‘Fallout’ Game Industry Veteran Correctly Details the Eternal Issues Pertaining to Criticism From Players and Developers Following Trends

Ah, the smell of fresh controversy in the morning! Well, not really. It’s more of a great conversation. Tim Cain, one of the main designers of the original Fallout game, recently released two YouTube videos. The first, “Do Gamers Know What They Like?” sparked many thoughtful comments about the nature of player feedback/criticism. The second video, “Do Devs Know What Gamers Want?” went a step further. Cain, the Fallout expert that he is, basically posited that it was impossible for developers to know what gamers want. Because gamers don’t know what the hell they want.

Even though y’all should, I know better than to assume you’ll watch the entirety of either video. If you do, kudos! If you don’t, here’s the gist of it. Usually, players don’t know how to properly critique a game in a way that’s useful to developers. Simply saying, “Why did the devs do this?/They don’t know this isn’t good?” doesn’t help developers improve their games.

Since Cain is here, let’s talk about Fallout. Personally, the last Fallout title I was desperately in love with was Fallout 3. For some reason, New Vegas didn’t really click with me too well. Perhaps I was experiencing franchise burnout. However, to this day (without having played either game in a while, granted), I can’t offer any actionable feedback as to why my relationship with the franchise changed so drastically. Even as someone who reviews/talks about games for a living, sometimes, it can be challenging to be constructive without coming off as cruel. And that’s just from a games journalist perspective — never mind the “general gaming public” who love dunking on and despising video games.

from ‘fallout’ with love

Cain brings up one of the best possible points as to why it’s hard for players to even know how to offer constructive criticism. Because negativity sells. The clickbait titles, the reactionary content creators — it’s an ecosystem that specifically feeds off of and promotes negativity. In that vein, it’s easier to get the dopamine of “THIS SUCKS!” out than to offer anything that would actually help correct the issue.

Likewise, it puts developers in a tough situation. Because the AAA market demands profitability, the goalpost becomes “Well, what do those gamers like?” Especially now, creating games through trend analysis and catering to the widest “consumer market” often results in a lackluster, lesser project. Rather than trusting developers to make games they want to make, the corporate suits (and players, to an extent) demand what’s comfortable and familiar.

Art is fundamentally useless if it’s so focused on bringing external factors in rather than allowing creatives to let internal desires out.