Derisive criticism of your work online...?

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Godline
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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#16 Post by Godline »

...
Last edited by Godline on Wed Dec 09, 2015 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#17 Post by RotGtIE »

Godline wrote:this unfair review needs to be removed from the game page!
Artists should be the last people to advocate in favor of censorship of any kind.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#18 Post by Godline »

Not censorship. But just if that's the only review up there people will get the wrong impression of what the game is about.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#19 Post by RotGtIE »

Godline wrote:Not censorship.
Oh, okay! I guess it isn't then, because you say so!

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#20 Post by Godline »

That's hardly a civil reply to the gripes of the thread. Getting unfair criticism is disheartening. There are really horrible people on the Internet with nothing better to do with their time than to destroy the creativity of others.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#21 Post by Katta »

Godline wrote:That's hardly a civil reply to the gripes of the thread. Getting unfair criticism is disheartening. There are really horrible people on the Internet with nothing better to do with their time than to destroy the creativity of others.
Don't feed the troll.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#22 Post by synedraacus »

I'll say a couple of words in defense of derisive criticism. Too many places on the Internet have policies that are strictly against any critique, unless it's covered by layers and layers of sweet talk. Even if the work is utter rubbish, it's called great solely to protect authors from so-called "Web bullying" or "Trolling" which is understood as "saying something the insulted party doesn't like" (for those new to this "internets" thing: it's not exactly correct definition). Everything less than a direct praise is shunned, called uncivilized and totally definitely means that a critic has nothing better to do with his life other than waste it saying other folks make bad games. PROTIP: wasting his life saying those folks make good games is way more productive affair, don't get mistaken!

Compare the following two dialogues:

DIALOGUE 1
User1: here's my Sonic|Mario crossover mod, plz rate!
Users 2-10: wow so cool
User3: I'm sorry, but the balance is clearly non-existent. Please also use spellchecker while writing game dialogue. And adding Mario vs Sonic porn to Skyrim may have been a bad idea altogether, but after all that's up to you to decide what you make.
User1: YOUR A HORRIBLE PATHETIC BASEMENT DWELLER WHO HAS NOTHIGN TO DO BUT INSULT WOMEN ON THE INTERNET
Users 2-9: damn this guy
User10: Don't feed the troll
User11: You know, balancing surely IS necessary.
<5 pages of flame war over Gamersgate>
Mod: ban user3 and user11
User 2: here's my Luigi|Siri crossover mod, plz rate!

DIALOGUE 2:
User1: Here's my first platformer, plz rate!
User2: Where the *** is whip like C:SotN? And the hitboxes are ***** off by like fifty pixels, WTF? Am I hitting their like invisible souls or what?
User1: Guess what? It's not C:SotN, because
<5 pages of flame war over C:SotN role in the genre history>
User1: BTW thnx for hitboxess report. Here's fix
User3: Man, it crashes on Win98, WTF?
User1: Marty, go back to eighties.
User3: Kill yourself
User1: When I'm finished with your mom.

Okay, statistics!
Dialogue 1: 2 issues reported, 0 fixed, 1 user personally insulted, 2 people banned
Dialogue 2: 2 issues reported, 1 fixed, 1 user personally insulted, 0 people banned.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#23 Post by Katta »

Haha, user10 here. I actually agree that many people and communities would benefit from reacting to critique better, but I do consider RotGtIE personally a troll from their other posts that I've seen) Maybe I'm wrong and they're just overly sarcastic here and plain rude in other thread.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#24 Post by RotGtIE »

Godline wrote:That's hardly a civil reply
And your snarky response to the critical review of your game was? You'd like it if you said you didn't like a character and the author said they were "sorry that she had too much personality for some people?" Civility either goes both ways or it goes no ways. You may think you're standing up to defend your work when you bite back at people who say negative things about it and plead to have negative reviews removed from view of the general public, but chances are that you're just going to become the next Dylan Saccoccio, and you really, REALLY don't want to be That Guy.
Katta wrote:but I do consider RotGtIE personally a troll
Enjoy being wrong, then. Twice in this thread it's had to be said that a "troll" is not "anyone who says something I don't like." If that's not enough reminders for you, no amount is ever going to be.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#25 Post by Enigma »

Katta wrote:Haha, user10 here. I actually agree that many people and communities would benefit from reacting to critique better, but I do consider RotGtIE personally a troll from their other posts that I've seen) Maybe I'm wrong and they're just overly sarcastic here and plain rude in other thread.
I personally don't think of RotGtIE as a troll, and I get what he's saying about it being censorship as well. Though I wouldn't call it censorship exactly, I don't think the creator of the work should be trying to influence the reviews of their product even if the current reviews seems unfair. I feel RotGtIE is a bit rude at times, but I wouldn't call it trolling, RotGtIE makes a point then defends it kinda agressively or even rudely and that's about it.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#26 Post by LeonDaydreamer »

Godline wrote:Speaking of horrible critisicim. This review turned up on Google Play.....
So, tact or lack thereof notwithstanding, I think RotGtIE's note about Dylan Saccoccio serves as an important example not to take criticism too personally. I know it can be hard after investing so much time, effort, emotional energy to end up making something you truly believe in only to have someone slam it down. I think if there's one thing we can take away from this thread, it's that not everyone will like your work. If you're lucky they will be nice about it, but at the end of the day whatever attitude, mood, or point of view someone approached your work with, as long as their opinion is about your work and not about you, then it has to be valid.

Having said that, the review is quite harsh. There could be any number of reasons why they didn't enjoy it, maybe they just wanted a distraction to goof around to and your game required too much effort or thinking at the moment, maybe your soundtrack happened to include that one note that triggers seizures in them, or maybe they're a Chinese grammar professor and take great offense to any error, who knows? Maybe they have valid points that could have been expressed better, or maybe it's just not for them, and they weren't going to like it no matter what you had in it or how you presented it. You still have a really good rating on there and a couple of good reviews, so don't feel too bad Godline.

Really nice concept, by the way. :)
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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#27 Post by Godline »

LeonDaydreamer wrote: You still have a really good rating on there and a couple of good reviews, so don't feel too bad Godline.
Really nice concept, by the way. :)
Thanks! You're right. Though I would never rate and review someone's work like that! You should ALWAYS look for the positive even if something isn't your cup of tea. That's being respectful and a decent human being (in my humble opinion). If I've said anything negative on this forum about someone's work it is coupled with at least a balancing positive comment.
RotGtIE wrote:[But chances are that you're just going to become the next Dylan Saccoccio, and you really, REALLY don't want to be That Guy.
I wasn't being a Dylan Saccoccio as my complaint of the review was in this thread which was relevant to general gripes we have as VN developers (and not to the person who did leave an unfair review).
If you can't relate to that and like to talk to like-minded people about the struggles they face, then good for you. But for the rest of us, it's nice having a place where we can talk about our struggles and build each other up.

I just wonder how constructive your comments are in general.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#28 Post by Enigma »

Godline wrote: You should ALWAYS look for the positive even if something isn't your cup of tea. That's being respectful and a decent human being (in my humble opinion). If I've said anything negative on this forum about someone's work it is coupled with at least a balancing positive comment.
I actually can't agree to this. I don't think reviewing something negatively makes someone less decent as a human being and I don't even think it's disrespectful. There are kinder ways to phrase things, but I don't think we should make compliment sandwhiches every time we review a creative work.

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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#29 Post by Rossfellow »

My two cents.

If you mislabel a reviewer as a troll, your readers will know. If you get defensive about your work, your readers will know. And that will bite you in the neck because it will say something about you.

Losing viewership isn't necessarily the end of the world, of course. People will look elsewhere when what you offer isn't their cup of tea. But it's going to be a damn shame if you end up throwing away your potential readerbase because of author drama.

P.S.
RotGtIE isn't a troll. He's just blunt. He gets his point across without verbal flourish but also without pretense. That's something you should want from your reviewers too.
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Re: Derisive criticism of your work online...?

#30 Post by truefaiterman »

Well f**k, this post is gonna be harsher than usual.

LeonDaydreamer asked, between other things, if there's any advice about how to answer to critiques...
Godline wrote:Speaking of horrible critisicim. This review turned up on Google Play [...]
This is a huge How NOT to do it. As a consumer, if I see a comment like this from the creator, I'd honestly run away from that game. FAST. Stuff like this can even be counter-argumented without having to play the game (I'd actually do, if I could, but my phone works awfully when dealing with games, and I have no tablet).
A. The main character is defined with a "high-school villain stereotype", and her "redeeming quality" is having a attitude. And I'm supposed to root for her.
B. In a game partially marketed as a "learning game", having deceiving accents sound risky.
C. If you can turn the music off and have the same joy from the game, that speaks volumes about a lack of sound design and... perhaps the music isn't that fine.
And the simple fact that the creator has gotten a single nasty review, which is not destructive, but "only" really harsh, and it's going to a forum asking for positive reviews in order to overthrown the bad critique, feels like putting a bright signal stating "NOT A PROFESSIONAL".

In my earlier post on this thread, I said that there are actual trolls who just want to screw you, but Jesus, this has nothing to do with that. This is negative, really negative critique. But it's still critique. And even if it's harsh and hurts like hell, it's valuable, and makes points to be considered.

Godline is probably thinking I'm a huge jerk for this, but c'mon, this has become a Dylan Saccoccio example already, just way less insulting in general (also, consider that the thread linked is also from an external website, not where Dylan sells his book). Accept even the worst critique, and harden your skin, cause you're posting your projects on the Internet, and as I said in my earlier post, there are no filters there. As far a I've seen from the Google store, the concept doesn't sound bad, and going through the screenshots there seems to be a big amount of effort and passion put into the game. But a customer is not watching effort, but results, and not everyone is gonna like those.

Also, RotGtIE is blunt. A lot. But that's actually valuable, too, and he's shown a lot of times he's not a troll going out for anyone's head (I'll add though, if you just showed your Dylan Saccoccio point before going full sarcasm, and not after, I don't think there would be unneeded labels towards you).
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