Walton spent many years building games to put in boxes for retail stores, and over time began concentrating on online games, which demands a relationship between the company and individual gamers. That's a difficult transition for publishers used to the old way of doing business. "Most of the big companies I work for think about the consumers like a faceless mass, and not about people," Walton said. "People are the ones using our stuff. Even in the mid '80s, when I was doing games then, I always went to alpha as quickly as I could. I was on the online services and I would recruit people who were interested in the topic and I would have forty or fifty people playing my early game and giving me feedback, because you can't see the forest for the trees when you're making the game. Just because you made it for yourself, and your team, and they all think it's cool, doesn't mean a damn thing if customers don't think it's cool."
Not like the industry hasn't heard this before, and I doubt they'll listen just because Gordo got some press. OTOH, if reading Gordo's words educate even a few of the kids who enter the computer games business every year, then it's a great thing.
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