Player-Developed Games

[Morreion]

Player-Developed Games (Keen & Graev)

Player-driven development is on the rise. Smed from SOE stated that it’s at the core of who they (SOE) are and who they are evolving into. Generally speaking, I think I like the practice of truly listening to players and including them to the degree that SOE has done over the past several months. The open channels of communication truly are awesome, and I think in many ways the game(s) we get in the end will be better as a result...

I’m also curious to think about how much developers might use the players as an excuse or a crutch. Some of the best ideas come from thinking outside the box and trying something new or risky. We don’t have enough risk in this market. We’re stagnant and “innovating” on the same five or six ideas over and over–rather we are pretending to innovate by tossing in one novelty after the next. Reality is, in order to innovate and truly design the future of MMOs we have to be able to discard what has come before in favor of rethinking something entirely new. Complicate that by keeping the crucial, working fundamentals.

Before anyone considers jumping on the “let’s have the players help us develop our game” (and truly mean it) bandwagon, I hope they’ll take a really hard look at their own team and conclude that they have the experience, talent, and vision to see something truly amazing BEFORE the players get involved.

[Regolyth]

Players don't always have the best of ideas. Just look at when Mythic listened to the whiners in DAoC and made things to suit them. The game took a bit hit in fun. They later corrected those issues, but it's part of the reason for it's decline. Blizzard has admitted to doing the same thing with WoW in the past few expansions. They are no longer looking to keep WoW going, and instead are focusing efforts on their next MMO; so they have been catering to the fans. If you've played WoW recently, you'll see how horribly different it is than the game we played on the outset (after the server bugs were fixed).

[Morreion]

Players don't always have the best of ideas.

Exactly! They say they want something new, and then they complain when it's not familiar enough. You see this all the time. They like fast leveling, instancing, auction houses and instant travel- and then they wonder why nobody makes a game that holds their interest for more than 2 months. Sometimes its because of you, players.

Vocal minorities on message boards do not a great game make!

[Laethaka]

Jun 18, 2014 20:52:09 GMT -5 Regolyth said:

Blizzard has admitted to doing the same thing with WoW in the past few expansions. They are no longer looking to keep WoW going, and instead are focusing efforts on their next MMO; so they have been catering to the fans. If you've played WoW recently, you'll see how horribly different it is than the game we played on the outset (after the server bugs were fixed).

last I heard in like 2010 it was solo questing while waiting for a dungeon queue to pop and AH stuff to sell over and over. Zero chat. It's gotten worse?

[Regolyth]

That's about the last time I checked in on it too (maybe 2011). Look at Mists of Pandara. It's totally catering to what the fans want to see. It's also ridiculous.

[Laethaka]

Jun 19, 2014 15:46:15 GMT -5 Regolyth said:

It's also ridiculous.

I still have trouble believing that wasn't one of their April Fools posts

[Oatik]

I have to agree, most people don't know what they want, or they do know what they want but then don't about the unintended consequences of the change. To Morreion's point, if there is a place to gather at all it might be in the capital city, but people are waiting on their raid group or dungeon finder to pop and away they go. No one is interacting with each other. I doubt many people have done the Test of the Acrobat from ATiTD ($2 in the pizza fund for bringing up ATiTD but that pales in comparison to the DAoC money in there!) www.atitd.org/wiki/tale4/Test_of_the_Acrobat. Players had to teach different moves to each other and you couldn't learn from just anyone...there were events organized around it or random people running past you would stop and start somersaulting to see if they could teach you anything...maybe you had to be there...

I would think most games have extensive in game data and be able to see if there are issues instead of only taking feedback from a minority of players. I'm thinking trying to balance LoL Champions based on player feedback would be a tough road.