[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: Emergent Behaviors spawnedfrom...]

[Damion Schubert]

On 8/12/05, Jeff Bachtel <jeff at cepheid.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2005 at 03:00:09PM -0400, Michael Hartman wrote:
>> Sean Howard wrote:

>>> Developers need to start listening to the silent majority in
>>> these games.  Failure to do so is creating negative experiences
>>> for gamers and sending them away.

>> This is right on the money. Developers need to understand that
>> the tiny vocal minority who writes 99% of the forum posts and
>> emails, represents less than 1% of their users. You cannot rely
>> on unsolicited player feedback.

[ snip ]

> Does anyone have any actual evidence to back their assertions that
> the desires of the "silent majority" differ significantly from
> vocal players?

> I would expect, without evidence to the contrary, that the desires
> of vocal players are the same, proportionally, as the non-vocal
> players.

This is absolutely true.  On our Shadowbane boards, for example, the
people on the boards are much more invested in roleplaying than
those who don't read the forums.  Here are some trends I've noticed
over my career.

  1) Players on your boards are more hardcore than those playing the
  game.  They tend to like greater complexity.  Newbie players are
  almost never represented on your boards, since they don't feel
  they can represent their opinions with confidence.  Casual players
  lack the time to play the game AND read the boards.

  2) Players on your boards tend to be much more disgruntled than
  your average players.  If they were happy, they'd be...  playing.

  3) Players on your boards tend to consume all available content
  about your game.  They're the ones that read all of the lore, go
  to all of the dev chats and find all of the previews about
  upcoming content.  As such, they are far better informed about
  your game than the average guy playing it, and it's very easy to
  forget that not everyone is so informed.

  4) Players on your boards tend to be more educated.  A couple of
  reasons for that.  One is that the community will eventually run
  out people who can't express themselves fluently, but more than
  that, people who post are people who love the game addictively but
  can't play because they're at work. =)

  5) Players on your boards can frequently have their opinions led
  by a charismatic idiot, who will raise discussion on a topic to
  the point where its deafening.  As such, the entire community can
  be convinced, for example, that thieves need nerfing, but if you
  go into the game and ask about it, you'll find that people in-
  game have a much wider array of opinions.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some.  And this is in no way to suggest that
the forums aren't important.  But it's crucial to compare the data
you get from them with data from other sources.

--d
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