139 réponses à ce sujet

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Developers have to actually turn their ideas into something that can be sold.



Players can just shoot their mouths off in the forums until Mom calls them to dinner.

[Landozelig]

I am a software developer (not games). The biggest issue that always comes up with me and non-programmers is their total lack of understanding of developing.

Many times they will come to me and say "can you fix this little thing really quick?". These 'little things' are usually massive and involve a huge undertaking.

Other times they will not mention something until it is too late and say "oh, I thought that would be way to hard to do", when in fact it may have been a few lines of code to do it.

If they'd only just ask, so much hassle could be avoided. My 2 cents.

[JayDust]

lol!

[Stitch808]

Working for a paycheck does put a damper on one's creativity.

[Wolfva2]

Astorax wrote...

_Loc_N_lol_ wrote...

Astorax wrote...

It's called the shotgun principle.

Oh I didn't know that one, gotta use it sometime.

Also, what the mod said.

It actually has a more full description of the principle...

it's the "shotgun bullcrap principle" (even as a mod we're discouraged from triggering the swear filter)

Really?  No bull? 
/ducking

[Wolfva2]

Kimberly Shaw wrote...

The only design decision I can see being an absolute problem of group think was mage hoods. WHAT? Super bad. No one should defend those things, they are fugly.

Thats not a game design problem, but a fashion design one.  Calling Mr. Black!  

Ya know, I'm reminded of an episode of the Simpsons, where Homer's brother has decided to make the ultimate car for the common man.  The problem, he sees, is cars are designed by designers with little or no input from the average joe who buys them.  SO he gets Homer to design...the perfect car!  And Homer does so.  The car is unveiled and it is the most godawful ugliest design ever; the Hugo looked like a Ferari next to it.  The company goes under, his brother becomes unemployed (and after that debacle unemployable) and Homer is left contemplating why everyone is mad at him after he designed such a great car.

There's a reason why the average joe (ie. gamers in this case) don't design games for a living.  We're morons.
/grabs a donut and a beer

[OneBadAssMother]

I've supported an Indie game company in the past which only had about 5 employees (Taleworlds), they realised a game that I personally found exceptionally well done for a very low budget (Mount & Blade). Throughout the years the developer relied almost completely on their fanbase to give them ideas/suggestions.



Which means yes, it was really the fans and players who developed it over the years as the game was shareware open beta. However, the end result is though they did please a certain target audience exceptionally (The reviews proved it to be a love-or-hate game), they simply could not please everyone.



In the end - you simply can't please everyone.

[Pocketgb]

Stitch808 wrote...

Working for a paycheck does put a damper on one's creativity.

winrar

A player does not have to worry about the millions of concerns that comes with developing a game. They only have to worry about being comfortable for the duration of the playtime.

[Chragen]

It has nothing to do with devs not having good ideas. It's about the gaming community in general not understanding just how much time and effort goes in to implementing just a single small idea.

When you're making a game like Dragon Age you got to commit to your original plan very early or you will never be able to finish the game. So even though you got a much better idea for something or you would love to redo big parts it's to late.

Not to mention that ideas are free and everyone got them, but implementation is time and money.

[purplesunset]

OneBadAssMother wrote...

I've supported an Indie game
company in the past which only had about 5 employees (Taleworlds), they realised a game that I personally found exceptionally well done for a very low budget (Mount & Blade). Throughout the years the developer relied almost completely on their fanbase to give them ideas/suggestions.

Which means yes, it was really the fans and players who developed it over the years as the game was shareware open beta. However, the end result is though they did please a certain target audience exceptionally (The reviews proved it to be a love-or-hate game), they simply could not please everyone.

In the end - you simply can't please everyone.

Let me revisit my idea about "going beyond the fullstop" which I mentioned on page 2:

Can't you see what your post is implying, if you go one step further ?

Your post means that indie and small game companies can best cater to a niche market and if it so happens that you share their passion, then lucky you. If you don't share their passion for the niche product, then you will absolutely hate the game (incidentally with a passion ). Hence it is a love it or hate it kind of thing.

With bigger companies, they  can't afford "love it or hate it" games. They could tank and go under which is not good for any of us who love gaming. They DO have to worry increasingly about "pleasing everyone" or "pleasing their bosses."
They have to worry about these things because the more people they please, the more customers they have. This concern will understandably have a crippling effect on the ideas and the creativity involved in big gaming companies.

Modifié par purplesunset, 09 décembre 2009 - 09:26 .

[OneBadAssMother]

Actually, you elaborated on what I was trying to say quite well heh

[sleepy__head]

You have to consider all of the unbelievably terrible ideas that are also thrown out by players into that statement.

If say, .1% of player ideas are good (better than devs) ideas, that means 99.9% of them are worse...

I bet such a mission statement on the game's main website would do wonders for sales.

"Bioware : We are BETTER than 99.9% of you"

[CJohnJones]

This reminds me of a guy I know who thinks he is as good as B.B. King because he can play in the same style. Develop your OWN style from the ground up that is equally good.



Also, go make an awesome mod and then say "see, that's how it is done people."

[Soretooth]

T1l wrote...

Sometimes developers can't see the forest for the trees.

I don't mean that in a condescending or critical sense, either; I just think when any individual is engrossed in a project they're passionate about they can be unintentionally blind to the bigger picture. It's human. The developers, talented and brilliant as they are, are human just like everyone else. Besides; it's not just the developers that have great ideas. Thank God Bioware had the foresight and kindness to release the toolset – it helps everyone. The developers learn from the community and the community learns from the developers; in the end, we all end up with a better end product.

Good points.  In fact, I'm impressed with most of the intelligent comments in this thread without trying to trash the developer.

Let me point out, too, that the writers and artists are on a timeline and usually have a very strict production path to follow.  Everything has to tie in together.  So the dreamer who sits in a chair all day thinking up ideas is restricted to what will work and what won't.  If most of the work is done for idea "A" then enhancement idea "B" to slightly improve "A" won't get done.  It's too hard and costly to move backwards.  So the dreamer gets slapped on the back of the head and asked why that idea wasn't presented earlier.

I had a job once in software quality control.  I was the monkey who was tasked to find errors in how the programming translated to screen appearance.  I loved the job because I was redlining screenshots like you wouldn't believe.  When you have so many fingers in the same pie it's almost impossible to make a great pie.  The team leader's job as head programmer is a virtual nightmare.  He or she must help identify all broken code and get them rectified before the product is pushed out the door.  When the rush is on near the end, testing gets tossed out the window.  Then it's patch time.

I'll end this by enticing you to make suggestions under the excellent DLC, expansion, and DA:O 2 idea threads on this forum.  Make yourself heard in keeping with this OP, if you think you have better ideas (and you just might).  Bioware is reading these forums to improve the DA:O line of products for us.  But some ideas just won't work given engine restrictions, etc.

Anyway, Bioware did an outstanding job with DA:O.  I, for one, can see the quality, although I'd like a larger font in the game for these old eyes.

[Soretooth]

T1l wrote...

Sometimes developers can't see the forest for the trees.

I don't mean that in a condescending or critical sense, either; I just think when any individual is engrossed in a project they're passionate about they can be unintentionally blind to the bigger picture. It's human. The developers, talented and brilliant as they are, are human just like everyone else. Besides; it's not just the developers that have great ideas. Thank God Bioware had the foresight and kindness to release the toolset – it helps everyone. The developers learn from the community and the community learns from the developers; in the end, we all end up with a better end product.

Good points.  In fact, I'm impressed with most of the intelligent comments in this thread without trying to trash the developer.

Let me point out, too, that the writers and artists are on a timeline and usually have a very strict production path to follow.  Everything has to tie in together.  So the dreamer who sits in a chair all day thinking up ideas is restricted to what will work and what won't.  If most of the work is done for idea "A" then enhancement idea "B" to slightly improve "A" won't get done.  It's too hard and costly to move backwards.  So the dreamer gets slapped on the back of the head and asked why that idea wasn't presented earlier.

I had a job once in software quality control.  I was the monkey who was tasked to find errors in how the programming translated to screen appearance.  I loved the job because I was redlining screenshots like you wouldn't believe.  When you have so many fingers in the same pie it's almost impossible to make a great pie.  The team leader's job as head programmer is a virtual nightmare.  He or she must help identify all broken code and get them rectified before the product is pushed out the door.  When the rush is on near the end, testing gets tossed out the window.  Then it's patch time.

I'll end this by enticing you to make suggestions under the excellent DLC, expansion, and DA:O 2 idea threads on this forum.  Make yourself heard in keeping with this OP, if you think you have better ideas (and you just might).  Bioware is reading these forums to improve the DA:O line of products for us.  But some ideas just won't work given engine restrictions, etc.

Anyway, Bioware did an outstanding job with DA:O.  I, for one, can see the quality, although I'd like a larger font in the game for these old eyes.

[dfjdejulio]

I don't get it. What is it about becoming a developer that makes them lose all the bright and interesting ideas?

The paycheck.

What you call "bright and interesting ideas" will often not appeal to as many of the average game-buying people as much as the stuff the developers put out.  There's a bit of a least-common-denominator thing that happens because the game has to sell enough to pay for its own development.  Stuff that caters to niche audiences (such as hardcore fans) often doesn't justify the cost of making it, if you're working for a paycheck.

Also, the developers come under more scrutiny than modders do.  The modders don't have to think about whether content will make it past the US, EU, and AU software ratings bodies.  The modders don't have to think about how the religious right, PETA, and Wal*Mart will react to some bit of content.  The modders don't have to worry about what the gaming press will say.  The developers have to worry about all that stuff, and it's gonna make 'em more cautious.

[kevinwastaken]

CJohnJones wrote...

This reminds me of a guy I know who thinks he is as good as B.B. King because he can play in the same style. Develop your OWN style from the ground up that is equally good.

Also, go make an awesome mod and then say "see, that's how it is done people."

Seriously, any jerkwad can come up with an idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen but if you don't have the means to implement them then stfu until you do.  Developers worked hard to get where they are, they most certainly didn't get there by spewing diarrhea all over internet forums.

[Vizkos]

Better ideas possibly because there are millions of players compared to tens or hundreds of developers.

[Magic Zarim]

th3warr1or wrote...

I don't get it. What is it about becoming a developer that makes them lose all the bright and interesting ideas? Of course, there'll always be people who will disagree, so some people may think that the developer's ideas are way better than player ideas.

But for the most part, for almost every and any game, there will be a bunch of people who come up with better ideas than any Dev for that game ever will. Of course, those ideas are never used because of copyright issues, and since the Devs didn't come up with it, they're the company is afraid that they'll be sued if they use it.

I mean I've seen several modders who've got tons and tons of ideas as it is. Why can't BioWare come up with that kind of DLC? Fair enough it's only been slightly over a month since the release, but if all the DLC is going to be like Warden's Keep, that's really disappointing.

That's easily explained:

Dev team (game (mechanics) designer) 10 - 25 people. Player base: 50,000 - ? people.

There's bound to be a 'better idea' in the pool of thousands of people contrary to the hand ful.

[purplesunset]

dfjdejulio wrote...

I don't get it. What is it about becoming a developer that makes them lose all the bright and interesting ideas?

The paycheck.

What you call "bright and interesting ideas" will often not appeal to as many of the average game-buying people as much as the stuff the developers put out.  There's a bit of a least-common-denominator thing that happens because the game has to sell enough to pay for its own development. .

You're right, but is that really a good excuse to the  game developers?  Is this the kind of defense that developers who work for big companies want for themselves?  "Well, this game is nothing more than a meal ticket to me. Another day, another do$$ar ,  so screw creativity."

This doesn't sound like a very flattering defense to me. This is the point I wanted to make on page 2.

 Stuff that caters to niche audiences (such as hardcore fans) often doesn't justify the cost of making it, if you're working for a paycheck

Well, this only applies to big gaming companies. As the previous posts show, indie companies can and do thrive on the rabid fan support of their small niche audiences.

Modifié par purplesunset, 09 décembre 2009 - 11:04 .

[Solistus1]

Just responding to the OP:

1) I dunno about these forums but in general, it's trivial to write up your legal boilerplate to clarify that any suggestions posted on the forums become property of the company and can be used with or without credit.  Honestly, I don't even think such measures are required - if you share a suggestion with no indication of trademark or other intellectual property holdings, would it not be either A) in the public domain or only exist as part of the company's proprietary web holdings and either way be fair game to use?  Anyway, long story short - it ain't liability that holds back devs.

2) It's really easy to make an idea sound like an obvious improvement when you don't actually implement any changes.  Even if you assume that the already coded game engine can easily do what you want it to (not always true and rewriting tons of code to add a minor feature is a recipe for Duke Nukem Forever level launch delays (i.e. indefinite)) and assume the same about the graphics side of things (the way models are constructed and animations are handled can be a major limiting factor - some of the issues with Arcane Warriors sheathing to cast certain spells were blamed on the models and animations IIRC and there was no easy and elegant fix which is why they coded the sheath before casting workaround for some spells), you still have to worry about how each seemingly minor change will impact the AI, retest all the triggered cutscenes to make sure nothing broke, push it out to beta testers in time to get playabiltiy and balance feedback, etc.

3) There's no such thing as a universally popular game or idea within a game.  Even here on the forums no idea is unanimously loved or hated and game forums tend to represent a specific subset of more enthusiastic players to begin with.  I assume BioWare uses standard industry practices of intensive internal playtesting and tweaking.  You imagine that the players always have better ideas because you selectively remember all the good ideas you've heard and ignore the mounds of stupid ones. 

4) A good way to test a lot of my claims is to see what we get in the next couple months out of the toolset.  Enough of fans pontificating about the random changes they'd like; let's see who's able to make any of them work and actually result in better gameplay.

That said, I don't think there's any defense for intentionally withholding in-game stats and information from the player.  I've made peace with the fact that I will need to keep using the respec mod to add that feature to the game, but the whole not providing any numerical info on most abilities and items thing is obnoxious.  We see the damage each skill does each time we use it anyway, but they leave it up to us to track those tiny popping numbers and do boring dry run tests to start reverse-engineering the numbers.

Modifié par Solistus1, 09 décembre 2009 - 11:17 .

[Shadow_Viper]

Some people just delight in whining and crying on video game forums, that's where most of these so called "good ideas" come from.



One must always remember though that...



IFSW.

[JackDresden]

th3warr1or wrote...

I don't get it. What is it about becoming a developer that makes them lose all the bright and interesting ideas? Of course, there'll always be people who will disagree, so some people may think that the developer's ideas are way better than player ideas.

But for the most part, for almost every and any game, there will be a bunch of people who come up with better ideas than any Dev for that game ever will. Of course, those ideas are never used because of copyright issues, and since the Devs didn't come up with it, they're the company is afraid that they'll be sued if they use it.

I mean I've seen several modders who've got tons and tons of ideas as it is. Why can't BioWare come up with that kind of DLC? Fair enough it's only been slightly over a month since the release, but if all the DLC is going to be like Warden's Keep, that's really disappointing.

Just like great novels, everyone has an idea for a great novel not everyone will ever be able to write one, ideas are two a penny it's the ability to put those ideas into practice that counts. Now in a community of hundreds of thousands or millions given a good toolset some people are bound to come up with some good mods that even impress the developers, but by and large most great ideas are impractical or won't work for reasons that the ideas man/woman can't see. Or the person who has the idea lacks the practical skills and follow through needed to develop a game.

Modifié par JackDresden, 09 décembre 2009 - 11:39 .

[AshedMan]

Because players don't do the coding? Coming up with ideas is easy. Implementing those ideas is not.

Modifié par AshedMan, 09 décembre 2009 - 11:41 .

[Lutger]

Players don't have better ideas for games at all.

Just a couple of good or even great ideas are worth exactly nothing. For a game, you need to actually design something: working out all the details, how different ideas interact with the mechanics, plot and style of the whole game, within the technical constraints and limited by the resources you have. Everything has to fit in a single vision, taking all the interacting elements into account. That is very different and much harder than just tossing some ideas in the air. If you start analysing seriously what's going on in DA, you'll soon see it is very, very complex. Everything influences everything.

Consider also this: a game can have some awesome moments or features, but when there are just a few things really off the mark, it usually means it is not enjoyable. To make a good game you not only have to be able to make a good design, but also a consistently good design.

Modifié par Lutger, 09 décembre 2009 - 11:50 .