Welcome to our AMA write up with Corey (he/him) and Will (he/him), who generously agreed to spend some time with us answering questions about their experience at Rose City Games, their past open Community Developer role, and advanced Rose City Games strategies!
🤩 Corey and Will, thank you for being here and sharing your insights with the Work With Indies community!
🌹 Hi, I’m Corey Warning - co-founder of Rose City Games w/ Will. I was the director of our first original game The World Next Door, and I’m the producer of Floppy Knights. I like tattoos, watching cartoons with my kids, co-op board games, and I’m currently playing a LOT of Monster Hunter Rise. I’m most active online here.
🏙️ Hi all, my name is Will Lewis! I'm a co-founder at Rose City Games with Corey, currently producing Garden Story as my main studio role and doing all kinds of management/design/bizdev along the way. I'm also the President of the Portland Indie Game Squad, a nonprofit community platform helping people make games together in Portland and online. Fun & games -wise, lately I've been trying out a lot of games and demos like Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, OTHER: Her Loving Embrace, and Of Love and Eternity! I also love Dragon Quest ⚔️💧. You can find me on Twitter here!
.webp)
.webp)
What's your HR rank? 👀 - Katherine
🌹 Corey: 20!! I just got my urgent last night, and I'm waiting for my main hunting crew to catch up. 🦎
What co-op board games do you recommend? - Brandon
🌹 Corey: Lots of good stuff from Gamewright (I've got 3 little kids, so family-friendly is my go-to in a lot of places) Forbidden Island / Desert / Sky art hits in my house, and I'm looking forward to getting back into some legacy stuff with friends now that we're all getting vaxxed.
How did you get your start in games? - Katherine
🌹 Corey: I worked in the music industry for about 10 years (touring in bands and then working at a record label) and got into making chiptunes when I moved to Portland in 2012. I met Will who was running the Portland Indie Game Squad meetup group in town, and that was my gateway to doing this more professionally. Fast fwd and we're been doing Rose City Games together for over 5 years now!
🏙️ Will: My TRUE start was of course playing Kirby's Adventure for NES with my cousin and drawing level designs in sketchbooks. Fast forward to any sort of "professional" start, I founded the Portland Indie Game Squad in 2011 (10 year anniversary was this month!) to bring game makers of all roles and experience levels together for game jams, hobby projects, professional needs, etc. I was a community organizer for film and flipped over to games because of said sketching-designs-when-I-was-little days, and Corey and I were able to found RCG through the people and projects we'd worked with through PIGSquad!
[.c-insight]💡 Editor's Note: I love this so much. Creating a community (where it was very much in need in a small-ish Portland gaming scene), which while likely wasn't part of the master plan, led to meeting great people and opportunities (in this case, starting your own company). 👏[.c-insight]
Hi guys! I noticed you already have a Communications Manager. Is this community developer position meant to help lighten her workload? - Sean
🌹 Corey: Jenny has been doing amazing work with us for quite a while now! She's moving on to other roles at Soft Not Weak / Kowloon Nights, and we're both sad + excited for her. She's staying on with us part-time for a bit longer as we onboard our new hire.
[.c-insight]💡 Editor's Note: It is great to see that someone in this role was able to grow and branch out into other opportunities. It speaks well to both the skills and experience one can gain in this role, as well as the support from the team and culture to create space for growth.[.c-insight]
How have you filled the void of conferences like PAX for marketing power this past year? Have metrics shown a noticeable change from not being at shows? - Punisher
🌹 Corey: We've done a LOT (lots lots lots) of digital events, like Steam Fests that have been really nice - we of course track Steam Wishlists, and anytime there's an event like LudoNarraCon that features our games on Steam, we see a huge boost. They've been really fun and helpful, but we still really miss going to PAX.
The Community Developer position sounds exciting! What's the culture like working for Rose City Games? - Brandon
🏙️ Will: We work really closely with each other! We try as hard as we can to focus on original creative content, and being able to share feedback and processes with each other along the way is key. In a logistical sense, we have weekly standup and review meetings where we're able to interact a lot more (which is hard during the pandemic!) and we do weekly Jackbox/Among Us hangouts to keep that conversation going. I think we're lucky in that we all have some sort of roots or background in the community or the Portland Indie Game Squad, so it's been easier to stay healthy with our communication and work/life balance because of our familiarity with each other.
[.c-highlight]We also avoid crunch wherever possible. Sometimes deadlines gotta deadline, but really giving the team room to do their job well, be creative well, and be their own person well is something we re-up on all the time.[.c-highlight]
I'm very curious as to how a studio like Rose City plans to approach in-person conferences/conventions for the foreseeable future. - Casey
🌹 Corey: We're excited to get back to in-person events, but we're not going to rush it. We're keeping an eye on CDC guidelines, and will be likely the most cautious we can be.
Who's the best Among Us imposter? 😉 - Harmonia
🌹 Corey: Not Jenny lol
🏙️ Will: Seriously 🔪
How do you manage work-life balance? I know a lot of game studios have issues with overworking their employees, and when people in the office are friendly, it can be easy to cross boundaries and start asking for more/doing more than you really should. That can include having technically not required but actually required fun times. How do you manage that? - Crystal
🌹 Corey: We keep general RCG working hours between 9-6 pm and ask folks to make sure they're online starting between 9-10 am, and then log off by 6 pm. Although we've been a bit more flexible with everyone working from home. Some of us have kids now too, so stuff just comes up, but in general, our whole crew is good about making up a little time when needed, and we encourage everyone to take breaks and time-off (even when we're all having fun!)
🤔 Was there any inspiration behind the creation of Floppy Knights and Garden Story? How did these projects come about? - Brandon
🏙️ Will: We're publishing Garden Story, which is being developed solo by Picogram (with music & sfx by Grahm Nesbitt). Pico is very inspired by social issues they saw while living in Hawaii, love classic games and pixel art, and love some of the modern takes given to classic games (like top-down Zelda and Stardew Valley). They had been working on Garden Story for 1-2 years before we jumped in to act as publisher. They lived in Portland so it was easy to start working with them via PIGSquad and then start a more professional relationship after!
Floppy Knights is an interesting story - we'd been working with the concept for multiple years (as the result of a "game design jam") before finding a way to get it funded. The concept originally started from a goofy idea that I called "Draggin' Knights," where you programmed one-note units to do your bidding in a tower-offense-style game. During the game design jam, our artist Marlowe converted it much more to a Fire Emblem / Advance Wars-like (because we love those games), and the Trading Card aspect kind of came in later as a fun twist!
I've been following Picogram since they first started showing off character models for Garden Story so my excitement knows no bounds. - Harmonia
🌹 Corey: Meeeeee too - I feel really lucky to be able to work with Pico and have a hand in helping Garden Story release. Also, working with Grahm has been amazing - he's doing a bunch of audio with us now, including all of Floppy Knights!
I love the community Rose City has built over on your discord. What do you think has helped most in designing your community for kindness? - Hlywa
🌹 Corey: I think starting from PIGSquad helped a lot here - we were kinda already in that mode from the community org side of things, and our games all kinda lean into that too. We're big on collaboration and communication - and I really like working on games I can share with my kids (maybe The World Next Door later, slightly T for Teen) - also, hiring Jenny helped a lot! - Corey
What's the day to day look like for a potential new Community Manager? - Casey
🏙️ Will: We typically focus a lot on a few different areas: growth, management, strategy, and execution. The day-to-day typically changes pending our upcoming milestones. If we're in a slow time, things are much more about looking forward to next steps, creating or supporting activations on our calendar, or "filling in the gaps" to keep everyone happy and continually joining the hype train. If we're near a launch, we are very focused on that tentpole, really doubling down on how to engage the community's feedback, work well with partners, and celebrate milestones. We want our community to stay invested in between launches and prep them to really "show up" when the launches happen!
So as both a developer and publishing studio, this means that your Community Developer also has to work with developers that you're helping to publish. What is that interaction like and how does it differ from a Community Developer that only works dev side? - Harmonia
🌹 Corey: Because Rose City Games is small, and the Garden Story dev team is even smaller - it's felt pretty 1:1 for us as far as the in-house projects and published projects go, at least from the community side. Garden Story is different in that it's not our game, in the way Floppy Knights is. So there's a layer of sign-off that needs to happen because we don't want to step on toes or do anything Pico isn't comfortable with. We've worked with other folks who haven't respected that as much, and it's the pits - so we try hard to not be that publisher.
And although the position is remote, you expect this in PST? - Kat
🌹 Corey: PST is preferred, but we're working with folks in different time zones too! [.c-highlight]The most important thing for us is finding someone who can really own the role, and add to our already stellar team.[.c-highlight] If that means we're a few hours out of sync, it's worth it.
Do you have a favored content calendar app/association the team is familiar with and would prefer for the new hire to utilize too? - Kat
🏙️ Will: We currently use Agorapulse for content calendaring but are open to anything! We've tried a lot of platforms and I think we feel okay about changing things up if needed because our primary platforms are Twitter, Discord, Steam, and moving into Email/Newsletter. For any other general calendaring, Google services is our go-to!
So the role says that it's a part-time contract with the eventual move to full-time. How long do you think the part-time length would be AND once full-time hits, would you require relocation? - Harmonia
Would Rose City be willing to help relocate if someone wanted to transition to in office work? - Casey
🌹 Corey: Ideally, I think going part-time to full-time could happen by Q4 of 2021, but that will depend a little bit on our needs / how everyone is feeling after some months working together. Our hope is that, with Garden Story and Floppy Knights both slated for 2021 release, we will have plenty of work to stay very busy and add more hours once Jenny moves only fully. We won't require relocation, although if it's something our new hire wanted, we could help out with that!
What percentage of your people are based in Portland vs remote? - Sean
🏙️ Will: Our full-timers are 100% local, our contractors are about 50/50! Some of our projects have had different ratios but we're fairly settled at these numbers now. We are of course looking forward to when we can actually consider getting an office again, but feel pretty good about how we've adapted to working remotely during the pandemic. We moved from Slack to Discord and use the video call features very frequently now.
If it's a part-time contract, would you expect a certain amount of hours per week or would it be fewer days per week? - Kat
🌹 Corey: We're shooting for 15-20 hours per week - and we'll likely be pretty flexible on what days those need to happen, based on what everyone has going on!
🏙️ Will: A lot of that is communication during office hours, too! Flexibility is there. 🙂
What are your thoughts on providing growth for your peeps, especially when working on small teams where someone might be the only member in a certain discipline? - Chloe
🏙️ Will: The Community Developer position is a great example of this. We totally understand that a lot of the asks or "nice to haves" in our job posting are very multi-discipline (leaning into marketing, more intense video editing, etc). Being a small studio, "having a finger on the pulse" of a lot is important, but we of course don't want people wearing too many hats. Right now, as we're looking forward to launches, we have additional consultants and contractors working with our team to address other specialized areas of marketing like Email/Newsletter, PR, and influencer campaign management. Our new Community Developer will need to be aware of what is happening in those roles, and it's going to be a great learning experience for everyone. This works similarly with other roles at the studio, like working with different genres and tools for programmers between projects or working between game art and promotional art for artists.
That's an awesome response. I like this a lot. A big part of the point of working in a team is that everyone has their strengths and should be working together. It's a great place to share and grow. Thank you for answering! - Chloe
🏙️ Will: Totally, I am NOT one for many puns like this but [.c-highlight]you can only multi-class so hard until your healer can't heal enough... 😛[.c-highlight]
I think it's really incredible that you have additional consultants and contractors and that you're looking to aid the community developer. That kind of adjustment and focus for the team's success, coordination, collaboration, and health is important and from what I've seen it's really rare. So RCG is setting a really wonderful standard and bar for other indie companies too! - Kat
🏙️ Will: We also just wanna make sure our launches are knocked out of the park. 😉
🏙️ Will: It's always SUPER exciting to get direct hands-on experience with someone who has had successes starting from a similar position to yourself.
Are you open to applications from someone who might be looking into transitioning into another area of games? For example, I really, really love my music, audio, writing, and design. I am aiming to transition into that creative work in games. Would that work for you, or are you looking for a much longer-term employee? - Crystal
🌹 Corey: For this position, we're hoping for someone with some direct Community / Social experience - but that doesn't have to be from a specific game or studio per se. And we're absolutely hoping to hire someone who sticks around long term!
Oh I think I need to clarify–I mean transitioning to another area, not from. - Crystal
🌹 Corey: Gotcha - I think I'm following, so you're saying someone who could start in the Comm Dev role, and potentially move into other roles? We haven't discussed that much, but folks on our team have had a hand in other areas (the whole, small team / several hats thing) but we also try to be careful not to over ask, and expect people on our team to be a jack of all trades.
And are you open to someone who just recently graduated and has been working as a junior community and social media manager? - Kat
🌹 Corey: Similar to my last reply - we're shooting for mid-level, so direct experience is preferred, but if someone is the right fit and can show us how they're able to knock it out of the park, we'd love to hear from you!
Given this opening is a backfill for your current Community Developer, Jenny. What was it that made you decide to originally hire Jenny? What set her apart from other applicants? What was it about Jenny and her approach that made her successful in this role? - Nate
🌹 Corey: [.c-highlight]We met Jenny at PAX West at a MIX event and learned we were all from Portland. That was sort of a right place / right time scenario, where we needed marketing/community support but weren't actively posting jobs for it.[.c-highlight] She had experience from her previous work, and we saw how well she was promoting her own stuff, and our games/vibe really matched up well. We started out hourly to just kinda see how things went, and we decided to keep things going full time after The World Next Door launched!
[.c-insight]💡 Editor's Note: You don't need to go to events to network and find jobs, but serendipitous opportunities can and do arise if you are able.[.c-insight]
🌹 Corey: To speak a bit more to this - Jenny has been great at self-managing, taking ownership of her role and tasks, and working really well with our entire team. [.c-highlight]She's passionate about her work and bettering the industry, and that has a real positive impact on everyone at the studio.[.c-highlight]
I think it can be difficult, at times, to think of big picture plans when working in the nitty-gritty of a small team environment where each person wears so many hats. How do you intend to work with the Community Developer when it comes to maintaining Rose City Games' quarterly, annually, etc. plans? How will you "check-in," essentially, to ensure plans are on track or need to adapt? - Joey
🏙️ Will: Our understanding of how the indie game marketing environment works really helps us determine this. We of course have to be active but reactivity is super key. Because our work is product-based and we don't engage in much service-based work, we can rely on the opportunities that come up in the industry (launches, partner relationships, events, sales, platform innovations, etc) to set goals, then work backward. We will very commonly have a work-back calendar centered around launch, then see what else is out there to support that launch. There's a lot of variability to this, including if you need to push a launch date or you're JUST getting started on understanding player feedback about your project mid-dev, but trying to post-up on goals surrounding those big opportunities is how we typically measure success and next steps.
Similar, but departing from that concept of game-specific success a bit, our typical logistics for checkins are to do weekly standups, monthly employee checkins, and quarterly employee reviews to make sure our team is meeting those goals we set together.
Wonderful. You mention stand-ups, do you sort of run in an agile environment? - Joey
🏙️ Will: We back-and-forth depending on how far we are. Upfront, we typically waterfall a project to make sure our scope can meet our resources. In between milestones, we more or less "time box in an agile environment." There comes a certain point where you have to be very vigilant and evaluative about how much you know about your project - especially towards the end of a game's dev cycle, being able to step back and understand that there's no more time or resources for something should inspire a little more waterfall in ya. It's really disappointing to have to cut or have a tough conversation about sunken cost fallacy when you're nearing a launch! You also have to evaluate when you need to free up more time or resources and balance what's worth it.
How much autonomy do you expect/allow the community manager? This can really vary between companies. One role might involve constant contact and feedback/direction, the next will expect the community manager to handle it on their own. Where does Rose City fit? - Casey
🌹 Corey: We really encourage everyone on our team to own their work - we try hard not to micromanage, but also be available when support and strategy are needed. Will and I generally like to be involved heavily in big picture planning, and once we're ready to execute, keeps our hands out of it as much as possible. It's important for us to be able to trust that everyone in our team can manage their work as independently as possible because it's the only way we can focus on our jobs too!
What content are you looking for to engage the community? Is it brand voice-based? Memes Gifs? IMGUR? A seamless blend of all the above? - Kat
🌹 Corey: We're down to try new things! But in general, keeping things friendly / PG, for the most part, seems to work well for us. We're not huge fans of meme / shitposting approach, although I've seen that work well for other studios! We mostly want to show off the games we're making, get people excited to play them and inspire others to make games.
What would be the contact point specifically for players and the community developer/manager? Discord/Reddit/Twitter? - Kat
🌹 Corey: Our main channels are Twitter, Discord, and Steam right now. We do a little on Twitch as well.
It is super cool to see examples of your ability to successfully transition from music and film into games. Any advice for others that are looking at a career change into games (especially when so many game companies seem to want game industry experience)? - Nate
🌹 Corey: Game Jams! More specifically, there are a LOT of communities out there for getting started making games (like this one!) If you're looking to get started, I think finding the right community to get involved in is the best thing you can do - that's what PIGSquad did for me ❤️
🏙️ Will: Stay organized! Try things and learn from them! Be a really good communicator, learn to ask questions, and pay attention to what you do and don't like about what you do. Games are EXTREMELY multifaceted so you have to have a bead on all of this if you're to be successful (or to even understand what "success" means to you!).
...and game jams. PIGSquad has game jams coming up this summer btw, we're announcing soon and welcome remote participants. We have newsletter/Discord/calendar/etc! (click the pic!)
.webp)
When will you be closing applications for this role? Any final words of advice or tips and tricks for those of us looking to submit our applications? - Nate
🌹 Corey: SOON - we've had a lot of applications, and are looking to hire pretty quickly. I'd say, if you're interested, please don't wait! (probably Monday). I'd say the first thing that usually catches our eye when reviewing applications is something that jumps out QUICK - anything that shows us "this person has direct related experience" or "wow that really grabbed me for how they'd be a great fit here" is key. [.c-highlight]Do your research on where you're applying![.c-highlight]
Getting this kind of direct feedback from a studio before making it through to the personal interview process is SO USEFUL! There's a very clear picture here now, I know exactly what I'm applying for. It's awesome. - Casey
🌹 Corey: Thanks y'all! And big thanks to WWI team here for having us and helping us broadcast the job post! Amazing community here, seriously.
🏙️ Will: Thanks all, this was really fun! Thankful for our high WPM count, these were great questions. Huge props to Work With Indies for having us.
[.c-insight]Make sure you take the time to do your research and put that extra bit of effort into your application. And particularly for community roles, we highly recommend that you browse through their socials and join their Discord to get a feel for and interact with the community.[.c-insight]
