'Fallout' Creator Claims Video Game Developers Have No Idea What Gamers Want Then Blames Gamers For Providing Bad Feedback
Tim Cain, one of the creators of Fallout, recently declared that video game developers and studios have no clue what gamers want, but then proceeded to blame gamers for providing bad feedback.
In a recent upload to his YouTube channel, Cain stated, “I want to give you the raw, unfiltered response to ‘Do devs know what gamers want?’ And here it is: No. No, we don’t know what you want. We have no idea, seriously, what you want.”
As for why he believes that game developers do not know what gamers want, he elaborated, “Here’s the longer answer and it’s all kind of can be summed up as ‘Because you don’t know either.’”
He then explained, “First off, many of you only tell developers what you hate. Great. You said what it is you don’t want. But what is it you want? … When you keep saying I hate this in games. I hate this feature. I hate these kinds of characters and all that. Great. What kind of characters do you want? If you hate sarcastic characters. Well, there’s an entire realm of non-sarcastic characters. But what is it you want? Do you want funny characters? Do you want serious characters? Do you want characters with a lot of background? Do you want characters with very little that you don’t want to spend a wall of time in a wall of text dialogue? What do you want? That’s why you have to tell us what you want and not what you don’t want.”
Next, he noted that even if gamers do explain what they want, it’s vague.
He said, “Even when you say what you want you're often extraordinarily vague. You will say, ‘I want a better game. I want better AI. I want a better UI.’ Yeah, I'll just slide the better slider from okay to great on all of those.”
If you don't say what you're talking about it can be really vague,” he reiterated. “For example, 'What what does better for you mean in a game?’ Or when you say, ‘How is that AI bad’ What are you talking about? Are they just running straight at you not shooting? What do you mean?”
“When you say you don't like a UI what is the friction point in that UI that you're encountering? What is it that's bothering you? If you just say, ‘That UI is dumb.’ It's not helping. And trust me it's not just gamers who do this. I've worked with people who've literally said that out of their mouth. They're like, ‘That looks dumb.’ Great, I'll get right on that,” he continued.
From there, Cain noted that gamers are not monolothic and have different preferences. He points to comments on his previous videos about people disagreeing with fast travel, different difficulty options, or encumbrance mechanics.
He notes because of all these different preferences “there is no possible way to make a game that will make all of you happy.”
Cain then added, “What's interesting to me, and this channel has made me really acknowledge it, you don't even agree on the fact that all of you are disagreeing.”
In summary, Cain concluded, “I get that you the individual want what you the individual want, but you have to realize that you, the individual, are not very good at giving developers feedback. And that you the individual are not everybody the game's being made for. Many of you aren't even in the majority, and I hear you, I don't think I'm in the majority. I like a lot of niche games. I've made a lot of niche games.”
“And so that's kind of what I'm saying here: Is game development is hard on its own technically, but this lack of consensus among game players about what they want takes that difficulty to a whole new level. It's that much harder to make a game that you want to be popular, that you want to have a lot of sales because most of you don't know what you want, those of you that do know what you want are very vague at expressing it, and many of you don't realize that what you want isn't what a lot of other people want,” he said.
He later concluded, “Do game developers know what game players want no we don't.”
Cain is not the only person to point out that developers do not know what players want.
During a Q&A portion of an interview at the XDS24 conference Assassin’s Creed Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Côté said, “We need to find where players are, which has been a question I’ve been having for the last two years. Where are players? What are they playing? Where do we reach them? All of this will become clear in the coming years as our industry transforms.”
What do you make of Cain’s comments?
They know what we want, they are just playing stupid, bc to admit that they have activley not given us what we want bc Kim Belaire said we were "Picky Babies" destroys there whole narrative.. let them die out of the industry so the chuds can rebuild!
He has a point, however, for me it's simple. I want a good story, interesting characters, fun combat and NO woke crap ideology - no lesbians in every major role, no pronouns, & a choice of good-looking male or female characters as a hero! They should all take a lesson from Baldurs's Gate 3, Mass Effect 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance and Skyrim! I'm a female gamer btw.