I was going to reply with this on the forum, but I decided I didn't want to hijack the thread. This post spawned as a reply to this comment. But it's more of a rant now, and no longer directed at any one person.
If your work isn't good enough to deserve appreciation, you should work on improving it, not going: "ah damn, well I suck, I'm going to try sports now!"
I don't see why we should force people to give only positive comments. Without negative comments, people don't improve themselves, it's just that simple. Force feeding positive comments down people's throats does nothing but hurt the project more in the end because there's nothing constructive to go off.
What's more, this over-generalising thing that people wont make good games because no one is giving them positive feedback is crap. I don't care if people like my work or not and I bet a lot of others feel the same way. I get three people telling me something is cool, and one person telling me it blows, I'm not going to go: "damn! That one person must be more correct than those other three. I should give up, no sense in trying now! I'm going to try sports!"
I don't lose interest in projects because someone tells me my interface is ugly or my generic system is shoddy. If anything, I'll either tell that person "don't like it, don't play it" or ask them specifically what the problem is, and see if I can make a compromise, provided I care enough about their opinion.
I lose interest in my projects because I get distracted. It's that simple. I'll work on something really hard and burn-out my care factor, or I'll consider my own work sloppy, drop it and start again, or I'll decide that I don't have time to work on this project because another one is more deserving of an update.
If anything, the more crippling attitude to have is "BYOND has no good games" or "No one is doing anything spectacular". At any one time, there are several developments going on. You don't know every developer BYOND has, so all you can do is make an assumption which will only lead to a mistake. Imagine how all the newer developers react when they read "no one is doing anything" a day after they've released their first game. They're thoughts are probably "oh... ok... I worked hard on this, and I guess I just fall under the radar. Well, I'm going to try sports!"
And besides, how can anyone say there are no good games? We all have different likes and dislikes in games. If there's nothing that takes your fancy, bloody well make it. If you think there's no good games? Get off your ass and make one then. Stop griping at developers to make it for you, unless you're going to offer them money.
I have two problems with this community, there's people who say "there's no good games! Make them!" and there's people who say "this game on this other website is fantastic, but all you've got here is crap!"
If you fall into either one of these categories, please, consider your opinion to be your favourite food, swallow it, and never throw it up again. You'll save us all a headache.
You've just read another rant by Tiberath. I hope you learned something, if you didn't, click here.
Hey, all I know is that there are communities where people build good games, and also receive positive feedback, and then there's BYOND, where people usually don't build good games and also get lots of negative feedback.
I don't know whether good games result in good feedback, or good feedback results in good games. But I do know that, personally, I'm not inclined to do things where I'm constantly getting negative feedback. When I first joined here, my first game sucked. Most people's first games suck. If everyone who logged into my first game said, "WTF is this stupid pile of @#$#!?" and logged out, I would have given up learning DM long ago. | |
I agree that feedback doesn't have to be positive. If it's negative, it just has to be (eventually) detailed enough to lead to an improvement. Complaining about games in general does not give a developer information on how to proceed.
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Just so you know, you're allowed to swear here.
Foomer wrote: Hey, all I know is that there are communities where people build good games, and also receive positive feedback, and then there's BYOND, where people usually don't build good games and also get lots of negative feedback. I love the way you say that. "And there's BYOND". If you feel this system isn't worth your time, why do you persist on coming here? Your attitude falls into the second category I mentioned above. It's detrimental to the development process and offers less help than the negative feed back you claim to hate. What do you think is worse, someone logging into someone else's game and saying it's shit? Or someone not even bothering to log into someone else's game, and saying it's shit? I don't know whether good games result in good feedback, or good feedback results in good games. But I do know that, personally, I'm not inclined to do things where I'm constantly getting negative feedback. Good feedback is generated by good games, not vice versa. Pieces of crap need to be called out on what they are, just that. If they aren't, people wont learn, they wont improve and they wont make an effort. See, the problem with you is, you're a good programmer. And I believe you to also be a good artist. So if you make something and not many people like it, you can be fairly sure it isn't your code or graphics but the concept itself. But you have to take into account that not everyone will like everything. And some over-opinionated people will call you out regardless of whether you deserve it or not. Generally, this is what we call trolling and as such, it is to be ignored. If you think you're the only one who cops heat for a concept, then you're mistaken. I get it all the time, for things that literally have nothing to do with me. When I first joined here, my first game sucked. Most people's first games suck. If everyone who logged into my first game said, "WTF is this stupid pile of @#$#!?" and logged out, I would have given up learning DM long ago. Then by your theory, I should have disappeared a long, long time ago. Because I didn't receive much praise when I first started either. Instead of being tossed around like a piece of flame-meat. I said to myself: "Right, fuck you guys, I'm going to prove I can do this and do it right". Five years later, I still haven't succeeded very well, but I did succeed. The initial tests of Story Telling turned out very well. Version one received a few players while it was hosted, and I very rarely, if at all, received negative feedback. Which in itself is a curse. Because I didn't learn how to improve the game until I matured. And only now am I starting to figure out how I can improve it properly. Perhaps it's just my mental attitude. I don't like people walking over me, and if they do, I'm determined to get them back. Be it one-upping them, proving them wrong, or torturing them until they relent. The former happens every now and again, the latter has happened once and they brought it on themselves, and the middle seems to be my favourite method. But the fact is, stating we have to give no or very little negative feedback is ludicrous. I'll pay this, saying "it sucks" and leaving isn't helping at all. But then again, that's not feedback is it? That's what we like to call "trolling". And although sometimes there's a fine line between the two, there is a line. It all depends on how you interpret it. I had more I was going to say, but I've lost my train of thought. So I'll let you retort to this wall of text before I continue. =) | |
Foomer wrote:
When I first joined here, my first game sucked. Most people's first games suck. If everyone who logged into my first game said, "WTF is this stupid pile of @#$#!?" and logged out, I would have given up learning DM long ago. That was all I heard for nearly two years from people logging into my first project, and now it's basically got the genre cornered. There is something to be said about filtering what you get in response to your projects -- regardless of the community, there are always countless trolls who take it upon themselves to drive people away, but there are also small numbers of people who actually know what they're talking about. Generally, it takes a lot for the latter group to subvert their usual critique tactics, so it's generally deserved when they do as such. | |
I'm tired... maybe I should just go try sports!
Lmao Tibs, once again one of your blog posts has made my week. ~Ease~ | |
Like most positive/negative stuff its about balance. When people pick apart what you're doing, even when they're enjoying it you lose motivation quickly, however when people praise you it often encourages you to work but doesn't give you a direction to move towards.
A good method for keeping your comments inline is to just do the opposite of what your initial reaction was. If you hate the game and want to be negative, write some positive things. If you love the game and want to praise it, write negative things. Provided you use words and sentences properly your true tone should come through but not in a way that's too strong. | |
Completely understandable. All that needs to be said. Nice rant.
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And here I thought the general purpose of making a game was to "Build Your Own Net Dream", not look for praise and ass-kissers amongst the gamers.
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That said, I don't believe in sugar-coating anything. If it's wrong, I'm damn well gonna tell you it's wrong -- I'm not going to build you up with ten minutes of praise just to tell you hit detection is spotty, I'm gonna come out and say it: "Your collision system sucks." This is especially true in cases of something so monumentally important to good design.
As far as BYOND is concerned, I'll start being nice when the developers stop sucking. There's countless examples lately that deserve -no- praise at all, like this piece of crap, for instance, which I'm tempted to review just to point out how bad it is. I'm not going to be nice to Maxwell McNooblar for a single instance of correctly employing usr when the rest of his code is a huge, steaming pile of excrement.