[2019] Permission to come aboard? A greeting from the new Senior Community Manager

Hey everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and say hi! My name is Tim “Kalvothe” Slager, I’ve recently joined the Wargaming team here in Austin, joining Femennenly and KARMAT1KA on the World of Warships Community Team as a Senior Community Manager.

I’ve been involved in the game industry for many years, in a variety of roles – most recently, I was an Unreal Engine Community Manager at Epic Games. I got my start in building gaming communities around 1997 with Ultima Online, running the gambit through the MMO and MOBA spaces. I also worked on RiME, Grey Goo and Dreadnought.

In my former users, I was also in the US Navy and served aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69), and VAW-120, an E-2 Hawkeye and the C-2 Greyhound training(rag) squadron, as an Aircrew Survival Equipmentman or parachute rigger for short. Despite the title we hardly ever packed parachutes, I spent my time working with oxygen equipment from regulators to liquid oxygen containers or verifying that equipment was safe for flight.

I am excited to be a part of this community, and the community team here at Wargaming. I look forward to meeting and playing with all of you. I hang out in a variety of Discords, and Twitch streams, so you may see me pop in from time to time! Or if you want to jump into a few matches with me, let me know! I started a new account to have a fresh start, so I look forward to getting into some battles!
If you have any questions about me, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Fair Winds and Following Seas,

Tim “Kalvothe” Slager
NA SCM – World of Warships

Welcome aboard! We're very excited to have you on the team with us!

Thanks for the warm welcome, all!

Hey there, Saintsfan.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and feedback on ways that we can improve the game. I am still getting my sea legs here at Wargaming, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't have an immediate response for you on the topics that you're asking for. If you have more detailed thoughts on these areas you suggest we drive improvements, I'd love to hear them.

It was a combination of both.

I went to the "Old Navy" bootcamp at Great Lakes. We did not have coffin racks, we had to march to the galley, and to various evolutions. The new Navy experience has everything within the ship. Recruits do not have to leave their ship for a variety of training, and their Battlestations evolution is done in a simulated ship experience, beyond just the Marlin Spike. Mine required we march around the base in the northern cold of Illinois during October.

However, when I got to the fleet, it was a much newer Navy. I still wore utilities but did not wear dungarees, we could smoke on the ship, but only in designated smoking areas. We flew the "Don't Tread on me," flag along with the American Flag, while in port. Chiefs and officers were the only sailors who wore khakis and we did not have Starbucks on the ship.

I started on Tuesday, but I had to go through forum quals and get my CPO to sign off on my request chit.

I am forever enthusiastic, so that will never change. As far as the POD, I'm working on that. Right now we're building out the NA community team, we'll have another member joining us soon. We're also hiring two others to join our team and support our LATAM regions. Check out the job postings for those billets:

https://wargaming.com/en/careers/vacancy_1204423/

https://wargaming.com/en/careers/vacancy_1204479/

Hey there, I am of course reading this.

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'get NA going?'

I ate the bacon for midrats.

Let me check SOP.... nope. I am not supposed to do that. :P

Wow, the past few replies have been a rollercoaster! I'm not sure if my emotions should be high or low right now. :P

One of the questions was, what am I going to focus on? The short answer is everything. The long answer is... long.

First, we should explore what a community manager does. Most people know this, but, for the sake of being thorough I'll type it out (or copy/paste, whatever)

According to Wikipedia

This is a very very broad generalization of the role. Over the years, I've heard many different definitions of the role, from 'a player that works at the studio', to 'the megaphone in the studio.' While these are both correct, they hardly scratch the surface of what we do. Community management is not just about listening to the community and feeding it back to the developers, or sharing information from the developers with the players. It goes FAR beyond that.

My style of community management begins with relationships. I dedicate a portion of my day hanging out in a variety of micro-communities, from Discord servers, Twitch channels, Reddit, forums, Facebook groups, and in-game chatting with folks. I do this because I am also a part of the community. Changes that impact any World of Warships players are going to impact me, because I play the game, and I am part of the discussion - not just on the forums, but in real-time, where the players are, like one of the 13 World of Warships Discord servers I am currently a member of. Some I haven't spoken in, others I've been very vocal. It all depends on... honestly I don't know what it depends on, that is just it. I am Kalvothe on every channel, so if you see that name, unless I've reached some odd level of popularity that someone imitates me, then it is me.

I digress, as I mentioned above relationships are extremely important to this craft, so why is building a relationship important? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but most of them come down to trust. I thrive on trusting the community to provide me solid, critical, and when possible, actionable feedback.

Everyone has something they like or dislike about the game, and I completely respect that, but to share that with anyone internally, I need to trust that the feedback is coming from a place that is both honest and in the best interest of the game/community. Equally, I need to establish myself and earn the community's trust and by being open and honest.

BUT, we are all human, and we are prone to making mistakes, things happen, when I make a mistake, I will own it, I will apologize for it, and I'll move on, pretty straight forward! We also wear a lot of hats, so there may be times that I don't get to check in to all areas of the community, but rest assured, I'm keeping an eye out!

That said, to get to the question of what am I going to be doing? First, I am going to work on growing the community team, we're currently hiring a Spanish speaking CM and Brazillian Portuguese speaking CM. If you're interested, let us know! I am also going to be working with the team here in Austin to help drive that relationship building I mentioned above. To that end, I've mustered our team here in Austin and we'll be jumping into a few matches on Thursday, and playing with the community. I'll be hanging out in the /r/WorldofWarships Discord chat, so if you'd like to play with me, join in!

And, scene.