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Do devs get demoralized reading GAF threads that shit on their games?
- Thread starter braves01
- Start date
DashReindeer
Lead Community Manager, Outpost Games
A good designer reads every and all criticism that they can to try and effectively offer the entertainment experience to players that they want to achieve. It's important to be able to look at yourself and your own works critically, and good game developers know this.
The designers I have worked with all spend a lot of time looking directly at the most vitriolic comments they can to make sure there isn't something they are missing. It's too easy to get tunnel vision on your own perspective, and it's important to step outside of that from time to time.
That's not to say that it isn't completely demoralizing for them at points, but the more seasoned they get, the more they learn to not take things personally, and to see things as constructively as possible. I have gained a lot of respect for the ones who can do that, because detractors of all forms can be particularly vicious.
The designers I have worked with all spend a lot of time looking directly at the most vitriolic comments they can to make sure there isn't something they are missing. It's too easy to get tunnel vision on your own perspective, and it's important to step outside of that from time to time.
That's not to say that it isn't completely demoralizing for them at points, but the more seasoned they get, the more they learn to not take things personally, and to see things as constructively as possible. I have gained a lot of respect for the ones who can do that, because detractors of all forms can be particularly vicious.
Being in the iOS and Android development market it's quite difficult sometimes reading parts of NeoGAF because of some people's irrational hate towards the iPhone game market (Not real games, cheap garbage) and even further, the hatred of freemium markets, which is kind of my job to deal with.
Even something like Plants Vs. Zombies 2 which is freemium I see as quite reasonable. Heck I've been playing Clash of Clans almost every day for 7 months and haven't spent a dime, and seeing either game as slimy, disgusting freemium models seems weird to me.
There certainly ARE some out there which are kind of fucked up, but I don't think those two are. Even Killer Instincts model of pay-per-character or buy a bundle for $20 for 8 guys seems really awesome and I hope it does well, but so many trolls appear in those threads that it makes me sad (especially those spreading that the game costs $40, not $20,which isn't accurate)
Even something like Plants Vs. Zombies 2 which is freemium I see as quite reasonable. Heck I've been playing Clash of Clans almost every day for 7 months and haven't spent a dime, and seeing either game as slimy, disgusting freemium models seems weird to me.
There certainly ARE some out there which are kind of fucked up, but I don't think those two are. Even Killer Instincts model of pay-per-character or buy a bundle for $20 for 8 guys seems really awesome and I hope it does well, but so many trolls appear in those threads that it makes me sad (especially those spreading that the game costs $40, not $20,which isn't accurate)
The mechanics and some things are good but the abysmal length and horribly designed MP are what make it bad the only one that came close to being a excellent game is 4 and 2 the rest are either ok or just plain horrible
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
I would not want to be compared to a hardcore comic book geek.
Gaf has gotten too big. It's not safe to speak openly here. You have to watch what you say, and most of the time the best thing to do is say nothing at all. There are fucking news stories on every game site anytime a dev or someone in the industry says (or tweets) something even remotely controversial, and in some cases people have lost jobs. Once that starts happening you see a lot less devs and other industry insiders posting.
Once you say that you are the most "hardcore" it's over.
This is like calling yourself cool.
Once you say that you are the most "hardcore" it's over.
Nevermind "most."
SirButterstick
Banned
If you're going to make a living as an artist, you better grow some think skin. That's just how it works.
You make it sound so easy....
All developers want to make good games, shit just dosnt magically happen though. Once your budget and time runs out your fucked and left with a bloody husk of what the developers dreamed of making.
dragonbane
Member
Interesting insight.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
For the record, I kinda liked Turok
njean777
Member
I think personal attacks are really lame and unwarranted, but if you have a criticism that you want to complain about then by all means do it in a respectable way. No reason to not be able to complain about something if you have a problem with it, as long as it doesn't reduce down to personal attacks.
zerokoolpsx
Member
If feedback was offered instead of just shitting on their game. I like to call it as it is too. No sugar coating bs. What I like, what I don't like and what it could improve upon. Sadly, there is only so much time before the deadline.
Pretty good thread. Interesting to see different devs responding.
I have no doubt that it must be demoralizing to some extent, but I honestly I find more love on NeoGAF than hate. I've noticed lots of games that get beat up by reviewers only to be loved by a good number of GAF members.
Still, when the hate does flow, it comes like a roaring hurricane more often than not and that's kind of sad. I'd love to see more thought-out criticism as to why people don't like certain games or aspects of games.
I have no doubt that it must be demoralizing to some extent, but I honestly I find more love on NeoGAF than hate. I've noticed lots of games that get beat up by reviewers only to be loved by a good number of GAF members.
Still, when the hate does flow, it comes like a roaring hurricane more often than not and that's kind of sad. I'd love to see more thought-out criticism as to why people don't like certain games or aspects of games.
AlphaTwo00
Member
Well I've read through this thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=363900. So you tell me. It's a tad easier to swallow because by the time the game was out, I was told that I was getting laid off.
So what was my alternative in that case, just quit the project because I don't like it?
You learn to just live with it, take in as much as you can and roll with it.
So, as a single designer on a large team, how much actual change can one make to influence the product, especially if I'm not the lead? There were two weeks where I had literally slept in the office, tweaking and fixing as many things as I can, but it still wouldn't make a dent into all the problems that's out of my scope to fix.
So what was my alternative in that case, just quit the project because I don't like it?
You learn to just live with it, take in as much as you can and roll with it.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
Bad games should be coddled to avoid hurt feels?
TheSpaceBetween
Member
I would hope that most of them would be able to realize the internet is a cesspool of negativity and not take anything too personally. Hopefully some of the well constructed critiques will help them become better devs and improve their game though.
As a designer; if you're not the person that is most critical of your own work... then you're doing it wrong.
While you can't control every variable that emerges as the end result - at least you should have an awareness of where the failings are and where things went wrong so as to have an understanding of how the process can be improved in the future.
With this mindset, you can properly assess the saliency of criticism directed at your work - some may be criticisms that were actually things that you've considered yourself and in the process of solving the problem have had to arrive at a solution that they didn't connect, or some may be criticisms that are at a disjunct with your purpose.
On some level, all criticisms are salient - if only to let you know that the messaging lead to misunderstandings from the part of the critique.
The greatest sin as a designer in my opinion (speaking again as a professional designer) is to waste everyone's time (your own, your colleagues that help you realize your vision, your consumers that use it) on a poor product that addresses no ones needs and solves no problems, but rather creates even more problems - so do what must be done to avoid this traversty.
While you can't control every variable that emerges as the end result - at least you should have an awareness of where the failings are and where things went wrong so as to have an understanding of how the process can be improved in the future.
With this mindset, you can properly assess the saliency of criticism directed at your work - some may be criticisms that were actually things that you've considered yourself and in the process of solving the problem have had to arrive at a solution that they didn't connect, or some may be criticisms that are at a disjunct with your purpose.
On some level, all criticisms are salient - if only to let you know that the messaging lead to misunderstandings from the part of the critique.
The greatest sin as a designer in my opinion (speaking again as a professional designer) is to waste everyone's time (your own, your colleagues that help you realize your vision, your consumers that use it) on a poor product that addresses no ones needs and solves no problems, but rather creates even more problems - so do what must be done to avoid this traversty.
inpHilltr8r
Member
Yeah, but you learn to deal with it. Often you know when something is going to get shat on. The worst thing is reading about bugs that slipped through or were waived. The flip side is when something you spent years working on gets singled out for praise.
Hugh Buelow
Member
Yeah... the comment was meant to be sarcastic, to spark discussion about how a project can fail and the little that can be done by a single person, especially late in the development of a title (when it gets shown to the public), to "save" it. No harm was intended.
@AlphaTwo00, I read a bit through the thread you linked: all I can say is damn. I feel for you.
Read the replies directed to me.
Off-topic, but in Clash, have you hit the gold wall around Town hall lvl 7 yet? You end up with 6 mines making about 400,000 gold a day. Most defensive upgrades will cost 1-2 million or so. You'll be constantly attacked by considerably higher level players which you will not be able to defend against, which removes about 100-200,000 of your gold every 6 hours or so.
The only solution to get out of your hole is to spend gems. It's well obfuscated, since you may believe the design of your base could be improved, but it is there. You don't hit it until you've deliberately spent a great deal of time and effort getting there, making the cash purchase easier.
SandMan2233
Member
Hypothetically speaking...
If a dev were to read criticisms or positives on this site, I would hope that, in lieu of being demoralized and devistated, they would take to heart the negatives AND positives posted on here.
I like to think that GAF is a learning tool for developers, in the sense that they get to read the enthusiast's (I.e., their true market) opinion and work that into their design.
I by no-means believe this site is the end-all be-all for critique... But I like to think that it can be a very specific learning tool for devs trying to reach their target
If a dev were to read criticisms or positives on this site, I would hope that, in lieu of being demoralized and devistated, they would take to heart the negatives AND positives posted on here.
I like to think that GAF is a learning tool for developers, in the sense that they get to read the enthusiast's (I.e., their true market) opinion and work that into their design.
I by no-means believe this site is the end-all be-all for critique... But I like to think that it can be a very specific learning tool for devs trying to reach their target
Sometimes, nobody knows it's a bad game until the game is close to done. There are a ton of concepts that sound great on paper, and inspire the imagination, but when it gets implemented it ends up not being as awesome as you imagined.
It's like cooking. Maybe you thought a certain set of ingredients would taste awesome together, except they don't. What do you do?
- Eat it anyway (ship it)
- Throw it away (cancel it)
- Scrape off what you can and try to mold it into something decent (Final Fantasy XIV: ARR)
I think it would be interesting if there were more transparency in failure analysis, like the older postmortems at Gama Sutra.
It's like cooking. Maybe you thought a certain set of ingredients would taste awesome together, except they don't. What do you do?
- Eat it anyway (ship it)
- Throw it away (cancel it)
- Scrape off what you can and try to mold it into something decent (Final Fantasy XIV: ARR)
I think it would be interesting if there were more transparency in failure analysis, like the older postmortems at Gama Sutra.
R
Retro_
Unconfirmed Member
This thread reminded me that Fuse existed
Filthy Blood Junkie
Banned
I showed Justin Robey the senior producer of Ryse the AAAA gif last night on twitter and he acknowledged it to me as being an in game glitch.
https://twitter.com/Robeyonekenobi/status/373998368596295680
I felt really awful because I am sure some of the below-the-belt belt comments probably hurt him to see.
Believe me they probably all come her and read this stuff here on places like twitter. It is a free consumer focus group for them. They just have to sort through all the bullshit in these threads to find it. And there is still plenty of time for them to fix the stuff we are bitching about.
https://twitter.com/Robeyonekenobi/status/373998368596295680
I felt really awful because I am sure some of the below-the-belt belt comments probably hurt him to see.
Believe me they probably all come her and read this stuff here on places like twitter. It is a free consumer focus group for them. They just have to sort through all the bullshit in these threads to find it. And there is still plenty of time for them to fix the stuff we are bitching about.
velociraptor
Junior Member
I completely agree.
I think to a certain extent most posters are guilty of this - knee-jerk reactions and prejudging. It's pretty strange how opinions can dramatically shift from one end of the spectrum to the other. I can think of several games in which this has happened to.
AlphaTwo00
Member
The problem with 90% of GAF replies are echo-chambre like statements. "LOL fuck this trash will not buy". So if you're looking strictly at "do devs get demoralized reading GAF threads", then yes. But are they learning from the 10% that are fair and balanced criticisms? I sure hope so.
There's also an unspoken side about such criticisms though: I can almost assure you, developers knows where the game will land before they ship, we know the problems you've pointed at us, and more often than not, we've walked through most of the suggestions you've suggested too. But sometimes, budget, scope, complexity, and many other factors (including fun ones like office politics, business management, etc...) can muddle the entire thing up. It's easy to sit on the outside making the best of assumptions about what went wrong or what should/can be done. Sit a day on the other side of the fence, then you'll see a world of difference.
Meh, when I first started working there, I kind of knew it going in that I'd catch personal flack for things I wasn't accountable for. Look, outside of the straight up trash comments in there, I've read and heard plenty of fair and balanced criticisms, and those are always more than welcomed in my books.
As much as I love all the gamasutra articles, there's a very strong selection bias about the articles that actually appear. Occasionally you'll hear some devs who are brutally honest with their spectacular failures, but more often than not, most of these games that appear in the postmortem are well received in someway or another. In my 3 year catalog, I don't recall seeing any major Japanese dev postmortem, nor do I see anything that is heavy licensed based or very middle of the road games. There really isn't a whole lot of failure analysis in the industry as a whole: some companies just don't want to admit to mistakes, and my understanding is that it's pretty much not kosher to go out on your own and talk about a "failure" of your product if you're still employed at the place.
Open Source
Banned
It's got all sorts. There is also a lot of groupthink and unhappy people getting in their two minutes' hate to feel better about themselves. It's quite useful, though, especially if your game is targeted at enthusiast gamers. But there is a whole world of gamers out there who could not be more different from the NeoGAF median in their gaming tastes and habits. And really, if you don't have a good game, you know it already. You just hope that people are more forgiving of its flaws than you are.
Why consumers/gaf should care about that ? Unless developer will do post mortem we won't know if game had budget problems. Until that we shouldn't care about that and criticize as much as we want because people here criticize what they bought not developer themselves.
Without criticism there is no place for improvement.
velociraptor
Junior Member
Heh.
I suspect they would take that.
I doubt many devs will care what gaming forums think as long as:
A - Game is critically well received
B - Sells well
Just take a look at how many people here shit on GTA4 and Call Of Duty for example.
Filthy Blood Junkie
Banned
Yeah this was a bummer. Stuff like this sucks.
I say that's bullshit!
I do quite enjoy attacking people though, "solving" their castles.
Warm Machine
Member
Many reviews people do of a game before release are useless fashion based opinions. Fuse is a good example. After release when the game is actually in players hands and people care to write more than a sentence about it, then their opinion matters.
Doing a drive by "this is shit" means nothing to me. If your opinion is dictated by narrative or fashion I can't care.
If a player actually makes the effort to understand the game and then tears it to shreds fine.
At the end of the day, a person wrote an opinion and we wrote a game. Which took more effort, time, and life decisions? I'd rather make an unsuccessful game and enjoy doing it than never have the opportunity to make anything.
Doing a drive by "this is shit" means nothing to me. If your opinion is dictated by narrative or fashion I can't care.
If a player actually makes the effort to understand the game and then tears it to shreds fine.
At the end of the day, a person wrote an opinion and we wrote a game. Which took more effort, time, and life decisions? I'd rather make an unsuccessful game and enjoy doing it than never have the opportunity to make anything.
GameDeveloperGuy
Neo Member
Regarding the original question, not really since we tend not to take these boards too seriously. We do value their input though!
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that's a bit of a stretch probably.
Gaf is a really, really picky group.
8.8, dawg.
hipbabboom
Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
I don't think most devs read gaf. Had a buddy who worked at Troika --> Pandemic back in the day and he didn't know about GAF until I brought up a thread about The Saboteur. Granted GAF was much smaller back then but here's an interesting truth I've learned about how people in industry follow enthusiast sites about said industry: They typically don't. That said, there's always an exception to the rule and "The Video Games Industry" has a lot of personalities that seem to blur the line enough to make it an exception.
This, for the sake of their sanity (what's left of it after game dev is over or going on)
Also this
Thx man.
Ghost_Protocol
Member
Didn't Naughty Dog actually have some gaffers come down to their offices to help tweak the controls for Uncharted 3 after we complained about it feeling off? That was pretty awesome.
And to answer the question about how many devs read gaf? The answer is all of them. They're all gamers, and this site is like the TMZ/Yahoo headlines of gaming. Even if you hate it, you still find yourself clicking on it.
And to answer the question about how many devs read gaf? The answer is all of them. They're all gamers, and this site is like the TMZ/Yahoo headlines of gaming. Even if you hate it, you still find yourself clicking on it.
In the early days of my bedroom musician period, some guy decided to randomly review a number of songs that were uploaded to a now defunct site. One of mine was part of that group
The guy shit on the song, and took a few swipes at me to boot. I was heated for days.
If dropkicking someone through the Internet was a reality, then I would have done it many times over to that guy.
I'm not a video game developer (or even a musician, for that matter), but sometimes I feel sorry for them when I see certain threads.
Especially when those threads involve Ninja Theory.
A lot of unreasonable people gravitate towards Ninja Theory threads.
The guy shit on the song, and took a few swipes at me to boot. I was heated for days.
If dropkicking someone through the Internet was a reality, then I would have done it many times over to that guy.
I'm not a video game developer (or even a musician, for that matter), but sometimes I feel sorry for them when I see certain threads.
Especially when those threads involve Ninja Theory.
A lot of unreasonable people gravitate towards Ninja Theory threads.
Haha, well played.
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