Savvy game marketers understand that the long-term health of their business rests on the audience of game players, and helping them become a community rather than just a large number of people with no connections. Yet this is a difficult task, especially for mobile games. While game companies have created and maintained forums on PCs for years, that structure doesn’t lend itself to the way people are connecting today. Today’s gamers are connecting via smartphones, which make it hard to use traditional forums with lengthy text posts.

Moreover, the fast-paced world of gaming demands equally quick development of communications, where groups can form rapidly when games engage them. This is the situation that Camp Mobile’s BAND has stepped into. This mobile forum community app now reaches over 40 million people to help them communicate with other players. The CEO of Camp Mobile, Manho Won, spoke with [a]listdaily to explain how BAND is bringing gamers together.

Manho WonManho Won

What was the driving force that led you to create BAND?

We realized that gamers did not really have a place where they could go and meet other gamers to play together. A lot of players were using web based forums like Reddit to post their ideas and content, or using messenger apps like LINE and Facebook Messenger. But, they are not the right solution. The main strength of BAND is its flexibility and the mobile accessibility. On BAND, you can make your own private guild or clan group and also public groups to talk with other random players. You have to use your single real profile photo and name on the messenger apps or Facebook, but on BAND you can use multiple profiles or your IGN on different groups. We wanted a place where people could go and find other like-minded people and freely share their thoughts on any kinds of topics.

How does BAND help moderate community chat for gamers on a mobile platform?

When streamers are broadcasting, often they are too focused on playing the game, so questions and comments from their audience tend to get left unanswered and buried in the stream chat services. With BAND, viewers can post their questions onto the board or use the chatroom to communicate with the streamer and other players. Streamers can easily leave comments and chat with their viewers on the go anytime 24/7 with their mobile devices, so they won’t be restricted to chatting just on PC.

Does BAND replace the functions that forums serve on web sites to bring communities together, or does it supplement those forums?

The game publishers provide their forum under the official web site. Players can get the official information like how to play, new updates and server maintenance notice from there. But, gamers use BAND to talk with others more frequently and intimately, to recruit new guild members or to easily set up the play dates by polling. If you search “Clash” on BAND, you can find out over 600 small or mid-size communities which look for other players publicly. BAND gives gamers the value that they cannot get from the web-based forum service.

How are streamers using BAND to help create, maintain, and grow their audiences?

Streamers on BAND can get the benefit of keeping close connections with their audience and getting the information and the event easily organized. The calendar event feature allows streamers to post and notify their viewers that when they are about to stream and when they do some giveaways event and community local meetups. The polling feature allows for anyone in the community to create a poll to ask questions to other players and to get some tips from them. Also, streamers can post their favorite videos and pictures to share with their communities. Streamers can communicate 24/7 with their viewers using BAND’s chatroom features, so there is always close contact with viewers. All of BAND’s features allow for streamers to keep a tight bond with their communities and help maintain and grow their audiences.

BAND on PC

How does BAND work with game publishers Or is all the activity through BAND driven by the users?

Most of communities are generated by users. But, BAND can be very useful for game publishers too. We saw that some publishers set up the game community on BAND to get feedbacks and bug reports about their beta version from their test gamers. With BAND, game publishers can keep a close relationship with heavy and loyal gamers. The way BAND works with publishers now is to get feedback about the beta version, but we would like to eventually have game publishers create official BAND’s for their games.

Example: Kill Strain from Playstation Studio

http://killstrain.com

http://www.band.us/#!/band/56990499

What does the future hold for BAND?

BAND reached 40 million users globally and most of them are gamers. The future is looking bright for BAND because everything will be more fun if they play together. Also, there is no perfect solution for gamers to build a fun community. We eventually want to build the communication platform where anyone from game publishers, game streamers and game players can build their own community to enjoy games more.