AMA #3: Christina, Customer Support at Twitch

Livio

Hey @everyone welcome to our third AMA. @Silcris you can start by giving a brief intro about yourself

Silcris

Just @ me with a question if you have any 😃

Oh! Yes I have worked in gaming for four years now. Worked in esports, then with two different small indie studios and now with twitch 😃

Livio

Have you worked outside of games too?

Silcris

Yes I worked with a digital ad agency in DC

Rob (Younghand)

@Silcris Hey Silcris! What drew you to the gaming industry? Do you have any areas of expertise?

Silcris

I loved gaming 😃

I’m particularly well organized and pretty good at social media marketing ! I also like cats

Livio

What kind of work did you do for esports? Was it similar to what you did at the ad agency?

Silcris

I have done both marketing and hospitality

I worked with two different orgs

Well played and one nation of gamers

These were part time 😃

Goodnews

Hi Silcris! What do you think is key to marketing an indie game in 2018?

Daniel Kim

@Silcris Hey Silcris, have you ever been involved with a Kickstarter project’s marketing before?

Silcris

Influenced branding is really important. I think you have a couple on your corner your social does really wel

I have not unfortunately:(

Livio

so basically getting key influencers to speak well about your game

Silcris

Yes

Goodnews

Cool – thank you!

Silcris

Of course !

[FFL] Acquilius

Hi @Silcris , 6 months since my college graduation and still struggling to find a job here in my country (everyone wants an experienced person) :/ any tips for a game designer to make his / her profile more prone to employment?

Silcris

Our industry is such that it’s very rare to get hired straight out of college

I’d recommend helping projects on the side and getting a job that bolsters your skills. What specifically was your degree focused on?

[FFL] Acquilius

BS Game Development w/ Specialization on Game Design and Programming (the school hasn’t really been teaching game development properly, so im mostly self studying for the past 4 years)

Silcris

Hmm. Have you reached out to indie projects to see if they could use help? Have you worked on your own pieces to reflect on a resume or portfolio growth since graduation? I’d look for a programming job for now to pay the bills. It’s important even in the time off duty work wise to have something else going on. Extra curricular activities matter just as much as they did in high school college

[FFL] Acquilius

Hmm.. programming isn’t really my strongest arm, neither art tbh. Thanks for the input 😃

Livio

Do you think working outside of the games industry helped you improve, even if it wasn’t technical work?

Silcris

Yes absolutely. It’s a silo in our industry and there’s a different expectation in terms of professionalism, goals and overall organization

My time at the ad agency was fundamental in learning client expectations, managing high level clients and seeing potential for reaching out to people traditionally outside of gaming

Livio

Do you have coworkers who you wish had gained similar experience

Silcris

Yes absolutely. It’s beneficial to be able to work professionally and a lot of my coworkers have grown with the industry and don’t have similar insight into managing relationships

And I don’t mean specifically twitch but across the board

Livio

What’s your current job at Twitch like

Silcris

It’s fun! Customer support is difficult but rewarding

I focus on Hispanic customers

Livio

so you get to speak spanish to them and stuff?

do they get routed to you when they specifically contact Twitch through spanish?

Silcris

Yes I do! And they are sent my way specifically

Ian P

Hi silcris, do you have any advice for getting familiar with customer support’s role in a business in general, or more specifically in game dev? It seems like one of those things I’d never be comfortable with

Silcris

Hmmm what are you not comfortable with

Ian P

Direct communication with customers and knowing how to find what they need, especially if they aren’t communicating well

Silcris

I think a large part of what is important for customer service is empathy. Being empathetic even if you might not have all the answers is what will make you successful

Livio

I think a big part is also just being in an organization where you’re surrounded by people who are much better than you at that stuff. It does sound like a skillset that is lacking in games, so it makes sense that working in another field is a good way to get better at it

Rob (Younghand)

Having had experiene with Customer Service myself (mostly startups) It helps to keep calm. Most folks will come to you with an issue or angry and expect that you know -all- there is to know and have the exact answer. Keep calm and like Silcris said, empathy works wonders.

Silcris

Haha especially at twitch

Livio

Do you have any current career goals that you’re pursuing

LiamSorta

Hey @Silcris! I’m a little late to the party but I’m curious as to what differences in company culture you’ve noticed at the various places you’ve worked at

Silcris

Oh man lemme think

I’m pursuing event management which is hard but I’m working on it! Every single company I worked for demanded excellence. Messing up could cost us. Similarly office politics and how you navigated those really mattered

Be right back 😃

Livio

When I think of event management, I think of the people who make E3 happen, and that sounds really hectic. But there’s all sorts of other events too, like every time one of the big studios set up a promotion somewhere or even events for a mainly online audience. I have a lot of respect for people with that skillset, especially after seeing some (bad) club leaders and organizers when I was a student.

LiamSorta

Ah I can definitely imagine – that’s wonderful though!
I’m not sure how much help I can be for Twitch-size events, but I have organised a few 100-150 person events before – I’m happy to lend a hand

Livio

hehe liam maybe you should go into that field.

LiamSorta

Haha maybe one day, it’s always a tonne of fun when you get past the paperwork stage

Engineering is too fun though

Livio

My cousin used to work for Univision, and I don’t remember what her job title was but it sounded like a lot of event planning and management. She had to put up with a lot of celebrities with bad manners, lol. But at the end of the day, it seemed like her job was to just fight against the natural spread of chaos.

nowadays she’s at LinkedIn

LiamSorta

Yikes, I’d hate to deal with that. Thankfully the events I’ve organised have just been full of super passionate devs, it sounds like an immense pressure though so props to her!

That’s awesome! I hear LinkedIn has the best catering 👀

Silcris

yeah i like the stress of it

Back 😃

Livio

earlier liam asked about what you thought of the different company cultures of where you’ve worked so far

Silcris

Oh yeah like i said, there’s a big emphasis on work hard and play hard.

Both aspects mattered.

Even outside of gaming

Livio

btw how much time do you have left? We’ve passed the hour mark, but there was also a break in the middle

Xavier

I’d like to ask whether you have any tips for getting niche/experimental games played on Twitch?

Ian P

After this^ Do you know any notable streamers on twitch inside of game dev? I’ve been curious about streaming game dev, but twitch definitely feels more about gamers.

Silcris

I can stay for a little bit longer

1 sounds good to me

Xavier what do you mean?

And yeah a ton of streamers are affiliates and partners who are also developers. I don’t think anybody at the Dr Disrespect level

but we def got some awesome ones

Xavier

Well it seems like big popular games are correlated with big popular streamers, but have you seen before smaller weirder games being played by big streamers, and would they have done anything in particular to tailor to a Twitch audience? Sorry, kind of a broad question 😛

Silcris

Yeah, i’ve seen streamers play smaller games. It depends on who the streamer is, if they’re just a variety streamer it’s eexpected. If it’s paid advertisement they may do something interesting with their community for better engagement like survival games would be how long they could survive and betting or something

Xavier

If you had to guess, where would you see Twitch headed in ~5 years? 😃

(in terms of features like heavier use of Twitch integration in games, etc.)

Silcris

That’s a hard question haha

I can’t say. Hopefully we’re sharing all our memorable experiences live thru twitch :)(

Kinthamen

Well, Epic’s Fortnite has a built in streaming feature for twitch in settings, so I would say that twitch is going to be part of all games.

Silcris

Not just games imo

😃

Kinthamen

There are many other games doing the same

Xavier

interactive movies perhaps? 😄

“Twitch watches Batman”

Kinthamen

Another SportsCenter or something

Silcris

Well there’s also what IRL is capable of. I just watched a weding IRL

That’s kinda cool 😃

Livio

what’s your favorite game

we should probably ask everyone that

or I guess a better way to phrase that is “what’s your favorite game right now”

Silcris

hm

Battlegrounds lol 😃

Livio

Thanks for speaking with us @Silcris. I should probably let you get back to your job now. 😃

Silcris

no problema 😄