View From the Bushes

I have a play tonight, so I'm not going to have any time to write this evening, so I thought I'd dash off a quick blog entry during lunch. To update you on the treasure issue with the NPC: I believe I mentioned that I had tracked it down to an issue with the caching. Well, I am using the caching library of a friend of mine so I am going to have him take a look at it, but hopefully it will be fixed later today. Other than that, it's pretty slow in my neck of the woods. I may have to hurt someone to liven things up a bit.

I guess anytime it's slow is a good time to have a meta-post. One of the purposes of this blog, or any for that matter, is to create a dialogue, get feedback and engender some kind of a response, particularly in cases where the blog is attached to some kind of product. Which leads us to a long-standing debate in the gaming community over how important gamer feedback is. I was reminded of this by a recent spy/counter-spy article over at GameSpy.com. Just like every issue that comes up, I'm going to take the pusillanimous stance that a balance needs to be struck.

Quite often the gamers/customers offer completely contradictory suggestions: "more role-playing and dialogue," "more combat less dialogue." But at the same time, there are occasions when the users seem to speak with a single voice, or are completely silent on an issue that the developers decide to mess with, just because they can. Paying too much attention to the most vocal (read hardcore) gamers can end up producing a game that only the most dedicated 10% enjoy. But not listening at all can frequently result in mis-steps which would be comedic, if not so tragic. As proof I refer you outside the world of games to a little movie called, The Phantom Menace.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross