De open Gear of War 3 multiplayer beta ligt alweereen paar weken ver achter ons, en Epic heeft nu door vele bergen date gespit en hier en daar de nodige veranderingen toegevoegd. Nu had de website Kotaku een interview met Jim Brown over deze data mining operatie, en dat ze zich soms niks aantrekken van het commentaar die de mensen hadden.

Gamers aren't always right. Game designers know this and they can't make a change just because a part of their game has been criticized. Take the sawed-off shotgun, a new weapon introduced in the Gears 3 beta that Brown's team knew would be controversial. "That was obvious," he said. "It's a weapon that lets you run up to someone, shoot them in the face and they explode. It's binary: you win or you lose." They'd made the weapon for players who aren't experts. "The sawed-off is intended to be for a new player who really isn't that experienced with the game, really isn't that great of a player, but they can still run up to somebody, pull the trigger and they still get that awesome moment where the dude explodes, they get points, ribbons start appearing on the screen, and there's a big celebration. There's this big sense of accomplishment. "

The introduction of the sawed-off in the beta freaked some players out. "We were kind of shocked and surprised at how passionately people felt about it," Brown said. "There were people who thought it should be cut; there were people who said it was the greatest weapons in the game." But the developers stuck to their gun, because they discovered that there were message board threads like that for every weapon in the game. Each was loved by some and hated by others. That, they decided, was a sign of creative success. They'd made guns that appealed to a variety of player-types, each catering to different play styles. They did make some tweaks to the sawed-off, but the uproar about its inclusion didn't discourage them. Beta players found that it could be countered, and that's what mattered. It had its place.