Goodbye to the official BioWare Forum

Thoughts on Forum’s Potential Future
By Tiffany/DragonRacer

The BioWare Forum is a subject very near and dear to my heart, and also one that brings me some measure of sadness. I imagine my journey into fandom started like many others. I had never before paid much attention to specific developers or publishers; I just picked up games whose description on the back of the box sounded fun. A year after Dragon Age: Origins released, I picked up a used copy and gave it a whirl… and instantly fell in love.

What was the first thing I wanted to do? See what others were saying about it. I had questions to ask, feelings to share, other viewpoints to seek out. A quick Google search for “Dragon Age message board” brought up the BioWare Social Network. I lurked for a few weeks, reading countless threads and learning much. I also noticed there were certain posters in the forum with a BioWare tag denoting them as devs and I thought, “I have found the Holy Grail of gaming. An official forum where some of the developers of the actual game talk with the fans? Wow!”

I joined not too long after and made my fair share of posts and new threads. From the forum, I learned about Mass Effect, the other game series developed recently by BioWare. I was on PS3 and so only had access to Mass Effect 2 at the time. I asked fans on the forum if it was worth jumping into the trilogy without having access to the first game. Based on their feedback, I picked it up and fell in love all over again.

I followed the forum much more closely after that. Watched the pre-game hype for Dragon Age 2 and greatly enjoyed my time. And then came the post-release discovery that the forum had a darker side, as much toxicity came brewing up and anyone who enjoyed any aspect of DA2 was publicly flogged. I stopped visiting the forum so frequently.

Eventually, I came back again in full force as Mass Effect 3 came up on the horizon. I know I don’t need to rehash how the forum went after release; y’all had to live it and suffer it. It was watching the toxicity and insanity on the forum that spurred me to write that letter of “thank you and keep your chins up” after ME3 played a part in helping me deal with the aftermath of my mother’s suicide, the letter that was met with such an outpouring of care and love from you all that you made a loyal fan for life.

I determined not to be run off by negativity again and decided to work extra hard at being a positive influence in the forum. I mostly kept to the ME3 Multiplayer forum while the single player forums burned during that timeframe and focused on helping new players adjust to the game. I eventually went on to create a stickied thread of helpful links () and even ran the first, and only, successful fan tournamen. Much to my surprise, I became a bit of a leader in that forum and there are many now in the DAIMP forum who recognize me from there.

After making such an impact in the Mass Effect forum, I endeavored to do the same in the Dragon Age forum as you worked on Dragon Age: Inquisition, returning to my original roots as a Dragon Age fan. That was where I discovered the Twitter thread, fan-run and fan-updated, and eventually led to creating a Twitter account myself, as well as creating a stickied DAIMP resource thread in the same vein I made the ME3MP one.

I gave that long-winded back story to lead up to this (and this is where my public relations major from back in my college years starts to rear its head): your forum – your official forum – is a 24/7 public face for your company and your games. I started as a used game player who did a quick Google search one day and landed in your official forum. That led to me learning about your other games, purchasing them (even the older ones, like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights), religiously preordering all your new games as the pre-game hype built, refusing to buy used games ever again because I want all my money in your pockets and not a used game store’s, and following your Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as your website and YouTube channel. I was led to those other official sources of information through the forum.

And yet, the forum seems to be the most “neglected” of the media sources you utilize. Obviously, somebody runs the website, the Twitter account, the Facebook account, the YouTube channel, and the blog in some sort of official capacity. But the forum feels a bit like a rudderless ship. News from those official sources oftentimes only shows up on the official forum when fans re-post the info. It’s like the forums exist and the fans largely run the show (which makes some sense, as we outnumber you by an extremely large margin; there will always be thousands more threads and posts by fans than by developers), but the only official presence are some faceless, numbered mods from what I’m guessing (perhaps wrongly) is an outsourced commodity. Occasionally some of the developers will volunteer their time to post, and that’s a mixed bag – sometimes people are nice and grateful for the information and other times people are complete and total dicks. Which often leads to the devs pulling back and then the fans grow restless and the cycle repeats itself over and over.

Threads like this one, they make me weep inside: forum.bioware.com/topic/545013-bioware-i-feel-like-youre-avoiding-your-customers/

It was started by a fan who I’ve always viewed as a good and positive one in the forums. The fact that he/she feels that way, and that many others echoed the feeling, is not a good situation.

Now, that being said, the interaction as of late has vastly improved. Vastly. Many devs are now posting informational threads on upcoming events or patches. Some are bouncing around answering questions. The fact you grabbed some PC folks to help beta test Patch 5 is simply phenomenal, in my opinion. This is good. No, this is great. This is what one envisions seeing in an official forum. The sad part is that this sudden resurgence of interaction appears to have occurred because of a literal fan uprising in the DAIMP forum that involved a very public lynch mob against one of the few devs who voluntarily tried to interact and caught the worse end of the deal.

Teddie Sage’s thread brings up an incredibly valid question: who is our Community Manager? Do we even have one? I had thought it was David Huleegard, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case as far as the forum goes. It was Chris Priestly once, and everyone on the forum knew this. Then it was Jessica Merizan, and, again, everyone on the forum knew this. Now both are gone elsewhere and we are left with literally zero clue. Who is running the forum in an official capacity? Is it even being run in an official capacity?

If there is a Community Manager for the forum, they may want to revisit how it’s being run from the top down. Or, if there isn’t one, the absence is most certainly felt. If there is one, but their job is to focus on the other official modes of information dissemination, then perhaps it may be time to consider a second position devoted to the forum? Perhaps it seems much to saddle a forum as only one position, but I do understand the forum is a massive beast compared to running the other accounts, which are largely about dispersing information moreso than direct fan interaction on as intimate a level as a message board presents.

I do not say all this to make anyone feel bad. I especially don’t say this to make any of the devs who do dedicate their own personal downtime to the forum feel as if they are not doing enough. Many of you know me well enough by now to know the depth of genuine love and respect I hold for you. And I have been there in the trenches, miserably watching as you get dogpiled sometimes. I know. I understand. But I recognize that you have your very unique dev perspective on the forum, while I have my own unique fan/user perspective on the forum. I say all this simply to try and express a fan’s view of the forum to you. That includes where it feels lacking and why.

So, what are my thoughts on how we can try and improve this? How can we make a safe space for the devs to interact without fearing witch hunts and for fans to feel like they have a positive community to interact with, rather than a place that drives them away because of negativity and toxicity (a complaint I see on Twitter a lot, sadly, and occasionally still feel myself at times)?

Let's pretend we blew it all up, Anders Chantry-style, and started from the ground up again.

I view maintaining a forum much like tending a garden. These are my three major guides:

1. You have to seed it properly and give it love and maintenance to grow good things. This means you need to have some type of presence in it – something regular, preferably, rather than in spouts and bursts dependent on mood and level of forum vitriol/happiness. Someone or several someones who regularly interact, even if that is maybe only once or twice a week and – this is important – spread equally across at least the most active subforums (i.e. giving more love and maintenance to the DAIMP forum may – and will, as I’ve seen grumblings – lead to dissent in other subforums, such as single player, who may feel neglected, ignored, cast aside, or less important than the multiplayer fans).

2. Weed regularly. There are a lot of troll accounts that exist only to raise people’s hackles and negative types who post the same copy-pasted complaint in every thread or make multiple threads across the forums to express their disdain… or, worse (in my opinion), only seem to exist to pop into any positive thread they see and immediately poop (real time forum note: a stronger word was used here, but I know better than to avoid the profanity filter) all over it. Please excuse the language on that, but there is truly no polite way to express how disgusting it is to see thread after thread started by a happy fan literally get shot down in the second or third post by one of the “resident whiners”. There is a fine line between someone expressing concern or a legitimate complaint about an issue they are having or a feature they dislike vs someone who appears to get their jollies by just being a Negative Nancy in as many threads as possible. Perhaps these simply aren’t being reported enough, but the weeds need to be pulled regularly. A thorny plant is fine and can be beneficial – after all, constructive criticism is how we all learn and grow, and there are plenty of fans capable of dispensing that in a civil manner – but the really bad or regularly bad ones need to be shown the door. These are, after all, your forums. You do not have to put up with a guest coming in and proceeding to lay a deuce on your fine Orlesian rug.

3. Maintain the mature plants while grooming the seedlings. This is just Business 101 no matter what you’re selling, whether it be newspaper ads or video games. You want and need to maintain your core (often hardcore, yes) customers while gaining news ones. After all, there is natural attrition as people move on to other games, become too busy to consider themselves gamers anymore, or otherwise leave the fandom and/or forum and you need fresh blood coming in to replace them and become your future “veterans”, while growing your overall baseline. This means patrolling subforums where the “newbies” are most likely to start their forum experience and making sure it’s a positive one (such as the general help subforum or the non-spoiler discussion one, as well as MP subforums where you’ll often see threads made by new players looking for help or advice). Nothing can be more off-putting than joining a forum and immediately getting assaulted by negativity. I saw that happen a few times in the ME3MP subforum and I made every effort to step in and tell people to chill out, and often would personally message the new person and apologize on behalf of us all. Made some friends and some new forum “veterans” from the experience, but I can only do so much. I am, after all, only one fan and I only have so much influence with my fellow fans – I am sure there are some who view me as just a “BioWare shill” or what have you.

These guidelines sound pretty solid, right? They also sound like so much puffery from a self-help book or one of those “30,000-mile bird’s eye view of the situation” types of meetings that look great on the paper and maybe you leave them feeling good and motivated, but then you realize nothing REALLY got said or done. How do you take a lame analogy about a nice garden with pretty flowers and make steps to actually, really achieve that?

I have a few thoughts on that front, too. You can take it or leave it or say, “Tiff, you’re out to lunch because you have no idea how our inner workings go down”… and you really can say that, you know, you’re not gonna hurt my feelings. I’m a forum “veteran”, after all, so my skin is Deep Roads-thick from mere survival. My only hope is that some part of this may be deemed a useful thought, if nothing else; a starting point for brainstorming.

1. Community moderators brought back or new ones enlisted? I remember back when we had named moderators, people like Ninja Stan (former employee, I know) or RaenImrahl. It seemed more personal and people tended to at least behave a little better if they felt like they “knew” the mods, even if they didn’t. Switching over to the BioWareModInsertNumberHere was a move that I understand from a bottom line and time management standpoint, but it raised a lot of discontent. And, honestly, it made things pretty awkward because I saw people and posts get temporarily banned/deleted because of an inside joke between friends getting taken totally out of context. Rules are important, but so is some level of leniency. Nobody wants to fear posting in a police state. Surely a good balance can be struck? After all, our own real life communities are monitored by the police who live among us, who know our community and are aware of “the usual suspects”. The original reason we were given for bringing the “faceless” mods in was that it would free the named moderators up to interact more with the community. Instead, they disappeared entirely. Perhaps a return to them or, at least, their heritage is one for consideration? Heavy forum users who are online a lot, who are familiar with the community, who have proven trustworthy (Hrungr and ElitePinecone immediately spring to mind as examples), who are in a lot of the threads every day. If they were empowered to redirect the flow of a hot topic thread or to warn a troublemaker, I think that would be immensely helpful. I think many posts or threads go unreported simply because people might not understand the report feature, they fear a full thread closure/deletion rather than one or two people/posts being moderated, or the general disdain of thinking themselves a “snitch”. Regular community members – empowered – could address such issues when they see them, rather than rely on hoping someone reports trouble while a thread festers more and more.

2. A moderator or developer assigned to each subforum or similar grouping of subforums? Maybe this is a bit much to ask of people who are already volunteering their limited time, but it may behoove considering. Of the devs who like and want to interact with the forum, perhaps they could all get together and organize themselves into a collective and segment certain parts of the forum out to “monitor” or “maintain” (preferably the ones they have a direct interest in, of course). For example, someone taking on the Dragon Age: Inquisition single player forums, someone taking the Dragon Age: Inquisition Romance/Character forums, someone taking the Dragon Age MP forums, someone taking the Mass Effect 3 single player forums, repeat previous examples, etc. That particular dev who has taken on a certain subforum or set of subforums would take it upon himself or herself to be responsible for stickied topics, providing general info such as an FAQ (if needed), a list of bugs being reviewed (if allowed to disclose), balance changes, hints at upcoming content (as allowed and if allowed, of course), announcement of weekend challenges/insider videos/livestreams, etc. If it’s worthy of being posted on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or as a news update on the website or the blog, it’s worthy of being posted on the appropriate subforum. These are the official forums, after all.

3. If that’s not feasible, could “Community Collectors” be a viable option? Good forumites like myself, Hrungr, ElitePinecone, etc. that could be given some type of displayed status showing we have a semi-official capacity forum-wise (a step below moderator?), who can collect the hottest topics/issues and maybe submit a weekly report/inquiry to a designated dev liaison? That could help to give the forum answers/some “official” dev presence without asking the devs themselves to stick their necks out on their free time. Let us take on some of your burden and help funnel the most important issues, if need be. You need not shoulder this alone. Let some of your “super users” help with the task. I am sure many would see it as a great honor.

4. Create surveys for folks to provide real feedback they feel is actually viewed? Like the Keep team did during the Beta. Because having a Feedback subforum specifically for “Want to get your thoughts directly to the BioWare Community Team? Put it down on paper here” and then nothing happens in there save for faceless mods locking threads is just… it’s quite possibly the most neglected subforum and in that there is an irony I cannot quite describe given what its intended purpose was for. Is that subforum even being looked at? By anyone? That one should perhaps get the most attention out of any since that is what its stated purpose is.

5. Community Manager – maybe this needs to be extended to a second person, if the current role is too much for just one to handle? And that very well could be (I know I said that before earlier in my ramblings, but I feel it deserves repeating).

I will leave this rather long-winded dissertation on these final thoughts:

I remember David Huleegard blogging about a “Day in the Life of a Community Manager” a long while back, how much coordination with the various teams that entailed, but I saw a lot of mention about YouTube videos, the Twitter account, and the Facebook account. And experimenting with Instagram. No real mention of the official forums. At all. Which is as perplexing as it is a bit disturbing, honestly. These aren’t unofficial fan forums. These aren’t a random place on the Internet or a subforum on some random gaming site. These are your official forums. When people who have bought your games go online to find info – be it general discussion or tech help or “how do I solve this quest, help, I am stuck” – the BioWare forum comes up basically at the top of the organic Google search engine. That’s money. People spend a lot on search engine optimization to rise that high in Google searches, and that money doesn’t guarantee the kind of positioning you already have (I know this for a fact because I sell this in my daily job).

So, naturally, customers searching see that result link near the top and go there. Only to see some praise, a lot of bitching, some help, and very little of anything official. It’s an untended garden. There are weeds everywhere and a newcomer has no idea where to look other than to be overwhelmed (maybe some type of “Welcome to the Official BioWare Forums” introductory forum or stickied thread at the top of the forum giving further direction/outlining the subforums, etc). That’s how I started my forum life. I took my knocks from trolls and persevered because I’m hard-headed and resilient like that, but new forumites need not have to go through the same.

I'd like to think that the public forum is not beyond hope of saving. It just needs a little extra help and, in my opinion, a unified guiding force, such as a Community Manager. If this is not something deserving of an official BioWare employee, surely it’s deserving of a dedicated fan volunteer, group of fan volunteers, or something. Let’s work together to make a forum that represents your company and games in the brightest light and provides a safe place for fans to gather and talk, both with the developers and amongst themselves.