Generally speaking, it’s a good thing when game makers interact with game players. The audience gets the impression that their money is going towards those who actually care about earning it, and in the end, that feeling of goodwill can be an invaluable commodity that developers and publisher can rely upon (or in some cases exploit) towards future titles.
Yet not everyone feels that way. In a recent conversation with Destructoid, Cliff Harris (best know as the creator of Gratuitous Space Battles) reveals some of the inner workings at his former digs, Lionhead Studios:
"I used to get told off a lot at Lionhead for talking to the community too much… They'd ask a question like 'will you be able to do this in the game,' and normally you can't answer that. But if you're the guy that coded it, well, yeah you can, I'm looking at the code right now, and I got a bit told off for that.
But with Positech, because it's me, there's nobody to tell me what I can say or can't say, and if someone suggests something on the forums and I think that's a good idea then it will happen — as long as it's feasible."
So is such an attitude completely free in the world of indie game development? Not necessarily:
"There's nobody that I have to argue round, whereas with most companies, even with a lot of other indie companies, if there's two or three of them, you won't get that sort of discussion and response because they need to agree on whether or not they are going to do that. But here it's a dictatorship of me, so I can just say yeah, that sounds great, I'll put that in, or I won't for whatever reason."
In Lionhead's defense, game making is often a collaborative effort, so it's not entirely reasonable for one person to get upset when someone else adds some new feature into a game that hasn't been okayed or approved by the first person. Furthermore, even if it's just one person, said member of the team's comments will be viewed as being representative of everyone.
