Cancel your subscription to make a statement! This does nothing, says one of the leading developers of World of Warcraft and League of Legends.
Many players might still know Greg Street, better known as “Ghostcrawler”. In his early days, he worked on Age of Empires, later he moved to World of Warcraft as Lead Systems Designer. He is now working on League of Legends as Lead Designer, but often talks about Warcraft or the gaming industry in general on his blog. In one of his latest posts, he spoke extensively about why “Canceling your subscription as a protest against design decisions” hardly brings any results.
The question from a user was:
“Canceling the subscription often seems to be the only “right” way for players to express their dissatisfaction in a way that affects the developers. But I have never understood how exactly the developers respond. Do you ramp up your efforts? Do you discard plans? Do you let the game deteriorate?”
We translated some passages from the blog and highlighted the most interesting points:
“Developers are interested in why you stop playing the game and they want to know why you do it. But for games like League of Legends or World of Warcraft, the answer is almost always ‘I have less time to play (job, school, family)’ or ‘My friends no longer play.’ (This is based on the fact that I have seen a lot of data – and is not really open for debate.)”
That people turn away from a game because they dislike a specific design decision (contrary to what is read in forums and Reddit) is actually very rare. I know it happens, but if you were to rank the reasons for quitting, this point would be so far down the list [that it hardly matters]. It is very rare to see ‘Wow, this change cost us 10,000 players. Let’s reverse it!’ Essentially, I would not advocate boycotting a game to make your point clear, especially when you actually love the game. It is very unlikely that this will lead to a change.”
Ghostcrawler still considers the best way to provide criticism and feedback in a constructive form on the forum of the respective game. He knows that this is often frustrating because there is no response for every post and there is never a guarantee that the desired outcome will occur.
In most major games, there are various trends over their lifespan. Sometimes the number of players decreases steadily for months, then it rises again over a quarter.
“And that’s interesting. When many players lose, say, over the course of half a year, this almost always triggers two completely opposite reactions in the development team. One side says ‘Players are getting bored – we need to be bolder and more innovative!’ and the other ‘We are changing so much about the game that we are losing our soul. We need to go back to the basics!'”
There is rarely a clear answer to this issue. It is often a mix of both directions that one must strive for to meet the needs of most (never all).
“In my perception, the players and developers in the ‘We have changed too much’ camp are usually those who currently spend less time with the game than they did in the past. Losing touch with changes usually happens to players who used to play every day and now only play once a week or even once a month. They remember when they used to know everything that was going on in the game. The fact that this is no longer the case saddens them and alienates them from the game. On the other hand, players who spend a lot of time in the game likely need something new and fresh so they still have things to do in the game.”
You can find the complete blog in the original English as usual in our sources.
Cortyn says: It will never be possible to make all players happy, but it is quite fascinating to see it all from the perspective of a developer who has worked on some of the biggest game titles ever. Personally, I find all the “When X comes, I will cancel” screamers quite annoying, just like the “The game is dead if you do Y” people. In most cases, the majority of players end up being satisfied, and if you are not – then you probably just don’t belong to the majority.
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