[What follows is a paraphrasing of a comment I made on
/evn/ a few days ago.]
I'd add is that a lot of discussions about criticism, including the one between Sasquatchi and mikey on The Buzz, get muddied by equivocation. Criticism has two different meanings:
- A negative comment about something.
- A thorough comment on something.
Looking at those two points you can see the problem. The majority of people in a non-academic setting interpret criticism as being the first definition. But a piece of criticism can simply be a critical evaluation—the critical in "critical thinking"; it's thorough and it's thoughtful. Insult or condemnation isn't necessary for a critical evaluation of something.
As developers, it's probably more useful to call insults what they actually are: insults, and adopt a little more unambiguous definition of criticism. The disdain and dismissal of criticism by some is no doubt due to it having the aforementioned dual meanings. An insult is its own thing, in addition to the criticism—not a part of it.
Lastly, a piece of criticism isn't simply for the creator, it's for everyone. When criticism is shared online (WTF "online" isn't a word yet?) everyone has access to it and can decide for themselves what to take from it. Sure, there are times a thorough critique is inappropriate, such as elucidating every single flaw in a beginner's project directly in their release thread, but one would hope people have enough common sense not to do that.
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Other than that I seem to be mostly in agreement with LateWhiteRabbit and trooper6. As for how I personally deal with it, I just don't care most of the time. In general I seem to be much more critical of my own work than others, and I value what I think much more strongly than what others do. That said, I'm still appreciative toward those who spend time critiquing my work and make sure to thank them when they do.
As has been said already, it's important to distinguish between criticism that acknowledges your intentions and criticism which, for whatever reason, overlooks them. I think trooper6's earlier point is a good one:
trooper6 wrote:Then I think about this rewritten critique [about incorrect perspective]. Now, if I were making some sort of surrealist art where the perspective was supposed to be off...this critique might be evidence that the perspective was not off in a way that made it look deliberate...and maybe I want to go through and fix this. On the other hand, maybe I did want to have more realist perspective...this comment is evidence that I might have failed at that with this game.
Edit: Oh,
and here's how I react to someone calling my work "3d shit." Usually I don't spend any more time on those sorts of comments than it takes to glance them over, but the mental image I had from those words was much too amusing (plus the shape was one I'd never had cause to make so I learned something too!)
