“That’s my name! I’m in a game!” ft. Community Manager Charis Reid
(You can also watch this episode on YouTube.)
Today’s guest is Charis Reid, founder of Cut Teeth, an ad-hoc community management agency. After unexpectedly being made redundant earlier this year, Charis turned a setback into an opportunity—launching her own business that lets her collaborate with multiple studios and projects at once.
We chat about how redundancy pushed her to build something new, the challenges of setting boundaries when running your own agency, and the lessons she’s learned from juggling clients across the industry. Charis shares her unconventional path into games—from studying game art and dreaming of building environments to discovering her passion for connecting players and developers.
She also tells a touching story about being honored in-game by a small indie team she supported, how an ambitious ARG campaign went hilariously off-script, and why knowing a community’s “deep lore” is the secret to succeeding as a new community manager.
Games mentioned in this episode:
Find Charis on:
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Transcription
Steve McLeod
I’m joined today by Charis Reid, who run runs an ad hoc community management agency called Cut Teeth. Welcome to the show, Charis.
Charis Reid
Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.
Steve McLeod
Did I say the name absolutely right. Do you want to actually repeat?
Charis Reid
Yeah, you did. You’re fine.
Steve McLeod
Fantastic.
Charis Reid
You can use it if you want to, but I think you said it perfectly fine. Yeah.
Steve McLeod
Charis, Charis, Charis
Charis Reid
Charis, I think that’s partly because of your accent as well.
Steve McLeod
Yeah. Yeah. It’s and the most of my life, I’ve lived in places where I’ve had a noticeable accent and part of life. Charis, you run an agency for community management. Let’s start with that. Before we hear the story about how you became a community manager, tell me about this agency you run, why you run it, when you started it, et cetera.
Charis Reid
Yeah, so it is a relatively new thing. So early this year, I would say in April, I was made redundant and fortunately for me, you know, I was able to take some time to figure out “okay, what do I want to do next?” And honestly, it was so unexpected that redundancy, like I have gone my entire career trying to pick up on all the signs to make sure that I was never made redundant, and that I always knew that it was coming. And then the one time it happened to me, I did not expect it at all.
So I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I was like, well,I wanted to do this, and now I’m not doing this anymore, so what do I do? So I put out, honestly, just to post on LinkedIn kind of thinking what would be nice to do next? I was like, I’d like to do some little bits of work where I get to work with, you know, a bunch of different people and a bunch of smaller things.
And then maybe that will lead me in the direction for what I enjoy doing most and what I want to keep doing. And you know, I might work with someone and then be like, oh, okay, let’s, you know, go inside a full-time role working with these people. And so I did that. And then I think within like two weeks I got three clients and I was like, oh wait, hold on a second.
I think there’s enough demand for this that I can have like the best of both worlds all the time, which is that I get to work with a bunch of different people on a bunch of different projects and have a ton of variety. Especially I get to work with people that can’t afford to have me full time, which is something that is great because the sometimes the most interesting projects, they don’t necessarily need you full time.
So then yeah, from April to May, I started my own company and then it’s since May I’ve been doing my own thing. I’ve worked with five different clients so far, about to start working with the sixth in this time. So these aren’t all ongoing. These are just like, you know, here and there and it’s probably the happiest I’ve been in my career so far, which is kind of crazy that it came from something like redundancy, which is honestly hellish. I was like, what is happening? Yeah.
Steve McLeod
So that’s amazing. That’s taking – finding the silver lining, etc, in the dark clouds. Somehow you felt secure enough that you could start your own business because this is a risky thing. You know, your clients could fall through. You have to start worrying about how to get new clients and so on.
Tell me about something, some moment in which you’ve struggled with running your own agency so far. I mean, it’s been six months, right? We’re recording in September, and you said you started in April or May. Sometime in which you thought, “I didn’t realize it was supposed to be like this” or “I was supposed to do that”. Has there been some experience like that?
Charis Reid
Well, that’s a really good question. I think one of them was boundaries.
Steve McLeod
Yeah? Tell me more about that.
Charis Reid
So it is, there’s one of these things where it’s like, you know, you can go into like running your own business and you have the confidence of like, okay, I know that I can do this. Like I know how to put something forward to a client. I you know, you have all of that confidence hopefully. And then, you know, you could be confident like talking to people, like all of these different elements. But then the thing I found that I have had to gain confidence in is the awkwardness around kind of saying, “okay, well this is actually out of the scope of work that we’ve spoken about” or “actually, I’ve already committed to a another client on this day, so I can’t do this thing for you then”. You know, saying, “well, this actually isn’t the kind of thing that I do. Can I recommend you to somebody else?” Because I think at first you have this like, although you might have confidence in the stuff that you do. You might – or at least I felt very grateful – for the work that was being set my way and I wanted to just people please.
I wanted to, I wanna say yes to people. I wanna make people happy. But then sometimes through doing that, like you can, I don’t know, that might not be the best decision long term to do for somebody. So I think that was quite a difficult thing because I wanted to give my best to everybody. And I was like, but actually in order to do that I have say no to things.
And I think that’s still something that I am working on. But yeah, that was unexpected. Like genuinely the first few weeks of me doing my own thing, I was talking to people. I think it was at Develop, I think I even may have said this to you when we met at Develop, which was it felt like every single week I was learning something new and I was like, oh my God, I really have like opened up a new skill tree of learning.
Like I felt like, you know, I’ve worked in community management for like five or six years at this point, and I feel like to a certain level, like I have an awareness of what I know and what I don’t know, you know. I’ve been around long enough to kind of see that and see the areas that I could be better at and things like that.
SO going into your own business, it’s like, oh, and then this whole new thing like opens up and you’re like, Oh my God, There’s so much more to learn.
Steve McLeod
I think that never stops in a running your own business. I’ve been doing it for a long time. Yeah. Every day, every week. Hey, let’s go back to your founding story, how it’ll start for you as a community manager.
Charis Reid
Yeah.
Steve McLeod
Wanna, you can maybe start from your, something happened in your childhood or something already as an adult, wherever you’d like to start, but what is it that brought you into becoming a community manager?
Charis Reid
It honestly is a bit of an odd story. I feel like fate just kind of like pushed me in that direction and they just kept pushing, like I kept getting signs and I kept ignoring them.
So basically like originally what kind of like drew me to the games industry was game art. Like I’ve always loved art and I wanted to be a game artist. I wanted to do environment art. And so that’s what I went to university for. But whilst I was at university, I got involved in a game development society and you know, I would work doing like support at like festivals and stuff on the side, and like all these things that involved communicating with people and bringing people in to do events.
For instance, I would organize speakers to come in from the industry and talk to this game development society or get involved with organizing game jams or like all of these kind of things.
Like a lot of things that involved, like being quite extroverted, like talking to people, doing a lot of comms, like communications, a lot of that kind of stuff. I remember having this speaker come in and I did this quite, you know, I thought it was quite a professional thing. I was like, you know, you’re coming in and you’re doing this talk for us, but then afterwards, can I take you to dinner?
Because I wanted to like, ask them some questions about like, their career and like, you know, they were doing some really cool work working on like Rainbow Six Siege and like, stuff like that on like all of the weapons. And I was like, I’m gonna ask him some questions and I’m gonna be an artist.
And this person spoke to me and they were like, “oh, you better be careful ’cause you’re gonna become a community manager”. And I was like, I was so at the time, by the way, I was so insulted because like I was like hustling in order to get into a career, being a game artist. And like at the time, the way I thought about things, having never been in the industry was that if you didn’t work on part of a game that actually ended up being visible in the game, then was that worth it at all?
Like if you didn’t get to be like, point out a tree and be like, I’d worked in that tree. Or if you didn’t get to point at a line and say, I wrote that line, or you know, all of those kind of things, then how could you get fulfillment from working in games? So for someone to say, you know.“Oh, you’ll be careful, you’re a community manager”. I was like, no, no, no. I don’t want that. Because those people they help. They’re out of the way. They don’t really get involved in the games. That’s what I thought at the time. And so I tried to avoid that. I tried to avoid it so much, but it kept coming for me.
And then I did this essay in my second year and it was about toxic communities. And so I reached out to some community managers and I started talking to them and I really enjoyed doing this essay. I focused on things like League of Legends and even like Pokemon Go, because that was like huge at the time. And like all of these different communities. And I really enjoyed like learning about them and all of the like little, they’re like tiny little societies. That was just really enjoyable. And then from there I started being like, oh. “Maybe this is the way that I should go”. And then bit by bit I moved over to working in community management.
Steve McLeod
And now have you changed your opinion of what community managers are and what they do. I hope so.
Charis Reid
Like significantly. It is honestly insane how wrong I was. And I think a lot of people still have that idea that, oh, if you’re a community manager, you don’t have involvement in the game. You’re just, you know, you’re just managing forums over there, or you’re just doing customer service and that’s just…
Steve McLeod
Or posting memes.
Charis Reid
…or posting memes. And it genuinely isn’t the case. Like there is so much of my work that has ended up in games because so much of my work is keeping the conversation going between developers and players and developers listen to me, and players listen to me. And so, you know, your opinions and your thoughts and things do get into the game.
That’s obviously not the intention of being a community manager, but it does happen like that. Like the reason for a lot of events and a lot of like people’s most happy memories of being in a game community can come from a community manager. And that’s, you know, that could be in game as well.
So yeah, it has it’s changed a lot and I feel kind of ashamed that I suppose I guess I looked down on it originally because I didn’t really know what it was. Whereas now I’m like, oh man, I wish more people realize like how much of you know community management is involved in making games.
Yeah. It can be make or break for some games.
One of the reasons why I’m doing this podcast series and related things is because I noticed that community managers are completely overlooked in a lot of the gaming industry events and, and so on. If there is something for community managers at an event like develop that you mentioned earlier, it’s usually just tacked on onto the side.
It’s or there’s just one night, one talk or something. And actually community managers do have stories they tell and, and important roles to play. And it changes a lot from game to game. Some games might not be so important, but other games it’s the community manager who’s there making sure the players are staying involved in the game. So, I think you’re not alone, that view you had, I think it’s way too common.
Charis Reid
Yeah. There was there was definitely a period of time and this was like, I wanna say, how old would I have been? I don’t know. Definitely like early twenties where you’d have like lots of game developers and stuff on Twitter and there would be people at the time were still discussing our game’s art, like that was still a thing that people were talking about.
But also people would be like, “oh, you can’t call yourself a game developer if you are a community manager”.
And you know, maybe that is still there sometimes in the back of people’s minds, but it’s so, I just don’t think that’s true. I really just don’t think that’s true at all. You are helping the development of games. I think some of the most kind of like widely known, like respected, appreciated, like viral games are like that because they are responsive and the reason they’re responsive is because they have great community managers.
Steve McLeod
Yeah, 100% agree. Let’s move on to a story of a memorable positive moment as a community manager that you’d like to talk about.
Charis Reid
Sure. Okay. This one I actually really, really love. So there was a game that I worked on back when I was at a publisher, and this game was, it was called Mechajammer. And it was made by like a husband and wife team, and it was really, really, really tiny team. And they had like a whole kind of like Kickstarter and stuff behind it. It was really cool and we worked really hard from when that game released because it, it needed a bunch of updates, you know, quite frequently. And so I found myself like working like, obviously like paid, but like later hours, earlier hours. A lot of the community were kind of like American based as well, but honestly it’s like some of the best…
Steve McLeod
For the audience, you’re in the UK so this is a time zone problem? Yes.
Charis Reid
Yeah. And they were based in New York, so. There you go. But it was kind of I have some of my best memories of working on that. And there were so many different challenges and stuff that came up. I really feel like it leveled me up as a community manager, but one of the best things was that it was getting kind of like closer to Christmas and there was like one last patch before I knew that I would have like a whole month off over Christmas and I was like, putting this patch together and I was like, write it down. You know, like in the Steam update thing. Because that was, that was my role. That was what I would do all of that stuff.
And they got to a bit where they were talking about new characters that they’d added to the game that could be like companion characters. And I was like, go down the list. And I was like writing it over from the email. They had blah, blah, blah, blah. And then my name was on there and I was like, huh. And I like checked back, back at the thing. And then I was like going through messages and I was like, have I just like copied this wrong? Am I going insane?
Have they put this there by mistake? And then I had to reach out to them and I was, I am gonna, I’ll cry, but like I had, I had to reach out to them and I was just like, is that meant to be there? And they were like, yes! We decided to name a companion after you. And we’re like really thankful for all the work that you’ve done so far. No. I’ll cry.
Steve McLeod
But that’s so cool. That is so cool. That’s a real genuine way of showing them, showing you that they appreciated your work.
Charis Reid
Yeah, and it, and it was a surprise, like no one had mentioned it. So I don’t know how they, I guess I don’t know how they figured that they, I would find out, I dunno, they knew that I did the patch notes or like whatever, but I was just like, that really touched me because for them in a way, it’s a small thing.
Like, you know, it’s just up changing a name. But for me, I think especially going into community management. Like I said in that story before where I felt like being community manager, you can’t touch the game. It’s not something that’s in the game. And you know, having that thought, this was a moment where it’s like although my opinions had already changed, and you knew that I could, it was like a very tangible thing of like, “oh, that’s my name. I’m in there. I’m in a game”. Isn’t that insane?
Steve McLeod
You said that when you were into the game art, you thought you had to be able to point to a line of code or a tree. But what better of being able to point to an actual in-game character and say that’s me!
Steve McLeod
It’s wonderful.
Charis Reid
Yeah. I really like it. That’s my favorite story. I just I love it. What was funny though afterwards was I was like over Christmas. I was trying to. It was quite a difficult game. It was intentionally difficult. It was kind of like the first, like early like Fallout games. I was like, how do I get to my character?
How do I get to me? And so I’m like going to the game and they’re like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re on the prison island. And I’m like my character is on the prison island? And I was like, should I be insulted by this? But no, I think they just happen to be in a fun area.
Steve McLeod
Now I’m gonna change the tone of the interview dramatically, and I want to ask you about a hard challenge that you face as a community manager that stands out in your memory. Is there anything that comes to mind?
Charis Reid
Yeah, I mean, I feel like there’s like a softer answer to do with this, but I feel like there’s also like the honest.
Steve McLeod
Go with whichever one you feel more comfortable talking about.
Charis Reid
Let’s do a little mixture of both. So I think, I think the honest truth is like when things go terribly wrong and then you’re just there and you’re like, oh, and it’s not always a situation where you can clearly communicate to a community what is going on. So for instance, there was a game I worked on where there was a marketing idea to do an ARG. Do you know what an ARG is?
Steve McLeod
ARG? No.
Charis Reid
It’s kind of like an online game where there’s lots of little hidden clues and it is kinda like a mystery. Okay. And so you’re like, oh, here’s a riddle. And then from this I found a YouTube link. And then from this, I jumped to this and jumped to this.
And like we thought this would be a really cool like marketing stunt. Right. But unfortunately, the people that have put it together, they didn’t necessarily have a great deal of experience doing this, and the Internet is a wild beast. You have no idea like how to set a skill level on that kind of a thing.
So the start of it went out and within seconds it was solved. And this was meant to be like a multiple day long thing. We had intentionally not released all of these clues because we wanted to stagger it, but people managed to get it immediately. It was just like, are people cheating, like, what is going on here?
And it was just like a total panic because you’re having more and more people come over to see that what’s going on, and then immediately they’re seeing it solved and they’re like, oh, has the person already solved it? Like, are we, are we doing this? Other people are further on down the clue and you’re just like, okay, do we admit that this has just gone really, really wrong? Do we tweak it a little bit?
Like how do we go about this? And that’s something where, especially because it’s live, you’re having to make that decision in real time with a team of people and with the developer. And everyone has different opinions and that’s stressful, not to say the least. So in the end with that one, we ended up being like, right, okay, we’re gonna do a mixture of both.
We’re gonna admit that, oops, that was a little bit easier than we thought it was gonna be. And then work a bit over time – paid over time yet again – in order to put together something that lasted a little bit longer. But yeah, it’s definitely one of those things where you, you can make the best plans in community management of like, we are gonna have this strategy, we’re gonna do this thing, we’re gonna do these events.
But when the community actually comes along, they could be a little bit different to what you thought they were going to be like. And then you have to, then you just have to be good at reacting to those kind of things as they come up. That can be difficult sometimes in a situation like that where you’re like, oh no, we really didn’t expect this.
Steve McLeod
It’s easy from a distance to say, well, this is what I would do, or this is what you should do. But when the people are there saying, well, what happens now? And you’ve gotta decide, yeah. Was the director of the studio or somebody very senior around to talk to and help make the final decision? Or did you have to just decide on the spot?
Charis Reid
It was a little team of us. Fortunately it was a little team, so you know, it wasn’t, yeah, I guess can’t really necessarily go in depth on it, but it was a little too few people, we just had to figure out on the spot basically.
Steve McLeod
I like it. Things don’t always go to plan, but you got through. And let’s move on to some practical information, some practical questions. As when you first started being a community manager and you didn’t really know what to do apart from your natural, outgoing personality that led to someone say you’re gonna be a community manager. This is a long, long question. How do you learn to do your job better? How do you learn to do what it takes to be a community manager?
Charis Reid
Ooh, interesting. Like how did I learn or how do I, how do I continue to learn now?
Steve McLeod
How did and do you learn? What are the resources you’ve used or the strategies you’ve used to learn how to do your job? Because you didn’t study to be a community manager, but somehow you found yourself doing this.
Charis Reid
Yeah, I mean, I think what kind of helped is that I had grown up essentially entirely online. So I think something about it was that it was almost like innate in a way. Like I said, like with someone telling you, you better be careful, otherwise you’re gonna turn out to be a community manager. And that wasn’t the only comment I had. I had quite a few people saying that. So I do think it was something that came naturally, but I also think it was something where. I always enjoyed being part of communities, and I don’t necessarily mean just gaming communities. I mean, kinda like I did a lot of volunteering for different events, like those could be events that like games festivals or like graffiti festivals or music festivals.
I always got involved with those kind of things and found those really fun to do and really fun to meet people. And so I think something is that I took inspiration from a lot of different types of community. It wasn’t just that I was only looking on Discord or only looking on Reddit, although I was in those places too.
It was also that I was taking part in in-person communities and even in the things that I was interested in seeing, even if I didn’t take part in those kind of communities. So for instance, like, I really do quite like Taylor Swift a lot and although I’m not like on her Reddit or posting in her forums or like those kind of things, I do keep an eye on what’s going on there and how their community is reacting to stuff and, you know, being quite online with, like, seeing what’s happening in those spaces.
Steve McLeod
From the point of view of her team and how they manage the community?
Charis Reid
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Steve McLeod
They’re masterful, I have to say. I don’t think I’m Taylor Swift’s target demographic, so I’m not a fan, but I have heard some of the amazing things her team does. Like when there was a little bit of criticism for using in a private jet, and what was the thing they did? They managed to get the word jet associated with – that was maybe just a conspiracy theory.
Charis Reid
That was the conspiracy theory. But I know what you’re talking about. They did a game with Google where you had to search certain terms and you could unlock like Easter eggs about her next album. I love how I already know this.
But yeah, yeah, yeah. People had a conspiracy that because like Jet, which was like in a song lyric was coming up as a search term that it would change the way the Google algorithm showed her flying her plane. Those kind of things.
Steve McLeod
As I was starting to say it, I realized wait, this sounds like a conspiracy theory, I should say.
Charis Reid
I feel like we’ve had two in this episode already with Pizza Express and now Taylor Swift.
Steve McLeod
This is what happens when you know about things vaguely from news headlines and no more. And then one should not open one’s mouth when one only knows from a news headline and that’s all.
Let’s move on to my next question for you. If someone listening is about to become a community manager for the first time, what tips do you have for them for their first say days or weeks or months in the job? What should they be doing?
Charis Reid
Interesting. I think like the first thing you have to do, and this is also one of my favorite things to do. If it is an already existing community, you’ve got to go deep into the lore of that community. I’m not just talking like, what’s this game about? I’m talking like, which of the moderators hate each other because of X, Y, Z reason? I’m talking about do the community have beef with the developers for one specific thing. Are the developers mad at the community for something that happened two years ago.
Like all of these things, because you want to make sure that you are coming in and you are just like clicking with the community and that nothing that you do or any kind of thing is gonna trigger any of these maybe sore spots from the community’s past.
Steve McLeod
How would one go about finding out these things?
Charis Reid
Okay, so one of them is that you need to talk to the developers, like inside out. Like you’re not just like, you don’t just go in like, okay, what’s your game about? You also need to be like, okay, what’s the history of this community? Are there any like particular members that do certain things like that could be standouts of maybe not having the best behaviour or like people that you can depend on or like all of those kind of things.
But then also moderators. As moderators, they usually tend to, they’re locked in. Like they know the lore and they’re like, oh yeah, this guy, he used to be moderator, he’s not anymore. So finding out all of that history, I think is really helpful. You’ll also find out if you are going back through like previous forums or if you’re doing your research on news that’s happened before.
Even if you’re just looking at comments, you’ll sometimes see players will refer to something in the past and like, oh yeah, you remember that update and you’re like, what’s that update? So like, kind of like building a bank of that information is really helpful that you’re kinda like immersing yourself in it as if you have been in that community from the start.
So yeah, I would say that’s the best thing you can do. But it’s also really enjoyable because you’re like, what am I finding out right now? Yeah, like what is going on?
Steve McLeod
Like an investigate… I can’t say the word, investigative journalist. Really undigging the past. Look, we’re actually running out of time, but there is still one very important question I want to ask you. What game have you been playing lately?
Charis Reid
Ooh, have I even been playing a game recently? This is not a good, this is not a good thing, Steve. What game have I been playing recently? I haven’t been playing any games recently. I have of my best friends are getting married. One of them got married last weekend. Shout out to setting Freddy and Sarah. Congratulations.
And then my other friend’s getting married this next weekend coming up, and I’ve been a bridesmaid for both of them. Also, shout out to Rhianna and Sean. You’re gonna have a great wedding, let’s go. And because of that, my whole time has just been wedding, wedding, wedding, wedding, wedding, business, wedding.
Steve McLeod
Yeah. Yeah, and I guess you’re in that part of a business in which it is all consuming. Even when you do try to set boundaries, it’s all consuming for a while.
Charis Reid
Yeah. You have to give up for a little bit. You have to be like, okay, it would be so nice if I could just clock off here, but that’s not happening.
Steve McLeod
Wow. A community manager in the video game industry who gets no time to play video games.
Charis Reid
This is so common though. I feel like this is so common. Yeah, I think the last game that I played that I really enjoyed, because I think a lot of the games I play nowadays are with friends that live a little bit further away from me, is Oh Deer. Have you heard of this?
Steve McLeod
No, I haven’t heard of Oh Deer.
Charis Reid
I can’t believe I’m doing this on the podcast. So basically the way that it works is you are either a deer that is trying to fit in on an island of like other kind of like NPC deer and act like a normal deer, or you are hunters and you are having to figure out which the deer is acting a little bit suspicious and hunt that deer down basically. And the deer’s top move that it can do is if a hunter is getting like too close to it, it can fart and then it can, it shoots off across the map and then it gets lost in the deer again. So that’s what me and my friends play.
Steve McLeod
What platform is that on?
Charis Reid
Steam.
Steve McLeod
That sounds fantastic, really fun. Well, we need to wrap up. There are plenty of things I could still ask you, but we have come to the end of our time. So Charis again, thanks for being on the show.
Charis Reid
Yeah, it’s been lovely. It’s been nice time chat with you.
Steve McLeod
And where can listeners get in touch if they’d like to know more about what we’ve discussed today?
Charis Reid
Yeah, that’s either on my LinkedIn. So that’s Charis Reid. I guess my name is gonna be in the podcast header, so there we are or cutteeth.co.uk
Steve McLeod
Okay. We’ll have both of those in the show notes. Okay. Thank you. Bye.
Charis Reid
Amazing. Thanks so much.
Steve McLeod
Bye everybody.