An annual event going back to 2008, the Mario Marathon is an amazing example of building a community through word of mouth, relentless promotion and clever interactions with fans. It’s one of the earliest examples of a gaming marathon benefitting charity, which involves streaming gamers playing the games to a live audience over the course of several days.

The team of Mario Marathon volunteers has done an impressive job growing their community each year – no easy task considering the long downtime between each event. The Mario Marathon has reached over 500,000 gamers to date, and through them raised over $125,000 for Child’s Play.

Following our recent experiment in online charity gaming, we reached out to Mario Marathon co-founder Brian “Shirt Guy” Brinegar to learn more about how it’s done. Read on for his insights on community building and how to motivate members for a common good.

Wavedash: Thanks again for the chat! To start off, are you surprised that charity gaming marathons have caught on to such a degree?

Brian: I was not entirely surprised. Gaming marathons are a fun way to bring the gaming community together to support a cause and they are relatively easy to get started. We’ve also tried to support the community by providing some documentation on how our events have been created.

WD: Are you finding it harder to differentiate yourself from the increased competition? How do you keep potential new viewers from saying “Oh great, another marathon”?

Brian: I always spend an excessive amount of time and money trying to top the previous year. I hope this shows when someone happens across our stream. We try to add a level of interaction and attention to detail that would be hard to establish on the first go around. We also have a huge advantage of being established as one of the early marathon groups which provides some additional access to get the word out.

WD: How did you grow your community of stream-watchers in the early days?

Brian: Initially, we were just very very lucky. At the beginning of the first Mario Marathon we were featured on both Penny-Arcade and Kotaku. This provided us with a ton of traffic. For the second year we weren’t sure
what access we would have to major gaming sites like these, so we pounded the pavement, sending information to every media outlet we could find contact information for. We also try to keep past donors and supporters informed of the annual event via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.

WD: What are the best fan interaction ideas you use to keep viewers engaged?

Brian: It’s all about constant communication. The Internet provides the opportunity for a vast amount of two-way communication unavailable in any other media. We use channels such as Twitter, Facebook, IRC Chat, Fanart, and Skype to facilitate this communication as well as a way to hold contests and audience challenges. This year we’ve added something we call “React Time” which lets the audience applaud, boo, taunt, and laugh at the team by clicking buttons on our website. A system analyzes these reactions and triggers actual sounds we can hear.

WD: Aside from those who donate loads of money, who are your most valuable viewers/chatters? Are some members better for a healthy broadcast than others?

Brian: Everyone that watches the Mario Marathon is very important. Those ofus who put the event together really are nothing without the people who support what we’re doing. Every person who donates, helps to spread the word, or interacts during the event plays an important part in making it successful. There are also a small number of people who stick around throughout the year, act as moderators, and generally provide feedback and ideas for improving the event. These people really add to Mario Marathon in an unmeasurable way.

WD: What viewer behavior has surprised you the most?

Brian: The fact that viewers show up to watch a few old guys play video games for days on end pretty surprising all on its own. Beyond that I’m surprised by the dedication and support the community provides. Many
people go out of their way to provide support that we could never expect. For example, this year viewers have stepped up and contributed prizes, an amazing T-Shirt design, and what will ultimately be an amazing promotional poster/prize. This kind of support comes from all over the world. Its a surprise to anyone I tell about the event.

WD: What is the optimal time to announce a marathon and start generating buzz, but not fall off people’s radar?

Brian: We’ve announced Mario Marathon about 5-6 months out each year. Since we only hold one real event each year this gives us plenty of time to promote the event. Also, because Child’s Play Charity runs their donation drive in November and December it’s important for us to get on their schedule before they stop updating the site for the year. Keeping the buzz going can be very difficult. We start a media blitz about two weeks prior to the event. This includes press released to print and television, e-mails to gaming sites, etc.

WD: How do you reconnect with viewers from previous marathons? Do you see the same viewers returning year after year, or is it largely fresh faces?

Brian: Yes, there are a lot of names that pop up year after year. We have over 1,100 attendees from previous years signed up to attend via a Facebook event. Of course, there are a ton of new people every year, some stop in for a few minutes, others become a part of the community and stay connected year round.

WD: The “achievements” are great! What benefits have you seen since they were implemented?

Brian: We’ve always had an internal list of promotion “achievements,” which are goals for promoting the event each year. Last year, for Mario Marathon 3, we made this list public in the form of achievements. The thought
was that some of our viewers may have connections or resources we do not have internally. If they are willing to use their connections to help promote the event we want to provide some direction. The achievements also act as a kickback to the various groups that do support us. Having an achievement titled, “Can I has Joystiq?” does a little to show how much we value Joystiq’s support.

WD: Do you have any plans to further “gamify” your event, like you did with achievements?

Brian: Absolutely, I’m very interested in the ability of games to teach and influence people’s actions. For example, I use my Discover Card to buy almost everything because I earn points which I can use to receive “prizes” (cash back bonus rewards). This is a very simple game, but it influences what I do. Some games, like Animal Crossing reward players for returning each day. We try to use these concepts to promote engagement and reward those that participate throughout the event. This year, we’re introducing a feature called “Social Trivia” which lets people all over the world participate in a multi-day trivia contest. Our structure of donations unlocking levels is another game-like element, there are very small measurable and achievable goals that all add up to a huge amount of money for Charity. If we started with a single goal of $125,000 it seems insurmountable. Lastly, we are adding a set of audience participation games, which will let members of the audience actually plan some custom games with the team, right from their web browser. Think 1 vs. 100.

WD: Is a charity gaming marathon a good way for an existing gaming community, website or company to engage with members? Why or why not?

Brian: The internet provides an amazing number of new ways to communicate with lots of people, be it live video, social networking, or a custom online game, all of these things that bring people together are going to engage and likely grow a community. A gaming marathon is a popular way to bring these technologies together, but I believe it’s the massive amount of communication that really engages the members of a community. The one advantage that a charity event provides is a sort of beacon for everyone in the community to point at an say, “Look at this! Look what we were able to accomplish as a community.” I hope that the members of the Mario Marathon community realize how much they have accomplished and how important they are to the process.

WD: Finally, do you have any parting tips on how would-be marathoners can find and grow an audience?

Brian: Just ask. Ask people to share on Facebook, post on message boards, and send out Tweets. This kind of first hand word-of-mouth support can go along way. Of course, the group hosting the marathon needs to do their share of work to make sure the show is something people want to share, but once you’ve got that setup, just ask.

~–

To donate money to Child’s Play through the Mario Marathon, visit their donation page. For more tips on how to run an online charity event, visit the Mario Marathon’s handy how-to guide Notes On Running a Gaming Marathon.

The fourth annual Mario Marathon webcast kicks off on June 24th.

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for me. I recently landed a gig as an online community manager for a prominent social gaming company. More on that later, but the short version has me living in San Francisco and kick-starting an exciting new career. Good times!

As a result of this long job hunt, I’ve been through a lot of job interviews. Some good, some bad. With the economy as rough as it is, and considering how competitive both the video game and social media industries can be, even a great interview often ends with “good luck in your search.”

But this post isn’t about how to land any community manager job (check out Blaise’s fantastic article for help on that front.) It’s about how to figure out if that specific position is right for you.

Nearly all interviewers will end with “So, do you have any questions for me?” Once you’ve finished impressing them with your savvy, well-informed questions about their products and company history, make sure you ask:

Where does the online community manager sit?

Will you be sitting with the engineers, the marketing team, or the customer support team? Or another team entirely? Because of the jack-of-all-trades nature of community management, and because many companies are hiring one for the first time, every organization has a different view on the CM’s role. The physical place that you sit gives you a great snapshot of what your primary tasks will be.

If you’re sitting with the engineers, your primary task is probably to engage with your members and relay bugs that the community finds. With marketing, you’ll be more focused on blogger outreach, social media and community involvement. Of course, you’ll probably be doing all of this regardless, just in different proportions.

The good news is, community management is such an encompassing role that once you get in the door, you can mold it into your ideal mix of abilities. All you have to do is be awesome at it.

Find out where your chair is, and you’ll learn a lot more than if you asked “so tell me about the position.”

Last week I attended a presentation by Shama Kabani as part of a lecture series put on by the Dallas chapter of Social Media Club (and also featuring a fantastic talk by the inimitable Eric Swayne). Shama is the president of the Dallas-based online marketing firm Marketing Zen Group and author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing.

Shama’s presentation was loaded with wisdom for exciting a social media following. The most important takeaway: people use social media to show off their identity. Keeping up with friends is nice. Sharing photos is cool. But showing yourself is what it’s all about. Any brand trying to build a community must first figure out how people will incorporate that brand into their online identities. (Social game developers know it’s also the secret to selling virtual goods.)

To accomplish this, Shama coined the ACT model for social media marketing — Attract, Convert, Transform. And it’s a great way to look at online community building.

Shama details the ACT model over at the Marketing Message Blog:

A is for Attract. To attract means to get attention or stand out. Practically, this means attracting traffic to your website—your main online marketing tool. Nowhere is social media marketing more successful and useful than in the “attracting” phase of online marketing. During the attraction phase, you are trying to drive traffic to your site and stand out from the masses.

C is for Convert. Conversion happens when you turn a stranger into a consumer or customer. And there is a difference between the two! A consumer may take in your information or even sample your product, but he or she may not always buy. That’s okay! Over time, that consumer may become a customer. The more expensive a purchase, the longer it may take. This means that you constantly have to work to convert people into consumers and customers.

T is for Transform. You transform when you turn past and present successes into magnetic forces of attraction.

Looking at this strictly from an online community management perspective, the ACT model matches both the lifecycle of a successful community and the lifecycle of your members themselves. When you’re first launching, your goal is to attract new members (but not too many). As your community matures, your membership coalesces into a more active group. Maybe they start referring to themselves as “Goons” or “Redditors”. Maybe they start holding offline events. Finally, once it hits critical mass, your community (hopefully) becomes a self-sustaining force that uses a rich history to draw in new members.

The ACT model also dovetails with the Membership Lifecycle for Online Communities, first put forth by Amy Jo Kim. According to Dr. Kim, online community members go through five stages:

1. Lurkers – newly exposed members who consume content without creating any. Many won’t even have registered. You’ve attracted them, but haven’t yet converted them into a real member.
2. Novices – Something triggers the lurker to contribute. For instance: a heated debate, an interesting topic, a new game release, a need for technical support, or a witty comment. The lurker has built enough comfort and trust to be willing to join up, but is still low on the reputation totem pole.
3. Regulars – After a period of sustained contribution, the novice becomes a regular both in terms of proficiency and in reputation. They are fully converted and participating in your community, rather than just consuming it.
4. Leaders – Your most valuable regulars will eventually take ownership of different aspects of your community. They have earned so much respect that, even if you haven’t endowed them with moderation-type powers, they still wield a great deal of influence. These are your movers and shakers. They create the memes, in-jokes and conversations that constitute your community’s engine.
5. Elders – Inevitably, users move on. This is another part of your community’s transformation. It must have an ability to adapt to a new environment. An elder still has great influence in an online community, but is probably no longer actively contributing.

Your goal as online community manager is to guide both your community and your members through each of these steps. Attract the right people. Convert them into useful, content-producing, experience-improving members. And then build on those successes to transform the community as a whole.

Major thanks to Shama for the fresh perspective.

Image credit: Steve Snodgrass

Social Media (and it’s parent buzzword “Web 2.0″) proves one thing: the most powerful force on the internet is narcissism. Well, and cats. Whether it’s a tweet, a blog or a Facebook status update, people love to talk about themselves. And when other people talk about them, they love it even more.

Is your online community hurting for activity? Then it’s time to stroke some egos. Here are 5 ways to turn everyone into frothing narcissists.

1) End of the Year Awards

Is it December? Good. Start your annual award thread. It’s not December? Then make some other excuse. With a good mix of categories, you’ll have a fun forum event that gets everyone involved in complimenting each other.

Get your community voting on as much as possible. Ask for categories and accept both the sensible and the silly. Once the categories are set, have a nomination period. And once the nominees are filtered down, begin final voting.

Possible forum award categories:

• Most helpful – who’s always the first to help a newbie?
• Smartest member – who always kicks your ass in forum debates?
• Spamtastic – but Matt! Spamming is against the rules! Yes, but every community has that overenthusiastic member who is online 24/7 and answers every post, without violating the rules. Make them smile.
• Sexiest mod – again, don’t take it too seriously. There’s a line between having fun and flouting your own rules. So long as you can enforce that line, this is always a popular category.
• Member of the year – “Best in Show,” only with less tail wagging and drooling. Ok, maybe just less tail wagging.

Forum awards are a fun way to get your community to reward your best posters. But! Do not give actual prizes. This is about social recognition, which is much more powerful. The more you pay to forum award winners, the cheaper the award itself.

2) Call your users a bunch of dogs

You’ve seen those infernal Facebook quizzes. What animal are you? What Apple product are you? What toenail clipper are you? “What ____ are you” games are annoying in your feed, but are always a hit on message boards.

Create a thread where you compare 10-20 of your top, most beloved members to anything. Animals, Pokemon, household appliances, whatever. Make sure you’re saying good things about them – or at the very least, giving them a loving punch to the shoulder. The goal is to get everyone agreeing, disagreeing and laughing. More importantly, you want them making more comparisons. End the post with “what ____ are you?” Invite everyone to keep the game going.

3) Spotlight user generated content

This holds doubly true if you run a community focused on said user generated content. But even if you don’t, there are things you can do to make a member feel awesome. For example, if you manage a forum, start a “weekly sticky”, which sticks a new thread at the top. This has the added benefit of praising good behavior. It sets an example that for what a “good thread” is.

More random ways to spotlight a member:

• Create a “Member of the Month” award
• Promote fan-made artwork to the front page
• Feature a user blog post in the site news
• Supply commentary to an online gaming match

Use these spotlights to give your users something to aspire to. Think of it as an “Employee of the Month” program, only less soul crushing.

4) Trophies, achievements and badges

Foursquare and Gowalla leverage this to great effect. Xbox Live discovered that achievements excite both the completionist and the casual player. In some ways it’s obvious, but there are still communities out there that don’t have any kind of reputation metric whatsoever.

These virtual trinkets turn your community into a powerful Skinner Machine. So long as they are a publicly visible status symbol, they will create excitement. (Remember: the whole point of virtual goods is to look awesome in front of your friends.)

5) Give your members cameos

Admit it. You’ve done it. You’ve gone into a thread and done a Ctrl-F for your name, just to see if you were mentioned. Users love to be mentioned by name. Find some way to incorporate a popular user into your content. The more in-jokes and references you can cram in, the healthier your community. Just don’t let all of your content become self-referential. The goal is occasional ego indulgence, not ego masturbation.

A few ways to give a community member a cameo:

• Create a webcomic starring caricatures of your members
• Interview top users
• Start a collaborative fan fiction based on your community (does it get any more delightfully nerdy and self indulgent than that?)

If you do it right, then many members you include will become evangelists. They’ll feel like they “own” a piece of your community. Which is a good thing.

The power of a grassroots gaming community is that your members are the ones spreading the word. Get them involved by stroking their egos, and your community will reap the benefits.

Photo credit: Marina(im.back)

Video game community manager David “Historian” DeWald has a great article up on why your company needs a community manager.

One key point:

The launch phase of any community requires someone that is passionate and “transacting” a lot. Building communities is not about collecting as many people as possible and communities often don’t grow the way they are planned. The CM role will change as the needs of the community change. This means the CM doesn’t fit into any single definition. I often refer the to the role as being similar to a liaison, bridging the gap between those inside and outside the organization.

The important subtext here managing a community is a complex responsibility. You’re hiring a customer liaison, a marketer, a writer, a blogger, a human resources administrator and a product manager, and you’re probably expecting him/her to know about the tech, too. This takes substantial work from at least one person, and probably more than that. Remember: a big reason why most online communities fail is because they are understaffed.

This is just as important whether you’re building a brand-driven or a grassroots gaming community. Even if you’re giving users most of the control over the content, you need a hands-on CM to keep promote growth and encourage good behavior.

Image credit: Horia Varlan

I started this blog as more of a scratchboard. A placeholder for ideas spread across various interests, including fiction, copywriting, creative agency life, social media, online community building, and video games. The old tagline, “Writing, Gaming and Brazen Geekery” expressed this.

As a personal project, that’s fine. As a blog? Ineffective.

Now I have a subject. For the past several months I’ve been diving back into online community management and social media management, with a particular focus on gaming communities. It’s a subject I’ve been immersed in for almost a decade. I’m good at it, and I love it. So, as a start to a new personal brand, Wavedash.net is relaunching.

What is a Wavedash?

From SmashWiki:

A wavedash is a technique in Melee that causes a character to slide along the ground without walking or running. It transfers the momentum of the air dodge into a spurt of ground-based movement. Like l-canceling and Short Hopping, wavedashing is considered an advanced technique, and one of the first techniques smashers learn when they train for tournaments.

How’s that for confusing? Wavedashing is a technique used in Super Smash Bros. Melee to move without changing direction. It lets you do standing attacks while moving. You can do it out of a shield. You can use it to change the way you land after jumping. It’s considered the gateway to advanced play: wavedashing doesn’t make you good, but because of the complex hand motions it requires, learning it puts you on the path to competitive play. It’s like learning about foreshortening when painting.

There’s a reason why this site is called Wavedash. The technique is an example of emergence in a gaming community, facilitated by modern technology. At the time, thousands of Smashers were talking strategy on one website, Smashboards.com. They shared techniques, exploits and crazy bugs. At the same time, all of these gamers from all over the world voluntarily began hosting tournaments. They created their own meetups, shared ideas and evangelized the game to their friends.

Bear in mind that this was already years after SSBM had been released.

Wavedashing was the first truly “advanced” technique that Smashers collectively identified. It’s an exploit of the phsyics engine. It doesn’t exist anywhere in the rulebook. Nintendo has never spoken the word out loud. But if you wanted to compete in the dozens of tournaments popping up, you learned to wavedash.

Since then, wavedashing has taken on a bad rap. Casual players talk about banning it. Funny thing is, it doesn’t actually do anything. It’s not a powerful strategy. Some top players don’t use it at all. But it’s become so synonymous with competitive play that it represents the entire competitive Smash community, complete with rules, philosophies and strategies that are anathema to the casual.

I’m fascinated by this emergence. The Internet has created a way for fans of a game to connect and have conversations. This leads to completely new rules that the designers never foresaw. More importantly, it leads to the creation of a frothing enthusiastic fanbase that promotes the game. With zero support from Nintendo, the Wavedashers made the competitive Smash community into one of the largest for any game on any platform.

This is Grassroots Gaming

Esports like MLG and NVGA have finally taken off. Game companies the world over have identified the value in having a dedicated community. “Community Manager” and “Social Media Manager” are both real job titles. Just look at Bungie, Blizzard, Valve and a dozen other developers who have given their fans a place to play. It translates to real dollars.

Grassroots gaming is different. It’s the holy grail that all of these companies, from the competitive league to the publisher, want to grab. It combines the hardcore fervor of competitive play with the friendly frolicking of social media.

In short, “grassroots gaming” is about harnessing emergence to turn fans into community builders. It’s about tapping the casual fan as well as the hardcore, and exciting them about getting their friends to play. It’s part word of mouth, part marketing, part community management, and part chaos.

There’s the Wavedash wheelhouse. Welcome.

Oh dear, I’ve gone and violated Godwin’s Law. At least I got it out of the way early, which was unavoidable as the entire point of this post is a review I read of Pat Buchanan’s new book. The former Nixon Adviser/former presidential candidate/current MSNB correspondent hops aboard the World War II revisionism short bus, and it’s obvious the NY Sun reviewer enjoyed lumping his book in with recent far-left attempts at the same. Buchanan’s thesis, according to the review, is simple: we (in particular, Britain) should not have entered war with Germany.

From the review:

There is really only one controversial claim in “Hitler, Churchill, and the Unnecessary War.” This is the notion that Britain should not have offered to guarantee Poland against Nazi aggression in April 1939, and so would not have had to go to war when the aggression came that September. This would have been the wiser course, Mr. Buchanan argues, because Hitler had no interest in war with Britain. In fact, he admired the English as racial comrades, and more than once floated the prospect of the two nations dividing up the world between them. His real target was the Soviet Union, and it would have been better for Britain and the world to allow those two monstrous tyrannies to fight each other alone.

Extrapolating this idea made for an interesting thought experiment. The review goes on to outline how Germany, if all was quiet on the western front, would have easily been the first European to win a land war in Asia. But taking Buchanan’s ideas and expanding them, suppose Hitler had only succeeded in conquering Europe, Stalin cemented his bloc in the east, and England and the U.S. remained neutral. Buchanan argues that the conflict would have been so great between the two fraternal twin totalitarian regimes that it would have solved both, and we would be living in a western wonderland today.

My question is, besides in the great Butter Battle, when has this happened?

Buchanan’s thesis is based on the idea that the two powers would tear each other apart. Or, not unlike Republican hopes of the protracted Democratic primary, that at least two powerful forces would drag each other down until the Good Guys (Capitalism; McCain) could build themselves unmolested. It’s like in Starcraft, right? You zerg rush your Terran friend and kill his drones, but he’s turtled some marines to fend them off, all while launching a counterstrike that wounds your build order. Meanwhile, the noble Protoss player in the upper right has had time to tech up, and before you know it you have a pocket of zerglings fending off 10 carriers.

Unfortunately (erm, I guess fortunately…) history did not unfold like Starcraft. Rather, history shows that two competing forces often leads to both of those forces dominating the rest of the world. For practically all of the middle ages, you have England versus France. For more than half of the 20th century, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. fought so hard and so coldly that they were by far the most powerful players. Having a rival (or even better, an enemy) ferments fanaticism and provokes passion better than any claims of manifest destiny.

There are exceptions, of course. The Romans didn’t have an equal opponent for most of their empire. Yet their protracted war with Carthage is one of the most defining periods of their military history.

Take Roger Federer. He’s one of the greatest tennis players the world has ever produced. Had Rafael Nadal not appeared, Federer would likely hold all of the records in tennis. But Nadal did appear, and their intense rivalry has led to the two of them dominating the 1 and 2 spots since 2005.

And that brings us to Iran, which might play in to Buchanan’s point. The Iranians and the Iraqis balanced each other for years, their political and religious differences making them both powerful (but peripheral) entities in the Middle East. Their wars, plus U.N. sanctions, kept either from severely unbalancing the region. But, it also lead both to build powerful armies. Now, the Iraq threat to Iran is removed, and Ahmadinejad is the most powerful figure outside of Saudi Arabia.

Competition between two nations has two effects: it ossifies the Us vs. Them mentality, and causes both parties to far out pace those outside of the conflict. A 50-year cold war between Nazis and Stalinists might have kept both in “check,” but it would have forced the rest of the world to become satellites of either side. Then, if either collapsed, the full might of the winning side would be free to will itself on a new, far weaker target.

You hear about politicians yearning for the simplicity of the Cold War, or the Neocon nostalgia for the “Good War” of World War II. The War on Terror is an attempt to create a new Us vs. Them mentality, replacing communists with terrorists (and when rhetorically at its worst, Islam). But Al Qaida does not make for a good rival. For the balancing act to occur, both sides must be on an equal footing. Otherwise, instead of Zerg/Terran/Protoss, it’s just Rebels and the Empire in a new Star Wars. And that didn’t end well for the Empire.