Career Switches, Showcase Pitches, and Finding Your Voice with Dennis Abe
(You can also watch this episode on YouTube.)
Today’s guest is Dennis Abe, a community manager at King in Sweden. Dennis has held various roles in the video game industry, including time in Japan as a game designer and esports commentator. His unconventional journey—from awkward introvert and indie game studio intern in Tokyo to respected community manager—reflects the power of curiosity, persistence, and community-building.
We chat about the value of setting boundaries as a community manager, how to separate personal and professional identities, and why internal communication within game studios is just as critical as player engagement. Dennis shares actionable tips for newcomers to the industry and highlights what makes communities like Supercell’s and Landfall’s so impactful.
Dennis also tells the story of launching a VR game showcase, driven by player passion, and how that initiative helped shape broader industry practices.
Games mentioned in this episode:
Find Dennis on:
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Transcription
Steve McLeod
Today I’m joined by Dennis Abe. Dennis has had many roles in the video game industry in Sweden and in Japan. He’s now back in Sweden and working as a community manager at King. Welcome to the show, Dennis.
Dennis Abe
Thanks for having me. I’m super excited about this. I’ve heard the previous episodes and I’m really happy to be here.
Steve McLeod
I think you’re the first person I met in real life because of this first season of the podcast. Well, you were in Barcelona for a few days, we managed to catch up and that was really cool.
Dennis Abe
Yeah, I mean, what can I say? The cast is making waves in the community manager kind of spectrum. Like I’ve heard about it from other community managers and well, now I’m here. So.
Steve McLeod
Excellent. Listeners, I’m a friendly person. If you’re passing through Barcelona, get in touch. I do like to meet up for a coffee or a drink or whatever beverage and we can talk. And you know, it might even lead to your own appearance on the podcast. Dennis, tell me, how did you become a community manager? Go right back as far as you want to.
Dennis Abe
Sure. So I think starting off, it’s just fun to hear others, community managers, kind of stories, how do they get into this kind of line of work because everyone has their own story. For me, um if I go really, really far back, which for some might be too far, um I always kind of wanted to work with games as a kid. Like, you know, I got into games very early on. I was an awkward introvert kid and I didn’t know how to talk to people, but games was kind of like an outlet. It was creative and fun. But I had no idea how to kind of use my talents for that. uh And so for a long time, I had no idea how games were even made. Like up until my teens, just, I liked games, but I didn’t know how they were made. And so I guess my entry point really into it was that I realized that a lot of games were made in Japan. This is for me as a Swedish person as well. For some reason had no idea in my teens that Sweden was a powerhouse in the games industry. I just know about Japan. So my goal became to go to Japan someday and try to get into games. And that’s easier than it sounds like. Or no, not really.
Steve McLeod
This was you as a Swedish person and I assume not really speaking Japanese.
Dennis Abe
Exactly. It’s quite a lot harder than I thought it would be, but as luck would have it, I would eventually find my way to Japan. When I got into university, I started studying game design and project management in a bachelor program. And uh at the end, they did have an internship section. As I said, as luck would have it, I did get an internship as a game designer in Tokyo in Japan. And so that was my first entry as a career point into games. Totally clueless, very bad at Japanese, but I tried to make my way there. During that time, I did try out some other things. It was a small indie game studio. I tried QA, I tried game design. I also tried to build a community for the game that I worked with because it needed to be done. So that’s where I got my first taste for it. em yeah, after some time in Japan, I realized, sorry?
Steve McLeod
So were you officially a community manager when you were trying to get create the community for this role or this one you still had the title of game designer?
Dennis Abe
Yeah, it was a game designer still, and I did not have that expectation, but I felt like it was sad to not see more people talk about the game. And so I kind of got motivated by myself that like, okay, someone has to talk about this and how do I get people interested in this? So I started to build my own like subreddits. I tried to spread the word on Twitter back then. And so that was my first like taste and I had no idea what I was doing basically. But uh I kind of got back to that point later because after some time I realized I wasn’t really good at programming. I was pretty bad at it actually. And I had some difficulties getting jobs as a game designer. So I came back to Sweden after some time, tried to figure out what I wanted to do with games, worked as QA for a bit. And uh I got into kind of the line of e-sports. Did some kind of grassroots initiatives for the fighting game community. And that’s where I also started to kind of build communities again. And so eventually all of this kind of work that I did on the side of work, like on my spare time, eventually led me to a job into the games industry as a community manager. And that’s where I’ve been now for about five, six years and just focusing on building communities for different games. I’m still around so I guess that’s what I do good and that’s what I want to do.
Steve McLeod
I think you’re the first community manager I’ve talked to for this podcast series who has experienced as a coder, as a developer, as a programmer. How does that influence your, your job, your day-to-day job as a community manager or how, has it influenced?
Dennis Abe
I mean, just, yeah, the short answer would be like, I’m not as delusional, I hope, uh when I ask of stuff from the developers now, but I think it has given me some strengths in understanding of just how, what kind of effort and resources goes into the development and understanding that, oh, maybe I want to do this fun thing. Well, it’s not as easy for the developers to actually accommodate that. Also, surprisingly though, the QA experience has helped me a lot in unexpected ways too. When players approach you or they’re having an issue in the game, I sometimes go back into my QA routines and start breaking the games. Sometimes that helps the developers too. So having that kind of overview of how a game is made, I think has helped me a lot in terms of just understanding it basically.
Steve McLeod
You said you did some esports commentating. How’s that? How, I think esports is not having a great time anymore, right? There was the heyday maybe 10 years ago and it’s dropped away a bit.
Dennis Abe
Yeah, esports has definitely seen its brighter days and esports has been a part of my life too. I just love competing in games too. And I did work for a while at an esports company now after the QA role and I did some commentary, I did some streaming. And I think the theme that I’ve kind of been repeating for myself now that I have been comfortably working as a community manager is that all of these kind of seemingly random experiences I had previously led up to become meaningful later for me as a community manager. I had no idea that doing game design would be beneficial for me like eight years later or doing, well, doing e-sports commentary. I did that for a few times and that led to me being comfortable in front of the camera and talking to people and, you know, going to conferences and stuff as a community manager. Yeah, it’s never been a waste of time. It’s just been a wild ride.
Steve McLeod
You mentioned that you were introverted or you are introverted and this is a common theme for, for Community Managers and myself too. I think, uh, having that experience that she talking to the camera helps so much with that. I’ve had a couple of guests I would have loved to have on the podcast. They’ve accepted to come on, but then when we got closer to the date, they canceled and I’m, I feel that a, a big factor of that is it’s nerve like it creates nervousness having to get onto the camera and talk. So I think that’s really nice that you’ve had that experience and can comfortably do this. oh
Dennis Abe
I will say though that like every time I go into this, not this like podcast per se, but in when doing something that is live in front of an audience or live streamed or something like that, I do get so nervous and I, every time my heartbeat goes up so much, but I’ve just told myself that I’ve done this enough times that it should be fine, but my body always wrecks the other way and just like. I feel like I’m dying every time I go live in something, but you just have to convince yourself that that’s just how it could be. And I’m fine with it, I guess.
Steve McLeod
Have you developed any coping mechanisms or any like a routine to do before going live to help with that?
Dennis Abe
I think maybe not thinking is one thing as well. No, but I really not. I guess for commentary and stuff like this, or when I represent the company in a live stream, I almost feel like I’m going into some sort of character. Like this is me, a professional version of me. And then I can step in and out almost like acting, I guess, even though I will comment, I have no idea how acting works. But it feels like that at least.
Steve McLeod
I am trying to do some more public speaking than I have done this year. And something I’ve learned is this, same thing, assume a role. When I go on stage, I’m not Steve. I’m a person who’s a confident, comfortable public speaker. And that’s the role I’m playing. And I don’t break role. Even if I’m as nervous as anything, I don’t get up on the stage and say, oh, I’m so nervous because that’s not the character I’m playing.
Dennis Abe
That’s good. I like that too, actually.
Steve McLeod
I mean, easier said than done, but it’s what I’m trying to do. Moving on with the questions. So where do you go about learning how to do your job better as a community manager?
Dennis Abe
Yeah, so I think that would be a mix of things because being a community manager is a mix of things as well. Depends a bit on what you focus on. When it comes to the games industry and especially community managers, I think we as a profession, we’re very open to learning from each other. So it’s very easy to just go to other community managers once you’ve established a sort of network. And ask them about day-to-day things. But also because of our work being so public, I have found it to be very easy to just look at what others are doing and try to understand it. Join a Discord for a famous game or look at a campaign some other game is making. What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? What do you like? What don’t you like? And kind of actively try to ask yourself those questions to learn more. And yeah, at least that’s good for us is staying on top of trends and like understanding your audience. I think more for specific examples, you’d love to name drop companies here, right? And I think the ones that I’ve been looking at for a really long time that just seems to nail it every time are for me, Supercell and Landfall.
Steve McLeod
Okay, what do you like about how they do their community management?
Dennis Abe
Yeah, Supercell from Finland, close to Sweden. So I guess it’s some kind of camaraderie there, but I’ve, um they have this kind of really personal touch to how they communicate to their fans. And they really just knock it out of the park of how professionally they do it. It almost feels like when you’re a player for their games, you’re being like showered with rewards every time you just tune in and like interact with their community managers. I mean, I guess it’s bit of envy, like how their community managers for me are almost seen as like rock stars. They’re, you know, in their presentations, but I, I feel like they’ve rarely gotten things wrong. And when, when they do, they’re very transparent and saying that they are wrong or that they did something bad. And then Landfall, if you don’t know, is this indie game company that also, for some reasons can frustrate people because they’re so good at what they do. I don’t understand how they keep doing it, but uh they have so many successes and they just seem to understand their player base so well. And I think it’s just a part of the transparency. They seem to just be really in tune with their audience and honest of what they do. And it seems to work out.
Steve McLeod
I’m not familiar with Landfall, but I’m going to look them up after this interview, after that, that praise. And when you join, for example, the Discord of a popular game to see how they’re doing community management, are you doing that as a player or are you a bit open saying, I am a Community Manager? Are you from another game?
Dennis Abe
I think the best way for me, seeing how others work is just not the role playing, but basically joining as a player and trying to figure out, okay, what would I do joining this community as a player? What would be important for me? Sometimes, I mean, the audience doesn’t really match what I want to do, but I try to kind of imagine, okay, what would this player be interested in? If there’s a creative game where you draw, okay, how can I get to connect with other artists in this kind of community when I join and are there spaces for where I can do what I want to do? And, you know, it’s very different from game to game, I would say. But, but overall, I would join as a player and try to figure things out. Is it a safe space? uh Do people get treated well? Do they get responses when they need to? uh And do they have, I think the most important part, do they have the space to kind of express themselves to. If the community has that kind of place, usually it’s a very healthy community.
Steve McLeod
And these communities are normally running in Discord, on Reddit, on their own private forums. What’s the trend that you’re seeing?
Dennis Abe
Yeah, I mean, obviously the trends very much lately in the last few years has been Discord and I do, and that’s why it’s for me easier to just kind of join, pop in and out of servers and try to figure things out. Obviously there are some communities like King that does communities on message boards and there it’s, I mean, maybe it’s even easier than Discord because it’s open. You don’t need an invite. You can just view the page. But yeah, checking Reddit message boards and Discord is the biggest ones that require very little, I guess, effort. Like it’s a lot more effort for me, at least, heading into my 30s to research stuff on TikTok and Instagram. There’s some more kind of pain points for me to go into that, but uh definitely something you can do as well, right?
Steve McLeod
A community manager I was talking to privately last year told me he thinks or his research has shown that Reddit skews towards Americans and skews towards male. And he saw that as potentially a problem and that it wasn’t representative of the global player base. And he had to say, you know, it’s good, Reddit’s good, but we have to be careful that we’re not doing just what people are saying on Reddit and not only addressing their concerns because it might be missing out on a big other big segments of our audience, of our player base.
Dennis Abe
Yeah, I 100 % I mean the social media platforms that are used for different types of communities and games do have their inherent bias of like how they present themselves. I 100 % believe that too. And it’s especially noticeable with places like Twitter or X how that’s changed the last few times, not to date this podcast too much. And I think that’s really important. mean, one of the biggest things I’ve seen at King, for example, is the communities on Facebook can be really strong and a lot stronger than people might realize. People may underrate Facebook and the groups that go on there. But I’ve seen Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of people that are active. But also building your own space is kind of a way to get around that. Having your own type of message board use of the rules and use of the boundaries in another way than like ah how it’s presented by Reddit ah or Twitter or X.
Steve McLeod
Exactly. It’s a real dilemma. Do you say X? Then it sounds like you’re talking about something that used to be something. Some people say X Twitter, which means former Twitter, Twitter X, I don’t know. I wish they just hadn’t messed around with it. Twitter was so good back in the day. I mean, it always had its problems, but I made good friends on Twitter before it fell apart.
Dennis Abe
No, exactly. Me too, and I’ve been trying Blue Sky too, but it’s not really popping off in the same way. But yeah, we still have that problem in Sweden. Every time it’s mentioned in the news, they always have to say ex-formerly Twitter in like every sentence in newspaper, and it’s getting a bit tiring.
Steve McLeod
Do you have a story of a memorable positive moment that you’ve had as a Community Manager that you could share with us?
Dennis Abe
Yeah, sure. Let me just think a moment here. Yeah, exactly. No, definitely have a lot of moments where positive interactions as a community manager. But I think the one that of stands out was, so a few years back, I used to work with VR games. And back then, I noticed this kind of huge gap that there wasn’t really this big event that brought players together or fans of VR games in the same way that you do see with, well, these days, the Summer of Games and Game Awards or like back in the day, E3 and these types of things. And so I’ve been a big fan of those too. And I felt like VR games didn’t really have something similar.
Steve McLeod
By VR games, we’re talking about Oculus, for example, right? The headsets, yeah. Okay.
Dennis Abe
Exactly, the headset games. And so as a community manager at the VR game studio, I felt, well, why don’t we do it ourselves? uh And so there, yeah, why don’t I make some sort of kind of event to gather players and have their excitement gathered for something that they all enjoy? And so, sure, there have been some VR showcases that are run by press outlets. But they didn’t really have that same level of energy like E3 or the Xbox games showcase or Nintendo Direct or even BlizzCon or Brawl Talks. They don’t have that kind of same power to them. And at the time, we were developing several games. So we had enough to make our own showcase. So basically, in my spare time, I started building this pitch deck outside of work and making a business case for this. And then when I had the presentation, I kept resharing it to my coworkers and trying to convince them, this is what we should be doing. And eventually I got so bold that I started sharing it with the leadership at the company as well, because I was so convinced that this was what we were supposed to be doing. And it took about a year and a lot changed from my original idea, but eventually we made this entire showcase, which is I think it’s about a half an hour still up on YouTube. And where we had these like exclusive announcements of the trailers shown and all of the players were gathered in chat and like it was this kind of they were excited for a week before this leading up to this event. Looking back at it now, I mean, maybe this showcase didn’t really go viral or blow up our sales or anything like that, but it did really put the company um in a new position and in a new light. Basically, all the other VR game studios were looking at us and saying, oh, you can do that? And so afterwards, I started seeing these kind of events showcases pop up in VR more and more. And I don’t want to be the one to say credit solely for it but it does feel really good
Steve McLeod
Let me do it. I’m giving you the credit for this.
Dennis Abe
I can take some. But it just kind of stuck with me that the entire team, the marketing team and the entire studio, because everyone was working on a different games, were working towards this one goal. And at the time, the company, when I was at Resolution Games, there were about 200 people. And so it was this really crazy energy where we match the players excitement. Like the developers and marketing was excited and they were excited. So it was special.
Steve McLeod
That’s awesome. It’s really nice that the organization supported you in this too. So moving on, let’s talk about tips you might have for somebody who’s just got their very first job as a community manager and has no idea what they’re supposed to be doing. What would you suggest they concentrate on doing in the first weeks or months in their job?
Dennis Abe
Yeah, this is, I’m glad that I wish someone had this for me when I started as a Community Manager. But I think the biggest point that I’ve been seeing for people that have worked with community management for quite some time is the biggest topic to bring up is setting boundaries uh and maintaining them. What I mean by that, is like dividing your life between professional and personal life. A lot of community managers that get into games, they’re excited, they want to do their very best, they want to be personal. And so they run with their personal accounts, they use the real names in the discords and all of these things. That can have a lot of really bad downsides. And I think to set that as a real example, I used to do this myself. I used to kind of consider myself as one with the company. I was basically a part of the company as a Community Manager. And then about two years ago, before working at King, I experienced my first layoff at the Resolution Games. And for me as a community manager, I’m not sure how it is for developers and artists. They have their things that they’ve worked on as well. But as a community manager, it basically felt like I lost a part of who I am because I was representing the company so intensively that when I lost that, it felt like I lost a part of me. I didn’t no longer represent this entity. And that was partially because I hadn’t set up and maintained boundaries for how I work. To put that into actuality, set up separate accounts for when you start working. Never use your personal accounts. And try to find ways to ah separate when you work and when you don’t work, like having two different devices, uh taking a walk after you stop working, these types of things. And I guess to add to it also is just being a community manager doesn’t mean that you’re always available, which is also a thing that I did. I kept responding to players on weekends and evenings. It was this kind of, I don’t even know if it was a company expectation or if it was an expectation set by myself, but no one really needs to need you all the time. Like you can take the weekend off and evenings off. It’s fine.It’s just games. Like it’s going to be OK.
Steve McLeod
I have this way of thinking that, uh, what did I do two years ago on this very weekend? I don’t remember. Nobody remembers. Nobody remembers if I went above and beyond and worked on my, did my work all over the weekend. And therefore if nobody remembers that from two years ago, why would I do it this weekend? Like it has no long-term benefit. And it just has a negative short term effect for me because you’ve got to be outside of your job.
Dennis Abe
Yeah. And I mean, long-term, also kind of degrades or it kind of makes the quality of what you do worse as well. I think if I want to play like devil’s advocate, there’s some people have said, yeah, but what if something happens during the weekend or what if this, you need to be there like you need, because you have the ownership. I think once I’ve heard those types of arguments, I try to say to people that, well, there are ways to kind of set that up.
Like you can have moderators helping you out or you can have some sort of like safe, you know, rules being set up automatically over the weekend. I guess maybe that comes with more experience of community management. You start to become more bold, like close down the community. Like don’t let anyone talk, do whatever you’re more important in terms of your health than someone having to be angry at you at 6 p.m. on a Saturday.
Steve McLeod
So tip one I’ve heard is separate your professional life from your private life. And tip two is to set boundaries. Both. Yeah.
Dennis Abe
Yeah, I think so. if I may, may I add a third?
Steve McLeod
You may, you may add as many as you want.
Dennis Abe
I think the third tip, it’s something that I haven’t really heard many talk about as community managers that are just in the games industry as well. But it’s something that I’ve kind of gotten to know the last few years is that a lot of Community Managers that get into the profession, they only focus on, okay, how can I decipher what the players want and how can I collect their feedback and how can I talk to the players? It’s always outwards. But I think a lot of really kind of good community managers also focus on the communication internally into the company. So if the developers and the company trusts you, you have so much more freedom on what you want to do with the players. And I feel like a lot of people, when they get into that, they only focus on the players and they don’t really think about, well, I’m presenting the stuff that the game designer artists or producers are working on, but they actually trust me. And if they don’t, that can cause problems later. So I would also like, please take the internal communication seriously as well.
Steve McLeod
Okay, what’s a practical way in which you could do that?
Dennis Abe
Well, being there for them in the same way that you consider yourself you’re being there for the player. When you get requests from players, how urgent does that feel versus when you get to talk to someone at the game company or like a request internally, how urgent do you feel that that is too? Sometimes, you know, it can vary in balance of what is more urgent, but uh a lot of the times people have the tendency to be like, the player is important, kind of prioritizing maybe the programmers need to know how players feel about this specific feature. How can you get that to them? How can you understand what they’re looking for? Like it’s almost looking at a different type of player. You have to kind of decipher what they want as well. Great. Is that it for your tips? I can move on.
Dennis Abe
Yeah, yeah, I’m done, yeah.
Steve McLeod
Okay. So last question, second last question really. Let’s say there’s a 20 year old you’re talking to or somebody in the early twenties whose dream job is to be a community manager in a video games company. And they’re not even in the video games industry yet. How would you recommend they start the process of becoming a community manager? What tip do you have for people wanting to become a community manager?
Dennis Abe
I mean, thank you for choosing this profession and being interested in, first of all, for that 20 year old. But I would say that there are so many different ways of how to get into community management. And it’s a lot more open to try things out than you’d think. There are communities for everything and there are people who want to connect with things everywhere. So that’s a good thing, right? um
Dennis Abe
Being the one to kind of step up to the plate and help people connect to the common interest will always be appreciated if um you do it for them, not for yourself. If you try to think about it like, oh, I want to help people, I think that’s when you start to see doors opening up a lot more rather than, okay, how can I get a job or how can this look good on my resume? If you genuinely care about something and want to help, that’s step one.
And then you’ve done a lot in that case. Then what it is in terms of quality, it could be anything. It could be your local cat shelter. It could be a Facebook group. Like it doesn’t have to be a game from the start. Just try to see where you can help and then get into it. And then you start to learn things.
Steve McLeod
Pick up the skills. This time it really is the final question. This is the most important question by far. What game have you been playing lately?
Dennis Abe
I feel so bad because it’s such a good question, but I feel like I’m so boring when it comes to this. I think one of the things I do to kind of, how can I say, reset my mind of their work is playing competitive games because then I have to just focus in on what’s ahead of me. So really what I’ve been playing in terms of is just Valorant and Smash Brothers Melee., which is these two competitive games that I just can’t get enough of. If I wanted to be more professional and like, yeah, I do this and I’m learning things, I would probably just say that I do also sometimes download the latest games on my phone and try to kind of understand what is happening in trends now and again, lunches and stuff like that. Topical, I guess, but King released uh Candy Crush Solitaire not too long ago. And for me, it was interesting to kind of see in real time, because it doesn’t happen a lot of times that King releases a fully new game and launch them, experience that how a player sees the game, but also other companies. I mentioned Supercell earlier, and I’ve been a big fan of Squad Busters, but also I’ve been trying their new MoCo as well, which has been interesting.
Steve McLeod
Nice, nice. Dennis, that’s all we have time for today. So thank you for coming on the show.
Dennis Abe
Thank you for having me. It’s been great.
Steve McLeod
And if people would like to get in touch and find out more about you, where’s the best place to go?
Dennis Abe
I think it would just be reaching out to me on LinkedIn as Dennis Abe or well, I’m trying to make a blue sky work. if you’re on there, please, please make this an active space for me. I’m Defure there. D E F U R.
Steve McLeod
I will have both the LinkedIn and Blue Sky profiles linked in the show notes. Bye, Dennis.
Dennis Abe
Bye bye.
Steve McLeod
Bye everyone.