Since 2022, Megan Everett has been the “Community Director” of Warframe. But what does that actually mean? In the interview, we spoke with her about the profession, her personal career path, and the gaming industry. On the occasion of this year’s TennoCon, the community event of Warframe, we also took the opportunity to learn more about upcoming innovations.
Anyone who has ever seen a DevStream of Warframe or has generally looked around on the game’s social media channels will likely recognize Megan’s face. There, she often takes on the moderation, discusses the game’s development, and engages with the community.
She has been working for Digital Extremes, the Canadian development studio behind Warframe, since 2013. In 2022, she was appointed Community Director, leading the entire community team. This positions her as the successor to Rebecca Ford, who is now the Creative Director for Warframe.
The entire interview with Megan is available either as a video (in English) or as a transcript (in German or English):
Note: For better readability, the text has been slightly revised and shortened.
What does a Community Director actually do?
MeinMMO: Hello Megan, thank you for being here today. We really appreciate you taking the time for this interview.
Before we delve deeper into Warframe, I would like to know more about you and your work at Digital Extremes. Can you give us a brief overview of what your role as Community Director entails and what your daily work looks like?
Megan Everett: Yes, definitely. So, my name is Megan Everett, I am the Community Director of Warframe. I have been here since 2013 and have witnessed how Warframe has truly grown and taken off. In the 13 years we’ve been doing this, I’ve experienced all the highs and lows.
I started as a Junior Community Manager. Rebecca took me under her wing and taught me everything I know. And then – I believe it was 2021 when we made the “transition,” as we call it – Rebb became Creative Director and I became Community Director.
That, of course, significantly changed my responsibilities. Now, I am responsible for a team of 20, 21 employees who have a significant influence on the game and fill various roles. We have our creator team, our quality assurance, we handle localization, we have live operations, and we take care of charitable events – we have so many great people in the community team. My job is to ensure they have everything they need.
At the same time, I’ve been involved for 13 years and, to my great honor, get to be the face of this game, so that the community hopefully sees me as someone they can trust with their feedback. I also get to moderate live streams and meet our players from all over the world, which is one of my greatest joys.
And of course, TennoCon is coming up – players come to us, which is a wonderful one-day – or now a two-day – event. One of the greatest moments of my entire career is when thousands of players – specifically from Warframe and Soulframe – come and want to see us. That is truly a highlight of my career.
And yes, the daily routine really depends on what is on the agenda. When we make updates, we either work in the live operations area, ensuring that the current public version is maintained – that it has everything it needs – and that bug fixes are released.
Or we are already looking at upcoming updates, developing these behind the scenes, and ensuring that there is enough Quality of Life
present. And we ask ourselves if that’s what the players want?
It’s a mix of these things. Additionally, I talk to the players, lead the team, and collaborate with the developers. It’s a very hard-to-describe role because we take on so many different tasks. But yes, I can’t imagine being anywhere else, at another game. I am happy where I am, with the community we have built.
MeinMMO: Oh, that’s really nice.
It’s not always easy to take on a great legacy
MeinMMO: As you mentioned, you have stepped into the shoes of none other than the “Space Mom” herself, Rebecca Ford, who is now the Creative Director of Warframe. How was it for you to take on such a huge legacy?
Megan Everett: Oh my God. I still vividly remember the time – because that was right at the beginning of the COVID crisis in 2021, in early 2021, in January and February – when we started talking about the transition and that the old guard wanted to implement Soulframe.
I remember Rebb telling me the news during a Google Meet call, explaining what was happening. She said something like, “Megan, we need a Community Director (of course, since she became Creative Director herself). And that is you. I would be thrilled if you took on this role.”
And I … I do everything Rebb asks of me.
Basically, I thought, “If you believe in me, then I believe in myself, right?” After all, she literally taught me everything I know.
That she placed so much trust in me to take on full responsibility – even if it was “just” about team management – was something that at that time wasn’t really one of my specialties. I was a community manager. But there’s a difference between managing the team and managing the game.
Because that’s what a large part of the community team does: simply managing the game, supporting the players, and shaping this world. Alongside that, however, there is also the responsibility of leading employees and ensuring they are taken care of.
I think that was my biggest challenge: to bear the responsibility for a large number of people and ensure they have everything they need – with all the ups and downs and so on.
So that was definitely a big hurdle. And I also believe that Rebb logically contributed significantly to the development of this game. She was at the beginning the only person in the community team. She launched the forums. She built the customer support. It was simply her.
And that she entrusted me with the responsibility to lead this community team was very intimidating. But it was a clear thing. In my mind, I thought: “Yes, I will do this. I will face the challenges.”
And to this day, I consider it a very good thing that our relationship is so close – that the Creative Director and Community Director work together as closely as we do. Since she comes from the community department, she understands the feedback from the community team and the players and can almost predict how the players will react to our updates while she fulfills the role of Creative Director.
I simply feel very honored to hold this role and that she places her trust in me. And I am so happy with how Warframe has evolved. This change we’ve gone through, and all that we have created – the updates we’ve released, and all that we have achieved as a team.
It has been a very daunting but interesting journey, and not everything has always been perfect, but we have definitely found a good rhythm and flow for how we want to work in these roles. And I feel that it…, I feel that it is paying off.
MeinMMO: Yes, definitely!
From Supermarket to the Sacred Halls of Warframe
MeinMMO: Can you tell us a bit more about how you got here? Was it always your dream to work in the video game industry? Was it difficult for you to break into the industry, especially as a woman, since – at least from my perspective – women are still quite underrepresented in higher positions? How was that journey for you?
Megan Everett: Yes. I mean, I grew up as a gamer. My first gaming experience was – I’m about to reveal my age by saying this – but my first console was an N64, on which I played Ocarina of Time, Hybrid Heaven, and 007. And I had a Game Boy, where I played Pokémon. I was totally fixated on Nintendo in my youth. Then I switched to Xbox and played Halo like crazy. So I was always this little gamer girl, a nerd. In school, I was bullied. All that stuff.
Honestly, I didn’t even know that video games could be a profession. It always had that feeling of “You play in your basement, you’ll never make a career out of that.” It’s just a hobby. Don’t waste your time.
I somehow had that mentality in my head. Just a hobby, just fun after school.
MeinMMO: Yes, I definitely agree with you.
The Biggest Update in the History of Warframe
MeinMMO: So, for TennoCon, as I know, you have some great announcements prepared. I think one of the biggest revelations will probably be that Warframe is finally advancing into the Tau system. Please tell us everything about this highly anticipated update. What can players expect?
Megan Everett: Oh, this is probably our biggest update we have ever made. I think anyone who is familiar with Warframe or has played Warframe extensively knows what Tau is – or at least knows that Tau exists, that we have never been there, and that we don’t know how it looks there.
There is this whole story about what happened in Tau. And now, in 2026 – 13 years later – we are finally heading to Tau. And we are not just going to Tau, but it is our new solar system. We have our current solar system. We have Earth, we have Mercury, and so on. And we have lived in this solar system for 13 years. Now we are creating a completely new solar system.
What the TennoCon and the Tenno Live demo will show is essentially a region of the Tau solar system called Fornax, which is like a conscious, ringed city. It deals with organized crime, drug addiction, and such things.
It is not a happy place, which is a shame. But that is of course our intention. You will see that in the demo and experience this type of region of the Tau solar system.
The complete Tenno Live demo can be found on the Warframe YouTube channel:
Later this year, we will show you a second region within the Tau solar system. And it is really huge.
When I just think of that moment in the demo when you fly through and see Tau finally opening up in front of you: I have my hopes and dreams about how people will react. I will be sad if it doesn’t go the way I wish, but I really feel that the fact that we are finally heading to Tau will be something great for our players.
I hope they enjoy the path we are on. I believe – I am almost sure – that no one expects it to be a happy place. So I think we will not disappoint anyone expecting that everything will be filled with rainbows and sunshine. It is actually the opposite. But we are finally heading there and will experience how it is together.
Of course, the Tenno Live shows only a small part of what the world of Tau will look like. I can hardly wait to see how players will react to it. How they will find Brysko – our first Warframe with inner monologue. Albrecht Entrati is also back. So there are so many great and exciting aspects of the demo that I believe will really excite people as Warframe fans and lovers.
I think we will be putting a few puzzle pieces in the huge Warframe puzzle we have built. And probably also removing some. Because we always like to give more questions than answers. But it will definitely encourage people to talk a bit about the connection between Old Peace and what we learned there, as well as what we are now experiencing in Tau.
MeinMMO: There will also be a new Warframe: the first female ice frame in the game. I think that sounds pretty cool. Can you tell us a bit more about her?
Megan Everett: Yes, we are keeping things a bit under wraps, apart from saying that she is our first female ice Warframe. We are getting a lot of understandable feedback from players. When we released Uriel last year, everyone said he was the male Ember, right? He’s the fire type. And then there’s Ember as the fire girl.
We are constantly being asked: “I want a male Zephyr. I want a female Knightess.” In that case, it would be Saryn. But anyway, you constantly get comments like: “I love this Warframe theme. Give me the other gender and a slightly different atmosphere.”
And Frost has so far been the only ice type in Warframe. No other Warframe has really dealt with ice. The fact that we are now developing a female ice frame is very exciting.
I believe the only other thing I can say about her is that for the conception of this next frame, we were genuinely inspired by a specific story from the cultural world. It was very fitting to make her a female ice frame. It was kind of “at the right place at the right time.” And thus emerges the Ice Blade of Narin
.
You will find out everything about her in the Dev Stream from South Korea in September, which is very exciting. And yes, she is really exciting. I can’t wait for people to see her.
MeinMMO: Aside from the things we’ve talked about – is there a personal highlight from the announcements at TennoCon that you are particularly looking forward to?
Megan Everett: Ooh. I mean, I really believe that it’s this trip to Tau. I saw this sequence when it was still in a raw state and didn’t look good at all, and yet I was already excited about it. So I have very high expectations of the viewers’ reactions when they finally see Tau and are there. That is the highlight of what we have been working on for me.
And everything else is also very exciting. The Emir, Shockwave, Nightwave – it’s just fun and silly. And I believe people are really excited that the Hex characters from 1999 are being brought back to life.
There are plenty of exciting things, and it will just be another exciting year. I hope that people can identify with what we do and want to join us on this journey.
MeinMMO: Finally, I want to wrap up the interview with a slightly funnier question: If you had to describe the community as a Warframe, which one would it be?
Megan Everett: Uhh, as a Warframe? I would say they are probably Jade. And I say this because Jade is a very passionate yet powerful Warframe.
She obviously has her own story arc, and that was a bit sad. But I think everyone could really identify with Jade’s story. She had to make some sacrifices. But ultimately, she is this powerful, beautiful being that radiates compassion, understanding, and just love. And our community shows us their love each and every day. I feel that Jade represents our players well.
MeinMMO: Thank you very much for the interview and the great answers!
MeinMMO was present as a press representative at TennoCon. The costs for admission, travel, and accommodation were covered by the organizers.
And especially in London, Ontario – we are not exactly the biggest place. We are also not the place where the most action is. People would rather drive to Toronto or Montreal. That’s where the action is. So, I found it completely unthinkable that there could be a development studio in London.
I was a branch manager in a supermarket and wasn’t quite sure what to do with my life. I went to college, got a marketing degree, and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Then I met Rebecca through mutual friends and didn’t even know what she did for a living. I had no idea about her background or anything.
Just so, while we were hanging out, she noticed that I was a nerd because I talked about video games. And I have Zelda tattoos. She was like, “Oh, wait a minute. You might be like me.” She approached me and said, “I work for a development studio, and the video game we’re currently working on is doing really well, and I urgently need help in the community area. Would you be willing to apply for that?”
And I thought: “Oh my God, this exists here in London? I had no idea.”
I believe my skills were very… well, I might have been anonymously active in the Zelda forums. Otherwise, I had no real background knowledge that would have qualified me for the role I took on back then.
But Rebb simply said, “No, you are the right person.” Something like, “Come on, join us. We will get along great. And I’ll teach you everything I know.” Because she too was learning all the while during the process. So it was a very natural entry into this industry, which I think in 2026 likely wouldn’t happen anymore.
I think, by 2026, you have to bring the skills or something like that already with you. I was just very lucky to befriend Rebecca and get into the industry. She then taught me everything I know – from forums to social media to the actual gameplay. Not that I could program, but just understanding what all that means in the background, and so on. She taught me that. So I would say it was very …, I was underqualified for this job.
MeinMMO: But you learned it bit by bit. I mean, in the end, it worked out, so why not?
Megan Everett: Yes, I learned it piece by piece. And I think, as I said, Rebb taught me everything. I definitely feel that when I joined around 2021 – when I was asked if I wanted to become Community Director – I had full confidence in my abilities, in what I had learned. And of course, I always watched Rebb as she did her work and tried to emulate that as best as I could.
I believe one of the most important things I had to understand when I became Community Director was that Rebb – and I am of course biased – was kind of the perfect example of how a Community Director could be. I had to understand that as much as I wanted to just be a copy of Rebb, I couldn’t. I am my own person and have my own leadership style and those things.
So I had to come to the realization that I need to approach this in my own way. I take everything I have ever learned from her and apply it. But yes, it was a position I was actually underqualified for, and then I just really worked hard and took to heart everything Rebb said and taught me.
And honestly, this game is very dear to me. I would not still be in this role if I did not love the game as much as I do, and the people who work on it. I mean, I owe everything to Rebb. And she would hate that I say this, but it’s really true.
MeinMMO: Oh, that’s really sweet!
An interview with Rebecca about her path to Creative Director can be found here:
An Industry in Constant Change
MeinMMO: Warframe has been around for over a decade now. I believe working with the community is probably one of the main reasons why that has been possible at all.
In your opinion, how has the aspect of community management changed over the years? Do you also see changes in gaming and gaming culture in general?
Megan Everett: Yes. I like to think back to the time when I started, and our team consisted of two or three people. Back then, we mainly only had Twitter and Facebook to communicate with people. And we had our own chat in the game and our forums. That was it.
We spent our time reading threads and responding to them. We had support tickets, but that was about it. Over the course of 2013, we then started with Twitch. That was at a time when Twitch was just starting. We were one of the first video game developers to ever do live streams on Twitch. And we took off with that. It also became a channel to communicate with the players.
What I find really interesting – if you jump to the present or the last few years – is that there are now so many ways to communicate with players. There are social media, there’s Discord, there are in-game chats. There are so many ways we can communicate with our players through our live streams and all the other channels.
It’s almost a little crazy and hectic to manage all that. Because you want to ensure you cover all areas and don’t neglect any platform, be it Reddit or similar. Even if you don’t own Reddit, you want to ensure it is well managed and maintained. It’s definitely an area where a lot is going on, and we as a community team – I would like to say: as experts – must understand how to handle it and figure out how to communicate on these different channels.
13 Years of Success – How Does That Work?
Megan Everett: Regarding the current state of Warframe and the community we have built, I am very proud. Because I believe our community lets us know when we make a misstep, for which I am very grateful. We have our highs and lows, and our community honestly accompanies us on this journey, for which I am very grateful.
But it is a tribute to the early days when we thought about how we wanted to shape the community and were very sincere and honest about it.
We use the word “transparent” here almost to the point of overkill. I try to think of another word when I want to talk about transparency. But from the beginning, we have always said: Warframe should become a game that players can help develop. That we shape together by giving us feedback and let us know what they like and what they don’t.
As community staff, we directly pass that on to the developers. We advocate for the community and try to convey our perspectives. And I believe, because we have been doing this for more than a decade – now for 13 years – our development team overall understands how valuable community input is, even if it’s not always what you want to hear.
They know that community feedback is one of the most important components of every update we release or any changes we make. That was, I believe, in many ways our guiding star – or our signpost – when it comes to how we design our updates, how we talk about them, and how we present ourselves in these live streams.
We really don’t take ourselves seriously at all. We go into these DevStreams or these TennoLives and joke around, we laugh, we make jokes. I think what we’ve built over the years has simply come about – or not. But it shows our community that we are just humans and that we are just developing a game that we love.
And we develop the game together with our players, who have been there for 13 years. Those who still belong to the founding members. I just attended the Anime Expo and met about six founding members, and I thought: “Oh my God, you are still here. That’s crazy. You are the reason this game is still alive.”
And I think we owe it to the community to just keep that going. With what is hopefully now something like a legacy. Consisting of Warframe updates and a story that develops in strange directions. And like I said: developing the game our community wants – the game we want – just having fun and being honest when we make a small misstep.
A Future with AI – Grim?
MeinMMO: Do you have any expectations or assumptions about what the future might hold? Especially in a time when AI is everywhere and can achieve a lot, such as writing social media posts or similar.
What do you think makes “human work” and interactions so valuable, especially in the Warframe community?
Megan Everett: Yes, that’s a great question. And I think, of course, the situation out there is frightening. That cannot be denied. You open any social media app and the first thing you see is something that endangers our industry. That is honestly demoralizing and very sad.
I feel very – this is of course biased – but I consider myself very lucky to be with Warframe where we are. We have had some of the best years we’ve ever had. And I think that’s quite impressive for a 13-year-old game. Of course, I hope that it continues that way.
People will look at the Steam charts, analyze them down to the smallest detail, and do what they have to do. But we see the stats internally and can derive everything we need from them.
We know some of the weaknesses of “Jade Shadows: Constellations,” which has just been released. We know: Okay, we tried that with the Railjack, and maybe that wasn’t the best move. So, we will do something else and try to connect where we might have missed something.
We firmly believe that humans develop games, and not, well, that AI develops games. And that has been very important to us in everything we’ve done.
For example, we always conduct our demos live. In every single TennoCon demo – the “Tenno Live” – either Rebecca or I play a 25- to 30-minute demo live with an Xbox 360 controller. Completely live, with little hiccups and things that aren’t perfect.
That’s how we want to do it. And that’s how we will always do it because we believe in that. We see ourselves as a Canadian “home brewed” company that simply wants to be authentic and honest and not take the easy road or chase what people think is the next big trend. We are in our bubble here in London, Ontario. And we don’t really deviate from that. I believe that has really helped us on our path not to get too lost in all the commotion that is currently happening.
MeinMMO: Yes, I definitely agree with you.
The Biggest Update in the History of Warframe
MeinMMO: So, for TennoCon, as I know, you have some great announcements prepared. I think one of the biggest revelations will probably be that Warframe is finally advancing into the Tau system. Please tell us everything about this highly anticipated update. What can players expect?
Megan Everett: Oh, this is probably our biggest update we have ever made. I think anyone who is familiar with Warframe or has played Warframe extensively knows what Tau is – or at least knows that Tau exists, that we have never been there, and that we don’t know how it looks there.
There is this whole story about what happened in Tau. And now, in 2026 – 13 years later – we are finally heading to Tau. And we are not just going to Tau, but it is our new solar system. We have our current solar system. We have Earth, we have Mercury, and so on. And we have lived in this solar system for 13 years. Now we are creating a completely new solar system.
What the TennoCon and the Tenno Live demo will show is essentially a region of the Tau solar system called Fornax, which is like a conscious, ringed city. It deals with organized crime, drug addiction, and such things.
It is not a happy place, which is a shame. But that is of course our intention. You will see that in the demo and experience this type of region of the Tau solar system.
The complete Tenno Live demo can be found on the Warframe YouTube channel:
Later this year, we will show you a second region within the Tau solar system. And it is really huge.
When I just think of that moment in the demo when you fly through and see Tau finally opening up in front of you: I have my hopes and dreams about how people will react. I will be sad if it doesn’t go the way I wish, but I really feel that the fact that we are finally heading to Tau will be something great for our players.
I hope they enjoy the path we are on. I believe – I am almost sure – that no one expects it to be a happy place. So I think we will not disappoint anyone expecting that everything will be filled with rainbows and sunshine. It is actually the opposite. But we are finally heading there and will experience how it is together.
Of course, the Tenno Live shows only a small part of what the world of Tau will look like. I can hardly wait to see how players will react to it. How they will find Brysko – our first Warframe with inner monologue. Albrecht Entrati is also back. So there are so many great and exciting aspects of the demo that I believe will really excite people as Warframe fans and lovers.
I think we will be putting a few puzzle pieces in the huge Warframe puzzle we have built. And probably also removing some. Because we always like to give more questions than answers. But it will definitely encourage people to talk a bit about the connection between Old Peace and what we learned there, as well as what we are now experiencing in Tau.
MeinMMO: There will also be a new Warframe: the first female ice frame in the game. I think that sounds pretty cool. Can you tell us a bit more about her?
Megan Everett: Yes, we are keeping things a bit under wraps, apart from saying that she is our first female ice Warframe. We are getting a lot of understandable feedback from players. When we released Uriel last year, everyone said he was the male Ember, right? He’s the fire type. And then there’s Ember as the fire girl.
We are constantly being asked: “I want a male Zephyr. I want a female Knightess.” In that case, it would be Saryn. But anyway, you constantly get comments like: “I love this Warframe theme. Give me the other gender and a slightly different atmosphere.”
And Frost has so far been the only ice type in Warframe. No other Warframe has really dealt with ice. The fact that we are now developing a female ice frame is very exciting.
I believe the only other thing I can say about her is that for the conception of this next frame, we were genuinely inspired by a specific story from the cultural world. It was very fitting to make her a female ice frame. It was kind of “at the right place at the right time.” And thus emerges the Ice Blade of Narin
.
You will find out everything about her in the Dev Stream from South Korea in September, which is very exciting. And yes, she is really exciting. I can’t wait for people to see her.
MeinMMO: Aside from the things we’ve talked about – is there a personal highlight from the announcements at TennoCon that you are particularly looking forward to?
Megan Everett: Ooh. I mean, I really believe that it’s this trip to Tau. I saw this sequence when it was still in a raw state and didn’t look good at all, and yet I was already excited about it. So I have very high expectations of the viewers’ reactions when they finally see Tau and are there. That is the highlight of what we have been working on for me.
And everything else is also very exciting. The Emir, Shockwave, Nightwave – it’s just fun and silly. And I believe people are really excited that the Hex characters from 1999 are being brought back to life.
There are plenty of exciting things, and it will just be another exciting year. I hope that people can identify with what we do and want to join us on this journey.
MeinMMO: Finally, I want to wrap up the interview with a slightly funnier question: If you had to describe the community as a Warframe, which one would it be?
Megan Everett: Uhh, as a Warframe? I would say they are probably Jade. And I say this because Jade is a very passionate yet powerful Warframe.
She obviously has her own story arc, and that was a bit sad. But I think everyone could really identify with Jade’s story. She had to make some sacrifices. But ultimately, she is this powerful, beautiful being that radiates compassion, understanding, and just love. And our community shows us their love each and every day. I feel that Jade represents our players well.
MeinMMO: Thank you very much for the interview and the great answers!
MeinMMO was present as a press representative at TennoCon. The costs for admission, travel, and accommodation were covered by the organizers.
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