Because it's Hater Week here on Aftermath, I thought it'd be fun to take my usual 'What I Do' feature--which is normally a very positive look at what it is, exactly, that people working in the video game industry do for a living--and instead see if anyone wanted to talk about the stuff they hate about their job.
And Kristoph Zandecki was kind enough to take me up on the offer! Zandecki has been working as both a community manager and social media manager in the video game space for the last five years. He doesn't hate his job, but when I asked people for specifics on aspects of their job that they hate, he was able to go into the kind of detail that a) we love to see here on What I Do, and b) is extremely relatable to someone who spent 17 years writing at Kotaku and had to deal with Kotaku haters on social media almost the entire time.
"The work of a Community or Social Media Manager is one people have a lot of opinions about, probably because it’s the most visible to people outside of the studio", Zendecki says. "It’s very easy to just go on X or TikTok, watch one video and form your entire opinion on my work from that. I’ve had random people online tell me that my marketing efforts sucked because they haven’t heard of the game (despite them literally interacting with my posts about that game)".
He says the most hurtful comments, though, can come from inside the studio itself. "Everybody on the team who isn't working on socials has an opinion on socials. One person came up to me once and straight up told me 'You should try making funnier posts', with no warning or even so much as a 'hi'. That's why I hate this part of the job: how visible it is, how each failure comes under the scrutiny of everyone, how tiring it is to keep having to explain what you do to people who think they know better".
Another part of Zendecki's job that he hates is the expectation. He says that recruiters and hiring managers will be looking for posts that go viral, or can get a certain number of followers in a very short timeframe. He says studios are thinking they can hire a unicorn, when really they're hiring a worker.
"Would anyone ask a single artist to make their game a 'masterpiece', a single programmer to code 24/7?" he asks. "With this expectation comes an overwhelming focus on results, and if you fail to meet them, then the whole game's failure can be put on your shoulders, because you didn't do a good enough job promoting the game. But if you do a good job and the game does succeed, then suddenly it's not because of your community events or posts, it's because the team made a great game. The double standards are apparent".
All of which must be extremely frustrating and an understandably negative aspect of the job, but like I've said, Zendecki doesn't hate his job, just those parts of it. "I love talking to people about games; being around so much passion for games, especially indie titles, is very satisfying and revitalizing", he says. "Whenever I’m having a bad work day or the imposter syndrome takes over, I only need one positive community interaction to put me back on track. Seeing the impact I have on the people in those communities cannot be easily replaced by other positions, even in gamedev - that’s why, despite all the negative aspects, I still stick with this".
Zendecki says it's also great getting to be the “voice' of a game”, or company, as is the fact he can make an impact on a game and how it's perceived "despite me not being a programmer or designer". "Figuring out new ways to connect with people, new events to bring people together, new content to showcase the game in different light; it’s all an outlet for my creativity, and I’m so grateful to be able to work in this industry", he says.
All of which leads up to the biggest reason he's in the job: the fact he gets to work around video games all day. "I love all manner of games no matter the platform, and being able to work with so many of them on a day-to-day basis is incredible", he says. "My dad would say to me that I cannot make playing games my career, and I want to thank my younger self for not fully believing that. Technically, I’m not 'playing' games as a career, but close enough for me!"
It's Hater Week here on Aftermath. We're getting everything off our chests; we're writing about the things we hate, the things we're annoyed by, the things that are making our lives worse. And yet...there can be no hate without love, so we're finding time to write about that too.
