People who tell you you’re awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is. Especially watch out for the ones who tell you that nobody understands your genius.
Honestly, this is going to sound horrible, but self-doubt is one of your most powerful tools for craftsmanship. None of the designers you admire feel self-confident about their work in that way. None of them think that they are awesome. They all suffer from impostor complexes the size of the Titanic.
I am not saying that you need to lack confidence in yourself. (Heck, you’ll never put anything out if that’s the case! You need to have the arrogance to assume anyone will care in the first place). I am saying that nobody is ever done learning, and people who tell you you have arrived will give you a sense of complacency. You should never be complacent about your art.
Nail. On. Head.
This sentiment has been explained to people "fanboy-ing it up" for their chosen game time and again, but it's always dismissed, never sinks in, and continues to happen.
Will a veteran of the industry, who's seen it all from both sides of the fence, the good, the bad and the ugly of it command any more attention or respect from people who want to defend "their game" from any and all criticism? Probably not. They'll just find some arbitrary detail to dismiss everything he says outright and continue to wallow in their willful ignorance, believing "their game" is beyond criticism.
For those with the open mind and intellectual honesty to realize the truth in what he says, and those who are willing to learn, to replace poor beliefs with good knowledge, it's a very eye-opening article.
Ralph may want to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with Mark Jacobs and John Smedley. They both have nothing but fanbois to fuel interest their games. If they didn't, they might be less content putting out information that amounts to little more than term papers.
What he was getting at is that you learn nothing from those who think your game is great and plenty from those who do not think it is that good.
So for a dev the naysayers are more useful. But a game gaming company does not just have devs in it, I am sure marketing is very happy with the fanbois.
It's a bit silly even from a developer perspective. You also want to know what you did right. When the vast majority praises a feature, it's not "fanboism", it's that the feature is simply good. The few grumpy sad people who think otherwise won't change that fact.
It seems you, and others in this thread, missed the central point of what Raph is explaining, or you're just outright dismissing what he said and deferring to the flawed conclusion that those voicing criticism of an otherwise liked feature/system are just "grumpy sad people". You're doing precisely what he warns against... dismissing negative feedback and those giving it.
As he says - 100% correctly - you can not tell someone their experience was wrong, no matter how strongly you may disagree with it. Even if 900 people love a given feature, if there are 50 others who find problems with it, then those problems are very real and very legitimate to those players. You can not just dismiss that negative feedback, or the people providing it, simply because "more people like it".
The problem is, for those who like it.. they may have noticed the issue but decide it's not a big enough deal to worry about. They might be the more "fanboy" type and decide it must be part of the design, and therefor "right", because they can't conceive of the game having any flaws. They may not even recognize the issues. All those people are going to praise the given feature, without ever noting the parts that seem off. The developer learns nothing from that.
Meanwhile, those who do notice those issues and choose to voice them - the ones who are typically referred to as "trolls" or "haters", and told to "go away" - may be providing valuable insight to something the developer hadn't even noticed or considered.
By dismissing those people as "grumpy sad people", you are essentially shutting yourself off to something that could potentially be a bigger problem than it seems.
What Raph is making the case against in his article, is precisely what you're resorting right back to doing in your response; finding a way to dismiss negative feedback... and that is and can be very harmful to a game in the long run.
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
FFXIV ARR is the latest example.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
See what I did here?
Yes i see what you did here....you didn't bother to read the original topic or you completely missed the point.
There is difference between offering legitimate crticism and screaming 'this game is fail ..lololo'. OP is talking about the former type of criticism and why snubbing it with fanboyism is bad.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
See what I did here?
Yes i see what you did here....you didn't bother to read the original topic or you completely missed the point.
There is difference between offering legitimate crticism and screaming 'this game is fail ..lololo'. OP is talking about the former type of criticism and why snubbing it with fanboyism is bad.
But you're missing his point, this site is fulll of the latter.
Originally posted by Torvaldr Originally posted by FoomerangAh the sweet melancholy that is Raph Koster: the Robert Smith of game developers.
Sometimes you come up with some great ones Foo. This is one of them.
The article was a good read. If you didn't notice there will be an AMA and he's giving a seminar at GDC.
Haha well its true. That guy always has a dark cloud looming. I am very looking forward to his new projects though. Wonder if we will get a mobile sandbox mmo. That would be pretty amazing.
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
See what I did here?
Yes i see what you did here....you didn't bother to read the original topic or you completely missed the point.
There is difference between offering legitimate crticism and screaming 'this game is fail ..lololo'. OP is talking about the former type of criticism and why snubbing it with fanboyism is bad.
But you're missing his point, this site is fulll of the latter.
I see intelligent and valid crticism shot down as much as i see one line troll posts. Even according to this websites TOS... you can not simpley say 'game sucks' but you have to explain why and people for majority always give their experince in detail which is labelled as 'trolling' or 'hating'.
Look at the first two pages for FFXIV section and find me one topic with one line troll 'this game will fail ..lololo'. It would get locked down quickly. And yet when people explain their impressions and write negative things in detail they are still called haters or insecure. Such is the irony.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
See what I did here?
Yes i see what you did here....you didn't bother to read the original topic or you completely missed the point.
There is difference between offering legitimate crticism and screaming 'this game is fail ..lololo'. OP is talking about the former type of criticism and why snubbing it with fanboyism is bad.
But you're missing his point, this site is fulll of the latter.
I see intelligent and valid crticism shot down as much as i see one line troll posts. Even according to this websites TOS... you can not simpley say 'game sucks' but you have to explain why and people for majority always give their experince in detail which is labelled as 'trolling' or 'hating'.
Look at the first two pages for FFXIV section and find me one topic with one line troll 'this game will fail ..lololo'. It would get locked down quickly. And yet when people explain their impressions and write negative things in detail they are still called haters or insecure. Such is the irony.
But he does have a point correct? You can see that this site is full of the latter as well? You going to tell me that's not true? I"m not even arguing against your point that the former doesn't exist.
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
See what I did here?
Yes i see what you did here....you didn't bother to read the original topic or you completely missed the point.
There is difference between offering legitimate crticism and screaming 'this game is fail ..lololo'. OP is talking about the former type of criticism and why snubbing it with fanboyism is bad.
But you're missing his point, this site is fulll of the latter.
This site is full of fanboys who can't differentiate between legitimate critiques and bashing. Worse still, they make zero effort to make that distinction and just toss all criticism - no matter how it's presented - into the same category, and dismiss it all the same.
People who are intolerant of any criticism of "their game" are the last ones to be deciding what is or isn't useful to a developer. Raph explains the situation quite clearly. I don't think he needs to have fanboys on a forum pre-filtering the feedback based on what they find "ok".
What I'm seeing in this thread are responses from people already trying to find loopholes and exceptions to what Raph says, while continuing to prove that they either didn't read the entire article, didn't comprehend it, or have simply chosen to ignore it, because they can't bring themselves to accept that someone with criticism about "their game" could actually have a valid point.
Funny thing is, I predicted exactly that reaction from many here right in my first response, before I'd even read any of the replies. To quote myself...
"Will a veteran of the industry, who's seen it all from both sides of the fence, the good, the bad and the ugly of it command any more attention or respect from people who want to defend "their game" from any and all criticism? Probably not. They'll just find some arbitrary detail to dismiss everything he says outright and continue to wallow in their willful ignorance, believing "their game" is beyond criticism."
Anybody who believes their own hype are already flawed and will screw up anyways. Fanboyism is annoying, but not dangerous.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
But he does have a point correct? You can see that this site is full of the latter as well? You going to tell me that's not true? I"m not even arguing against your point that the former doesn't exist.
I don't know whats the point of bringing up 'latter' in this conversation when my post was directly related to what OP said. he is talking about former kind of crticism and so am i. Is this another attempt to derail the topic and make it about fanboys vs haters?
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
But he does have a point correct? You can see that this site is full of the latter as well? You going to tell me that's not true? I"m not even arguing against your point that the former doesn't exist.
I don't know whats the point of bringing up 'latter' in this conversation when my post was directly related to what OP said. he is talking about former kind of crticism and so am i. Is this another attempt to derail the topic and make it about fanboys vs haters?
It's not an attempt. It's a fact that haters are just as bad as fanbois. It's also a fact that the vast majority of players are somewhere inbetween those two extremes, which are sadly the most vocal.
As I said in a previous post, extremes are never good, no matter what side, no matter what topic (not only games).
What I'm seeing in this thread are responses from people already trying to find loopholes and exceptions to what Raph says, while continuing to prove that they either didn't read the entire article, didn't comprehend it, or have simply chosen to ignore it, because they can't bring themselves to accept that someone with criticism about "their game" could actually have a valid point.
Well, I was going to make a fawning post about how insightful and well-written the post was, but I looked at it and it came off as sounding like a complete fanboy post. So I fumbled around trying to find at least some new angle to post about. Looking for the loopholes or exceptions felt like the best tribute I could pay to the blog.
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
See what I did here?
Yes i see what you did here....you didn't bother to read the original topic or you completely missed the point.
There is difference between offering legitimate crticism and screaming 'this game is fail ..lololo'. OP is talking about the former type of criticism and why snubbing it with fanboyism is bad.
But you're missing his point, this site is fulll of the latter.
This site is full of fanboys who can't differentiate between legitimate critiques and bashing. Worse still, they make zero effort to make that distinction and just toss all criticism - no matter how it's presented - into the same category, and dismiss it all the same.
People who are intolerant of any criticism of "their game" are the last ones to be deciding what is or isn't useful to a developer. Raph explains the situation quite clearly. I don't think he needs to have fanboys on a forum pre-filtering the feedback based on what they find "ok".
What I'm seeing in this thread are responses from people already trying to find loopholes and exceptions to what Raph says, while continuing to prove that they either didn't read the entire article, didn't comprehend it, or have simply chosen to ignore it, because they can't bring themselves to accept that someone with criticism about "their game" could actually have a valid point.
Funny thing is, I predicted exactly that reaction from many here right in my first response, before I'd even read any of the replies. To quote myself...
"Will a veteran of the industry, who's seen it all from both sides of the fence, the good, the bad and the ugly of it command any more attention or respect from people who want to defend "their game" from any and all criticism? Probably not. They'll just find some arbitrary detail to dismiss everything he says outright and continue to wallow in their willful ignorance, believing "their game" is beyond criticism."
Basically people on this site behave just as people do everywhere else, and the developers who cater to them, are just a reflection on how people go about things everywhere, in every aspect of life. No doubt Koster is right, as far as how to create to the best of your ability and avoid stagnation, but it can be applied to every aspect of life and to every person alive.
People on this site are no different in their behaviour when defending "their" games than anywhere else where people defend their opions and viewpoints, and they are as want to reapply their behaviour by the time the next game rolls around, regardless of wether "their" game was all they thought it would be. Partly because taking personal responsibility for your part in the circle jerk chain is almost beyond peoples capacity for viewing themselves in context with others. People never learn, and have a hard time applying how their behaviour affects the outcome of things, struggle or are completely ignorant to draw conclusions on how that behaviour keeps churning poor games out of the developers who cater to them. Also, it is very difficult for reward oriented mammals to reign in adulation when it generally means exclusion from the group that gets heard. Popular opinion is a strange creature.
if you are the exception to this, than congratulations; you can apply your intelligence to your behaviour and its consequences beyond the readily apparent. But most intelligent people cannot. Unfortunately.
It is also slightly moot with regards to gaming, atleast the big AA titles. it might have been a fandriven, passion product, when Verant developed Everquest, but since then the gaming companies have become coorporations, and I really dont think the men in suits with the majority of shares, give a flying fuck about how creative you are, if the popular opinion is raging the pre-release hype into the ground. But like I said in the beginning, Koster is saying something that is generally applicable to generally everything in life, if you want to be better tomorrow, than today.
it is bad only for game that are instanced .go check ff14 I am pretty sure s-e is very happy .bottom line, people want to see each other in game instancing doesn't permit it .so a game fully instanced will always have more negative critic on average all else being = yes there are exeption but I say average so count the total game released this year and make an average!
two thing tho break this trend ,buy to play (a la gw or tsw)and player able to see each other when they game .
you have neither ?then sorry but your game will be be full of thread unfavorable toward it !
I think most of us who have been here a while, and seen games come and go can agree on one thing.
Fanboys have killed way way more MMO's then any hater could ever dream of.
In fact, I will give the hardcore hater a tip, if they REALLY want to see a game fail.
Hating on good features can be detrimental, but praising bad features?
That is the ticket to burn it down!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What he is saying, I believe, is something I generaly agree with. You want to listen to your audience. Listening does not equate with letting them into the drivers seat to control your work. On the contrary though, I think positive feedback is helpfull... maybe not for someone like Koster who probably doesn't need it. However for the rest of us who aren't particularly fameous in our respective fields..... a bit of a shot in the arm, knowing that someone recognizes and appreciates you work is not a bad thing at all. You just can't get lost in it.
For example, one of the things I've done as a hobby (strictly amatuer) is to create a few scenarios for people to play in turn based strategy games and make them available on the games public boards. When someone comes along and says "Hey, I really enjoyed that scenario you created...it was fun to play" that provides a sense of accomplishment, that it was worthwhile investing the hours to do that, because someone other then yourself derived enjoyment from your work. At the very least for people who are "modders" or "scenario makers" or that sort of thing, positive feedback is important.
At the same time the X isn't working well or I don't like how you designed Y is invaluable. Serious feedback is incredibly helpfull. Of course, as others have mentioned here...that is directly at odds with what folks from PR and Marketing want to see happen. Honestly.....those guys are a designer/fdevelopers/engineers worst enemy.... because alot of the time, they aren't actualy selling what you've produced....they are selling an illusion.
This is a good point: When you hear game after game after game and how great each one is (before many have even played it), then eventually those words fall upon deaf ears......It used to be frustrating to have people tell us what a great game such and such is, then we pay for it and realize its garbage and we wasted our money.......False praise is a terrible thing......MMOs need to earn their praise, not be nominated as the greatest game of all time before anyone has even played it for ten seconds.
But he does have a point correct? You can see that this site is full of the latter as well? You going to tell me that's not true? I"m not even arguing against your point that the former doesn't exist.
I don't know whats the point of bringing up 'latter' in this conversation when my post was directly related to what OP said. he is talking about former kind of crticism and so am i. Is this another attempt to derail the topic and make it about fanboys vs haters?
It's not an attempt. It's a fact that haters are just as bad as fanbois. It's also a fact that the vast majority of players are somewhere inbetween those two extremes, which are sadly the most vocal.
As I said in a previous post, extremes are never good, no matter what side, no matter what topic (not only games).
Once again you didn't bother to read the OP. Raph Koster is obviously only talking about legitimate crticism and not bashing. Even i don't condone one line hate replies for sake of trolling.
So i wonder why you keep bringing this up when no body is even talking about that kind of criticism? infact you are the first one to bring it up which is completely out of context of what Raph said.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Originally posted by Theocritus This is a good point: When you hear game after game after game and how great each one is (before many have even played it), then eventually those words fall upon deaf ears......It used to be frustrating to have people tell us what a great game such and such is, then we pay for it and realize its garbage and we wasted our money.......False praise is a terrible thing......MMOs need to earn their praise, not be nominated as the greatest game of all time before anyone has even played it for ten seconds.
Just play F2P games. There is no excuse for paying for something you do not like.
Comments
Nail. On. Head.
This sentiment has been explained to people "fanboy-ing it up" for their chosen game time and again, but it's always dismissed, never sinks in, and continues to happen.
Will a veteran of the industry, who's seen it all from both sides of the fence, the good, the bad and the ugly of it command any more attention or respect from people who want to defend "their game" from any and all criticism? Probably not. They'll just find some arbitrary detail to dismiss everything he says outright and continue to wallow in their willful ignorance, believing "their game" is beyond criticism.
For those with the open mind and intellectual honesty to realize the truth in what he says, and those who are willing to learn, to replace poor beliefs with good knowledge, it's a very eye-opening article.
Thanks for sharing!
Ralph may want to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with Mark Jacobs and John Smedley. They both have nothing but fanbois to fuel interest their games. If they didn't, they might be less content putting out information that amounts to little more than term papers.
It seems you, and others in this thread, missed the central point of what Raph is explaining, or you're just outright dismissing what he said and deferring to the flawed conclusion that those voicing criticism of an otherwise liked feature/system are just "grumpy sad people". You're doing precisely what he warns against... dismissing negative feedback and those giving it.
As he says - 100% correctly - you can not tell someone their experience was wrong, no matter how strongly you may disagree with it. Even if 900 people love a given feature, if there are 50 others who find problems with it, then those problems are very real and very legitimate to those players. You can not just dismiss that negative feedback, or the people providing it, simply because "more people like it".
The problem is, for those who like it.. they may have noticed the issue but decide it's not a big enough deal to worry about. They might be the more "fanboy" type and decide it must be part of the design, and therefor "right", because they can't conceive of the game having any flaws. They may not even recognize the issues. All those people are going to praise the given feature, without ever noting the parts that seem off. The developer learns nothing from that.
Meanwhile, those who do notice those issues and choose to voice them - the ones who are typically referred to as "trolls" or "haters", and told to "go away" - may be providing valuable insight to something the developer hadn't even noticed or considered.
By dismissing those people as "grumpy sad people", you are essentially shutting yourself off to something that could potentially be a bigger problem than it seems.
What Raph is making the case against in his article, is precisely what you're resorting right back to doing in your response; finding a way to dismiss negative feedback... and that is and can be very harmful to a game in the long run.
Whole heartedly agree with the topic. This website is the perfect example where posters would 'white knight' for companies and give an impression that game devs can do no wrong.
FFXIV ARR is the latest example.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Ain't that the truth.
This website is the perfect example where posters would bash a game and/or a company and give the impression that game devs never do anything right.
See what I did here?
My computer is better than yours.
Yes i see what you did here....you didn't bother to read the original topic or you completely missed the point.
There is difference between offering legitimate crticism and screaming 'this game is fail ..lololo'. OP is talking about the former type of criticism and why snubbing it with fanboyism is bad.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
But you're missing his point, this site is fulll of the latter.
The article was a good read. If you didn't notice there will be an AMA and he's giving a seminar at GDC.
Haha well its true. That guy always has a dark cloud looming. I am very looking forward to his new projects though. Wonder if we will get a mobile sandbox mmo. That would be pretty amazing.
I see intelligent and valid crticism shot down as much as i see one line troll posts. Even according to this websites TOS... you can not simpley say 'game sucks' but you have to explain why and people for majority always give their experince in detail which is labelled as 'trolling' or 'hating'.
Look at the first two pages for FFXIV section and find me one topic with one line troll 'this game will fail ..lololo'. It would get locked down quickly. And yet when people explain their impressions and write negative things in detail they are still called haters or insecure. Such is the irony.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
But he does have a point correct? You can see that this site is full of the latter as well? You going to tell me that's not true? I"m not even arguing against your point that the former doesn't exist.
This site is full of fanboys who can't differentiate between legitimate critiques and bashing. Worse still, they make zero effort to make that distinction and just toss all criticism - no matter how it's presented - into the same category, and dismiss it all the same.
People who are intolerant of any criticism of "their game" are the last ones to be deciding what is or isn't useful to a developer. Raph explains the situation quite clearly. I don't think he needs to have fanboys on a forum pre-filtering the feedback based on what they find "ok".
What I'm seeing in this thread are responses from people already trying to find loopholes and exceptions to what Raph says, while continuing to prove that they either didn't read the entire article, didn't comprehend it, or have simply chosen to ignore it, because they can't bring themselves to accept that someone with criticism about "their game" could actually have a valid point.
Funny thing is, I predicted exactly that reaction from many here right in my first response, before I'd even read any of the replies. To quote myself...
"Will a veteran of the industry, who's seen it all from both sides of the fence, the good, the bad and the ugly of it command any more attention or respect from people who want to defend "their game" from any and all criticism? Probably not. They'll just find some arbitrary detail to dismiss everything he says outright and continue to wallow in their willful ignorance, believing "their game" is beyond criticism."
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
I don't know whats the point of bringing up 'latter' in this conversation when my post was directly related to what OP said. he is talking about former kind of crticism and so am i. Is this another attempt to derail the topic and make it about fanboys vs haters?
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
It's not an attempt. It's a fact that haters are just as bad as fanbois. It's also a fact that the vast majority of players are somewhere inbetween those two extremes, which are sadly the most vocal.
As I said in a previous post, extremes are never good, no matter what side, no matter what topic (not only games).
My computer is better than yours.
Well, I was going to make a fawning post about how insightful and well-written the post was, but I looked at it and it came off as sounding like a complete fanboy post. So I fumbled around trying to find at least some new angle to post about. Looking for the loopholes or exceptions felt like the best tribute I could pay to the blog.
Basically people on this site behave just as people do everywhere else, and the developers who cater to them, are just a reflection on how people go about things everywhere, in every aspect of life. No doubt Koster is right, as far as how to create to the best of your ability and avoid stagnation, but it can be applied to every aspect of life and to every person alive.
People on this site are no different in their behaviour when defending "their" games than anywhere else where people defend their opions and viewpoints, and they are as want to reapply their behaviour by the time the next game rolls around, regardless of wether "their" game was all they thought it would be. Partly because taking personal responsibility for your part in the circle jerk chain is almost beyond peoples capacity for viewing themselves in context with others. People never learn, and have a hard time applying how their behaviour affects the outcome of things, struggle or are completely ignorant to draw conclusions on how that behaviour keeps churning poor games out of the developers who cater to them. Also, it is very difficult for reward oriented mammals to reign in adulation when it generally means exclusion from the group that gets heard. Popular opinion is a strange creature.
if you are the exception to this, than congratulations; you can apply your intelligence to your behaviour and its consequences beyond the readily apparent. But most intelligent people cannot. Unfortunately.
It is also slightly moot with regards to gaming, atleast the big AA titles. it might have been a fandriven, passion product, when Verant developed Everquest, but since then the gaming companies have become coorporations, and I really dont think the men in suits with the majority of shares, give a flying fuck about how creative you are, if the popular opinion is raging the pre-release hype into the ground. But like I said in the beginning, Koster is saying something that is generally applicable to generally everything in life, if you want to be better tomorrow, than today.
it is bad only for game that are instanced .go check ff14 I am pretty sure s-e is very happy .bottom line, people want to see each other in game instancing doesn't permit it .so a game fully instanced will always have more negative critic on average all else being = yes there are exeption but I say average so count the total game released this year and make an average!
two thing tho break this trend ,buy to play (a la gw or tsw)and player able to see each other when they game .
you have neither ?then sorry but your game will be be full of thread unfavorable toward it !
I think most of us who have been here a while, and seen games come and go can agree on one thing.
Fanboys have killed way way more MMO's then any hater could ever dream of.
In fact, I will give the hardcore hater a tip, if they REALLY want to see a game fail.
Hating on good features can be detrimental, but praising bad features?
That is the ticket to burn it down!
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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wise words
EQ2 fan sites
What he is saying, I believe, is something I generaly agree with. You want to listen to your audience. Listening does not equate with letting them into the drivers seat to control your work. On the contrary though, I think positive feedback is helpfull... maybe not for someone like Koster who probably doesn't need it. However for the rest of us who aren't particularly fameous in our respective fields..... a bit of a shot in the arm, knowing that someone recognizes and appreciates you work is not a bad thing at all. You just can't get lost in it.
For example, one of the things I've done as a hobby (strictly amatuer) is to create a few scenarios for people to play in turn based strategy games and make them available on the games public boards. When someone comes along and says "Hey, I really enjoyed that scenario you created...it was fun to play" that provides a sense of accomplishment, that it was worthwhile investing the hours to do that, because someone other then yourself derived enjoyment from your work. At the very least for people who are "modders" or "scenario makers" or that sort of thing, positive feedback is important.
At the same time the X isn't working well or I don't like how you designed Y is invaluable. Serious feedback is incredibly helpfull. Of course, as others have mentioned here...that is directly at odds with what folks from PR and Marketing want to see happen. Honestly.....those guys are a designer/fdevelopers/engineers worst enemy.... because alot of the time, they aren't actualy selling what you've produced....they are selling an illusion.
Once again you didn't bother to read the OP. Raph Koster is obviously only talking about legitimate crticism and not bashing. Even i don't condone one line hate replies for sake of trolling.
So i wonder why you keep bringing this up when no body is even talking about that kind of criticism? infact you are the first one to bring it up which is completely out of context of what Raph said.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Just play F2P games. There is no excuse for paying for something you do not like.