Responding to an interesting but occasionally misguided video by Tim Cain, called “Do Devs Know What Gamers Want?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA-P3p7PdEc
Tim makes some good points about how some of the feedback game developers get can be vague, open to multiple interpretations, and/or contradictory.
Get a copy of my outline for this video here.
This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
What we discover if we look a bit deeper is that Tim is missing the perspective of an entrepreneur, and we shouldn’t blame him too much, since even a lot of professional economists grossly understate the importance of entrepreneurship. (Keynesians and MMTers, I’m looking at you.)
For a very basic crash course on economics including entrepreneurship, I recommend Per Bylund’s book “How to Think about the Economy: A Primer,” available here:
https://mises.org/library/book/how-think-about-economy-primer
Plenty of additional writing by Per is available here, including deeper explanations about entrepreneurship:
https://mises.org/profile/bylund
Anyway, one of the basic economic concepts that applies to entrepreneurship is “demonstrated preferences versus stated preferences.” It is by examining game production with this concept in mind that we can find that game developers actually know quite a bit more about what gamers want than Tim Cain believes.
In this video, I examine game production through an entrepreneurial lens, show some examples where these principles were applied successfully, and provide a few thoughts on how to apply them more widely.
Intro music is “Moribund World,” from the Fallout soundtrack, composed by Mark Morgan!
If you like role-playing games and have never tried the early Fallout games, give them a look!
https://www.gog.com/en/game/fallout
And, if you’d like to check out my debut novel, “Pursuit of the Heliotrope,” it releases on April 7, 2025!
https://a.co/d/824ECce