360 talks to Bungie and Rare on the rise of community input in games development

You love your games, you visit forums, and you express opinions about what might make your favourite games even better. It’s a process that was denied to most gamers less than a decade ago. But now publishers and developers are getting in on the scene, creating official community boards for their most vocal consumers and encouraging them to make a difference in how future games are made, and in some cases played.

“Building communities around games is still relatively new in the console space,” explains George Kelion, Rare’s community manager. “It’s actually very exciting and who knows where it may be in a few years time. Look at the difference in feature sets from Halo, through Halo 2, and right up to Halo 3. It’s exciting to be a part of that and we’ve definitely learned a lot from the community-building aspects and related features we put into Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Hopefully the first step is the hardest and it’s something that gets easier and easier in the future.”

Gaming communities in themselves are nothing new, but it’s clear that developers are putting much more effort into encouraging creative input and loyalty from their most devoted fans.

“Currently our forums have over 220,000 active members,” enthuses Matt Grandstaff, community manager at Bethesda. “We put up our forums in 2000, shortly after we announced The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. After we release a game and start work on another project, we can use the forums to get an idea of what we did right, as well as what we did wrong.”

Thore Graepel, researcher, Microsoft Applied Games Group

Gone are the days when games were played in isolation with no sense that there was a dialogue between consumer and developer. Now, at the click of a button, it’s possible to share your views directly with the designer who introduced that controversial new laser weapon or decided to scrap your favourite multiplayer mode.

But is this the full story? More cynical commentators have suggested that this unique dialogue is nothing more than a sham, a clever way of keeping customers onside while actually doing little in the way of implementing feedback. And do customers really know what they want in the first place anyway?

Focus groups and feedback forums have been used by some of the biggest corporations down the years, but the research data is not always reliable. The most famous example of this was New Coke, the sweeter ‘improved’ formula introduced by Coca-Cola in 1985. After internal focus testing indicated that New Coke would be embraced by soda drinkers the world over, Coca-Cola rolled the product out. But Coca-Cola’s most ardent consumers rejected it out of hand, leading to petitions, lawsuits, and ultimately a massive drop in profitability for the company. Just three months later, ‘classic’ Coke was reintroduced.

Similar videogame examples are ten a penny. One well-known instance was the execrable Sudeki on the original Xbox. Though Sudeki wasn’t a terrible title in terms of its play mechanics, it looked like a game designed by committee. This is probably because it was focus tested to death. Before its release producers spoke of the hours they had invested into the look of the game, especially into the main characters. Large-breasted, half-manga, half-Americanised comic-book heroes and heroines emerged because they were exactly what the punters ‘wanted’. But it had no distinct art style of its own, and the waxen mishmash of influences ultimately appealed to no one.

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