| weɪfərskɪt |
| Chat Moderator |
 |
 |
Joined: November 15th, 2003, 11:22 am Posts: 20,532 Location: Pinwheel Galaxy
Gender: 
Status: Offline
|
Hello villagers! Recently we were offered an interview by Jagex to ask questions about the Machinima Competition and the Community Management (CM) Team. The questions have been answered and sent back to us, so here they are! Thanks to everyone who posted questions and to Jagex for offering us this and the three (1, 2, 3) previous interviews! Jagex Interview #3: Machinima Competition and the CM TeamGlodenox: How many people are currently active within the Community Management team? Do you guys also have a team logo?
»Mod Hohbien: If you take into account all of our non-English community management representatives, then well over 30. We don’t really have a team logo – but I want one. Thanks for reminding me!
_______________________________________________________________
Glodenox: Can you give some examples of which work the Community Management Team performs?
»Mod Paul M: One of the good things about Community Management is that we work on a huge range of projects. Today for example, we’re judging a competition, preparing copy for an upcoming newsletter, creating an in-game for event planned for a couple of months down the line, answering questions on our YouTube channel and getting ready for tonight’s Clan Awareness Week events. Then there’s moderator support, collecting feedback, scheduling events... Shall I go on? 
_______________________________________________________________
Muscular Ape: Who, in your opinion, is the most interesting member of the of the CM team?
»Mod Hohbien: Mod Timbo. He fascinates me.
_______________________________________________________________
Glodenox: How would you describe the reaction of the community on the events you've managed lately?
»Mod Hohbien: Simply awesome. We’ve had such a fantastic response from our playerbase, and we’ve had a lot of ‘first tries’ over the past year or so – so it’s really nice to know that we’re on the right track.
_______________________________________________________________
Muscular Ape: How often do you attend in-game events? What are your favourite ingame events? When you do, do you ever have a bit of fun with the Mod Powers to perhaps achieve victory? 
»Mod Hohbien: All the time. Mod Howes, our events guru, schedules JMods to attend player events throughout the week, and especially on weekends. We’d never use short cuts to achieve victory in a mini game though. Who was it that said “with great power comes great responsibility”? 
_______________________________________________________________
Glodenox: Which have been your most memorable moments leading the Community Management team so far?
»Mod Paul M: I’ve a terrible memory which doesn’t help answer this question but I’d say that some of the company outings have resulted in some very memorable moments. You’ll have to use your imagination there though as I’ll get someone into trouble if I elaborate too much.
_______________________________________________________________
Muscular Ape: Is looking after the Player Moderators a tough job? Do you enjoy this aspect of Community Management? Most importantly, does Mod Poppy enjoy being the "boss"?
»Mod Hohbien: I spent the first couple of years of my time in the CM team looking working with the PMod Community – and I loved it. They are a dedicated, genuinely lovely bunch of people and I do miss working as closely with them as I once did. Mod Poppy isn’t the boss of me! Don’t tell her I said that please.
_______________________________________________________________
Thedefencema: What made you guys come up with the Idea of RuneScape Machinima Contest?
»Mod Paul M: We’ve always really enjoyed watching RS Machinima videos, long before the first competition was announced last year. We’ve followed the videos of some of the famous video makers out there for ages, and the idea of creating more famous video makers and, importantly, getting a bunch of new funny/awesome videos was really appealing. The competition element to it came about through the usual method – an adhoc brainstorm session during a lively lunchtime beverage.
_______________________________________________________________
Landerpurex: Lifetime membership is a great reward. Exactly how long is a lifetime membership? Will the character receive membership FOREVER?
»Mod Hohbien: FOR LIIIIFE. Actually I believe our membership counter goes up to something like 4,000 days (11years). That’s not a problem though as in 11 years time, my calendar will remind me to add some more.
_______________________________________________________________
Landerpurex: What are the primary aspects the videos are judged upon?
»Mod Hohbien: Aside from the basic entry requirements (which a surprising number of people miss out) – we don’t really have a strict set of guidelines when it comes to judging videos. At the same time though, we aren’t unfair – we do consider a number of factors such as how well the video was put together technically, how good the audio/voiceover is, whether the entrant made their own music – that sort of thing.
_______________________________________________________________
Glodenox: Roughly how many videos are you expecting to be submitted?
»Mod Hohbien: Well we’ve had about 1000 entries so far, and it’s only a week in. We found with the last competition that there’s a spike toward the end, with all the last minute entries flooding in.
_______________________________________________________________
MiKeBoY2003: How do you all handle that many videos? Do you outsource some of the viewing to other areas in the staff, or sift through them all on your own?
»Mod Paul M: Once we’ve removed entries that don’t comply with the rules, the remaining entries are judged by a small group of us mostly made up of senior management types like Mark and Andrew and your very own RuneScape Community Management team. Fortunately, it’s actually lots of fun reviewing entries (last year for example, I spent many an evening staying up till 5am to review entries!)
_______________________________________________________________
TrendyHaz: Have you been suprised by the talent that is out there in the Runescape Community?
»Mod Paul M: We knew we’d get some great entries as we’d checked out the previous work of many of the entrants. By the time the competition closed though, it was clear that many brains had been wracked as the standard surpassed what we expected. It’s probably also worth pointing out that there were loads of entries that really made us laugh but couldn’t be included in the competition because they broke a rule or two. So even in the ‘sorry but no’ pile, there was some absolute gold!
_______________________________________________________________
Landerpurex: Do you plan the video competition to be an ongoing event? Will the rewards remain the same? Will there be a theme from now on as well?
»Mod Paul M: Absolutely. As long as there’s a community of players who want to make and watch videos, we’ll be very happy to support them through our YouTube channel and future competitions. We don’t want to get a reputation for just doing video competitions though as there are plenty of other skills that we’d like to celebrate too. So yes, among a great many other competitions we have planned, we certainly haven’t seen the last of the RuneScape Machinima Competition.
_______________________________________________________________
TrendyHaz: Do you feel the machinima competition could be used to "head hunt" future staff members for in-game cinematics?
»CM Team: Interesting question – not being in a recruitment specialist I couldn’t really say. But I know we’ve employed some experienced RuneScape players in the past and we definitely understand the value they can bring to the company.
_______________________________________________________________
Muscular Ape: There is often a lot of suggestions posted on the RS forums, how common is it come across one that really stands out and is a possible candidate for becoming a basis of a future update. When this happens, or if this happens, is there any contact/appraisal for the original idea the update is based on? Has this actually happened before?
»Mod Hohbien: This would probably be best answered by our content team. But from a CM perspective, we keep a log of suggestions posted on the forums and we make sure they’re passed on to our content teams on a regular basis. Interestingly enough, rather than seeing just one suggestion stand out, we tend to see numbers of people suddenly post very similar ideas at the same time. So it’s almost like a collective ‘eureka’ moment you could say. Things like that certainly stand out.
_______________________________________________________________
Muscular Ape: Does your Runescape Content Liaison 'Officer' often find it difficult to make posts on the forum, particularly the Future Updates forum, without leaking any information about future content? What is their favourite part of this particular role?
»Mod Paul M: You must be talking about Mod Emilee. Well, Emilee’s quite used to walking the line on what to say and what not to say and knowing her sense of humour, I’m sure she enjoys the inner turmoil that creates. What’s the favourite part of her role? Well, Emilee can answer that better than I can of course but I know that getting positive feedback on an update having seen it go from concept to release is something that brings a smile to her happy face. =)
_______________________________________________________________
Muscular Ape: Is Mod Emilee really a monkey?
»Mod Paul M: No comment. But yes.
__________________ 
|
|
Good job on thinking them up, guys! I wanted to ask something, but by the deadline, I still hadn't been able to come up with anything. There's always next time, I suppose!
