Moderators: I checked the rules and did not see anything that would indicate this would be against them. I fully accept I may have missed something and if so please strike this post.
Why isn't there any official oversight or consistent line of communication between the Official Battletech Forums and CGL staff? It's their site and community, and there continues to be the mentioned legitimate concerns raised here.
So I found this to be a valid question and went digging into it via comparison to other companies. It is not my intention to present an answer to the above, since I do not know anywhere near enough about CGL's internal operations, but rather to provide comparative information. For reference I used Zoominfo and RocketReach for the below information. I tried using Dun & Bradstreet as a better respected source but only one of the companies got a meaningful profile there.
I chose the below companies based upon brand recognition with my local crowd.
Catalyst Game Labs - Employees: 7 Yearly Revenue: $5.3M Official Forum?: Yes
Games Workshop - Employees: 2,700 Yearly Revenue: $623.4M Official Forum?: No
Reaper Miniatures - Employees: 23 Yearly Revenue: less than $5M Official Forum?: Yes
Mantic Games - Employees: 29 Yearly Revenue: $5.9M Official Forum?: No
So just looking at the data above I think it is noteworthy that the monster of the industry cannot be bothered to have official forums. I feel this is an indicator of the level of commitment and expense such a resource requires.
The other company that maintains an official forum does so in a manner very similar to CGL, moderated on a volunteer basis though using a different organizational model.
The amount of time needed to keep tabs on all the various online communication channels is at least one full-time job and possibly more. This inclines me to believe that using volunteer labor for such things is a prudent cost-reduction measure and also gives community involvement benefit for the company's reputation.
Using Glassdoor.com and Salary.com for reference I found that the average salary for an online community manager in the US is about $40k per year. I do not know the exact employment laws in Washington State, but I can say from experience with my own (failed) efforts at running a business in New York State that the additional costs of having employees can easily double that amount in taxes and benefits. This does not take into account office or equipment costs, which I believe would be relevant to such a position.
Comparing that to the revenues and employee numbers above, and taking into account that games industries tend to have an 80%/20% operating costs to profit revenue division, that appears to leave CGL in a pretty enviable position financially. It would seem that CGL has the resources to begin expanding their employee pool but I would note that they most likely have a great deal more need for administrators and developers than community engagement officers.
I believe it is also very salient to recognize that Kickstarter operations are anomalous to standard business operations and are basically extended one-off occurrences of increased activity. I do not believe that repeated Kickstarters are a long-term successful business model.
Overall, my personal takeaway from this is that CGL is doing an acceptable, if not exceptional, job of communication based upon their current situation. I believe that they are in position to, and certainly should, add to their staff overall which may alleviate some of the hat-swapping that I believe must be happening behind the scenes and provide greater breathing room for more consistent engagement with the community during crunch times like the various Kickstarters.
