Crowd Game Design

Neojac

Many players has said that having the input from the players on how the game must be designed is crazy, but funny enough they are talking about them self. I tend to believe the opposite and have seen this in action first hand. The ideas are amazing that has come out thus far from the community. The big problem with developers I find these days is they know the limit of their software so tend not to think to far outside the box. If you set no limitations and allow the community to think way outside the box the ideas they come up with is un heard off. And most of them can easily be implemented. So far the people that has been on our round tables has a clear direction they want to take the game and always work together well where they would go through the process of how the feature should look and then fine tune it to every ones liking. I strongly believe in the community and know that our game will mark a new way of game designing. what is your thoughts on this subject?

Mightyking

Some wise man once said (I forgot who): "Players don't really know what want". I think this is true. We as players know when we like a game or not, because we keep playing what we like. But pinpointing it to little features is a lot harder, and often it's a combination of a lot of features together that makes something fun or not. I will not say that this crowd design can not work, but players may sometimes mean something very different than what they are saying.

Also when you ask if players like female dwarves with or without beards, as one famous game recently asked, you can get a clear answer on that particular question. Players tell they like their female dwarves with beards (at least in that game), but whether they actually like your version of those beards will always depend on how those beards will look in the final result. Some players might actually change their opinion if they don't like the end result.

Finally I'm wondering what game you are referring to where crowd design worked very well, because I'm not familiar with games that have really tried this. Other than Neo's Land and Everquest Next (roundtables).

Neojac

Yes as far as I know this has never been tried before, or at least to the scale we are doing it so I am looking forward to seeing what the outcome is for Neo's Land. One thing to remember, even the developers are just players as well at the end.  But think of it this way, when developers decide what players want there is usually only about 20 maybe that decides that, with crowd design there is hundreds as its the community and so could the old saying of many minds are better than one be true.

Nevulus

Can't please all the people all the time.

 

It's rather unfortunate but true. Just take GW2 as an example. Heralded as the second coming of MMORPGs, while damning the trinity class system. Out of 5 personal friends of mine on that bandwagon, 4 of them now regret abandoning the trinity-based role system, none of them are playing GW2 anymore.

 

What I find more interesting is the leveraging of the asset store and community in unity3d to expedite the development process for games such as Neo's Land, while only taking the suggestions from the community as a whole in order to drive the direction of the production process. In order to do this right, the company must bear some sort of responsibility and educate the masses as to why some ideas they may come up with are not feasible in a working game environment so as not to shun possible consumers when their suggestions do not come into fruition, because as much as everyone would love to believe there are no limitations, the harsh reality is that there are limitations to what the technology can do.

 

Neojac

That is totally true, you can not please every one. When we get an idea from the community we do look at how to implement it and then if it works in the game setting. Some ideas might sound good but in practice wont work. The main focus of allowing the community to give us the ideas is so they can broaden our thinking and give us new possibilities to think about. Even if we implement an idea and think it will be amazing, it still needs to be tested in the game. Some ideas sound fun but when they are in the game they are not, so at that stage we get the input from the players again and then diced to keep it or not.