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Your Influence on Developers

by Dick Ward August 18th 2008 3:34 PM CDT2 Comments

To hardcore players, this question may sound ridiculous, but do game developers have too much fan feedback? Obviously, there are many that don’t, and won’t, take any of it seriously. For others, it’s their main source of feedback. While some may consider this new trend to be a perfect example of exactly what the industry should be, maybe in some cases the fans have just a bit too much influence.

With the release of Too Human, a lot of the attention that should be going to the game is instead going to the very outspoken president of Silicon Knights, Denis Dyack. He’s got views on everything and he’s not afraid to share them, but there’s much speculation that Dyack’s rants and social experiments may have done more harm than good.

Dyack seems to find the time to respond to any and all criticism that his game receives. He not only speaks out about the state of review and preview coverage of games, but against the way fans judge games as well. For those that aren’t familiar, Dyack’s diatribes, while often a bit convoluted, are really interesting reads, and I highly recommend finding them. If he were a journalist or just a message board dweller, he certainly wouldn’t get the kind of press he does for his posts, but he wouldn’t get in the same problematic situations either.

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As a prime example, take the situation over at the popular gaming forum Neogaf. Dyack drew a line in the sand asking Too Human’s detractors to enter into a sort of bet with him. If the game receives more than a certain rating on Metacritic, then his detractors will have “Owned by Too Human” attached to their posting IDs, and if less, then Dyack will be shown as “Owned by the GAF”.

This sort of posting shows the influence that the community in general can have on a developer, for better or for worse. Rather than making fans think about the game more critically, as was the intent, it seems to have created an atmosphere of competition, with Dyack on one side and message board posting gamers on the other.

MTV Games also listens very strongly to their fan base when planning downloadable content and tracks for the new game. While this may seem like a really beneficial thing, it seems to put a damper on the variety of DLC. It limits the more niche genres, rather than encouraging them, and boils everything down to the lowest common denominator, just like MTV itself did before they just plain stopped having music on the channel.


Of course, there is the flipside. Many successful MMOs, including Blizzard and their World of Warcraft, take fan feedback very seriously when making adjustments to their games. Upcoming patches take into account the different arena records, use of each class, and different threads on their official forums. Other companies such as Bungie, work with this kind of feedback as well as suggestions from their own forums when designing new games or patching old ones.

The team behind Bionic Commando Rearmed seem to have truly embraced their community and the game is a lot better for it. Capcom has a long history of taking influence from their loyal fans by beta testing games like Street Fighter IV in the arcades before nailing down the final build for home consoles. That process of testing and feedback works very well.

Influence from the fan base can certainly be beneficial, but it’s important to know to take it with a grain of salt. There’s a reason guys like Dyack are where they’re at – they know how to make games.