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Why Creators Should Never Read Their Forums
spidweb writes "One full-time Indie developer writes about why he never goes to online forums discussing his work and why he advises other creators to do the same. It's possible to learn valuable things, but the time and the stress just don't justify the effort. From the article, 'Forums contain a cacophony of people telling you to do diametrically opposite things, very loudly, often for bad reasons. There will be plenty of good ideas, but picking them out from the bad ones is unreliable and a lot of work. If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad. You have to be very, very careful who you let into your head.'"
Sometimes you just have to wonder about the /. editors...
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
... don't have one. It's really that simple. If you do have a forum on your site -- any site -- then users have a reasonable expectation that you'll read it and, if not cater to their every whim, at least take their opinions into account. Failing to do this send the message "we don't care about our users," and that's not exactly a formula for success.
BTW, this shouldn't be taken as a slam against Spiderweb Software, which has produced some really excellent games over the years. More a general note, I guess.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
So far as I can tell no-one reads forums. Even here on Slashdot I regularly get people who reply to a long thread when they clearly haven't bothered to read all of it.
Thankfully that's still considered rude on mailing lists.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Damn how'd you know?
Frankly, I would find that more exciting than trolling as A. Coward
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Spidweb seems to take things a bit personally. Good thing he doesn't read forums; I don't think he could take this criticism.
Whether it be FOSS or some organisation paying you, you always take into consideration the stakeholders. It's just that simple. I run an non-FOSS project (Freeware) and which also has a forum of about 700 active users and I always try to listen to them all or get someone else to tabulate their ideas. This can be made easier by using mechanisms like what Ubuntu uses (Even if Ubuntu devs ignore it, it's a good idea none the less). Fact is, you may not like it but it's an important part of any SDLC so either put up or shut up and let your users hate you for not even trying.
I had a great time playing Galactic Civilizations II. The experience was certainly enhanced by interacting with the game's creators on their forums. These folks were pretty good about releasing major updates for a good while after the release date, so suggestions actually made it in to the game. If nothing else it was nice to feel like someone was listening for once.
In short, responsive/interactive game developers can enhance the experience both in and outside of the game; taking every suggestion doesn't matter.
In .y experience this i all too true. I've developed a few homebrew apps for the wii, and while the wiibrew wiki was great for dusplaying your work and interacting with the community' it also gave a lot of peple the impression they could their creative input should carry as much weight as the author's
I did get some good feedback, but it was usually drowned out by all the 12 year olds asking everything from mp3 players to game system emulators to be integrated into your app. I found it really hard after a while to stay polite with people who would flame you if you disagreed with them.
I do xbox indie dev now and the community seems older amd more reasonable, but much less active.
sorry about all the typos. i wrote this from a kindle!
I just pooped your party.
The whole reason of having a forum is to have an equal discussion medium. Everyone who participates is on equal footing more or less and you can have big discussions on whatever you like. If that's not what you are after, that's fine, but then don't have one. Just post the information you'd like to give to people on your website. Having a forum and ignoring it is stupid because, as you note, it makes people feel neglected but if someone doesn't watch after it it'll just get used for spam or other shit like that.
So really what you need to decide is do you want to deal with user feedback or not. Saying not is fine, deciding that users really don't know what they want is a perfectly legit strategy, one that I might note has been wildly successful for companies like Apple who basically say "We know what you want, you'll get things the way we make it and like it." For an indy company that wants to do that, don't have a forum. Let people discuss your shit on other forums and ignore those forums.
However if you do decide you want a forum, then you need to read it to see what you users want. That doesn't mean listen to everything they say, but see what is on there. You'll find that there is plenty of hate, plenty of stupidity, but also plenty of good ideas and feedback. You'll want to see what it is that concerns your users. For example if feature X is something that nearly every user on the forum complains about, then it is probably a problem. If just a few loudmouths whine about it all the time and everyone else ignores them or tells them off, then probably not.
Obviously you are going to need to have thick skin to some degree, you'll have to deal with haters. However to have a discussion mechanism and then to refuse to participate is rather silly.
Jeff is right that managing game forums is a job. A thankless one that can chew through even the most heavily armor-plated CSR over time. Community Management can be one of the most difficult jobs any game company employee can take on. So, yes, if you as a creator/developer, or your team does not have the skillset to manage forums, it's going to become a cesspool of unhappy people fighting amongst themselves and denouncing your existence and lineage all the way back to Lucy.
Gamers are passionate people, though the game industry is not necessarily the only industry where you'll find such. The trick is, if you are going to have forums, and you want them to be of value to you as a creator (as well as to your customers), you have to manage them. Ignoring them because it turns out to be an intrinsically difficult job isn't really much of a solution, and will really only fan the flames even more. A lot of the time, the act of distancing yourself, either in intent or just apparent, will make it appear like you just don't care; that you live in an ivory tower away from the players and look down your nose at them with the all-too-common "I'm the game developer, and I am always right/best/smartest/insert-superlative-here", regardless of whether you explicitly say it or not. When it comes to this phenomenon, appearance of impropriety has nothing on the appearance of hubris.
What this means is that you have to communicate. Frequently, candidly, and, most importantly, VISIBLY. Remember that "say five nice things for every mean thing" notion goes both ways, but is meaningless if hardly anyone sees it.
There may also be technical problems in communication. Some game companies opt for some REALLY REALLY BAD community portal/forum software that is just total pants. No matter how good a communicator you are as a creator, or how stellar your Community Management team is, if your communication venue and tools are crap, it will completely ruin you. On the flip side, an extremely well-designed community portal / communications venue setup will make your job of communicating and interacting with your customers an absolute delight.
Yes, there will be those people who will simply be chronically unhappy with you no matter what you do, and yes, the anonymity of the interwebz can turn people into total douchebags. Do everything in your power to use the carrot to try and bring them around, but never be afraid to resort to the boot if they simply insist on spreading their misery to you and the rest of your (otherwise happy) customers. Not saying necessarily ban them, but at some point, you can just simply say "I am truly sorry that I/we have failed to resolve your issue(s) / bring you enjoyment with my efforts; I want you to know that I am at my wits' end trying to do so. At this point, I would suggest that maybe this game / community simply isn't for you, and I would urge you to seek out another game or form of entertainment that can bring you enjoyment. There is simply no sense in remaining somewhere where you are miserable, and I don't want you to be miserable, here or anywhere. I wish you the best of luck in your travels, and you'll always be welcome to return, if you do find something of value to you here later."
One last thing: don't fall into that "well, the forums are only representative of 10% of the playerbase, and only the loudest cranks to boot" trap. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant to how you treat your customers. It generally is only true to a certain degree, and grossly generalizing and overtly dismissing the entire body of forum participation as non-representative of the greater majority of your playerbase is the kiss of death, ESPECIALLY if you say that publicly. So, don't do it. Ever.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
On the contrary, a developer should pay attention to the forums if only to keep an eye on bugs. It's perfectly fine to do whatever you want with your chosen project but you'd better know about the times where something doesn't quite work as you'd expected once it's out in the wild.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Make it clear what input you want from users, make it specific. If you just say "here's a forum, post your comments" then you'll get lots of random whining. If you try to implement every single idea mentioned in the forum it'll end up as design by committee, and maintaining one creator's vision is usually a better idea. Game designed by committee: Yet Another WW2 FPS. Game designed by visionary: Super Mario Galaxy. Which would you rather make?
After a while look for someone with many well-thought-out posts and offer to make them an unpaid moderator. Check up periodically to make sure your mod isn't slacking off or godmodding, and have them email you every now and then summarizing users' legitimate gripes/bug reports/suggestions.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Angry Birds on the iPhone is a paid app without ad support. It runs very well, and is a great "toilet game." You can lose yourself for quite a while playing it.
Angry Birds on Android is ad supported, with fullscreen video adverts between levels and banner adverts during play. The banner advert in the top right of the screen makes zooming and seeing the whole of the map difficult, and when out of signal range (Plane? Tunnel? Anywhere where you have hours to spend doing nothing) the video adverts don't load, so you cannot progress to the next level. Every other comment is now either a previous user reporting the issues, or a new user telling how much they hate the adverts. I don't know how much he makes from the adverts per user, but so far he's lost approx 40% (by my guestimate) of the players he could have had if the adverts were less intrusive. If that 40% is an acceptable loss, then good for him, but if he read the comments and acted upon this overwhelming opposition to the advert intrusion to the game, he'd potentially make a lot more money.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Nobody who retains any semblance of sanity and wishes to keep that should ever engage in online discussion. It's usually pointless, annoys people and yourself to no end and you seldom feel you've accomplished anything.
Now if only I had realised this before starting to develop this god-damned need to add my two cents whenever someone is wrong on the internet...
You've got all sorts of hyper-critical morons calling every moving under the sun boring or overrated. At the same time, you've got the fan boys calling Paulie Shore movies the next Citizen Kane. Open calls for criticism usually garner responses from the extremes.
It's like looking up car reviews. You might as well throw out all the 1 and 5 stars since they're respectively the guy pissed off that the dealer took too long getting the car cleaned or the woman astroturfing for Ford.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Just go with the general spirit of the open source community. Set up a chatbot that post "Fix it yourself if you do not like it" to every forum entry and don't give a shit about your users. Problem solved. Or not.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
prime example, ive been following the previously indy game mount and blade since it was in .754 in the suggestions forum there was always a bunch of 1 or 2 page threads, and at the top there was always three or four threads running well into their 200th page. obviously these are the ideas people want most.
None of their fans are going to want to see all of their time taken up by community engagement. Some, certainly, are clueless, and enjoy being time vampires. You deal with time vampire 'fans' the same way you deal with time vampires in real life.
If you have an issue with the time commitment, make a rule for yourself and stick to it. "I'm only going to visit the forums on Friday nights." Or something similar. People will give you a wide berth, especially once your forum reaches a decent size (more than 10k members or so). Maybe a bit too wide, even.
Adult Role Playing Forum
So much for the power of prayer.
All rites reversed 2010
To a certain extent I agree fully. Hearing criticism can be quite helpful, but often times that has ulterior motives behind it, The criticism itself isn't often times objective, but extraordinarily subjective at least online. I've played WoW for years and it's easy to see what a community can do to a game, both good and bad, and how sometimes it leads the developers to take on a position they wouldn't normally (like acting like god). The developers on WoW forums have aquired a very nasty tone through all the ass kissing some people do and whenever they're confronted with issues they can't directly address it, instead they need to go around the problem and apply a band aid fix in order to look like they were never wrong or they don't even address a glaring problem and instead go in a completely opposite direction as to avoid or obsolete the problem. If you never visit the forums you can never be proven wrong because people don't know if you actually read their post or not. It's almost like politics and it's quite laughable. Just look through the blue tracker on mmo-champion.
Someone could really write a case study on the effects of forums on game developers. This doesn't even take into account all the trolls, people with malicious intent, people just messing around with other people, and people trying to carefully shape things in their favor. Forums can be very powerful, but only as long as a strict hand is used in care for them.
I talked about Tabula Rasa on another article, but I'm going to talk about it again. They had very good relations with their player base in how they addressed problems and openly talked about it with them. They didn't cater to underhanded tactics and simply ignored some comments. The friday community updates were extremely enlightening and they showed the direction of the game, what they developers were doing to address current problems, and what their current thoughts are on matters. It was refreshing and I enjoyed reading it a lot as well as playing the game, it made me feel like the developers actually cared about what they were making and what I as a gamer though. Tribes 2 also had such relations with their playerbase and featured continual updates to address problems. Another example of this is Living Legends (which is a mod) feel free to visit their website and look at how they handle their playerbase. As a mod the community is the lifeblood that keeps them going as they don't have money to use and they rely on the communities help.
Something I don't know if the article mention, but you have to look out for is people in the community that start assuming the role and talking like they speak for the developers. These types of people are very bad and can affect whatever is being developed in a very bad way as they also usually operate on personal interest only. They kill off any sort of different ideology or ideas that differ from their own (and their perceived views that represent the developers with their own ideas mixed in to skew things) so all you end up seeing in the end is what they want you to. There is at least one or two of these in every community I visit, mod or game. There is usually only one because they scare off anyone else that tries to act like them. WoW has a few since it is so big that you can hide in different parts of the forums and no one will ever see you.
I wrote an application for a given mobile platform and put it on that platform's store. I put a good number of hours into the thing, really felt it was more polished than some of its competitors, and despite having paid a fee to get it listed, charged $0.
Well, no good deed goes unpunished. I got a lot of weird and unactionable criticism. Even for stuff I couldn't really control. Some reviewers might as well write, "I hate this app because it doesn't tell me given a Turing machine M and an input x whether or not M(x) will halt or run forever. 1 star."
I can't say it was all that bad, but man, it was a lot of noise.
Some people can happily read through a list and pick out the ideas whilst laughing at the insults and caustic trolling, others get frustrated by content and end up dejected. If you're the latter type, you're probably best outsourcing it or leaving it be. But there's much to be said for communicating with your community, and as long as you remember that for every IQ 120 there's an IQ 80 out there - all, unfortunately, still allowed behind a computer - then it becomes easier to shrug it off. Besides, it's YOUR project. If they don't like it they can write their own and some people are just fashionably frustrated.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
All things in moderation. Avoiding what your fans have to say is no better an idea than trying to satisfy their every whim.
I thought all good developers knew that.
Case in counterpoint, Dwarf Fortress and it's most active forum frequented and responded to by the game creator. He answers questions, takes (in an ineffable manner) suggestions, and otherwise participates in the enjoyment of his game. Example: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1848408#msg1848408 Dwarf fortress: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Dwarf_Fortress:About
Thank DEITY$ Bioware doesn't do this. NWN wouldn't have been half as good if they had ignored the input of their players. The same is probably true for their other games, but NWN sticks out in my head as a game that the devs actually listened to the players for the most part.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Is this perhaps the same reason that politicians NEVER listen to the people they represent? (With the sole exception of lobbyists who show up with large amounts of cash).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...be why God never answer prayers?
I've been working for a small graphics software company for about 10-12 years now. We've always been in close contact with our users. I'm one of two developers, we have a support/registrations guy and have recently taken on another support/community outreach guy. We have a wide range of users, from hobbyists to CG studios. In the old days we had a Yahoo group mailing list (or rather whoever it was in the iterations before Yahoo bought it) and more recently we've changed to forums. Our forums have 9700+ users though we have noticed an upspike of spam accounts recently which we're working on removing.
I used to read everything but not so much in the last couple of years. I rely more on the support guy to bring important issues to my attention now. I used to reply to more as well, but we've found users often deal with queries and such more quickly than we can and it's not too often we need to deal with something directly. Back in the day I used to answer a lot of more technical queries but I'm not even in the top 10 forum posters now - happy to say the outreach guy is though!
We've always been very fortunate that our user groups have stayed pretty civilised. Many people have mentioned that they're some of the politest and most helpful they've experienced, that's certainly the case for me! I'm not sure why that is exactly. We have stepped in with a few users and asked them to change their ways and usually that works. We haven't had to ban many people at all.
We certainly use the forums to get an overview of what people think and do use that to make decisions about where to go. In the past we would sometimes solicit design feedback etc. but have stopped doing that so much because it doesn't always help a lot - too many different views. Every once in a while someone will start a "Top 5 most wanted features" thread which is always interesting. I haven't come across any particularly soul destroying feedback. Well, nothing that wasn't deserved ;-).
I wonder if there's a difference between our users and users of something with a wider appeal like a game. Our company name is similar to the name of a game which was popular a few years ago and we would occasionally get the game players straying into our forums. They usually seemed to be more aggressive and communicated less clearly. Frankly I think the fact they had confused our forums with those of the game showed they were already at a disadvantage...
Look at Vanguard, that game failed horribly and is one of the most boring games I have ever played. They had huge amounts of discussion on the forums and in IRC Chats. What was the end result? A game designed for nostalgic EQ1 players, that ended up ticking everyone one off.
One of the great Ideas from the "Van'bois" included: Release the game on Blu-ray (4 years ago) and charge $50 a month so that only "serious" players will join the game.
Go back and read the Vanguard Development forums and you will realize that the only people who post on an unreleased games forum are uber-fanboys trying to influence a game to fit their basement dweller lifestyles.
A good example is Heroes of Newerth. Some games do require input from the players in order to balance, or fix, broken systems. Most MMORPG also fall into this (and generally fail to do so...). Hell most competitive games should get input from the players. Of course, if the creator can't be arsed to hire moderators to keep the flaming and trolls in check, that's an entirely different matter.
Oblivion Awaits
We should totally have quicktime events in this game cause they're awsome!
And then you have other people say they'd never play quicktime events because the updater always nags to add iTunes and Safari to the installation, and your press-X-to-not-die cut scenes should use Windows Media instead. Cue another reply that VLC is more capable than either and available on more platforms.
I finally understand why I never see the mythical blue post!!
According to the article, the answer is simple, because they can't deal with criticism.
I fully believe that there is something to be gained by reading your forums. Not every single post - just the ones that catch your eye, or seem to be highly-read. Sure, there's going to be a lot of crap, but there's plenty of good ideas out there too.
However, there is very little to be gained by responding to your forums. At most, you might say "actually, that does seem like a good idea", or "I already discussed this in a blog article several months ago. It just doesn't work.". Responding to even half of the stupid, short-sighted and ignorant ideas people post would be a massive waste of time, and would probably drive anyone insane.
but still users can come up with some pretty stupid ideas. I mean in my mind the most classic one was how many players of the Street Fighter games wanted throws completely removed from the game. (Including EGM advocating removal of the throw.) That would have definitely been a stupid decision if Capcom went with it. (What was even more stupid is they didn't seem to have a problem with an unblockable attack that wasn't a throw.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
If you have a forum with an active community, you can have them do preselection of suggestions and comments, and organize votes among the members related to multiple potential improvements/updates/etc. One game where I've seen this work very well is a card flash game (a la Magic the Gathering) called elements; users create their own card ideas, these are submitted to a voting process, and the game creator occasionally checks out a couple of winners and incorporates what he likes.
Let's put the genes back in Genesis.
If you don't listen to customers who purchase your product that's a recipe for a short business venture. If you don't want to visit your own forums then DON'T HAVE ONE. If you want people to have a place on the web to discuss your ideas, creativity, products, etc... then a fan will create one if your product is good enough. Game developers should have blogs if they don't want to interact with their users. Fan sites go a very long way towards retaining brand loyalty. If you don't listen to your biggest fans then you'll lose them and all the loyalty they've worked hard to create FOR YOU. Which in that case, would make you an unappreciative a**hole. People don't have to buy your product or reiterations of it. If you take your users for granted you'll lose them and your business.
The reason people post vitriol on forums is due to the fact that it is allowed. All forums should have clear strict rules about profanity, personal attacks, non-constructive criticism, etc. If forums were moderated and any time a flame was posted the user was warned that they could be banned then maybe less flames would be posted. The warnings must be followed through. You will probably find that most of the issues are being caused by a very few people.
There are compromise positions between 'read everything' and "read nothing"; one could read the moderated forum or have someone forward only the interesting posts.
Maybe you should read that post, as it has nothing to do with Sonic the Hedgehog, or with taking a dump.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
I think that forums do provide useful input, but it has to be filtered. If people do have opinions about certain items it means that they can be changed for the next major release, but maybe not at all in the way that what's said on the forum.
And see it the other way - if you have a forum and there aren't any opinions at all about what you have made that may mean that nobody really uses what you have done.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I haven't read the article yet, but I have seen web forums be communities of fail. I'm not convinced that this is due to unavoidable faults either in forums or in human nature.
People will complain loudly about your products. They are not always rational or right. This will remain true whether you provide the venue for the forum or not.
Customer feedback is a vital part of any business. You need to have people who are capable of interfacing with customers. The best people for this are people who enjoy communicating with people and want to do it, and who also happen to have a solid working knowledge of the product. These are often other users of the product.
If you host a forum, you need to cultivate it in order for it to thrive. This does not mean censoring complaints about the product. It does mean policing the forums to keep abuse, trolling, griefing, and spam under control. Being a forum admin is probably not the best use of time for high value developers or designers. If you have a staff, the forum admin work should be delegated to an appropriate person or team who is suited to the task and knows how to do it well.
Having a presence on the forums will make a huge difference in how the general userbase perceives your company. If knowledgeable, helpful employees take the time to read and participate in forums, users of the forums will tend to be more appreciative and sympathetic toward the company. If official participation is loose and personable, not overly corporate toe-the-line, your customers will generally feel warmly toward the company. Don't punish low level employees who participate in the forums and openly admit that the product has faults or that the company could be better. It's obvious to everyone that you're not perfect, and punishing people for saying so isn't going to fix the problem.
If your only way of getting good information from your employees is through manually sifting through forum threads, you're doing it wrong. Your forum technology sucks, isn't well integrated with the rest of your business, and is out of date. That is why it fails. You can't just bolt a forum on to a web site and consider the job done. You need a system that rewards people for investing the time in participating positively to the forum, like Stack Overflow does. Forums where people are asking questions, especially where they are having problems, need to have follow-through and resolution. If this isn't provided, then the forum is largely a waste of time for everyone involved, and a frustrating experience.
You also need to integrate your forum into your overall customer relationship strategy, and other areas of the business process, such as product design and marketing. Forum discussions shouldn't dictate your product's design, but certainly customer feedback should be taken into account when considering your priorities, and a well-designed forum that provides useful datamining tools can provide this. A customer relationship management (CRM) suite can provide this integration quite well. Check out a product like Lithium and see what it can do for you. Western Digital uses Lithium CRM in their product support forums, and it's a lot nicer than many forums that I've seen used by other companies.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I wouldn't be nearly as worried about criticism as I would be about the possibility of getting sued by someone saying I stole some idea he posted on the forum. When I used to work in LA, staff screenwriters were officially discouraged from reading show and movie forums for that very reason (there were a few notable exceptions, but most writers/directors/producers avoided them like the plague, or at least were very careful to keep their perusing hidden).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If I had listened to my customers, I'd have built faster horses. ~Henry Ford
... should not be developing games, period. Most game developers _suck_ at making games and can't take criticism. To have forums means you need thick skin. Bioware has publically stated they used public feedback from websites and forums to help design mass effect 2, and Mass effect 2 ended up being better for it. They know that developing a game is a process of feedback and discourse.
Supreme commander 1 was released unfinished state and the AI was horribly broken, without the support and MOD forums AI developers from the community would have never fixed the horribly broken and unfinished AI into a fun state, in fact Sorian was hired by Gas powered games to do AI in supreme commander 2 since his AI for Supcom 1 was so darn good.
http://soriandev.blogspot.com/
Anyone knocking forums is clearly an idiot, sure you get a lot of waste but you also get real gems. That is just the nature of the internet itself.
It's just a matter of realizing it's a "cacophony" of opposing and often incorrect ideas" and simply:
1. Enjoying the positive remarks as a motivator, which are there if you've done a decent job.
2. Letting the gestalt sink in for that next "eureka" moment.
At the very least have someone whose job it is to read and maintain the forum.
It has become one of the best real time 4X games created because of the heavy community involvement with the devs. The game even has a built-in IRC client where the devs hang out and help their players, take suggestions, and basically improve the game in almost real-time. I'm not related to them, but I felt the need to point out that there are always exceptions, and this game is a strong case for it. The love these guys have put into their game is beyond anything I've seen to date, and the game itself is (IMO) a masterpiece.
What no one seems to have thought about is some of the legal implications. I haven't seen this happen with games but I did see it happen with a well known author. He used to participate regularly in a forum about his works until some fan accused him of stealing his ideas and demanding payment. The fan had no legal leg to stand on aparently but the thing did go to court. Sowered the author on forum participation.
I own a social networking site and members occasionally write about how they think the site could be improved. I read their suggestions, and I implement some of them, but I don't try to implement all of them. I implement the ones that I like that are practical to implement, and I explain why I don't intend to implement the ones that I don't like or consider to be impractical.
One of those old Chinese stratagems says "Let the enemy's own spy sow discord in the enemy camp". In this case, the camp is one's own mind. If you find yourself falling into this trap too often, better to ignore the cacophony.
I would say this is a good and yet bad idea. Yes you can never make everyone happy. But completely ignoring the users will just make everyone angry and your end product a piece of garbage. Look a Geeksoft and their product gfedwrestling.com, if the techs had taken the time to interact with user and be actively involved in their product or even semi-involved then they may have been able to stop the genocide that nearly killed them and forced them to restructure the entire product to stay a float. Owners and Admins should be involved in their product cause what is the point of making it otherwise. You just have to know where to put your effort. There will always be the one guy in the crowd ready to throw a shoe at you.
Here is an example of an indie developer who has been extremely active on the forums, and the game is all the better for it. Honestly, based on how much time SnowBrigade spends on the forum, it's a wonder he gets any coding done. :) And yet there are regular updates including many player suggested features, addressing player brought up balancing issues, etc. One of my own suggestions was recently implemented as well.
I used to run gaming fan sites. When your passion is something, and you put a lot of hours into that passion, getting crap for it, gets old fast. When I used to run gaming websites, the forums would grow and be great, and at a certain point, the community would finally grow and blossom on its own. At that point, I would assign forum moderators. That gave me a level of abstraction that I didn't have to keep current, and could do the news and write articles. If there was something questionable the moderators would let me know to check it out.
Personal attacks really are draining. Everyone has finite resources. Squandering yours reading inflammatory posts is very counter-productive.
This is what they're for, let them lose their minds and come to you with a list of plausible ideas gleaned from the muck.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
...developers whose business is making the software for online forums. Those of you who run large web forums yourselves can probably guess who I'm talking about.
I'm also an indie developer (http:/www.deadpixelarcade.com) and I've been very active with the people that play the games I make. I think it's extremely important to do that. Unless you're just making a game for yourself, the thoughts of the users are very telling. If a lot of people are complaining about something, then you probably want to revisit that. But you also need to know what to ignore. When you see that someone is expecting something from your game that you arent trying to accomplish, ignore it. When people say you HAVE to make your arcade racer have realistic damage and physics, you can safely ignore those people. But when people are saying your arcade racer simply isnt fun because the controls suck, you need to take a look at the controls.
But to patently refuse to look at the comments at all is a big mistake.
D
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If you're going to submit a /. story about an article you wrote, don't refer to yourself in the third person. It just sounds... well... tacky. Dishonest. Like you were hoping nobody would notice you were pimping your own stuff.
The online game industry has existed long enough for there to be people with talent and experience in handling online communities. Hire them. Seriously. Don't just pick a developer that's friendly and good at multitasking and expect them to deal with your clientele. A well managed online community is a huge advantage for any online game, but you need a filter between the creators and the players, and that filter goes both ways.
The creators don't need to view the more soul destroying senseless hate that shows on message boards, and the players don't need to hear about the grim reality of 16 hour days during crunch time. A good community manager knows enough about game development in general, and their product in particular to find the signal in the noise, and get the information to the correct people on the team, as well as editing the information the players want to hear from the developers.
Sanya Weathers, (aka. Tweety) has a sporadically updated blog that discusses these and other issues. If you want some insight in community management, I recommend checking the archives there. http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org/
Comments by users are great, because they're feedback. But the insights to have aren't what the users are saying, but what is motivating them to say it. They may suggest feature X, but you have to get behind that and figure out why they're suggesting it; that is the useful feedback. You know that users are encountering some issue when using the software, and you use what they say as a clue as to what the issue really is, and then you think up ways of addressing it (if you deem it a significant issue).
The developers of browser-based RPG Kingdom of Loathing not only read and post on their forums, but also do two two-hour radio podcasts a week taking questions and discussing the game. Their involvement has led to players being recruited to give development advice, to incorporate player suggestions into the game, and to quickly correct gameplay mistakes. They've commented that reading the forums can sometimes be painful or aggravating (and Mr. Skullhead's annual Crimbo rant at the ungrateful playerbase has become a bit of a tradition), but it's better that they suffer some aggravation in the course of making the game better for everyone than it is for them to happily avoid criticism but have the game suffer instead.
I think this was a fine post that gave me something to think about, but I disagree. Generally, people on forums get angry if they DO NOT get any feedback. Then things get ugly because that is frustrating. If developers are relatively active (they should at least answer when they are directly asked something) then a forum will most likely run nicely and be a constructive place. Also, people have to feel that problems are being fixed, or they will get annoyed.
Of course, there are always morons (this is the Internet we are talking about, after all) so there is need for moderators to warn/ban in order to ensure that the community is as pleasant as possible.
I have two examples to back up my views.
The Sports Interactive forum (they make the Football Manager series): http://community.sigames.com/
This is an example of a very good forum that is quite constructive. Sure, sometimes there are rants and so on, but it doesn't seem to scare the developers who post A LOT, and certainly answer all (semi-)important questions. This ensures a constructive atmosphere. Of course, the moderators are very active also in order to close ridiculous threads and so on.
An example of an impossibly bad forum, on the other hand, is the EA Sports FIFA forum: http://forum.ea.com/uk/categories/show/10.page
In here, the developers NEVER answer anything, and a few worthless community managers once in a while (rarely) give the most feeble and useless replies. Also, people are NEVER banned or even warned no matter how amazingly stupid they act. The result is a forum that is a complete mess. A billion threads are created and people are almost constantly angry and abusive (it sure doesn't help either, of course, that almost no problems in FIFA are fixed).
Probably the target audience for FIFA is somewhat less mature than that for FM, but still I think moderation and developer replies are key to having a constructive community.
"And see it the other way - if you have a forum and there aren't any opinions at all about what you have made that may mean that nobody really uses what you have done."
Actually, it means that nobody has anything good to say about it *on your forums*. There are so many layers of selection bias and other distortion that can occur between the step where a person buys/uses an item and a person posts on the creators forum about it, up to and including those being entirely different people, that it's a total crapshoot trying to gauge much of anything by it. If a game creator wants to see what people think about their game, they are better served checking reviews (including those on independent, reputable forums), analyzing their distribution info (if the game is selling/downloading like hotcakes, it stands to reason that people like it), or actually soliciting opinions from a random swath of customers.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I think that forums do provide useful input, but it has to be filtered. If people do have opinions about certain items it means that they can be changed for the next major release, but maybe not at all in the way that what's said on the forum.
I think if an indie dev does not read his forums and personally respond to posts, he won't be an indie developer for long.
Yes, the dev should not personally moderate the forums, but they have to understand that they are going to have a small player base to start with because they are most likely a niche game and in order to continue sales it is imperative they have some response to concerns and quests by the community. If you alienate the people who have actually bought your product with a wall of silence, then they will think "this douche doesn't care that I spent $20 on his game... f' him!"
Now there are some people you aren't going to please at all no matter what you say and most of the time you are going to reply "feature was WAD" was as designed and "patch is forthcoming and will be ready when it is ready" but it shows that you are trying and that is good enough for some.
Also, as a small time developer you aren't going to have paid QA staff and 9 times out of 10, your player base is going to be the ones reporting bugs through the forums.
A really good (no longer small) company is Paradox interactive where it is not uncommon for a developer to respond to a post complaining about a game saying "That shouldn't be happening. Could you send me a save game so I can take a look for myself?"
And as far as niche goes... Paradox is very niche and they are going strong after 10 years because they are active in their forums and people really respect them for it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
And on a side note, I have seen the lead developer of Paradox personally ban someone.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Also note that forum posters have no way to playtest an idea. So what sounds like a good idea could ultimately be exploitable in a way that breaks the game. That idea would then have to be nerfed and you would end up with a mechanic that is just as useless as what it was supposed to replace. (Not that I hold a grudge about the way Blizzard was utterly clueless when it came to the Shaman class)
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
This is exactly how TellTale Games keeps improving their games: by listening to their customers. Heck, they even have contests sometimes that makes user-submitted lines or arts appear in their games.
If you're always experimenting, it's useful to see what the reception is. This is exactly what TellTale does, and it's working.
If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad, yes, but when you make a game you should already be able to make a judgement on what works and what doesn't. Ignoring them completely isn't going to make them happier, listening to them is, even if this means pissing off some other people (which will happen no matter what you do).
I am not devoid of humor.
That's what community managers are for. They take what they need, and ban the rest.
If you're going to "down mod" a post of mine, @ least have the COURAGE to say why ON TECHNICAL GROUNDS (& ones that are "on topic", since this is a computer sciences related forum section here)!
APK
P.S.=> This "hit & run" down-mod of my post? That's for weasels... apk