From Passion to Profession with Erik Jakobsson
(You can also watch this episode on YouTube.)
Today’s guest is Erik Jakobsson, a community manager at Paradox Interactive in Sweden, where he leads a team of ambassadors. Erik’s journey into the gaming industry is unique—he started by running a fan Discord server that was eventually acquired by Paradox, leading to his first role in community management.
We chat about growing and moderating large online communities, the challenges of keeping a Discord server healthy, and how community managers can positively impact player engagement and sentiment.
Erik also shares insights on recruiting ambassadors, managing multilingual communities, and the evolving role of community management in the games industry.
Games mentioned in this episode:
Find Erik on:
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Interview transcription
Steve McLeod
Today I’m joined by Erik Jakobsson. Erik is currently a community manager at Paradox Interactive in Sweden, where he manages a team of ambassadors. Notably, Erik got into the industry by having his Discord server acquired by a game. Welcome to the show, Erik.
Erik Jakobsson
Hello there, thank you for having me on.
Steve McLeod
Why don’t we start with the Discord server and how that happened because that’s actually a really fascinating story. Tell us about that.
Erik Jakobsson
It’s an old story. Back in the day I was playing Grand Strategy games for fun and my friend introduced me to an upcoming game called Hearts of Iron IV which is developed and published by Paradox Interactive. I thought it was really fun but also it had multiplayer in it so I started a fun little Discord server with some friends and started playing multiplayer every Friday and we thought why not invite some more people. And long story short that server grew to about 30,000 people.
And back in 21, I was approached by Paradox Interactive’s then community manager, Benjamin Magnus, about acquiring the Discord as they wanted to expand upon the platform and acquiring my Discord, which was the largest one for the game, seemed easier than starting it on scratch. And from that, they offered me a freelance position to manage that Discord and also their forums and Steam channels. And that’s kind of how I got into it as a start.
Steve McLeod
So the thing that you were doing for free as a passion, as a hobby, actually became your job, your paid job.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, it did. was not something I was expecting. I was studying completely different things, but I kind of just started to love it.
Steve McLeod
And did they pay money to acquire the discord or was the payment the offer of a freelance position?
Erik Jakobsson
The payment was to offer a freelance position.
Steve McLeod
It’s amazing. So many people in our industry, know, create your own communities and discord servers, whatever you want to do. And, or even like just a fan page, you know, some type of webpage and to have the company come along and say, actually you’ve done what we want to do. Can we have it? That’s a really nice story.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, it’s a level of appreciation you didn’t expect when you just made a fun little Discord or Fandom or community that the company that makes the game would approach you and say, really like this, we want you to work for us.
Steve McLeod
Now, fun little discord, 30,000 people. That’s not a fun little discord. like, how was it? How were you managing to manage that discord when you were doing it for free? Was it like consuming a lot of your time and energy?
Erik Jakobsson
Well, as a start, you we started a few hundred people and that kind of grew over time, especially since we put a link on Steam on the discussion page for the game. And it was just continuously playing games. Every Friday we had a little game hosting and one turned to two, two turned to three, three turned to four. And then over time you found volunteers who wanted to help moderate the server. You tried to make it a bit more professional, less, you know, fun. You tried to make everyone feel more welcome in it.
But yeah, when it turns around 30,000 people, it starts consuming a bit of time. So was probably spending a few hours on it every week while I was studying on the side.
Steve McLeod
So you said you had some volunteers. How did you find those volunteers and did they stick around for a long time?
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, it’s mostly a start. People volunteer, they just wanted to help out. know, they really enjoyed the server. They spent a lot of their time there playing games or meeting new friends and then kind of drew this little small team of people, of moderators. Then we started having moderators and admins as there was a lot of moderators and know, different tasks to do. Later on, we actually have to put out like, hi, do you want to be a moderator? Apply here. Because it became so many people.
And yeah, some stuck around, some left, you know, in and out. And actually still to this day in the Discord, we still have volunteer moderators. And I know there’s one of them who’s been there since almost the start and he is still as active on the Discord playing games every week, which is something else.
Steve McLeod
Wow, wow. And how did your relationship to the Discord server change when it became a paid role for you?
Erik Jakobsson
I think it at the start it stayed the same over time, know, became more of a job and you try to separate, you know, working between your personal life as work-life balance is very important. So I think over time it became, you know, less of a hobby and I really enjoyed doing this more. This is my job. I do it, you know, I try to explore, know, draw it on different ways as before it was more about I want to draw the server because it’s fun. Later, like how do we maximize reach and draw from engagement?
Steve McLeod
Uh-huh. You’ve got started putting all those, I’m not going to say corporate words, but like professional words into, into the same thing. Uh, that’s interesting. Hey, you said you had a form for people applying to be moderators. So what type of criteria did you use when you were doing this as a hobby, not as a job? What kind of criteria were you looking for for people wanting to help moderate?
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah.
Erik Jakobsson
I think it was a few things like where in the world are you based? Do you speak English as the main language of the server? There were a few questions I wrote that was mostly to see if they can work well in a team and how are they with people. As a moderator, you have to deal with a lot of different situations. And mostly, it’s very much open-ended questions to see what personality they had. And then from the application, if it looked fine and not out of the ordinary, I would just sit down and have a chat with them.
You know, get to know them a little bit, see how they are and then you put them on a trial period like, let’s see how we can help out.
Steve McLeod
So you said that you wanted to know where in the world they were, what was the reason for that?
Erik Jakobsson
As the server grew larger, started getting more people than Europeans. We started getting people from North America, South America, Asia, Australia. Given that I’m from Europe and Sweden, a majority of the staff was from Europe or North America, we needed to get people to actually be available when we weren’t on. If you were from Australia or New Zealand, that would be a big plus because we did not have a lot of people around that time.
Steve McLeod
it. You mentioned that as the Discord grew there are a lot of problems that had to be dealt with by the moderators. What are some of the problems you end up having to deal with with people problems with a Discord server that big?
Erik Jakobsson
I think with any community that grows larger, start having, you know, people can have conflicts with each other. think conversations get heated. How to best handle it, not becoming a hostile environment for people to come into. If you join a Discord, you shouldn’t be greeted by people fighting each other in every text channel. Or if you’re on voice channel, you should be greeted by happiness instead of…
Get out of here. You should try to be welcoming place. I think you need moderators to try to push towards that. It’s not overly about, you you should not say these exact words. More like you should be friendly and nice to new people. You you dare to play games, have fun.
Steve McLeod
That’s, that’s really interesting and having to deal with those types of people problems. it draining? Did it sometimes take, make you want to stop doing it?
Erik Jakobsson
I think at a certain point, were all at crossroads, we were considering, this all worth it in the end? Like, I really enjoy doing this as I spend so much time? And there were definitely times where I thinking, like, should I give this server to someone else? Should I leave it? But I think in the end, what kind of overwhelmed me, one thing to continue is that I really enjoy building communities because…
Every time you think of it, oh, this is not much fun doing this. It’s a lot of effort. But then you hear people saying, you know, I met, you know, my friend of three years now on this discord and we met up, you know, had a lot of fun. And I think that kind of inspires you to keep on building your community because you see other people having such an amazing time there.
Steve McLeod
See, the reason why I wanted to really push into this about what it was like to run it is I want to make sure that people listening to this don’t think, oh, I can start a Discord server for my favorite game. And a week later, the company’s, the game’s going to come along and employ me. It shows that it was, it’s hard work, right? It was hard work.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, no, it takes a long time. I start that this was started in 2016 and 2021 I started talking about paradox and then February 22 is when I got employed as a freelancer. So a lot of years and you know, going from I think the first year we got up to like 700 members and that was a lot back in 2016. And then like, you know, we started getting a few thousand a year and I was like, that’s a lot more people. So I think.
It’s an element of hard work, a lot, because it’s the same thing if you start a YouTube channel. You can be really good at something, you might not succeed. So you can try your hardest, and I think you should if you want to make a Discord server or community, but you need to be patient, as patience is what wins.
Steve McLeod
patients, plus also, there’s more than patience there, there’s also being knowing that it’s going to take a lot of energy from time to time. And persistence. And now you’re still as a freelancer or you’re a permanent employee now.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah.
Erik Jakobsson
So about six months after I started as a freelancer, my then community manager left the position and I applied for it and I became the community manager with an employee at Paradart. So I’ve been an employee for about almost three years now at headquarters here in Sweden.
Steve McLeod
Well, so the first question I usually ask in interviews is, you’re passing to becoming a community manager. And I think you’ve described that. Have we missed any important detail?
Erik Jakobsson
I think just one thing is that, know, work experience is very important. You know, I got lucky getting in the way I did. But even though I’ve been working, you all time, I’ve also been studying about 20 hours a week throughout all the years I’ve been working for almost four years. Because, you know, theoretical knowledge will help you a lot, but practical knowledge is invaluable.
Steve McLeod
Okay, what were you studying?
Erik Jakobsson
I’ve been studying different ways how to do social media marketing, project management and leading teams, and also the philosophy behind the community and creating online communities.
Steve McLeod
Where did you find that information?
Erik Jakobsson
I found some books by talking to colleagues or some people online in different industry servers and then on different courses such as product management. It’s mostly going online, seeing what has the best ratings, has helped the most people and then try it out. There are a lot of really good free ones you can take, but I think there’s a difference between free and paid. You get what you pay for, so to speak. So, yeah, exactly.
Steve McLeod
Or what you don’t pay for.
Erik Jakobsson
So, know, currently I’m taking one prior management course at Google, which is very valuable and I think a lot better than most of the free ones, but you still get a good basic understanding from any of the free things on there. And there’s YouTube videos, people holding panels, there’s podcasts like this one where you can learn more about community.
Steve McLeod
Great. And what about events? Do you go to events that, any events that you find helpful for community managers?
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, I think there’s some you can go to. In Stockholm there’s one called Linkedin Bar I’ve been to a few times which is not just community managers, it’s industry professionals but it helps you see more into the game industry and it helps you a lot. But just events for only community managers, not that many I’ve been to before. I would recommend you try to find industry related discords with community people because
everyone is so helpful. If you ask the question there, you will have 10 answers within the hour. like, we’ve had the same issue before.
Steve McLeod
Yeah.
Steve McLeod
So the only problem I can see with these discords for community managers is they are private. They have to be private. had, I think you’re familiar with Gabriel, who’s surname I forget, Trance, who runs one. And yeah, we just talked about how it’s kind of as a community manager, as the face of the game, that’s mostly good, but sometimes it isn’t. And you just need that safe place where it’s just for professionals in the industry.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah.
Erik Jakobsson
Mm-hmm.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, no, think there are some smaller ones like the one Gabriel runs. There are some much larger ones, which is easier to access, which you can find online and you can apply to join. I know there’s one that has a very long name, but it has a few thousand members. I know you can apply, you say you’re a student, you’re interested in learning. And of course, it’s a different element of how they work. The large ones are more professional. You know, they’re not really like people. You won’t see people venting about their work in there.
But you will still see people helping each other out, sharing jobs, maybe going to events together, meeting up. And I think honestly, try to find as much knowledge as you can. You have to be a sponge and absorb it.
Steve McLeod
Last year I went to several events in the video games industry and what I noticed is this a real lack of community management stream in those events. Usually there’s one or two like round tables or a talk, but generally it’s almost missing from the general like wider world of computer, of events. Have you found that too or something or?
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, no, I agree. It’s not a large topic in larger industry events. Like I haven’t been to GDC personally, but from people I know have been there, there’s barely anything to none. And I think, you know, community management has evolved a lot in the past five years, 10 years, 20. It’s completely different from what it was, you know, two years ago to what it is now. And it’s such a flexible job and evolving one. mean, still a larger corporations, don’t quite know what community management is at its core.
Steve McLeod
Yeah.
Erik Jakobsson
And you see that if you jump between Microsoft, to Paradox, to Blizzard, everyone works differently, which is why it’s not the same job everywhere. It’s the same core principle of what you want to do. You want to grow a safe community place. You want to engage with your players, keep them happy. In the long run, happy players, engaged players, they buy your products. And that’s kind of the business reason why community exists. But how to get to that goal, how you do that is different everywhere. So I think…
It’s not, know, programming is of course different at different places, but it’s the core of it is still easier to understand, you you program something, it’s easier to understand the core of it than trying to explain community to someone who’s never heard of community. I do hope, you know, we see a growing interest in community and more people taking an interest in so we can see events, you know, at GDC or other industry events.
I think it should be really helpful for people working in the industry and also those who want to get into it.
Steve McLeod
Good answer. Moving on, I wanted to ask you about these ambassadors you told me that you manage. You told me off-ear that these are paid roles. Tell me about what they do and how you find them.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as a community manager here at Paradox, I do a lot of strategy, business planning, and you know, the bigger picture things. They’re working a lot with development team or marketing department. Absolutely.
Steve McLeod
Just to interject briefly, are you working just on one game or are working across multiple games?
Erik Jakobsson
Currently, I’m working on one project, well, one brand, technically. But previously, I have worked on up to three games at the same time. So when working on a lot of projects, even on one, the amount of things you actually want to do across community, social media, and that includes all YouTube videos, all shorts, all Twitter posts, everything. It’s a lot of work. So we hired Community Ambassadors, a sort of,
the fingers of the community manager to help you execute your plans, help you create, do video editing, help manage the discords, what I did previously. So it’s, know, they work 20 hours a week as one person. So it’s a half time freelance position. For example, I have one in China to help me localize all our developer diaries through Chinese, you know, keep all the players there, you know, keep talking to us because without someone actually speaking to them.
they kind of feel left out. And I think as an example, Chinese reviews, especially on our games, but also a lot of games, are much higher in the negative area because no one actually talks to them. And when you can see clear distinction when you have someone talking to them and when you don’t, it’s like, the reviews are starting to go up quite nicely.
Steve McLeod
That’s amazing. think right there you’ve given studios and publishers a really good argument as to why they should have a community manager. If only to blunt the criticism so that people can kind of understand why, things are the way they are. And also they can feel listened to if it gets better reviews. Isn’t everybody like obsessed with their esteem aggregate review rating?
Erik Jakobsson
You
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, think Steam reviews are kind of like a paradox in themselves. You see them, you don’t quite know how to increase them or decrease them. Like, you know, of course, if you make a bad product, they’ll be lower. If you make a good one, it’ll be higher. But, know, there’s other things that you’re into. You see people are complaining about there’s too high prices. You don’t localize my language. You can’t, you know, you don’t respond to my bug report or feedback. And that just gets inflated by what if our bug report area is only in English and we have half a million Chinese players?
That’s not the best success there. trying to reach out to a growing market is good idea. Especially, I keep mentioning China because that’s such a large world market right now. Chinese gaming in last 10 years has grown a lot, especially for us. Harsh of Iron, which is a game I worked on for quite some time, went from being a growing market to our largest fan base in just a few years. And I think…
not enough companies have really realized how big of a market China is. It’s an enormous country with a lot of people, but how many more players join the worldwide PC market every year. I think not talking to them is something that will over time lead to not directly failure, you could find success talking to them while you just would not find it otherwise.
Steve McLeod
So we, my product feature up vote, have a couple of customers in China, or at least we did. can’t remember if they’re still active and I’m actually quite intimidated by it all. I’m intimidated when we get that when people are using our Chinese translation and I look at it I don’t have any idea what’s on there. I have to say, I guess that’s a really good argument for having someone on team who’s fluent in Chinese and can translate.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, I’ve tried. I haven’t tried to feature up my personal before, so I haven’t looked into a little bit, but we’ve tried a few tools here. And the main issue is that, you know, majority of social media tools are made in the Western side of the world. The way they handle, most of them, the way they handle feedback or sentiment analysis of Asian countries is that they do AI translation. That is only good up until a point. And when your game is so detailed where you have
analogies or terminologies that an AI can’t understand, you can lose the entire meaning of a message. Also, you know, especially on Chinese platforms, they have a high level of censorship of some platforms, so they use other words to, you know, we can’t use this word, we will use this one. AI has no idea what they’re talking about. Like, for example, on Billy Billy, you can see Chinese players saying the word fudge a lot. That’s because they can’t say the other word, so they say fudge.
Steve McLeod
Uh huh.
Erik Jakobsson
a lot. So trying to teach an AI to understand that is very hard. hiring someone to really be there, talk to them, collect your feedback is a lot cheaper than using other localization tools that I’ve found thus far. I think even if you could find a tool that is completely cheap or even free that could do the job, the personal connection you can’t replace with a tool. think having…
Steve McLeod
personal connection you can’t replace I like that
Erik Jakobsson
So having someone working there, I think it’s Prio, if you can have a tool to assist that, that’s just extra nice.
Steve McLeod
Mm hmm. Great stuff. And this, this Chinese ambassador or the three ambassadors in general, were you involved hands on in finding and recruiting them?
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, so I’ve handled all the community-based recruitment for the brands I work on. I think since I started at Peridot, I’ve hired like eight people across our different brands. Most of the time, it’s like regular recruitment. You will see an ad on jobs Peridot. You can apply for it. There’s all the information there. We’ll have screening calls. I’ll send you a work test. Sometimes I have contact people saying, you should apply for this. I think you would be perfect for this, which is also a…
how we found a Chinese ambassador because he was very active in our forums and a standing community member. So I think every time, a few times a year, you’ll find community ambassador positions open up at Paradox.
Steve McLeod
Okay, and then what’s your role like managing them from day to day?
Erik Jakobsson
So on the other day, I need them to be relatively autonomous. I won’t tell them exactly what to do. I will create a strategy and plan that I want them to be on board of. They will get to be part of it all, trading it, I’ll give them the feedback that one feels to have ownership of the strategy. And then we have a sync meeting once or twice per brand, on the one I’m currently on. We have one on Mondays because we feel that’s enough. On Hotch of Iron, I previously had two.
On the Think meeting, we can ask you over the week’s agenda. What are we doing on social media channels this week? Are we doing a short on Tuesday? What is that about? And then we talked a little bit about other things coming later on. How are we going to plan for that? Do we have any DLC releases? Any larger videos we’re doing? So, we’re just trying to keep communication up, but then everyone has to assign brands that they work on. So, they handle the communication on that brand. So, if we’re doing YouTube short.
I’ll have one person doing that if you’re doing communication on Twitter or someone else. And that also includes answering comments on those platforms as well. And, you know, collecting analytics for those in our reports.
Steve McLeod
Have you seen any of the ambassadors that you’ve managed over your time as community manager at Paradox? Have you seen any of them get promoted out of that or end up finding themselves in a full-time position or a higher position?
Erik Jakobsson
Yes, I am very happy with my percentage score on this. So myself, I was a Community Ambassador, but also three people I have hired as CAs have either gone up to Community Manager at our company or work in marketing in a different one. And I think working as a CA, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll go up and rank, but you get to learn a lot because you work so closely with the marketing and business department and the developers.
Steve McLeod
You
Erik Jakobsson
So you can, if you want to, you can learn a lot from other people and make that step going into Community Manager. mean, it especially helps also because you’re a freelancer, but you’re not an employee, but you talk to everyone. sometimes get with sometimes fly out to the office, you meet people and connections help a lot when trying to get a job. But if you see an application with someone, I’m like, oh, I know this person. I’ve worked with this person. It makes it that much easier.
Steve McLeod
the part of recruitment is trying to guess whether the stranger who looks good on paper, what they’re to be like to work with, they’re just going to be pleasant when there’s a problem. And to have already proven that it’s a real advantage. It does sound like it can be very hard to get into certain community manager roles. Like there is a long process for you. was running your own Discord server, then being a freelance ambassador and now
Erik Jakobsson
Exactly.
Erik Jakobsson
Absolutely.
Steve McLeod
to now being a community manager.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, the process can be different for everyone. You know, I’ve seen some people move from completely different departments and disciplines into community management based on learning from them community management and going into more junior seniority. I’ve taught people who have studied it, like, you know, bachelor’s degree, you know, in the communications and gone on for that way. Some people who work completely with social media expanded on community. So, you know, there’s different, everyone does it differently.
on hard gendarmes There’s not one right way in hard gendarmes community, but if you want to, there is a way.
Steve McLeod
So I have a question for tips. Let’s assume I’m a young, enthusiastic player of games and I want to get into a community manager. No, I’ve just started my first role as a community manager. What tips would you have for me for my first weeks or months on the job? How should I get started in my brand new role as a community manager?
Erik Jakobsson
Talk to everyone you work with. Understand what their job is and how they work. Something I did when I started was I booked the meeting with every single person I thought I would be interacting with as a community manager and learned what do they do in their job? How do we interact between our jobs and how can we work together? Because you’re not a lone wolf in the company. You’re working with a lot of other people. Even though they have nothing to do with community, you will interact with them in some way or shape.
So I learning that and how to work with your colleagues is invaluable and will help you so much. Because even though, you might talk to someone who works in ads on paid media team, they might have understanding of a social media platform that you don’t. And well, as a community, you might work with social media. So that might be helpful. If you have a good relationship with the development team of the game you work on, that will help a lot, you know, getting their buy-in on doing dev diaries or videos. And overall, it’s…
same in every industry in my opinion but just good communication and having good working relationship with your colleagues helps everywhere.
Steve McLeod
think that sounds like a very Swedish approach. I say that full complement, a real complement. I like this idea that you are working with everybody in your team. It’s not just you have your role.
Erik Jakobsson
You
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah. Yeah. I will say, you know, I haven’t, I’ve only worked for Swedish companies before, so it’s definitely a different approach. I’m not sure how well it would do in, I know United States of America can be a bit more corporate level. like, I don’t, I don’t know how many people in working in US countries have sat down for lunch with their CEO and just talked about games. It’s bit of a different day. I have, yeah. You know, actually we have something called on boarding day yesterday.
Steve McLeod
Have you had that chance at Paradox?
Erik Jakobsson
really make people do it where you have have lunch with all C-level people as a group. So think yeah, there’s a lot of opportunity. you have someone, if we use Slack as a communication tool, if you want to contact our CEO and just say something, talk about something, he will respond to you and just, hi, son. So I think that openness helps a lot.
Steve McLeod
Mm-hmm.
Erik Jakobsson
As also Savi, noticed with people coming outside of Sweden, two paradox, can be with, know, hurdle to get over to, you know, I can talk to my managers and their managers and it’s fine. And of course, that’s a cultural norm here in Sweden where, know, it’s more open everywhere. But I think, you know, outside of Sweden, you know, tips on community management, mostly ask, you don’t maybe not have to talk to them, but try to understand what other people do, you know, try to understand their jobs, their end goals.
Because you you might be able to have, you have your goal, they have their goal. How can you reach one goal together? You know, can combine things, compromise.
Steve McLeod
Is that for tips? Do have any other tips you’d like to add for first-time community managers?
Erik Jakobsson
Don’t stop learning as the market keeps growing. think this is a personal approach for me, but I feel if you decide that I can’t learn anything, I am completely done learning, you might want to try to find something to, know, lit like that fire under you again, you know, maybe find a new passion, a new game to work on or like a new job, maybe. I think that’s honestly most jobs, but if you feel it can’t learn anymore, then you’re might be
burnt out, you just have no passion anymore. I think keep on learning forever, learn from others, no matter how senior they are. Like you can be someone who worked for two weeks or you can be someone who worked for 10 years. Listen to everyone because everyone can have good ideas.
Steve McLeod
Nice, nice. Is that it for tips? I have a feeling if I actually sat down over lunch with you, like you do with your CEO and other team members, I have a feeling I would also learn a lot one-on-one in that conversation. I’ve been learning a lot in this phone call actually, in this video call.
Erik Jakobsson
Yeah, what’s this though?
Erik Jakobsson
I think, you know, there’s, there’s no ends to how much you can talk about certain things. So I think, you know, there’s only so much you can learn in a short amount of time.
Steve McLeod
One last question, a second last question. How do you cope with the bad aspects of community management when you get that very tiny subset of players who are very vocal in a hostile way about something? How do you deal with that?
Erik Jakobsson
I think it’s a two-pronged approach to that one. think, you know, with any job, you can have a stressful moment. It can be, you know, community, can be bad players. It can be things internally that can make you, really want to rip your hair off or it can be most things. And how you deal with that is, you know, you can try to, you know, let it go past you, but it only goes to the point, you know, not everyone has as thick of a skin where nothing can pierce it. So try to find ways to, you know,
let loose of potential stress. Like personally, I go to the gym five times a week to try and let you know, it’s nice. You have an hour, you do nothing. You have to, you know, just relax. But I think for games and players being vocal, you have to understand one thing. They don’t hate you. They don’t hate the game. They’re too passionate about the game and they might not be able to formulate what they’re saying. They don’t mean to be like evil or like mean.
Well, some do, but most of them, they mean well, they just have a hard time formulating their thoughts and what they want to say. They just want the best for, you know, they want what’s best for the game. And you need to try to see past the toxic part of what you’re saying. Afterwards, to a point, you can’t just straight up take insults to you or the dev team. But understand what they mean comes from a good place and try to listen to them.
taking their feedback, know, really talk to them. I think most of the times where we’ve had people I’ve heard, you know, this person can’t work if they don’t give any constructive feedback. No one has really sat down and talk to them. Like they don’t feel like you listen. And if you, you know, if they don’t feel like you listen, they’ll, might lash out.
Steve McLeod
Right, yeah, it’s really hard from both sides. think some players, it takes them a while to learn that there’s the right way to go about this, but also, yeah, we all want to feel listened to. So real final question now, what game have you been playing lately?
Erik Jakobsson
That is a very good question. Lately, Path of Exile 2, when it came out, which I still feel is recent, I put a good, maybe 150 hours in that game in like two weeks, which is, that was my vacation. But I don’t know, I’ve been playing a game called Supervibe. It’s an indie game on Steam that is kind of a mix between Fortnite and Apex Legends in 10 to 15 minutes, like short matches.
and you know just getting home after work like just want to play something quick it’s perfect you can play something you can kill people you can lose really fast you restart
Steve McLeod
I like that criteria. Okay, I think on that note, we’ll wrap up the conversation. So Eric, thanks again for being on the show.
Erik Jakobsson
Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.
Steve McLeod
And we can listeners get in touch if they’d like to know more about you or what we’ve discussed today.
Erik Jakobsson
They can reach out to me on LinkedIn. think that’s the easiest way. Jacobson will be the guy with some random sunglasses with winter in the background. And I work at Paradox Interactive.
Steve McLeod
I’ll have that in the show notes. Okay, thanks. Bye, Eric. Bye, everyone.
Erik Jakobsson
Bye.