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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.
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.
Creative people are often sensitive. I wouldn't want to limit my world to things created only by people with thick skins: they are often unperceptive.
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.
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
The problem is that Android apps don't have any copy protection on them, so users can simply copy the app from each other. Rovio gets around the problem by simply displaying adverts and make $1M a month from this strategy.
http://androidcommunity.com/angry-birds-android-ads-make-rovio-1m-per-month-20101208
Summation 2
There are actually creative people who can take criticism. No idea how rare they are, but they definitely exist. John Carmack has posted on Slashdot. Brad Wardell has posted on usenet (off all the hotbeds of flamewars and trolls...). And I think Brad has had very productive discussions there, which did influence his games.
For example: Brad prided himself on the good AI for Galactic Civilizations, and it certainly had the best AI I've ever seen in a turn-based strategy game. But it still lacked true killer instinct. Brad said it'd be too frustrating if the AI truly pulled all the stops on dirty tricks. I (and others) disagreed; we argued that if a game had difficulty settings called "impossible" and "masochistic", we expected some serious punishment to come our way. We wanted the AI to trick us in the same ways we tried to trick it. In the end, I think he made one particular AI pull all the stops on the hardest difficulty levels. Not all, unfortunately, but it's still something.
Of course there were also idiots who complained that the game was too hard because they couldn't beat the AI at "hard" difficulty, and needed someone to explain to them that they could set the difficulty to "normal" or "easy". You just need to be able to recognize the idiots and trolls and tune them out. Anything that might be useful, you need to read in the most positive light possible. But some people have mastered those tricks.
Critique is fundamental to design - good & great designers actively seek out criticism. Whether the criticism is worthwhile is another question, but any designer worth paying is big enough to deal with flack. IMHE, I've found designers to be the most motivated solicitors of feedback.
bang goes my karma... again...
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.
If I had listened to my customers, I'd have built faster horses. ~Henry Ford