Neo Steam is a recently released title that we host for download in our free-to-play section! We were able to get some playtime at E3 and were very impressed by the graphics, lore, and gameplay of this exciting title from Atlus! When you enter the game you'll notice everything is powered, of course, by steam! There is a strong emphasis on character customization and all kinds of very unique mounts and transportation methods.

Neo Steam staffers Jason Ruper and Kevin Crawford have sent us a recent development journal about the importance of community in Neo Steam. The journal highlights some of what they've done, what the concerns were for developing a game around the community, and how they'll continue to focus on making Neo Steam as attune to the user as possible!

Here's a look at the development journal from Jason and Kevin:

In any online market (and especially so for the free-to-play market), your community is always your top priority. Keeping fans happy and satisfied, giving them something new and different, making them want to come back for more, trying to attract new members... and then struggling with how to manage the growing community and make sure no one feels left out or pushed aside... These are issues that we tackle on a daily (read: hourly!) basis. And at the end of the day, there is no simple secret to success. However, we can share some the things we learned along the road and the things that helped make us so successful.

First things first, an inactive community is practically an oxymoron. If you have a fanbase who isn't interacting with each other, taking part in discussions, and conversing about in-game as well as real-life topics, then you really don't have much of a community. And you can't expect this to just organically create itself overnight! You have to take an active role yourself and get the ball rolling...

The amount of time we spend interacting with players is far greater than you will see in almost any other MMORPG out there, and the way we go about it is probably even more noteworthy! We've always had a personal approach with our members; not a corporate one. We don't talk with them through pre-formatted responses. We go in-game and walk around. We congratulate them for kills and hang out with them. We run events and promote them working as a team. Sometimes, we like to just go into town and summon some Lv. 1 critters or dance with the players. It's all about having fun.

And outside the game, on the forums, we hold contests and giveaways, some with in-game prizes and some with actual goods like shirts or posters... At one point, we gave away a pair of hand-crafted steampunk goggles we commissioned (and we have a second pair we're itching to get rid of *wink*). But it's not all about giving away things. Even just giving players recognition for accomplishments can be very positive. For instance, we have a revolving "Community Spotlight" section right smack-dab in the middle of the front page of the portal where we feature some of our most active and helpful members.

We also decided early on that the moderators' names should all fit the same theme. In our case, we chose breakfast foods. Omelet... Burnt Toast... Muffin Chops... Sporkle... Korokke... Shredded Wheat... and the list (ahem, "menu") goes on! That way we're more recognizable to our community, and it makes us look more unified as a team. Plus, the unimposing nature of the identities makes us seem more inviting to talk to. The fans, of course, have responded very positively to that, even drawing pictures of all our food-y identities!

And naturally, if you're going to have a personal relationship with your fans, then that means you need to spend even more time listening than you do talking. We ask for their feedback, discuss their suggestions in our meetings, and actually try to make something happen.

So what's the result of all our hard work? We began with zero members on February 23rd, and five months later, we have over 17,000 forum members and over 160,000 posts on our forums. And yes, having a good game like Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent helps, but believe it or not, our forums were alive and buzzing well before we even announced what game we'd be launching. (In fact, we built an active community before we even announced what genre our first game would be!)

And when it comes to the nitty-gritty, you have to be transparent with your community. You can't have billing loopholes or shady dealings. We have never lied to our fans or tried to trick them. And when we make a mistake (it happens!) and things go sour, we give them an honest apology and a real explanation, not just an excuse. When you lose their trust, you lose everything!

Let me give you an example. When we introduced PvP ranks, we mentioned briefly that players would lose a percentage of their points every week at server maintenance. It wasn't as widely publicized as it should've been, though, so when the first maintenance came, there was an uproar. Between the forums, customer support tickets, and in-game chat channels, there was so much commotion that I think we can safely classify the entire fiasco as a "crisis."

So we informed them about the PvP mechanics and explained why there is a reduction (for game balance, so newer players actually stand a chance of ranking up), and the climate immediately shifted to the polar opposite. Suddenly, fans saw that we were being rational with them, and they responded by being rational themselves...! (How often do you see that happen on the internet!?) Best of all, the same people who, ten minutes earlier, were calling us names and accusing us of stealing their hard work from them were now our biggest supporters!

There are many other problems that have popped up... We ran a PvP event where the opposing nations would take turns trying to sprint across an open field and open the chests being guarded by the other team... Unfortunately, we forgot to take into account the game mechanic whereby characters under Lv. 30 who die from another player become temporarily immune to PvP-flagging unless they themselves make the first attack. Well, as you can guess, that meant anyone under Lv. 30 had absolutely no problem walking into hostile territory and opening the chests in safety... And also, as I am sure you can guess, the event didn't go over too well because of it! But we apologized to the players, and we told them we were sorry for wasting their time. We even gave both nations the prize that had been set aside for the winning team: five very generous buffs.

From that point forward, we knew every event needed to go as smoothly as possible, and while we still occasionally fumble here and there, we refine and refine (and refine some more!). And when the chest event failed and players wanted our heads on a spike, all we had to do was apologize and promise to improve. That is all they want from you... prompt, honest communication! The second we started talking to them, the entire atmosphere became less hostile.

If you try to see things from the players' angle, it really makes a difference in how a crisis gets resolved. If the community trusts you and knows you're looking out for them, then you can really go a long way.

And this brings us to something else we always strive for: flexibility. You stand a better chance of winning the lottery than you do of successfully predicting and preparing for every possible crisis that could come up within an online community. And thus, we're constantly on our toes (figuratively, of course), trying to adapt and respond to whatever comes up.

Thus, we also try to keep our community posted on new developments and keep them in the loop. This means we let them know in advance when new content is coming out, we try to give them a sneak peak (or at least a hint) at upcoming item releases, and we try to forewarn them about game issues they might encounter. For instance, every player has a shared bank that can be accessed by all the characters on their account. Logically, if you delete all your characters, you'll lose items in your vault. By making this fact explicitly clear to our fans, though, we can put out fires before they flare up!

We go out of our way to predict potential concerns and questions players might encounter, and by informing them early, we've helped lower the chances of players being caught unaware. Now, they see us as their allies, not some uber-corporation trying to prevent them from enjoying the game.

And finally, there's the forums. A good game will draw members into your community (and we are constantly working on adding new games), but it's on the forums that your members can truly communicate and participate. The forums are what really keep the community alive and kicking!

Our main approach to the forums is to facilitate that player-to-player communication and to give our fans the freedom to speak their mind. Now, part of this means you have to have a keen understanding of the difference between free speech and outright flaming, but if you learn to let players resolve their disagreements with each other on their own, they'll contribute more candidly and much more frequently.

But you need to learn how to use discretion and pick your battles! While we try not to lord over the forums and regulate player debates, we still maintain a zero-tolerance policy against inflammatory posts. They need to feel like they can post their opinion without being attacked by another fan! And heck, if a player wants to tell us how to do our job and critique Atlus Online, we welcome it! ...So long as it's constructive and not simply a run-on sentence filled with crude language and X-rated bodily appendages.

The forums need to be a safe, fun environment!

When all's said and done, that's really the secret to our success. We work as a team and try our hardest to keep the community active. We constantly come up with new, fun things to do with the players, and they respond to it all very well. They see us as real people with real personalities, not just faceless entities who show up from time to time and don't ever try to get involved in their lives.

And it's so easy for us to be so active with our fanbase because we all love doing it. It's not a chore. We don't set a timer and, when it goes off, start griping, "Oh great... Time to log in and play around with the users again...!" We look forward to it, and that's what an online community is really all about: having fun.