Should developers "listen to the fans"?

[Zhukov]

Well, should they?

I often hear this phrase mentioned, usually in relation to sequels and reboots.

On the one hand, I can see why it would make a great deal sense to cater to your prospective customer base. No one ever went broke selling people stuff that they want to buy. After all, they're the people paying the games, if anyone is going to be well-aquatinted with what needs fixing, it'll be them.

On the other hand, well... fans aren't game designers. I'm not entirely convinced that pandering to their whims makes for a good game. It will certainly never make for an innovative game since fans are invariably resistant to change. I shudder to think what would have happened to series like Fallout or Mass Effect if their developers had designed them according to the wishes of their respective fans.

Thoughts?

 

[The Madman]

Good god no!

The best games I've always felt are the ones made by passionate developers who make games just as much for themselves as for anyone else. People with a clear and definite vision they're wanting to see through to the end, investing their time, effort, and a good portion of their soul to do so. *Those* are the games which stand out, the games that often are remembered years after everything else is forgotten, not the generic stuff made specifically to cater to as many wildly divergent fan requests as possible.

That's kinda why I'm worried about Bioware as of late. No, not Dragon Age 2, I honestly couldn't care less. Just all their asking. Should they reveal Tali? Should they feature Femshep? What does Femshep look like?

I would have hoped the developers had a vision for all this rather than simply pandering to whatever the fans want. Fans are stupid, I should know, I'm one of em. They should ignore me and just make the best damn game they can, the game they want to make, not the game they think will be the least controversial and appeal to the widest audience. Because when they do, Bioware like many other developers out there, are capable of some really amazing stuff.

 

[Chris Barber]

I don't think there is a simple yes or no to this. I think a good developer can listen to fan feedback and take it into account to make a better product with it. But I also think that listening to fans for the wrong reason can lead to disaster.

People in either category can have good or bad ideas. Sometimes fans will come up with fresh ideas that wouldn't ever naturally occur to the devs. Over at the NEStalgia forums we have a suggestion forum and some of the things pitched do sometimes make their way into the game. The vast majority of ideas do not. And the ones that do usually have to be altered at least a little to fit in with the game. But I think one of the marks of a good developer at this point is the capacity to listen to feedback and do something constructive with it.

 

[WitchD0ctor]

Nah, I enjoy making games I want to play, screw other people, they don't spend 6 months in C++ and 3DS Max

 

[madwarper]

You know the phrase "The squeaky wheel gets the oil."?

I highly doubt that they were "listening to the fans" when they made the changes to Mass Effect when they dumbed ME2 down to a Gears knock-off. Mostly because the fans of ME1 were content, they weren't shouting "Derp! I no can shoot straight. Ability is confuse! Inventory make brain hurt!"

 

[badgersprite]

To the extent that it turns the original product into fanfic, no. Definitely not. I can think of several film franchises, TV shows and game series that hurt an awful lot.

 

[surg3n]

People tend to only be effective at telling you what is wrong with a game, not what is right, not what they like - as if admitting to liking something invalidates their critisism.

It's not like developers listen to feedback from beta testers other than bug reports. I mean, there's the design team, producers, project directors, managers... then along comes Timmy, and he thinks that...

The game would be much betterer is it had the halo guns and a big axe with flames coming out and special double jumps off walls and being able to pick up enemies and throw them at other enemies and pick up other things and fart on peoples heads.

Out of all the feedback gleamed from fans, the one or two nuggets of wisdom will always be lost in the thousands of derp ideas. It might be better if a select group was targetted, say an indi developer community, computer science students, maybe a clan from an established FPS - people who play a lot of relevant games but can also express their ideas. Cut out the chaff, and I think they'd see some really beneficial feedback.

I'm an indi developer, and personally I'm in the same mindset as WitchD0ctor, the best feedback I can expect is just people wanting to play my game... I don't need anymore bad ideas, I only really listen to people who I know, know what they are talking about.

 

[Zantos]

You know the phrase "The squeaky wheel gets the oil."?

I highly doubt that they were "listening to the fans" when they made the changes to Mass Effect when they dumbed ME2 down to a Gears knock-off. Mostly because the fans of ME1 were content, they weren't shouting "Derp! I no can shoot straight. Ability is confuse! Inventory make brain hurt!"

I was. Well not in those exact words, but I hated the inventory system with a passion. Granted, stripping out the whole thing was a step too far, but an "omni-gel the shit add-ons that I don't use or particularly want" button wouldn't have gone amiss. I'd have tolerated the inventory if I didn't have to spend so much bloody time in there.

OT: The problem is the fans are always wanting either things that are impossible, or things that completely opposed to each other. They do bear in mind some things (a load of stuff in Fallout NV was based on popular mods for Fallout 3), but at the end of the day it should be mostly their creation, and just trying to jack things in to appease the fans will lead to it not being as well made or polished.

 

[scw55]

I think fan opinnions should be looked at but not neccarily used. With 'art' it's always good having an outsider's opinnion. However the quality of that opinnion may not be of that a high standard.

 

[LookingGlass]

I'd much rather see games that perfectly display the vision of the developer. No compromises for the sake of fans or, just as importantly, the publishers.

If publishers want something else, they should publish that game instead.

If fans want something else, hopefully the developers are nice enough to give them powerful mod tools like The Elder Scrolls Construction Set.


But we don't really live in that world.

 

[You Can't Take the Sky From Me]

I think that if the fans say that something didn't work or that something was broken listening to them is probably a good idea but that pandering to them usualy creates a lesser product overall.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Nope, listening to fans for the most part is a bad idea. Sure, consider what they say, but don't build your games around what fans want, otherwise it's going to be crap.

 

[JochemDude]

I say let them listen to the critics, the ones who's job it is to judge games. Ofcourse there are people like me and you who know what we are talking about, but appearently there is also a butload of people out there that don't.

 

[The Virgo]

Yes and no. I always say "trust your instincts" when it comes to things like managing your product, but there are times when you have appease your fans. It all depends on the situation I guess. Besides, they can be right sometimes (Indiana Jones 4, anyone?).

 

[Bajinga]

It depends on the situation.

Let's take a company like 2K games and Valve. The two companies have made some great games over the years, but they have yet to make a game that has had no criticism. They both have their own ways of doing things. Fans generally want remakes of their favorite game, over and over again, which the developers aren't keen on (unless they are desperate for sales.

Then we take a very successful company like Bioware. They have also made some great games, but Dragon Age II wasn't their best, by any standard, and the fans of the company did make some great points to what the game could have been.

So, as mentioned, it all depends on what situation a developer is in.

 

[Wuggy]

The fans of ME1 are terminally boring nerds who want to bolster their tragically low self-esteem by fiddling with poorly designed interfaces that they falsely believe to be beyond the ken of supposedly lesser people. They also demand that games all include a list of numbers that steadily increase in order to make themselves feel better about their miserable lives.

Meanwhile, us colourful and interesting people who actually manage to have sex every once in a while were sick of having to mash the convert-to-omni-gel button every time we opened our inventory. An inventory that involved no aspect of choice or character customization but rather consisted of constantly swapping out equipment for identical items with bigger numbers on the end. Also, we didn't see the point in a skill point system that involved such incremental increases that you can put a single point into each skill, then completely ignore it and still finish the game. We wanted a better control scheme, improved AI and combat that required actual input from the player.

You want stats? Go play with a fucking calculator.

HAHAAHAHAHAHA! I applaud to you sir. You deserve a bow and a tip of my hypothetical hat. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. In other words: That was really funny, well done.

Anyway.
First of all, a lot people have a scewed view of "listening to fans". They view it specifically as "listening to fans (in other words: me)". And this is regardless whether they represent the majority of the fans or not. Because of course, everyone is the "real kind of fan".

Now to answer the question with a huge cop-out: Developers shoudl listen to fans... to an extent. You're right, fans aren't game developers but they still are the ones who the content is made for. If the fans were able to decide, no games would ever be finished. Also, a lot of the times fans do not know what the eff they're talking about (and I'm including myself to this), sometimes they do, a lot of the time they don't. Then again, a developer should find a balance between the their own ideas and appeasing the fans (I'm paraphrasing a making of document of Deus Ex: Human Revolution there). At least in the sequals they should pay attention to both professional criticism and fan criticism... and then make their own decisions regarding them. In a sequal one doesn't want to focus on things that were not liked, et cetera. I'd say World of Warcraft was greatly hindered when the developers started to listen to fans bitching about difficulty and how they're entitled to have and see everything. Now the game is constantly nerfed to piss-easy so that the people who actually put effort to "beating the game" don't feel that special anymore, regardless of the workload they've done to achieve it. And then again, that's just my subjective "fan-opinion".

 

[cgentero]

They do already, but only popular opinions, and usually its vague e.g. the game is too hard so they tone it down, etc.

 

[JediMB]

Listen? Yes.

And then consider if the praise/criticism/idea makes sense.

Finally, they use their brains to decide what is best for the games.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I think developers should definitely read forum posts about their game. I'm not talking about GameFAQs here. I'm talking about the official forums and other community based forums. For example, the devs for MLB The Show post and are a presence on the OperationSports forum and they add-in several community suggestions to next year's game and fix any bugs in a rather timely manner.

To me, it's very easy to tell the difference between the ignorant complainers and the complainers that have legitimate complaints. For example, lots of people can't adjust their playstyle to combat other playstyles and say this or that is overpowered or cheap when it's not. It's pretty easy to tell if a weapon or whatever is overpowered because everyone will be using it since people do everything to win in online games. If there's nothing to counter a weapon or tactic, it's unbalanced.

Lastly, the devs should only change stuff they actually agree with as it's their game. A game made by the players/fans would probably be a bad game.