ELO VS. ELO
Wouter Sleijffers and Roald van Buuren, the co-founders of ELO (not that one), take a step back from their games community-building studio to grill each other on what they’re actually up to, and the importance of players actively participating
Wouter: We work with all kinds of developers and publishers to increase community participation. How should developers and publishers balance control with (organized) chaos when building a community? Is there such a thing as too much community input? Roald: There can be. Often decisions can be made that may benefit the short-term, but their long-term impact is forgotten. For a game developer, it’s important to remember your initial goal when you started to create the game and what the game is meant to be, because that is what your players bought into initially and what should remain the north star.
Roald: How would a shift from campaigns to ongoing narratives impact studios? Wouter: Massively. Campaigns tend to live on borrowed viewerships and lack real participation. Campaigns can be part of an ongoing narrative but rarely do stand alone campaigns have true impact. A community is built through a sense of belonging and shared experiences, and these take time to create.
Roald: What would you say is a misconception people have about what “building community” actually means? Wouter: Too often, community is put in the same bracket as social media which is a terrible mistake. This is not
18 | MCV/DEVELOP June/July 2025
just about content or even UGC. Building a community means empowering the people that really care about your game for its storytelling, creativity, characters, competition and rewards. It also means that you will have to be comfortable with handing over some of your data, intellectual property, and possibly even some control. Fortnite is of course a good benchmark. Yet, many are still struggling to find the right balance, let alone having a vision or strategy for this aspect of their game. Reality is that game studios don’t always have the capacity or natural instinct to be really community centred and tend to focus on building the product only.
Roald: What role do you see fan-driven content (mods, fan art, roleplay) playing in extending a game’s lifespan? Wouter: It goes hand-in-hand with the game’s lifecycle, starting with a game’s concept and ideation. A good game needs to lend itself for fan-driven content and what we aim with ELO, is to support this thought, design and development process from the outset. The experience of a game does not stop with what has been coded as the ‘in-game experience’. This starts with thinking of the players as participants rather than consumers of play and watch hours.
Wouter: What has esports taught you about the importance of building a community in regards to a game’s long-term success?
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