Hey Jeff! Please describe your job to us. What’s your day-to-day like?
I manage a small team that supports both community and influencer marketing for the EA SPORTS Portfolio (PGA, NHL, UFC, and some of the other smaller sports titles). My team and I work closely with the community and our internal cross functional teams to gather feedback and ensure that we are communicating effectively with our players and internal partners. I’m lucky to be supported by my amazing team members that make my job easy.
Nice! Tell us … How long have you been working on the player-facing field and what do you like about it?
I’ve been working on the community side since I started at EA a little over 5 years ago. I am extremely passionate about game quality and the importance of player feedback in making great games. Before working at EA I was a part time content creator and part of a community design council for EA’s Madden Mobile. Being a part of that program gave me some important experience in seeing things from the perspective of our players.
A Community Design Council – that sounds amazing. Tell us please, are there any other professionals in this field that you particularly admire or learn from?
I regularly look at the work of other community teams across the industry and am amazed at the amount of talented and passionate people in the field. One in particular that I admire is my former manager, Stephen Gibbons, who works on Madden at EA. He has been a part of the community for so long and truly understands how we should work with and listen to our players.
We’re big Steph fans as well! What’s the importance of Player Feedback for your role?
Player feedback is extremely important in my role. We rely on player feedback both proactively and reactively to determine things like marketing strategies and game design. My team needs to understand what our players are saying and be able to determine what actions the company should take in order to ensure the product is successful.
So … We hear you’re an Affogata user 😀 Why?
With social media constantly changing and expanding it can be hard to keep up with all conversations about the game by ourselves. A tool like Affogata allows my team to search multiple platforms and aggregate that data into our regular sentiment reports for our internal partners. Being able to validate our anecdotal research against quantitative data from the tool gives us more confidence in what we are reporting.
What was it like before you used the tool?
Before Affogata we worked with a couple of other pieces of software that were very limited in scope and customizability for our games. It was a situation where we were unable to rely on the scores and data we were reporting from those tools because of their limitations.
Why use a Player Analytics Platform in the first place?
I wanted to be able to measure data from some of the more popular player platforms that most other tools (primarily Reddit and Discord) were unable to measure while being able to easily filter or customize my searches within those platforms.
We agree, measurement is key … So how do you measure success?
Measuring success for something like this is difficult because we work with very subjective data. I wanted to ensure that the data from Affogata was matching what I was able to manually search and find on other platforms. Additionally, I wanted to make sure that the tool was easy to use and allowed my team to save time on our regular reporting.
Makes sense! So, what has been the impact?
The tool has been fantastic so far. I have been extremely impressed with the UI and the depth of information I am able to filter and search. Having a custom Discord bot for our official servers has been a complete game changer and has allowed us to see data that we previously had no ability to measure.
Jeff, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom! A pro of your grade, who works on some of the most admired titles in the world, sharing your insights – that is so appreciated. We’re sure other Player Insight & Player Experience Professionals can use your these insights as inspiration – so many great gems, and measurability as a key point! Turning the qualitative into quantitative is possible and we’re here for it 📈
As a token of appreciation, Jeff receives a meaningful and lasting prize. In his name, Affogata has planted 100 trees 🌳 with a certificate showing the positive impact of his actions.
