Why Can't Gamers Be Designers?

[Bad Jim]

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.

Actually, it's not that at all. Game studios look for talent because they simply don't need more ideas. Everyone who can code, draw, model, compose, or otherwise contribute will come up with plenty of ideas if encouraged to do so. Ideas are like oxygen - vital, but plentiful and easy to get for free.

This is also the main reason they don't fish for ideas. Just asking their staff got them five times more decent ideas than they could implement. Why look for more on the forums?

 

[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.

...

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.

You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. It has been demonstrated empirically time and time again that, in fact, people do not know what they want or would enjoy.

The human brain does not deal with hypotheticals very well, meaning it takes a sizable amount of training and experience to actually learn that, for example, "thing A I enjoy + thing B I enjoy = thing C I would enjoy even more" usually is not true. Especially in the case of complex systems, like games, wherein a single change can have repercussions throughout the entire system - repercussions that most users are lacking the knowledge or desire to notice.