Welcome Friend

Hey, I'm Jimmy! I'm a Community Manager and MarComms professional in love with the ways video games bring people together.

In my time as a CM, I've worked as part of a publishing team, managing community and social strategy while maintaining influencer relationships. I've also been embedded within a development team, working closely with game design, product, economy, and data science.

I want to help build inclusive and engaging spaces for players to come together, tell stories, and have fun.

Download CV

Relevant Skills

Management

Social Media, Web, and Influencers

Content Marketing

Asset Ideation, Creation, and Delivery

Reporting

Monthly, Year-on-Year, and Key Beats/Campaigns

Writing

Copywriting, Copyediting, and Ghostwriting

Portfolio and Writing Samples

Content Portfolio

I've collected some examples of my work.

Rebellion

Social Channels

The social channels I managed for Zombie Army VR as part of Rebellion Developments.

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nDreams

Discord Server

The official nDreams Discord Server that I pitched, created, and managed during my time there.

Rebellion

Post Launch Support

Championed and provided quantifiable evidence for key community requests.

ama-hey-were-the-devs-behind-synapse-come-chat-to-us-about-v0-ohcyuluc6m8b1.webp

AMA (Game Focused)

A pre-launch AMA for the PSVR subreddit answering the community's biggest questions.

Myles Dyer

Interview (Career Focused)

Took part in an interview all about what it's like working in the industry and getting a 'dream job.'

PSVR Without Parole

Interview (Game Focused)

Took part in an interview with a partnered creator for the marketing campaign of Fracked.

nDreams

Ghostwriting

Ghostwriting for senior devs for the marketing campaigns of our games, primarily on the PlayStation Blog.

Aardvark Swift

Podcast

I created and launched the Aardvark Swift Podcast, releasing 15 episodes in total.

nDreams

Static Assets

An asset I gathered the data for and briefed in with our creative team to celebrate a community anniversary.

Rebellion

Short Form Assets

Leading on creating video assets for Zombie Army on platforms like YouTube Shorts and TikTok.

Sumo Sheffield Plays

Let's Play (BTS Interview)

Co-creator of this Let's Play series that celebrates our talent and games. I was also the Video Editor.

YouTube

Original Op-Ed

An original video I researched, filmed, and edited exploring a series I'm passionate about.

Killzine (Passion Project)

Killzone Fanzine

I created an anniversary fanzine for Killzone that collected original dev interviews, features, and fanworks.

Killzine (Passion Project)

Multiplayer Event

I organised and hosted a multiplayer event for the 20th anniversary of the series.

Relevant Skills

Software Competencies

Comms

Sprout Social, Meltwater, Discord, Wordpress, Wix, and Mailchimp

Content

PhotoShop, Premier Pro, Audition, OBS, YouTube Studio, and Twitch

Copy

Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Final Draft, Scrivener, Twine, and CMS software

Collab

Teams, Sharepoint, Slack, Wrike, Confluence, Jira, Miro, Trello, Notion, and Monday

Relevant Experience

Over seven years of marketing experience, with a focus on Community and Content Marketing.

Rebellion

Community Manager

Supported the Sniper Elite series, but was quickly given ownership of the Zombie Army franchise. Lead on community for the IP, including beat planning, social media management, player support functions, and content creation. Launched Zombie Army VR and communicated and championed community feedback to the dev team and senior stakeholders for inclusion in post launch updates.

Sumo Digital

LiveOps Community Manager

Worked within the LiveOps team at Sumo Sheffield on an unnanounced title. Reported directly to the LiveOps Director and Game Producer. Worked to establish community strategy and in-game feature sets, setting tone of voice, exploring content marketing opportunities, determining dev-to-player communications, as well as narrative exploration and support.

nDreams

Community Manager

Provided social media management, sentiment analysis, copywriting, and community strategy. Owned consumer-facing marketing efforts as well as the management of influencer relationships. The primary community point of contact within the studio. I produced content marketing for key projects, such as ghostwriting for senior developers within the team and asset ideation.

Primordial Game Studios

Community Manager

Worked remotely with the Dundee-based indie team, helping them grow a community from scratch during the pre-funding phase of their first project. Set up the official community Discord server and managed their social media. I also assisted with the creation of their brand guidelines to ensure the tone of voice of the studio would be consistent. Created original content marketing assets.

Game Credits

The titles I have named Community Manager credits on.

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Other Projects

Games under NDA (or that I've supported) but haven't received a named credit on.

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Relevant Skills

Event Management

Develop: Brighton

Primary Event Organiser

EGX

Event Support Staff

WASD London

Event Scout

Influencers

Primary Event Organiser

About CM

I help foster engaged and inclusive online communities. I love to see them thrive.

After languishing in a career I wasn't happy with for far too long, I decided to take active steps to pursue my passions. I undertook an undergraduate degree in English Literature (Creative Writing) around a full-time job. It helped me break into the games industry.

After working for a time as a freelance games journalist for outlets such as DualShockers, Switch Player Mag, MCV/DEVELOP, and Ukie, I made the transition studio-side and became a Community Manager!

As a CM for nDreams, I worked to ensure our community was inclusive, welcoming, well-informed, empowered, and excited for the future. Through content marketing efforts and building on the foundation of our games and their lore, I helped to create a fun, passionate, and engaged audience with additive experiences.

I launched and managed our official studio Discord server, and pushed nDreams to embrace an approachable tone of voice, being the primary driver of their external comms efforts across our social channels. Within Publishing, I worked closely with the Brand Managers for each of our games to ensure our assets and activations were in line and optimised for our community and KPIs.

Having left nDreams to pursue career progression at Sumo Digital, I transitioned to an embedded Community Manager within a development team, reporting directly to Production and the LiveOps Director. In this role, I got to explore working closely with game design, economy, and data science teams to plan and implement community features and requirements, using my experience of best practices in communication. I got to see video games much earlier in their development process from just before the greenlight phase, directly influencing design decisions.

Unfortunately, my time at Sumo was cut short due to two rounds of redundancy over a 12 month period, caused by the turbulence currently affecting the wider games industry. I found my next challenge at Rebellion Developments, originally supporting on the Sniper Elite series. I was quickly given stewardship of the Zombie Army IP ahead of the release of Zombie Army VR, thanks to my prior skills and experience in the virtual reality field.

Being swept up in social and content isn't my whole story. I'm also a Dad, a husband, an indie dev hobbyist, and a creative writer who enjoys nothing more than getting lost in a decent High Fantasy or Science Fiction story.

Get in Touch

Download CV

Testimonials

James Howard

Co-Founder & Technical Director @ Purple Yonder

"Jimmy did an outstanding job as the CM on Little Cities. He wrote engaging blog posts, facilitated insightful AMAs, and kept the Little Cities Discord channel active/welcoming.

He led creative social media campaigns and generated positive engagement with our audience across owned social channels. He compiled a thorough list of the most requested game features. It was crucial in guiding DLC development strategy."