Video Game Realities: Players

I am not licensed to teach. That said, feel free to pay me more than a teacher. 

I was looking through feedback that people have given me about this blog and one of the requests that came up was to talk more about the experience of being designer to help out others who want to get into the field. I'll go ahead and write about Video Game Realities, and the first reality is this: players. It's an aspect of the job that can elevate you to the best heights and also slam you down into the darkest pits of despair. 

I was a rabid fan of City of Heroes before I joined the team. As a developer, my goal was to do what I could to put a smile on the player's faces. I was going to listen to ALL the feedback and do ALL the things and make ALL the people happy. THE END! 

My work first debuted in Issue 17, where I did the Positron TF revamp, Dean MacArthur, Leonard, and took over the Agent Keith Nance and Jenni Adair arcs from another mission designer due to his own time constraints. All in all, it was a great success; players loved it and feedback for it on the forums was fantastic! I was riding high.

Living the good life, and it was all legal!

However, there were other areas of the game where I couldn't match expectations. I wanted to do more for Mission Architect, but the resources just weren't available for me to use due to the push to release Going Rogue after Issue 17. Mission Architect players weren't happy, and when I read their posts, I took it as personal attacks against myself. Actually, that's only partially true - I read their feedback and took it directly as, "Sean McCann, you have failed us and let us down you terrible person you". Granted, no one said that, but that's how I would take all negative feedback in the beginning of my career.

It's a terrible feeling as a designer when you try your best at something and the feedback is all negative, or even just if some negative feedback is given to you. You always end up remembering the one bit of nasty feedback instead of the ton of praise. I always felt like I let a player down when I saw negative feedback. Most of the talk from players regarding my work has been pretty positive on the CoH forums during the time to try to save it, though there have been one or two players who have pretty decisively insulted me specifically by stating things like it's a good thing I don't work on X game because of Y reasons. Even to this day, feedback like that still hurts. It makes me wonder, what is up with this person that they would say something like that? Back in Brooklyn (where I'm from), that would demand a fight! The second thing, and the more important lesson to take away from this, is asking the question: are they right about their feedback? Why are they saying these things, both positive and negative?

And why are they pointing a gun at me?

The questions of "why" and "are they right" are the most difficult ones to ask when receiving both positive and negative feedback, but they have to be considered. You have to try to put your feelings aside to judge what that person is saying. In the case of the person above, when you dig past the insults, there is some truth to what they say regarding my writing and where it can be improved. I say some truth because the rest of their statement was just blatantly false, and the one that is true was blown out of proportion to make it seem like it was an issue in all of my writing, when it was only an issue in some things I've done. However, that doesn't change the fact that it's an area that can be improved. 

An example of this that I'll actually go into involves work I did in Issue 19. Players who had become Incarnates had to fight level 54 Malta, a previously established villain group in the game. Some players didn't seem to mind this, while other players were very adamant, to the point of insults, about why this was terrible. 

(As an aside, Issue 19 was an interesting one for me, feedback wise. Someone posted that whoever wrote the Roy Cooling arc (me) should be fired. The same poster then continued to say that whoever wrote the Vincent Ross arc (me) should be given a raise from the money left over from firing the previous guy (me). Granted, Roy Cooling had some problems which the poster was partially right about, which will be brought up in a future blog post, How I Should Have Done It: Roy Cooling.)

The main feedback was that they didn't feel very powerful fighting the same looking guys from before, especially when there was no reason why they should be more powerful. This was a case where the lessons mentioned above came into play. It would be easy to just discard what they were saying because it was insulting and small. But I had to ask the question, what if there's a good point there? The answer was yes. What was the point? It was that players can be be given powers systems-wise to feel powerful, but it means nothing if the enemies you're fighting look the same and fight the same with no lore reason for their increase in powers beyond just, "they're level 54 now".

These level 5 gangsters are now level 54. No reason at all, no new powers. Deal with it. (This is not the way to do it, by the by)

Now, on the flip side, there's the positive feedback. This can be just as dangerous as negative feedback, so be careful! The more negative the feedback, the harder it is to see why the player is saying that. The same is true with positive feedback. You can read all the positive feedback in the world, but if you stick to, "people LOVE ME!", then you won't move very far in your design work. The best way to think of things is this: your design, your story, your work is a thesis. You're saying, "I have done all of this, and my thesis is that this should be fun." This can be stuff that you've done a thousand times, but it's still a thesis. The reaction from players gives you the answer to this thesis, but only if you pay attention. You need to understand what was the essence of what you did to see why people thought it was awesome. Example? Example!

Enchantment? Example!

In Dark Astoria, I introduced a mechanic where there were several missions set at the highest difficulty possible. In order to support players through this, I had 7 allies spawn. Granted, they weren't using my handy dandy LUA revive script because LUA didn't exist yet, so there were faults there with allies dying etc. However, before the missions, players had the option to choose not to take the allies and go it alone. I honestly put this in as an attempt to add more achievement badges to the game, because I liked achievements that mean something other than just playing the game normally. The feedback I received was that many players loved this part because it made them feel epic. Cool, right? People liked what I did, done deal.

I couldn't leave it at that. I sat down and asked myself, why did this make players feel epic? Couldn't they just do that by setting the difficulty to its maximum regularly? I read a lot of posts and eventually came to a conclusion. The story and system of the game were set up to tell players, "You can only do this if you follow this path that we've set for you." However, putting in that option, "... of course, though, you could try to do it in a totally crazy way that we don't at all recommend" makes the player feel awesome because they are choosing to take the awesome route. They are saying that they are better than what the game and story believes, and when you come out on top putting that idea forward, you feel great.

I couldn't think of a good image, so here's an American flag.

A designer making judgments like this will find their future work is stronger. The risk is to just copy and paste what you did before because that was great, so it should be great again. But players won't accept that for very long. You have to innovate, understand why something was good or bad, then move forward with that in mind. If you do this, you'll find your designs are stronger with players. Of course, it all hinges on your opinion of players as a designer.

Every person who works in the game industry has a decision to make - how do you face players? Some people ignore players and do their own thing and are content with being proud of their own work; other people hang on every word the players say and are defined by positive or negative feedback. I've gone through both during my time in City of Heroes, and I've eventually reached a happy place, as you may or may not be able to tell from the novel I've written here. You have to accept that you're not going to make everyone happy, but that you can do your best. If you fail, you fail! You get back up and try again. You don't let it affect how you see yourself. If a random person on the internet says that you should be fired because your arc was terrible, ask yourself if he's correct about his criticisms, and if so, why? Discard the feeling that he's personally insulting you; he is, but why should you care? Is he your friend? Does he know your life story? No? Then his opinion can't affect your life! But is he an adept player of the game? Yes? Then his opinion of the game absolutely has value!

To wrap this up, other players are the reason why I make games. I want to deliver amazing stories and game play, have people experience things, have fun, and maybe even have a stronger desire to go out and live life. Without players, my career would mean nothing at all. I'm here to deliver great experiences with my theses, and players are here to help me correct my ideas going forward. I will tell any aspiring game designers that dealing with player feedback is never easy, but you can't give up. You can eventually get to the point where every feedback, even the worst ones that de-humanize you and treat you like you're an object, is a chance for you to improve yourself and your design skills. Just remember that you're more than just a game designer, you're a full person, so don't let negative feedback affect your entire life!

Oh, and don't argue with players posting negative feedback. That won't get you anywhere. There's nothing profound to this part, it's just a rule you should follow. Even if you think the player is absolutely wrong, just let them say it. You know whether they're wrong or not, and that's all you need.

Or, you can track them down and punch them in the face. But then you'd no longer be a game designer. You'd be the defendant in a grievous assault case. And no one wants to be that guy.

You could get this guy to defend you, though.