Thanks for the input Nfries, that was really helpful :)

In the end, they're doing what most dev teams do. Go with the vision, don't bother listening to the customers. And they've all paid the price.

Your intentions about listening to the customers are admirable, and you absolutely should. But dont dismiss the notion of a "vision" outright. I can tell you from experience that a game project without some sort of vision is a recipe for a big huge mess. That vision can chance as you get feedback and as you iterate on the design, but the vision is what keeps people focused on finishing the game and what will make it unique. The vision also tells you what's important and what isnt. You'll need this when it comes time to start dropping features, characters, levels, etc.

Let me ask a hypothetical:

You go to Applebees. You want a steak, fries, and a salad. The waitress says "well we really want you to try our new sushi". You've never had sushi, so you try it, but don't like it. So you ask for your steak, fries, and a salad instead. Then the waitress says "well we don't really want to go that direction with your dinner, you can have fish stew instead of that". You don't want it, but you try the fish stew anyways. It sucks as well and you never do get that steak, fries, and a salad.

You go to Airborne's. You want steak, fries, and a salad. We give you steak, fries, and a salad. It was pretty good. Then the manager comes by and asks if you'd like to see anything else added to the menu. You say some ribs would be nice. A LOT of the customer base agrees. The next time you go to Airborne's, you see that they've added ribs. So you get that. And it's pretty good. Then the manager comes by and asks if you'd like to see anything else on the menu. You say some pig snout would be great. But the customer base doesn't agree, so the next time you go, there's no pig snout. BUT you can still get steak or ribs. It's still a good place to eat. You appreciate that they listened to you about the ribs. There's things there you like to eat, and the management is very friendly.

Which restaurant do you go back to on a consistent basis?

I think a vision is more like having a menu. You serve certain things, but not everything, and the things you do provide are cooked a specific way. Not having a vision is like telling your customers "tell us what you want and we'll cook it for you". This is a problem because very often people will come in with requests that your cooks just dont know how to make, or require ingredients that you dont stock, and if you try to stock enough stuff to make even half the people happy then your restaurant will be horribly inefficient and losing money like crazy. Also, you may be able to cook all kinds of different things on demand, but none of it will be especially good because none of your cooks specialize in anything.

The main problem in the industry isn't the programming or the programmer's vision. It's that the programmers don't actually take the time to find out what the customer wants.

That... is terribly wrong. That is the whole notion of software engineering. Programmers need to find out -EXACTLY- what the customer wants. There's a whole list of procedures that we follow in order to make sure that this does happen. And it's actually -very- effective.

And most of the time at larger companies it's not actually the programmers who decide what they're working on either (that's like assuming that a McDonalds cook decides on the menu) -- there's someone like AirborneAR who's job is to talk to the customers and find out what they need

It doesn't matter who's doing it, the management, the programmers, the janitor.....lol The point is, nobody is finding out what the customers want. Programming skill gets wasted on things the players don't care about, or worse things the players hate. In the end it all boils down to unhappy customers and less money.

What I think you're finding from the replies here is that your biggest challenge will be getting the team together, because without money or a proven track record a lot of experienced engineers and artists wont want to commit to a project that might take years... when they could be using that time for their own projects without any of the pressure or hassle.

At the very least I'd expect a detailed plan, complete with an initial design doc.

And most of the time at larger companies it's not actually the programmers who decide what they're working on either (that's like assuming that a McDonalds cook decides on the menu) -- there's someone like AirborneAR who's job is to talk to the customers and find out what they need

It doesn't matter who's doing it, the management, the programmers, the janitor.....lol The point is, nobody is finding out what the customers want. Programming skill gets wasted on things the players don't care about, or worse things the players hate. In the end it all boils down to unhappy customers and less money.

I actually thing the opposite is true. Companies care too much about what they think players want. This is why we get so many FPS's that are all basically the same and just generally tons of clones of whatever game comes out that's a success. Companies dont come out with the same games time after time because there's someone there with a "vision" of making Angry Birds #20, or Angry Birds Clone #1000. They do so because they think players will pay for that. Now, you could try to make a distinction between what players "want" and what they will "pay for", but from a developer point of view... I'm not sure that's meaningful distinction... at least not if you want your game to succeed.

The other issue is that depending too much on player input or suggestions, WILL cause problems. Here's some of the industry giants - whose been in the buisness for the longest time's quotes.

And they are actually onto something here. A lot of ideas sound awesome, or great on paper... to them or to a select few people. But they are not guaranteed to make a good game. Nor are they guranteed to make something that is actually decent.

It's safer to make some small adjustments, then to completely flip the entire genre onto it's head and start from scratch. Open World Survival Multiplayer Games have been known for being incredibly hit and miss for a huge multitude of reasons. No amount of player input will help you make one that's appealing to all four of these audiences that you mentioned.

A few reasons...

The games are never fair. Who ever has been playing the longest on a server has the best chance of survival. They had enough time to gather as much resources they can, and stockpile all the best equipment. RUSH and DayZ had this problem. And if the player with all this junk dies, guess what, there's a new titan in town doing noob stomping.

Nothing to Do: There's generally nothing to do than to gather crap and stay alive for as long as you can. Or kill other players. Players tend to act like little kids. They find this new shinny game and think it's awesome... and then they grow bored with it because it's happy birds number 989. You could add PVE elements like quests... but this doesn't fix anything. Like... at all.

PVE: Usually subpar and laughably stupid. Not very many games pulled this off well. And it usually goes ignored. DayZ for example... most of the deaths in the game aren't from zombies. And the majority of the deaths are still players. The main cause of them are other players.

Quest Elements: I can't remember the Open World Survival game that introduced this, but it highlighted one of the best problems ever. Simple missions and advancement was freaking impossible, because people would literally sit at the turn in point all damned day and wait for you to come running by. And it's not just two or three. It's an army of players. There's no amount of skill that will let you bipass that.

To be honest, the whole Open World Survival genre is borked in the first place. If you make a game for it, it's life span is not guaranteed to be that long. And few will get lucky.

Don't bother with player input on this one. Use your gut. Figure out who your primary audience is, then designed for them.

If your primary audience is PVP. Make a smaller world, that is just large enough. If gun fire is heard, the battle should be able to be over with before other players arrive, and by then the victor should be long gone. Make it where the life time of the round is much shorter. It needs to be able to end in less than 40 minutes. If a player is able to build up over the course of a few days, you need to make the world smaller. Think Hunger Games. The arena was not that large, and players ran into each other frequently enough, but there was never a warzone.

If your primary audience is "casual" or PVE. Good luck. This genre in it's purest form looses interest very quickly. The only way to fix that is to give it a story, meaningful quests that don't repeat. Some world events, NPCs, and factions. And make the character's lifespan finite. This is your typical MUD. Which is kinda like a roguelike crossbred with an MMO.