The Pros and Cons of Fan Feedback

Charlie writes:

"Name the obvious games where people have tried to get their message across to either fix or improve a franchise. Half-Life. Call of Duty. Final Fantasy. Those are the three franchises that spring to my mind, so you might see them occur a lot throughout this article. 10 minutes ago (in terms of 10 minutes before I wrote this very sentence), I spotted an article where Gabe Newell praised the usefulness of fan feedback. But then a few months earlier, a lot of articles cropped up saying how fan feedback should just be ignored by the developers, where it’s “their” game and “they” can make the game how they like. Should there be fan feedback? Lets look at both sides."

[LOOK_AT_THIS_I]

Socom.....the fans who purchased those games tried for many years to spell out to zipper inc. what the community wanted and instead they changed the formula up with every new game and lost loyal customers with each new game which strayed from what made it popular to begin with. They chose not to listen to the fanbase and just try to cash in to the casual market and blew off their own foot which caused them to bleed to death.

This will eventually happen to cod when people wise up and realize that other games are available to play. A billion dollar franchise that still won't throw a bone (free maps) or dedicated servers to help improve the game let alone an updated engine.

Most important lesson this generation is that Devs need to make their own game and not try to clone cod, people will buy cod not some cross dressing identity challenged cousin that kinda resembles it. you piss off your fanbase enough and you have to clean out your desk and update your resume. See zipper interactive.