Words with Dominik Voigt

Some games have carried with me since I was a very young child. Others are more recent but extremely important to me. Assassin’s Creed is a game that came to me during a time where I started taking games more seriously and moving on from just playing them here and there for fun. One of the first big games to come out when I worked at GameStop was Assassin’s Creed and it has always had a special place in my heart.

Today I bring you my #WordsWithBaun featuring Dominik Voigt who is a Community Manager at Ubisoft for Assassins Creed. He heads a very proud community and gets to enjoy the incredible AC: Origins that released in 2017. Whether it’s promoting new DLC or featuring amazing screenshots from the community Dom keeps busy. Please join me in getting some knowledge bombs dropped on us.

Do you have any ghost stories or supernatural experiences?

I do – kinda do! So this happened years ago. I was watching tv with my family and at some point, the character shot its opponent and simultaneously a bird hit our window. I was like 10 years old or so so that obviously freaked me out. Not sure if that qualifies as supernatural experience but it’s something. RIGHT? :D

What was your dream job as a child?

I think I’ve been through all possibilities as a child, depending on the day or movie I watched at the time, I wanted to be a fireman, policemen, astronaut, etc. All the classics you’d expect basically.

I grew older, I quickly realized that I want to end up in the gaming industry though. I wanted to learn to program but figured that it’s not the right thing for me, so I looked into Game Design and while that still interests me it’s the community section that interested me the most since I interacted with other people on the Ubisoft forums every day.

What is your most embarrassing guilty pleasure you’re willing to admit?

Sharknado. Don’t ask me why I watched it and/or especially why I didn’t stop after watching the first movie – it was just incredibly cringy and funny. I stopped eventually after the 3rd installment though. It got to weird, even for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What is your favorite non-work/game related thing to do?

Writing! I love writing! I’m in the process of writing a book, currently being on page 130 or so. I don’t really write regularly anymore – for several reasons, time being one – but I try to write as often as I can.

What is a game genre you enjoy that would surprise people?

Not sure if it’s a real surprise but I enjoy city-building games like Cities: Skylines to relax a bit.

What do you think your younger self would think of your current job?

‘Past Dom’ would probably give me a high five as he was/is a huge Ubisoft game & especially AC fan! Therefore, I’m certain he’d be quite proud! (writing of myself in the third person is weird lol)

What about your job has surprised you the most?

Gotta be to work on the AC brand!! I’m a huge AC fan and I never thought I’d be working on AC like… ever. The overall timing to join the AC team was just perfect! Being able to work on AC on its 10 years anniversary alongside the installment that happens to feature one of my favorite historical settings of all time - Egypt - is just amazing! But it’s also the brilliant AC Community peeps I’m working with! It’s so much fun to work with them every day. All of that combined is so much more than I have hoped for!

“You could say most of it is a trial by fire — learning-by-doing.”

What kind of training/education/experience did you receive to become a Community Manager?

I was a volunteer moderator on the Ubisoft forums for several years and learned a lot about managing & maintaining communities during that time. I also worked in Customer Support for a while for a local internet provider. That helped a lot, for sure.

However, I do think that Community Management is something you’ll be able to figure out along the way. Sure, a communications degree is definitely benefical & you can learn about it from a theoretical perspective (How to handle communities, crisis management etc) but it just varies so much depending on the brand, company, etc that it makes it difficult to properly prepare. You could say most of it is a trial by fire - learning-by-doing.

What was your first experience with the Assassin’s Creed franchise?

It was back with the announcement of Assassin’s Creed 1 on the Microsoft E3 press conference! However and to be super quite honest here, I didn’t like it at first. I cannot even remember why. I only grabbed a copy of the game 2 years after its launch and love and follow the series ever since. – And looking back it seems weird that I didn’t like it since I was always keen about the history and also considering it’s one of my favorite brands now and all that.

What are you most proud of when it comes to Assassin’s Creed community as a whole?

You’ll see that in most gaming communities, but it’s the passion and dedication our fans putting into supporting the brand. Every time I see a new piece of content created by our players, I cannot help myself but be in total awe by the love of detail they put into it. Other than that I’m really happy and quite proud how our players interact with each other. For the most part, it’s quite civil and usually only constructive. (there are exceptions of course.)

What do you wish the average player of Assassin’s Creed knew from your perspective?

Getting a glimpse of insight into a game’s development, the behind the scenes that are definitely something I wish more players would be able to experience. It changed the way I think about games by a lot. It just helps to understand why certain things are how they are.

And last if you were a Egyptian god what animal would represent you and how would your Trial of the Gods instance play out?

I would be Osiris, the god of the Dead and Underworld. I don’t think he has an animal representation so I’d just appear as him in human form. To start the trial you’d have to collect all pieces of him that are scattered in the world. After puzzling him back together, you’d need to revive him and then face him. The actual fight would be more close combat focused. So no arrow spam, dodge, repeat. Imagine it being like a Dark souls boss fight.

I want to thank Dom for being yet another amazing person involved in this project of mine. I am in the process of getting a bunch of people, Division related and otherwise, involved. I can’t wait to share it with you all.

Until next time.