Player feedback is more alive than it ever was in gaming. Thanks to the rise and success of Early Access releases, a lot of games have their earliest players essentially act as playtesters, to varying degrees of success. However, if a developer is looking at its playerbase and thinking that it might be worth surveying its users for feedback on the direction of a game, Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson has one word of advice: don't.
Speaking in a video on his YouTube channel (caught by GamesRadar+), Wilson explained that surveying players can be a bad way to go about deciding the next steps for your game. "I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to your players. Of course you should," Wilson clarifies. He says that developers need to watch how players play, what they focus on, pay attention to complaints, and more, but that "there's a big difference between listening to feedback and asking players to help you decide what your vision for the game should be."
Asking players to decide a game's direction is a sign that a developer doesn't have a clear vision of where a game is heading, which doesn't exactly instil confidence, as Wilson explains. There's also the issue of expectation. "The moment you put an idea in front of your players and ask them to weigh in on it, you imply that it's on the table. You imply that it might happen," Wilson said. It's best, then, to not get people's hopes up unless you mean to implement a feature.
Wilson also knows that players may be good at finding problems, but as few of them are developers themselves, they may not know how to discover solutions or provide useful ones. This can eventually lead to developers choosing safer, more obvious ideas over riskier ones that could pay off in the long run. "Sometimes the things that players push back on the short-term are exactly the things that give a game depth, meaning, and memorability over time," he says.
So, listen to your players, but also don't listen too hard. It's tough out there for budding developers.
