Interpreting User Feedback

Griffin McElroy on The Verge, writing about how developer Gearbox interpreted feedback from user testing sessions for their game Borderlands:

«A couple of things were very clear to us when we started working on Borderlands, and a few things took a few tests for us to really understand,» Armstrong explained. «There are rules that we've come to interpret as key things we need to follow, things like: Testers try to speak in fact, but they speak in emotion.»

(…)

«For instance, Borderlands is a game about wanting things,» Armstrong explained. «But one of the common things we hear people say is 'Boy, I'd like to build my own gun.' Okay, you can build your own gun. Now the game's over, congratulations. The quest for the perfect gun is over. It ends when you can build your own gun, and if you can do that in the first hour of the game, the game's over.»

Via Felix Metzger.

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