Fallout creator Tim Cain says devs don't know what gamers want because "you don't know either" and that's why he used to just make games he and his team liked

gamesradar.com:

Tim Cain, the co-creator of the original Fallout game says devs don't know what you want, but neither do you, apparently.

Speaking on his YouTube channel where he posts lots of videos about his time working on Fallout and industry knowledge at large, Cain says: "Do devs know what gamers want? No. No, we don't know what you want. We have no idea, seriously, what you want."

Making video games takes a long time. A lot longer than most movies and books. As such, it's hard to chase popular trends without making a new game feel dated. If Warner Bros. hadn't patented the nemesis system from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, we might have had a bunch of games come out five or six years later that all used it, but then we'd all be thinking of a game we played half a decade ago. So, while we may know what we like now, we may not like it several years from now.

Cain continues: "Here's the longer answer. It can all be summed up as because you don't know either. But you've got to remember that I'm using the collective you. First off, many of you only tell developers what you hate. Great, you said what it is you don't want, but what is it you want?"

He then goes on to mention a previous video that we reported on where he details how we can all give devs better feedback.

"But I can just say when you keep saying 'I hate this in games, I hate this feature, I hate these kind of characters,' and all that. Great. What kind of characters do you want? If you hate sarcastic characters, well, guess what? There's an entire realm of non-sarcastic characters, but what is it you want? Do you want funny characters? Do you want serious characters? Do you want characters with a lot of background? Characters with very little of it – you don't want to spend time in a wall of text dialogue. What do you want? That's why you have to tell us what you want and not what you don't want."

He then goes on to lament the vague criticisms people often give to aspects of games they dislike, such as wanting better