It’s impossible in any case to fix absolutely everything that’s wrong because so much of it will be purely subjective. If you asked 10 people how they’d change a given thing you’ll generally get 10 contradictory and mutually exclusive answers. At this point we plot the best line possible and tell the outliers that it ‘sucks to be them’ as you put it.

It remains the case however that in general companies are bad at getting the feedback they need because they are bad at explaining to their beta testers and fans how to criticise.

The usefulness of feedback is directly connected to one’s ability to act on it. Some of it is so minor or so specific to an individual’s personal tastes that it can’t be helped. The only genuine reponse is, “Yeah, it sucks to be you, sorry about that,” although probably in a more polite way…

In asking for feedback, it should always be clear that it is not an open promise to fix everything those providing the feedback don’t like. It’s hard to say “Well, that’s just your opinion but others disagree” when openly inviting people to comment, and it can create a false sense of entitlement if someone’s opinion has not only been expressed but actively sought.

With a book, feedback is pretty much something to be filed away for the next project – anything more serious that a typo anyway. Computer games have the ability to patch, and that opens up a whole new scope of response, some of it positive, some of it negative.

On the plus side, things can be changed. On the down side, just because something can be changed doesn’t mean it should be. Between beta tests and patches, there’s often little distinction in the reviewers’ minds between an error that needs fixing and an aspect of the game they simply don’t like but is otherwise mechanically sound.

The other pitfall can come from a constant feedback loop (heh heh, see what I did there?). Changes implemented from one set of feedback can prompt further corrections required by the impact of those changes, which in turn leads to a whole different group of people dissatisfied and wanting further changes, until the whole process just descends into a constant state of flux to the point where nobody is happy with the situation. At some point, designers have to make a decision to stop tinkering and get on with their lives. Fans too have to accept that the feedback process must eventually come to an end and, like it or lump it, this is the game as it’s going to be.

Any system for providing feedback should include a caveat to keep the reviewers’ expectation of action at an appropriate level.