Interview with Regina Buenaobra, ArenaNet’s Community Manager

By Billiard, Senior Moderator and Writer for Guild Wars Guru

In April 2008, Regina took over for Gaile Gray, ArenaNet’s long time Community Manager (CM) for Guild Wars. Over Labor Day weekend I attended the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle and got the chance to sit down with Regina to get to know her better. Regina was very personable and we spent a couple hours talking about her past as well as how things were looking for the future. She mentioned how the developers and staff from ArenaNet were all very excited to meet and chat with fans at PAX, and that in fact all of the ArenaNet staff at the convention were volunteers. Also special props to her for scoring me and my friends a bunch of VIP Passes for the ArenaNet party at Gameworks!

Regina is originally from the Philippines, having moved with her parents when she was three years old to the United States. She decided to go to the UK for college and completed her undergraduate work in St. Andrews, Scotland, earning a degree in Management. She completed a master’s degree in London, in Organizational and Social Psychology. Her master’s thesis was on video game culture, for which she completed a qualitative study looking into the various ways players enjoyed video games.

After completing her master’s degree, Regina moved back to the U.S. in order to find a job, and was soon employed at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Here she specialized in outside communications – maintaining the contact database, editing letters to Congress, and working on the department’s web site. It was also at this time that she became interested in blogs and blogging. After frequenting several other gaming blogs, she decided to start one of her own, Acid for Blood, which at its peak was averaging 300+ unique visitors a day. Of special emphasis in her blog was Guild Wars, a game that she had come to know and love for a couple years. At this time she also began looking for another job more related to her degrees, either in human resource management or research. In addition, she became interested in perhaps pursuing a PhD and started to track academic research in video gaming via various blogs. At the 2006 Game Developer Conference she met with several researchers and discussed PhD programs and the PhD processes. Because she had not fully nailed down what she wanted to research she decided not to pursue a PhD at the time, and instead continued looking for a job close to home in the DC area.

One day in 2007 she received an email from Xfire, asking her if she knew of someone who would be suitable for a community leader position with the company, which was based in California. Apparently someone at Xfire had read her blog and felt she might be interested in the position, or at a minimum would know someone who would be. Regina immediately jumped at opportunity and sent them her resume. Within a short time she had interviewed via the phone with the marketing and product development departments, and then was flown to California for a full day of interviews with many others in the company, including the CEO. The next day she was offered a job, which she readily accepted.

At Xfire she worked in the marketing department running marketing campaigns that included live chats and debates. Her first major project was to coordinate a full week of live chats. Xfire had been doing themed weeks for their fans (bringing in bands, etc.), and she was tasked with running a science fiction week.

Later in 2007 she was planning to attend PAX in Seattle. Before the convention ArenaNet announced their Superfan competition, so she entered. She praised the game and said how she was just an ordinary fan who loved the game. Apparently it was pretty well written because she was chosen as a winner! This was her first real contact with anyone at ArenaNet, and she entered the contest with no real expectations about the company. She frequented various Guild Wars forums and such, but rarely posted, preferring instead to write on her own blog. At PAX she met Gaile like the other players and chatted some. After PAX she had no contact with ArenaNet, and in fact had not done anything to pursue a position at ArenaNet at all. She continued working at Xfire, and in particular started working on a Guild Wars debate, where I first met her. Before the debate took place though, she was offered a position at ArenaNet and decided to accept.

When she first got onboard at ArenaNet, she had many meetings with the founders and marketing staff to discuss how community management should be conducted. Since they were between games with Guild Wars winding down and Guild Wars 2 still out on the horizon, there was a consensus that it was a good time to look at how things had been done in the past, and what might be changed for the future. The founders were very open to all different types of ideas, which is one reason why Regina started discussing the possible alternatives on her wikipage. At the moment the overall marketing strategy for the company is still being developed and refined, so how things will change is still to be determined and won’t really be set until closer to the release of Guild Wars 2. As for now, Regina prefers to post news on fan forums and her pages when she has something solid to say, rather than hint about stuff that she knows is coming down the road but is not allowed to really elaborate on. She tries very hard to be expedient when it comes to informing players about technical problems and issues, but while she is told about a lot of problems and potential resolutions as they are being worked on, often she is not allowed to say anything right away until things are resolved.

In all Regina was very easy going and comfortable to chat with. She had long days and nights at PAX, yet was always happy to talk to players. Her education and past work experience says something about the direction ArenaNet wants to go in the future, and I think that bodes well for the franchise.

Wow. Didn't know Regina was Filipina
Galing mo talaga Regina! IDOL!

thanks for posting this, it was interesting.

now if you could only find that thesis, it seems pretty interesting :O

Very interesting and informative. When she was hired, my first reaction had always been "who is this person? (and why can't I get that job)" She sounds very qualified and I'm glad to here about her past experience.

Edit: That thesis does sound interesting, but it doesn't list what school in London she participated, so it will be a bit harder to look up (if they even file such things online on Lexis)

Wait what winding down? I wonder what that means when they said they would still support GW
and I read somewhere they were adding new stuff to GW can't find the post now but was from a dev.
Sounds contradictory IMO.

that might have been the authors words, not Regina's words aussie. but Guild Wars is winding down, with the upcoming release of GW2 people have gotten bored with the content and with no monthly fee there is nothing to keep them here, or to keep them from coming back later if you are a glass half full kind of person.

Yeah that was my wording - she said something along those lines but not those specific words.

GW has been winding down since they cancelled utopia and announced GW2.

Hahaha I knew it!!! Kabayan!!!

Gud lak!!! May you saksid in eberi thing dat you do. Weder in amarika or in anywer in the world.

Always remember what we pinoy always say, "ang hindi lumingon sa pinangalingan, kung matinik ay malalim." (trans: time is gold, but nobody wants to buy time).

"Gud lak!!! May you saksid in eberi thing dat you do. Weder in amarika or in anywer in the world. "

^reminded me of my old friends from singapore, and myamar talks like that.

and nice to know her background.

Wow, great post. I defifnately have more respect for Regina now, I was never sure how well experienced she was and all that but I still miss Gaile haha. Very well written and extremely informative! Like everyone else I would like to read her thesis too haha.

A microfiche/scanned copy of every Masters and PhD thesis submitted in British Universities is kept in the British Library. If you have the name of the student/author, you should be able to find it....

Cool post. Always good to know who's who in the now what.

Get back to me when the franchise has a real PvP community relations. Its only been 3 1/2 years.

Awesome stuff.

Please to explain what the "debate" is? Expound if you will... sounds interesting.

Oh stop being a sour face and wanting special treatment.


Now on to the interview...

Very nicely presented and thank you for sharing it No doubt with the transition being worked out and formalized she's a very busy lady.

Thanks for sharing the interview! (:

I'm intrigued. But what should I say other than German Computec AG magazines, any number of pages, anytime you want. They don't hate Arenanet they print all news, provided they are somewhatish new.

Where's the interview? Where's the hard questions about GW2? All I see is a glorified biography.

Regina made it quite clear that they wouldn't be talking about GW2 at PAX, Fates Monk. And it does indeed answer a lot of questions from the community, I know more then a few people who wondered Regina's background and qualifications. It seems that Billiard chose to write the interview article style rather then Q&A style. Perhaps you would have been happier seeing it in that format? I know Billiard has more interviews to post so you can look for those next week.

Guess there's also more than a few people who are wondering if they should stop playing GW altogether or if any of Anet's people have anything to say to gives some of us some hope for the near future.

People have spent a lot of time on this game. Invested in it far beyond the cost of buying the game and now the lack of continuity is making a few people wonder if it was all for nothing. I fear that a lot of information like this, useful or not, will be ignored until people get something to work with or they will leave GW.

The problem is that when you leave there is the chance that you will get into another big game that will offer more continuity and then you get into that game and the whole GW thing will be irrelevant. Looking forward to letting this investment of time over 3.5 years simply go, is a bit more scary on this side of it than on the side of already having switched to another game at which time GW might then have become irrelevant and a shadow of the past.

The people who feel this way, is as I seem to notice a growing number of people and they want to know badly what Anet feels about this before they change to another game, because it has been a good game and it will be sad to let go of it. The fact that Anet is dodging this matter entirely I suppose will make it easier to break with Anet and embrace another game but it is a shame.

I am in a guild of about 50 people. About 15 havent been online in months. At least 5 left in the last 2 weeks to play other games like WoW and a growing number of people like myself are looking out for the next games like Aion, Sacred 2 ,Diablo 3 etc.

From our point of view GW is self-destructing and Anet doesn't care. Can you blame people for feeling that way? I don't think so. Is it smart to let a good amount of players leave the game being upset...again I don't think so. So excuse us for being disappointed with a biography (it was a good piece mind you, just not what I was looking for).

ArenaNet has repeated said they will release info on GW2 when they are ready. I personally am glad they are doing the job right rather than rushing to market like the failures that were Hellgate: London and Age of Conan.

The purpose for this piece was to give people more information about Regina's background and qualifications. Few of us knew Gaile's, so I thought this would be useful - sorry to disappoint people by writing what I wanted to write.

That said, I have a piece coming, probably next week when I get time, about Chris Lye the Director of Marketing. Again I don't cover specifics of GW2 development, but I do discuss some things that for me at least gets me very excited about GW2.

Also, please do not derail this topic any further. I have been playing this game as long as anyone, and have seen probably more of my guildies leave the game than anyone else, while also having as much time and money invested in the game as anyone. Still, these sorts of things are not appropriate for this thread.

Both games utterly dissapoint. If ANet has the courage to play it close to their chest and ignore the QQ over no details until it's ready, then I'm all for it. Hellgate, bah! I won't even talk about it. As for Conan...I knew something was up as soon as it went live and everyone without an account was locked out of the forums...methinks evil is afoot here.

IMHO it was a great peice. Ignore the whiny folks. Writing what you want to write is what used to make the American press great. In the spirit of olden times, I salute your conviction. Writing what other people want you to write (telling stories people want to hear) is why the U.S. media is currently so scewed towards the morbid and sensational..."if it bleeds in leads". I'd rather have some good old fashined meat to my information...thanks for the steak!

In spite of the lack of specifics of GW2, I can't wait for further insights to the inner workings...looking forward to it.

Unfortunately everyone has their own agenda. But I think I speak for at least a few of us when I say, "Thanks for the info on Regina...I...did...not...know...that." I will be scrubbing the internetz looking for her thesis as well. I've been studying the psychology of internet gaming and social-behavioral aspect aspects of online communities (as well as video game addiction) and think hers might make a cool read.

Thanks again for the post...well done!

I think people need to realize that the big guys behind ArenaNet came from Blizzard, and they have always showed a similar level of dedication. They release stuff when it's ready to be released, and not a moment sooner. If Blizzard finishes Diablo 3 and they think they need to rework half the game, they will do it. Anet is similar, they don't release stuff unless if its good enough for them to release, information wise.

Good interview tho..., pretty informative!

Thanks Billiard for the time taken to do that for the community.

Oh shucks you got me! I guess having a representative for half the game (and the original point of the game) is too much to ask from a company after 3 1/2 years! I'll wander off now!

All the Pinoys are coming out of the woodwork, lol ^_______^

I was also at the Pax Anet party on Saturday and had a great time. Something that Billiad said, I heard several times from the anet staff that was there. They want to get Guild Wars 2 right, and make it the best game they can. They do not want to release a half finished product. After spending 6 weeks playing Age of Conan, I am for them taking there time even if its 2 years and do it right. I myself am tired of paying for a half finished MMO. Just my opinion. Also great interview Billiard.

I wanted to respect Billiard's request to stay on topic according to his definition but unfortunately it is hard to do so as others feel the need to ignore his comments and add fuel to the fire.
So, I feel I need to rectify one thing. I do not, nor have I ever asked to rush the game into existence. I also want a game to be a good product. There are other ways of filling the big gap between EotN and GW2 but nothing is really happening there. That is just the way I feel and is just my opinion. Please feel free to not reply to these comments and go back to discussing the article.

I did have that lil' question at the back of my mind that Regina is a kababayan but I never knew how to ask her about it.

Mystery solved.

Nice interview too, congrats to the OP

Anyway, mabuhay (viva) Regina!

Where is the Chris Lye interview? Did I miss it?

IMO a lot of people high up in the game industry need to redo their 'Why people enjoy video games' if they think all it involves is playing online with others and a monthly fee, and since they feel like removing heroes and hench for GW2.

I formatted my hard drives a few weeks ago and Guild Wars is not getting reinstalled.

I am waiting for my import for Sacred 2 CE to arrive, I am thoroughly impressed with the demo and it has been ages since there has been a great solo RPG. Also cant wait for Diablo 3.

All other MMOs with a monthly fee I found I was bored of after a few months. GW is just somehow completely different and worse then what it was during Prophecies, and the ingame community is the worst one I have ever come across. Even kids in Maple Story are better then people I encounter in GW.