8 ms·

The amount of negativity and criticism in the comments here is sad. Not only I think it's way too easy to criticize other's work and choices (in hindsight), bu

The amount of negativity and criticism in the comments here is sad. Not only I think it's way too easy to criticize other's work and choices (in hindsight), but there's also a total lack of empathy. We should cherish many small developers and entrepeneurs that share their experiences with such honest and thorough posts about the experience as they offer unique and valuable inputs and reflections.

rawbot 3y ago
This was 7 years ago. What good would vapid praising comments do?
- epolanski 3y ago
  I'm saying authors of such content should be cherished for sharing it, and after writing a 30 minute-long article they may deserve some criticism that goes beyond the "obviously they failed with such a name/marketing/game/whatever" seems way too cheap and dismissive especially if not really motivated.
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    How is it dismissive when that is the reason why they failed? What more can one way when they see a game that doesn't have any interesting visuals, a generic name and overly niche gameplay? Even ignoring that this is a very old article, what sort of feedback do you expect people to give?
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >Even ignoring that this is a very old article, what sort of feedback do you expect people to give? Something higher quality than the most common bike shedding comment in history. Names are important but not tue end all be all. It's also useless feedback becsuse as you said: it's a very old article and the author already acknowledged 7 years ago that the name and genre it got assumedly stuck into didn't help. It's not only not useful feedback, it shows people did not read the article.
- rfrey 3y ago
  It's interesting that you think seven-year-old positive comments are vapid, but seven-year-old negativity is not.
barrysteve 3y ago
The dev is obviously skilled. He created all of that game himself and made his crowd cheer at PAX EAST 2015. He did a good job, good for him! I think there's a lot of empathy in putting yourself in his shoes and trying to help his game succeed, via deconstructing/criticizing the game's weaknesses. And if he's around making indie games again, he'll want to know what current devs think of the market..
cttet 3y ago
I don't consider the comments helpful as well, but quite contrastively, because of the over optimism. Lots of the comments contribute the failure to quite a few reasons, and emphasize on the effect of the reasons. But the real thing is this actually can imply that the failure can be narrow down to "a few simple obvious fixes". To me it make me feel good since "a bad title" can be a very simple excuse to think that "what if I fix that, things would get better" and ignore more problem in depth.. Since I can never go back in time and retry it in the exact same setting. Things like "It's OK, you have tried your best" is the real negativity to me, since it implies that I have reached the best I can do in potential/capacity, and can be quite discouraging. But it is quite helpful sometimes since I can recogonize my limits and try to improve myself or pivot.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  I am willing to agree for one more reason. Success has many fathers and few have issues with sharing their story ( even if it is sanitized ). Few have 'intestinal fortitude' to go over their failings. Even if the game flopped ( I looked, I actually liked the aesthetics -- it struck a chord, so something was there ), we all can learn something from it and the author should be commended for it. It is not easy ( or fun ) to expose oneself to internet scrutiny.
- erikerikson 3y ago
  A different interpretation of "you tried your best" is valid. It's not a remark that one has reached their capacity but that one made their honest best effort for the moment they made it (even if it often doesn't feel that way). In fact, because of that effort they'll have learned things that will make their next best efforts even more effective and less prone to the risks that reduced the desired outcome of the prior effort. Bests are a constantly evolving target.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >Things like "It's OK, you have tried your best" is the real negativity to me, since it implies that I have reached the best I can do in potential/capacity I don't see it that way at all. It simply means you played the best hand you felt you could at the time. My best in college isn't the same as my best now, Some 7 years into industry. I'll agree it's not necessarily constructive. But fluff encouragement can be reassuring. Non-constructive insults is almost never valid.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I mean, even if the developers did everything right, that's no guarantee for success; there's a ton of competition, and a lot of indie hits are more by chance than design.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  Indeed. Art/entertainment is not an exact science. There is no code to crack.
- dgb23 3y ago
  Vice versa, there are plenty of games that are low quality (some some dimensions or another) and make tons of money.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  Getting just the basic things right is hard. Imo designing and implementing fun is much harder than utility. I’m sure everyone has seen beautiful looking and sounding games that were downright boring or broken
- hinkley 3y ago
  World is full of great movies or games that came out a few weeks after a blockbuster and never got the buzz they deserved. Once in a while they become cult classics.
Etrnl_President 3y ago
[flagged]
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  That's obviously not true; but I don't get why you're saying that. What prompted it?
- rfrey 3y ago
  Not always. I'm pretty sure MY failures in life are because I'm bald. Certainly they have nothing to do with my own choices.
magicalhippo 3y ago
I remeber Gamasutra (game dev news site) having a regular Post Mortem column, where developers who had shipped a game would write about what worked and what didn't during development and launch of the game. Even though I wasn't a game dev I really enjoyed reading these, as most contained info applicable to other teams as well. edit: Oh wow, I had assumed they had gone the way of the Dodo after being bought way back, but seems they're still going: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/search?q=post%20mortem https://www.gamedeveloper.com/search?q=post%20mortem
- Solvency 3y ago
  I used to love reading Post Mortems back in the early 2000s. Maybe it's nostalgia lenses but the problems and obstacles just felt so much more relatable and interesting. Now it's all market dynamics and marketing and tortured business mechanics and layers of artificial tech complexity. It's more depressing to read than motivating.
mrangle 3y ago
In general, a socially and personally healthy life choice is to refrain from pointed criticism of anyone's work whose specific profession one is not in. Apart from instances when their performance has directly impacted you. If for no other reason than the fact that you haven't attempted it and therefore don't actually know. After that, the next level of karmic adjustment is to refrain from posting bad reviews of restaurants.
- thewebcount 3y ago
  No, that’s just stupid. If someone sings off key, I have every right to say that person is singing off key and it sounds bad even if I also cannot sing on key. If I see a bad movie or read a bad book, I have every right to criticize it even if I cannot direct a movie or write a book myself. I don’t need to have attempted any of those things to know that what I experienced was sub-par. I’ve heard better singers, seen better movies, and read better books. If what you said were true, only movie directors would be able to criticize movies. That’s not helpful.
  - joebob42 3y ago
    Thank you. I see gps sentiment more often than I can understand, and it horrifies me. Especially as regards creative mediums (music, art, etc) where the point is to entertain. I may not know exactly what's wrong with a work, but I'm obviously qualified to critique it. But even in other areas. It's easier to tell if something is good than to make a good thing. With a limited number of exceptions, I can tell if something someone did is crappy or not with a fairly limited understanding of their field.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    At the same time, most people aren't saying "he's singing off key", they say "he's a hack, can't sing, and is a bad person". At some point the criticism isn't just useless, it's spiteful and just an excuse to get in your own soapbox. That's why the stereotypical Karen isn't exactly praised for their "criticisms". If they left it at "this steak is done and I wanted medium rare", such stereotypes wouldn't exist.
fullshark 3y ago
People are doing a postmortem, for the purpose of learning 7 years later. Comments don't strike me as that negative really and people are relishing an in depth look at failure cause the in depth looks at success are overrepresented statistically.
hinkley 3y ago
We should cherish small developers. Simultaneously releasing on three platforms? What small developer do you know who does that? I’m still waiting for critics’ favorites to be ported to platforms I own.
- AussieWog93 3y ago
  I released on 5! (Not a game, but still). If you wrote your app from the start to be cross platform, it's not that much extra work to port it across.
  - NBJack 3y ago
    I invite you to give it a shot. Apps don't normally have to care that deeply about UI latency, high cpu usage, various quirks of performance hits across platforms, VRAM, controller variations, achieving a solid 30-60 FPS minimum, battery life impact, etc. Unity, for example, is great at giving you the tools to do exactly what you suggest from day one, but it by no means solves the above for you.

rawbot 3y ago

This was 7 years ago. What good would vapid praising comments do?

epolanski 3y ago
I'm saying authors of such content should be cherished for sharing it, and after writing a 30 minute-long article they may deserve some criticism that goes beyond the "obviously they failed with such a name/marketing/game/whatever" seems way too cheap and dismissive especially if not really motivated.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  How is it dismissive when that is the reason why they failed? What more can one way when they see a game that doesn't have any interesting visuals, a generic name and overly niche gameplay? Even ignoring that this is a very old article, what sort of feedback do you expect people to give?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >Even ignoring that this is a very old article, what sort of feedback do you expect people to give? Something higher quality than the most common bike shedding comment in history. Names are important but not tue end all be all. It's also useless feedback becsuse as you said: it's a very old article and the author already acknowledged 7 years ago that the name and genre it got assumedly stuck into didn't help. It's not only not useful feedback, it shows people did not read the article.
rfrey 3y ago
It's interesting that you think seven-year-old positive comments are vapid, but seven-year-old negativity is not.

barrysteve 3y ago

The dev is obviously skilled. He created all of that game himself and made his crowd cheer at PAX EAST 2015. He did a good job, good for him! I think there's a lot of empathy in putting yourself in his shoes and trying to help his game succeed, via deconstructing/criticizing the game's weaknesses. And if he's around making indie games again, he'll want to know what current devs think of the market..

cttet 3y ago

I don't consider the comments helpful as well, but quite contrastively, because of the over optimism. Lots of the comments contribute the failure to quite a few reasons, and emphasize on the effect of the reasons. But the real thing is this actually can imply that the failure can be narrow down to "a few simple obvious fixes". To me it make me feel good since "a bad title" can be a very simple excuse to think that "what if I fix that, things would get better" and ignore more problem in depth.. Since I can never go back in time and retry it in the exact same setting. Things like "It's OK, you have tried your best" is the real negativity to me, since it implies that I have reached the best I can do in potential/capacity, and can be quite discouraging. But it is quite helpful sometimes since I can recogonize my limits and try to improve myself or pivot.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
I am willing to agree for one more reason. Success has many fathers and few have issues with sharing their story ( even if it is sanitized ). Few have 'intestinal fortitude' to go over their failings. Even if the game flopped ( I looked, I actually liked the aesthetics -- it struck a chord, so something was there ), we all can learn something from it and the author should be commended for it. It is not easy ( or fun ) to expose oneself to internet scrutiny.
erikerikson 3y ago
A different interpretation of "you tried your best" is valid. It's not a remark that one has reached their capacity but that one made their honest best effort for the moment they made it (even if it often doesn't feel that way). In fact, because of that effort they'll have learned things that will make their next best efforts even more effective and less prone to the risks that reduced the desired outcome of the prior effort. Bests are a constantly evolving target.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>Things like "It's OK, you have tried your best" is the real negativity to me, since it implies that I have reached the best I can do in potential/capacity I don't see it that way at all. It simply means you played the best hand you felt you could at the time. My best in college isn't the same as my best now, Some 7 years into industry. I'll agree it's not necessarily constructive. But fluff encouragement can be reassuring. Non-constructive insults is almost never valid.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

I mean, even if the developers did everything right, that's no guarantee for success; there's a ton of competition, and a lot of indie hits are more by chance than design.

WeylandYutani 3y ago
Indeed. Art/entertainment is not an exact science. There is no code to crack.
dgb23 3y ago
Vice versa, there are plenty of games that are low quality (some some dimensions or another) and make tons of money.
chaostheory 3y ago
Getting just the basic things right is hard. Imo designing and implementing fun is much harder than utility. I’m sure everyone has seen beautiful looking and sounding games that were downright boring or broken
hinkley 3y ago
World is full of great movies or games that came out a few weeks after a blockbuster and never got the buzz they deserved. Once in a while they become cult classics.

Etrnl_President 3y ago

[flagged]

wizzwizz4 3y ago
That's obviously not true; but I don't get why you're saying that. What prompted it?
rfrey 3y ago
Not always. I'm pretty sure MY failures in life are because I'm bald. Certainly they have nothing to do with my own choices.

magicalhippo 3y ago

I remeber Gamasutra (game dev news site) having a regular Post Mortem column, where developers who had shipped a game would write about what worked and what didn't during development and launch of the game. Even though I wasn't a game dev I really enjoyed reading these, as most contained info applicable to other teams as well. edit: Oh wow, I had assumed they had gone the way of the Dodo after being bought way back, but seems they're still going: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/search?q=post%20mortem https://www.gamedeveloper.com/search?q=post%20mortem

Solvency 3y ago
I used to love reading Post Mortems back in the early 2000s. Maybe it's nostalgia lenses but the problems and obstacles just felt so much more relatable and interesting. Now it's all market dynamics and marketing and tortured business mechanics and layers of artificial tech complexity. It's more depressing to read than motivating.

mrangle 3y ago

In general, a socially and personally healthy life choice is to refrain from pointed criticism of anyone's work whose specific profession one is not in. Apart from instances when their performance has directly impacted you. If for no other reason than the fact that you haven't attempted it and therefore don't actually know. After that, the next level of karmic adjustment is to refrain from posting bad reviews of restaurants.

thewebcount 3y ago
No, that’s just stupid. If someone sings off key, I have every right to say that person is singing off key and it sounds bad even if I also cannot sing on key. If I see a bad movie or read a bad book, I have every right to criticize it even if I cannot direct a movie or write a book myself. I don’t need to have attempted any of those things to know that what I experienced was sub-par. I’ve heard better singers, seen better movies, and read better books. If what you said were true, only movie directors would be able to criticize movies. That’s not helpful.
- joebob42 3y ago
  Thank you. I see gps sentiment more often than I can understand, and it horrifies me. Especially as regards creative mediums (music, art, etc) where the point is to entertain. I may not know exactly what's wrong with a work, but I'm obviously qualified to critique it. But even in other areas. It's easier to tell if something is good than to make a good thing. With a limited number of exceptions, I can tell if something someone did is crappy or not with a fairly limited understanding of their field.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  At the same time, most people aren't saying "he's singing off key", they say "he's a hack, can't sing, and is a bad person". At some point the criticism isn't just useless, it's spiteful and just an excuse to get in your own soapbox. That's why the stereotypical Karen isn't exactly praised for their "criticisms". If they left it at "this steak is done and I wanted medium rare", such stereotypes wouldn't exist.

fullshark 3y ago

People are doing a postmortem, for the purpose of learning 7 years later. Comments don't strike me as that negative really and people are relishing an in depth look at failure cause the in depth looks at success are overrepresented statistically.

hinkley 3y ago

We should cherish small developers. Simultaneously releasing on three platforms? What small developer do you know who does that? I’m still waiting for critics’ favorites to be ported to platforms I own.

AussieWog93 3y ago
I released on 5! (Not a game, but still). If you wrote your app from the start to be cross platform, it's not that much extra work to port it across.
- NBJack 3y ago
  I invite you to give it a shot. Apps don't normally have to care that deeply about UI latency, high cpu usage, various quirks of performance hits across platforms, VRAM, controller variations, achieving a solid 30-60 FPS minimum, battery life impact, etc. Unity, for example, is great at giving you the tools to do exactly what you suggest from day one, but it by no means solves the above for you.