Mark Darrah: Gamers are good at discovering problems in games, but not at solving them
Former BioWare producer Mark Darrah shared his thoughts on YouTube about working with gamer feedback. He is convinced that developers should not always listen to the audience—especially when it comes to fixing game flaws.
Mark Darrah
In the video, Darrah immediately noted that, in general, developers should be interested in players' opinions. Feedback can provide a wealth of valuable information about weaknesses in a game that ideally should be improved and were initially overlooked for some reason.
“Often gamers identify issues much faster than even the best testing team because there are simply more of them. If you completely ignore them, you'll be creating a game in a vacuum. That's a huge mistake,” Darrah added.
Nevertheless, Darrah believes that suggestions from the audience about how to solve identified problems can paradoxically harm the game. Unlike developers, gamers do not understand how it is structured, so their proposals do not take into account many nuances. For example, they might ask to make enemy AI smarter, when in fact the balance needs to be adjusted.
Furthermore, Darrah pointed out that game audiences are almost always diverse. There are casual gamers, who primarily care about the story, and hardcore players, who are interested in the underlying mathematics of game mechanics. Many players do not write online about the game at all and keep their opinions to themselves. They need different changes, and it's unrealistic to implement all of them.
In the end, the former BioWare producer recommended that developers stick to their own vision. He emphasized that even good suggestions from gamers do not necessarily need to be implemented if they contradict the game's original concept.