Angrywolves wrote...
How does making a game compare to....running a restaurant ? We've all seen Kitchen Nightmares haven't we ? If the food tastes bad at a restaurant, people won't eat there. If the players don't like the games they won't buy them .
You're absolutely correct, though with the right marketing, such a restaurant may still get diners. Consider the recent boruhaha over that Kitchen Nightmares couple who apparently couldn't take criticism and attacked people over social media. Allegedly, they quietly reopened their restaurant and continue to get diners. Perhaps not many, perhaps not enough to keep the business afloat, but they still get diners.
A fan isn't some nutcase that can always be rejected/neglected. That fan is also a customer , as I am sure Gordon Ramsey would point out.
Correct, though a customer would get thrown out of that restaurant if he started screaming and yelling about the restaurant's perceived faults, and if he did so every time he ate there and found something he disliked, regardless of anyone else's experience.
In this case, however, no fan is "always" being rejected or neglected, despite the bad behaviour of a small section of the fanbase on forums and social media.
Game company creators like Ninja Stan cited, who want to set up in their ivory towers, turn up their noses and not read the comments do so at their peril. shrugs.
The "peril" you mention is that they will be reading a bunch of subjective experiences being trotted out as objective fact, reactionary responses to change, conspiracy theories, insults and name-calling, predictions on what will and won't sell, and demands for changes without regard for anyone else's experiences.
This is not ivory-tower developers being so snooty as to ignore the pleas of the common man. This is passionate people proud of their work not wanting to hear countless people crapping over the baby they've been slaving over for two years. These are developers who get lambasted, interrogated, and shamed whenever they try to engage in discussion with the community. These are talented professionals who get told how to do their jobs by armchair developers who want their jobs. These are creative people who are told by their alleged "fans" that they are lazy, greedy corporate shills who lie to fans, don't care about their fans, and should be fired. That is hardly the basis for either productive discussion or any kind of regular interaction.
And who loses out in this situation? Those mature, civilized fans who actually want productive discussion and interaction with the developers of the games that have affected them so. You can criticize a game without being a jerkface about it. You can disagree with other community members without the name-calling and insults. You can love the game and hate parts of it, and you can hate the game but still love parts of it. And you can have subjective experiences without being "right" or "wrong" about it.
Even when I was a developer, there was a handful of community members with whom I could not interact because of their hateful attitude. They were exceedingly negative all the time, could not say a single constructive or nice thing about the game they professed to be a fan of, and they could not hold a conversation without acting like they were the only gamer who needed to enjoy the game. This is the danger of believing one knows the "right" way to design a game, that one is entitled to receive it if one anticipates a game hard enough, and that one has the right--nay, the
duty--to crow about its faults and shortcomings at every opportunity to prevent themselves from ever being disappointed again.
And through it all, "regular" people can discuss what they like and not like about the game, productively and constructively, without any trouble. There is a difference, and if you can't (or won't) see that, you might find fewer and fewer people want to deal with you.
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