Transforming the Gaming Arena With Online Communities

Cultivating and engaging the audience of a game is a challenge in itself. And, what’s better than an online community to establish a solid online presence that offers your game more recognition?

Apart from a strong online presence, an online community offers quite a few benefits like innovation and expansion.

But the real challenge is to articulate a plan of action to engage your audience virtually. What can you possibly do in that situation?

That’s where online communities serve as an outlet for gaming businesses to connect, engage, and foster relations with audiences. With that said, let’s take a look at some more reasons for the gaming industry to embrace communities.

What are Online Gaming Communities?

Before we discuss the need for a gaming community, let’s start with what exactly it is. A community that connects gamers or people with a shared interest in a game, outside the screen, is a gaming community. Be it playing, watching, or reading about a game.

The reason?

53%^[i] of US teenagers play online games, indicating that a higher user base is certainly invested in this industry. And, building a community around it allows the collaboration of offline friend circles or comrades into online communities.

Communities in the Gaming Industry: What’s the Plus?

We don’t often associate communities with online gaming, but it’s new and exciting. A majority of gaming brands are already employing communities in their business to drive expected outcomes. Given that no two businesses are the same, simply building an online community won’t be of much help. It is essential to understand your core goals and strategize.

Some common goals for implementing communities in the gaming industry are-

Building a Personal Network With Like-Minded People

Gamers that join your community already share interests with you. So, leverage that interest to build connections by conversing about the game, tricks, updates, and more. This can lead to building cooperative tasks and healthy competition. As a result, see your community and game thrive on their own.

Cultivating Brand Loyalty

The two-way benefit is the key to bringing engagement to your community. Having built a strong connection with members enables you to gather candid reviews and feedback about your game. So, even if you have a handful of loyal gamers, you are going to achieve a sustainable amount of customers in no time. How? Your existing customers are going to spread word-of-mouth about your game among fellow gamers. And, this is how you will get an army of brand loyalists and gain more customers. All you need to do is keep engaging and acknowledging your members.

Idea Generation and Innovation

Brands that want to keep their community and businesses thriving will listen to their customers. And, what better place to source ideas and opinions than communities? When you have a thriving community, it becomes a hub for collecting opinions and feedback. Thus, collecting the right ideas can drive design decisions to fix imbalances in the game. Not only will it make your customers heard but will also make them feel connected to the bigger picture.

Top 3 Platforms to Build Gaming Communities

While some gaming brands run their communities on social media platforms like Facebook, having a more community-centered platform can offer an edge. That’s why building your gaming community on a platform that supports team collaboration makes sense. Let’s learn more about these platforms to pick out the best one for your gaming community –

Drupal

Drupal has been influencing the online gaming community for all the right reasons. It is certainly an efficient platform that offers faster switching between the backend and frontend for real-time interaction. Moreover, it offers full control over in-program applications despite being coupled with other technologies including jQuery, Node.js, JavaScript, and more.

Key Features of Drupal

• Decoupled experience with seamless integration
• Gameplay customizations like characters, avatars, etc.
• Scalability with community growth
• Intuitive multimedia features including scorecards, videos, photos, audios, etc.

Discord

Discord is another popular platform for building communities due to its numbers topping the charts. It is especially liked by gamers for its seamless support for text, voice, and video chat. The platform makes it easier for gamers to collaborate while working on cooperative tasks/missions.

Key Features of Discord

• AI-powered bots for automated tasks
• Message boards for broadcasting announcements
• Community discovery feature for better visibility
• Personalized welcome screens for exceptional onboarding experiences

Slack

Slack is home to over 75 million^[ii] daily active users. The platform is already well-popular among online users because of its familiar UI and community-centric features. Brands looking for a platform with an intuitive user interface prefer slack more often than others.

Key Features of Slack

• Easy-to-use user interface
• Ability to create sub-threads and private channels
• Organized communication structure with easy-to-follow discussions

So, to overcome the challenges of building and running a gaming community, pick the right platform and stick to your core goal. Not only will you witness an excellent start to your community journey, but also reap the desired outcomes.

Wish to Build a Thriving Gaming Community? Talk to Us!

References

[i] http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/06/chapter-3-video-games-are-key-elements-in-friendships-for-many-boys/
[ii] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/slack-statistics/