Bethesda Softworks - Do Developers Listen to Gamers?

Originally Posted by Squeek
Are games really that easy to make? If so, then that sounds great.

In the world of hardware, it works pretty much the opposite way. At some point someone will start soliciting feedback to hone the product strategy, conduct ongoing market research, monitor competitive activity and identify customer wants and needs. They'll see to it that the product is designed and manufactured to meet evolving market requirements.

As I understand it the trend in routine AAA game production is careful prototyping, early involvement of marketing, etc and detailed planning. When all this is done and the project on "go" EA or Ubi throw 250 people on it to get through the actual development as quickly as possible. Shorter cycle means more relative stability for their projections.
This might be different for ground-breaking AAA games like Spore, Bioshock or Oblvion.

Originally Posted by Briosafreak
The guy that runs the place is an evil follower of Pazuzu. Beware of his foul stench!

Heh, looks like my half awake, take on the piece was worst than half assed. I just jumped directly down to the posts and started reading, skipping your intro. I sure managed to stick my foot in my mouth, sorry Briosafreak.

Originally Posted by Gorath
This might be different for ground-breaking AAA games like Spore, Bioshock or Oblvion.

Well, they do have longer development cycles. Not sure why you'd call 'em ground-breaking, though, BioShock is just another shooter and breaks no ground that wasn't broken before by System Shock 2, and Oblivion didn't break any ground that Morrowind hadn't already trod on.

Only a technical term to give them more weight than the routine work the big publishers spit out in quick succession.

Oh, fair enough, then.

To Acleacius: you still need to watch out for that guys demonic stench and bad breath!

I think if you are not very careful and actually organize this process of sifting through community input in some impartial way, it is very easy to just see what you want to. That is exactly what happened at Bethesda, imo. There are so many different voices in the community, that you always find plenty of support for your own views, or justification for what you think "the market wants". That is what makes Todd and the gang so impervious to any critcism.

Oblivion's sales justify everything to Todd and Co I'm sure. People that started with pnp rpgs are not the bulk of the market and haven't been for a long time. I just hope they don't continue with such hollow consequence gameplay in the future.

I've read not everything here (just flew over the letteres ) , but there are two things I bear in mind:

1. The outcry about the "bad quality" of the "Beyond Divinity" Deathknight voice was so great it got changed - and then it was followed by a number of voices saying that the new one was even worse.

So, listening isn't always good, especially not to "Fanbois".

(German Word for it: "Verschlimmbessern".)

2. I heard that Icewind Dale was made without listening to the community at all.

So, in my mind, listening to the community is "a sword with two edges", as we say here in Germany, or a coin with two sides, so to say.

Listening can be good, too much listening might be bad, imho.


But seriously, I rather thing that this quiestion "do they listen" is rather born out of fear that Bethsoft might behave like EA, Ubi Soft, THQ, Atari etc. which don't listen at all (German word: "Betonkφpfe").

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
So, in my mind, listening to the community is "a sword with two edges", as we say here in Germany, or a coin with two sides, so to say.

It's a double-edged sword, in English. All coins have two sides, so that wouldn't make much sense as a proverb.

As for IWD: heh.

Okay, thank you. I just wasn't sure if I had translated this collecting. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Brother None
It's a double-edged sword, in English. All coins have two sides, so that wouldn't make much sense as a proverb.

As for IWD: heh.

Actually it is a proverb, and goes like this in English: "There are two sides to every coin." - Meaning obviously the same thing as "double-edged sword."

The proverb was originally "there are two sides to every question" - Protagoras.

Don't quote me on that though, and there are twelve arrangements to a song.

Originally Posted by woges
… and there are twelve arrangements to a song.

And nine million bicycles in Beijing

I think that some developers listen to the fans, and some don't. I think that a majority of them at least listen to feedback after a game is done so that they can make a better sequel. A good example of this would be the recently released patch for Bioshock that allows for a hardcore difficulty mode with no resurrection chambers. Also, Ken Levine bent over backwards to reassure PC gamers that the interface for Bioshock wouldn't betray the game's console origins (and they delivered on that promise). That seems to have been a result of years and years of PC gamers getting fed up with crappy and lazy interfaces.

Originally Posted by Brother None
And nine million bicycles in Beijing

One of my favourite songs.