“As a designer at some point you just have to be brave. You can’t shy away from making any major changes just because a subset of players may dislike it, or you will never ship anything interesting and your game will become stale.” – David Bocek, Respawn Entertainment
Processing video game feedback can be like plugging into the X-Men’s Cerebro. A thousand voices pop into your head all at once, and you’re trying to filter them all out to find the voice you’re looking for.
If you’re working with a great community management or playtest team, then you likely have a great process for evaluating and filtering all that player feedback. But if you don’t, Mark Brown’s latest entry in the Game Maker’s Toolkit series is worth your time.
Brown’s gone out of his way to highlight a number of practical tips developers can use to process feedback on their game, including a number of unique quotes from experienced developers who’ve solved feedback-driven problems on their own games.
You should watch the full video above, but for a quick overview, here are Brown’s four tips you can implement right away.
Don’t listen to a vocal minority. (Your most vocal players’ experiences may not match the data reflecting your broader playerbase.)
Identify problems, not solutions. (Players are great at identifying problems, but can’t always conceive of solutions.)
Don’t let changes lead to a boring game. (See the quote above.)
Create a conversation between developers and players. (If your players know why features are the way they are, they can improve their feedback.)
As a bonus, Brown’s video makes for a great explainer to players about how their feedback is best processed by developers.