Gaming has the power to build lifelong friendships. How might we build a positive, supportive online community that feels like home?
Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) often require gamers to group up with each other to tackle the game's toughest challenges and explore everything the game has to offer. Just like in real life, the process of "finding your tribe" can be daunting for many players. There are many guilds out there, each with their unique cultures and play styles catering to different types of players.
Due to the highly competitive nature of some MMOs, gaming communities can be toxic and unfriendly to new players and demographics not typically associated with gaming (e.g. women, minorities). As part of Heathen Horde's leadership, I sought to create a community that makes all gamers feel like home. In order to do so, we focused on brand building, teaching, and fun.
We needed to create a cohesive brand which represents the guild and that members are proud to rally behind. To do this, we decided to host a logo design contest on our Discord server and distribute prizes in the form of Steam gift cards to the top 3 winners. The winner would have their logo become Heathen Horde's logo.
We received a total of 7 entries from guild members.
After judging by the Heathen Horde leadership, we chose the following winners.
After obtaining permission from the contest winner, I vectorized and simplified the logo to make it scalable and usable in a variety of applications.
Next, I explored different color schemes. I chose a dark mode theme to better reflect gaming and tech.
I then explored different font choices for our logo and presented options to the team.
After deciding on a color and font, I created a lookbook to finalize our look and feel, then implemented our new brand on our Squarespace site.
At Heathen Horde, we sought to create a safe learning environment where our members can learn raid mechanics in a group setting. To get feedback on how we're doing at that goal and how we can improve, I conducted a lightweight user study and interviewed 10 members via Discord. Through this data, I created four player archetypes to help guild leadership conceptualize our users.
I also complied a series of recommendations to improve the raiding experience at Heathen Horde. These include:
We created a series of quick-reference guides that curated the best content out there, so that all members can have handy infographics at their fingertips before and during a raid. This made our raids much more efficient and improved the overall learning experience.
In the end, gaming is about having fun and making friends along the way. We never lost sight of that at Heathen Horde. As a guild, we created a parody song for the holidays that ended up being seen and loved by the ESO devs.
