That’s all she wrote!
Or rather, my contract with EA as the community manager for Need for Speed World has now come to an end. What started out as a 6 month contract, got extended 3 times, bringing it to just over to one helluva year with the company. I enjoyed working with the team and learning how to build and manage a community on a global scale.
You’d think that making games was the funnest and easiest thing to do in the world, but it turns out, that it’s one of the most challenging, at times, soul-crushing (gamers are notoriously a hard community to handle) thing I’ve ever had the honour to be a part of.
I learned a shit ton during my time there, including:
* more about cars than the average girl ought to know about
* how to swing that ban hammer!
* now knowing the word “codes” in several languages, as in “I want codes, I need codes, when are you going to give out codes?”
That at the end of the day, despite the trollers and griefers, that the community is mostly good. I’ve made friends with some really great gamers, who have always been supportive of the game and my role as their community manager. And it’s kinda cool that they from various parts around world: US, Brazil, Netherlands, India, Germany, Finland, Mexico, UK, Indonesia and Russia.
During my time there, I put together 62 contests and gave away over 2,600 promo codes to the community.
It’s been said to me that working a year at EA is the equivalent of working 3-4 years at any other outside company. The pace is maddening, the workload is relentless, priorities get shifted on a daily basis and that everyday, I feel like a fire-fighter, putting out fires.
It’s no doubt, a pressure cooker environment and the burn-out rate is high. Sink or swim! BUT if you can survive all that, you can handle anything that will come your way, professionally.
With this job, you definitely get out of it what you put into it. And I can feel proud of what I built.
I launched NFSW’s FB page when I got hired last may and in less than a year, I leave having garnered 259,000+ likes for the game.
I launched the Twitter page and in less than a year, grew the page to 32,000+ followers.
My Klout score, which measures online influence, on my last day of work:
The Klout score measures influence on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the most influential. According to Klout, the average Klout score is not 50; instead, it is around 20. — Klout
According to Klout, I am a thought leader.
To put it into perspective, if I were to compare myself to those in the music industry, this is how I’d stack against them:
Or to famous celebs:
The coveted 75+ score group consists of celebrities and larger-than-life figures — Media Bistro
Which is not to say that I think of myself as a celeb or larger than life. I’m surprised I even scored so high!
But I am glad that during my time at EA, I was able to gain the respect of the NFSW community and that my words and initiatives provided them with some value.
And what did I get in return? Besides an appreciative and eye-opening crash course into the world of gaming? Why that would be, 2 more inches of thicker skin!
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