Resident Evil 6 tries - and fails - to please everyone

"If Resident Evil represents a child, then the fans and us as creators are the two parents... And just like real parents, you’re not always going to agree on what is best for raising that child."

- Resident Evil 6 producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi reflects on the delicate tension between a designer's intuition and a player's instinctive feedback. Unfortunately, trying to please both parties can be quite risky, as Kobayashi and his team proved with their latest game. Resident Evil 6 has received very low reviews for such a high-profile title, with a number critics calling the game out for feeling directionless and awkward. Kobayashi says that the team at Capcom wanted to surprise fans with something new and exciting, but in the end it seems the team's effort to appeal to everyone ended up missing the mark altogether. "We want to make sure that what we do pleases [the fans] but the initial reaction might not always be positive," he says. "We do listen to the fans but we can’t be beholden to them at every turn or I don’t think we’ll ever make progress in terms of the series' development." But when your game is trying to add new elements and also appeal to long-time fans, it can be easy to lose track of what people really want. Based on the reception for Resident Evil 6, it seems Capcom may have fallen into that very trap.