Navigating the "ocean" of fandom as a community manager

gamedeveloper.com:

In her GDC 2023 talk, The Game Band community director (and Young Horses community manager) Bria Davis had a practical framework for developers looking to proactively and healthfully engage with and manage their fan communities. Davis started with a primer on the social psychology of fandom (and looked critically at the structural issues that create the sometimes wildly complex relationships fans have with the media and creators they love), before breaking down the dos and don'ts of proactive community management.

"First, we must understand the shape of the Beast," She said. "Fandom is an ocean. It is in a amorphous sort of shifting, overlapping ecosystem. There are different oceans with different names. But ultimately they are all connected. They support and influence everything that lives within the ocean, everything that lives without the ocean and [are] influenced by larger systems like the weather, the atmosphere, people, capitalism."

"The number one thing to know about the ocean, in my opinion, is that you cannot control it. You can only understand the risks that come with engaging with it and the joys that you can have with it, and prepare to be around [it] safely. If you could control the ocean you would be more like Poseidon, King Of The Seas. Instead. I want you to be surfing Pikachu." She referred to an infamous image of the beloved pocket monster, happily boarding along.

"You are not fighting the current, you're not controlling the sea. You are riding the waves and you look cute doing it, which is really the goal at the end of the day."

Davis spoke at length about the basics of social psychology, including the concepts of the in-group (where people feel strongly about shared values and feel a deep personal