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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.
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?
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.
Even the ones that whine whenever their favorite franchise takes a new direction? No. Remember, you can please some people all the time, but you can never please everyone.
--- Bwah?
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!
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.
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
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...
Remember, you can please some people all the time, but you can never please everyone.
:)
Wrong. You can please everyone some of the time. You just can't please everyone all of the time.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.