Does a lack of direct developer interaction hurt the game?

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Samus

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In this day and age pretty much any big game you can find has an official community forum online, or an official website that developers from the game interact with. It's all very well developers reading what people are writing, but to get the most out of it they really do need to be interacting directly, which as I say most studios do these days.

So with GT5, we basically have nothing. We don't know what they're doing, we don't know what they're thinking and they don't interact with us. They come up with things, but we've no idea why, and they aren't telling us. It's an easy comparison to make, but look at the Forza community. Forget what you think of the game, that's irrelevent, but what they do is have direct interaction with the community, and they make updates on the main website telling fans what they're doing and why. They listen to feedback in there, make comments about certain things and tell us what they're fixing and what is coming up, and when. They have weekly update blogs, let us know what's going on with the game.

With GT5, again we've got nothing beyond press articles and some responses on twitter. They add things before telling us or asking us if we'd like it. They don't tell us if they're fixing certain things, if they can or they can't and I definitely think that is hurting both us and the game. Maybe it's a Japanese thing that they like to keep what they're doing secret, but does anyone think a little interaction would be good? Ask us directly what we want, and directly respond. There are lots of "Why" questions about things in this game that go unanswered, where in other communities devs might pop in and say "Oh we did that because xxxx" or if someone voices a dislike, they might ask why and what we'd like to improve it.

I know it's not our game, but in this modern world developer and customer interaction is commonplace, and I think PD really need to join them if they want future games to be what us, the people who buy it want.
 
Your right.

What company couldn't benefit from Input from end users of the product they make.

It's good business.
 
It's not just about input though. Lots of people are having their say on the game here and it's pretty obvious PD read some of it, but there is no interaction. No "well if we implement X that you're asking for, would you like it done with Y or Z?".

Again I know they're a Japanese studio and persumably most don't speak/write English but I'm sure there are enough people that do.
 
I don't think the problems with GT5 have a thing in the world to do with lack of a community forum - I mean, look where you are - or western developer involvement. I don't think either of those things would have made GT5 better.

I think that SONY meddling drove everyone nuts, and the half baked ideas they were toying with got rushed, resulting in what we have now. If not for SONY's 3D Bravias, I doubt we'd be talking about many graphic issues since 3D was forced on Kaz from above.

Kaz knows how to make great racers. Gran Turismo games dominate the racing game world. We just have to pester SONY to fund enough high talent modelers who know how to keep their mouths shut, and then GET OUT OF THE WAY and let PD do their job.

Forget everything else, it won't really matter.
 
A few years ago, I would have said that interaction with fans/buyers/players is not necessary. I would have argued that they are the pros, it's their job to make the game, and that they know what they're doing.

Then, I became a technical editor and became responsible for a magazine printed in the thousands. And only then, I began to understand how important customer feedback is. Making a magazine is an incredibly demanding task, because the potential buyers of your product are just a big grey mass which is very hard to understand. You can of course try to go for the masses content-wise and hope to land a strike, but people can still pick up your magazine at the store, run over the pages and put it back, and you will have no idea what kept them from buying it. There is a lot of guessing and experience involved. Polls don't help either, because you only reach those who already bought the magazine, and the majority of the gray mass doesn't want to speak up anyway. So those who raise their voices are not representative of what the masses want.

That is why today, I think consumer interaction is vital for a good product. I don't expect PD to open an own forum or something, but I'd like them to at least sample what their competitors do, do some reading on GTPlanet and take the time to compile it into a range of good ideas about what they could improve on future GTs. Locking themselves in and making their unique product independently of everything has some benefits, but overall I think it is hurting Gran Turismo.
 
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Consumer interaction is something that needs to be done far more often IMO, it just makes good business sense to try and please as many fans as you can.

However, problems happen when game designers let outside influences change their original vision for the game, then you start to get a game that feels like it was designed by a suggestion box, and it simply doesn't work. It would certainly be good at the pre-production stage for devs to go to the community at large and say, "We're thinking of doing something like this, what do you guys think?" Then depending on how it's recieved, it can either be changed or kept the same. But ultimately the designers need to have the final say, and once they've figured out what they want, it just needs to be made without any more changes.

My hunch about GT5 is that someone wearing a suit and tie at Sony had too much influence on the direction the game took, and had PD adding things that simply aren't needed, at all sorts of inconvienient times in the development cycle, that were ultimately at the expense of other features.

I'm sure Mr. Busyness Man had plenty of graphs and charts showing that if 3d support was added it would boost sales by 1.45% amongst Females from Turkey aged 4-26, that's how those kinds of people think. They just don't understand the creative process, they think everything can be justified with numbers.

But it just can't, sometimes with a game you have to go with your gut feeling, and not what a focus group of people who only showed up for their 20 bucks and cookies says. Busyness people don't get that, but busyness people are in control of the money, so you can't really tell them to go get stuffed when you need that 60 million dollar budget.
 
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drama-kyd
That mess is the exact reason why everyone posts here.
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It wasn't that bad a forum until the "Big Change" around Dec. 15 when it disappeared for 3 days and came back the total mess it is now.

On the other hand you don't hear of people getting banned from GT5 or have the best money maker in the game loose it's ability to make any money. Kaz lets people play the way they want.
 
Another reason I've just thought of, is that without direct interaction of any kind we don't know what PD think of what is happening with the game. Do they mind duping? Are they going to stop it? Are other glitches ok? We just have no idea what they think or what is coming, whereas in other communities they're kept updating.

I can't help relating to Forza again because that is a community I actively visit, but over there whenever there was a problem or a glitch they would comment on it. They would say "X isn't acceptable, anyone doing X will be punished and we're working to fix it" or "Y is ok, we don't see it as a showstopper". Not everyone agreed, but at least they were talking to us, y'know?
 
I think it is obvious that PD didn't WANT duping, otherwise, even WITH a protected game save, they would have allowed it. What boggles the mind is that they thought that a protected game save would be accepted at all. No thought WHATSOEVER to how they could protect the game's progress structure without save protection.

Where have these guys BEEN for the last ten years? Under a rock?!

There's so much about this game that seems to indicate no developer interaction between even different coding teams at PD, let alone any between them and us. The left hand knows not what the right hand is doing.
 
Lots of developers now days use data farming to, bioware does it with the mass effect games, probably for dragon age also. More and more you see developers collecting game data of players to look at game design, and figure out what went wrong where.

Seems data farming is a better overall look at a games mechanics, since it gives you a broader snapshot of the gaming community at large, rather than a vocal minority on an online forum with a certain percentage being trolls no matter what game it is.

It is pretty clear that PD does in fact at lest look at the online component, look how fast the seasonals got nerfed down after many complained how hard they were.

It is nice to have official developer feedback on an online forum, with give and take, and yes we are aware of x and are working on it. But that has traditionally been a more pc thing, and then only with certain developers for certain games.
 
skywolf23
It is pretty clear that PD does in fact at lest look at the online component, look how fast the seasonals got nerfed down after many complained how hard they were.
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Whilst true that is also a good example of how talking to us might have had a better outcome. Plenty of people wanted to lose the restrictions so they just went ahead and did that, when they could have asked directly "how do you want the races set up?" and then people may have come up with better options.

Like I say, it's one thing reading what is being said, it's another directly interacting.
 

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