Valve Listening to the Players - The UpStream

Valve Listening to the Players

posted Sunday Mar 21, 2010 by Josh Henry

Valve Listening to the Players

While we wait for Valve to finally release the Engineer update for Team Fortress 2, Valve is letting anyone else add content to their hit multiplayer shooter. This week Valve released an update to the game that includes new weapons and items that were submitted by Team Fortress fans. Here's a little hint for the people out there wondering what's been added, have you noticed Elvis has been brought back from the dead to play some TF2? Well you can thank your fellow players for that little add-on.

The official Team Fortress web site has Valve stating, "The line between developers and players is getting very blurry, and we think that's a great thing." Could this be the recipe Valve uses to make their games so successful and fun? Could listening to the community actually make a game, oh what's the word I'm looking for... Better?

It seems a lot of game developers have started to implement this kind of strategy. Mass Effect 2 is a prime example of a game that was vastly improved on release simply because BioWare listened to the fans of the series. There are also developers that do the opposite with some of their games and do what they wish despite the communities input or protest. So class, the million dollar question is: Does listening to a player community improve a game or lead to its downfall?

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