赞赏对方的人”都将获得来自游戏的道具奖励。

对于我们来说这种正面的强化非常有效。我们大概收到了6万多的玩家报告。在执行Applaud系统的前3个月，我们收到了超过3万的玩家赞赏人选。

Kick是我们最常收到的玩家请求功能。但是我们却从未去执行它。在游戏中，玩家总是会感到紧张并发脾气。在一款需要团队协作的竞争性PvP比赛中，获胜会让人兴奋而失败则会让人受挫。当着眼于玩家的各种报告时我们发现，基于不同看法，玩家对于trolling行为的定义也不同。就像当一个工作人员正在努力做最后修复时一个飞行员可能会控诉对方没配抢。这种情况是很难分辨孰是孰非的。而即使我们执行了kick功能它也不能帮助我们解决这种矛盾并可能导致更多trolling行为。通常情况下朋友间总是会聚集在一起。如果我们执行了votekick功能，那么船上落单的那个人便最有可能被踢出去。尽管我们努力去缓解讨厌的情况，但是在胜利与失败的边缘这种类型的玩家争议是很难缓解的，而kick功能也只会让情况变得更加糟糕。

支持方法

游戏中的社交导向型系统让我们能够鼓励玩家间积极的社交互动并第一时间了解到问题的出现。为了提高服务速度，我们需要有效管理玩家反馈并将其整合到我们的生产线中。一开始我们是通过游戏，社交媒体，论坛，Steam聊天平台，Skype和Kickstarter等方式与玩家进行交流并回复他们的反馈。我们同样也尝试了一个QA报告网站。但最终我们却很及时难追踪所有的内容并给予所有人回复。于是我们便决定简化这些工作。

我们让玩家将自己的问题发邮件到一个支持邮箱中。在那里我们中的一些人将承担回复责任，我们也将在支持库的帮助下尽可能地解决更多问题。而对于那些需要我们帮助的问题，我们也会将其分享给其他团队成员。每次当我们需要解决一个之前未曾遇到的问题，我们便会将其添加到一个共享文件中并将其发布在FAQ中。就像我们便曾花一整个下午的时间与一个玩家共同发现一个损坏了UDP数据包的特殊路由器模型，这一发现也帮助了许多遇到同样问题的玩家。关于玩家的看法，我们都会将其与我们自己的看法整合在一起。

我们会去追踪每个玩家提出的问题的属性，对于那些需要执行的漏洞和功能问题，我们会进一步罗列出来并将其整合到短期计划中。

我们会在每次冲刺时审核玩家的看法，而一旦我们决定使用他们的理念，那就不再有玩家的理念和我们的理念之分。好理念就只是好理念。

在过去3年里，我们回复并浏览了超过3万篇Steam论坛上的文章，超过10万篇我们论坛上的文章以及5.1万封支持邮件（总共达到了24G）。我们也基于玩家的反馈执行了超过1200个功能修复。最初管理这些工作需要花费我们大量的时间和精力，并且有可能影响游戏开发进程。幸好我们在一开始遇到了许多充满热情的玩家愿意帮助我们。我们也因此将志愿加入项目中的玩家组成“社区大使”。他们将接收服务和教授任务，即将描述自己在游戏中的体验，关卡经历，过去的体验调节以及游戏社区管理等经历。我们会基于玩家资格以及其他玩家的推荐去选择这些玩家。一旦玩家加入了这一项目中，他便等于成为了我们团队中的一份子。我们将允许这些玩家提供新手教授，并给予他们在游戏和论坛中一定的权利，即他们可以主持不同的版面。我们还会开启道具生产系统让他们能够奖励游戏中的其他玩家。

我们希望保证这些玩家的成功，所以我们会定期去训练他们，即会尝试各种不同的支持条件。我们同样也会与他们分享支持库。我们创建了与他们的群组聊天去保持交流。而这些玩家在游戏中也拥有不同的身份，徽章和头衔，所以新玩家在需要帮助时总是能够轻松地识别出他们。我们同样也会因为这些玩家帮助了我们而奖励它们，并且我们也会第一时间告知他们我们所做的事。这些玩家志愿者还将全权负责我们的一些展位，即他们将组织各种竞争性比赛。随着时间的发展，该项目中已经拥有超过100名成员，并且其中有超过50名的活跃成员。

服务意识

在过去3年里有很多时候我们想要善待别人的决心和意识在面对别人的厌恶时都会遭受到巨大的挑战。我非常尊重世界各地所有身处服务产业并尝试着做好这份工作的人，因为这真的不是件简单的工作。我认为成功做到这点的关键便在于正视它，并将其和个人生活区分开来。那些说了过分的话或作出无理要求的人也许他那一天经历了某些不好的事。而我们的回应既有可能鼓舞他们的士气也有可能导致他们更加沮丧。我们经常会在游戏中遇到这类型玩家。即当我们给予他们警告时，他们会误以为接收到临时禁令，并会对此感到愤怒并发邮件给我们。

最初在看到那些我用红色划出的内容时我真的很难接受。我不得不先离开桌位去缓解自己的情绪。当我回到桌位并平复下心情时，我便能够更轻松地面对那些我用蓝色划出的内容，即对方想要传达的要点。他表示自己花了辛苦挣得的钱购买了游戏。他非常喜欢游戏并赠送了3份副本给朋友。但是他误解了禁止警告。所以只要我能够理解问题所在，我便很容易对此作出回应。我同时也非常感谢对方帮助我去维护并发展社区，但同时我也提醒了他我们和Steam的使用条款和社区标准。也许该玩家从未想过我会回复他，但一旦我这么做了，他便会对自己帮助了我们的这一行动表示高兴并改变自己在游戏中的行为。我们遇到了蛮多这样的玩家，并且许多这些玩家最终都玩了好几百个小时的游戏。在超过6万份玩家报告中，我们发出禁令内容的情况只有4%。并且只有0.3%的情况是我们会发布不同程度的禁令。我们非常重视玩家辛苦挣得的钱，并且比起严格的监控我们更看重人道，而这种做法的确也非常适合我们。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

3 Years of Managing the Guns of Icarus Community

by Howard Tsao

3 years ago, when we released this online-teamwork-multiplayer-Steampunk-airship-combat game called Guns of Icarus, we didn’t think we would still have the privilege of updating and support the game today. We released in the middle of a hurricane, with servers failing and us having just about no clue how to manage an online game community. The game was near the top of the best seller’s list on Steam, and many people could not even get through Steam authentication (Steam was having server issues as well because of the hurricane) let alone connecting to our servers, which were also knocked out by the storm. We didn’t know if we would make it through the first week.

Over the last 3 years, we had our servers crushed by the mights of TotalBiscuit and other youtubers, and we’ve been ddos’ed. In one stretch I slept so little that, in semi consciousness, I ran into a door beam and got a concussion and a nasty cut, spewing nonsense in meetings that no one understood. Through it all, we’ve learned a few things that hopefully would be of use.

One of the first things we learned from a rough launch is that, players look to the devs for issues beyond those directly related to the game. Whether it was someone’s LAN setup, firewall, antivirus, VPN, malware, ISP, or issues related to Unity or Steam, players came to us because they didn’t have anywhere else to go. By in large, even with early testing, player interact with the game near, at, or post release. As developers, we had the mindset of looking at the release milestone as almost an end point. As it turned out, our expected duration of interaction with our game was grossly mismatched with the duration of players’ interaction. That was the first major mindset change we had to undergo as a team. We realized that post-release was arguably more important than pre-release and release.

Once players were in game, we were no longer just developers. We were service reps as well, whether we liked it or not. Once we realized that, there were two things we needed to do, and quickly. First was to define for ourselves what it meant for us to serve – how do we serve, to what extent do we serve, and what principles do we live by. The other was building a process as well as a support library and knowledge base.

Service Model

With a paid download game, a player pays once, and can play for as long as he/she would like. With an indie game on Steam, the price point generally ranges between $10-25. Typically, the higher the price paid, the more premium the service. For example, if I pay to ship a package with FedEx, I would expect better service than USPS (less wait, more reliable delivery, better forms, smoother and clean pens, nicer looking packages, etc.). So the challenge then became, how would we offer good service while players weren’t expected to pay as much?

We started looking at businesses in different service industries that would hopefully guide us. Then, this dumpling chain in Taiwan called Ding Tai Fung (鼎泰豐) somehow popped into my head. This place used to be this mom and pop place at the entrance of an alley, the quintessential neighborhood restaurant. Over the years, they expanded and expanded, centralized their operations, systematized their service, and exploded into an international chain. Price wise, it’s Chipotle plus, very affordable, but a bit more expensive than fast food or street food. Food wise, it’s incredible mouth-watering deliciousness that rivals any fine dining restaurant. It is in fact the only restaurant in Taiwan to have received a Michelin Star.

The line at the restaurant is usually really long, but ordering is mostly done in line. By the time people sit, food usually arrive within minutes. Any request, from highchair to extra utensils, can be fulfilled by anyone, from busboy to manager.

In studying their restaurant management and service, we realized one important thing – they are only governed by a few principles, and are not hampered and burdened by rules. They tended to say yes a lot and rarely said no. They were extremely flexible, personable, and fast. No one hid behind rules, and everyone seemed empowered to act. In short, they were principle driven instead of rules driven. If we were to deduce the essence of their service to a few principles, we thought they would be speed, niceness, and empowerment. The next question then became how that applied to us.

We decided that speed for us meant turnaround time of player reports or feedback. We tried to reply to everything our players threw our way within 36hrs as an ambitious goal, and we were able to by in large keep to that over time. We were also determined to read through and process every player report in terms of moderation. With niceness, that became a requirement regardless of how difficult or frustrating. With empowerment, a couple of us were trying to do it all, and that became increasing difficult as volume of player feedback grew. We therefore had to look for a way to scale the help and empower those who helped us to both moderate and reward. For this we partnered with our players.

Social Systems

In order to achieve speed, we needed a system and a process. The design and systems of the game itself had to support our community management and service principles. Guns of Icarus is a game where teamwork is required. The communications system therefore had to be at the core. In addition to hierarchical voice chat channels that facilitate crew-captain, and captain-captain communications, we also added voice commands for international speakers. Our server structure was one where anyone in the world could play in the same match. We have a global chat where everyone can see and talk to each other in game, and this turned out to be extremely effective for us to support players at the point of the issue as well as showing new players the activity of the community.

Screen Shot 2016-03-19 at 10.32.35 PM.pngBeyond core systems and features designed to foster teamwork, we looked to design and implement features focused on improving positive social interactions. From a simple one time thumb up for crew, captain, and opponents at the end of a game to incorporating new player teaching and commendations into clan progressions, we tried to model and reinforce positive behavior. For an entire clan to progress, members needed to crew with new players, to teach, and to give novice player commendations. This created tangible and meaningful value of novice players to veterans, thereby creating a social based leveling and reward system.

Another system we created was called Applaud. I went to a high school that was supposed to be a diverse community. It was diverse, but it wasn’t much of a community. People isolated into cliques, and there wasn’t much to bring people together. I look at my daughter’s elementary school. It is equally if not more socio-economically diverse, and it is one harmonious community. The difference I realized was in the little things made with conscious, deliberate effort. For example, every week in my daughter’s grade school there is a chapel. The chapel celebrates all religions and cultures. During chapel, kids would volunteer to go up on stage and announce a good deed by a classmate or a friend that affects them in a positive way. Those little gestures matter. Taking inspiration, we designed a system where a player could nominate another player for sportsmanship and citizenship and tell us about it. Every week, we selected “applauds” to post onto our forum. Both the “applauder” and the “applauded” would be rewarded with gifts of game items from us.

For us, positive reinforcement in this case was effective. In the history of the game, there had been about 60K player reports. In the first 3 months of implementing the Applaud system, we had over 30K applauds.

Kick, whether captain or vote, is one of the most often player requested features for us. Yet, we never implemented it. In the game, tension could arise and tempers could flare. In an intensely competitive PvP match that requires teamwork, winning can be exhilarating and losing can be really deflating. In looking at a significant number of player reports over time, we learned that, the definition of trolling for instance could be really gray, often depending on the perspectives of the players. A pilot can accuse a crew of not being on gun while the crew was trying to make a last ditch repair. These cases were far from black and white. Had we implemented a kick function, it would not have helped in conflict resolution and would likely have led to more “trolling.” Often friends crewed together. Had we implemented votekick, the odd person on a ship would have had little to no protection in case of a dispute. While we moderated obvious cases of hate, these types of player disputes at the margins of winning and losing were much tougher to moderate, and kick would most likely made the situations worse.

Support Methods

Social oriented systems in game allow us to encourage positive social interaction and deliver help at the point where issues first arise. To deliver speed in service, we needed a way to effectively manage player feedback and feed it into our production pipeline as well. In the beginning, we tried to reply to player feedback and issues wherever they were raised, and our points of contact extended from in game, social media, and forums to Steam chat, Skype, and Kickstarter. We tried out a QA reporting site as well. Ended up, it became hard for us to keep track of everything and getting back to everyone in a timely fashion. So we decided to simplify.

We had players email their issues to one support email. From there, a couple of us took on first responder duties, solving as many issues as we could, with the support library that we’ve been accumulating. For issues we needed help with, we then pulled in the rest of the team. Each time we solved an issue we’ve never seen before, we’ll add it to a shared doc and publish it to our FAQ. We’ve spent an entire afternoon with a player to discover a particular router model corrupting UDP packets for instance, and that discovery ended up helping quite a few players with the same issues. For player ideas, we logged them together with our own.

We tracked the status of each player’s issue, and for bugs and features worthy of implementation, we specified them further and fed them to our sprint planning.

We reviewed player ideas every sprint, and once we decided to pursue them, there was no longer a difference between player ideas vs. our ideas. A good idea was a good idea.

Over the last 3 years, we replied to and reviewed over 30K Steam forum posts, over 100K posts on our forum, and 51K support emails (totalling 24GB). And we implemented over 1,200 features and fixes based on player feedback. Initially, managing this volume took significant amount of time and effort for us, fracturing development. Early on, we were fortunate to have quite a few passionate players who wanted to help beyond merely playing the game. We decided to formalize player volunteering into a program called Community Ambassadors. The program had a service and teaching mission. We formalized an application for the players to describe their experiences in game, experience levels, and past experiences moderating or managing game communities. We selected people based on citizenship and other players’ recommendations. Once someone was a part of the program, the person was empowered to act and, to a large extent, became a part of the team. We allowed them to be in novice matches to teach, gave them moderation functions in game and on forums, where they moderated different boards. We opened our item generation system so they could reward people in game.

We wanted to ensure that they succeeded, so we held regular training with them, going over different support situations and cases. We also shared our support library with them. We set up group chat with them as well so we were constantly in communications. They also had distinct status, badges, and title in game, so a new player could easily identify and find them if help was needed. We also rewarded them for helping us, and they got news and updates about what we do first hand. We’ve had show booths completely manned by player volunteers, and they host most of our competitive tournaments. Over time, the program grew to over a hundred members, and over 50 are active at a given time.

Service Mindset

There were plenty of moments in the last 3 years when our mindset and resolve to be nice in the face of hate were challenged to the core. I have all the respect in the world for everyone in the service industries who tries to do a good job. To serve is a noble profession, and to do it well is not easy at all. I think a key to success is to treat it as a serious job, and divorce it from being personal. Someone who says mean things and has unreasonable demands might just be having a bad day. Our responses had the power to perpetuate the downward spiral, or to lift someone up. The above quote was one of the worst emails we’ve had (and there were quite a few like that). That this player was reported in game multiple times by multiple people was no surprise. We then gave him a warning, which he confused to be a temp ban. He then got incensed and wrote us an email.

Initially, seeing all the text that I highlighted in red was tough to take. I had to walk away for a bit to collect myself. When I returned to the email and calmed down, it became easier to see the text that I highlighted in blue, which was the point he was trying to make. He paid for the game and spent his hard earned money. He liked the game enough to gift 3 copies to his friends. He misunderstood the warning for a ban. Once I understood the issue, it became easy to reply. I also appealed to him to help us maintain and grow this community while reminding him of ours as well as Steam’s terms of use and community standards. The player never expected me to reply, and once I did, he was nice enough to help us and turned his behavior in game completely around. We’ve had quite a few players with a similar encounter, and the majority of these players actually stayed with the game over hundreds of hours of play. With over 60K player reports investigated, we ended up giving out warnings only about 4% of the time. Only 0.3% of the time did we issue bans of varying degrees. We take players’ hard earned money seriously, and we try to appeal to people’s humanity and reason over heavy handed policing, and I think it has worked for us.（source：Gamasutra）