Ex-BioWare Producer Says Players Are Good at “Identifying Problems” But Not Providing Solutions Because “They’re Not Developers”
A former BioWare producer recommends not listening to the community, at least not in the way many people think.
Mark Darrah, known for working at the developer behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect for more than 20 years, recently published a video where he says players are good at “identifying problems” but not at providing solutions.
Darrah sometimes uploads videos to YouTube where he talks about his life at BioWare and the video game industry as a whole.
BioWare Veteran Says Listening to Players Can Be Both “Great” and “Terrible”
Although his latest video may sound like an attack on the community, it actually focuses on community feedback and how useful it can really be for developers.
Darrah says listening to player feedback can be both “great” and “terrible” for developers, and encourages them to look beyond what players directly tell them.
“Players are really, really good at identifying problems,” he said (via The Gamer). “What they’re a lot less good at is identifying solutions. They’re not developers. They’re game players.”
He then explained it by giving an example. “If they’re telling you a class is boring, the actual problem might be that the choices in progression aren’t very interesting. It might be that it’s too powerful or too weak. It might be that it interacts with the game in a non-standard way. It might just be confusing, and players aren’t figuring out how to use it to their greatest advantage.”
He also said that most complaints online come from only a small group of people, while most players simply play the game and leave without saying anything.
“You have multiple different groups of people playing your game,” he added. “You have hardcore players, you have casual players, you have people that play for the math, people that play for the story, you have people that are going to consume every single piece of content and some that are going to blow through the game as fast as they can and then move on to the next thing.”
Darrah says that “each of these groups wants different things. And the problem is you don’t have an equal conversation with all of these different groups.”
In short, the former BioWare producer insists that players will not always know what they want because they are not developers. They cannot see the creative process behind a game or clearly picture what the finished product will become.
In other news, Electronic Arts is reportedly planning mass layoffs after its $55 billion acquisition, with concerns that BioWare could also be affected.
