8 Times Listening To Fans Made Video Games WORSE
Proof that listening to players isn't always the right choice.
Considering the perilous, high-risk nature of the games industry, it certainly makes sense for developers to listen closely to player feedback and react accordingly.
That might mean deploying a patch to fix nagging issues or simply endeavouring to ensure the next game in the series better hits the mark.
But there's also something to be said for the artists' process, because there are absolutely times where blindly kowtowing to the demands of vocal fans - who might, in fact, be the vocal minority - isn't actually the way to go. In fact, it can be downright harmful to the end product.
And that's absolutely the case with these video games, each of which saw their developer listen to fan complaints and then make a hard pivot.
Their intentions were clearly good, but for one of many reasons the final game ended up suffering immeasurably as a result.
They pivoted for sure, but didn't do so with enough clarity or conviction, ensuring that what we ended up with was most often a wishy-washy mess, if not downright broken.
The lesson here? Player feedback should definitely be considered, but it isn't everything...
8. Get Rid Of The Timer - Dead Rising 4
One of the more divisive gameplay aspects of the original Dead Rising trilogy is the in-game timer, which places a hard ceiling on how long players have to finish the main story.
Many felt that this made the game less fun, as it discouraged exploration and put pressure on them to race through the core story as fast as possible.
Capcom listened to the complaints and made the timer more forgiving in Dead Rising 3 in particular, but because some fans still weren't happy, they ditched it entirely for the series' most recent entry, Dead Rising 4.
And yet, perhaps the single most vocal complaint about the fourth game was that the lack of an in-game timer robbed the experience of its overarching tension and unease.
Some felt that the sequel tried too hard to streamline and even "casualise" gameplay to its overall detriment, when a fair compromise would've probably been including the timer as an optional toggle.