"The industry is smaller than you think" ft. Community Manager Vicki Fieldhouse

“The industry is smaller than you think” ft. Community Manager Vicki Fieldhouse

(You can also watch this episode on YouTube.)

Today’s guest is Vicki Fieldhouse, Senior Community Manager at Secret Mode. Vicki took an unconventional path into games, entering community management in her mid-30s after years of trying to break into the industry. Her journey involved customer service from running her own business, social media management, and streaming RPGs during COVID—all of which became the perfect foundation for her community management career.

We chat about how Vicki landed her first games job by streaming Fighting Fantasy books on YouTube, why being genuinely passionate about the games you work on matters, and the challenges of taking a lead management role that led her back to hands-on community work. Vicki also shares insights about the differences between working for developers versus publishers, the importance of honesty when you can’t fix a bug, and her work on Cozy Quest: Secret Mode’s annual celebration of cozy games featuring nearly 300 developers.

Games mentioned in this episode:

Find Vicki on:

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Transcription

Steve McLeod
Today I’m joined by Vicki Fieldhouse. Vicki is currently Senior Community Manager at Secret Mode. Notably, until a few months ago, she was a Lead Community Manager, which is actually more senior than your current position. I’m sure we’ll talk about how that happened, but first, welcome to the show, Vicky. It’s a pleasure.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Thanks for having me. So glad to be here.

Steve McLeod
Shall we start at the beginning? Tell me how you got into community management. I’ve heard this story before, bits of it, and it’s a good one.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Okay, I’m glad you think so. I actually got into community management in my mid-30s, which I think is quite late to come into community management. And I’d wanted to get into games for over 10 years, I think, at that point and just struggled and tried and failed. And yeah, I think it’s only now looking back at sort of the stepping stones in the path that got me here that I realized that everything that I did was bringing me to this place. So…

Yeah, I had like a lot of customer service experience and I think that’s a really good foundation for being a community manager is to know how to do customer service and how to talk to players and how to talk to your customers essentially. Then I had a ton of social media experience. I ran my own business for a little bit about 10 years ago, back when the only platforms were Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. So.

I became quite savvy with social media.

Steve McLeod
So, so far we’ve got customer support, social media, yep.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, customer support, social media. So I knew how to use the social medias. And then it wasn’t till 2020 that the final Missing Piece sort of came into play. And as everybody pretty much did, like when COVID hit, everyone started streaming on Twitch, which I never thought I’d do.

So I started streaming, so I got a lot of technical experience on how to use OBS, how to do live streams, how to make video content for YouTube and TikTok. I started hanging out in Discord servers and yeah, turns out that that’s a really useful skill to have, when it comes to community management. So yeah, three, I would say those are my three sort of building blocks and three stepping stones for, for community management.

Steve McLeod
And that was 2020 when you were doing the streaming and when did you get your first job in the video game industry?

So not quite video game industry, but games related. got my first paid position in 2020. And that was, oh it was 2021, sorry. So started working for a company that makes soundscapes and sound effects for RPGs. So big RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons and all of that kind of stuff. They did all the official music for the tabletop role playing games. And they were based out in Australia. So I got a completely remote role doing that.

Steve McLeod
You’re in the UK.

Vicki Fieldhouse
I’m in the UK. Yeah. So that was quite…

Steve McLeod
I’ve done UK to Australia. That’s like the worst possible remote work for our time zones.

Vicki Fieldhouse
It’s terrible. It’s terrible, but they had people on their team who were in America and they had one other person who was based in the UK. So it kind of worked like a lot of my team that I was working directly with were in America and the UK. So that was quite nice. And it meant also that there was someone sort of overseeing the community 24-7 essentially. So the community were never left without anybody. But yeah, so I worked for them for a year. It was just a contract for a year. But I thought it was, I really got to use my streaming skills. So the reason I got that job was because I was streaming RPGs. I created my entire own thing. I don’t know you’ve ever heard of fighting fantasy books, like game books.

Steve McLeod
Ah, wow. You just took me back to my childhood. Like Ann Livingston and Steve Jackson. I loved those things. It’s like a choose your own adventure, but you’re, you met them. Choose your own adventure, but you roll dies. Wow.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yes! Yes, so I’ve met both of them. actually… Yes! I’ve met them multiple times. Yeah.

I went to Fighting Fantasy Fest like a couple of years back and Ian was like, my god, it’s Vicky! Shall we have a photo? And I was like, how does this guy know me? And if you’ve ever met Ian Livingstone, he’s like the most humble person, like he doesn’t need to be.

I’ve met him a couple of times at UK Games Expo and he’s always like, oh, it’s Vicky, hi. And he notices me from, he knows that I make content or used to make content about fighting fantasy. So I used to run my own show.

Steve McLeod
That’s incredible. So you were doing like the old, you’re doing the old fighting fantasy books from the eighties, and you were doing modern YouTube videos based on those old books. Okay.

Vicki Fieldhouse
I have got like a ton of books. So yeah, so what I used to do is I used to run it like D&D because this is what I started doing in COVID with friends is I got really into fighting fantasy.

And I was like, I quite like being like the narrator or like the dungeon master essentially and running my friends through these books as though they are the adventurers. And then I saw, I turned it into a show on YouTube and I would have like a guest adventurer on every week and I would narrate and I would play the monsters and I would roll for the monsters and then they would play the adventurer and they would roll for themselves and we would dice battle. We would dice battle it out.

And I was using, so the company that I ended up working for, was using all of their sounds, all of their music. I was building my own like soundscapes and battle music and silly sound effects when people failed their dice rolls and eventually got killed. I used to love killing my adventurers. It was so fun. And yeah, I ended up using all of their own stuff. So I was actually using that, the advanced version where I would build all of my own stuff because they were offering like paid pre-made packages and I was just making on my own stuff.

So when I interviewed for them, I was like, yeah, I know how to make on my own sound sets and I know how to do all of this. And I just sent them my YouTube link and I basically just got the job done in there. And then for them, like that allowed me to like connect with new audiences because they hadn’t really done anything on Twitch. They didn’t know anything about TikTok.

Steve McLeod
This is the Australian soundscape company.

Vicki Fieldhouse
This is the Australian. Yes, they’re called Syrinscape. They’re a really lovely company, really nice to work for. And they do some really cool stuff, but yeah, so I, I was doing that for a little while. And like I said, like me being able to make TikToks and me being able to live stream on Twitch really allowed me to expand their audience and reach a new audience. I was hanging out in discords as well, which they hadn’t previously done. They were very old school. They had a forum and that was it. So in terms of customer support, they weren’t really reaching their audience, where their audience was at and their audience was on Twitch and their audience was on Discord. So a lot of their users hung out in those spaces.

So I did a lot of custom support in like D&D specific Discord. So I would run like master classes on stuff like that for them and show them how to use the in-depth features if they want to make their own stuff. And yeah, it was really cool. I really enjoyed that. So that I would say that’s game adjacent. That’s not video games, but it’s game adjacent.

Steve McLeod
Yeah. And you were a community manager.

Vicki Fieldhouse
I was community manager, yes. So that was my first community, like paid community role. And then, again, because of streaming, I got my next role, which was community ambassador at Raw Fury. And I got that again, because I was streaming and I was streaming a game called Kingdom Two Crowns, which is still one of my all time favorite games. I feel like I’m just rambling, but I’m so happy to be rambling.

Steve McLeod
Can I interject and say that…

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, of course you can!

Steve McLeod
So we had an intro call you and I a couple of days ago and you mentioned to me then Kingdom Two Crowns.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Have you played it? Yay!

Steve McLeod
I wish you hadn’t because I then went and got out my iPad and I haven’t stopped playing it for the last two days.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yay! That makes me so happy! That’s awesome.

Steve McLeod
I mean, I have a company to run and a family to be with, but you know, this game…

Vicki Fieldhouse
You would be amazed at how many parents play Kingdom Two Crowns with their kids.

Steve McLeod
Really?

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, it’s so, because I think it’s so child-friendly in a way, like there’s no speech, there’s no dialogue, there’s no like difficult controls to master, there’s no, I’m not, I wouldn’t say it’s not not violent, but it’s not violent in a way that you wouldn’t want to expose your children to that. So you would be amazed at how many people within the community play with their children.

And I love that about the community. I do miss them a lot. But yeah, so I was streaming that game and again, I was having like a player two. So I would co-stream it with somebody else, another streamer. And I just got really knowledgeable about the game. Like I think I had about four or five hundred hours in the game before they hired me. And again, that was because I was kind of ingraining myself in their community. I was hanging out a lot on Discord and helping of the players.

So there’s a lot of people like in their Facebook group for Kingdom and a lot of people in their Discord to be like, I’m really stuck on this bit. What does this do? Or like, how do I get past this thing? Or like, how do I progress? Or what’s this for? And I’d be like, I know what that is. I can just, I can just answer.

Steve McLeod
So this is before you were actually working for Raw Fury. You were very active in their Discord.

Vicki Fieldhouse
So this is before I was working for them. Super active. Yeah. So super ingraining myself into that thing. And then I saw a role come up for Community Ambassador and I applied and I always tell this story but I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the job straight off. So the first time I applied I didn’t get it but I continued to be part of the community and I got quite friendly with their community manager at the time who was called Fiona and probably two or three months after I applied and didn’t get it Fiona messaged me on Twitter, now X I never call it X it’s still Twitter to me.

Steve McLeod
Same to me.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, and she just messaged and said, you know, I know you applied a few months back and you didn’t get it, but would you still be interested? The role is much smaller now. It’s only 20 hours a week. Would you still be interested? And I was like, that’s perfect. Like, I love a part-time job that I can fit around my streaming. So I could still work. And technically I was freelance. So I could still work and do my hours to fit around whatever else. Like I could go to the gym. I could go into town for lunch, could run my errands, could stream in the afternoons, it was perfect. And yeah, I loved being there and I think Raw Fury is such a great publisher, they’ve got so many games that just hit the mark for me. So I’m still a very big fan of Raw Fury.

Steve McLeod
Were you working remotely or in person with Raw Fury?

Vicki Fieldhouse
No, I was working remotely. So all of this time, like both of my roles had been remote. So I hadn’t really known anything else. And before that I was self-employed. So yeah, I hadn’t worked for a company and I hadn’t really been in full-time employment for a long time before that.

Steve McLeod
Okay. And now you’re at Secret Mode. how long have you been there?

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, nearly two years. Yeah, I started in 2024, but I started as a lead and I know you touched on this before. So I jumped quite a few levels. I’d gone from community ambassador working part-time at Raw Fury to jumping up into a lead position, which is quite a senior position in the company. And that, yeah, that was full-time, but I… fully believed I could do it. I was confident I could do it. I loved the team. I loved Secret Mode’s games. Like I played A Little to the Left and I played Loddlenaut at that point and I loved both of those titles. So I was really excited and they’re right here where I live. So I was like, I can walk to work if I need to. This is great.

Steve McLeod
Okay. So you said how much you love part-time work, but this was a full-time job. I, am I right in thinking that that full-time thing, turned out not to be exactly what you wanted?

Vicki Fieldhouse
Well, no, I mean, it was definitely a challenge. It’s not that I don’t want to work full time. I don’t think anyone really wants to work full time. We’d all love to have a part-time flexible career, wouldn’t we? But yeah, working full time after being part-time and self-employed for so long. mean, even at Raw Fury, was technically still self-employed. So going from that into full-time employment, obviously you think you know, stability benefits, a salary, I don’t need to pay my own taxes.

So there’s a lot of good benefits. But yeah, I just was so excited about what they were doing. And I was really excited to be a lead and have that position as well. yeah, it’s not that it didn’t appeal to me, but ultimately I have stepped down into a more community management role. So back down from a lead into a more community management role.

Steve McLeod
So for my education and also some listeners, how do you see a difference between a senior community manager versus a lead community manager? What is the difference in these? There is no standard definition for community manager, but at least in how it is for you, you can tell us.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, absolutely. Sure. So, senior community manager is just a very experienced community manager. So, I would say that even though I’ve not been in the industry that long, that my experience, I do have quite a lot of experience and a lot of skills that would make me senior. With a lead, it’s more like a management position. There’s different types of leads. You could be a principal lead as well, which just means that you still get to do the work. You are just in a more principal position, but lead for me was like a management position.

You are managing a team, you’re managing the everyday, you’re having to chat with stakeholders a lot, you’re having to chat with upper management a lot, you’re not so hands on with the community management. You don’t really have time to be. And I think that’s what I missed the most was just actually just being hands on with the game and hands on with the community. Like it’s very much a hands off position being a lead.

Steve McLeod
I understand now. In a community manager role, even senior, you’re actually doing the day-to-day work, interacting with the community. I mean, at lead, at least in this situation, it was more like being a manager rather than being a doer. Yeah.

Vicki Fieldhouse
For sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Steve McLeod
Let’s move on. I want to hear how you learned to do your job better, especially when you first started as a community manager and it was a new to you, new to you, except you did find that you had a background that helped. How did you learn? What to do?

Vicki Fieldhouse
God, that’s really tricky because I feel like I was just doing it. Like I said, I was hanging out in those spaces. I was helping other people. I was already making content off my own back for my own channels. It’s just that when I got the job, I was suddenly being paid to do everything I was doing already before. So I kind of feel like it just came naturally as horrible as that sounds, like as awful as that sounds, like it just came naturally.

I think to be a community manager, you’ve got to have a certain sensibility. Like you’ve got to want to help people. You’ve got to want to give value to people. You’ve got to want to be of value to a gaming community and be passionate about what you’re doing. And for me, that was always quite natural, especially with working at Raw Fury and also working at Secret Mode as well. But I would say I’m quite picky with what I work on.

Like, I don’t just work on anything. I like to work on things that I am genuinely excited and passionate about because I think that that’s how I will best serve the community and that’s how I will best serve the game. So in terms of like coming up with content for the game, I’m going to want to produce the best content for the game in terms of like live streams or TikToks. I’m going to want to create that.

Because I’m passionate about it already and I’m enjoying it already. I wouldn’t say that I had to learn anything to do my job, but I am continuing to learn. So that’s the key is that you can never, I think you can never stop learning about community management.

Steve McLeod
Yeah, good answer. So let’s say a listener has heard your story of the three key skills you developed and they’re trying to do the same and they’re about to become a community manager for the first time. What would you give them as tips for the first week on the job?

Vicki Fieldhouse
Mmm. Be nice, be nice to everybody.

Steve McLeod
I mean, this is a good life tip.

Vicki Fieldhouse
The industry, yeah, I mean, the industry is smaller than you think. Like you think the games industry is big, right? It’s small and it’s getting smaller by the day. But what I’ve learned is like in my many years of interviewing and trying to get into the industry, I met a lot of people that I now work with. Yeah, so people who interviewed me at other studios now work with me at Secret Mode.

And I’m like, when I started working, I was like, why do I know these people? I’m like, where do I know you from? I was like, did you interview me once? So I would just say be nice, be respectful. I’m not saying that I’m the nicest person in the world. I try to be nice to everybody, but I just think you never know who you’re going to meet again or who you’re going to work for again or who might be hiring you for your next job.

You know, just bear in mind that you’re going to see the same people around a lot because the industry is smaller than you think. So yeah, my biggest tip is be nice.

Steve McLeod
Okay. Be nice. So that goes a long way. It can be interpreted in many ways, but you’re so right that the industry is very insular. I’ve been kind of surprised by this too. You go to the two different events and you already know half the people at the second event because they were at the first event.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Steve McLeod
Do you have any story you can think of a memorable, positive moment as a community manager?

Vicki Fieldhouse
I mean, there’s loads, there’s loads. Particularly when I was working on Kingdom Two Crowns, like I was so, I got so attached to that community. And when it came around to “Raw-cember”, which is something that Raw Fury do every December, they do “Raw-cember” every year, they do a whole sort of week or a month. So I can’t remember how long it is now, but.

They do a lot of giveaways and competitions for their community across like a range of games. So for Kingdom, I got to design and create like a whole week of competitions and giveaways. And that was a lot of fun because it really was for the fans. And you knew that the people who were going to engage with that were going to be like hardcore Kingdom Two Crowns players.

Steve McLeod
Uh-huh.

Vicki Fieldhouse
And they were going to enjoy it. Like I was like, as a player, would I enjoy this experience? Like, would I find this exciting? Yes, I would. Like, am I being asked to test my knowledge on the game? Yes, I am. I know that stuff. Like, I’m going to ace this. And then just being able to give away prizes at the end of it and be like, you know, you guys are amazing. Let’s just give away all the prizes. Like, “Raw-cember” was all about being generous and giving. So just being able to be so involved with designing and running that was super cool, but also like a really big highlight for me at Secret Mode is always Cozy Quest.

Steve McLeod
Yeah, tell me about Cozy Quest. I haven’t heard much about this except that it’s obviously to do with Cozy Games.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yes. So it’s an event that we do at Secret Mode every year called Cozy Quest. It’s a reason why I stepped down actually was because I wanted to be more involved with Cozy Quest and be able to champion our Cozy Games more. And yeah, Cozy Quest is a celebration of Cozy Games essentially. This year we had nearly 300 developers take part in our event and we did four whole days of, we did a showcase, we did four whole days of content.

Where we did like live streams and developers sent us playthroughs and interviews that they’d done and we did a panel and then we topped it all off with an award show which we did live and the award show is always so fun. But yeah, it’s great and I think it’s such a lot of work but I always feel like it’s really worth it and it’s so rewarding and it’s just really nice to get to throw a spotlight on cozy Games that aren’t…

Steve McLeod
So these are surely not all games being published by Secret Mode. No, that’s a lot of games.

Vicki Fieldhouse
No, gosh, no, no, no. So I think that’s, it’s a lot of games that are yeah, most of it, like the vast majority of it is games published by other Cozy publishers or developers, which it’s always really nice to throw the spotlight on their games and give them a chance to shine and really sort of highlight the best of the best of what’s coming for Cozy games. We do a whole sort of feature around like upcoming Cozy games. We do hidden gems, things that have maybe not had the spotlight quite as much as they need to.

But it’s really great to sort of meet and chat with so many other like cozy game devs who were just excited to take part and that we’ve decided to put them in the event. yeah, real highlight this year was we created a Cozy Quest Discord and the devs got to sort of hang out in there and be like, my God, we’ve just had so many new wishlists because of the event. And it’s been so cool like seeing all the content and my God, we just won an award in the award show.

Steve McLeod
Yeah, yeah.

Vicki Fieldhouse
So just their excitement over it was just, it’s just super rewarding. So I would say Cozy Quest is always a highlight for me every year.

Steve McLeod
I’ll have to take a bigger look at that. Everybody likes winning awards, right?

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, it’s always really fun and it’s really fun to give awards as well. Like it’s more like, my God, I can’t wait to see who wins. I can’t wait to tell them they’ve won. Yeah, it’s really, really great fun.

Steve McLeod
Moving on, we’ve talked about something positive, are there any like negative or very challenging moments that have you faced as a community manager that stand out? One of the more negative sides that I think we need to talk about from time to time.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, I think we did speak about this a little bit before we started to hit record because I was like, I think I’m going to give you an answer that isn’t the answer you’re expecting. And I’ve watched a few of your episodes and community managers talk about specific things within the community they’ve managed, some really tough things and some really negative things. And I feel like I’ve been quite, I mean, touch wood, I’ve been quite lucky in terms of like, we haven’t had anything catastrophic or where it’s been like everyone sound the alarms, there’s an emergency that we need to address immediately.

There hasn’t really been anything like that. And if there has, I’ve clearly repressed it. But for me, the biggest challenge was, I think we briefly touched on is just going from that sort of part-time, very much working on one game, one community and working on the dev side as well. Working for a dev is very different to working for a publisher. So…

Steve McLeod
Yeah, how so? Tell me about the differences there.

Vicki Fieldhouse
So the challenge there, so working with a developer, you know, if a community member comes to you with a question about the game and you’re like, gosh, I can’t answer, I don’t know, you can literally just get on a call to the dev and say, I’ve got a question, can you answer it? Easy peasy, right? The dev is one phone call away and they can answer the question.

Steve McLeod
And they know everything, right? They know everything.

Vicki Fieldhouse
They know everything. If I don’t know, the dev will know how their game works or how their game is supposed to work. So yeah, that’s really good.

With a publisher, the dev is a few steps away. They’re not quite so easy to get a hold of if you need to ask them a question about their game. And I think as well, working on multiple games. So when I worked at Raw Fury, I worked on one game and that was super easy.

Steve McLeod
Which game was that one?

Vicki Fieldhouse
That was the Kingdom Two Crowns.

Steve McLeod
That right then the game you had already played for hundreds of hours in advance.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Exactly. So I knew it inside out. it was very rare that I needed to ask a question of, can I just get confirmation on how that works?

I think being on the publisher side and working across multiple titles, it’s really hard to get to know the games inside out. And if you have got a question about the game, so it’s more often that I will have a question about, it supposed to work that way? Or does that feature, is that a feature or is that a bug? I’m not sure. It’s, it’s harder to get the answer. There’s a few more steps to go through before you can get to speak to a dev about that.

So I think that is quite a challenge, also, yeah, going from part time to full time and also going from a community management position to being a lead, that was a big challenge for me. So, yeah, not really a challenge in terms of things within the community, but certainly like a professional challenge for me.

Steve McLeod
How does it make you feel as a community manager for a game when you can’t quickly and easily get in touch with the person who is best placed to answer or tell you?

Vicki Fieldhouse
My goodness, how does it make me feel? Well, I’m a very feelings based person and I’m also neurodivergent. So I really want to help people all the time. I am a people pleaser. If I can’t get them that answer and I can’t help them, I feel awful. And it’s almost like I have to be like really apologetic of like, I’ll ask, but it’s going to be a few days before I can get back to you. Is that okay?

Steve McLeod
Yeah. Okay.

Vicki Fieldhouse
I always want to give them the answer now. I want to help them now. And you’ve got to think of it like I, what I think of it as that player is playing right now, and they want the answer now so they can progress. for example, if there’s a bug and they can’t progress because of this bug, they’re going to stop playing the game or they’re going to, if we don’t respond to them immediately, they’re going to, I mean, people can get very, what is the word I’m looking for?

They’re not very patient, they’re bit impatient. They want you to answer right now!

Steve McLeod
And to be fair enough, to be fair enough, like a game is something you’re very emotionally involved in.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, for sure.

Steve McLeod
It’s very hard to say, I’m just going to stop all that enjoyment right now until it’s…

Vicki Fieldhouse
Until I get an answer. Yeah, until it’s fixed. Yeah, it’s really difficult. And to be honest, if I was in their shoes, and I’d got a game that I mean, yes, if I bought a game, and I was like, Oh, this bug keeps getting in my way, and I can’t actually progress anymore. I would start to feel as though like, I’m just gonna give up, I’m gonna play there’s so many other games that I could be playing right now.

So I think for me as well, that plays into my mindset as a community manager of like, if I can’t get them the answer now, if we can’t get this fixed soon people are gonna stop playing and people are gonna start getting a bit irate about it. So it always just makes me feel a bit crappy to be honest if I can’t solve it for them right then and there.

Steve McLeod
So two or three episodes ago, I was talking to Dale Stiffel. I think I got his surname right.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Mm-hmm. That was one of my favourite episodes. Yeah.

Steve McLeod
Aww, really? I’ll make sure they hear that. I think it was Dale, or I was at Calum, I think it was Dale who said he wrote to the community management team or the support team of a game and it took them more than 60 days to answer.

Vicki Fieldhouse
What?!

Steve McLeod
So all I want to say is if your answer is straight away with, I don’t know the answer, but I’ll get back to you and then five days later you have the answer you’re still doing a lot better than whatever game that was.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Okay, phew, that’s okay. But it’s worse when, so there are a couple of things at the moment that we can’t fix and we can’t fix them because we can’t replicate them.

Steve McLeod
Oh yeah, that’s hard.

Vicki Fieldhouse
So there’s a lot of people having this issue and we’re like, we’re struggling to replicate that. We’ve no idea how to get to that bug. And if we can’t get to it, we can’t fix it. So there’s a lot of people having the same issue. We can’t replicate it, which means, yeah, we can’t fix it. And I don’t know if or when or if ever there will be a fix and that’s going to affect a whole community or a subset of the community playing on a certain platform for that game that yeah I really want to help them and I just don’t think I don’t think I can.

Steve McLeod
So tell me what would be a good strategy in that situation as a community manager when there is a problem that you can’t replicate, you can’t fix, but you still need to go on with managing the community. How would, how would you, what would be a solution or an approach to dealing with that?

Vicki Fieldhouse
Mm-hmm. I think honesty is the best policy if you can be. Like if you can be honest. So I do think honesty is the best policy. We did have this at Syrinscape actually. did have, now I’ve thought about it. We did have a problem. But I think honesty is the best policy. It pays off. If you can be honest. Yeah.

Steve McLeod
And if this is happening to many players on one particular platform, what would you do?

Vicki Fieldhouse
I would probably just say we’re struggling to replicate that right now as soon as we can. Like if you can help us to replicate it, if you can. So a lot of the people reporting the bug have not given us the steps that to replicate essentially. They don’t know how they got to the bug and we don’t know how they got to the bug. So it’s a case of if anyone has more information or can replicate it, please let us know. That would really help us. But until we can replicate it, we can’t fix it. So it’s just a case of being honest and like.

Players don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. Players don’t know that we need to be able to replicate it before we can fix it. So I think it’s just a case of being honest with them and just saying until we can replicate it, we can’t fix it. I’m really sorry that’s happening to you.

Steve McLeod
And then frustrating for you, frustrating for them, but it’s the best one can do. Believe it or not, we’re running out of time. It has gone very, very quickly, but there is one final and very important question for you. What game have you been playing lately?

Vicki Fieldhouse
I play a lot of games. Gaming is my life. So I haven’t got a quick answer for you. I’ve just finished a game called Winter Burrow. It had been on my wishlist for ages and it finally came out.

Steve McLeod
Is that a cozy game? It sounds like a cozy game.

Vicki Fieldhouse
It’s a cozy survival game. You play as a little mouse during winter and you have to survive. It’s lovely. I really enjoyed it. But aside from that, I’m also playing a game called Squeakross. Which is, I can’t remember what it’s actually, what the, is it a mnemonic kind of game? You’ve got a grid with squares and numbers and you have to fill in the squares to make a pattern or an image. So it makes me feel very smart.

Steve McLeod
Ha ha ha.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Cause my husband looks at the game and goes, I said to him, do you know what I’m doing? And he’s like, not a clue. And I’m like, I’m just putting the square here, square there, square there. And he’s like, yeah, not a clue.

But the numbers on the sides of the grid will tell you how many â“ squares there are and how many need to be filled. yeah, that makes me feel really smart. I’m also addicted to a game called Everything is Crab.

Steve McLeod
Everything is…

Vicki Fieldhouse
Everything is Crab.

Steve McLeod
Crab, okay. Tell me about this.

Vicki Fieldhouse
It’s a roguelite game where you play as a blob. It’s kind of like Vampire Survivors mixed with Spore.

Steve McLeod
Okay, Spore.

Vicki Fieldhouse
So you start as a blob and the more you fight and the more you eat, the more you can evolve. And it’s a case of trying to evolve as quickly as possible because you’re on a timer until the boss arrives. So it’s…

Steve McLeod
You’re really taking me back with some of your answers today. Fighting Fantasy and Spore. Wow.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah and then I also play on PS5 so I’m currently playing Split Fiction with my husband and I’ve just got into Jurassic World Evolution 3 so I do play, I play a lot of games.

Steve McLeod
I guess the follow-up question is, how do you find the time? Well, you told me you’re part-time. You’re working part-time, so you can…

Vicki Fieldhouse
It’s literally… No, I’m not working part-time, I work full-time!

Steve McLeod
Oh, okay. I misunderstood. thought that was part of the change of role. Okay, you’re working full time and you play all these games.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yes, so I still work full time. But it’s literally all I do. So in my lunch break, I will crack open some Squeakross or some Everything is Crab and fit it into my lunchtime if I’m working from home. And then generally in the evenings, like I can watch TV and play a game at the same time. Or I can watch my husband play a game and I can play a game at the same time. It’s one of the reasons I got a Steam Deck.

Just so that can sit next to him and still play a game in the evening. So he doesn’t feel guilty about playing a game on PlayStation, and I don’t feel guilty about playing a game on my Steam Deck, because we’re both playing at the same time, essentially. So yeah.

Steve McLeod
It’s the modern family, it’s the modern couple.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Yeah, it’s pretty much all I do in my spare time is just play video games.

Steve McLeod
Wow, that’s really interesting to hear. Vicky, it’s all we have time for today. Thank you again for being on the show and speaking so openly and honestly. Where can listeners get in touch if they’d like to know more about what we’ve discussed today?

Vicki Fieldhouse
Oh my goodness. So despite being in a lot of community and social spaces, I’m not, don’t really do social media anymore. I think I’ve hit that age where I’m kind of, I’m trying to get off all the platforms, if I’m honest, trying to spend as little amount of time on social media as possible. I hang out in a lot of cozy game Discords, or if you want to reach out professionally, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Steve McLeod
Okay, well, we’ll have the LinkedIn profile on the show notes, but we won’t have any other social media there.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Nah, I don’t really use it anymore.

Steve McLeod
I wish I could get myself off social media. Okay. Thank you, Vicki. Bye.

Vicki Fieldhouse
Thank you very much, bye.

Steve McLeod
Bye everyone.

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“The industry is smaller than you think” ft. Community Manager Vicki Fieldhouse

Transcription