The Community Lounge

Today Gabriel Sanchewski tells us about his journey from avid gamer to community manager.

Gabriel and I talk about how he even before he was officially a community manager, he would just roll up his sleeves and create the community resources he noticed were missing.

And we hear about how Gabriel came to create and run The Break Room, a private Discord server for community managers.

Games mentioned in this episode: RuneScape, Wizard Wars, Halo 3, Magicka: Wizard Wars, Questland, Squad Busters, Super Auto Pets, Marvel Snap, Silk Song

Find Gabriel on:

• Discord tag: trance. (make sure to include the trailing period)
• Twitter: https://x.com/SoundOfTrance
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanchewski/
• Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/soundoftrance.bsky.social

The Discord servers we mentioned:

• The Break Room (for community management professionals) application form - https://forms.gle/ySGhYwyNxzA16GV67
• SMCMG Discord (for aspiring community managers) application form - https://bit.ly/3xW5J0D

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Today’s guest is Erik Jakobsson, a community manager at Paradox Interactive in Sweden, where he leads a team of ambassadors. Erik's journey into the gaming industry is unique—he started by running a fan Discord server that was eventually acquired by Paradox, leading to his first role in community management.

We chat about growing and moderating large online communities, the challenges of keeping a Discord server healthy, and how community managers can positively impact player engagement and sentiment.

Erik also shares insights on recruiting ambassadors, managing multilingual communities, and the evolving role of community management in the games industry.

Games mentioned in this episode:

• Hearts of Iron IV
• Path of Exile 2
• Supervive

Find Erik on:

• LinkedIn

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The trailer for season 1 of The Community Lounge.

The Community Lounge is a podcast where community managers from video games studios and publishers tell their story of how they got into the role, talk about the challenges they face, and share tips to help other community managers.

Today I chat with Florian Rohde, currently Community & Player Support Lead at YAGER.

We talk about how as a community manager, you can support your colleagues to do their job in the best way possible while shielding them from all the unnecessary noise.

Games mentioned in this episode: The Cycle, The Cycle: Frontier, CrossFire Europe, Summoners War, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Yakuza series

Find Florian on:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florianrohde/
• Twitter: https://x.com/FeraFlox
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/feraflox.bsky.social

Florian's blog posts on being a community manager:

• https://yager.de/2024/04/11/community-management-at-yager/
• https://yager.de/2024/09/04/what-being-a-gamer-taught-me-leadership/

The Community Lounge is brought to you by Feature Upvote: Painlessly collect feedback from your players. More insights, less noise.

This is a very short episode to announce that we've reached the end of season one.

SEASON TWO IS COMING SOON!

Thank you to everybody involved. Thank you to the eight guests who gave very freely and generously of their time to be on the show.

Thank you for listening and thank you to anybody who helped share the word about what I'm doing with the Community Lounge.

Make sure to SUBSCRIBE in your podcasting app. That way, you'll be notified as soon as Season 2 is available. in early 2025.