Forbes recently interviewed Chris Whiteside, Lead Producer of Guild Wars 2, asking him a number of questions about community feedback and its effect on the Guild Wars 2 creation process.
One of the best parts of the interview is seeing what the feedback that we, the community, have provided is helping create.
What type of feedback have you received?
There are two main types of feedback that have been beneficial from the open betas. One is understanding the readiness of when you’re ready to launch. Specifically, the way we measure that is when you have a closed beta or an open beta and the feedback you’re getting is talking about macro systems in the game, then you know that you’re far away from launch. You’ve still got a lot of work to do. The more micro the feedback becomes, like asking about a particular color or suggesting we have a different tray here, then we know that we’re much closer to launch readiness because we really are polishing the game at that point. The secondary type of feedback that we got from these events is really putting our systems out there and getting feedback on how we can improve them to make them more accessible or better.
While it is great to see our effect on the development process, Chris’ response to a later question definitely takes the proverbial cake.
‘What’s it like to finally have a release date in sight?’
Scary. The thing is there’s no arrogance here. One of the great things about relying on your community is that it’s less about Metacritic and that kind of industry pressure, and it’s more about the good pressure that’s put on us by our community. We don’t want to let the community down. It’s like we’re super excited about what we’re doing. We haven’t tried to over hype the game in any way. People have an opinion of the game and that’s fantastic. We just want to make sure that we exceed those expectations, and that we really put something special into the hands of the community and the people who are going to play the game. That continued support will allow us to sustain equally high, or even higher, quality moving forward. We’re nervous, but in a good way, about the launch. And we can’t wait to play with everyone once the gates open and the world is born, essentially, into digital space.
It is superb to see such a devoted producer, and one can only imagine the pressure that the ArenaNet Team feels in this final week before release. I wish them the best of luck, and thank them for all the work they have done in making this world.
If you’d like to read the rest of the interview, head to the full article here.
