The Ignorance Of Crowds: Why Open Development Is Crap

"Open development is just about the worst idea for games.
People like to think they’re pretty special. And people do tend to have a habit of thinking what they think is right, and those who disagree are wrong. In my case it’s actually true, but unfortunately that’s not always the case for others. And really, honestly, the very last thing I want is other wrong people to be influencing the games I’m going to play. Developers have to stop asking other people how to make their games."
Rock, Paper Shotgun Article

Discuss!

 

I think Shroud has proven that the benefits outweigh the annoyance.

Let's ask Lum!

 

The article was entertaining and some good points are made, but it's up to the developers to separate the good requests from the staid and/or plain silly ones. I still think open development is a good thing.

 

Yes, open development requires a strong personality in the leadership position : Someone who will say "This is the way it will be! If you want something different, there are other games for you."

Sort of like the comments regarding the addition of wind turbines in the game (and electricity for that matter). That is the "Vision!" of the leadership, so arguing about whether they should be included in the game or not is moot.

Now, you can certainly ask the crowd whether there are too many turbines, but not whether there should be any at all.

Same with the odd comment I head in one of the older dev chats, when they introduced the magic system they were planning on using : The devs noted how many peoples were complaining about not being involved from the get-go.

Well, the leadership chooses the tone for the game : They are doing the work. Though, they may ask for our input on whether to do A or B, a strong hand must be used to ensure that the game does not become a watered down mess.

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Mind you, I come from a biased position: For the last 15 years, I have been part of a team that maintains the development of the in-house software used by my company.

Without a firm hand from the dev team, and the ability to say "Sorry no, we are not doing that." The application suite would have imploded into uselessness long ago from the onslaught of a 100 users requesting completely different directions.

 

Users are terrible with "what" and "how" but they're pretty decent with "why" if you can get that out of them. But it takes work to pull that out sometimes.

 

I think the difference is they aren't just taking a poll and saying, this is what the crowd says they want! But they are taking ideas that are actually good out of here, and listening to the feedback of what we like/don't like/how it can be improved.

I think Diablo 3 is an example of a game that was closed in testing, got out to market with it's own ideas of how to do things. And the people voiced a lot of concerns about things, and some of them they implemented afterwards that was good. some examples is artifacts when dropped made a big beam and a special noise, originally you had no idea it dropped if there were enough items around it to hide it. (even using the show item names button).

I haven't played Star was the old republic since a few months after launch, so I don't know what they changed, but it needed changed, if they changed it in the right ways I don't know.

So there is a point between listening too much to the crowd if the crowd is just asking for things to be like other games or to have the same features of other games.

 

Do we really have many examples of Open Development though? A large part of the problem with gaming communities is not that they ask unreasonable things, but the major players in the market are so crippled by fear and corporate drone culture that they don't have a clue how to actually talk to their customers any more. From the legal and business wonks who cripple any potential outreach, to the devs over-worked on hellish contracts who don't have the time to respond, to the frankly atrocious human resources skills of some of the programming types, to the sheer pressure when literal billions of dollars are at stake to keep churning out games guaranteed to catch the very barrel scraping demographic the article claims to deplore, how do you really expect any meaningful conversation between the creators and end users to develop?

But... if developers could just say "Ok, that's a good idea, but our code base probably isn't able to do that" or "We really liked your thoughts, however our fiction doesn't leave much space for a sentient race of cows", the sensible, intelligent players would soon develop a much deeper understanding of the actual development process, and tweak their ideas to be much more reasonable... and usable.

Let's be honest here; the reason Shroud has been able to open up so much is not just down to the nature of Kickstarter but the fact that Richard Garriot is personally an extremely charismatic and talented social networker. He's got both the space and the skills to connect with the public, and has been able to surround himself with equally diversely gifted people. If they were all still at Electronic Arts though, EA'd be throttling the life out of the forums already.

 

Bah! Not even going to read the article. Is this guy a game developer? If so he can run his company his own way and if not then he can stick his head back up where the sun don't shine.

 

Ultimately it's the decision of the developer as to what goes in the game. They take all the good ideas and the bad ones and they need to filter or be convinced of its benefits vs just blindly adding it due to popularity polls.

 

Open Innovation is a pretty mature concept, it's just relatively new to the gaming industry (but not software as a whole). Most other industries have turned it into a pretty successful venture, so I'm hoping for the same in this one.

Joe
The Unseen Dragon

 

I strongly disagree with the OP. Listening is a virtue that all development teams should have. The fact that most don't is why we often get bad games, imo.

 

Devs definitely should stop listening to whiners if they want to make a special games.

So do with it what you like.

 

By inference they should be listening to HC manly-men heroes? Because non-casual==successful game?

Developers will do what they deem to be correct, but plugging the consumer in has value. Anyone who imagines different needs to spend some time in marketing.

 

Have you spent some time in marketing yourself?
When did you become such an expert on marketing niche games?
Why do you care so much about their MARKETING (literally, greed) and not about the quality of the MMORPG?
The last question is the most important.

 

I can see that this is probably somewhat true, especially in cases where ideas a collected and implemented. Usually there is no back and forth process or rounding out it's just ideas interpreted and put to use.
The feeling of co-operation is complicit but some may be more likely to aquiesse if mistakes are made.

Give those the power to not just create but to destroy??

 

I have. Many years worth. And product development.

Marketing is not "greed", it is awareness.

Awareness can foster interest. Interest can prompt investigation. Investigation can turn hesitation into decision, which then could turn to purchase.

But awareness is the key. Awareness breeds community.

Apple is a good example. They are very good at marketing, and product design. Enough that they prompt me to look into their products. Do I buy them? Ultimately no, because the cost ratio is too high for me.

But then I spend time seeking out information. Discussing ideas on forums, basically helping indirectly, without purchasing anything, by providing more thought about the good and bad of their product.

Marketing is a self-metric generating machine that can only help the lifetime and quality of your products in the long run.

 

You're aware we're here because we want a game, which is a product of creativity, right?
We don't want to discuss marketing, we don't care about prices. And if we don't get the game we want, we won't buy it. If RG is happy with his game being a casual-oriented theme-park, it's fine, its his choice. But I won't tolerate this choice and I won't buy and play that piece of crap.
Many others will agree with me. That's why many people came to this forum in the first place. Because they want free for all emergent gameplay. Not because they want stupid theme parks.

 

Point of order. This is why you may be here.

 

Why are you here? To discuss marketing?

Then Im really sorry for you. I'm here for the game.

 

Although I posted the article I think this is a positive idea to involve the community, The writer seems to think that Game Devs are dumb, But all I see from the SOTA team is taking the good ideas that a majority feel they need and implementing them into the game, I do think however that maybe we have been led in some instances to think we are making contributions when in actual fact we are not and that the Dev's have been doing this to garner our interest more, And i would be thinking of Jumping in this, Why in the world would they leave that out?, So we can all say "We want jumping!" then they put it in and we all say YES! result, It's our game we are paying for it and we are involved, But apart from that this whole process of player testing has been as interesting for me and worth the entrance fee alone, I have enjoyed it all immensely being part of this cool Dev community. And am eagerly looking forward to R3 Testing.