IdeaStorm (for Stardock)

or other ways to get user opinions

from Sins Forums
So, I'm sure most of you are familiar with Dell's IdeaStorm site:

http://www.ideastorm.com/

I just thought- how cool would it be for Stardock to have something like this as a way to provide input on game development (especially in new games) and patch releases?

I've thought about some of the pros and cons to this as well.  Obviously it would require programming, administration, and financial resources to pull something like this off, so they'd need to be behind the effort.  BUT, I see it as paying dividends to the programmers as being a way to introduce new features/ideas that are very important to a large group of people.

In a similar vein to how the US Congress works, this could be like the House of Representatives, where majority rules (since the more the votes, the higher something goes up in rank).  The forums would act as more of the Senate, where people hash through more particular issues that might be *very* important to a few people but maybe most people wouldn't think to vote on that issue or fully understand its implications.  It's not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.

That'd rock to see a voting method out there for "What do you want in the next patch?" and the community could contribute and vote up the really good ideas.  When I saw Brad's post about "What do you want in 1.03", it had well over 20 pages of feedback (!), with a lot of it being repeats or unrelated comments.  Plus, developers could chime in on specific issues to keep the community updated.

I can't imagine this hasn't been considered already, but what do you guys think?  Stardock/Ironclad?
23,234 views 5 replies
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I would love something like this, though it would have to be heavily moderated....
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
With great power comes great responsibility.


Yeah- it wouldn't be something SD could implement on the fly- it'd need to have good backing from them. I'm sure if they could tie it into their existing login structure that would help things considerably, but moderation would still be needed, unfortunately.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
While in theory this idea sounds good, I don't think it would really work out when it comes to video game development. Sure, when it comes to EA, Take 2, or Midway these sorts of idea voting sites can give those big companies a clue as to what direction to go in, but smaller companies like Ironclad generally have a whole laundry list of game ideas, nice-to-haves, desired enhancements, potential expansions, and all that sort of stuff just sitting around. They normally make games they want to enjoy and play and like to make them the way they think they should be made, not necessarily the way someone else thinks they should be made. While community, fan, and customer input is desirable, it's important to recognize that these ideas work best when tweaking a product. If you let ideas from outside people run a project, then you end up with a bomb like UT3 was where it was a mishmash of different ideas from different people and the developer never had any interest in playing or enjoying the game because no one can agree and therefore no one enjoys it.

My fear with an ideastorm-like website is that it'd quickly overwhelm or upset people behind the product. It works for Dell because Dell wants to know what you want so that they can deliver exactly what you want. Specifications are very cut and dry. In entertainment things are much much more subjective so it's hard to get a clear, concise set of productive ideas that don't stomp all over the creative vision initially behind a project such as Sins. Ironclad, probably much like Frontier, reads almost every post on the forum (unlike some other companies) and can gather a wealth of ideas they can run off of if they already don't have enough of their own.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I would have to back ZJB's opinion on this topic.