Building a Community From Scratch with Thomas Schramm
(You can also watch this episode on YouTube.)
Today’s guest is Thomas Schramm, Community Manager at Sky E Red in Germany, where he’s helping shape the launch of their debut game, Battle Frontier. Thomas’s path into the video game industry is anything but typical—what began as a childhood hobby in online Halo communities eventually turned into a full-time career in community management.
We talk about what it’s like to build a community from scratch when your game hasn’t even launched yet, the strategic (and very human) work that goes into early-stage community development, and the unique challenges of community-building in a startup environment.
Thomas also opens up about dealing with unemployment in the games industry, learning new skills to stay competitive, and the evolving, often ambiguous nature of community management roles—especially at indie studios.
Games mentioned in this episode:
Find Thomas on:
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Interview transcription
Steve McLeod Today I’m talking with Thomas Schramm, Community Manager at Sky E Red in Germany. Sky E Red is a new studio and they are working on their first game Battle Frontier. It’s not yet released and we’re going to discuss what it’s like being a Community Manager in that situation. Welcome to the show, Thomas.
Thomas Schramm Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.
Steve McLeod It’s great to have you on the show. But before we go into that story of what it’s like being a community manager when there’s not actually a game released, I want to hear your story about your path into becoming a community manager. Tell us how that happened. Start as early as back as you want.
Thomas Schramm It’s always very interesting whenever I meet another community manager, I want to hear their story because it’s always a different one. For me, it started with being a hobby actually. When I was 13, I didn’t speak a lick of English. I joined my first English community about a game I loved called Halo 1. You might know it.
Steve McLeod Just a little like indie game that hardly anyone’s heard of. No, the very opposite.
Thomas Schramm My dad played it all the time when I was a child, on his PC. I’d never played Halo 2 at that point. I really loved that game and I wanted to join online communities talking about it, but there were no German ones. So I had to join the English ones. I had to learn English and very slowly build my way up. Every day I logged on and really loved interacting. Before I knew it, I became part of the administration team for that site because I was just too active. I was always there. You need these kinds of people in your communities that are there all the time anyway. And I was a natural fit. And since then, it was always my hobby, like in the background, like this nerdy hobby that I didn’t tell anybody about, that I didn’t really take that seriously to basically be part of like Halo gaming sites. There was a website called halo-customs.com, which is basically my very first gaming website that I became a part of, where we hosted a custom game, so Halo. So I’ve always had this little side hobby going, but I never really thought about it too much. Of course, thinking about your future, I was like, need to find a real job. I need to get an education and like something that might interest me, but it has to be like a good and real job. So after graduating, I actually went into biology and laboratory research.
Steve McLeod Biology?
Thomas Schramm Yes. So I was like, this is like, I really like biology was part of my studies. And I was like, I’m going to have like a university degree in this and a very boring laboratory job. But I always kept this hobby going. When I was really bored in lectures about biology, I was joining a community about the upcoming game from Bungie, the makers of Halo 1, called Destiny. And it was the Destiny subreddit. I was very active there. I was talking with everybody about it. And right before launch and things hit the fan, I was added to be a moderator for that place. And Destiny since then became a ginormous franchise. We’ve had millions of players streaming into the Destiny of the Game subreddit. So at that point, I was a little bit bored about doing my studies and poured all of my time into being a moderator on the forum. Basically, like up to 10, 12 hours a day moderating, like keeping the place running. And also meeting people like the community managers for Bungie later on because they’re course interested in the biggest community around the game.
Steve McLeod How did you meet them? Online or in real life?
Thomas Schramm So I did actually meet them at Gamescom. So back then it was David Dague, also known as DeeJ, who I somehow coaxed into inviting me to like an exclusive influencer event. I was a nobody because I was just always in the background. And that’s how I really like kind of snuck my way into the circle of influencers and community leaders. And ever since then, I was part of it, actually. And I talked to David, like, do you think I could do this job, like, community manager, what you’re doing? And he’s like, yeah, if you want to, why not? Like, he wasn’t really that interested or really passionate about it, but that’s when the thought of actually doing this as a job instead of a hobby formed. And ever since then, I tried to get a little bit more professional and I found I stopped doing my biology degree. I went and found like a degree that was relevant for community management. So, Media Sciences basically.
Steve McLeod So what degree did you do?
Thomas Schramm Applied Cognitive and Media Sciences. It sounds a little like a word, mouthful, right?
Steve McLeod
It does indeed.
Thomas Schramm
And I did find a company that wanted to hire me based on my experiences as somebody managing millions of players. That was the game company that still exists today, Coulibri Games in Berlin, with their mobile games. And I basically started as a working student. So that was my first foray into it. I always loved it as a hobby, but I never really pursued it or thought about doing this actually like as a job. This is not a real job, I always thought. But once I met with David and he gave me that pep talk that, yeah, if you want to do it, just do it. I really loved the idea, also doing something you love and not just doing something that you think is a good career. would have never fulfilled me. I’m personally not that good at doing something I’m not passionate about. So right now I am doing my dream job just from doing it as a hobby, which is fun. And this is how I got into it.
Steve McLeod Excellent. Several things I just want to say quickly. First of all, for people who are not based in Europe, we mentioned Gamescom, that is the biggest gaming industry event in Europe, currently in Cologne every year, but it used to be, think, Leipzig.
Thomas Schramm
That’s a while ago.
Steve McLeod
So you got invited to the industry part of the event, not the consumer one.
Thomas Schramm Yes.
Steve McLeod Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. Secondly, we have a member of our team at feature up vote who also studied biology, did an internship or what like what you call a practical in Germany as in the lab and realized this was not for her.
Thomas Schramm
Absolutely me.
Steve McLeod
So you’re not alone. Apparently it’s really tedious working all day in a lab. A lot of it’s just cleaning. But you said you’re, you found that you’re a natural fit for being a moderator in the sub Reddit for destiny. In what ways do you think you’re a natural fit? Tell me.
Thomas Schramm Over the years, I’ve noticed what makes a good community moderator. I think I was that. Somebody who’s there anyway, somebody who likes being on the platform and who sees everything anyway, be it good posts, bad posts, things that should be moderated, somebody who’s not like, oh, OK, I need to do the moderation queue. But people that love talking about the game are super passionate, that love everything about it. So having this… somebody that is really into the community aspect, the interaction and having a game that a community is based around, but then becoming so much more, being a social experience. These people that really thrive on having these experiences, they really are what you want in both your moderation team, but also as your community manager that is hands on with the players.
Steve McLeod I really like the story. I really liked the path you went down and definitely that you were bold enough and wise enough to realize you were on the wrong path for what was going to satisfy you. Okay. I want to go back to the story we promised to talk about in the intro. so Sky E Red is a studio, I’m guessing very few people have heard of because they’re brand new, right? I think the, how old is the studio?
Thomas Schramm The studio was founded in 2023, but it was only the inklings of the studio, how these projects start. it really picked up steam in 2024. But now we have a big team starting in 2025.
Steve McLeod And that’s working on a game called Battle Frontier. What type of game is this?
Thomas Schramm Yes. So Battle Frontier is my baby now. I started working in February there. And Battle Frontier is basically, think of 3D action, monster taming, so there’s monsters that roam the world that you can fight and capture. You might know a game like that. But the hook, the kicker is that there’s fighting game mechanics. So the people that are really familiar with 3D fighting game mechanics in like, for say, Dragon Ball games, I’m going to be very familiar with our gameplay. So marrying this monster chain, which I have discovered is a ginormous genre with so many passionate players, and also having like a very complex combat system where you are actively having all of the control. There’s no turn-based, there’s no automatic attacks. You are… fighting alongside your monster or merging with your monster into a super powerful form. So it gives you both the nice PvE and PvP battle experience that is semi-competitive, but also capturing and bonding with your monsters. And then I really, really like the hook of merging with the monsters that you’ve been training up and then becoming a super powerful form and beating your opponents, be it PvP or PvE.
Steve McLeod So that’s the part of the interview that’s going to really make your boss and manager happy. We got a really good description. So you’re managing the community of this game, but I’m going to imagine that it actually doesn’t have much of a community yet. So what do you do when you come onto a game that doesn’t, it hasn’t been released with a young studio as a community manager? What do you do?
Thomas Schramm It’s been really interesting so far because in my career, I’ve had most of the time already an existing community. So when I started my hobby, like Destiny the Game, I came in with 20,000 people. Now we’re 3.3 million. When I joined Kolibri Games, we already had millions of players. When I worked for PUBG Mobile, we had millions upon millions of players. What do you do then if you start from scratch?
Steve McLeod This is the good question. Yes, tell me.
Thomas Schramm Yes, that’s the million dollar question. Being able to answer it well and taking your own advice and making a success is something that can make you rich. But I’ve just been breaking it down into small parts. Like, what does a developer need? What does a game need to start forming a community? I’m not only a community manager, I specialize in community development. So thinking about what is the core that you need to create where then people can revolve around, where people can gather, and what qualities does this core of a community need to have? It needs good rules, good presentation, it needs to show players immediately what the game is about, and also have some world building that can imagine what the game is going to be. I came into a project that was underway, but still in development, of course. How do you then create a community? The first thing I actually did was do an analysis of what is. What is currently going on? What did the game designer and what does the development team already create? So I didn’t start it from scratch. Most of the social media did already exist. But of course, me as a community professional and also social media professional, I can say, OK, these are things we could improve. Let’s do an overhaul. So I planned it, I made sure to show it to the rest of the team. A lot of our people in our team already had invested a lot of time into it. So I didn’t want to just yank it all out and create from scratch. I wanted to preserve it and build on the good foundations that were already laid. So I made a ginormous plan because I’m a very analytical person and I really like documenting what I do and made an overhaul creating all of the basic stuff. Usernames should all be the same across the board. The profile descriptions should immediately tell you what the game is about and build set expectations and really go into a base level of quality for the socials. And that’s just the basis. But you still don’t have anybody that cares about your game or follows you. You can also make good quality social media content and hope. But you are always at the mercy of an algorithm.
Steve McLeod
Sure. Aren’t we all?
Thomas Schramm
So I’m a little bit of a cheater that way I try to make good quality content, but I am very aware that it will not lead to this to get the snowball rolling, you need to have a little bit of like people that care about your game just win a few people over and you already have tripled the people that care about your game. So right in the beginning, things like looking about what people are already talking about games like your game, like on Twitter, which is a really open platform, you can take a look at where are people talking about like monster taming games and what communities are about them, joining those communities, talking to those people. Not only to show your game, not only to do advertising, but also join the conversation, talk to other developers. Doing this very tedious growth work, talking to people, social listening, joining communities is what gives you this first boost. So joining existing community is basically the low rundown of what I did. And what I’m still doing at the very start. Look, identify, think about what makes your game tick, what is it about, what other communities are there that are already about similar games like this, joining them. And don’t be too spammy because you’re going to get banned. Me as a community moderator knows this. Me as a Redditor knows this.
Steve McLeod You’re on the other side of the fence now.
Thomas Schramm Yes. Reddit is actually a very interesting platform. There’s so much potential for going viral. There’s so many games actually started getting their publicity there. But getting around the filters, getting around the moderation team, actually being able to post is sometimes something no marketer wants to deal with. Me being a 10 year Reddit moderator has some experiences with this that I can actually post without getting banned.
Steve McLeod Yeah.
Thomas Schramm Like reading the rules, which is apparently very hard for many people.
Steve McLeod So apart from reading the rules, what tips do you have for being able to promote yourself or your game on Reddit without getting banned? What tips do you have?
Thomas Schramm So you can’t think about Reddit as one platform. I mean, everybody says this, but it is, of course, a collection of many different communities and moderation teams. Some of them are really open to you sharing stuff. Some of them are really, really tight. Generally, the bigger the site, the more rules there’s going to be. You should not think about, oh, wow, r/gaming is the biggest subreddit I should definitely post there. You’re going to be banned immediately. The moderators deal with developers like you every day. And there’s not even going to be a single person looking at you. There’s going to be a bot that’s already banned you. So think more about what are little niche communities that actually would appreciate this content? And basically get out your finesse and talk there. And it really helps if you’re not creating a new Reddit account. It helps if you have an existing one, maybe one you’ve been using personally. As a community manager or social media manager, you might be like, I’m just going to use a brand account. The thing is, my first brand account on Reddit was automatically declared spam because I added a link tree link. So you have so many hurdles to clear if you have a new account for your game. So it’s better to have a developer account, somebody that’s already been on Reddit talking to small communities, reading their rules. If you want to make sure and moderators really appreciate this, really message the moderators, is this fine to post? They might be a little passive aggressive, just be nice. They’re not being paid for this, which is why they’re usually like not that nice to you, but it’s fine. Then you can.
Steve McLeod This is something really important to remember. Like people crap over Reddit moderators, but you’ve got to remember that mostly it’s the doing this as a hobby free and, there’s a lot of repetitive nonsense you have to go through. So it’s really important to remember that. I like this, what you’re saying. Sorry for interrupting. Please keep going.
Thomas Schramm me.
Thomas Schramm No, it’s definitely very interesting to see from the other side. I mean, you think of the typical Reddit moderator, probably not like me, but yeah, there’s definitely like, definitely been many cases where moderator teams have messed up. Of course, they are not professionals. They’re just fans that happen to reserve the subreddit at an early time, get in other people. And it’s just fans. Like you don’t have the professionalism of like community professionals. There’s going to be people that mess up, people that just have negative publicity. And yeah, you will have to really deal with moderation to use that might not be ideal. But that’s how Reddit works. It would be impossible to moderate otherwise if you didn’t have community volunteers.
Steve McLeod So before we started recording, you told me that you’re actually willing to talk a little bit about what it’s like being unemployed. You’re currently employed as a community manager, but you did go through a period of unemployment, right? And this is a very common theme in the games industry, particularly now, but I think always it’s always a very volatile industry. Tell me your thoughts on what it’s like to have to deal with both unemployment or the fact that for many people it’s this real uncertainty even when they have a job.
Thomas Schramm Absolutely. I really wanted to talk about this topic because it’s something some people are not that keen on, like focusing on. Of course, you’re talking as a community professional, you want to be hireable in the future. You would like to, especially in our job, you often could focus on the positive instead of the negative. But of course, being unemployed right now is a very real risk as a community manager. So what happened to me is that I worked for an agency and I was hired for a big client. The client jumped off the contract and I was let go along with my entire team. So now I suddenly had to find a new job. And as you have seen, in the current climate of our industry, people are being let go left and right on these ginormous games. Like there’s so many talented people that are also looking for a job. And me as like a medium community manager in terms of experience, I get dwarfed by these industry giants that are also competing for these very limited jobs, because there’s also not a lot of new companies popping up that have the budget to actually pay you. So you’re either stuck accepting a very low paying job, or you might be on the lookout for long time. I’ve actually been looking for five months, which was devastating to my morale and like, I’ve been having self doubts like, do I even know anything? Is community management even a real job? So all of these thoughts are getting worse and worse while you get rejection after rejection after rejection. And I was very close after five months and people have been looking for way for a longer time than I have, but I was very close to leaving the industry. And I just got very lucky that I had like networked three years before with the company that I’m currently working at. And they contacted me, I didn’t even apply to their company. So I got very lucky to get out of this situation. But I could just be in this situation still. What I tried to do was like get more hard skills. So I wanna be a community manager that really can do everything. So I know a little bit of coding, a little bit of website design, video editing, photo editing, but likem getting all of these hard skills and being the jack of all trades is how I try to make myself better on the job market, but it’s hard out there. Even if you’re doing everything correctly, it might not work out. And really, you have to, if you’re in that situation, you have to stay strong, do the numbers game, try to reach out to people. I mean, it worked for me because I’ve been networking. It is in our industry and in our job description to talk with people and network, but it might not work out and you just need to persevere, keep on going and try to find some hard skills that put you above the rest of all the others. But it’s hard to do.
Steve McLeod Yeah, it’s hard time. my career, I’ve only had one brief period of being unemployed, but I still remember how much that hit my self-esteem so quickly. I’ve always been very confident in my job and all of a sudden I found that I had all these self-doubts too. Yeah, it’s a cruel thing. It really is. And you also mentioned to me when we talking offline that you feel sometimes community management team tend to be the first to go, When times get bad.
Thomas Schramm I mean, at the end of the day, you’re not doing the product. You are not iterating on it. The product will be released without you. You are the cushion between the product and the bridge of communication between the product and the consumer. But somebody that is pulling the shots is going to look at marketing and is going to kick it out first. And it’s going to have the least impact on the product. Of course, that’s short sighted. There’s a lot of people that are very passionate about this topic, but it is the truth that marketing is the first one to go. And you will always have to leave doors open, network, and try to put yourself in a position where you’re very hireable and you get the experience that you need. For me, my first five years of the job, I stayed in the same company doing the same tasks. And I put the plunge after five years to really get a new position, which turned out to be not a mistake, but I was unemployed after that position failed on me. And I still think it was a good decision because I’ve since then learned so many skills that now differentiate me. So I think you have to really think about acquiring new skills in any position. but also stability. Right now, would really put stability above everything else. If you have an employer that’s been really good about keeping their employees and it’s been really supportive, think about if you really want to take that plunge right now in the current job market is what I would say, because it’s not fun out there.
Steve McLeod No, no.
Thomas Schramm You can see on LinkedIn, there’s a lot of people in that same boat. So if you’re currently in that position, my heart goes out to you, stay strong, do the numbers game, do the minimum at least if you can’t do otherwise. We all have imposter syndrome. We all think about, I even enough? What can I even do? Why does everybody reject me? But if you keep it up statistically, it will work at some point. Otherwise, like me, I was looking at other industries. I was just lucky.
Steve McLeod Yeah. Other industries do exist and I think it’s good to remember that this is a possibility. You know, it’s not the end of the world if you have to move temporarily or forever into another industry. And some of the skills you develop as a community manager are so useful in other industries, really. But the really important thing though, I think you said there, well, one of the really important things is the importance to always be networking or frequently be networking, go to events, meet with other community managers, other people in the industry, just being because you don’t know when you’ll need this and it’s much harder to do once you’re in that situation of unemployment. So do it now while you can.
Thomas Schramm Absolutely.
Steve McLeod Um, there’s some really good tips there that you’ve given us, but I want to know in general, how do you go about learning to do your job better as a community manager?
Thomas Schramm The thing is that you can always identify things where you can improve, but you don’t always have the capacity to do it immediately. Just being mindful of whenever you have to, when you have a task and you have to then give it to somebody, would you be able to learn that skill that you’re missing that somebody else then has to do? For example, like small edits on the websites, small edits in a video, small edits in Photoshop. So whenever there’s a hard skill missing, I really believe that like doing a small course or doing some tutorials can really set you apart and like keeping an eye out and being open to learning some of these skills that make you a jack of all trades. Because at the end of the day, Community Managers is the job is not clearly defined. Every company wants a different skill set from you. You are simply a social media manager, marketing manager, editor, all of these things sometimes. And yes, it’s unfair, but that’s the reality of it. Even if you’re overwhelmed, take a little hard skill, take a little lesson of things you can do the next time yourself and become that powerhouse and take these little small learnings from from the things that you would usually pass off to somebody else. Of course, it’s sometimes good for you, like you can’t do everything, but I really like to identify these things and then learn them because I love learning at the end of the day.
Steve McLeod I think you’ve nailed it there to love learning, also to keep learning. So you talk, you talked about the role of community manager being not well defined. And in fact, this is your job currently also is more than community manager. said it’s community developer, but you’re also doing marketing. Tell me about how that is to be doing all of these roles.
Thomas Schramm Absolutely. Just first, you can really tell from a community manager listing whether the company that’s behind that actually knows what they want. Sometimes they just need like three people, but they want you to do everything. What I really appreciated for my current company, which is why I even took the job, is that they’re very upfront about the limitations of one person, but also that they needed a lot of skills that I didn’t have yet, but were also very willing for me to learn on the job and not expecting me to do everything perfectly. So right now, I am basically the marketing guy for our company. And with indie companies, that is the reality. Very early on, like, solo devs do it all. Like, I don’t know how they do it. Respectable. Especially the ones that, go viral with very cool marketing things. How do they even make the game? But when you’re the community manager or social media manager for a small indie company, you of course have to wear a lot of hats. That is expected. And I really took it as a challenge. I wasn’t there like five years ago. I would have gone under, it would have really destroyed my mental health to be in this position. But now, because my previous jobs were a little restrictive, I was a small cog in a complex machine, right now I can really take all the skills I accrued and learn so much in this small timeframe that I really love my current job. And it is what you sign up for becoming a social media community manager for a small indie game. Because you can’t just say, wait, I’m just here to talk about the community. Why am I suddenly having to reach out to journalists or make all the marketing material? That’s about it. You have to be really respectful with your own time to say, hey, I need to prioritize this. I can’t do it all. I know it. I’m just one person. And always do the high impact stuff first. And ask for help if you need help, because your game designer can take some work. My game designer is so helpful. He’s always there when I need help. And he’s the reason it’s been going really well so far. And that’s the reason I can clock off when I’m actually off.
Steve McLeod Ask for help. Ask for help. That’s a good one.
Thomas Schramm Ask for help. Absolutely. Because your team is there to support you.
Steve McLeod
They are. Thomas, we’re almost out of time, but I still have one very, very important question for you.
Thomas Schramm
Okay.
Steve McLeod
What game have you been playing lately?
Thomas Schramm Oh my God, I have always been a core gamer and like always looked down on mobile games. But now I’m a mobile gamer because I have less time. I’ve been really, really into and I know it’s very generic, but Pokemon trading cards, like the app. Oh no. So opening two packs a day and like trading with my girlfriend and like battling with my girlfriend is something you can really share with everybody. I got all of my friends into it. It feels like back in the day playing Pokemon. So I’ve gotten all my friends and my girlfriend into it and we’re all just trading cards and trying to complete a collection on the app. And it’s really good. I can recommend it. It’s fun.
Steve McLeod That’s cool. You start once you have less time in your life for games, you begin to realize why mobile gaming is so big.
Thomas Schramm Absolutely.
Steve McLeod A very common story or answer I hear to this question is that, well, I used to play a lot more, but I don’t have time now. It’s a really common answer.
Thomas Schramm I mean, the game I’m currently playing and that I’ve been like kind of on the backburner has been Final Fantasy 16, which is so long and there’s a very dull middle part. So yeah. I feel like I can’t start a new one until that one’s done.
Steve McLeod Okay Thomas, that’s all we have time for today. Thank you again for being on the show.
Thomas Schramm Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Steve McLeod Where can listeners get in touch if they’d like to know more about what we’ve discussed today?
Thomas Schramm Oh yeah, our game can be definitely taken a look at. It’s Battle Frontier game on all platforms basically. And me, you can talk to me. I’m Thomas Schramm on LinkedIn and Fuzzle, F-U-Z-Z-L-E on Twitter.
Steve McLeod Okay, we’ll have that linked in the show notes. Bye Thomas.
Thomas Schramm Thank you, have a good day.
Steve McLeod Bye everyone.
Steve McLeod Thanks