Being a Game Developer [Negative Comments/Constructive Criticism]

[Boom's Attic Games]

Hello all.

I'll be honest with everyone, I'm not 100% sure why I'm writing this post...
I guess it's just some things I've noticed over the past several months and thought I'd share my experience with anyone that is interested in hearing it.

Negative Comments/Constructive Criticism :
I guess the hardest part of being a game developer is dealing with the negative comments...
Especially in the early stages of development.

I've seen developers come and go over the past serval months and after speaking to a few of them it always seems to be down them "losing motivation" to keep developing and improving their work/skills.
When I asked them to elaborate on what made them "loose Motivation" there experience was the same as mine.

For those of you unaware, the negative comments that people leave on developers pages/threads etc have a bigger effect on the developer than you probably realize, especially the new ones starting out.

I know I personally can read 30-40 positive comments about my work but then I'll come across that 1 comment...
You know what I'm talking that about, That one person that just comments something like :
"This is shit, you should give up now".
That 1 comment will stand out from all the others and take a front seat in the developer's mind...

Even though I may have just had 30-40 people telling me that I'm doing a good job and that they like my game etc, that 1 negative comment will have a much bigger impact on me than all of those other comments and will be on my mined all day...

You end up starting to doubt yourself and the work you're doing...
Which let's face it, it's stupid considering 30-40people have just said they enjoy your work but for some reason, our brains focus more on the negative feedback than the positive...

Now don't get me wrong, this may not be the case for every developer out there.
Especially the ones that have been established for a while now as they have dealt with this for a long time and have learned to ignore such comments but for those developers just starting out it has a really big impact.

I think we can all agree that most new games being developed start out "Terrible"...
But that's because they're just starting out and are in the early development stages.
I know I can honestly say looking back at my first attempts/earlier builds I feel ashamed at how bad they were...

I guess what I'm trying to say is :
Before you post something on a developers page/thread take the time to think about what you're actually about to post.

You can either post a: "negative comment"
Which let's face it, it doesn't help anyone and is kinda pointless to post unless you're actually someone that just wants to make someone feel bad.
(Which to be very very blunt, makes you a horrible person)

Or you can post: "Constructive Criticism"
The game you're posting about may, in fact, be terrible, but instead of just pointing that out how about letting the developer know what is making the game a terrible experience for you so they can try and fix it and improve their game/skill set.

I've seen some really good talent/first attempts at games lost/abandoned over the past several months because of this and it's a real shame that they got knocked down before they even managed to get started...

My advice to new developers:
As hard as it may be starting out dealing with "negative comments" you need to remember one thing, You can only improve going forward.

Yes, It's hard to ignore comments such as these, Trust me I know.
But these people don't care about your game.

The comments you need to be focusing on is the positive comments and the people taking the time to give you "Constructive Criticism" these people do care about your game.

Yes, You'll get negative feedback from the people giving you "Constructive Criticism" but this is a good thing because they're explaining to you what is making your game a bad experience for them to play.

Don't take the "Constructive Criticism" people are giving you to heart, these people are fantastic and will help you improve your game and skills going forward.

That's it...:
I guess that's all I have to say/share really...
I may have just wasted 10 minutes of my life writing this but I guess I'm just hoping to open a few peoples eyes.

-Boom

 

[anschwww]

u will never change this kids, so.... ignore them.

 

[a meme]

You're not wrong about that. However, there's possibilities for someone to leave that kind of negative comment:

• The guy speaking the truth: the game really is so shit he doesn't bother explaining because it's so obvious (no content, broken english, poor scenario, grindy gameplay, etc.). He may be crude, but also right.
• The internet citizen: someone who spent too much time on the internet and started behaving as such. They have reasons to be negative about the game though, so ask them to explain themselves. Usually, they stopped explaining themselves because of fanboys attacking their legitimate criticism or the dev completely ignored them or brushed them off as trolls.
  
• The internet cave troll: a lost cause, just ignore them. You can easily recognize them by looking at their post history (racism, constantly looking for fights, etc.).

 

[tooldev]

To deliver constructive criticism does not require to care about your game. I think you are wrong with that point.

People basically split into 2 groups in comments:

The consumers - they comment on your product 'as is'. If you spit out something that is merely an early prototype and call it 'game' you have it coming. (Before your heart explodes here - i dont know your game at all. This is a general comment and if you dont think it applies to your game: good for you).

The second group consists of people with at least some basic background knowledge about development, design etc. Most often those people will not really comment or if they do it might sound bad unless you really delivered a proper and consistent design, good tools, consistent mechanics - this list can go on for hours.

Looking around here i risk a verbal beating now and say that most of the comments in 'game discussion' threads will consist of consumer comments. If they make you feel uncomfortable or even make you doubt yourself chance is high something isnt right with your 'product'. A consumer does not have to care about how many hours it takes or which tools or how complicated something is. They comment based on consumer experience. If the experience is bad the comment will be bad. You as a developer have to learn to cope with that and have to make decisions (as you are basically a business).

Not meaning to sound too snappy here. But a developer isnt necessarily a good product manager (in fact most are not). The game discussion threads require a different attitude than the one a developer usually has. As a developer you should deal with designs, code, mechanics and when consumers think something is bad your developer brain immediately sees the implications on a development level and you feel like they call you a bad developer now . Which they are not. They simply see something isnt as they like to have it in the product or something is really not working out for them.

 

[Boom's Attic Games]

You're not wrong about that. However, there's possibilities for someone to leave that kind of negative comment:

• The guy speaking the truth: the game really is so shit he doesn't bother explaining because it's so obvious (no content, broken english, poor scenario, grindy gameplay, etc.). He may be crude, but also right.
• The internet citizen: someone who spent too much time on the internet and started behaving as such. They have reasons to be negative about the game though, so ask them to explain themselves. Usually, they stopped explaining themselves because of fanboys attacking their legitimate criticism or the dev completely ignored them or brushed them off as trolls.
  
• The internet cave troll: a lost cause, just ignore them. You can easily recognize them by looking at their post history (racism, constantly looking for fights, etc.).

To deliver constructive criticism does not require to care about your game. I think you are wrong with that point.

People basically split into 2 groups in comments:

The consumers - they comment on your product 'as is'. If you spit out something that is merely an early prototype and call it 'game' you have it coming. (Before your heart explodes here - i dont know your game at all. This is a general comment and if you dont think it applies to your game: good for you).

The second group consists of people with at least some basic background knowledge about development, design etc. Most often those people will not really comment or if they do it might sound bad unless you really delivered a proper and consistent design, good tools, consistent mechanics - this list can go on for hours.

Looking around here i risk a verbal beating now and say that most of the comments in 'game discussion' threads will consist of consumer comments. If they make you feel uncomfortable or even make you doubt yourself chance is high something isnt right with your 'product'. A consumer does not have to care about how many hours it takes or which tools or how complicated something is. They comment based on consumer experience. If the experience is bad the comment will be bad. You as a developer have to learn to cope with that and have to make decisions (as you are basically a business).

Not meaning to sound too snappy here. But a developer isnt necessarily a good product manager (in fact most are not). The game discussion threads require a different attitude than the one a developer usually has. As a developer you should deal with designs, code, mechanics and when consumers think something is bad your developer brain immediately sees the implications on a development level and you feel like they call you a bad developer now . Which they are not. They simply see something isnt as they like to have it in the product or something is really not working out for them.

Some really good insight, Thank you both for taking the time to write this for others to read.

 

[dspeed]

Err.....sort of.

It's a bit of an easy cop out to be honest.

Anybody who has ever studied Project Management in software will tell you that the vast majority of projects fail. They fail based on different criteria to those in indie game projects but they're still classified as a failure. Anybody who has been around the indie games market will tell you that indie games fail with a ridiculous regularity. If it was lower than 99% of projects, I'd be pretty shocked. Failure being defined with having a finished, polished product which you either sell or release for free.

The problem is internal motivation and that's not on the negative audience but on you as a developer, but it's also something that changes as your experience deepens and your level of knowledge grows.

Specifically if we want to get down to it, new developers have extremely unrealistic goals regarding their time, their ability and the length that of time that it will take to create something. On the old cprogramming.com boards this used to manifest itself with about 20 posts a week, usually with terrible grammar, telling people that they're a brand new developer and they're highly experienced in playing WoW but they know the one or two things wrong with it so they're going to make the next WoW and they want people to join them. "Like WoW, but..." was a common phrase used by beginner developers.

Things like GamaSutra, Youtube and social media have opened up the eyes of many people to the realities of game development so we don't get many new guys any more saying they're going to build the next Call of Duty, a multi million dollar budget game made by 250 developers across 3 years, alone in their bedroom on their computer. But we still have the constant problem that people aim WAY too high for their early projects.

Motivation is a funny thing. This resonates past software and into life itself whenever you want to make a change. So you want to do something positive - great! So you pick something; game development or a diet or learning a new language. And the first few days are fantastic, you're finally doing that thing you want to do! You're positive, your life is going to be different now, you're going to do this. Then one of a few things happen; either you think that you've made progress so you can afford to slack off or you do the much more likely option of starting to realise the massive task that you've undertaken and how long this thing will take. That early motivation that spurred you through the start of the journey wears off and all you're left with is a nagging feeling in your head that you should be doing something or working out or building your game or practising your verbs but a crippling level of procrastination that ensures you don't.

Here's the trick. Motivation is a lie when it comes to do anything worth doing. If you're sustaining yourself on motivation from your accomplishment or by positive comments (to the point that the opposite makes you give up) or motivation from you congratulating yourself then you need to reevaluate your project. Motivation builds a wall, discipline creates a city.

Discipline is the thing whereby you do something that you understand is something that you SHOULD do but not necessarily something that you WANT to do right now. One line of code, every single day. That's the goal. You write one line then you're progressing. Anything extra is a bonus but every single day you have to write one line (or if you're late enough into your project, rewrite one line). And you should be happy and congratulate yourself on doing that because you've just surpassed all of the people who completely gave up that day and wrote nothing.

You're probably never going to be John Carmack or Sid Meier. Hell, you're probably never going to be @DarkSilver or DarkCookie who made great, popular products that they could monetise well and start the beginnings of a studio. But that's ok because not everybody needs to be that, you only need to write that one line every day and go wherever that takes you.

Whether you read negative comments all day or not. Whether you're sick or busy or tired or bored or whatever. One line a day.

When you add up all of those one lines a day, you'll find you have a pretty well established product that you can begin to polish and learn from. Then you take the lessons that you learnt from taking your terrible mess of one lines into the next game design and start the process again.

I have a friend who is a script writer in the movie and TV industry. Somebody once asked him how he became such a good writer and he looked at them confusedly and said "well I write a lot". Same idea. Want to be a game developer? Sweet, develop some games. And keep doing it. Start with Hangman then Asteroids then go to PacMan then Mario then keep adding complexity and sophistication. In fact if you've actually built a Hangman game and a PacMan game that works (and that's a tough task in itself), congratulations - you now have the skills to build the next Call of Duty as part of a huge team because it's the same concepts just scaled up in complexity dramatically. Though you should probably still not try to jump 100 steps ahead in your complexity!

On a final note actually, I want to semi-rant about this. In the adult space I don't see anywhere near enough ideas of "sexy Hangman" or something extremely simple with an adult twist yet see a ton of clones of other games. If you want to learn, you have to start with a tiny project, some that is realistic and that you can manage and complete to some level of actual polish. Creating a 500,000 word Visual Novel with branching stories or God forbid "WoW but porn" is still far too common for beginners. We've opened up the games industry by providing new people with the tools for them to start developing their ideas but we haven't opened up the basic fundamentals of learning that, which is to tell you that every single games programmer out there has built a shitty Pac Man clone or a shitty Mario rip off and having an incredibly small game focused on a single mechanic in no way limits your creativity or theming options.

Just do the work and keep doing it over and over and over. That's the "trick" to doing anything.

 

[Boom's Attic Games]

Err.....sort of.

It's a bit of an easy cop out to be honest.

Anybody who has ever studied Project Management in software will tell you that the vast majority of projects fail. They fail based on different criteria to those in indie game projects but they're still classified as a failure. Anybody who has been around the indie games market will tell you that indie games fail with a ridiculous regularity. If it was lower than 99% of projects, I'd be pretty shocked. Failure being defined with having a finished, polished product which you either sell or release for free.

The problem is internal motivation and that's not on the negative audience but on you as a developer, but it's also something that changes as your experience deepens and your level of knowledge grows.

Specifically if we want to get down to it, new developers have extremely unrealistic goals regarding their time, their ability and the length that of time that it will take to create something. On the old cprogramming.com boards this used to manifest itself with about 20 posts a week, usually with terrible grammar, telling people that they're a brand new developer and they're highly experienced in playing WoW but they know the one or two things wrong with it so they're going to make the next WoW and they want people to join them. "Like WoW, but..." was a common phrase used by beginner developers.

Things like GamaSutra, Youtube and social media have opened up the eyes of many people to the realities of game development so we don't get many new guys any more saying they're going to build the next Call of Duty, a multi million dollar budget game made by 250 developers across 3 years, alone in their bedroom on their computer. But we still have the constant problem that people aim WAY too high for their early projects.

Motivation is a funny thing. This resonates past software and into life itself whenever you want to make a change. So you want to do something positive - great! So you pick something; game development or a diet or learning a new language. And the first few days are fantastic, you're finally doing that thing you want to do! You're positive, your life is going to be different now, you're going to do this. Then one of a few things happen; either you think that you've made progress so you can afford to slack off or you do the much more likely option of starting to realise the massive task that you've undertaken and how long this thing will take. That early motivation that spurred you through the start of the journey wears off and all you're left with is a nagging feeling in your head that you should be doing something or working out or building your game or practising your verbs but a crippling level of procrastination that ensures you don't.

Here's the trick. Motivation is a lie when it comes to do anything worth doing. If you're sustaining yourself on motivation from your accomplishment or by positive comments (to the point that the opposite makes you give up) or motivation from you congratulating yourself then you need to reevaluate your project. Motivation builds a wall, discipline creates a city.

Discipline is the thing whereby you do something that you understand is something that you SHOULD do but not necessarily something that you WANT to do right now. One line of code, every single day. That's the goal. You write one line then you're progressing. Anything extra is a bonus but every single day you have to write one line (or if you're late enough into your project, rewrite one line). And you should be happy and congratulate yourself on doing that because you've just surpassed all of the people who completely gave up that day and wrote nothing.

You're probably never going to be John Carmack or Sid Meier. Hell, you're probably never going to be @DarkSilver or DarkCookie who made great, popular products that they could monetise well and start the beginnings of a studio. But that's ok because not everybody needs to be that, you only need to write that one line every day and go wherever that takes you.

Whether you read negative comments all day or not. Whether you're sick or busy or tired or bored or whatever. One line a day.

When you add up all of those one lines a day, you'll find you have a pretty well established product that you can begin to polish and learn from. Then you take the lessons that you learnt from taking your terrible mess of one lines into the next game design and start the process again.

I have a friend who is a script writer in the movie and TV industry. Somebody once asked him how he became such a good writer and he looked at them confusedly and said "well I write a lot". Same idea. Want to be a game developer? Sweet, develop some games. And keep doing it. Start with Hangman then Asteroids then go to PacMan then Mario then keep adding complexity and sophistication.

On a final note actually, I want to semi-rant about this. In the adult space I don't see anywhere near enough ideas of "sexy Hangman" or something extremely simple with an adult twist yet see a ton of clones of other games. If you want to learn, you have to start with a tiny project, some that is realistic and that you can manage and complete to some level of actual polish. Creating a 500,000 word Visual Novel with branching stories or God forbid "WoW but porn" is still far too common for beginners. We've opened up the games industry by providing new people with the tools for them to start developing their ideas but we haven't opened up the basic fundamentals of learning that, which is to tell you that every single games programmer out there has built a shitty Pac Man clone or a shitty Mario rip off and having an incredibly small game focused on a single mechanic in no way limits your creativity or theming options.

Just do the work and keep doing it over and over and over. That's the "trick" to doing anything.

Thank you for taking the time to write/post this for myself and other developers.

 

[baneini]

I believe anyone who goes from being a normal to joe to being special in the conversation has to go trough a process of changing their view on what they're meant to do and how they should view themselves. Like ecelebs who gain fame, lots of attention but no way to reply to them all or please them all and they have to somehow manage the incoming messages.
Some people are bad at it and think everything is personal while some are better at filtering. Usually it goes "pay more attention to peers who have deeper understanding of things, ignore almost everything that comes from plebs".
Gamers aren't game developers, they have no empathy or insight for the process of creation so they can't make informed comments on it.

 

[Alexander Krisnov]

this is a long post so a TLDR would have been nice.... anyways from the gist of it i agree that comments have a lot of weight for a developer, there can be many supporters but also many trolls/haters sometimes more of the latter than the former. And it hurts to get the messages which rejects your ideas and hardworks. BUT it is to be expected being a dev means not only to code or design a game its a test anywhere there is an idea there will be some kind of opnion on it no matter how trivial it is. However if you are passonate about your project are you gonna just leave because some stranger on the internet said that it was bad ... as long as there is even 1 person that supports you no matter who never think that what you are doing is in vain. What you do is what defines you no matter what never loose track of what you set out to create.

TLDR: Dont loose hope. if there are hater for your game there will also be supporters for you.

PS: if you revived any comments in your DM or in your Posts in this site if they are derogatory or specifically is targeted towards you please tell me or any staff members about it . If its just constructive criticisms on the game its okay but any targeted opnion or fights is never allowed

 

[Droid Productions]

One thing that helps is to weight the comment based on the knowledge and work that went into it. @dspeed wrote a lengthy comment, showing that he understands the problem domain, and actually thought about it. As such I'd weight his comment quite highly; it's surely worth 50 "Fag dev tis game shit, gfx n0thg like CoD, go die in fire" throwaway comments by idiots.

The harder part is constructive criticism. What do you do if someone has clearly thought about the topic, clearly understands the problem domain, and still says your art sucks? Because that can happen. It should happen, in fact. Usually the first thing that happens is you (me) get angry or defensive; I sweated blood and tears for this render, it's fucking awesomeballz. So much better than my first render 3 weeks ago. But if you can set aside the ego, and actually read the comments, you'll see they're quite possibly right. Yeah; that hand IS clipping the cloth. My savegame system isn't as good as what people are used to. That girl sure did go straight from stand-offish to slavish, with no middle ground. And that's when you learn, and get better.

Of course, sometimes no matter how well thought out, reasoned or argued a point, the other guy's still wrong. It's your game, you have a vision and a dream for it. Which is fine. But at least you should be able to justify WHY (at least to yourself) you think that's the right decision, and that thinking will make you a better developer, and the game better for it.

Don't lose hope, just keep pushing. Good luck.

 

[tooldev]

A min

Some people are bad at it and think everything is personal while some are better at filtering. Usually it goes "pay more attention to peers who have deeper understanding of things, ignore almost everything that comes from plebs".
Gamers aren't game developers, they have no empathy or insight for the process of creation so they can't make informed comments on it.

They do have insight in the product itself by using it. If a coffee maker requires an engineering degree to get just the water to boil the design has at least some major flaws. Any consumer is entitled to comment on that flaw

You might rethink using the word 'pleps'. Without them who would use your product? It shows a despite for an entire group that is actually supposed to be your target group. Unless you are developing for yourself that is

 

[Droid Productions]

They do have insight in the product itself by using it. If a coffee maker requires an engineering degree to get just the water to boil the design has at least some major flaws. Any consumer is entitled to comment on that flaw

They know what they like, but consumers are notoriously bad at seeing beyond 'what is' into 'what will be'. So take it with a large grain of salt, and know that the earlier your product is in development, the harder it is for pure consumers to understand what you're trying to do. They tend to the get caught up in the place-holders and temp-art, and not see the underlying structure.

Prosumers, expert consumers (they might be modders, tool-makers, fan-artists, hobbyists, or just that guy who's played every single HGame on Patreon and can pick which on it is from a single picture) are a lot more likely to give you constructive criticism at that point of the process, because they understand better where you are in the process. I'd also personally be really wary of opening up a product to a large audience before it was at least Alpha stage; yes you want the adrenaline rush of people playing your game and giving feedback, but ideally not at the cost of exposing a very early build to people who'll give you an overload of negative feedback.

 

[tooldev]

They know what they like, but consumers are notoriously bad at seeing beyond 'what is' into 'what will be'. So take it with a large grain of salt, and know that the earlier your product is in development, the harder it is for pure consumers to understand what you're trying to do. They tend to the get caught up in the place-holders and temp-art, and not see the underlying structure.

Prosumers, expert consumers (they might be modders, tool-makers, fan-artists, hobbyists, or just that guy who's played every single HGame on Patreon and can pick which on it is from a single picture) are a lot more likely to give you constructive criticism at that point of the process, because they understand better where you are in the process. I'd also personally be really wary of opening up a product to a large audience before it was at least Alpha stage; yes you want the adrenaline rush of people playing your game and giving feedback, but ideally not at the cost of exposing a very early build to people who'll give you an overload of negative feedback.

I dont disagree at all. Buuuut (You knew this was coming, right?)

The situation you describe is self made. The consumer doesnt give a damn if you call it alpha, pre-release or whatever. They consume what IS. Which is why so many new developers fail, give up etc. There was a reason why established studios and software companies in general wouldnt release anything to anyone public before a certain product stage to begin with. Its actually the same with any producing company. The second you let your product into the hands of the 'common' consumer you have to deal with common comments. Failing to deliver something meaningful from a consumer perspective probably means you are too early out or your overall design has some major flaws. Going public with your stuff is like making a first impression at a date. You get only one chance to do it right. Maybe a second one if the date is gracious and really likes you. Which doesnt apply to product development. If the consumers like green and you have red you have to live with not pleasing that particular group.

Lately the funding via sites as Patreon etc has led to an influx of badly designed (if at all designed) quick shots (trying to stay polite). This entire discussion wouldnt even happen if that wasnt the case. I know tons of 'indie' developers who dont dare to put anything into the hands of consumers because they know how this would play out. They have closed groups who test and play around. As something in 'alpha' should be. The moment it goes into the hands of the public it becomes 'beta'. And lets be honest here: Most of the stuff we see here doesnt really deserve the name 'beta' yet. Even calling it 'alpha' for many things around here would be a far reach.

 

[Droid Productions]

I dont disagree at all. Buuuut (You knew this was coming, right?)

I don't think we disagree on this I've done a couple of Steam Early Access -> launch games (non-porn) with the company I work for, and I certainly wouldn't advocate punting something out at pre-alpha stage.

I'm just saying that 1) consumers know what they like, but they struggle to articulate it, and to see beyond placeholders. 2) If you asked the customers in 1880 what kind of car they'd want, they'd tell you a faster horse that eats less. Once you're at open Alpha/EA, now getting consumers involved makes sense. The systems (basically) work, the tech is mostly stable, savegames don't destroy themselves, and most of the bugs and placeholder art has been weeded out. Now you can flag it for consumer behavior and likeability.

I think a lot of people look at teams like DS, and say "look, they put it out a full year before it was done/abandoned", and forget that even quite early it was a polished product with strong production values (just limited content). They were quite clear and clever in ring-fencing opportunities that would later become fleshed out (foreshadowing, often with cliff-hanger confrontations). They basically treat it like a normal product launch. Which shows.

 

[tooldev]

The problem is both a lack or ignorance of definitions for things like 'alpha' , 'pre-relase' etc.

Alpha, beta etc are terms coined in configuration management and became more or less a standard term especially in software development. Alpha stages where never ever meant to get anywhere near the public to begin with and no serious software company would ever do it. Handpicked people or closed and vetted groups - maybe. Just because i give it some fancy new wording doesnt actually makes most of the things anything more than what is considered a 'prototype' for most product developers.

Early access is a much better wording and there is a good reason Steam used that wording: Its a consumer platform so it has to make sense for a consumer. But it still comes with the same traps and failures in the relationship between devs and customer.

 

[Droid Productions]

Depends a little on the company/style. The terms Alpha and Beta are certainly used relatively normally in Game Development (especially games with online components, where you need actual users to stress-test systems). So closed-alpha, alpha, closed-beta, beta, first release, OMFG we were not ready release, shit-is-finally-stable release.

But a lot of people are launching tech-demos, and getting roasted. Which shouldn't surprise anyone, yet does.

 

[Humlebien]

In regards to feedback, including from randoms. I think it was in this video, that he try to explain how to turn bad feedback into something you can use. For both sides of it. But the TLR:

Sometimes negativ feedback is badly formulated for reasons like language barriers, inability to point out exactly what is so bad etc
Sometimes good feedback is less helpful, as you keep making the same mistakes, that will haunt you later.
Sometimes idiots happen.
You don't get better if you're not ready to get bumps.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Well, it's kind of the price to pay for F95 success. The more people come here, the more stupid brats you'll find to leave a negative/harsh comment regarding a game. Moderators try to limit this, but they can't be everywhere and can't always react to a simple "your game is shit"-like comment.

Usually I just keep my mouth shut when I think that a game is bad, simply because I know that my taste isn't universal. There's a game like this which started recently, one for which my opinion is really, "this is pure shit". The story mean nothing, the dialogs are worse than in the worse TV series of the 70's, and the images looks like 3D from the early 80's and give you headache... But taking a quick look at the thread, well, most people say about it that it's the best game they ever seen. So, who am I to say that it's the worse game I ever played ?
But, as I'm not the symbol of universal taste, I'm neither the example of good manners. And I think that game developers need to toughen themselves. I know that it's not easy to see all these bad comments about your works ; I'm on the net since almost 20 years now, I've seen more of those regarding my own works, than I wanted to saw during my whole life. It hurt really bad sometimes, but it's part of the job. You can't have sincere comments without the bad ones. Read again what I said above, how a game I saw as the worse ever made, can be see by everyone else as the best game ever made ? It's just impossible, there should have, at least, people saying that it's an average game. So, how much the author of this game can trust the comments ? How many of these are just people lying to not discourage him ?

If, as game developer, you loose your motivation just because of some bad/harsh comments, isn't it because you haven't had enough motivation at start ? And if it's the case, should you really try to make a game ? It's not that you shouldn't at all, but finishing a game need a lot of motivation ; it's a long process, it will invade your life for months, if not years. There's days where you'll want to live for yourself but will have to works on your game because the deadline is near.
If few bad comments are enough to take away all your motivation, are you ready to dedicate yourself this much to your game ? And if those bad comments are the majority, perhaps it's just because your game is really bad and that you shouldn't even have tried ? It can seem harsh to say this, but it's just the truth. We aren't all Leonardo Da Vinci or Pablo Picasso, why should we all be able to create an adult game ? I don't believe in participation trophies, because it's just bullshit and while you think that what you do is good, and so continue doing it, you don't try to find, then do, what you are really good for.

To deliver constructive criticism does not require to care about your game. I think you are wrong with that point.

I agree with this. I sometimes commented on games I don't care about, just because, even if I don't like it, I saw few little things that can be improved to make it more enjoyable for people who like it. Comments and criticisms, especially the constructive ones, aren't always about caring, it can also be about helping.
I see a bug while trying a game, I report it, whatever my own opinion regarding the said game. Why should I not do it ? Whatever it's a good game or not, someone took on his own free time to make it, the least I can do is taking few minutes of mine to report what I found.

 

[Fasder]

Hello!

So I've read through some of the comments here and I figured I'll outline my experience.
Even though I'm a fairly new developer(my first public release was December 5th of last year) I've had my fair share of negative comments. This was not unexpected, I know I'm not a game developer per say.

Generally speaking most criticism is based in opinion rather than fact. This makes it a lot easier for me to handle because I know what I like and that's what I set out to make in the first place. So having someone criticize my taste is just a conflict of interest rather than something more objective.
The stuff that's harder to swallow for me is usually when there is some truth to what the person is saying but it is in conflicts with what was originally intended. These are the more objective types of criticism and they are probably the ones that have kept me awake more than anything else.
There there's the people who don't understand what you made or have problems with core elements of the game, these are pretty harsh sometimes but they also generally fall under opinion rather than fact.

All in all criticism is often very valuable, especially for someone like me, who is still learning. Still sucks sometimes though and has had me feeling quite shitty, often because I blame myself.

 

[The-real-Vastitas]

Constructive Criticism

is all that matters if negative, positive or in between it is the one thing I myself value while it opens the eyes for something one might have missed and can be worked on to improve the game...

negative comment

as in something like "this game sucks" without reasons or arguments as to why...

most criticism based in opinion

...that kind...
well...that might sound a little harsh but I couldn't give a f... about them and anyone who does should rethink reading comments at all...most people tent to let others way to easily under there skin...if you go public you have to realize that intelligence isn't equally distributed...as is self-esteem and the once that have little of either tend to write bullshit every once in awhile...let them but do ignore them and perhaps if you can take it for the joke it is and smile...

The one comment that is kind of a bother at least to the thread nobody mentioned yet...the follow up post...
if a user does not read or cares about what has been written countless times already...hell I've gone so far as to delete a thread and start anew only to receive the same bullocks I know all too well by the same users in record time...the outcome... in order to read something meaningful I have to stroll through a ton of "I just said the same thing as the guy before me" kinda comments.

I know that my taste isn't universal.

...true words given my personal preference in games I am glad I think alike only problem being not enough games for my kinda taste but well at least this way I get some work done...:closedeyesmile:
Concerning motivation two sources spring to mind...number 1... passionate players that try out every branch have input and insights that keep pushing development in all sorts of ways and number 2 fun and fulfillment doing it...and yeah it helps if you keep your aspirations in check...a 20k goal right from the start of your patreon campaign is laughable at best turning this into a profession that pays the monthly bill might be a cool dream to some ( it's risky man don't go there ) but not every dream becomes a reality.