Don't just listen to players. If given the option, they'll optimize the game out of their games, and the story out of their stories. It's our job to filter information and data and feedback into good work, and while we'll sometimes miss it's better than blindly following surveys. - ThreadSky

ramiismail.com • 10 hours ago

Don't just listen to players. If given the option, they'll optimize the game out of their games, and the story out of their stories. It's our job to filter information and data and feedback into good work, and while we'll sometimes miss it's better than blindly following surveys.

Reposted from Josh

I once worked on a visual novel game where all the surveys and focus groups said that nobody wanted romance, they only wanted mystery and sci-fi.

Then 75+% of clicks in-game went to stories with explicit romantic or sexy themes.

www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

Comments

edgarallanbro.bsky.social•5 hours ago

People don't know what they want until you give it to them.

wolksite.bsky.social•5 hours ago

While I agree, I also find this survey sounds poorly constructed. Romance doesn't have to equal sex, what if there is a significant desire for one but not the other? Don't conflate the two.

luckydagger.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Perhaps some people just mean "i want romance without sex" or vice versa but because of the lumping in of the two by society players don't bother chasing either for its own sake but rather they expect the other thing they'd like will come with it.

zombieboof.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Gamers will always say, "I want [thing that already exists], but different." Give them that, and you'd never have things like Portal or Katamari or Papers, Please.

maya-weiss.bsky.social•6 hours ago

I remember having rather unpleasant issue in Guild Wars 2. Lack of item description, bad stats and vendor price that suggested 'sell it' lead to many casual players deleting item worth around 500 dollars.
I made few somewhat popular threads about it and devs admitted mistake.. after half a decade.

maya-weiss.bsky.social•6 hours ago

More often than not, players aren't best in terms of advice, but sometimes ignorance of the professional side of the dialogue is stunning.

maya-weiss.bsky.social•6 hours ago

To be fair, never had any other issues that were THAT bad and easy to remedy simultaneous.

strider-ms.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Going to be against the majority here here and say I am fucking tired of obligatory checkmark romance in games, give me interesting platonic relationships.

One of the reasons why games like Ghost of Tsushima struck a cord with me is because you had a close companionship without it being romantic.

briangomez.bsky.social•9 hours ago

I keep a list of useful tips and pithy statements about game development for use when I do talks or teach classes. That one is going on the list — I will be sure to credit you!

taw.moe•7 hours ago

I think it's also too broad. If a love story is REALLY well made, I'll take that. But it's hard and too easy to get into cheesy-territory... Much easier than with a typical "big corpo conspiracy" for example.

ramiismail.com•10 hours ago

If surveys were the solution we'd all make 10/10 games with no negative reviews whatsoever. And if listening to players blindly was the solution, we'd all be doing that to tremendous results - but the most popular games out there are almost all known for tense dynamics between players and devs.

unabridgedgamer.bsky.social•10 hours ago

And some of the most renowned additions to games were met with intense hostility. People forget THE RAGE at Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer mode that was “tacked-on” even though it’s still played over a decade later!

vaaasm.com•1 hour ago

fully agree!

katdiedagain.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Gamers don’t know what they want. And then they scream at the top of their lungs when designers go “No, I’m not getting rid of all the flowers on the map just because some of them add a little visual noise.” They’re like dogs begging for boiling water on the stove. No idea what they’re asking for.

mikerousseau.bsky.social•10 hours ago

I think gamers know what they want, generally, but have zero clue as to what they actually need. Our job is to figure that out and give it to them.

litemechanist.bsky.social•6 hours ago

The way I think about it, is that gamers know what problems they have, and they often articulate those problems by giving solutions. It's our job to understand that core problem and then find the best way to solve it.

olivia.fluffie.st•4 hours ago

One of my best friends has an awful habit of asking for help with whats knows as xy problems; (i.e., they have an issue x, realized y might be part of a solution, then asks for help with y without mentioning x so you don't know what the *actual* problem is.)

katdiedagain.bsky.social•1 hour ago

That’s an interesting way to ask for help!

mikerousseau.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Sometimes, the problem they identify isn't the actual problem. "We need bigger maps" was something I drilled down to "crossing midline gives severe penalties." Small maps weren't the issue. The malus needed adjusting.

mikerousseau.bsky.social•1 hour ago

But to your point: if a player tells you something is wrong, they're right. If they tell you how to fix it, they're wrong.

jasonmehmel.bsky.social•9 hours ago

"It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need."

-Alan Moore

kimera.world•5 hours ago

it's odd to make takeaways about nobody wanting romance from this. surely it's obvious that when filling out a survey about your idealised game interests, you're going to have different priorities to what may manifest when playing? nobody would say they love gacha games but they're clearly popular

kimera.world•5 hours ago

there's also a level of bias where people see romance as a low brow thing to focus on in a story, so obviously they'll pick the stuff they see as more interesting and grand, and then actually end up gravitating to it when it comes time to engage with games in the real world

datagoblin.bsky.social•5 hours ago

"if i asked gamers what they want, they'd've said faster dodge rolls" - hidetaka miyazaki

honeywiz.bsky.social•4 hours ago

Lots of people play otome games but nobody admits they play otome games.

magicalgoth.bsky.social•3 hours ago

My current experience with players is - they think their opinion entitles them to your time, and none of your decisions may disagree with what they envision is the "right way to do it", even when they are objectively wrong (example, when you are implementing the rule of a boardgame in its digital)

tillerqueendev.bsky.social•5 hours ago

I choose to interpret this as nearly everyone loving romance and horniness but most gamers being too proud/embarassed to admit it 🫣

luckydagger.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Another factor could be sample size fir the survey versus the in game data.

rockalot.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Can I get a AMEN

acohen.bsky.social•10 hours ago

I think statistics have ruined our ability to critically think in ways we vastly underestimate. I have made some of my best content by ignoring surveys and just going with what made sense. I wish more people would nurture that instinct instead of trying to "solve for fun".

indiegameclinic.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I’m not sure who the “our” refers to here but in my experience it’s “people who for some weird reason work in games despite not understanding how they work, and who want an easy fix vs developing intuition, experimenting, and taking risks (ie being creative)”

popculthur.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Same. As a journalist or former comic book author, I cannot agree more. I used to work for a big magazine and all of this shit almost broke me, the rules we were following made absolutely no sense

dashwallkick.bsky.social•9 hours ago

Perception and approval of "DEI" reversed the second Trump won. You really can't count on polls to have conclusive data on stuff like this. A lot of people just say what sounds right and not even think much on it.

sam-carlisle.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Similar to the dichotomy for journalism.

Ask the public what they want and it’s good news stories.
See what they read and it’s bad news stories.

spool32.bsky.social•3 minutes ago

Incredible that "young people don't want stories about sex" has any credibility. That's "study shows 68% of people enjoy being robbed at gunpoint" levels of obviously wrong.

vandaltree.bsky.social•10 hours ago

This reminds me of an aptitude test I did at a job agency years ago. According to the test I wasn't suited for anything creative yet I had just finished a diploma of fine arts.

Sometimes people's answers are more towards what they think the intent of the question is.

sycknight.bsky.social•2 hours ago

This is what I try to share with friends about gaming feedback. Folks who say, "things would be better if they just listened to us". Players have no context of the broader community, how decisions impact other systems, how player sentiment changes over time in relation to dev timelines etc.

adiblue.bsky.social•10 hours ago

It's Homer's car over and over again.

lycanthotep.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Nah! This is just a case of bad statistics. Their samples in the surveys are biased and do not represent the population who is playing the game at all.

Bad surveys with bad sampling lead to bad data which lead them to wrong conclusions.

titaniafairyqueen.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I was so happy to get this yesterday….so there is enough people looking for unique things, rather than what statistics say.

zubzub.bsky.social•9 hours ago

Sometimes when people complain the mechanics of mine are too difficult, I want to give them an iWin button. Like yes, you might need some effort - but you’ll get dopamine when you do it!
(Please note current game is a flipper where you clean walls and build castles, not what I’d call challenging)

tomudev.bsky.social•4 hours ago

Great take. Art has to have people behind it, with a vision. If you focus-test it to death it's just a product.

savvyspark.bsky.social•4 hours ago

Are people in focus groups really going to tell you they want porn games? Because I’m guessing that’s where the majority of those 75% of clicks went to.

xeneth.design•9 hours ago

Asking people what they NEED is powerful when it comes to survival; rights, the essentials...

Asking people what they WANT from their entertainment is a very unintuitive exercise, given surprise and delight originate from being exposed to things you haven't yet imagined and didn't know you wanted!

kobolds-keep.net•10 hours ago

First rule of playtesting. Players are good at knowing when there is a problem, but terrible at suggesting changes to fix it.

ionswitz.bsky.social•9 hours ago

Very much this. Always listen to the feedback, there’s real value there when it comes to problems - but the suggested solutions aren’t always the best for the final game.

rav3style.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Destiny listened to what the top 1% of players wanted and ended with a game that’s impossible for new players to join now. It also resulted in a game with fights that have a billion respawning enemies and no cover that force you to min/max or cheese because the people that play the game for 8hrs…

rav3style.bsky.social•8 hours ago

… a day as a job thought it was too easy. Like, buddy, of course it’s easy for you, you have made this your life. Same thing with raids, they have become a convoluted game of broken telephone that instead of exploring positioning and gunplay, they emphasize military level coordination.

maocat.bsky.social•5 hours ago

This also sounds like a badly set up survey, almost like an excuse. There’s a lot of potential bias involved in things like these and especially bigger companies should have the resources to figure out that they cannot rely on them, especially with creative direction.

vaelis.bsky.social•4 hours ago

This whole “we can commoditize art to the point we can plan a hit like I can forecast toilet paper sales in December based on historicals and a focus group” is part of why all of our media is so bland and boring. We don’t let artists tell the stories they want to tell and help it find an audience

vaelis.bsky.social•4 hours ago

We are forced to work with corporate legal to make a sanitized “one size fits all; can compete with Fortnite on revenue to be worth investing in as a megacorp” game that ideally offends nobody and can be ported worldwide with few changes beyond localization. It’s awful for the industry.

kressnik.bsky.social•10 hours ago

As a player - this always confused me. I don't know what I want. I might want something specific, but when I get it - I'm disappointed. I might not want something, but when I get it - I can't get enough of that.

It's such a dumb thing to say what people want or don't want.

0j.io•8 hours ago

This is all true, though I suppose the audience needs to want the outward appearance of the game enough to give it a shot in the first place and find out if they actually like it. A lot of that is down to aesthetics and theme, I think.

kressnik.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Oh, there has to be a hook for players to try your game, that much is true, but beyond that - I think it's up to devs to choose what you will experience

0j.io•7 hours ago

Absolutely. There's been a constant background hum since at least the turn of the Millennium of the idea that people could craft their own experiences, or discover then endlessly through procedural generation.

0j.io•7 hours ago

But while both those things can be and have been good, on the whole want people want is specific experiences designed by skilled creatives.

kressnik.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Yeah. I've been extremely burnt out on procedural stuff in games, to the point where as soon as I see that being a decent chunk of a game - I'm out. And usually it's not even that the games are bad, it's just that my mind is really bothered when I see generated patterns

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