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How to deal with criticism?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by JA_555, Apr 19, 2015.

  1. JA_555

    JA_555

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    How should someone in this line of work deal with criticism? My problem is with constructive criticism. Simply put, I don't know when to accept someone's word on what I should change.

    I have this mindset that all my ideas are great, but I'm worried that if I change it based on someone's criticism, my game won't turn out the way I want it to. But then again, my game might be even better with someone else's input. So how do you deal with constructive criticism? Do you have the same problem as me? Let's discuss
     
  2. FuguFirecracker

    FuguFirecracker

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    Change nothing based on someones's criticism.
    Ask 10, 20, or even 100, people to give you their honest feedback.
    If they all say the same thing ... better look into it.
    If they all have different ideas / suggestions / criticisms, well that's just noise. Ignore the whole lot.
     
    KEMBL, wetcircuit, Not_Sure and 5 others like this.
  3. Tiles

    Tiles

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    Change it when it makes sense to you. It's your software. Not the one of the critics. On the same time, listen carefully to feedback. Feedback is super important and essential. Usually the ones who gives feedback doesn't do it without a reason. And your users are the ones who uses your software. Also check who is giving the feedback and for what reason.
     
    angrypenguin likes this.
  4. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    Be cautious about finding the root of the criticism too. Sometimes players are not complaining about what they think they are.
     
  5. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

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    "deal" with? I ask for it. I don't "deal" with it. More honest the better. It's your own intelligence, not a rule set that determines if you should be acting on a given piece of criticism.

    If you don't have that, then you're a lost cause. You can't be taught this, you can only learn from experience or have good judgement skills.
     
    wccrawford, ogike and Kiwasi like this.
  6. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Pucker up and take it..

    You don't always have to agree, you don't have to necessarily change it if it's not worth doing. Some of it doesn't make sense, "yo bro why can't I shootz in the air?" Urrrrr what?

    If you want to survive, you need thick skin. I welcome it, need it and feel honoured enough that somebody is interested in my game enough to give me feedback.

    End of the day it's up to you, but a group might spot a glaring issue you missed. Because you become to close to your own project.
     
  7. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    I don't think the question is about how to "deal with it" in an emotional sense. I think it's about managing what changes to enact arising from the criticism?

    First up, as @BoredMoremon says, be sure to find out the root of the issues raised. Henry Ford said something along the lines of "If I asked what people wanted, they'd have told me 'faster horses'". He didn't do what people said, he figured out their problems and found a new solution.

    Secondly, as has been said, it's your software. You know your design goals, how it works, what you want to get out of it. I use feedback as a yardstick to see how close to the intended experience the thing I've built is getting. I also go more than just asking for feedback - whenever I can I watch people play, because there's a lot in their reactions, in seeing how they do things, and seeing what they do and don't give their attention to that will tell you things that conscious feedback just can't achieve.

    Personally, I look at making games as crafting an experience. I want players to have a certain experience when they're playing my game, so I keep putting it in front of players, observing the experience they're having, then modifying the game to bring the actual experience more in line with my intended experience. Regardless of the form of feedback or what other ways I gather information to achieve that, every decision comes down to "how can I change what I have to get what I want?" And players often know what they don't like, but you are the only one who can answer that specific question.
     
  8. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    Do you think a poll would be a good idea?
     
  9. FuguFirecracker

    FuguFirecracker

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    Absolutely not.
    Do not bait the badgers.

    Polls are finite. Gleen from the infinite.
    You want people to tell you what they think without prompting nor fixation on topics as supplied.

    It's in our nature to want to feel like we've contributed, or that our ideas and opinions matter.. Our "say" is significant.

    When tasked to criticize, most will try damn good and hard to do just that... find fault. To do otherwise might lead others to believe that we lack perception... That we aren't smart enough to have an opinion.

    Fact is, most opinions are like assholes... everyone's got one and they ain't all that special.

    Now, of course, broad sweeping questions such as:
    "What did you enjoy?"
    and "What did you dislike?"
    are perfectly cromulent.
     
    Tomnnn likes this.
  10. delinx32

    delinx32

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    Keep an open mind and don't get married to your ideas. An idea is a seed, and the seed contains the foundations of what a tree is, but the tree adapts and changes its shape to best collect sun/water.

    Know when you're being stubborn vs sticking to your core idea. Don't dismiss other people's ideas because they aren't "your idea".

    Play devil's advocate with the criticism. Force half of yourself to agree with it and then argue with the other half about it. If you do this honestly, by the end of the argument you'll know the answers.

    Never ever ever let it bother you. In life, you should never worry about time, money, death, or other people's opinions. There's never enough time or money, you'll die more times than you want to, and there are way too many opinions to take any of them seriously.
     
    angrypenguin likes this.
  11. Aiursrage2k

    Aiursrage2k

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    Look at a guy working on titan souls, he couldnt take criticism from total biscuit and now he boycotted the game.


    Or the guy who behind fez, who got so hot and bothered by his critics/trolls he quit the industry.

    Or the guy who went after jim sterling. I guess the moral of the story is learn to deal with criticism so if you do make it big these things wont happen to you.
     
  12. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    I love digitalhomicide's meltdown on this game and other games (see them pose as an anonymous user who actually enjoys their games in the attached screenshot).

    --edit

    Not only are those the same words digitalhomicide first game Jim Sterling regarding being an early access title and working on other games, it was also edited by DigitalHomicide despite the user 'having no part in the game development' and speaking the same awkwardly structured english that DigitalHomicide does.
     

    Attached Files:

  13. Aiursrage2k

    Aiursrage2k

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    That was actually a different developer, at least two have gone ape on jim and both have been made a laughingstock.
     
  14. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    It was? :O or do you mean another dev within the company 'DigitalHomicide'? Or was DigitalHomicide editing the post made by someone else? Steam should make what's going on there more obvious.

    I think the latest dev to actually try dmca takedown is the one for that horrible skateboarding game that runs at 6-12 fps and you can't really tell what's going on because of the horrible camera positioning & controls.
     
  15. Aiursrage2k

    Aiursrage2k

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    I was thinking of skateman
     
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  16. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    @Aiursrage2k that's what I was referring to, haha. Notice the terrible fps, camera controls and... my memory messed up storying the 'skateboard - sktateman' fuzzy key.

    As for the image I posted, that was in reference to another game released by digitalhomicide called deadly profits.
     
  17. superpig

    superpig

    Drink more water! Unity Technologies

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  18. RJ-MacReady

    RJ-MacReady

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    Kanye West is a good role model, here. Yell at people. If needed, yell while they're talking so nobody can hear them. Criticism is no more than "haters" "hating". You are the best. Everything you design is superior.

    </sarcasm>

    Give feedback on games and study the responses you get from creators... and you will see truth. We are all skin thinned when it comes to our creations. Just accept what people say. Let it wash over you, then examine their points. Maybe they are right. Is it so bad to admit that we are imperfect? It's not. It's freeing. Then you can see clearly and make something even better. Do this enough, and you'll get more and more praise. You'll always get that criticism, though. If you do too well, you'll start being accused of arrogance and perfectionism... so, the answer is to just accept the criticism exactly as it is. Respond to it without embarrassment. :)
     
  19. Not_Sure

    Not_Sure

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    I think there are really three kinds of criticism:

    1) The kind where you're asking about an idea, which is a useless point to ask for input in my experience. Most of the time it works like "Which do you like more red apples or green apples?" "Apples are stupid, do oranges!" Pointless.

    2) The kind where it's genuinely useful. "Hey, there's a seam on that rock model." "I noticed that there is a tear in the terrain here." "This build is really laggy on my rig." "I'm not sure I'd pay money for this, it doesn't add anything to the inspirational matterial."

    and

    3) The kind of criticism where they're REALLY telling you that you aren't conveying the concept well enough. "Why don't you have the player KO when their life hits 0% like in Street Fighter instead of counting up?" "Because, Smash Brothers isn't going to be a Street Fighter clone."

    Or at least that's just me.
     
    frosted likes this.
  20. frosted

    frosted

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    It sounds to me like you're probably fairly early in an ambitious project.

    My suggestion is: put this game on the back burner. Make something simpler first. Finish it. Come back to this project later.
     
  21. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    Very true. This frequently occurs in software development. Users often say they don't like something and then give advice about what they think needs to be changed. It is important to really clarify why a person is saying something, and it often has nothing to do with what the user initially said. I have gotten into the habit of politely rephrasing questions over and over to dig deeper. I usually obtain a useful answer by the third or forth time I re-ask the same user why.
     
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  22. Gigiwoo

    Gigiwoo

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    I used to take criticism personally. I believed I was talented, which means I believed my ideas were awesome! So, criticisms threatened my belief, which made me defensive, and eventually, when I realized I was not in fact perfect, my ego ended up on the floor, shattered. Then, I began to learn:

    1) Skill is not innate (see Mindset), it's developed over time.
    2) The most efficient way to improve is to deliberately practice things ALMOST beyond my ability.
    3) YES... AND!

    Gigi
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2015
  23. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    My bad practices in coding are pretty innate. I whip up spaghetti code like no other!

    Can you rate that on a scale of 1 to DigitalHomicide?
     
    Gigiwoo likes this.
  24. frosted

    frosted

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    Dealing with criticism is a really complex question.

    Five Nights at Freddy's has a really interesting back story involving an earlier work being eviscerated by critics, leading to the development of an incredibly successful franchise. Scroll down about 2/3 of the way down to where it talks about "Chipper & Sons".
    http://kotaku.com/why-five-nights-at-freddys-is-so-popular-explained-1684275687

    An earlier version of my own project was torn apart by friends playing it. I scrapped the entire project and rewrote it. The result is actually really promising. I came very close to just giving up on game dev at that point.

    What criticism means, and how you deal with it can really depend entirely on where your game is in terms of development. How fleshed out it is, what scope it is, etc.

    In a more ambitious project, there can be various moving parts that need to work properly together to present the idea clearly to a player. Criticism received prematurely here can be detrimental. But a project like this needs to be approached carefully and is most likely bound for failure if you don't have previous experience.
     
  25. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    It all depends on what is being criticized. If someone is nit picking about graphics in your early wip ignore that because you almost certainly know the graphics are placeholder at such an early stage. If your ambition is way beyond the wip you threw out for feedback realize the only feedback you can get is based on what you have in your wip demo and not on any of the stuff that is in your mind.

    That happened to me with a platformer last year. The feedback was great based on the state of the game. But the problem was the state of the game was very lacking of what it was to become. That was a great learning experience for me. Before I would have thrown my current game out for feedback a month or two ago... but this time I knew there was no way for reviewers to understand the game scope. It would have seemed like an ultra simple game consisting of a 3 screen wide playfield. Because the game design is way more ambitious than that but none of it was implemented.

    Now the game has 12 screens worth of game world and is just starting to slightly give a better idea what it is about. When it gets up to 32 or 64 screens worth of game world I think it will be at a point where feedback will accurately reflect the real game. Just throwing this out as something to keep in mind.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2015
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  26. hopeful

    hopeful

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    Sometimes what someone else wants is a different game.
     
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  27. Tomnnn

    Tomnnn

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    That's a majority of the Diablo 3 criticisms, haha. We wanted a diablo game.
     
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