Why Can't Gamers Be Designers?

ThriKreen

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+1 for modding. Having come from a modding background and had the studio call me up before I can call them up, I can say hard work pays off, but it is still hard work on both sides of the spectrum.

That said, having been a part of a modding community, it's safe to say that the 90-10-1 rule [http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html] still applies. 90% of your audience will just play the game, 10% might muck with the toolset or play multiplayer, and 1% will be heavily involved in that feature.

Then you can go one level further into that 10+1% of modders, in that 90% of the stuff made will be crap, 10% will be decent, and the 1% of really awesome stuff that where they can probably get hired from their work (and it has happened). Or for multiplayer, 90% will just play with friends, 10% will take part in competitions and tournaments, and 1% will do it professionally.

Case in point for NWN, I've seen SOOOOO many boring hack'n'slash modules which made me fall asleep. Then there were gems that I still remember to this day, like one of them that had you investigate a murder, very minimal combat, LA Noire like interrogations (before LA Noire, ha). But later you discover that after you've interviewed each suspect, they ended up dead. Holy crap, you're being framed! Now you're rushing against the clock to avoid the city guard since you have a price on your head, while also trying to figure out who the murderer is and if he's also framing you. Tense!

Ultimately though, what makes that 0.01% to 0.1% stand out from the rest, that makes them more worthy to call the shots, especially if they end up at the game studio?

They don't just write down how they think a game should be designed, they actually go out and do the work.
 

Emiscary

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burningdragoon said:
Not caring about copyright or IP laws is fine... unless you are a business that has to. It's also a different, though related and plenty valid, discussion and isn't a valid counter-argument for this one.

As much as you reject the Dunning-Kruger effect as argument, it really is one of the better reasons. It's super goddamn easy to think you know what's best as an outsider. It's also super easy to have "I would like this" lead into "therefore so would everyone else". Then you have to realize that even ideas that are actually "good" are not only still just ideas, which are worthless, they are ideas without any knowledge of the inside processes.

Now, I do think developers should listen to feedback when possible, but ultimately it's their project and they should have as much control over it as possible.

And finally, we do have a way to participate in the design process already. It's called voting with your damn wallet. Edit: also, there's always making your own game. It's not that hard

--

Oh, and since you're big into the idea of listening to other's ideas, maybe you should work on being less abrasive yourself before complaining about "condescending jagoffs"
Did I not open the thread by saying most people are lazy assholes? I consider myself to be a part of most people. And I'm predisposed to both behaviors. This is why I linked a video explaining the long and short of the history of involving users in the conceptualization and design of products and it's potential future implementation rather than summarize the points myself. It's also why I don't bother being polite to people I have no interest in listening to. Rude? To an extent, yeah. But this is the internet, and rudeness here has a much lower price than elsewhere. And let's be honest, in modern civilized society it doesn't cost you that much normally >.>

It also amazes me exactly how limited the scope of people's vision is with regards to open business models despite the clear evidence that they work.
 

Xanadu84

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Fun semi-tangent, when Ebert made his criticism of games not being art, it wasn't exactly a value judgement, but he was addressing this very idea of authorship in games. Specifically that the very act of playing a game brings the player into the creative process, and this excludes it from the realm of art. Now he was certainly wrong (after all, he is not an expert of games, he is an expert on movies), but unfortunately, he was dismissed out of hand rather then taken to task in a debate that could lead to some meaningful introspection.

Games lend themselves quite naturally to authorship by the audience. They are of more use to a designer then the average audience member is to a filmmaker. But there is still craft and complexity to game design that the average player may miss. Games may not work as a pure democracy, but they certainly could benefit from a representational democracy. Bioware shouldn't dismiss the usefulness of their audience as co collaborators, but neither should they abandon there personal vision.
 

Wintermoot

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didn't valve release community stuff on multiple updates?
gamers can be designers just look at the modding community or the metric ton of homebrew games.
 

Emiscary

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Xanadu84 said:
Fun semi-tangent, when Ebert made his criticism of games not being art, it wasn't exactly a value judgement, but he was addressing this very idea of authorship in games. Specifically that the very act of playing a game brings the player into the creative process, and this excludes it from the realm of art. Now he was certainly wrong (after all, he is not an expert of games, he is an expert on movies), but unfortunately, he was dismissed out of hand rather then taken to task in a debate that could lead to some meaningful introspection.

Games lend themselves quite naturally to authorship by the audience. They are of more use to a designer then the average audience member is to a filmmaker. But there is still craft and complexity to game design that the average player may miss. Games may not work as a pure democracy, but they certainly could benefit from a representational democracy. Bioware shouldn't dismiss the usefulness of their audience as co collaborators, but neither should they abandon there personal vision.
People don't need to be involved in/knowledgeable about every aspect of game design in order to have useful input. Even the most cursory interactive effort on the part of any game dev would go a very very long way.

As it's been mentioned many times community driven content creation goes way back, and its being implemented to a greater degree in all kinds of games. Look at something like Minecraft, or Littlebig Planet, or the Steam Workshop. Why can't the lessons learned from open source titles and modding communities be implemented into the process of game design itself?
 

Aircross

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Gamers can be designers, but in this day and age business men are the puppet masters of developers.
 

Woodsey

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I don't really get the question. If people think they have great ideas for making games then they should get a small group of people together and start making them - now's a better time than ever.

If you're talking about devs paying attention to criticism, they already do.
 

Rednog

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Nov 3, 2008
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Like other people have said, gamers can be idiots.
I mean look at the "input" into WoW as a perfect example, how everything is turned up on its head because of people constantly bitching and moaning about mechanics to the point that things get so F'd up and then gamers complain about how much it sucks even though they got what they wanted.
 

rob_simple

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Aug 8, 2010
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Because just because you think it's a good idea, doesn't mean it is and it definitely doesn't mean everyone will agree with you.

I watch a lot of Korean films, and they almost inevitably have what I like to call a happy sad ending where, at best, maybe one of the main characters survives. Now, a lot of people --especially in Western audiences-- would look at that and go 'NOOOO EVERYONE HAS TO LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER THEY SHOULD CHANGE THE ENDING.'

Here's the thing though: I like those endings, they are far more realistic than the saccharine bullshit Hollywood pulls most of the time. I don't mind to sound all Weeaboo, but the point I'm trying to make is what you are describing is pretty much the epitomy of the saying 'a camel is a horse designed by comittee.'

You simply can't let everyone have their say on a topic because you will never satisfy everyone, meaning that to please some people you'd have to outright deny the desires of others or come to a truce that makes everything bland across the board.

You are never going to get everyone to agree on something and in the end you'll just end up with a tangled mess of changes and alterations that leave the product feeling broken and unfinished.
 

MC K-Mac

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Oct 23, 2010
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DrVornoff said:
ThriKreen said:
They don't just write down how they think a game should be designed, they actually go out and do the work.
And therein lies the difference between a professional and some no-name chucklefuck shooting his mouth off on the internet.
This! This! A thousand times this!

Dr. Vornoff, you are my Internet hero for the day.
 

burningdragoon

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Jul 27, 2009
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Emiscary said:
burningdragoon said:
Not caring about copyright or IP laws is fine... unless you are a business that has to. It's also a different, though related and plenty valid, discussion and isn't a valid counter-argument for this one.

As much as you reject the Dunning-Kruger effect as argument, it really is one of the better reasons. It's super goddamn easy to think you know what's best as an outsider. It's also super easy to have "I would like this" lead into "therefore so would everyone else". Then you have to realize that even ideas that are actually "good" are not only still just ideas, which are worthless, they are ideas without any knowledge of the inside processes.

Now, I do think developers should listen to feedback when possible, but ultimately it's their project and they should have as much control over it as possible.

And finally, we do have a way to participate in the design process already. It's called voting with your damn wallet. Edit: also, there's always making your own game. It's not that hard

--

Oh, and since you're big into the idea of listening to other's ideas, maybe you should work on being less abrasive yourself before complaining about "condescending jagoffs"
Did I not open the thread by saying most people are lazy assholes? I consider myself to be a part of most people. And I'm predisposed to both behaviors. This is why I linked a video explaining the long and short of the history of involving users in the conceptualization and design of products and it's potential future implementation rather than summarize the points myself. It's also why I don't bother being polite to people I have no interest in listening to. Rude? To an extent, yeah. But this is the internet, and rudeness here has a much lower price than elsewhere. And let's be honest, in modern civilized society it doesn't cost you that much normally >.>

It also amazes me exactly how limited the scope of people's vision is with regards to open business models despite the clear evidence that they work.
"People are assholes, so I will be an asshole then complain when people are assholes back." Great outlook right there. And being rude to people you have no intent on listening to will definitely get them to listen to you, without question.

Did I... did I just put myself into your "people I don't listen to" category? Whoops.

Anyway, get ready for a sloppy metaphor/analogy: If you're in a haystack (of ideas!) and aren't working hard to make your idea noticeable (by actually working on it), then chances are you aren't the needle (an idea needle!)... wait, if I explain the pieces that kinda defeats the purpose of the metaphor, doesn't it? Whoops again. "Why can't the developers just look through the entire haystack?" is not a good argument.
 

Jesse Willadson

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Jan 14, 2012
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I went to game design school for a year and a half. Alot of the people in the program were gamer's, but there were also a lot of graphic designers, techophiles, etc....

The problem with gamer's making games is often they don't have the patience to actually make the game. Game design schools tend to have a high degree of drop-outs. Also alot of gamer's ideas tend to be there favorite game plus a couple of new features. They also fall victim to feature creep, and incredibly convoluted and confusing game design ideas (I am often guilty of this as well)

They also almost always aim for the hardcore crowd, god forbid you suggest making a simple game similar to bejeweled.

However its not always bad, gamer's on the team tend to make sure that the game is fun. I've had a team of mostly artists and teams of mostly programmers, and they are usually so focused on either really cool environments, or cool programming that the player can be an afterthought
 

gigastar

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Sep 13, 2010
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gigastrike said:
Isn't this what game testers are for?

Also, "lead to believe that they were involved in the creative process"? How in the world would someone who just pays to play the final game feel like they had any actual control in how said game turns out?
Testers have no say in what goes into the game, thier job is to make sure that everything works properly and nothing else.
 

hermes

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Mar 2, 2009
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People don't know what they want. I can't blame developers for considering most input as white noise, since most is. And even if they do, knowing it and having the ability to pull it off are totally different.

Making games is hard. I know it may sound extremely obvious, but many people don't have any idea about the set of skill required to program a function, compose a song, draw concept art, animate a model, voice act a character, talk to the press, test a feature and manage all those people and activities successfully. Its a hard, excruciating work... Just playing games and being able to say "this game should work better with a different controller layout" doesn't make you a designer.

If you still want to be a designer, there are a lot of mod tools, free engines and examples out there you could get to try to experiment with your ideas. The indie world has opened this possibility to a lot more people than before. You think you can be a game designer? Prove it. Stop playing games and start building them.
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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Emiscary said:
Y'know I could type out long and short of it- but seeing as how most people are lazy assholes, here's a link explaining things:

http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html

I only post it here on a gaming forum because it relates (you guessed it!) to Mass Effect 3. Remember when a bunch of infuriatingly self-righteous people claimed that gamers had no right to try and claim authorship over the game? Well it's my belief that their aim wasn't to try and steal anything from anyone- it was simply to involve themselves in the process of creative collaboration.

If they came off as entitled, here's why: they were led to believe they were already involved in the process (at least to some extent). And then they were basically flat out told that this was not actually the case. And people got mad, the way people who feel misled tend to do.

Here's the point I'm getting at: gamers are an automatically engaged and passionate audience. They desperately *want* to be involved in the design of the games they play. Anyone who wants proof of how true that is should spend 10 minutes on any MOBA message board and look over the volumes upon volumes of input people will just gift wrap for anyone who's willing to listen. And a nonzero portion of that input? Is *GOOD*. And it's *FREE*. How can any company not see the benefits of taking advantage of free labor?
There's actually a valid reason for why game companies rarely (if ever) accept random input from their audience: lawsuits.

Say you came up with the ultimate ending for ME 3 before the game came out, you post "Hey guys, wouldn't it be awesome if ME 3 ended like this? *insert how you would have ME 3 end*" on the Bioware forums. Bioware sees this and says "You know what? That really is a damn good ending, lets run with it!" Well it turns out that you're a greedy bastard, and knowing full well that YOU'RE the one that came up with the ending, you sue Bioware so you can get credit for them using the ending that YOU came up with. Thus ensues a nice juicy legal battle over plagiarism and such. Granted, I'd imagine most gamers would just be cumming in their pants at the knowledge of "HOLY SHIT MY FAVORITE GAME SERIES USED MY ENDING! FUCK YEAH!" and that would be enough...but legally, the devs are covering their asses.

It's the same reason TV series never incorporate FanFic into cannon.

It's also why Magic the Gathering won't accept ideas for new sets/cards from random people unless they have an agent to represent their ideas to Wizards of the Coast. :p