The Ignorance Of Crowds: Why Open Development Is Crap

[Six]

Rather interesting article from Rock Paper Shotgun which I felt was very relevant in the BTW design philosophy vs MC design:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01 ... t-is-crap/

[FlowerChild]

Hehe...nice :)

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, pretty spot on, though it goes even further than what the article is claiming. Design by committee produces even worse results than arriving at clones of games already existing. Mindless clone games come forth through design by benefactor (publishers). Design by committee is the same, but with the publishers being replaced by a drooling kid.

Basically, apply George Carlin: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

[FlowerChild]

I think there's a bit of a trap to it as well which I witnessed with MC, am seeing with other games, and experienced to a small degree with BTW as well:

Early on in development, it takes a certain amount of imagination to get on board with the development of a game. Thus, I think it tends to attract a certain kind of people, and those people tend to be both more intelligent than average, and tend to be particularly dedicated to the kind of concept you're working on.

However, as a game gains in popularity, it attracts a much wider audience, which both brings the average intelligence level down, and winds up attracting people that may have no clue what your game is actually intended to be about, but rather, are dedicated solely to the concept of what they happen to think it might be about (relative to their experience with other games).

I think this creates a dynamic whereby it's very easy to get addicted to community feedback in the early stages, where it can actually be helpful, and then have a hard time letting go of it when that goes south and turns into a screaming mass of kids. Anyways, I think that tends to play weird head games with developers as you watch your once valuable "playtesting and design team" turn into total rubbish and suddenly find yourself effectively alone again perhaps after spending a lot of time and effort nurturing a solid community for your game.

[Stormweaver]

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

Ah, so true.

Which explains the solid half of the comments which view the article as being against any sort of community input, as opposed to the open development it's lambasting in the first place. The problem for 'indie' development is finding a sweet spot where your minions/testers/players are interested in the game and the community and happy to prattle on about their game experiences, but don't feel overly invested and feel a right to dictate what they want to be having fun doing in it.

Thankfully, our forum's philosophy on bans seems to have adjusted the averages back in our favour.

Ninja'd by FC.

[Gilberreke]

Interesting, I'd never of thought of it that way FlowerChild. Seems to be true enough :)

Of course, part of the problem is entitlement, as you can read in the comments of the article. Most people are offended when game companies don't "listen to the fans". Very few commenters actually seem to get the article.

If you really want to design by committee right, I think you need to go the Simpsons route. They have a team of like 8 writers, who come together to do design by committee, then they hand off an episode to each writer and come back to committee every now and then until the episode is written. Rules for design by committee seem to be:

1) hand pick the committee
2) make sure most of them are qualified (the odd goofball to mostly spout drivel, but keep your ideas from becoming stale might work)
3) do most of the work outside of committee

[FlowerChild]

Thankfully, our forum's philosophy on bans seems to have adjusted the averages back in our favour.

Yup. And the forums were created right after the Yogaboo invasion where basically all community feedback for the mod went to shit due to being lost in static.

I experienced my own form of the sense of loss I describe above when that happened. Right before then, BTW had a GREAT community over on MCF and I was constantly engaged in design discussions with them tossing ideas back and forth. Overnight, that suddenly disappeared, drowned out by a screaming hoard.

I had never experienced anything like it, as in my time as a professional dev I was always somewhat sheltered from the fan base for my games, but having to find a coping strategy for it, I think I gained some insight into what guys like Notch must go through when they experience similar things on a much greater scale.

I think Jim Morrison said something about how his fans only wanted to rip him apart, and I was reminded of that quote, which I had originally not quite understood, when that all went down.

[Solymr]

This has been said before but it's still a valid point:
You need to flesh out the idiots. If you don't, you end up with a democracy, and everyone knows that doesn't work.

The problem is that if you aren't constantly keeping them in check like these forums you end up getting overwhelmed by the stupid. Even if you do sometimes you just get colbert-bumped and with a sudden influx of idiots.

I feel you man I'm surrounded by idiots too.

[warmist]

I wish i had such a place to toss design ideas back and forward. Usually it happens with close friends at some pub, but either we get drunk and i forget half the design ideas, we get drunk and design ideas get very crappy or other friends get annoyed because we are talking about such uninteresting topic as "computah games".
It's really hard to see your the drawbacks of your own genius ideas (at least for me) without any feedback. Especially when the game is at very early stages (i.e. non-playable).

[MoRmEnGiL]

Personally I think the hardest thing is to know where to draw the line. Obviously you cannot ignore large crowds shouting at you, but you must not compromise your vision to satisfy them. This kind of integrity tends to be very hard. You must be sure of yourself, because when you start doubting your own decisions and second guessing yourself you start to lose the game. But at the same time you need to know when you must stop and listen.

I think part of what makes Japanese game developers so great and successful (or at least used to in the 90ties and early 00ies) is their uncompromising nature. They had a strong vision, and the target audience had to pretty much suck it until the game was delivered, and when those guys delivered they really delivered.

All in all psychology is a major factor in all this, which is why some people are just not suited to be in crucial positions in this industry despite their other skills.

[Lorsayden]

-Deleted-

[nmarshall23]

[...]he one exception being that dev's should at least fix the bugs and aim to balance their games.

I'm going to be honest and say that i have played TFC a couple of months before i began playing BTW. I liked TFC and its style alot, however, i couldn't bring myself to play it anymore because of the amount of bugs that are just left alone, unfixed. Its completely different with BTW in the way that you simply don't encounter massive bugs that ruin the game, and also, BTW has a very good balance.

I too checked out TFC, really liked some of the ideas. However, I can't deal with the large amount of bugs. I don't understand why they haven't fixed them.. I mean Barrels are a central part of that game. Why do they have FX glitches?

FC, you have spoiled me, other mod's, and vanilla MC don't your level of QC.

[FlowerChild]

Well, that part largely just comes down to experience. I'm extremely anal about testing everything that I code immediately after I write it (seriously, I probably spend more time in game testing code than I do actually typing code out of game). Experience also gives me a good sense of which code paths need to be tested in this manner, and given I'm the guy that wrote it, and thus know all the code paths, this means that I am a far more effective tester than anyone else could be. Given I consider myself primarily a designer anyways, this also serves as playtesting time in a lot of cases.

This means I'm slower to develop stuff initially (well, experience helps speed that up too), but that I spend much less time maintaining things and bug fixing down the road.

That part is rather off-topic (despite being in the off-topic forum) here though, given that bug reporting and fixing based on community feedback is not at all what the article is about or what is being discussed here.

[devak]

I just read the article and the 5 comments below and i'm smiling.

It is just too funny to see people completely miss the point. Community feedback is indeed awesome but the very problem is that many developers rely too heavily on it. Yet the replies below talk only about the uses of it and that developers should totally listen to it...

:D it's just pure humor.