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Should Developers Listen To All Gamer Feedback?
Thanks to GameSpy for their 'Spy/CounterSpy' editorial discussing whether the videogame developer should listen to all fan feedback regarding in-development titles. The writer suggests: "Who in their right mind ignores advice from the people who are going to pay for your product? And in the end, that's what it comes down. Fans pay the bills - and they deserve respect." Bit he also points out the negative angle: "Fan suggestions are usually what would make the game better for that one individual. Developers need to consider the global effects of any suggestion and work to keep the majority happy." Are there some game titles or genres where a vocal minority's agitation for change has resulted in an inferior title?
They should listen to SOME feedback. Next braindead question.
Ask yourself this. Would you want to play HL2 having seen the beta that got released? Or would rather have been suprised?
Someone hates these cans.
As usual, a balence of both is often the best solution - most sensible suggestions should be listened to, and the better ones acted upon.
Is it a boat?
Filler article, obvious conclusion! Faux thinking! Decorate your webpage!
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
Yes.
Hitman : Code 47 was a fantastic game. It was all about the suspense. You could spend fifteen minutes getting yourself into a position for the perfect shot, knowing that if you fouled up, you had to start all over again. It was tense, exciting and something entirely different from anything else out there. It was also as buggy as hell, but what can you expect when the publishing house tells the developers that they will be releasing it on a certain date, whether it is finished or not?
Of course, what happened when it was released? The whining began. "It's too difficult", "you can't save midlevel", "I can't circle-strafe" etc. etc.
And so they made some changes to the sequel. Now you could easily finish a level by just charging in, all guns blazing. Things getting a bit tricky? No problem, just quicksave! Sure, you could hide your guns in a tray of groceries, pose as a postman to pass through the gate, duck into the kitchen, collect your weaponry, sneak up the stairs, bludgeon your target to death with a golfclub and escape without a shot being fired.. but why go to all that bother when the game doesn't penalise you for just shooting everyone in the head?
By listening to the "fans", who never seemed to understand the point of the game, they turned one of the most innovative games of recent times into a sub-par FPS.
I cant recally the actual quote, or who to correctly attribute it to. It's something like:
"90% of Science fiction is crap. Come to think of it, 90% of everything is crap." This applies to user suggestions.
Or to plagerize Abraham Lincon: "You can please some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time; but you can't please all the people all the time"
Anyone remember Robocop 2?
In other words, developers should not give up their vision, but should be open to that rare suggestion that might improve their vision. If not, it's design by committee.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Anyone else think of the Simpsons episode where Homer designs his dream car?
Money for nothing, pix for free
This is what happened to Tribes 2. Tribes 2 was the best game ever until they fucked it up. What happened was they had a forum built into the game itself, so most players participated in it. They used it the same way the counter-strike forums are used. "The AWM is cheap take it out of the game!" "Change this it sucks!" "Make it so people can't steal vehicles!"
The Tribes 2 devs made the mistake of doing everything the players wanted. The game turned to crap. After everybody stopped playing they finally restored the game to a decent classic version, and now you can play online with the small community in what was one of the best games ever.
Now look at Counter-Strike. It's the most popular multiplayer online game ever probably. They hardly ever do what players want. They only make changes in the interest of game design. The AWM is still there. The game is still hard. Heck, they make changes to piss players off. Like when they changed the p90 way back in the beta 7 days.
So, why does this happen? Because players are dumb. They don't know anything about game design. They only want you to change the game in such a way so that their current style of playing will immediately become the best style and they will win every time. Think about it. All those guys who say take the AWM out are guys who don't have the skill to deal with someone else sniping at them. That's part of the game and to be good you need those skills. The vast majority of the time players don't ask for game improvements. They just want the game to change to suit themselves rather than become better players. This usually turns the game into crap and all the real players leave. If you don't do what the players want and you just stick to good design all the good players stay, and the idiots stay too. They will always complain, but they will keep playing your game until the end of days. There are guys who have been complaining about things in CS since the very beginning and now they are playing on steam and complaining it is crap and the shield is cheap.
Tribes 2, Counter-Strike. Real world examples and evidence. Don't give in to the whims of players. The vast majority of players like things the way they are. Only the few idiot fanboy types are asking for changes. Don't listen to them. They may seem like the majority on the forums, because they are the majority on the forums. But they aren't the majority of your players.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
to make a coherent game you need a coherent plan of action. asking the forums whhat to do is a good way to get the pulse of what ppl want, but the details should be left to ppl who understand the technical issues.
you should be hiring talented individuals who can make a market niche, or at least predict what we want to see in a game in 3 years.
you should make the game and then patch as necessary.
you should amke a game and then instead of figuring out whhat went wrong all by your lonesome and making changes as need be for the sequel (if you get this far), you should ask the fans what they want to see and WHY in the sequel. then take this data and make a game.
deus ex2 may flop on pc, and i think youll find after the dust has cleared that it may be becuase the devs figured they were more clever than the ~100,000 (total guess) people who played DE1. not smart.
In response to (a vocal minority of) players whining, Raven Software tweaked the game balance (force powers, lightsabre moves) in each released patch for JK2. Since they overreacted to perceived problems, the result was that the "overpowered" force powers and techniques became completely underpowered in the next patch.
First, fans very often don't know what they want and they contradict each other when they ask for it.
50% say "more", 50% say "less" -> leave it like it is. Simple as that.
[The game's creators] are not required to submit to gamers for approval if they decide to move the storyline forward or change the gameplay mechanics [...]
Ummm, yes they are - gamers voice their approval in the shops. Sure, game creators don't have to make a game that sells many copies. I think it would be smarter, though.
Yes, as a developer you should listen to every opinion. And no, you should not implement every wish without thinking. But you should listen nevertheless - and remember that angry customers are more likely to voice their discontent than satisfied customers. The game mechanics are - usually - made the way they are for a reason. Find out if your reasoning is flawed (or not).
And, lastly, if developers or producers don't care, why do you still want me to register your games?
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Of course developers should Listen to all feedback.
How much of that feedback they should Act on is an entirely different matter. It's probably more important to get some sort of demographic feel for their customer base, to know if it's some sort of lunatic fringe making the most noise, or if complaints are broad-based.
Perhaps the hardest challenge would be developing a game that can appeal both to a broad base, and to hard-core lunatic fans.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Personally I think they are the worst for listening too much to the whiners.
How many Nerfs can you name happened to classes just because some people got killed in RVR by said class.
Its always the people who got smoked in a PVP situation that will cry the loudest.. doesn't matter what the circumstances of the kill were they will scream and yell and cause a fuss until Mythic nerfs the offending class.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
So, why does this happen? Because players are dumb.
So, this would be a case of "the customers don't know what's good for them?"
Well, possibly this is the case for many of the players that loudly express themselves. This doesn't have to mean that user suggestions, even when they wouldn't result in a game that most people would actually like better, should be ignored. Possibly there is a market for games that each user can adapt to their own opinion of what is good.
Of course, customized games woudln't work for network gaming, unless there is some way to ensure that all altered versions result in more or less the same level of difficulty.
Could this all be tried, or am I completely out of my mind?
What developers should however do when making a sequel, especially when they intend to ride the wave of the previous installment of the game, is look closely at what their clients like about it, and not go and remove it.
Have a look at 3DO and Might and Magic 9. The same hack&slash pushed this game into a 9th (!!) title, having a very solid clientelle and fan base.
Then, right after #8, someone up in management decided he wants to go do what the mass-selling games do. Let's transform it into a simple-to-use "RPG" game that the masses can understand, he said. And so they did.
It may have been wiser to do such a stupid experiment on a new title (like they did when they decided on a genre-change - with Heroes of Might and Magic - which went quite well, and ended them with two hot-selling brands) rather than dumb down a game that was bought for being technical hack&slash and alienate your own paying crown, in search of some dream of the masses chasing you with money.
The mistake managers make here is thinking that many new people will buy your game in addition to those who bought the last 8 titles. They're wrong of course. Take away what people liked for 8 titles, and they won't buy the 9th. You end up relying solely on your hypothetical newly-added clientelle. In M&M9, they stayed hypothetical.
Same goes for Unreal 2, or better yet, Deus-Ex 2, being released now. DE1 was one of the best games of all time. Then Mr. Spector sold out to a big paycheck to make a console shooter and slap the DE2 title on it, dumbed down the RPG elements of the game (which is what made it stand out from the rest of dozens of shooters on the shelves 2 years ago), removed reloading, replaced ammo with universal ammo (a way of saying either all your weapons work, or none of them do). Between the lines this reads: you never run out of ammo. Whoopee. This was done at the expense of what I suspect will be alienating the entire DE1 PC crowd.
Furthermore, where DE1 broke ice, DE2 will mingle with the crowd, be like all other console shooters, and disappear from the shelves 4 months later. I can understand why his producer takes the "exploit, trash and throw away" attitude at Spector's titles. After all, corporations are in it for a quick buck. But for someone who may have an interest in preserving the title/brand (not to mention releasing yet another one) this seems a clear no-no way to go. Looked what happened to Unreal 2. If, that is, you remember it ever came out. In less than a year, the game utterly disappeared.
So should game devs listen to their own crowd? If that crowd paid them for making a previous title, listening to them and understanding what they paid for is the sole ticket to making them pay again.
Cheers.
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Players can tell you if they're having fun. Their feedback is useful, you should consider their feedback in making design choices about the game, this doesn't mean you let the players design your game!
I don't know how anyone could conceive that a useful game development process includes doing everything the players ask. There seems to be a consensus it's a stupid idea amongst the slashdot posters this is the case. Waste of space on slashdot.
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I support spreading santorum
The game works with the typical FPS keyboard layout (ASDW/ALT/SPACE/Mouse). However, whenever you were walking forward (holding down 'W') and then wanted to jump (alt key), Windows XP would beep and then bring you back to the desktop. You could switch back to the game by clicking on the task bar, but this problem bugged me, since it made the game unplayable.
I opened a ticket with Ubi Soft's tech support, and I was told to do the "get latest drivers" routine. Did that. Still didn't work. Their solution? Remap the keyboard. For those of you that play FPS games, you know the layout I described is the most sensible way of doing it, unless you want to shift everything on your desk and use the number pad.
I was appaled by Ubi Soft's lack of an acknowledgement of a problem in their software and refusal to fix the issue. I vowed never to buy another product from them again.
(ok, my rant is done)
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
I'm a user/peruser of the Nival Forums, specifically for the Etherlords II forum. A lot of suggestions are great. Some contradict. Some are awful. One thing I do know is that users want everything.
There's a reason for this. It's economic bias. They want as much as they can get for their $30-70. They forget development costs are fixed to a certain limit. As long as the company is willing to listen, they're gonna ask.
Let's face it. You need a reasonably small selection of users of the end product to filter the crap from all of the users. You also need a small panel of the programmers to breathe some sense into the producer as to what is possible off the filtered list. And the producers of the product really owe it to themselves to stick to the original product specs/plans/capabilities as much as possible.
As far as priorities, listen to the user's bug reports. If you don't kill all the current bugs, you'll never get them all. New "stuff" will always add new bugs, and you don't want the errors to interact.
As far as Etherlords II, a lot of the suggestions are great, but for a sequel. So even bad suggestions in the present can be good suggestions in the future.
Obviously you have to listen to criticism about hardware issues and general performance.
As for the creative element, though, it's the same as workshopping any artwork. You really just want to listen to the BEST criticism, and that's the kind where the audience senses where the producer intended to go with the game, and can offer intelligent advice on how close the product is to getting there. Stuff like "Well, I don't think this is a good RTS because it's not more like Total Annihilation" is bad criticism. Even stuff like "It's not a good RTS because you have to spend too much time micromanaging resources" isn't the greatest criticism because it doesn't take into account whether or not the producer wants to have made an RTS that focuses on micromanaging resources, as well as the fact that many gamers might like such an RTS. What THAT producer needs to hear is "It's not a good RTS because the resource management isn't fun -- it's repetitive, I don't have ways of automating my units, etc.".
Good advice comes from a producer being clear about their intent for the game, and finding the sort of people best able to offer advice on how to fulfill that intent. It's when the producer ignores this advice that they commit hubris.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Sometimes "feedback" is more than just e-mails to the technical staff. There was so much (righteous) negativity towards the shoddy GameCube port of BG:DA that they are not even releasing the followup on the GameCube, citing that "not enough money was made on the GameCube version for the first port". So BG:DA2 was cancelled for the GameCube because it didn't sell.
However they misunderstood the feedback -- they assumed that the reason nobody was buying the GameCube version was because nobody was interested, when the real reason was that the port was shoddy and so much later than the PS2 release that most interested parties had already bought and played the game, and the other interested parties were capable of reading a review.
So BG:DA2 is on the incredibly inferior PS2 and not on the GameCube at all. The strange thing is that this "lesson" is being repeated by many gaming companies of late: release a late, shoddy port of "game X" on the GameCube, it doesn't sell, and then halt development for the GameCube. It's strange that the companies don't learn from "Soul Calibur II" that all consoles given equal footing, the GameCube version sold incredibly well.
Even games as recent as UbiSoft's XIII suffer from substandard GameCube ports -- XIII for example doesn't offer LAN play for the GameCube, so obviously people would prefer the XBox and PS2 versions which have that feature. The sad thing is, Ubi will probably assume that there just isn't any interest for the GameCube version and not release the sequel on the GameCube, or something ridiculous like that, when what they should be doing is apologising to the GameCube owners and releasing a version with LAN play and watch it sell like hotcakes. Are you kidding? A $99 console, and we can get 4 players on each of 4 boxes, for 16-person LAN shooter madess? How freaking insane would that be. But no, they put LAN play on the $200, 100-pound (ok the weight is an exaggeration) XBox and the $200, 8-bit-graphics (ok that is another exaggeration) PS2. And on top of that, how about using the GBA-link feature to use the GBA as a radar device, or for guided weapons, etc, some feature which would actually make the GameCube version even more appealing? And each of the other consoles has something "exclusive" like a multiplayer mode, why not an exclusive multiplayer mode for GameCube such as "Reverse Tag", etc? Although this is just another stupid gimmick -- these "console-specific" feature-wars are just stupid, stupid, stupid and don't seem to have any technical basis whatsoever.
Bottom line: the GameCube just outsold the PS2 for the insanity that was Black Friday and Thanksgiving week. When are developers going to stop misunderstanding the "feedback" when their games do not sell on GameCube?
MORTAR COMBAT!
This is a huge advantage if your development team is good at game design, and a huge disadvantage if your developers suck at it. For better or worse, the rules of a console game are essentially static. On the other hand, players of PC games know that they can influence the developers (via posting on official message boards and the like) in an attempt to get the rules of the game to work in their favor. Therefore PC gamers are more likely to be voice any gripes they have about the game.
It'd be interesting to see a PC game-development group come out and say "for the first N months that our game is out, there will be no gameplay-affecting patches, only bugfixes and the like"... this would discourage people from going straight to the messageboards with "OMGOMGOMG I got pwn3d by strategy X, and I'm too much of an idiot to figure out how to beat strategy X, so clearly strategy X is overpowered, please nerf". Having a moratorium on balance patches would actually force people to think, "well, I think strategy X is overpowered... but they're not going to fix it for at least 2 months... so in the meantime I better shut up and figure out some way of countering it."
Part of the reason I don't play Warcraft III anymore is that I don't have a ton of time to dedicate to nothing but games, and the balance-update cycle for WC3 seemed to be so short that every time I played it was a different game -- each of the units I was used to playing suddenly became stronger or weaker, or cost more, or less, or took a longer time to build... it got to the point where it was impossible to actually play a good game without revisiting the messageboards every day to see what the current complaints were about (and therefore what would be nerfed in the next patch.)
[Sigh]. Someday. Someday.
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
The developers should listen, they don't have to respond or do what the customers want of course.
Now with that said if they don't listen and react enough they will not please the customers and loose those who are not happy.
Ok, first, they SHOULD listen to customer feedback. They need to get good beta testers. I mean, people who will actually help test and provide feedback, not fanboys that'll just say "this is great" no matter what, and not people that just sign up for beta, play twice, and finish. A good beta tester is worth their weight in gold.
Second, while they should listen to feedback, listening and actually implementing those suggestions are two different things. Some suggestions are just stupid. Some a great. Most are in between. It's up to the developer to figure out which suggestions are the right ones to make. The most popular suggestion might not be the right one, and can ruin a game.
Third, sometimes it comes down to company politics. The team might have a great vision, but if the big boss REALLY wants a talking dog in your FPS, it'll go in there...even if it is stupid. This happens ALL the time on projects, and not just on games. Think of all the stupid products you've ever seen. I'd bet that a lot of those had people at the company who tried to prevent the release (or at least fix it), and it was some dork in a position of "power" that decided to be a dick and do it their way, even though it was stupid.
When you're in the middle of beta, it's usually too later to make massive changes, even if the product does suck... the team might want to do it, but the bean counters won't let them. In the end, releasing a crappy product foreits not only the money you could have made with a better product, but it ends up ruining the house's reputation.
Let me get this straight. Companies want to spy on our buying habits, profile us socially, statistically, and behaviorally, and generally come up with a good model of our tastes, likes and dislikes, but they're uncertain as to whether they want our opinions? What?
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Many quality, genre-defining 3D shooters use alt.
Maybe you've never heard of Wolfenstein 3D, or Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake.
Sure, XBOX shooters don't use ALT, but first person shooters are disadvantaged on a console due to the input.
Ultima Online has seen a series of changes, each one lowering the risk/reward ratio. Of course each time that happens, it makes players happy (more loot, no pk's!) but now it's so easy it's boring.
For great justice.
Many projects turn to mush because they listen too much to their users. Master of Orion 3 implemented all of the desires of the hardcore fans. What did we get? A game that only hardcore fans would love.
Part of a good game design process will involve frustrating your users. If a user is upset that the railgun is too powerful, 99 times out of 100 they need to learn to play better. It should be a motivating factor. If you keep getting jacked, CYA. Live in fear. That's the point.
Likewise, the kind of fans that hang around on forums are going to want features that will only dilute other player's experiences, if not downright annoy them. I may want my worms in worms 3D to have bios, backstories, and individual stats, but the casual gamer would find that baffling. A hot topic on the Empires: DMW forums was the lifecycle of the ambient animals. It wasn't enough that they reproduced and grew, the fans also wanted the animals to trade DNA when mating, to protect their young, and to hunt their own food.
That's not to say that fan feedback isn't essential to balance competitive games. Either somebody somewhere is going to think of an omnipotent strategy that didn't occur to you, or your system isn't complicated enough. But don't give in to the whims of your fans. Only you have access to the full game. Only you are paid to know what will work and what won't. If everyone on your forums agrees that having the 6 key be the default action key is bad, consider fixing it. If, on the other hand, 20 of them say that the thing which would make driving really fun would be random tire blowouts, thank them for their suggestion and get some work done.
Make it fun, make it done, make another one.
The ______ Agenda
I know a developer who gave the "fans" everything they wanted. Fans WANT Boba Fett! Fans WANT to see Yoda fight. He gave the FANS what they wanted and forgot to make a good movie.
If you focus on your fans you can lose sight of the vision and quality you need. If you focus on your own vision without taking into account what people desire, you make a masterpiece that few can appreciate.
Success lies in the balance between giving people what they need and controling the quality.
When Westwood was working on Red Alert 2, they experimented with lots of different strengths for the superweapons, and finally settled for something slightly on the heavy side of the spectrum, but not extremely so.
When the game was released a lot of people complained that they were too powerful. A lot of people complained that they weren't powerful enough. (Unfortunatly i forget if there was any particular bias to one side or the other.) So while working on Yuri's Revege, they put a poll up on the website, asking if people thought the superweapons were too strong, too weak, or about right.
I forget the exact numbers, but it came out pretty close to 1/3 for each answer. The lead designer concluded that this meant they'd balanced the superweapons pretty well. On the other hand i wonder how far out of whack something would have to be before you'd get responses very far out of line of a random distribution. Unless something is blatantly out of whack, i suspect for any individual element you'll frequently end up with equal amounts of people thinking something is too weak, too strong, or just right, and one group being more vocal than the other about their opinion is not sufficient reason to make a change.
And of course even if there _had_ been a significant percent in favor of a chance in one direction, they'd have to wonder about the nature of their source of data, a poll on a website isn't exactly an unbiased information source.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It's important to know what people really like and dislike. However, if you have a vision for your game you also need to focus on that. It's a bit of a tight rope.
The early development of EQ was seriously harmed by the devs listening to the extremely vocal minority, leading to massive nerf campaigns in the name of "balance".
I think it was partly due to it's being the first really big MMO, and the devs didn't know how to filter the suggestions.
So now they've swung the other way, and the SWG dev team ignores the players too much. I was in Beta for SWG and there were a lot of very important issues that the devs completely ignored the players on. It ended up causing major problems in the first few months of release.
is seperating the wheat from the chaff: Remember that "gamer advice" hepled gave us the original NBA hands-sized Xbox controller, as well as the longer/breakaway cord.
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men... --Willy Wonka
I have a friend who likes to play football games on the easiest mode, and run up 100 points to 0 on the opposing team. He can sit there and do this for hours.
My other friend likes GTA, because he can try out different cars and roam around looking for stuff to do.
I like games that involve character development, and acquiring big, bad swords and spells. Games like Halo give me motion sickness.
In summary:
There are different archetypes of gamers, who each enjoy different things. They expect to get some sort of reward, gratification, or experience, according to their personality type. To make a hit game, you just have to appeal to one or more of these broad sets of challenge/reward/satisfaction.
All gamer feedback could potentially be categorized into one of a dozen or so themes, and used to make something cool.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Way back when he infamously said "We don't listen to players. They only fuck us up."
You want proof? Go watch a few episodes of a TV show. Say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then go read some Buffy fanfiction.
Do the same with Star Trek. Try it with some comic books.
Look at what happened to a TV show like Doctor Who when it explicitly became "for the fans" (Clue: There's a reason the news is that Doctor Who is back on the air)
Listening to the fans is not a smart idea. Even if they have computers and post on message boards.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Does anyone else find the fact that this editorial was posted on GameSpy to be the least bit ironic? While their historical articles have some merit, I am frequently left speechless by the inanity of their editorial content. I mean, how can you take seriously someone who finds it even worthwhile to argue whether game developers should take to heart every remark that their customers make?
Of course you don't want to listen to all feedback. People want different, conflicting things. Often, gamers don't even know what they want. Look at The Wind Waker: it was blasted up and down prior to release, and has since gone on to be one of the most successful games of 2003. If someone has consistently insightful commentary on improving games, chances are they already work for a game development studio. Everything else is just marketing masturbation, and while it might increase sales, adding elements to satisfy consumers probably won't do much for the quality of the product.
type that are dying because of the public's desire for new, better games. Personally I like playing turn based strategy, 2d platform games and text adventures. Not that I am putting down FPS or other new 3d eye candy games, but a lot of game design skills are learned making simple games that the majority of gamers today don't seem to appreciate.
Celebrities are like ads, if we all ignore them, they'll just go away.
There's a saying about another saying, "The customer is always right", and that's "even a whore won't do everything the customer demands."
If you have a fifty customers and your product costs a million bucks a pop, you might want to jump when they say jump. if you have a million customers and your product costs fifty bucks, you better bank on your creative vision, not fickle demands contrary to the design of the product.
There's bugs, there's misfeatures, and there's design. Sometimes they just need to buy another game -- it helps if you also produce that game too. Geez, what if myth added building and resource gathering?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
UT2K3 is easily the best example of user whining that got way too much attention.
I'm not talking about the graphics, which hardcore Unreal and UT fans looked at and said, "Hey, it's Quake!"
No, I'm talking about the weapons. Granted, every one complained in UT about the flak cannon being overpowered, the shock combo being too powerful, the sniper rifle being to easy to camp with, and more. I don't see a problem with listening to that when considering how to tweak them for a new game.
The problem is that the developers paid way too much attention to their forums while making it; gamers were giving them tons of suggestions by the post-load on how to improve it...despite the fact that they hadn't ever even SEEN the game. Because of these suggestions, the game ended up more developed towards a small group (one that apparently was arrogant enough to think the shock combo wasn't strong enough) and when the ancient Unreal gamers touched it, they dropped the game like it was on fire.
To this day I still think UT2K3 is the downfall of Epic. Yeah, their game engine still looks nice enough...but combine the foolishness of UT2K3 with the utter failure of Unreal 2, and you'll see that many a dedicated Unreal/UT player don't really care about the Unreal series anymore. All because the developers cared too much to kiss the ass of a few fans who thought whining enough could get them the features they wanted.
Aren't the developers themselves a vocal minority?
A good humor post, but you do raise a interesting question. I think what it boils down to is this:
People lie.
Not even intentionally or knowingly, but when its a judgement call folks are giving their _Opinion_, which is just that, and opinion. People frequently hold an opinion, voice an opinion, but then don't always act on it, or in accordance with it. Your opinion also reflects how _you_ view yourself rather than the actual facts of your existance.
This is why companies would rather spy on you and gather overall statistics. These are facts,of a sort. (whats the old saw? 3 kind of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics.) Your actions speak lowder than you words, and are less affected by your own self perception. This is part of why introspection and psychoanalysis fell out of favor in psychology in favor of behavioralism.
This is the quandry of privacy vs responsiveness to consumer desires. Take for example tv ratings. There was a flash in the pan a while back about Tivo recording customer viewing habits and what use was made of that information. If every TV/Tivo/cable box sent back viewing preferences to broadcasters then we would probably have better programs on the air (farscape? firefly?), but really do you want ANYONE to know about your secret addiction to Gilligan's Island? And once you open the door, how do you filter?
There there is my answer to your question, they want a model be cause its more accurate than your opinion. The question of which is more important I will leave for another discussion.
Orthancstone you are correct sir. Sadly, quite a few people in the dev community agree with you regarding UT2K3, but in Epic's defense, they did not develop Unreal2, Legend Entertainment did, under minimal supervision from Epic.
One step beyond listening is providing gamer-initiated opportunities to change games--mods. Simcity 4 is ten times the stock release because players can create lots, modify effects, and even fix bugs. The fan site Simtropolis is often the source for bug reports that get Maxis to release new patches.
If I was a developer, the game concept would be pretty much inviolate, but small modifications and bug fixes would be very much gamer-driven.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
OR the episode where Homer consulted with Mel Gibson on a movie.
It should seem pretty damn obvious that if you're in a position where you have the skills and talent to actually be hired on to BUILD a game, you should know a thing or two more than the average joe who can only PLAY games.
Everyone thinks their a game designer, but few really think things out in a complete, coherent and balanced way.
"Lincoln never even said "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time." It "cannot be found in any of Lincoln's printed addresses." Boller (Paul F. Boller) says it's a fake, but Lincoln scholars still repeat it because, they say, it sounds so "Lincolnesque."
This is only partially true for MMORPGs. Listening to only SOME players is exactly what caused quite a large population of people to leave Ultima Online.
In 99 or 2000 (can't remember exactly), most of the PvP issues had been resolved so that people who were annoying could be dealt with (Kill Stealers, people who deliberately try and get powerful monsters like Balrons to kill you, and then loot you [Lewters]), while still punishing those who recklessly and willfully hunted helpless people like newbies. Newbie killing was NOT an accepted practice, even among those who were deeply "red".
Then they screwed the game up. The devs listened to all of the people who had absolutely no sense, and couldn't figure out why they died every half an hour from being stupid. In that game, it was NOT hard to escape from more powerful players. But then they removed pre-casting (the ability to have a spell ready to cast and still have a weapon equipped). This effectively made it almost impossible to kill somebody who had even rudimentary escaping skills, like the A-holes who deliberately tried to get you killed, instead of killing you themselves.
My example is where the developers changed a game to cater to a specific vocal sub-set of the players, ignoring all those who were OK with that system. It was one of the primary reasons that caused me to leave UO (The other being the introduction of absolutely rediculous time sinks like the necessity of having the Evaluate Intelligence Skill). UO used to be a game where the players mainly policed themselves by treating other people fairly, and killing those who just were there to ruin it for others. However, after those changes, it turned into a free-for-all for the A-holes, who could ruin other people's experiences with no consequences to them.
Basically, for MMORPGs, the developers should mainly listen to the old-hands, and those who are established on community messageboards as being sensible people, and ignore the people that nobody respects. Most people who act badly are not well-represented in online communities, while those who know what's happening and are constructive generally participate in lots of online and offline activities. In UO a good measure would be to see who attracted the most people for the Weddings. Those people are the ones to be respected, not the whiners.
Erioll
those are two good examples. deus ex was a complex game and the devs took out that complexity (in mostly superficial ways, but still significant) for the sequel. the fans were enraged but ion storm at least responded. so they're walking a fine line (actually more like dancing back and forth on it). being a fan myself i want them to patch the pc version but if those changes were included in the initial release it might have cost them sales in the console market and ultimately displeased eidos, their publisher. it's a hard choice.
but at least they're dancing on that line. valve and steam are not, as a previous post pointed out. but that can be a problem. a while back valve released an update that inadvertently prevented people from playing half-life games in direct3d. the result was a firestorm of fan complaints that only got worse as valve released patch after patch (once a week actually) that added features like shadows under players or tweaks to weapons' strength in cs without even admitting the d3d problem much less fixing it or even announcing that they were fixing it or removing the broken feature that caused the mess in the first place. their priorities in updating the game are obviously insensitive to the needs of the users, and that kind of attitude is dangerous - even for a company as big as valve.
dance the line - the game that dances the best wins the prize.
my book
With Linux distros or desktop shells, user feedback in a vacuum.
Quack, quack.
Romero: Tell me what you want and I'll listen.
Vocal Minority: We want to wait forever for a subpar videogame while you drive your video game company into oblivion!
Romero: You got it!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Only if we want games to drop to the sad state of affairs that is Hollywood currently. Generally speaking - focus groups are a bad thing.
As one of the developers of a fairly popular multiplayer FPS game and a frequenter of the game's online forums this is definitely an interesting topic.
Something I think worth adding to this mix is an option fans actually have now days. Go make their own (damn) game. This is a mod friendly world we live in now. Don't like how a game works, and think you got better ideas how it should be done right? Then make it yourself. Or go find one of the hundreds of active mod projects and join it. Give your ideas to a cause and show your stuff.
I suppose that could come off as sort of arrogant, but it's not meant to be. That's where a number of games came from that are popular. CS, DoD, Desert Crisis to name a few.
Overall, most suggestions presuppose unrealistic dev resources. Plus the devs will recieve hate mail for each popular suggestion that doesn't make it into the game. Plus, the devs want to make it their game and just might not want to take many suggestions, no matter how interesting or helpful. And often an idea comes in too late in the process, or too early.
Yes, you are a potential customer and are thereby an important element to be considered when creating the product, and nothing should be created in a white tower, but since you can't actually play with the creation or even see it in action, your help would be only sporadically useful.
True...I wasn't trying to tie in Unreal 2's development with UT2K3's dev. Sorry if that was not clear.
People who play the game a lot will have a very different view from more casual players. Similar to having a good command line interface versus a good GUI, different people will want different things. If the game it too hard to learn, they alienate new players. Of course, in traditional games, you have already bought the game and good luck trying to return it. In online games with subscription costs, this won't fly.
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Amazingly, Everquest, a successful online game, was really hard to begin. If you didn't know what you were doing, you could easily loose your "corpse" which had most (or all) of your valuables on it. People still played because it was fun. There was risk, but it was exciting. And you could always get another +3 club of slamming. However, with the increase in competition, Everquest is making it easier and easier to start the game. You now have ingame overhead maps of the cities, which used to take just hours of time to really learn. Now you begin with some gear and some basic hotbuttons pre-configured, and your spells pre-memorized. Further, dont even have to worry about loosing your corpse until level 9? 10? Thus, the game is far more user friendly.
And this has been cited as a sign of the end of Everquest by some. So it goes.
The power gamers will perhaps not mind a complex interface if it is powerful. The novice will. If there are far more novices than power gamers, the balance of limited developer time and effort will shift that direction, if the company is wise. Supply and demand. Simple.
Yet in MMORPGs, there is another issue, and it spurs endless discussion. The question of balance. The history of Everquest is full of "game breaking" items which have been "nerfed" or made less useful, or in some cases, no longer dropped. Yet beyond the obvious items (say, unlimited mana or health) which clearly have to go, there is the big issue. Balance between the classes.
Since players have a great deal of time invested in their character, thus there is a high barrier to switching classes, people hope that in the future, their class is still desirable in groups. Everquest has a strong group system: to get really good stuff, you have to team up. It sucks if you happen to have chosen a class which no one else wants.
Add to this constantly changing content and new levels and abilities, and you have a recipe for infinite whining - and any change will make some people unhappy. Even a simple step of giving one class an extra boost would make classes in competition with it whine.
People will whine about everything, and the internet is a highly critical media. Yet constant change is needed to sell product, thus constant tweaks to balance are needed. And despite the userbase being incredibly whiney, they generally have the idea of what needs to be done.
The current example in everquest is the warrior class at the very high end has trouble holding monster's attention (compared to others). A *small* increase is needed - only for warriors and only at the high levels. Warriors would still be inferior to others at this task, but better than they are now. This is generally the consensus of the calmer voices on the boards. Yet when a change was announced, there was a vast outcry from others that they would be left behind - before they even saw the changes.
Obviously, balance will never be perfect. I think a good idea is to plan for it. Implement a user vote for the most pathetic "class" and give that class, or the bottom 2 or 3, a small bonus to make them more attractive. Hold the election, say, monthly. It will give the users a voice and it will restore *minor* imbalances. Major imbalances will still need to be addressed in the usual way and, although users generally know what is needed, the details must be left to neutral parties - hopefully the developers.
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a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
As a game developer, I find it interesting that this question comes up so often. Where's the posts about whether or not movie directors should listen to viewer feedback when creating movie or a sequel? The best we hope for is some small focus groups giving a thumbs up or down in an "advanced screening" of a movie. (Usually resulting in a hastily tacked-on "happy ending" to please the audience.) Do you think script writers really go out and look for suggestions on how to write a movie script? Do you think every bit of feedback from every movie is recorded by the big movie studios?
;)
You could also apply this to authors and books. Wait, maybe that's a good idea; then Stephenson's fiction might actually have a satisfying ending.
This isn't to say that feedback isn't useful or should be completely ignored, however. But, knowing how to filter the useful from the less useful suggestions is a important (and time-consuming) thing to do.
My thoughts,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
From my experience: ...
-Usually, forums are filled with hard core gamers that do not always represent the large audience of your game.
-It is very time consuming to read forums. As a developper, it is also very frustrating as alot of posts only contain negative, non constructive feedback.
-When making a game, you cannot always take the perfect decision. It is very easy to propose solutions and ideas from the comfort of your home, but in the real world, there are deadlines to respect, technical limitations to live with,
Finally, it will never be possible to make a game that everyone loves. I think we should let developpers make the game they envision, at least you get a game that has consistency (hopefully), and not a game that tries to make everyone happy, and fails at it.(jack of all trades, master of none...) This is a very interesting question, and I think it must be really hard to have a good opinion on the subject if you do not have experience as a game developper first. Maybe we should have a round table about this at the next GDC...
Gamers are usually good at telling you what they like and what they don't like - they are good at playtesting. But I would guess that the average gamer has very little idea about how to make a really good, balanced game. Just because an idea sounds good to them doesn't mean it would work out that way in practice. So their opinions on the current state of the game should be listened to, but their suggestions for how it should be altered should be taken with a pinch of salt - YOU are the one who knows about game design, not them.
qntm.org
It is insane to listen to all user feedback because some are idiots. One users "good idea" might be the stupidest thing to the rest of the population. Just be reasonalble when you are developing and borrow things (controls, features, etc) from games you like as need be and then when the time is ready put together selected team of respected users and listen to their feedback and try to make them as happy as possible. Don't lose focus on the important issues just because some idiot is complaining about something that does not truly affect the game.
What if Lucas had released a ten-minute "demo" of The Phantom Menace halfway through the editing process. Not a commercial -- an actual example of some of his "ideas" for the movie. A couple scenes with JarJar, a couple "Yippes!" and a midichlorian quote or two. Can you imagine what kind of feedback he would have received on how to make a better movie?
Granted the movie made a zillion dollars thanks to fanbois who went to see it ten times even though they hated it. That's no way to judge the quality of a movie. I look back at the dissapointment it was, and wonder if a few helpful hints would have helped save the soul of the franchise.
Players have a tendency to not look at the big picture. They often see something happen that causes them to lose a match for example and so they scream to change something because they dont like it. Even though it was a strategic aspect of the game.
What developers need to realize is that those few players that are constantly screaming for this or that to change almost always represent the vocal minority.
That is not to say player feedback is not important but you have to take it moderation and you have to always, as a developer, do a sanity check on what they are suggesting to do to your game.
"Everquest" and "Dark Age of Camelot" stand out as two clear examples. They both catered to a very vocal user base who would obsess over the dumbest things. Essentially, people had their prefered way of playing, and any other classes which were viewed (often incorrectly) as 'better' ended up getting dumbed down (or "nerfed", as the process was refered). This created a game where the most vocal groups were catered to, generally to the exclusion of game balance and the enjoyment of other players.
I think its better when developers basically DONT listen to the player community regarding design considerations. The only real use for feedback would be to resolve technical issues, and take suggestions for additional features.
Thats why I really enjoy Final Fantasy XI: the developers are all Japanese, and can effectively ignore the habitual complainers in the US. Then they are just free to design a good, balanced game, according to their vision of how things should be.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Many game development houses do not last long enough to have a reputation. [I wrote this from memory so do not use this as a reference.]
Sid Meier writes great games as Microprose. Microprose gets bought by Hasbro, Infogrames, Atari, and they won't let him play. So Sid splits and starts Firaxis. Sid wants to make historical games, so he gives the big money maker to Brian Reynolds. Alpha Centauri is great, and Brian gets a rep, so he splits and starts BigHugeGames. Civ3 is a collaborative effort between Firaxis and that other company that owns the trademark. It has gameplay issues, but nobody knows which company to blame.
Peter Molyneux has 3 divisions in his company that release under their own brands. If the next "Black and White" bombs, then say goodbye to "Lionhead Studios".
Will Wright is Maxis, and all his games' names begin with "Sim", so it does not matter what the development house is called.
New World Computing gets bought by 3DO. A few financial troubles (and the little problem of never hiring anybody who understands writing AI engines) and they disappear. Say goodbye to "Might and Magic".
id and Blizzard are still around, but they never release a game that will bomb. id releases a Doom or Quake every few years. You would think they live on subsidies from the video card manufacturers if their games were not so great. Keep watching Blizzard though, since it was bought and eventually the bean counters will take control.
The smaller dev houses sometimes change their name three times while developing one game. If the game bombs, everybody is fired. If the game is successful, the company is bought by a larger company and the sequel is released by the new company. And everybody from the original team quits since the new company changes the culture, and the developers have a win on their resume.
Feedback is great if you are Blizzard and can keep releasing patches to balance StarCraft 5 years after it is released. But most games will be in the bargain bin in less than 6 months. The day after one goes gold, the developers start working on their next game so they can keep eating. I think most feedback serves more as criticism the developers can use on their next job than as suggestions that will improve the current game.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.