Why Can't Gamers Be Designers?

[Emiscary]

Y'know I could type out long and short of it- but seeing as how most people are lazy assholes, here's a link explaining things:

http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html

I only post it here on a gaming forum because it relates (you guessed it!) to Mass Effect 3. Remember when a bunch of infuriatingly self-righteous people claimed that gamers had no right to try and claim authorship over the game? Well it's my belief that their aim wasn't to try and steal anything from anyone- it was simply to involve themselves in the process of creative collaboration.

If they came off as entitled, here's why: they were led to believe they were already involved in the process (at least to some extent). And then they were basically flat out told that this was not actually the case. And people got mad, the way people who feel misled tend to do.

Here's the point I'm getting at: gamers are an automatically engaged and passionate audience. They desperately *want* to be involved in the design of the games they play. Anyone who wants proof of how true that is should spend 10 minutes on any MOBA message board and look over the volumes upon volumes of input people will just gift wrap for anyone who's willing to listen. And a nonzero portion of that input? Is *GOOD*. And it's *FREE*. How can any company not see the benefits of taking advantage of free labor?

 

[Erana]

And a nonzero portion of that input? Is *GOOD*. And it's *FREE*. How can any company not see the benefits of taking advantage of free labor?

Well for one, there's always copyright Hell to worry about...

Still, with Bioware, they're a creative team. They've had design docs in the works for ME3 for years, and other than the ending, it was a great game. And there's tons of evidence suggesting that all kinds of things were cut from the finale (likely due to external pressures), and they were not, in fact, dicking around for months, simply incapable of creating a competent ending.
Don't get me wrong, I totally get wanting to contribute to the game, and I don't think there's some "sacred boundary put forth by the nature of artistic integrity" (Oh boy, do most of the people using that term not get the concept) or anything like that, but trying to tell Bioware how to do this? Yeah, they messed up, but its not for a lack of ability. I'd say the best thing a fan could have done upon playing that is to (politely and respectfully) pressure Bioware into living up to the rest of its creation (incoming DLC) or make the best of what we've been given. (like indoctrination theory guys)

Still, in addition to the aforementioned Copyright Hell that's actually made a lot of game companies put a "Don't give us suggestions, please" clause in their User Agreement, a lot of it is, well... Bad. Bad or terribly irrelevant to the game.
Remember how Yahzee was harping on how big studios can't make good horror games? The same ideas of people not being unified enough in the greater purpose of the game vision applies to most other titles. Horror is just an especially sensitive genre. Imagine what happens to a title that is also sensitive to deviance from a specific concept is subject to user input?
(Also relevent: Michael Samyn's article here on the Escapist from a while back)

That being said, some games, and I mean only some would benefit greatly from more variety and excited fresh blood. I would definitely err on the side of caution in terms of promoting content generated by user input because I envision it doing more harm than good. What developers should be doing here and now, no matter how much they internalize user input, is making sure that players have the ability to do this themselves- give them as many tools as possible for user generated content and mods. (I'm looking at you, console peeps)

 

[Emiscary]

Let me be very clear: I don't give a rat's hairy arsehole about copyright law, nor intellectual property law.

Both of those things are a result of people trying to force their neat little shit worldviews onto a reality that is not suited to accommodate them.

"THIS IDEA IS MINE. IT IS AN ABSTRACT THAT EXISTS ONLY IN THE MINDS OF THOSE WHO PAUSE TO PONDER IT, BUT IT IS MINE! AND I WILL SEE ANY MAN WHO DARES MAKE USE OF IT IN ANY FASHION WITHOUT MY EXPRESS PERMISSION DRAWN AND QUARTERED!"

In short I'm about as moved by large groups of people governed by the whims of shareholders barking about the sanctity of their thoughts as I would've been in the dark ages when crotchety old bishops tried to threaten the leeches in the local lake with excommunication if they didn't GTFO.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Let me be very clear: I don't give a rat's hairy arsehole about copyright law, nor intellectual property law.

Both of those things are a result of people trying to force their neat little shit worldviews onto a reality that is not suited to accommodate them.

"THIS IDEA IS MINE. IT IS AN ABSTRACT THAT EXISTS ONLY IN THE MINDS OF THOSE WHO PAUSE TO PONDER IT, BUT IT IS MINE! AND I WILL SEE ANY MAN WHO DARES MAKE USE OF IT IN ANY FASHION WITHOUT MY EXPRESS PERMISSION DRAWN AND QUARTERED!"

In short I'm about as moved by large groups of people governed by the whims of shareholders barking about the sanctity of their thoughts as I would've been in the dark ages when crotchety old bishops tried to threaten the leeches in the local lake with excommunication if they didn't GTFO.

You don't know how the world works, do you

Ideas need some form of protection, otherwise you end up with something akin to China, where everything is copied.

Oh the fun that would be had

 

[Twilight_guy]

The majority of gamers, as with most people, are idiots. Unfortunately, they don't know that they are idiots. I'm amazed at how many people think creating a small deathmatch map and packing it with rocket launchers is a good idea because it makes your average lifetime about a second and thus its "super fast".

People are dumb. That's not to say that there isn't going to be any good advise in the mix, there will be but the majority of it will be crap. On top of that, if you ask for advise, all the idiots are going to come out of the woodwork to offer up there dumb suggestions and drown out any good voices in the mix. There is a reason game studios look for a hire talented people and not just random guys.

On top of that, the phrase "designed by committee" become relevant when your literately mashing together the ideas of a horde of players. You don't create good idea by trying to synthase a thousand suggestions, you make good idea by collaborations and its impossible to coordinate all your fans to one goal (maybe one idea but one singular goal no). It's a problem of coordination, its a tower of babble.

On top of that, it also assumes that the people working in the company aren't smart enough to come up with these ideas and it completely disregards the realities of development by assuming that all good idea actually make it into a game and work out in the end. Sometimes the best ideas are cut or botched in execution.

I don't think trying to crowd-source game development is a good idea. I'd like to see it be done maybe they can get some sort of open-source thing going, but I don't think it would work out very well.

(Also, if you think copyright and IP laws are bullshit I'm obligated to say 'fuck you' because I'm a programmer and I'd like to have a job one day.)

 

[Emiscary]

Right on schedual, someone brought up the 2nd stupid generalization I knew would be mentioned. Saying "average people are dumb so we should ignore them!" is not a thought worth sharing. Saying you think most people are dumb reveals exactly 1 fact about you: you've have at least 1 conversation with a 14 year old. That's all.

Of *course* some people are stupid and their input should be ignored. Some people are psychotic and shouldn't be trained to use weaponry. That doesn't mean we should stop having a police force, or an army. It just means we should screen for people whose aims aren't conducive to the purposes of those institutions and/or aren't qualified to be a part of them.

The groups of people were talking about drawing volunteers from are composed of MILLIONS of individuals. Finding the ones with valuable information to share is not that difficult a prospect if you put a modicum of effort into looking.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Right on schedual, someone brought up the 2nd stupid generalization I knew would be mentioned. Saying "average people are dumb so we should ignore them!" is not a thought worth sharing. Saying you think most people are dumb reveals exactly 1 fact about you: you've have at least 1 conversation with a 14 year old. That's all.

Of *course* some people are stupid and their input should be ignored. Some people are psychotic and shouldn't be trained to use weaponry. That doesn't mean we should stop having a police force, or an army. It just means we should screen for people who aren't conducive to the purposes of those institutions and/or aren't qualified to be a part of them.

The groups of people were talking about drawing volunteers from are composed of MILLIONS of individuals. Finding the ones with valuable information to share is not that difficult a prospect if you put a modicum of effort into looking.

You've been here a while, yet you don't know how to quote people?

Either that, or you don't want to give people the chance to make a rebuttal...

 

[gigastrike]

Isn't this what game testers are for?

Also, "lead to believe that they were involved in the creative process"? How in the world would someone who just pays to play the final game feel like they had any actual control in how said game turns out?

 

[Emiscary]

Isn't this what game testers are for?

Also, "lead to believe that they were involved in the creative process"? How in the world would someone who just pays to play the final game feel like they had any actual control in how said game turns out?

A) playtesting for stability in a product made by someone else is in no way the same thing as being involved in the process of designing that product.

B) you're obviously not especially informed about the topic if you don't know how it is people got that impression. And it's not my job to inform you. Google "Mass Effect 3 Promises" or "Claims About Mass Effect 3 By Bioware" if you want some inkling of how.

 

[Kahunaburger]

If the dev team isn't good to begin with, they won't be able to discern the good advice from the bad advice.

 

[Judgement101]

I wouldn't want to be a designer, apparently it is nightmarishly tedious.

 

[Emiscary]

I wouldn't want to be a designer, apparently it is nightmarishly tedious.

So are most jobs that require actual effort on the part of the person doing it >.>

It's my belief that the word "tedious" more or less translates to "requires work".

 

[Grygor]

Right on schedual, someone brought up the 2nd stupid generalization I knew would be mentioned. Saying "average people are dumb so we should ignore them!" is not a thought worth sharing. Saying you think most people are dumb reveals exactly 1 fact about you: you've have at least 1 conversation with a 14 year old. That's all.

Except that's not what's going on here.

The fact of the matter is, to a first approximation, 100% of your player base is people who aren't game designers. They may think they have brilliant game design ideas, but since they have not developed the relevant skill-set, they have now way of recognizing that their ideas are, almost without exception, terrible - in other words, the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action. Furthermore, player suggestions often have ulterior motives - "Buff scissors, nerf rock, paper's fine. Sincerely, Scissors" is a meme for a reason, after all - or else the person suggesting has an idea of "fun" radically different from the rest of the player base.

As a general rule, 90% of gameplay suggestions from players are objectively terrible or purely selfish, and 9% are useless for one reason or another (can't be implemented with the current engine/hardware/architecture, conflicts with other impending changes, etc.).

 

[Emiscary]

Right on schedual, someone brought up the 2nd stupid generalization I knew would be mentioned. Saying "average people are dumb so we should ignore them!" is not a thought worth sharing. Saying you think most people are dumb reveals exactly 1 fact about you: you've have at least 1 conversation with a 14 year old. That's all.

Except that's not what's going on here.

...

As a general rule, 90% of gameplay suggestions from players are objectively terrible or purely selfish, and 9% are useless for one reason or another (can't be implemented with the current engine/hardware/architecture, conflicts with other impending changes, etc.).

Ahhh, you're right. I had it completely wrong. You're not saying: most people are stupid and that they should be ignored. You're saying: most people don't know what they need/want/are talking about, and should be ignored.

That's wildly different.

I'm sorry, but people actually *do* know what they want and what they'd enjoy. And in a connected world they've also got a pretty good handle on what is and is not possible (crazy eh?). And when they share all this with you your response as an industry should not be ANYTHING like this:

"Hah. That's cute. You wait patiently for us to give you the thing we're going to give you now. We know what's best, don't worry. We won't let you ruin it."

And you as a customer should not say:

"Bah! What we have is what we have, be happy with it!"

Both lead to stagnation, horseshit products, ridiculous business practices and disgruntled/heartbroken consumers.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Let me be very clear: I don't give a rat's hairy arsehole about copyright law, nor intellectual property law.

Both of those things are a result of people trying to force their neat little shit worldviews onto a reality that is not suited to accommodate them.

"THIS IDEA IS MINE. IT IS AN ABSTRACT THAT EXISTS ONLY IN THE MINDS OF THOSE WHO PAUSE TO PONDER IT, BUT IT IS MINE! AND I WILL SEE ANY MAN WHO DARES MAKE USE OF IT IN ANY FASHION WITHOUT MY EXPRESS PERMISSION DRAWN AND QUARTERED!"

In short I'm about as moved by large groups of people governed by the whims of shareholders barking about the sanctity of their thoughts as I would've been in the dark ages when crotchety old bishops tried to threaten the leeches in the local lake with excommunication if they didn't GTFO.

You don't know how the world works, do you

Ideas need some form of protection, otherwise you end up with something akin to China, where everything is copied.

Oh the fun that would be had

Ideas need protection? Do they? Why exactly? Is having anything and everything copied constantly necessarily worse than trying to lock down stuff to the point where nobody can create anything new without a million people accusing them of ripping off someone else?

It's all a matter of perspective, and depends largely on what your end goals are.

Trying to protect ideas especially the way it's getting now, is an exercise in screwing over the majority for the benefit of a few.

However, removing the protection altogether merely reverses the situation, since it usually (but not always) screws over anyone willing to take the time and effort to create something. (Though at the same time making creation easier by having less legal problems to worry about, since, as might not be immediately obvious, everything is a remix. [http://vimeo.com/14912890].)

This is obviously inter-related to the way our society functions. To a large extent creative works need protecting only because the creators need limited, physical resources to survive.
Of all the things we make and sell, creative works are those least bound by resource limitations, and thus, theoretically anyway, the least bound by economics. (Economics being the study of the efficient distribution of limited resources. And Creative works are for most practical purposes not really a limited resource.)

It's thus more tied to the limited availability of food and other resources than the nature of creative works.
If the artist didn't need food and other items from others, trying to protect their work from anyone would be a rather meaningless, and futile thing to do.
But... The practical issue faced with a situation where that does matter, is one of balance.
The situation in a place like china is one thing, but western laws are becoming increasingly draconian and at serious risk of slipping too far in the other direction. (if they haven't already.)

 

[cryogeist]

Just because we play games doesn't mean that we can make one.

 

[Iori Branford]

They can, and they should try. There has been a way as long as there have been electronic games: modding. In the case of singleplayer, no effect on the developers' work or the other players' play whatsoever.

(There has also been a way for the rest of us to avoid modded multiplayer: pick a "pure" or "vanilla" or "no mod" server. (There has ALSO also been an easy remedy for when no such option exists: play a better game, designed by non-morons who thought to provide the option.))

And I'm NOT talking about only modding games with official mod toolsets. Perhaps 5 or 10 years later, if not all of our computers have ended up completely crippled by control freak corporations, someone with talent will create or come across an Unreal Development Kit hacked to work with ME3. Give it another 5 years and one of us may stumble upon a little file titled "ME3_True_End_for_PC_and_360.exe" or similar, hopefully giving the ME fans the ending they wanted, and the whole ME3 ending drama its own happy end as well.

No, I don't care if 90% of mods are penis weapons or breast enhancements. Every creator great and small in the history of mankind started out doing crap like that for at least half of their youth.

These are why fighting recent anti-mod efforts by businesscritters and stuck-up pricks is not only commendable, but essential for the survival of our industry. To ban all modding would be to ban all except mythical fairytale billionaire supermen from becoming qualified to work in the game design field, ever.

 

[Emiscary]

Ideas need protection? Do they? Why exactly? Is having anything and everything copied constantly necessarily worse than trying to lock down stuff to the point where nobody can create anything new without a million people accusing them of ripping off someone else?

It's all a matter of perspective, and depends largely on what your end goals are.

Trying to protect ideas especially the way it's getting now, is an exercise in screwing over the majority for the benefit of a few.

However, removing the protection altogether merely reverses the situation, since it usually (but not always) screws over anyone willing to take the time and effort to create something. (Though at the same time making creation easier by having less legal problems to worry about, since, as might not be immediately obvious, everything is a remix. [http://vimeo.com/14912890].)

This is obviously inter-related to the way our society functions. To a large extent creative works need protecting only because the creators need limited, physical resources to survive.
Of all the things we make and sell, creative works are those least bound by resource limitations, and thus, theoretically anyway, the least bound by economics. (Economics being the study of the efficient distribution of limited resources. And Creative works are for most practical purposes not really a limited resource.)

It's thus more tied to the limited availability of food and other resources than the nature of creative works.
If the artist didn't need food and other items from others, trying to protect their work from anyone would be a rather meaningless, and futile thing to do.
But... The practical issue faced with a situation where that does matter, is one of balance.
The situation in a place like china is one thing, but western laws are becoming increasingly draconian and at serious risk of slipping too far in the other direction. (if they haven't already.)

Hey! Thanks for that. I normally avoid engaging condescending jagoffs in conversation at all (it ultimately only encourages their condescending jagoff behavior). That being said, you did do a pretty good job of summarizing the reality of the issue.

Copyright laws serve the interests of professional ARTISTS. *Not* the interests of art. The indefinite article has very little respect for the business models of capitalistic societies. This is why a very large portion of what people consider to be some of the best art out there is made for free by amateurs simply for its own sake.

 

[SciMal]

I only post it here on a gaming forum because it relates (you guessed it!) to Mass Effect 3. Remember when a bunch of infuriatingly self-righteous people claimed that gamers had no right to try and claim authorship over the game? Well it's my belief that their aim wasn't to try and steal anything from anyone- it was simply to involve themselves in the process of creative collaboration.

Gamers don't have any right to claim authorship of any game not made directly by them, so there's that. In order for Art to remain respectable, it MUST remain the domain of the artist.

Where the authorship/art argument falls flat is that it's perfectly fine to claim that ME3 is art, but it doesn't mean it's GOOD art. Art can (and often is) bad. So, yeah, BioWare owns the authorship of ME3 - it's just not very good to begin with.

If they came off as entitled, here's why: they were led to believe they were already involved in the process (at least to some extent). And then they were basically flat out told that this was not actually the case. And people got mad, the way people who feel misled tend to do.

BioWare is infamous for including fan suggestions into their games.

However, anybody who wasn't on BioWare's payroll who honestly thought (especially after EA acquired BioWare) that BioWare would admit to their game being written (at all) by fans is a nitwit. The legal consequences for a large company alone is nightmarish. It even says in the BioWare Forums ToA that whatever you write on the forums is the Property of BioWare.

Here's the point I'm getting at: gamers are an automatically engaged and passionate audience. They desperately *want* to be involved in the design of the games they play. Anyone who wants proof of how true that is should spend 10 minutes on any MOBA message board and look over the volumes upon volumes of input people will just gift wrap for anyone who's willing to listen. And a nonzero portion of that input? Is *GOOD*. And it's *FREE*. How can any company not see the benefits of taking advantage of free labor?

Of course they're taking advantage of it. However, they can't legally admit that it's someone else's idea. The minute they do that, they have to pay that person royalties or a fee for using their idea. Yes, there's a chance the fan would gladly give permission without any fees attached, but there's also a chance you'd have some really great notions parked on the side of the road because the jag-off who spent the last 5 years writing the wiki for the game wants $25k to use his idea.

It's simply easier to say, "Everything you write on our boards is ours. End of line."

If fans want to get paid, they need to participate with a community that actually pays fans: TF2 is at the forefront, Diablo III possibly (in a grindy, poorly executed way), or be hired for doing something fantastic with an existing game (DotA, Counter Strike, etc.).

 

[burningdragoon]

Not caring about copyright or IP laws is fine... unless you are a business that has to. It's also a different, though related and plenty valid, discussion and isn't a valid counter-argument for this one.

As much as you reject the Dunning-Kruger effect as argument, it really is one of the better reasons. It's super goddamn easy to think you know what's best as an outsider. It's also super easy to have "I would like this" lead into "therefore so would everyone else". Then you have to realize that even ideas that are actually "good" are not only still just ideas, which are worthless, they are ideas without any knowledge of the inside processes.

Now, I do think developers should listen to feedback when possible, but ultimately it's their project and they should have as much control over it as possible.

And finally, we do have a way to participate in the design process already. It's called voting with your damn wallet. Edit: also, there's always making your own game. It's not that hardOk, so it's kind of hard..

--

Oh, and since you're big into the idea of listening to other's ideas, maybe you should work on being less abrasive yourself before complaining about "condescending jagoffs"