A Veteran’s Take on Being a Community Manager with Nicolas Nottin
(You can also watch this episode on YouTube)
Today’s guest is Nico Nottin, a seasoned community developer with over 15 years of experience in the video game industry. Nico is currently the Lead Community Developer at Tribo Games in Germany. His career spans major studios including Square Enix, Creative Assembly, and InnoGames, where he’s cultivated deep expertise in building and managing vibrant gaming communities.
We chat about the distinction between community development and management, how to build a player base before a product launches, and the crucial role of empathy in community work. Nico shares how his background in UX informs his approach to community strategy, and reflects on the evolving skill set needed for today’s community professionals.
Nico also offers practical advice for new community managers, including why LiveOps games offer a rich learning ground, the value of making mistakes, and how small teams can foster rapid iteration and close collaboration.
Games mentioned in this episode:
Find Nico on:
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Transcription
Steve McLeod
Today I’m joined by Nico Nottin. Nico has 15 years of community development and management in the video game industry, and he is currently lead community developer at Tribo Games. Welcome to the show, Nico.
Nicolas Nottin
Hello and thank you very much for inviting me. I’m really excited to be here. And yeah, 15 years. I’m feeling much older already. Just hearing it. It’s probably actually more than that, but yes. uh
Steve McLeod
I got that from your LinkedIn profile.
Steve McLeod
The one thing you’ve got to say about in favor of LinkedIn is people generally tell the truth there, right? Because they have a profile you can check. So there’s no like pretending to be a 25 year old.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, I’m not old.
Steve McLeod
Let’s start with a definition. What exactly is a community development manager in comparison to a community manager?
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, that’s a very interesting question, actually, because um I don’t think it’s very well established yet within the industry. But I think if you look at what’s happening with the game or a product, um you start probably working on the product behind the scenes even before everyone has a chance to actually hear about it. And then as you have designers and coders developing all the features, you also need to think about how are you going to develop that.
community so that at some point you can switch to management mode. So there’s this whole journey of inspiring the users and the players in our case to see the game for what it is, but also empower them to take the game to the next level. And usually you need a well-established community to do just that. And it can’t always come from the developers. And that’s the idea of developing a community is to develop it in a way that
it’s ready to take your game to the next stage. um Ideally a stage that you as a developer you didn’t even think about. You had no idea about it. So that’s the idea about it.
Steve McLeod
It makes sense. It’s for that difficult situation where you start a job for a studio whose game doesn’t actually yet exist and they say, manage our community. And you’re like, what community? So instead you’ve got to develop the community. How do you do that? How do you develop a community when you have no product yet?
Nicolas Nottin
Yes.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, think it’s a lot of discussions first internally with the rest of the team. What is it that we want to provide? What kind of experiences? But they’re so like, what are the crazy things that we would love to see being achieved? You know, either we did it or the players did it, or how much are we willing to be surprised by how the community is actually using and transforming the game? And all of those discussions you extract.
processes or procedures or tools or features that will allow you to inspire your players to see the potential in what can be done and empower your users to actually do just that. So a great example is we want to create an awesome competitive multiplayer game. Okay, that’s great. And then someone goes and say, we would love to have the game live streamed by millions. That’s great. And all of that you understand like,
Having a good Spectreftor mode is probably something that you would want. then the replay system and all of things are tools that will enable you to actually develop the community to the streaming scene or to the content creation scene and so on. So that’s the… It starts with that. lot of discussions with the developers and a lot of soul searching, I would say. But there’s quite a bit of that.
Steve McLeod
So I imagine that if it’s not somebody whose job is to think about that, it just doesn’t happen, right? This thing doesn’t, you don’t create these communities by accident or by magic.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, I wish it was that easy. I think a lot of people think it is exactly just like that. And I mean, it has happened, obviously. There has been games where, you know, it was very organic and that’s awesome. Great success stories. But, you know, the opposite is also true. Even if you have the tools and the best tools in the place, you know, it doesn’t guarantee that you will be able to develop a community and take a game to being a very successful project.
Steve McLeod
Right.
Nicolas Nottin
So it’s a lot of different things, you need someone there to think about these things. It’s really thinking about the user journey as well, so that’s quite a bit of… I like to think that all of what we do is player experience. There’s a lot of that, think, and all that massive umbrella, thinking about the player experience. Who are you? Are you a player? Are competitive player? Are you a content creator? Are you someone who just enjoys the…
artistic aspects of the game. So you need to think about these personas. Someone needs to think about that. And that’s the job of a community developer to think about all of these different personas playing your game and consuming your game in so many different ways and so many different ways to take your game to the next level, basically, the next stage. That’s the idea behind it.
Steve McLeod
Good answer. Let’s move on to you personally. We’ve already established that it’s 15 years or more in the industry. Hey, you can be sure that I’m older than you, right? I’ve got the hair to prove it. When I go to the industry events, I’m surprised by how many middle-aged gray haired men are there. And, you know, it’s a very diverse industry, but there’s still this level of management where the people kind of look like me.
Nicolas Nottin
I’m hiding mine.
Steve McLeod
unfortunately, for better or worse, but I’m diverging. We’re supposed to be telling your story. So tell me, how did you become a community manager? How did it start?
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, think, so at the time I was working at Square Enix and community management wasn’t really a thing. think community moderation was quite something already, but we didn’t have Facebook and social networks and none of that existed. The level of engagement was very much, it was very basic. was so nice to, who is reporting a bug and who is giving us feedback. And there was no notion of giving back to the community in
different ways than just the game. And then it kind of like started becoming something and I joined Creative Assembly and started working on the Total War series, the strategy game on PC. And I joined an amazing team there with different committee managers as well. And I was working on the French department. So I was looking after the French community of that massive franchise. And that’s when I realized that there was a lot
potential there and the job started being respected a little bit better in the industry as well. then YouTube arrived and Twitch arrived. And then all of these sub-segments of community development started to appear. Social media and content creation and a lot of different things that go beyond the very typical B2C communication, which is there is an update goes live, let’s talk about it. Sure, but there is a lot more that we can do about it.
And then, so I worked alone, you PC and console games, and then, you know, for personal reasons, I thought it was time to leave the UK. So I moved from the UK uh to Germany, and I was really, really interested in getting into the mobile industry. And the reason for that is because I really wanted to understand this obsession with numbers and, you know, like trying to understand and the mobile industry is
crazy about this, years and years and years of trying to understand everything with numbers. And so I was thinking, that’s the next thing we need for community development. We need to be able to quantify where we can and where it sense, the effort and results of community development and what it brings to the project. But also we need to understand the things that we cannot quantify because that’s another…
Nicolas Nottin
Love for brand, for instance, is really hard to quantify. Yes, we can run surveys and so on, but there are many different ways and many different reasons that someone might actually love your brand. And sometimes it goes beyond the actual project. Some people love a project not because of the actual game, but because of who’s working on the game. I’m thinking about Overwatch, for instance. All the dev diaries and so on, always looking at the same person.
Nicolas Nottin
but also having huge respect for the rest of the team. That might actually make someone love the game just because they love the spirit of the team. And you can’t really quantify that. So brand image is another thing where, as the same with community image, you can’t really quantify that. People are loving your community because it’s welcoming and it’s not toxic. You can feel it, but you can’t really put a number on it. You can’t really…
So it’s pretty hard. It’s one of those things that are often taken for granted as well. So it’s really frustrating as well as a Community Developer or Manager to be like, but we’ve worked on this so hard and we need to to protect that. then, so I’ve worked on quite a few projects and lately I’ve been working mostly oh on web3 projects. So I found it really interesting to be able to
have these tools that create new tools for basically community members. whether it’s NFTs or a way to claim prices through different processes that are not usually there in the video game through Web3 slash blockchain, it’s quite interesting. And that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m working on the game called Rumble Arcade. early, but there is quite a bit of that new dynamics in the game.
and these new personas as well, people who love games and love running one way or another. And they don’t want to play casino games, but they want to play real games. And it’s quite interesting as well. yeah, try to surmise all of that.
Steve McLeod
So this, I want to go back to the beginning of that story because I didn’t quite follow. You said you were working at Square. At Square and, and how did that, how did you get started in the first role as a community manager? Was it something you did with ambition? This is what you wanted to do. Had you trained to something else?
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, I so I moved to the UK from France and then I joined Square Enix and it was mostly customer support back then. There were a few jobs for community management at some point, but I guess no opportunity to really get into it. But it started becoming something. And then I found opportunities elsewhere where they were looking for community managers and community coordinators and so on. And there was an opportunity to work on different kinds of games as well. And I was like,
This is quite interesting as well because I remember telling myself, I think that’s quite important to the story. Initially, what I wanted to do and what I trained for was UX and UI. That’s why I went to university and I learned how to do that. then, so I couldn’t really do it, maybe because I wasn’t really good at it. I don’t remember. I do remember. uh
Steve McLeod
Ha ha ha.
Nicolas Nottin
But when I realized that community management, what is it? it’s, it’s not just talking to people is really thinking it requires a certain level of empathy to understand where the players are coming from and what do they want in their journey. And I immediately felt the connection with user experience. So it was a, for me, was like, this is exactly what I want to do because that’s exactly what that’s something I understand very well. Um, and you need, it’s the same with UX artists, know, UX and UI artists, put themselves in the skin of the players and they really think about like, okay, that’s the same with community development and management. How do I react if I read this? How would I feel if I play this game? If I read an announcement and then go into the game, do I feel the same? Is there something changing? So all of that is, it’s really, really important, which is also why it’s a really difficult job because you rely on human and social interactions, which is extremely volatile.
It’s the least reliable thing that you can use to work on something. But it’s beautiful at the same time.
Steve McLeod
I think games have a habit of really evoking strong emotions too. And when those strong emotions are evoked, it’s even harder for people to act rationally or to themselves, you know, like nice and calmly. I think I understand the connection between UX, user experience and human team management. I didn’t realize this, but you’re right. It’s empathy in both of those. You need a lot of empathy. Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, I think it’s a key thing. And again, I think it’s understanding where some people are very passionate about something, why are they so angry on the farm talking about the latest update? And why are they making these threads about like 50 things that developers should follow to fix their game? And while it might feel like it’s at times…
You know, how to take maybe seriously or you don’t understand the reason why someone would put so much effort in that. It’s because they have that passion and these emotions tied to it. And they mean well, but you need that empathy to really understand where those players are coming from as well. And take your time as well to react to those posts.
Steve McLeod
Do you find it hard sometimes to keep calm in those situations?
or to defuse the conversation.
Nicolas Nottin
There was a time I think, and everyone is different, but there was a time I found it very hard to stay calm and compose myself and really not overreact to it. I think I’ve had great leads as well. Like you said earlier, the industry is tons of… amazing men and women and I’ve had the chance to work with really amazing leader back when I worked at Fair Games, Tara. I think I’ve learned a great deal of how to stay calm and just having empathy as well. I think that that helps quite a bit, having a good lead. We can really teach you there’s nothing wrong. There’s no need to overreact. It’s completely fine.
Steve McLeod
Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
And as long as no one is actually toxic towards another player or developer or team, know, like, you can find ways to relax. If not, let’s just have a coffee somewhere for five minutes and talk about it.
Steve McLeod
That five minute coffee break is great, especially with it if it’s with another human being who’s kind of on your side and isn’t emotionally involved. Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah. Yeah. And talk with someone who actually never reads the form and being like, how would you react? know, it’s like, you know, and maybe you, and I found myself to be at some point being like, okay, I think I’m overreacting here, you know, and, that’s the thing as well. is a lot of pressure on community developers and managers to protect developers quite often from some of the toxicity, some of the really mean stuff that is happening on forms and social that it can happen.
Steve McLeod
Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
that sometimes it’s hard to, you know, kind of adjust, especially in big milestones and so on. But yeah, usually it’s okay.
Steve McLeod
Moving on, one of the reasons I’m doing this podcast is because it’s so hard to find good information online about how to be a community manager, how to do your job well. So I want to know how do you go about finding out how to do your job better as a community manager or a community developer?
Nicolas Nottin
That’s quite interesting. think it’s hard to really give specific advice on, you know, you can’t really have like one way that just works for everyone. And I think that’s the one advice I would have is, or one of the many first advices is, there is no one way to do things. I think there are key rules to have, you know, try to be…
try to have empathy so that you can understand where people are coming from. It’s not just about forgiving people, it’s also to understand where they’re coming from. But don’t approach each project the same way. Every team, every studio, every organization, every game, every community is always different. So it’s good to know that there might be different ways to get to achieve your goals as well. And I think it’s an interesting one as well to
I mean, becoming a community referral or manager, think it’s also having a very strategic mindset about what you want to do, but also be extremely flexible in, you know, so that you can react to what’s happening. So have a plan in place. If you have the time, have a strategy, but also be ready to adapt really quickly. And I think for new
New people trying to get into the job. think it’s quite interesting to work on games with LiveOps. That’s quite interesting. I think it’s probably the best way to, one of my favorite way to get into the job.
Steve McLeod
Can you tell me what for the listeners who might not know what a game with Life Ops means and what they would be doing?
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, think especially now that there are so many different ways to do LiveOps. LiveOps usually is everything that is live content. So it’s evergreen content or something running into the game. And quite often these are online games. Maybe there are even more RPGs. Maybe there are games, FPS games or mobile games. But there is always like a constant online element. And these games usually have a very active community around these online LiveOps elements.
So whether it’s an event or seasonal events or tournaments, these are great ways for someone new to really understand the different dynamics that you can find in the game, especially if you work with the community. So, you know, there will be new content coming, so you can work on a lot of communication around that. That’s really cool. But you also have kind of like the most sensitive topics like… uh
Character balancing, for instance. That’s an interesting one. So you get to work on a lot of different things and lot of different topics and a lot of different challenges. So if you really wanted to work as a Community Developer Manager, if you’re able to work on a live game, something online, that’s pretty good. I think that’s a great way for someone to get into it. Mobile games are great for that, I think.
Steve McLeod
And what about you personally, how do you learn to do, how do you learn your skills or to improve your skills as a community manager? Are there resources you’ve found? it from communities for community managers or from events, from books?
Nicolas Nottin
Right.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, I think making mistakes.
Steve McLeod
I like that one.
Nicolas Nottin
And I think I’m putting this one first because I think that is, I think our industry suffers a little bit from, you know, trying to get everything right right away and being perfect. And I think that there are some leadership challenges in our industry, sadly. And I think many people are afraid of making mistakes. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t care. You should be considerate and cost-conscious as well.
but don’t be afraid of or so if something breaks and you’re going to learn from that. you know, just take it on, ask for help as well. You know, anyone can ask for help. Well, I think anyone who you think can really, you know, help you either fix the situation or give you, you know, advice beforehand or give you feedback on or a different perspective on things, whether you are lead.
Steve McLeod
Ask for help from who?
Nicolas Nottin
And I think that’s quite important as well, whether you’re a lead and it’s okay to ask help from the people you’re looking after. And if you’re someone who is part of the team as well, ask your leaders or your team leaders for help. But I find it really, if you’re a very small studio and you’re just the one person as a community manager, I’ve loved working with producers.
and designers and analytics department as well. These are people that can really help you kind of like get a better perspective on things. QA as well, really. Even if it’s for like, hey, you know, I drafted this announcement, what do you feel about it? If you were a new player and you read it and you can ask anyone, but ask for help and don’t be afraid of someone telling you, I think that’s mistake or even making a mistake along the way. It will happen. So you might as well just, you know.
Nicolas Nottin
Accept it now and it’s a great thing. happens. Online resources, there are plenty. There are of really great, well-established committee of developer and managers in the industry that regularly post on Twitter, on LinkedIn, whether they worked on small games or giant games. But observing as well. Look around, look at the different games, see what they do.
see how they do it differently and try to understand why they do it that way. um But don’t try to take it and just put it on your game. Use it as an inspiration. I think that’s really key. um That’s really important because like I say, there is not one strategy that works for everything. So don’t set yourself full um frustration and…
Steve McLeod
Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
And yeah, things that don’t work because they’re just not meant to work for your game.
Steve McLeod
There’s a game whose name I just can’t remember right now. It’s something like Galactic Rock, Deep Rock Galactic or something. You know, the game is a, it’s become infamous because the whole company is in on community management, like all the developers and everything. And I think that’s a great example of yes, it works for them. They have the right team for that. But if you just try to do what they’re doing in your game and you don’t have the right developers and the right people managing the whole process, I could see that going terribly.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, definitely. I think so. That’s a great example of like, okay, it might work for one game and it doesn’t work for another. I think being successful on Twitch is probably the second uh biggest misconception out there. It’s like, we want to make a game that people stream. It’s so organic that you can create tools that will inspire people or make it easier for people to live stream, but that doesn’t mean your game will be… Or like an e-sport game. think that’s the biggest mistake ever. Like, let’s make an e-sport game that means nothing. But these things, it’s like, you have to get inspiration, understand why some things might have worked for that game and not another. And I just leave it at these things are inspirations. And now how do I adapt that to my game with my team, my resources, very important as well.
And the challenges I’m facing with also probing if it’s going to work. I think that’s really important as well because it’s really easy for, just like many other departments, but for community management departments to be the first to go when things don’t go well in the studio. that’s the, one of the realities is it’s really hard for us to so verify things. So rightly so when the studio needs to make a decision.
It’s quite often committee management going among a few other great departments.
Steve McLeod
Yeah, sad reality of being a community manager, I’m afraid. I have a question for you about your previous position. You were at Inno Games, right? They’re a big company. They’re one of Germany’s biggest games companies, if I understand. And with many successful franchises. And now you’re at Tribo Games, also in Germany, but I imagine they’re a much smaller team. What kind of difference have you found in the support for your job?
Nicolas Nottin
Definitely, Yeah.
Steve McLeod
inside the different companies. don’t want you to tell me about inside specifics. It’s not fair to ask you of that, but just if you think about in general, going from a large company to a small company, how do you find the differences as a community manager or community developer?
Nicolas Nottin
That’s a great question. love it. Yeah, mean, Eno Games is giant, it’s massive and has been around for many years and with a really huge community department and not just internally but also like, know, they work with so many great volunteers and community managers working freelance and so on. So it’s huge. when you work on like within the company,
that is much smaller, much newer, like where I am right now, things tend to be definitely much quicker as well. There is no need for meetings and so on. It’s much quicker to have discussions about things and you have to. So it sounds, it might feel like, that’s amazing. Things, it’s much easier, there’s no need for process, approval, Department XYZ to be informed and GRI and whatnot.
But you have to be, you need that flexibility because you’re such a small team as well that you have to work at the same pace as the developers. that’s, you you can’t, things need to move super quick and super fast. So it’s also a good way for you to quickly move on to, okay, we tried that, didn’t work. Let’s move on to the next thing. Maybe we’ll go back to this another time, but now is not the time to just set things in stone and be like, okay, this is how it is now.
can’t afford it. um But it’s nice to see some of my colleagues who have before I’ve never really got interested in communities to be like, okay, and they got into communities as well, even before I joined. So it’s pretty interesting to now see them, you know, understanding that aspect of the project a lot more. it’s, it’s great. But I think that’s, that’s one aspect as well is
It gives you more flexibility, but you have to have it so that you can really use it a lot more to follow up with your developers because it moves really, really quick.
Steve McLeod
I’ve heard that in general software development, some people moving from big companies to small companies are shocked and can’t do it. They get to the small company and realize they have to do things quickly and they’ve just got too cemented into the old ways. So I personally much prefer smaller companies, but that’s again, I’m talking about me. Let’s talk about you. Do you have a story of a memorable positive moment as a community manager that you can share?
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, I mean, there are so many actually. I think for me it was, em I think we were working on, I was working on Total War actually. And the World Team you know was back when I was travelling a lot actually with the community team because we went to a lot of events and we literally went around the entire world promoting games. And I remember
We were walking around with Otto Dover t-shirts and then one of the fans came with his parents all the way from America and was a massive fan and just like recognized the team. Wasn’t too sure about it, but then, you know, ask kind of like it, but very excited, but ask about it. And that’s nice to, you know, to see someone really kind of having these emotions tied to a game that you’ve been working on. And the, and the
They don’t see the game, they see you walking around at the trade show and they’re like, oh, and they shout the name of your game. And you can’t help but think about all the other thousands of people who have been working on this game and this person who clearly has really strong emotion about the project and is really excited about it. And then you understand how much that game is part of their life.
how much of an impact that game is having on that person’s life. Hopefully and most definitely, probably in very positive way. So I think that’s something I quite often remember and I have flashes in my mind about like I remember that scene.
Steve McLeod
It’s like you felt like a rock star briefly.
Nicolas Nottin
Well, I mean, I guess I’m too humble for that now, kidding. But I think it’s also knowing that something that so many people back at the office has been working on. that was, remember that was back when we had released Total War Rome 2, which had a bit of a challenging launch. And then we were trying to redeem ourselves with Total War Attila. And it was going well.
Steve McLeod
Yeah.
Nicolas Nottin
But you know, can tell there are deep emotions related to video games and, you know, really, really strong memories and ways for people to really cope with life as well, especially at the time now when things seems really difficult and challenging games is a great way for people to, um you know, find the energy to continue working on projects and feeling well. So, yeah, that was a good memory.
That is a good memory.
Steve McLeod
I like this story. Nico, we’re running out of time, but I have one very important final question for you. What game have you been playing lately?
Nicolas Nottin
Oh gosh, I mean, I’ve mostly been playing Rumble Arcade, I’m not gonna lie. But too late lately, my brother has been getting into gaming a lot more lately. And oddly enough, he’s got into simulation games and he got into farming simulator, a game I’ve never played before. And I found myself spending thousands of hours on the game. it’s really, yeah, no, I nothing about farming.
Clearly, but I’ve been playing that and I just it’s so relaxing. I just like it’s it’s Yeah, it’s odd And then I’ve played a little bit of Monster Hunter. It was a great game. But um, yeah
Steve McLeod
Farming Simulator. Look, I’ve never played it. I’ve heard good things about it. And it’s a juggernaut. It’s a really successful, profitable game with really devoted players. When we go to industry events, there’s always a Farming Simulator stand there. And like, I go and talk to them like, yeah, we’re not here for sales. We’re just here because, you know, we like to tell people what’s a good place to work.
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, I was very surprised by, you know, it’s a strong community with mods as well, but I was very surprised by the amount of content that is really, you know, kind of like improving those games. I was surprised to like it. was like, it’s actually not bad. Yes, it did. Yeah. The guy that I play games and then he got me into farming somewhere. So that’s pretty funny.
Steve McLeod
And you said your brother got you into this.
Steve McLeod
Nice. Well, it’s time for us to wrap up. If people want to know more about you or get in touch, where’s the best way to do that?
Nicolas Nottin
Yeah, probably LinkedIn. think it’s a good place to be and a great place to connect with other committee managers for sure.
Steve McLeod
Okay.I’ll make sure your LinkedIn profile is in the show notes. Okay, Nico, thanks again for being on the show. Bye. Bye, everybody.
Nicolas Nottin
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.