"Players are great at seeing problems, but bad at solving them": Path of Exile creator explains why audience surveys are harmful to developers

Chris Wilson, founder of Grinding Gear Games and one of the creators of the ARPG Path of Exile, recently advised game studios not to conduct surveys among their audience. According to the industry veteran, who left GGG in early 2025 for his own independent project Light Pattern, this method of interaction does more harm than good.

To support his position, Wilson quoted Magic: The Gathering lead designer Mark Rosewater: “Your audience is great at noticing problems, but completely incapable of solving them.” After that, he named four main reasons:

• First – loss of authority. When authors offer players a choice between several mechanics through surveys, it creates the impression that the studio lacks a clear creative vision and does not understand its own game.

• Second – false expectations. As soon as an idea gets into a questionnaire, players begin to believe that the feature is guaranteed to appear in the game and start “fighting” for it.

• Third – incompetence in balance issues. Player complaints about boredom, unfairness, or confusion are valuable, but their suggestions for correction are most often erroneous. An ordinary gamer, unlike a game designer, does not see the whole picture and is not obliged to balance the entire ecosystem of the project.

• Fourth – sample distortion. Surveys are most often attended by the loudest and most radically minded fans, whose opinion may not reflect the position of the silent majority.

Wilson believes that by pandering to the crowd, developers begin to optimize the game for the immediate comfort of users and abandon complex, non-obvious, but important solutions for the long life of the project.

At the same time, the creator of Path of Exile specifically stipulated that he does not call for ignoring the community. Developers should collect feedback and identify common problems, but independently decide what to do with them and control the final creative vision.