Showcase appreciation

General Discussions
#21

The writer gets paid to read scripts, and either people who barely know him are asking him to either work overtime for free, cut into his professional time, or do a half-assed job at reading. Actual friends are asking him to potentially destroy their friendship by shattering their dreams.

I do agree he could say “I can’t give you much more than first impressions, and I might have to go all Simon Cowell on you and your life’s ambitions, so do you really want me to read it?” But maybe he dislikes confrontation – FSM knows I do – and would rather avoid it altogether.

#22

Well, he did write an article calling people dicks. :stuck_out_tongue:

#23

:o What a dick! :stuck_out_tongue:

#24

He mentioned in there that if you are truly a writer then he wont be able to dissuade you with constructive criticism… so why not just give it? In the past when I have received negative feedback from an industry professional, you know in your heart it is true. You knew all along. It was just a case of will this go unnoticed?

Call me a masochist, but I love getting verbally raped by a professional who knows what they are talking about. This is when the learning will begin.

#25

Same here.

#26

I don’t agree with him when he says you only want professional opinion to be encouraged and patted in the head. When I look for opinion I want the hurting truth. If I want to get patted in the head I will find someone easily impressed, not a pro.

And that’s one thing and to get verbally destroyed by a criticism that was intentionally sharped is another thing. Truth usually hurts by itself, don’t make it more hurting on purpose.

#27

I feel the comprehension of his essay may have flown past many people, entirely misunderstood.

Cas :slight_smile:

#28

Olson isn’t really concerned with the professional growth of his petitioners, or he’d be giving them something like the warning I said. He resents being asked to work for free, and to have to say nasty things to someone’s face and have it screw up his other friendships in the process.

I tell people who I work for, and the first thing out of their mouth is “oh can you help me with $product” where $product=some big consumer software that said company makes. Nevermind that I don’t work for that department, nevermind that I know as much about fixing it as the next schmoe, nevermind that I’m not tech support. I’m nice about it because they’re mostly just trying to connect like any sociable person, whereas Olson is mostly dealing with hangers-on of scant acquaintance who want to use him to network and make it in show biz. Notch probably has the same problems these days.

#29

Alternatively:

The author is making the point that someone just starting out in a creative field will catastrophically underestimate the amount that they have to learn, and assume that because they worked hard and are proud of their creation that it must be of a professional standard. The author delivers his (presumably fictitious) anecdote in an over-the-top ‘bad guy’ tone to take the sting out of the point he’s making (if you don’t like the message, you don’t feel too bad about shooting the messenger in this case).

Anyhow, I can believe that the article is as true for game makers as it is for screen writers (based on personal experience - and not in the Josh Olson role :emo: ). But I’m still not entirely sure how relevant it is to the Showcase section (unless there are lots of “You’ve gotta play my Wolfenstein clone 'cos it’s better than Call Of Duty!!!” threads that I’ve missed).

Simon

#30

My feelings on the matter: I don’t like giving real feedback on JGO, because I would generally just say, “Your game is shit.” and then expound upon that in unnecessarily great detail, which would then result in a huge argument thread, followed by bad feelings, at the end of which I will a) have been ignored and b) have wasted a fuckload of time on someone I’ve never even met. I would rather then have just said “Your game is shit.” and left it at that but that is absolutely no use to anyone. And so I generally say very little at all about other peoples’ work. I have been on the other side of the fence and it’s taken me this far to understand the status quo.

The other alternative is to say something like, “Your game is brilliant!” and then go on to sort of … lie about bits that are sort of ok. This leads to a happy forum poster blissfully continuing to waste his or her time writing a shit game that will never go anywhere.

I’ve tried both tactics. But now I understand why it is a dick move to ask for feedback like this.

And of course there is the entirely likely - very likely - fact that I am basically completely wrong. I thought Minecraft was kinda shit. I still don’t get it either. I bought it and played it for a bit so I could figure out what it was all about. I discovered what it was all about and why it sells, but I’ll keep that secret to myself. I still don’t like it much.

Cas :slight_smile:

#31

[quote]I discovered what it was all about and why it sells, but I’ll keep that secret to myself.
[/quote]
probably he didnt use static in the source code :wink:

I think the main motivation is reputation/approval. Beside from geting actual help to solve a problem. And to measure that in rank point medals or what ever is a good think. Thats basically how stackoverflow works.

#32

You so should’ve been a school teacher…

#33

How about polling system? keep anon and OP should still have glance how ppl react to their work. It’s up to you to give detailed post or not.

#34

That seems like a very good idea!
You also wont have to feel bad if you vote negative. since nobody shall know about it! :slight_smile:

#35

I third that idea :slight_smile:

#36

I think we should call it Emo-poll :-X, since I’ll want to die once I see the results for my (far-future) games.

I fourth the idea! ;D

#37

I dunno. I’ve been pondering this topic (here’s another spanner in the works). If your games so good then why do you need appreciation? If your games not so good why do you need appreciation? I really dunno - I like appreciation but I don’t write games just for that… or do I?

#38

Why would you be nice to your friends, I mean, they are already close to you…
Why would you be nice to anybody else, I mean, it’s not like you care about them…

#39

When I write software, I want it to be used. Games can be used by anyone. You’d think posting games on a game development enthusiast site would garner some good feedback. That none of the games are good enough to warrant positive comment is nonsense. I think some of us here are quite full of ourselves. No one expects games in the JGO showcase to be triple A. We do expect them to be fun. Appropriate feedback on that is not hard to give. You can simply post why you didn’t (or did) have fun. Common courtesy like prefixes such as “I felt that…” are sufficient to keep things civil, and by saying WHY it isn’t fun for you, the author gets something useful. If you really can’t say why you didn’t have fun or you are just too busy to be bothered to post, then don’t, but don’t blame the games themselves for it.

#40

Because everyone typically has a case of creation syndrome. Meaning you have spent so many hours on it you have no idea whether what you have done is any good.