Why are community managers always so shit at the games they manage...

No, because they'd rather give their friend/family member a nice cushy job instead of someone who's qualified or will take their position seriously.

Community manager is a joke job that people in the company give away as a favor to otherwise useless cronies. Usually you get a community manager job for literally sucking someone's dick in the company.

hardcore fans are worse than noobs
if they are forum moderators, they think of themselves as gods
and if they are a part of the balancing community, they make shit even worse gameplay-wise

My theory is that it takes a special type of faggot to be considered as a community manager, and with the "power" they get they just can't contain their faggotry anymore.

Nowadays, barely any companies have dedicated HR departments. It's just a cost overhead with no profit. So most new hires are via networks, which does include shitty family members and friends.

(((community))) is kike shit

What is the point of community managers anyways? A handful of recent indie/AA/kikestarter games have already flopped because some faggot community manager always creates some retarded political/personal controversy just a few days before release.

This. Community Managers are a liability at this point. Think about all the very public drama these assholes have caused over the last few years.

Turns out there isn't much overlap between the interpersonal skills required to deal with the specific part of the community they're supposed to manage, and highpowered vidya autism.
They'ld call everybody shit and piss off all the whales.

Well there are a few types.

The first is basically a paid forum moderator.
The second is someone who helps put together and host in-game events. Quizzes, races, spawning mobs in the middle of town, that sort of stuff.
The third is someone who ideally understands the game's community and reads through all the posts on forums, discord, reddit, etc, and both distill feedback to give to devs, and answer concerns of players and assure them that the next patch will fix everything to stop them from rioting.

There is also the fourth type, who will intentionally destroy the community and destroy any hopes of success the game had.

In a number of games, I've seen the opposite. For example, in wakfu, their english CMs are basically absent aside from posts that all have -20 or more downvotes. Meanwhile the guy who wrote the guide on Enutrofs was always well respected by noobs, whales, and powergamers alike. Basically every post he made people would say "Ankama hire this guy." Instead they drive away people with their lack of communication or rationalization of the weird patches they make.

I can answer your question having been a comm manager for an old gaming community (although I wasn't shit at it, just really average).
It's all about being a primadonna. None of the community managers give a shit about the quality of the game or whether they're good at it or not, they just care about keeping the community active for their own egoism. Most comm managers see it as a power trip, except they also think they're in the right in using their powers in that the thriving of the community is both their goal and their constraint. If the community stagnates, it's their fault most of the time because of their inability to deal with bad PR.
Here's the thing about comm managers: they don't require any professional skill, so devs/companies/the four autists that direct a forum are justified in getting on board via nepotism. Turbo autists don't make very convincing comm managers because, if they're hired by a company, they'll always take the side of the community in all possible scenarios (as they're autists who love the game itself more than the developers), if it's a ragtag bunch of indies they can't because power autists don't drive new blood into the game as much as people with social skills.

Similar question with a similar answer: Why would an avid anime fan choose to volunteer to work at a convention when they could be attending the convention? Because it's not about the hobby, it's about seeking out and seizing power, no matter how small.

I know people who have volunteered to work for completely altruistic reasons, but typically only do it 1 year because they're turned off by the cliquishness of the con staff.

But when you actually have forums run by people knowledgeable about the game, the community typically thrives. Whether it is by a fan or by the dev himself.

Take a look at any MMO community and the people every player trusts or looks up to is the guys doing the theorcrafting or boss fight videos, never the developers. Hell, there's no one the players hate more than the developers when it comes to almost any online game.

"Community manager" always struck me as a reprehensible phrase. I'm not your employee. You don't get to "manage" me. Management implies you have power over me. You don't get power over me because I play your game.
No online community has ever benefited from this management.

It's no coincidence that the old definition for management was trickery and deceit.

I did it one year because a friend begged me for help and it was a free badge and hotel. Otherwise, most of the people who do it year to year and at numerous cons are doing it to weasel their way up in power.

They are hired based on social skills not video game playing "skills"

This is exactly why they don't. A CM is like a cute puppy to keep the goyimplayers happy and have someone to yell at that has no real power.

They don't have social skills either.

They don't pay, anymore. They take people who do it for free. Even big companies like Epic Games do this.

...

I want to say I remember Ghostcrawler doing that but I'm not sure. Man it must sting for him knowing he'll never do any sort of meaningful marine biology like he wanted to.

That doesn't stop when some friendly guide maker or community member gets hired. That's just how faggots express their vague discontent and absorbing it without going insane is their primary job skill.

If by community manager you mean a weird mix of PR, both community content and development, and forum moderation; this generally requires social skills or the personality type that attracts attention.

...

Because their existence is only to benefit the corporated part of the industry, the same part of the industry that blatanly tells you that you dont know what you really want, praise and try to shove walking simulators, and thinks gameplay is a toxic word and games are art, the same part of the industries that hire devs to developg games that they woudnt even play because they dont even play vidya, face it managers and the whole PR department on any vidya game exist as a form of cronyism. Nothing less, nothing more.

It's baffling how so many gaming controversies happened because of a shitty Community Manager. They had one job.

Yeah, I can just imagine this going down really well.

The Affirmative Action Stacies don't want to work with a bunch of quiet autists who just do their job all day. They want chads who will flirt with them all the time.

Literally the Niggers of a dev team.

Lose lose situation if you ask me

community manager and pr spots get filled with diversity quota. they're essentially "throw-away" hires

The thing with community managers is the vast majority of the time you aren't even aware they're there. They usually just answer emails and manage the twitter account. The only time you even remember that such a job exists is when one goes off the deep end

if you look at it statistically 99.9% of community managers do their jobs and as a result you generally don't even know they existed in the first place

Like I mean ideally they are a non-autist who happens to understand how the game works and plays it an hour or two per day, but it really helps empathizing with the players if you actually know what they have to go through.

Just admit you didn't think this one through.

That would be helpful, but finding someone with the right balance of passion and character is going to be difficult, especially for the peanuts they pay the hotpockets. There's a reason mods, janitors and admins tend to be the way they are.

Because cool people wouldn't want to be community managers. Only a fucking useless faggot would want that.

Community managers are usually someone's girlfriend. It's a tragic mistake as you really do need someone that can effectively relay info back and forth.

Sucking a penis is sort of like a back and forth information relay in terms of the nervous system.

because someone gotta do it

Because the entire reason the position exists is to give a job to the HR manager's friend's kid with the worthless liberal arts degree. There is no actual need for a "community manager"

If I was a dev I would just lurk existing internet communities for feedback.

I don't trust any community manager that doesn't communicate in memes.

Pretty much this, it's why guys like Kamiya lurk Holla Forums