The Community/developer Relationship And What It Means.

[kazeyama]

In light of recent events over the last couple of weeks as well as the current situation regarding U13, delays, the MMObomb voting contest, april fools and everything else in between I figured this was as good a time as any to hopefully give people something to reflect upon. This topic is not complaining about DE, this topic is not complaining about the community, this topic is to hopefully give both sides something to think about to improve the relationship in the future. 

 

In the current landscape of game development and as a design philosophy developers, specifically DE, have found that engaging the players and community as part of the development process is part of making a sustainable and successful title. Especially in something like an MMO or F2P game where a smaller group of dedicated customers drives the business over time rather than a blockbuster release on console or a single player experience which cashes in at launch and any community interaction or fan input into development is minimal.

 

I see this trend continuing to expand and grow and largely it has already been realized that the developers of a title and the community that supports a title are one and the same. DE is one of the few developers that has really taken this concept to the next level. They have a design council, they openly share development progress and accept feedback/questions in the developer streams as a way to guide future content. They have openly admitted that fan concepts such as the zephyr, melee weapons, and others are what inspired them or served as a basis for present and future content. What I want to impress upon anyone who feels somehow disappointed, alienated, or angry at DE for anything is that YOU are a developer of this game as well. The level of communication and interaction that allows for a development staff to crowd source from its own consumer wouldn't have been feasible, acceptable, or considered a good business model 5-10 years ago. There are doubtlessly many game developers who view the community as consumers of the product and not capable of providing anything meaningful to a game's development that exist today.

 

So what does this all mean? That the warframe community should take pride in the fact that they have helped the game become what it is today and what it will be in the future. 

 

So now how does this apply to the actual DE staff, community managers, and other people working directly for the developer? If DE wants to use the community as part of the development process then they need to offer some sort of compensation in return. Now primarily this compensation is simply in the form of delivering great content and making community ideas into a reality. However in the event of situations like melee 2.0 and the constant revisions and delays the developers have faced a challenge where the community expectations and the reality are different. Simple psychology dictates when a person's perception of reality differs from the environmental response i.e. "I was expecting an update and it didn't happen" or "this content wasn't what I pictured in my head" it leads to a dissonance between perception and reality which in turn creates distress in the form of anger and frustration. So what compensation can DE provide if the content or expectations of the community can't always be met? They can either try to offer some other form of compensation i.e. the alerts we saw today. Or what would have likely been more effective was to change community expectations through open communication. The weekly hype threads are fun and keep the community active and involved, but it also creates unrealistic expectations. It would really take no more than one post from a developer every week to give an overview of the scale or size of the update. In the worst case scenario the update drops and people get what they were told. In the best case DE delivers more than what they initially said they would and the community is happier as a result, simply because the developers communicated a realistic set of expectations.

 

Finally in conclusion the most important thing for everyone to remember is that the community and the developers are all people. These are real people with real feelings and even though they may love their jobs that doesn't mean it isn't extremely difficult or time consuming work. They put these updates out at midnight. That means someone has to be there to flip the switch. They have these developer chats after a full days work. That means overtime everytime they do a developer stream. This isn't even including all the countless untold hours they spend working that the community isn't aware of. That is time spent away from their families, that is time spent working so the community can enjoy itself. It also means that every complaint, every feedback, and every criticism has the potential to influence the game. Most people think that by complaining or making a point that they will somehow help solve the problem. However if the community is really going to be part of the development process take responsibility for the fact that you can just as easily hurt people's feelings or affect development in a negative way as well if the feedback isn't constructive and well thought out. 

 

 

TLDR: The warframe developers and the community both have the same goal of making the best game possible. Warframe is unique because of the relationship the devs have with the community. Recognize that we are all human, prone to making mistakes, and that better communication from both sides will make warframe better in the future. 

[NoelleAllogene]

amen, brother.

 

Of all my experience in a game forum, Warframe has the best community ever seen.

 

I still want to thank DE for all their hard work for making their our dream game come true, even though sometimes we act like we owns them because we bought plats or bought prime packs

Edited April 2, 2014 by dataman88

[.Talia.]

Dammit, i spent all my upvotes giving +1 to spartan gifs at the poll topic.

 

But take this, you can have all my internets.

[Anunymau5]

DE actually did this for a while with the Developer Diary forum page. It started as weekly updates but eventually fell under the radar. We still occassionally get stuff but on average at least a month will go by between posts. I think the devs should get back to making weekly text updates through this.

[Xriborg]

The community/developer realtionship has it's advantages and it's disadvantages. Unfortunately, almost all of those disadvantages are disadvantages the community carries.

 

We are your beta testers. We are your free idea buckets. We are your promoters. And in return, we get buggy updates and delays on expected system overhauls. (Overhauls that could have been avoided entirely with stronger initial design)

 

This relationship is a slippery slope, because DE holds all of the cards. They make the updates. They choose which feedback to listen to and which feedback to ignore. Even though we report bugs, submit ideas, and promote simply by bolstering community numbers, we have nothing but thanks. All the community really has to fight back with, is angry rage posts and not playing the game.

 

So, you're going to see a lot of flame and hatred, because the longer you stay in this community, the easier it is to feel cheated.