This video (Indie Game Success Roadmap #8) recommends posing questions directly to players and collecting feedback that way, but I was under the impression that users are good at finding problems, but famously bad at finding solutions, and that the proper way to handle this is just, well, observational playtesting. I think this video might benefit more from an emphasis on that.
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There’s a difference between being overly reliant and not reliant at all. Play testing is great but it means next to nothing without allowing testers to expand on their thoughts. It’s important to accept that as the owner of an idea you will tend to look at it through rose tinted glasses and that many players will know a lot more than you do about what makes your game successful.
But obviously be smart about it. There will always be someone who thinks all game designers are idiots. You don’t have to scroll far on any game’s social to see this in action. Learning how to interpret feedback is a skill in itself that you can only build over time and mostly through trial and error.
A couple of examples in the real world:
The design of Valve’s Portal was completely rebuilt from scratch after the game was near completion and first went out to testers. There were some tweaks that were needed with players not knowing where to go or what to do, but the most important feedback they got was that it was a great tutorial and they couldn’t wait for the real game. But what they were playing was the real game… They scrapped the entire game and worked with testers to redesign into something worth playing. Portal would have been a complete flop without this insight and now Valve’s game development process is centric to both playtesting and player feedback.
The design of Rare’s Sea of Thieves is constantly evolving each season. The season’s themselves are driven by the team at Rare but their Insiders program allows members of the public to get early insights on upcoming seasons and to test them out on beta servers. Bugs have been upgraded to features, entire ideas have been scrapped, many changes have been made based on player feedback. But equally many player ideas have been disregarded over and over again because they would most likely require a complete redesign of the game. It’s a constant balancing act that will last the lifetime of SoT but it’s what makes it so successful.
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Feedback is essential to game development but “Obey your players” (as it was phrased in the video) is an extremely unhealthy and unhelpful way to approach this. Your players are not designers, and while they may sometimes THINK they know everything, they do not.
As a rule you should always take feedback seriously, because if nothing else it is true to the experience of at least one person and that is useful information, but what you then decide to DO with that feedback is up to you. Players cannot design the game for you and ultimately it is still YOUR game and YOUR decision. The idea that genre is the only thing you should be in charge of is ludicrous. I like the rest of the course, but this is just a ridiculous thing to say. Having players come up with the story, are you kidding? Gamers are not designers, writers, artists, animators, composers, programmers, etc. They do not know how to make a game. They know how to describe their own experience and preferences. You should make the game that YOU want to make and use playtesting and feedback to find out whether you are reaching YOUR goals, and whether players are getting the experience that YOU intended. If not, adjust as necessary, but definitely DO NOT put players in charge of your game.
Playtest frequently, and get as much feedback as you can, but apply that feedback wisely.
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I agree.
I love lots of what GDTV has to offer but not a huge fan of this mindset as someone with a history in making a game.
It’s SUPER important to make a game that can be enjoyed by more than JUST you, but if you’re making something for someone else and the “genre is for you” I feel it’s too easy to hit burnout and stop being interested in what you’re making.
I feel Rick’s point here is kind of counter-intuitive to what he said previously about failing fast. I think you should make what YOU want, and if it fails because your interests don’t align with the playerbase that’s fine and you need to be in the mentality to be fine killing it and moving to the next thing.