PEOPLE OF BEHAVIOUR

Gabrielle Murphy

Gabrielle Murphy is the Community Manager – Team Lead on Dead by Daylight.

Tell us about yourself – how did you get into gaming? What was your gateway game?

My dad is the one that actually got me into gaming! As far as I remember, I’ve always had access to a computer with games. One of my favourite memories is waking up early in the morning on weekends to run downstairs with my brothers and start up Doom2, DukeNukem3D or Commander Keen. I grew up with games like Baldur’s Gate 2 and playing Nintendo at my friend’s houses. The first console to make it to our house was the game cube with classics like Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Luigi’s Mansion.

When did you discover Dead by Daylight and why did it appeal to you as a player?

I started playing Dead by Daylight on a free weekend back in 2016, just shy of the Nurse chapter. So, I like to say that I’ve learned to play DbD in a challenging time when nurse could blink 7 times! I can also say that I was terrified and was struggling to survive but I struck with it because I am a pretty stubborn gamer. After a while, when I started improving, I just got completely swept by the game. I had found my new main game and little did I know, my new career, too.

The story of how you came to Behaviour is interesting – tell us how you got your job here.

At the time, I was working freelance as a graphic designer and I had started streaming DbD on Twitch. After streaming for a few months, I decided to go to PAX East 2017 as my first-ever video game convention. There, I met with the devs and a lot of people from the community. It felt like home!

I left the devs my info in case they needed some art done and I didn’t think much more about it … It was just a freelancer habit. A month later, Mathieu Côté shows up on my stream and asks me if I would like to come meet him at the studio. My chat was hyper, Mat always knows how to make an entrance!

I was invited to the studio and offered the Community Manager job. So, like a reasonable person, I asked for a week to think about it. But as I was walking out the door, I knew I was going to do it, there was no doubt … it was my dream job! I like to compare that to the feeling you would have being drafted for a professional sports team when you were just playing in your backyard with friends.

Moral of the story? Take your shot in life, I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t reached out and left my contact info with the devs. Worst case, nothing happens, and you had a good time. Best case … you might end up working on your favourite game!

What does your typical day involve?

Typically, my day involves a lot of support to my team and a lot of discussions with collaborators on the team concerning feedback and raising flags. I do this mostly, but not exclusively, with our Project Management, Design, QA and Marketing team. I like to do a quick community scan in the morning where I check what our players are talking about, and what our team is working on and the priorities for the day. We make sure communications are ready and that everyone on the team has everything they need to get on with their day. Then I look at future content and campaigns, and make sure we’re on time for them. Now that I am a lead, I am a bit more removed from discussing directly with the players, which I do miss a lot, honestly. However, part of my job is now to approve memes created by the team so I would say I have it good!

What do you like about community management? What are its main challenges?

This is going to sound cheesy, but I really love the cleverness and passion from our players. To see all the content created from our fans and how creative they can be, whether it is with video, art or memes. There is so much love and so much support around Dead by Daylight. We’re a very lucky team to have such a dedicated and genuine player base. One of the worst thing for a community manager is engaging with a community and then *crickets*—we’re lucky that is definitely not an issue.

I think one of the main challenges we faced with the community is how much it grew in such a short time. Communities need to adapt and be nurtured. In order to achieve that, we had to stop and question how we do things in order to review and improve processes to make the community a great place to be. This is work that will never end as there is always something to improve!

How did it feel to win Indie Community Manager of the Year at the GameHERS Awards?

A bit unreal! There were big names in that list and I was just happy to be nominated. I am honestly humbled that after just a few years in the industry I was recognized like this.

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

The leaders of our world. Currently on the planet, very few leaders care about the humans they are leading. Racism, homophobia, sexism and hate are running rampant and we’re basically ruining the only planet we live on. We need a change in leadership … yesterday!