Don’t listen to players [Livestream Highlight #2]

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Mr VR Voice

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Published on May 22, 2022 12:03:44 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTmeFf3lI0k

Duration: 6:14

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*********CONTEXT*********
Taken from a viewer discussion in-stream regarding how the 2D gaming industry has become stagnant, repeating the same concepts over and over again with design-by-commitee corporate homogenisation, and so on.

When I say things like "People don't know what they want" this can be applied as a philosophical concept, and certainly applicable to our creative media. The notion of 'creativity' comes with it an implicit understanding of there being something unexpected, a surprise, for something to successfully be considered creative.

For many other social/survival matters in life, people's collective needs and will are absolutely paramount and should be listened to because they usually come from a place of intuitive communal understanding based on lived experience [!When they're not being brainwashed by propagandist media, that is!].

All the power in society ultimately lies with the will of the people and what they intuitively know to be best, not centralised bodies like governments, which are nothing without beings to govern. This is not an intellectual deduction however, it is something far deeper and more innate than the highly limited bounds of mind-based concoctions.

In collective discussion presently we have lost our humility, self-awareness, our ability to say we DON'T know something and are willing to accept and leave it in the hands of the artists' chaotic wonderment, and trust in their visions to allow creativity and risk without attempting to control it with rigid preconceived expectations [NOT to be confused with having a set minimum STANDARD for something, which is a subject I'll tackle in a later video].

"Too many cooks spoil the broth" "Design by committee" "Fifth wheel" etc and many more, are idioms that have historically been in cultural vernacular for a reason.
I am not saying that one should ALWAYS ignore feedback and suggestions, but that artists (game devs) should be extremely conscious and careful about what feedback they entertain and how it may be subtly affecting their ability to be creative and dynamic to produce something genuinely ORIGINAL that we will come to cherish for that very fact.

But of course, if something is designed inherently a large-scale communal project then much of what I've said can go out the window, and isn't applicable.