Culture Clash

(November 2008)

Intelligent Design

Want better games? Listen to gamers

“It seems by and large,” said Valve's Gabe Newell recently, “that gamers are incredibly smart. The average gamer seems to know more about what makes a good game than the average person at a publisher.”

Coming from Newell it's a little like him saying the sky is blue; Valve is a chronic monitor of gamer opinion throughout its development cycles, optimizing based on player feedback, always trusting the consumer to define the ideal experience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Valve has never released a less than outstanding game. Between the talented staff and its faith in the belief that gamers know what's good, the company can seemingly do no wrong.

And Gabe's right. Gamers are (by and large) smart people, people who know what they want from their games. Many of the companies that serve them, however, prefer to scoff at the wishes of gamers, both in design and business practices. The ongoing DRM debate underscores that. Will Wright admits that he should have paid more attention to what EA was doing with Spore – an especially relevant point since he's one of the few developers with enough clout to maybe get EA to reconsider its draconian anti-piracy measures that did nothing to prevent theft but did hurt sales and drive a lot of negative publicity.

Meanwhile, EA's John Ricitiello deplored and defended DRM in the same breath while simultaneously managing to insult every EA customer: essentially saying complainers were either pirates or too stupid to know what they were complaining about, while everyone else was too stupid to care what gets installed on their computers. Later, Ricitiello – the guy who runs EA – warned against “the drug of profits,” saying that making great games to please customers is what really matters. I agree that we be wary about the drug of profits, but I'd love to get my hands on whatever drugs John Ricitiello is doing if he thinks anybody's going to fall for a line like that coming from EA, for which customer satisfaction is less a credo and more a loose guideline.

And let's not forget Activision's head Bobby Kotick, the genius who recently said that his company is not interested in working with titles or franchises that aren't positioned to become 10-year, $100-million properties. He doesn't mention gamers at all; apparently they're not an important variable. You know, you have to stop and wonder, really, how often some of these execs were dropped on their heads as babies. At least Ricitiello is saying that quality games are important, and we have seen a slight turnaround on EA's part there. Kotick seems eager to slither right into the hole EA is trying to climb out of.

Devs and publishers alike that ignore gamers and the march of progress often find their significance diminished. id Software, once the lord of modern action gaming, has certainly dwindled in relevance as gamers evolve and seek more complicated experiences, while it still gives them monster closets . Same goes for Core Design; Tomb Raider should have kept the firm swimming in gold. Instead Core repeatedly did the wrong thing, ignoring gamer wishes along the way, and had to be stripped of its own creation.

The thing is, it's pretty simple, these gamer wants. Gamers want a wide selection of games suitable to varied tastes. They don't want to be hassled or mistreated by the products they purchase, they expect some measure of quality control, and want evolution in design theory as the medium continues to mature. Many devpubs, though, and the employees within them, don't care what gamers think – and aren't afraid to say so. It's a common refrain at GDC… gamers don't make games, so no opinions from them.

Which is patently ridiculous, and it signifies contempt for the customer that most industries can't get away with. Game companies should make games for gamers. When that gets lost, it sets the stage for the PCP-jacked frat-boy behavior of capering buffoons like GameCock executives, who pretty clearly have little interest in publishing games but plenty of interest in behaving like complete knob goblins. And while that's the worst of the worst, certainly the trend of endless franchisation, buggy releases, and just poor games tie back to developers or publishers who aren't interested in what gamers have to say about the medium. And they can get away with it because gamers complain loudly but still go out and buy the product – an error I'm as guilty of as the next gamer.

I really appreciate Stardock's and Gas Powered's recent Gamers Bill of Rights. I'd change some of its content, but that doesn't matter because it's proof that some developers are very interested in doing right by the customer. Based on this document, I doubt Brad Wardell or Chris Taylor would ever say that they didn't care what gamers think, and that's great. And I can't help but notice that titles from Stardock and Gas Powered Games have received significant critical and audience acclaim. Like Valve, those guys make some pretty good games, and it might have something to do with the fact that they respect the wishes of their audience.

Sometimes firms pre-emptively listen to consumers in order to avoid potential backlash – witness Sony's global recall of LittleBigPlanet just prior to release, when lines from the Qur'an were discovered in its soundtrack. I asked IGDA Localization SIG chair Tom Edwards of Englobe, Inc. whether he felt the recall was the right move, given the existence of a Day Zero patch that could have ameliorated the issue much more quietly. His response: “If the Day Zero patch ensures with 100% certainty that the content will not be exposed, I would definitely support that approach… [But] making an open admission of the fix is ultimately less risky… It just seems to me they [Sony] were trying to avoid a worst-case scenario… of course ideally, this is done proactively during production.” Since the patch obviously couldn't ensure total coverage (some consoles may not be online) his view is that Sony made the right move, essentially acceding to the future likelihood of customer response before it became a crisis. A valid concern is voiced by Penny Arcade, though; the recall may be like a bucket of water before a brushfire, one completely out of Sony's control that may render the good intentions of the recall moot.

Customers who play games and look forward to them should be seen by developers and publishers alike as a valuable resource with encyclopedic insight. Gamers are tireless and perceptive; there are more of them then there are industry professionals, and they spend much more time playing the product, which is quite different from making it. Development can get so lost in the trees that it loses sight of the forest – sometimes big missteps like the LittleBigPlanet song, and sometimes simply making a bad design decision. Gamers know more about games than anyone else. Those who've tapped into that vast sea of wisdom have been successful in the past; those who scorn it often fall aside.