“What do I want people to do in my server?” is the question to ask yourself no matter what stage of game development you’re in. Part One of our guide focuses on the task of creating a private space for conversation and feedback during the early stages of your game’s life. In Part Two, we’ll build on that foundation for a public audience and help inspire how to create real-time conversations around your game and foster engagement within your community.
The role of your server will always evolve and change as your game develops. Your Discord server pre-launch is a great opportunity to connect with a growing fanbase and to establish an environment for your community to talk, share thoughts, and even learn about a game some members may not have access to yet.
Many games have evolved through this process including Valorant, Spellbreak, and Satisfactory. Some of today’s examples of games in the early access/pre-launch stage include Thunder Tier One, Midnight Ghost Hunt, and Grounded.
Getting Started, Part 2
Just like last time, it’s assumed you have a solid understanding of the following concepts. Check ’em out before diving into this piece:
If you’re starting your community at the Early Access phase, check out this Server Template we’ve created to jumpstart your community: Early Access/Pre-Launch Server
So what do you want members to do?
The vast majority of spaces on Discord are private communities averaging between five to fifteen people per server. These private spaces are where users are most active, so when a new member joins your server, they’re typically looking for information, searching for like-minded players or fans, entering to share feedback, or seeking opportunities to join on organized events/experiences.
At any stage of your server’s evolution, it’s important to have a clear vision for what you want your members to do when they visit your server.
Here are some of the more common traits successful servers have shared in their communities:
Inspire Open Conversations: Whether it’s a reaction to your newest trailer or a town hall with the development team to voice feedback, players want to learn and talk about your game. More importantly, they’ll want to talk and form a connection with your team.
Foster a Network of Ambassadors and Super Fans: 99% of servers on Discord are invite-only. Consider how you might develop an insiders group within your server to disseminate information and have your insiders consider your server one of the many communities they’ll check in on a daily basis.
Participate Together: Discord is a place where large groups of people can gather together. Think through ways you can approach server events or activities that your community can gather around and participate in.
Gather Feedback: Don’t just post one-way announcements. When you reveal your latest news and updates, ask questions to your community to inspire conversation around what’s happening in and around your game. Collect their thoughts and listen to feedback around the latest balance changes, new characters, maps, and so on.
Players Finding Players: Players typically look to official game servers for groups to play with or discuss particular game mechanics, strategies, and their mutual love for what you’re building. It may be a good idea to create LFG-style channels that lets players connect with each other and play together.
Server Layout and Design
There’s no wrong time to start a community on Discord. The earlier you get started, the better you’ll understand the role of your community as the scope changes over time.
Below are a few things to consider before creating your official game server:
- Servers that primarily focus on one game are often best. Publisher-themed servers, or any server that lists multiple games or franchises, can become confusing to navigate and may be overwhelming for newer members.
- If you’re shifting from a private playtest to a public server, consider starting from scratch and invite your playtesters to your new community. You can even give ‘ema snazzy VIP role as a reward for being an early fan. (Use our server template for a head start!)
- Experiment often — don’t feel you’re locked to a particular setup — your community is what you make of it.
Categories
In our template, the core category structure hasn’t changed much in comparison to the template provided in Part One. We’ve added some additional channels for your community to chat amongst themselves, and a support category if you’re at the stage where you’re able to offer technical support.
Channels
Every channel should have a clear purpose so conversations remain focused on the topic at hand. Be sure you don’t overwhelm your members with too many channels — start small and expand from there. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a situation where conversations may be spread too thin.
Roles & Permissions
In this server template, we have the same @Administrator and @Staff roles as Part One. Now, we have a new @Moderator role so members you’ve chosen as moderators can help keep the community running smoothly.
@Administrators should be trusted to make sweeping changes to the server, while @Staff may have lighter permissions and access to staff-only categories/channels. Moderators usually have a subset of access and permissions that enable them to enforce server rules.
This template is a great starting point for you to decide the best role structure for your server. It’s easier to add channels and roles in the future rather than take back established settings, so think through your setup carefully and stay lean.
Server Tactics and Member Engagement
One of Discord’s many strengths is that it provides you an opportunity to build a deep and meaningful relationship with your most passionate players.
There’s a common misconception that the more members your server has, the more successful you are. While we all love seeing numbers grow bigger, it’s best to think of your server as an ongoing community conversation rather than a one-way megaphone to your “followers,” as other platforms may work. Growth is an important aspect of your performance, but avoid prioritizing growth as your primary metric.
Instead, you should consider the following metrics the best way to measure your Discord’s success.
- Activation: For every member that joins your server, what % have either sent a message or clicked through three channels on their first day?
- Communication: What % of your total members are sending a message or in a voice channel per day/week/month
- Retention: What % of new members came back the next week and performed an action in your server?
If you’ve assigned your server as a Community, you’ll have access to Server Insights so you can keep track of these metrics and a ton more. Frequent use of pruning 30-day inactive members can help make room for more active members.
An important thing to note: Pruning 30-day inactive members doesn’t mean you remove someone who hasn’t posted in 30 days. Instead, you’re pruning members who have not used Discord at all within the last 30 days.
Pairing these metrics with your high-level community objectives is the key to success for a thriving community. Check out a few of the following suggestions and ideas we’ve seen successful in other communities:
Announcements
Your server should play a unique role in your marketing strategy: don’t resort to copying and pasting content from your other social channels. Announcements within your Discord server should be tailored to your server’s read-only announcement channels. When sharing announcements within your server, make them actionable and inspire conversation. Most importantly, participate in that conversation after you post!
Developer AMAs/Town Halls
Another great option to consider is using your server as a place where fans and players have a chance to interact and share a two-way conversation with the development team. It’s empowering to feel like your voice is being heard and responded to in an authentic and human way.
With the launch of Stage Channels, the ability to create a one-to-many audio event is easier than ever. Stage channels allow you to share a focused conversation with select individuals to an audience of listeners. Members can “raise their hands,” and a moderator can let them onto the stage to participate.
They’re especially useful in situations where you’re running events within your server such as voice AMAs or interviews where each person talks about the latest game patch or giving an inside look at the development process. No more having people talking over each other thinking it’s their turn, or that long awkward silence before someone goes “…oh, am I up?”
Offering an opportunity for your members to feel like they are insiders is a great feeling. With Stages, it can be done on a regular basis.
Contests and Challenges
Every server can easily add a Giveaway bot. If you want to go above and beyond, get creative and consider how you can make use of your game’s lore, brand, or if applicable, the back catalog of content to create fun and interesting challenges.
In addition, offer members a chance to tap into their creative side with art contests or cosplay. Perhaps, there’s an opportunity for the larger community to come together and solve a mystery or challenge. Maybe even an elaborate ARG that unlocks new information about an impending update.
We encourage you to check out Sabotage Studio’s recent guest post about all the crazy stuff they’ve been doing on Discord.
As always, center events around conversation and active participation rather than one-time interactions.
Looking For Group (LFG)
LFG categories and channels can be an important source of engagement within your server by helping community members gather for a few games. In certain cases, this can be achieved by creating an LFG category with associated text channels for players to list the criteria they’re looking for in a player. Then, have a number of audio channels with limited space to jump into to make sure your four-player romp doesn’t turn into 40-person voice chaos.
Incorporating Discord Within Your Launch Marketing Plans
Discord can be shaped and customized to achieve a variety of needs. There isn’t a singular way to approach a problem — don’t be afraid to experiment. No matter how your server fits within your studio’s broader marketing or business needs, it should always be a place for people to talk and find belonging.
It’s a place where anyone can discuss the latest trailer, voice feedback with the development team, and feel acknowledged. It’s where community members can work together to solve a problem or even form light-hearted rivalries between each other
Always treat your server as an ever-evolving home for tens, hundreds, or even thousands that you continue to nurture, rather than something you set up once and maintain passively.
Dos and Don’ts for a Public Community on Discord
Now, let’s review: when launching a Verified community on Discord, quickly go through the following list to make sure you’re on the right track:
Do
- Start simple — You don’t have to accomplish everything at once when launching your server. Create core channels, be clear on the purpose of your server, and listen to and grow with your community.
- Form relationships within your community — Empower and reward your most supportive and vocal members by sharing exclusive info with their communities and guilds. Make your community moderators feel they are part of the team, not treated as outsiders.
- Be Actionable — Your newest community members should understand they should join and what they should do once on your server. For example, “Listen to our dev team’s live town hall every Tuesday” or “Share your questions in #town-hall-questions” rather than a simple “Join our Discord!”
- Brush Up On Your Discord Moderation Knowledge — Read through our Discord Moderator Academy curriculum and learn how to automate healthy behavior with bots.
- Treat your server as an extension of your game’s meta — Only after you have a plan for a solid server foundation should you stretch your creativity muscles. There are a number of ways your server can play a role to support your game in the pre-launch stage.
- Add Discord to your social bar — You’ve invested a lot of time into building a community, so don’t forget to promote it alongside your other social channels!
Don’t
- Start without a clear idea of what success looks like for your Discord community.
- Use your server as a one-way form of communication. (i.e. A read-only server)
- Use your announcement channels exclusively as a surface to link announcements from other platforms. Posting tweets is what Twitter is for!
- Take a back seat and let your community run your server for you. Verified servers should be owned and operated by your studio and managed by an employee.
Early Access/Pre-Launch Servers for Inspiration
Here are a few servers we think are great for inspiration that have moved over time from private playtest, to pre-launch/early access, or have even fully launched. They offer a good example of how to build your community on Discord.
- Spellbreak — (https://discord.gg/spellbreak) The team behind Spellbreak evolved their server from a very small alpha testing invite-only community into a monolith where people gather together to talk about the game, share strategies, talk with the developers, and offer feedback about new features.
- Sabotage — (https://discord.gg/sabotagestudio) Sabotage Studio’s server is a living and thriving community that started with playing their first release, “The Messenger.”. They’ve since nurtured their community into a hype machine for their upcoming title “Sea of Stars” with an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), custom bots, events, and more. Check out their guest blog post here.
- Satisfactory — (https://discord.gg/satisfactory) The Satisfactory team created and maintained a growing member base of over 100,000 users for an early access game. They now use Discord as their primary tool for delivering patch notes, developer update videos, and AMAs with their development team.
- Ashes of Creation — (https://discord.gg/ashesofcreation) Ashes of Creation built a community around the hype of their upcoming Kickstarter MMORPG. Their Discord serves as a hub for players to come together and discuss theory around the game, mechanics, lore, and more. They also have open guild recruitment channels the community uses to find members before the game launches.
Launch Checklist
Before you launch (or relaunch) your community for its Early Access phase, work your way through the list below to make sure you’re ready to open the doors to your community:
- Designate one employee as the de facto server owner, and transfer ownership if needed.
- Optional: Use or modify our template.
- Brush up on your moderation knowledge.
- Setup your #rules channel for new members.
- Confirm your roles are set up to your needs (make use of View Server As)
- Designate your server as a Community
- Submit for Verification if you meet the requirements.
- Don’t forget the custom emojis!
- Develop consistent formatting for server announcements and updates.
- Plan and schedule activities for your server in advance.
- Share an invite and launch to the world!
