Category Archives: BioWare Social Network

Answer HQ

Howdy all. “Evil” Chris Priestly here.

You may have noticed that there is a new link in the BioWare Social Network tech support forums. This leads to a new site that gives a great option for tech support issues. For a long time now, we’ve seen that one of the commonly used ways for people to find tech solutions has been on the forums. We’ve got a lot of clever and helpful folks playing our games, which we’re incredibly thankful for. But there are obvious drawbacks to using traditional forums for this kind of support, not the least of which is the time it takes to find that one post that may actually offer a good solution for your situation.

EA has been working to identify something that can be used for this very purpose that would address all of the needs and concerns that come along with standard forums. Quickly and easily finding solutions to issues. Recognition for individual contributions. Making sure that each game’s community is maintained. The solution EA found is working really well and as some of you may have seen already, there are sections for both Mass Effect and Dragon Age that currently live there. We’re really excited about the potential this has and are looking at how best to get our tech traffic to Answer HQ.

So, before we make any change of this magnitude, the obvious question is how do we use Answer HQ without losing the sense of our community from our own tech forums. This is a really important point to us, because the community for our games mean as much as the game itself. You’re part of our success here and we want you to feel like you’re home, even when you’re just asking a tech support question. We also know your time is valuable and we want you to get the help you need as quickly and efficiently as possible, so you can get back to playing the games you love.

We feel that the mechanics behind Answer HQ are extremely powerful, allowing people to flag a post as helpful. For example, if you’re looking for solutions on a graphics issue for example, simply do a quick search and see a thread that fits your issue which has a green check by it, you know you can look there and find an answer. If none of them have an answer, you can look at the replies on outstanding questions. If you find an answer, flag it as helpful and it will help people find a quick solution there, just like you were looking for. Now, one of the best parts is it tracks who gave the “good” answer, giving credit to the person who solved the issue. We want those folks who make it a point to help others, to understand that we all value what they contribute to our community. They’ll get “experience” on the forums which will allow us to call out the top folks. Cool stuff.

Now, where do we go from here? We don’t want to lose the accumulated knowledge our existing tech forums have, so how do we keep those while making the most of Answer HQ? Well, rest assured, we have a plan! The link I mentioned on the forums list is currently there to let those who don’t know see it. When we’re confident with moving forward, based on various factors that we won’t bore you with, we’ll lock the existing tech forums (but leave them available to be read), remove the links from the general list and include those links as stickies on the Answer HQ forum for their respective games. This way, we’ll always have access to the knowledge housed in the current tech forums while transitioning new questions to Answer HQ .

We’ve very excited about this new feature and believe you’ll appreciate the addition too!

What is a Community?

We recently posted an innocent looking piece of fan art on Facebook that was created by one of our community members. The image playfully mashed up the themes of Mass Effect and My Little Pony, depicting the Pinkie Pie character in N7 armor. We thought it was hilarious and wanted to let the rest of our community in on the fun. Those of you that had front row seats during the aftermath know that’s not exactly what happened.

Even though the image was posted in jest, it raised the ire of a portion of our Facebook community. Some fans felt compelled to “unlike” our page, while others even went as far as to post their intention to “sell all their Mass Effect games.”

It got me thinking: What exactly is a social media community, and what is its true purpose?

It is my belief that the purpose of a social media community is to create a place where people from all over the world can gather, linked by their shared affection of a particular passion. It sounds almost Utopian, doesn’t it? A little corner of the internet reserved just for us where we can go and interact with like-minded fans.

At BioWare, we think of our fans as our extended family, and as within any family, there are bound to be times when we won’t always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes Uncle Jay is going to root against your favorite sports team. Sometimes cousin Sue is going to wear socks with sandals. And sometimes, just sometimes, we’re going to post pictures of little pink ponies sworn to protect the galaxy from Reapers.

We support our community’s desire to be creative and share with us. Our talented fans send us all types of content, from painstakingly detailed fan art and cosplay photos to music and poetry inspired by our games. We try to showcase as many of them as we can, and hope that the community will find it all as fascinating as we do.

We strive to provide a community that offers a little something for everyone, and as such, new content is always being gathered for future posts. We take the work that we do very seriously, but we also believe that a good sense of humor is healthy. Doesn’t everyone enjoy a good laugh?

If you don’t enjoy a particular post, that’s okay. You can’t please everyone, as they say. However, rather than become hostile and turn against the community, we have an alternate suggestion: Create something better. Instead of raving about what you don’t like, show us an example of something that appeals to you.

Remember, it’s your feedback that helps to shape the community, but you’re always going to catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Be good to one another.

~ David Hulegaard, Social Media Coordinator