New feature: Your studio now has a fuller audience layer. You can see who follows you, how they feel, what they want, and what to do about it. This replaces the old standalone Community screen as the main place to manage fans, while keeping per-game community tools inside the same hub.
Studio → Fans (formerly labeled Community in some builds, now Fans in navigation)From there you have five tabs:
Overview
Segments
Research
History
Game communities
Before this release, community management was mostly per-game. Now the game tracks a studio-wide audience model built from sales, releases, marketing, game communities, franchises, and player behavior.Two numbers appear everywhere and mean different things:
Metric
What it means
Active fans
People with a sustained positive attachment to your studio (casual through core fans)
Community reach
Total players connected to your game communities, including people who bought or play your games but are not loyal studio fans yet
A game can have tens of thousands in community reach while active studio fans stay in the thousands. That is intentional.
Click path: Fans → OverviewWhat you see:
Active fans, Community reach, Latest net change, Satisfaction, and Audience reach
Fan relationship bar: Casual, Regular, Loyal, Core, Lapsed, Detractors
What needs attention: actionable warnings (fatigue, vocal minority skew, lapsed fan opportunities, positive advocacy)
Largest audience segments: top three segment cards with portraits
Open Marketing from here if an insight suggests a campaign response.View all segments → jumps to the Segments tab.If you load an older save, you may see a one-time banner: "This audience breakdown was recalibrated from your game communities, sales, and release history." That is normal for migrated saves.
Click path: Fans → SegmentsYour audience is grouped into audience segments (for example Story & character fans, Competitive players, Tech enthusiasts & collectors). Each segment is a blend of:
Engagement tier (Potential, Customer, Casual, Regular, Loyal, Core, Lapsed)
Genre and platform preferences
Motivations (story, competition, social, and others)
Spending tendency
Satisfaction, loyalty, and vocal intensity
Each segment card shows:
A portrait image for that segment type
Population estimate
Genre and motivation tags
Current concern (for example "Satisfaction is falling")
Click a segment to open its detail view: portrait, tagline, preferences, behavior, and opportunity notes.Tip: Segments are estimates built from cohort data, not individual simulated people. Populations are rounded and grouped for readability.
Click path: Fans → ResearchThis is the big new player-facing layer. You can ask your audience what they want, get imperfect but useful answers, then act on the findings.
Commission – start new research
In progress – running surveys and live polls
Results & actions – latest completed study waiting for your decision
History – past research with status
Studio-attached: potential customers, buyers, active fans, and lapsed players with a studio relationship. More precise.
Broader community reach: includes game-community members who may not be studio fans yet. Cheaper, wider, noisier (higher margin of error).
Instrument
Cost (approx.)
Duration
Best for
Audience pulse
~$75K
1 week
Quick check after a bad release or controversy
Commissioned survey
~$210K
2–3 weeks
Ranked wants, segment splits, margin of error
Focus group
~$105K
Instant
Deep dive on one segment (requires picking a segment)
Live audience poll
Free (team time)
2–8 weeks
Ongoing vote on a released game
Next genre appetite
Price & monetisation tolerance
Franchise direction
Platform preference
Feature priorities
Trust repair
Concept test (project-specific, see below)
Research does not give you perfect truth. Every result includes:
A headline finding with percentage and margin of error
A confidence band (Low / Moderate / High)
A plain-English verdict
A full breakdown bar chart of all options
If your vocal minority gap is high, you may see a warning that forum loudmouths skewed the sample.
When research completes, you get 2–3 follow-up choices, for example:
Align marketing with this finding – hype boost and better targeted campaign efficiency for matching segments
Publish a community response – trust and satisfaction boost studio-wide
Hold back premium plans – trust recovery when audiences reject premium pricing
Tease a revival – nostalgia and hype for dormant franchises
Commit to the concept direction – conversion boost for a linked project
Commit to the poll winner – timed boost if you ship matching content (live polls)
Ignore for now – no benefit; strong findings may cost trust if ignored
You have 12 weeks to act on most follow-ups (26 weeks for live poll commitments). Expired options are shown as disabled in the UI.Click path to act: Fans → Research → Results & actions, or open a completed study from History.
Click path: Fans → HistoryA log of audience changes with:
What happened
Which week
Explicit deltas (satisfaction, trust, hype, and others)
Severity (positive, warning, critical)
Survey completions and follow-up actions also appear here with survey.* cause keys.
Click path: Fans → Game communitiesThis is the familiar per-title community dashboard, now nested inside Fans:
Total members, average satisfaction, EA games, games needing attention
Per-game cards: satisfaction, trust, toxicity, engagement
Community manager assignment
Quick actions: Dev Blog, AMA, Patch Notes, Sneak Peek
Live poll panel per released game
EA roadmap tracking where applicable
View studio audience → links back to Overview.Click path for live poll: Fans → Game communities → [pick a game] → Live poll section → Start live pollChoose question template and sample scope, then let votes accumulate weekly until the poll ends. The winner opens a timed commitment window in Research results.
Click path: Projects → [open a project in development] → Pre-release audience fit panelOn active (non-released) projects you see:
Interested audience estimate
Likely conversion (exact % or a range after concept research)
Best-fit segments
Open Fans & Audiences – jumps to the Fans hub
Run concept survey – commissions a studio-attached concept test tied to that project
After a concept survey, conversion shows as a range (for example 20–28%) instead of a single precise number, reflecting research uncertainty.If you commit to the concept direction from survey results, you get a temporary conversion boost on that project.
Click path: Marketing → Launch campaign → Audience segment dropdownWhen launching a targeted campaign, segment options now show "Validated by research" if you recently ran a focus group or aligned marketing on that segment. Validated segments are more efficient targets and less likely to backlash.You can also reach Marketing from Fans → Overview → Open Marketing when an insight suggests it.
The Founder Assistant studio_fans topic may recommend audience research when:
Satisfaction is very low
The fanbase is divided
A live poll action window is almost expired
You ignored a high-confidence finding
A non-blocking status alert "Consider commissioning audience research" can also appear on the main game screen in similar situations.
The game uses 28 aggregated cohorts, not individual fan NPCs
Cohorts promote, lapse, and react weekly based on releases, marketing, communities, and controversies
Vocal intensity is separate from population. loud forums do not equal majority opinion
Audience fit can affect weekly sales e.g., by ±15%
Existing reactive community events (feedback surges, sequel demand, and others) still happen; player-initiated research complements those, it does not replace them
Save data migrates automatically on load (save version 178); older saves get empty research history and preserved fan data
Goal
Path
Check studio health
Fans → Overview
See who your fans are
Fans → Segments → [click a segment]
Quick temperature check
Fans → Research → Commission → Audience pulse
Test a game idea before launch
Projects → [project] → Run concept survey
Ask what players want next
Fans → Game communities → [game] → Start live poll
Act on survey results
Fans → Research → Results & actions
Target marketing smarter
Marketing → segment dropdown (look for Validated by research)
Manage CM and dev blogs
Fans → Game communities → [game]
See why satisfaction dropped
Fans → History