Having worked in the game industry I can say that CMs who interact with the community in ways that aren’t pre-approved by their superiors never last long. Essentially, doing their job in a natural and real way is extremely frowned upon because they risk saying things that make the company look bad, even if it’s completely valid, even if it’s constructive criticism. There’s a really prevalent attitude in this industry that you only acknowledge mistakes as an extreme last resort, and communication to players has to be as vague and noncommittal as possible while still giving the illusion of assurance.
There are some valid reasons for this mentality but a lot of it seems to me like cowardice and deceit. I would never want to be a CM, it’s a really ■■■■ job and your hands are super tied. Of course, this is true of anyone in the dev team, but since the CM’s job is to communicate with the playerbase it’s extremely difficult to actually interface with people on a real level without stepping on the toes of the company. Which is why most CMs “suck” and the ones that are “good” end up sacked, because in the industry a “good” CM is one who never speaks out of turn, meaning totally noninteractive in the eyes of the community. It’s almost a paradox.
