Tymon Smektała is proud to say he helped developer Techland establish a reputation for truly listening to its players. After operating as Dying Light’s franchise director for 13 years – the gaming vet recently stepped away from the zombie-slayer horror series – Smektała knows the customer is… not necessarily always right, but they need to be heard.
There’s no other option in the video game business, which relies on hordes of other people to take your art seriously enough to make it part of their routine – after work, before dinner, as the basis of their Twitter arguments, and so on. Smektała tells other developers during a Digital Dragons Conference talk attended by GamesRadar+, “I believe very strongly that this makes it your obligation to focus and listen to the players.”
“As soon as you release the game, it stops being only your game. Suddenly, there are hundreds, thousands, hopefully millions of ‘stakeholders,’ players with opinions, expectations, memories, frustrations, theories, ideas, requests,” Smektała reasons. “Suddenly, the game starts belonging not only to you, the makers, the creators, but also to the people who play it.”
That said, Smektała isn’t convinced by old business advice recommending you tell your customer exactly what they want to hear. He reminds developers, “we are not just selling products to customers, we are building a leading relationship with our community.”
“This doesn’t mean that you have to do what the loudest players are saying,” the former director adds. After all, players loudly say all kinds of things, like that Dying Light protagonist Kyle Crane “is sexy” and deserves a big birthday present and kiss on the mouth. Well, in this case, they’re correct.
But Smektała reminds developers “players are not always right about the solution,” although “what they mostly shout are the solutions: do this, do that, change this into that. They’re very often wrong.”
However, they’re also experts at detailing their opinions – whether it’s favorable, like their thoughts on hard-boiled protagonist Crane, or angry. For this reason, Smektała says fans “are always right when it comes to the feeling, so if something frustrates them, something disappoints them, if something excites them, scares them, or makes them feel somehow special – you should pay attention.” Now that’s good advice.
Try these 10 games like Dying Light 2 to play once you’re done with Techland’s latest.
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