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Argument 1: Developers need to listen more to their players so that they end up producing the kinds of games the public wants. Gamers should be able to shape the future of gaming!

Argument 2: Developers need to pay less attention to the grumbling of their players and stay true to their vision. Griping gamers ruin perfectly good games!

Take a look at the official forum for any game, whether released or in development, and you'll find plenty of griping gamers; they're everywhere. The DDO forums are certainly no exception. But do their comments--some of them constructive and intelligent; others decidedly less so--really affect the future of any game? And, perhaps more to the point, should they?

On one hand, you could certainly argue the people who buy and pay monthly fees to play MMOGs should have a say in how they shape up. But those who come down on the side of Argument 2 believe in letting game developers work their magic unfettered. After all, the devs are the industry professionals, not the fans. I believe that MMOG gamers need to take back their games and start insisting that developers listen to the community; at least to the ones who write in complete sentences and have something constructive to say.

The thing is, game developers like Turbine have become increasingly numb to the demands of gamers and, aside from the vocal (and often downright annoying) minority you'll find on the official forums for any given title, we gamers are letting them get away with it. We got a skimpy little manual (would you even call these things manuals?) with our $50 software, but if we want to pay another $20 or so we can get a useless Prima guide that will be outdated by the time we receive it. We pay monthly for content that's bugged and broken, and those bugs go for weeks unaddressed. We pay $15 a month for DDO, an all-instanced game, while Guild Wars (a similar platform) is free in North America. Turbine (and perhaps Wizards of the Coast had a hand in this) crammed the idea of “no soloing” down our throats, whether we liked the taste of it or not. Licensing is king, yet the interests of the community remain ignored.

I understand that production and maintenance for MMOGs cost developers and publishers big money. I'm not unsympathetic to the challenges that developers like Turbine faced in putting out a game like DDO. But we have to lose the mentality that game developers are doing us, the gamers, a favor by producing a new title that we'll play for a few months (or maybe not even beyond the obligatory 30-day free trial) and then drop like a hot potato. There's a reason that a contingency within my EQ guild call themselves The Game Jumpers--because, unlike a nice Snickers bar, our MMOGs consistently fail to satisfy. I can honestly say that, since the days when I played EverQuest with almost religious zeal, there hasn't been a single new title that has held my interest for more than a month or two.

What's the solution? Well, let me start by saying that the answer doesn't lie within the vast majority of posts on the official forums. But Turbine could have waded between the forum muck and the fervent fanboi bleating to find that, during the development period, potential players were concerned that the lack of solo and small group content would end up being an issue for many (they were right), and crafting or other time sinks that could occupy folks waiting for a group to assemble was a necessity (also right). Turbine made a decent game, but they could have made it that much better if they'd managed to be less myopic

DDO is already out of the chute, so to speak, so it may be too late for Turbine to make the fundamental changes that would've made a good game into a great one. That said, whenever you point a finger, three more point back at you. So, perhaps it's time for us gamers to get off our butts and start taking back the MMOG genre. These games are ours, and it's time we realized that. We need to stop eating up whatever developers spit out. Research games before you run to your local retailer to lay down $50 of your hard-earned cash. If you don't like what you find in your research, if it's not what you're looking for...don't buy it.

Life's too short to play crappy games.

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