Christian "Wrangler" Danhill is the Senior Community Manager of EVE Online. We recently had the opportunity to talk with him, so this is what he said to us ...

GS: Could you talk about your previous experiences in videogames industry?

I started as a volunteer moderator for EVE back in 2002 and after a while I advanced to lead moderator for that team. In 2006 CCP decided the current Community Manager needed help and offered me a position as Assistant Community Manager. About a year later I was promoted to Community Manager and recently to Senior Community Manager. I’d say my experience in the industry is pretty centered on EVE.

GS: What do you think about the actual MMOs panorama ? What are your favs of all times ?

I like that you meet other people while playing, get to know them and interact with them. It makes things so much more interesting than single player games, though of course I still play some of those. I’ve played a lot of different MMO’s and I’m looking forward to many currently unreleased ones, but so far EVE is the one I’ve played the most.


GS: What kind of EVE player are you? And how many hours do you spend in-game during the week?

I doubt it’d come as a surprise to anyone that I’m the industrial “carebear” type, though I’ve been involved in some battles as well--usually by valiantly sacrificing myself for my corporation mates (read: dying because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing).


GS: In your opinion, in what direction the EVE community evolved during these last years? What did it be the main changes in behaviours, mentality or even suggestions to the dev team ?

It certainly has grown, but I think we still have the core that we had back when EVE was released, which, simply put, is a group of people who play a game they love.

GS: Do you think that in our Facebook/Twitter/social networking age the classic forum setting is obsolete ? Will there be new forms of off-game interactions between players in the next future?

All those things, and whatever else the future has in store for us, are very exciting. They don’t make forums obsolete, but they do enhance both player-to-player and player-to-developer interaction, which makes for an inherently stronger community..


GS: Will there be some news about forum/website/forum tools changes or adds in the future?

There are some exciting new things on the works, but I’m not able to talk about them just yet.


GS: Do you think that for a new player is quite easy to find support from the EVE veteran players on forum and in game? Or EVE Online has a kind of community with a more marked, clearer RPG personality than other MMOs and  that may be an obstacle for new comers?

I don’t think there are any problems finding help for new players from forums, chat channels or petitions. Now that we have the EVElopedia it is even easier than before.


GS: Player-driven economy, politics, e-democracy and syndacate. EVE Online community is very different from the other MMOs ones, so what are the main problems to handle it, trying (or not) to descern RPGs elements from the real persons ?

Apart from one forum channel which is role playing only we don’t enforce any role playing rules, though a lot of players do role play even if a much of what they say involves out of character comments. We try to accommodate that as much as we can, thought there are still rules for how you can and cannot interact with others, even on an online forum. I don’t think this complicates our work; it may make it more exciting at times though.

GS: Cally affair, years ago, was a scandal inside EVE Community. Is it possible to have some considerations, thoughts from you, now, after a while from the facts ?

EVE is not a very forgiving world. Most interactions between players are based on trust with fact-checking being an essential tactic for success. In this case, a lot of players simply trusted the wrong person and that ended up costing some of them a lot of ISK.


GS: In your opinion, the release of a boxed version of the game by Atari has brought  more casual players than before ?

 The boxed release was exciting because it spread EVE to people who might not otherwise have found our game; it was interesting to see how it was received in a boxed version after being digital distribution only. I haven’t noticed any greater influx of casual players though.
 

Thx to Christian for the interview.