Game dev and criticism

Edit: TLDR Version..

How do you deal with criticism? I've had some feedback before I've fixated on.. More implementation than the funny jump off a cliff comments. Has it ever put you into a fixation loop?

 

Yes, all the time. You constantly need to criticise criticism. A lot of people know that they don't enjoy something but the comments they then make about how to address the problem or the features they identify as what's wrong may not be the best thing to fix to address what is really bothering them.

For example, in a game with free continue's when watching an ad someone might say, "I don't like how many ads there are." The real issue is that there may not be a good way for players to balance the game's difficulty to their ability. Removing ads isn't the solution but making it easier may not be a good solution either as this player isn't the only person playing your game. There may well be 99 other players that haven't made a comment that like the difficulty and ad balance just the way it is.

And here lies the problem. Most people don't give feedback. you have to assume that as long as your ratings are generally high that most people do indeed like it how it is... My strategy now is to not over react when someone gives tough criticism, instead I make baby steps towards what I think makes the game better overall and use metrics to confirm that those baby steps are indeed improving retention and reviews.

Edit: TLDR Version..
Yes, but it's usually counter productive. Just take it on board but don't overreact. Continue to make the game the best you can.

 

Imagine having guest over for dinner. Everybody is going to be polite and say your food was good, but do you trust that? If you really want to know if the food was good, see who is getting seconds.

It's kind like that, but inverse. Gamers are bratty little punks who really deserve a smack across the face. But it's smarter to sell them poison and rob them... well, ahem, excuse the ugly honesty, the point is, ignore the bitching, and look at the money, and only look at reviews/other feedback mechanisms for trends.

 

Remember, most feedback you receive is negative. Most happy players you never hear from.

 

Positive feedback is just telling me what I already know. Negative feedback though tells me what I don't know, either about what I've done or how it was perceived.

Sometimes I hear something that doesn't make me feel good, but I always tell myself "Truth first, reconcilliation later". It's possible to reconcile oneself with the truth in any number of ways, but one might never have another opportunity to discover that truth, especially if one knows where it might be found.

 

Identify what useful information there is in the criticism, take it on board, and act on it.

That doesn't mean I "fix" every bad thing that I hear about, each piece of feedback is just a data point. But the bad stuff is just as important as the good stuff.

 

I don't listen do steam reviews, they are seldom constructive, I listen to the players at our discord channel. Much more constructive feedback going on there.

Listen to your players is super important , and something we take very serious.

 

For me there is no "dealing with criticism". It's just someone's independent view of things, and I can choose to use that data or not. But I'm not exactly the kind of thinker that fits typical moulds.

Basically, feelings don't belong in the same space as criticism. Why would I *ever* be offended if someone said "you're stupid and your game sucks". That is just someone's data, and meaningless. I know better. And if I did not know better and actually judged the person being competent by looking at what they've done, then I would ask for more specific data.

TLDR: It's just data that probably most likely isn't accurate. You can choose to use some of it or not. Feelings are irrelevant outside of family, loved ones and health, so there is no "dealing with".

 

Hey good morning!

Criticism is a phase of production called Quality Assurance. One of the most important aspects of the game isn't to be able to play it

If it doesn't look good or play correctly, it won't sell. Sure it isn't always about selling but it's nice to have an income for doing something you love, right?

Think of it this way, forums like these are incredible. The community is amazing and everyone wants to help each other. Every once in a while you find a d-bag, but it doesn't matter. Filter out their garbage and move on

 

Btw, there are 3 primary phases of Q.A, Alpha, Beta, and Gold.

Alpha is the ability to test a game to get all of the hard crashes out of it. In other words, when you play the game and it crashes by kicking you out to the desktop, either on the Phone or PC). In the beginning, crash percentages are pretty high and common. At some point, those will be difficult to find.

Beta testing are soft-crashes. It's when the game locks up in mid-game, usually something isn't called that was supposed to be... or something was called that shouldn't be. Usually it's the case, but not always. Sometimes a soft crash is when the Player or Companions exit the levels bounding boxes and they can't get back into the world.

If I remember correctly, there are 23 different types of bugs. The primary reasons to test is to find Hard and Soft crashes. Finding other bugs is a bi-product of finding crashes.

Gold is when you're done. Often times, games will ship and the Dev knows there's still bugs to fix too. That's why your games now a days update once a month or so. These bugs that ship are called KS - Known/Shippable.

Every game has bugs. The objective is to minimize them and to minimize the critique.

I hope this helps.

 

QA is not just about bugs, it's about having the best possible mechanics etc. We target VR and having the best mechanics can mean multiple ways of doing the same thing because players have different tastes etc

 

Criticism makes you better. Love it.

 

Criticism. Man, what a hard subject. This isn't just about reviews or the final product, this is equally (or more so) about the process.

There are no hard and fast rules to dealing with criticism. For example, if the source is your girlfriend/wife it's incredibly different than if the source is a random gamer. Similarly, there's a world of difference between "your table sucks!" and more subtle, implicit criticism like "is [x] really what you should be working on?"

I've personally found that my tolerance for criticism really depends more on your social environment more than anything else. If you have people who are "on your team" either professionally or personally then generally criticism can be a tool to help you identify and fix problems or safely ignored. If you don't, then things can get very messy indeed.

Some of this is an attitude thing, but IMO, most of it really has to do with more fundamental social environment.

The lesson? The more your social environment (again, both personal and professional) is healthy the more likely you are to see criticism as a tool or a datapoint.

I've really been all over the map on every side of this issue, and that's my experience at least.

 

The other key factor is momentum. Are you on a roll moving forward, or have you hit a really rough spot? We're far more vulnerable when we hit a major obstacle. Forward momentum is another great help turning criticism into a tool vs something that debilitates you.

 

I find it much harder trying to gauge my response to people that ask for criticism

 

We were hit hard by fanboys from a compititor, a wave of mostly non constructive negative reviews. Even though I'm a seasoned professional it did felt a bit personal at times. Since it was so targeted .

 

I think this kind of thing works on a large or small scale.

For instance, I play Gwent and played Hearthstone. Looking at how Blizzard and CDPR dealt with widespread gamer feedback is night and day. CDPR is known for it's single player Witcher games, Blizzard specializes in multi player.

I watched both the Hearthstone community freak out and the Gwent community freak out at different points.

Blizzard was able to more or less insulate itself from the community meltdown, CDPR on the other hand has recently declared that they are doing a fundamental redesign of the game (a redesign that IMO isn't necessary). The CDPR response (I believe) is an over reaction to community vitriol.

I think a huge part of that comes down to the fact that when the HS team was getting demolished, a guy from the SC or Diablo team could talk to them about their experiences dealing with a community riot. The long history from WoW especially comes in handy here, as at many points, they had many very angry users.

The Gwent team didn't have the same resources, didn't have people who had been under siege from an angry gamer community and didn't know how to handle it as well.

Fundamentally, having employees who had long term experience dealing with player meltdowns over decades means that Blizzard probably has an environment where employees with experience in the subject can (to some degree) coach the less experienced.

This is a healthy professional environment for dealing with multi-player gamer community meltdowns. CDPRs environment, more accustomed to well reviewed major titles was probably far less supportive since they had less institutional experience dealing with multi-player rioting.

Not all the criticism was right, not all of it was wrong. But being able to filter, judge, etc, this can be very hard.

 

I had a much longer version typed out but I thought I'd leave it to the morning before posting it..

Y'know I've read a lot of post mortems or heard interviews with youtube "critics" where the constant pummeling of criticism has had a psychological impact. Everyone has a weakness (believe me they do), it's just a matter of what it is and how long it takes to get to you..

I've had everything from jump off a cliff because my fire rate spread wasn't high enough (which again I find that sort of stuff hilarious and also kinda sad for those who say it) to your full of crap / all the way over to asset flipper because I needed to swap stop art out for prototypes. None of that bothers me..

This isn't a topic to give "PR" style responses which is wrapped up in bullcrap, I'll be as honest and blunt as I can be.. I've been asked on several occasions why I've not released anything yet and my reasons are below:

My weakness is when somebody mentions a specific item about my game and I somewhat notice it (the issue may not be as massive one) but I will fixate and become OCD (for months or even years).. I also can be a little tetchy one someone insults my intelligence, even though I was at the top of my career in my mid twenties. I did VERY well for myself in terms of company rank, fiscal return etc. and I went on to do even better solo (so I have nothing to prove, or that's what I like to think) hell, in reality if my game failed miserably it wouldn't mean jack..

But it's a double edged sword, my OCD side IS the part of me that got me where I am.. It's also the part that's holding me back..

So I tell myself at least what matters is the success and how I feel about the product, although here's my other weakness I'm a sucker for competition, I do compare my game to other games a little too much.. Doesn't matter if it has been made by a team of two or two hundred my OCD will try to beat them, not match them and as an indie or small team you're stretched way too far to be a specialist in anything..

I have honestly been told (obviously not content wise because that's impossible) that I've been relatively successful at matching or beating the games I compare to but even at a rate of six to eight hours per 30 seconds of gameplay I'm pushing it.. Also you'd think I'd focus more on the positive than the negative right? Nah, I just keep pushing further.

You're probably thinking at this point you should just quit? I love art / sound, I love programming, to an extent I even enjoy the business side of it.. Doing this keeps me sane, I just need to get off the hamster wheel and cut the BS.. Which is nice in theory, not so much in practice.

Ultimatley, it does get to me every now and again.. Technology isn't a healthy career to be in, I don't know many that it hasn't got to eventually, whether it's in your 40's or 50's it's just a matter of time (from a sample of a lot of developers I personally know).

TLDR; Criticism can get to me and because of that sometimes I talk myself out of stuff before I've begun.

 

Managing meltdowns and backlashes depends on the strength of the people who interact with the community. Unity has moderators that actually care, and aren't actually unity staff. In this respect, Unity (if they realise this or not) is massively insulated so as you can imagine, the Unity forums are stable (don't know about connect since that's managed by Unity only).

You can't fake this stuff, people will smell BS a mile off in communities.

 

Too much time spent on introspection will make anybody insecure. A person says, "I'm confident. I have strong reasons to be confident." What I hear is, "I ought to feel confident. Why don't I? Why do insignificant attacks shudder my foundations?"

Introspection can be a trap. A whirlpool that sucks you in and gets stronger and stronger. You've got to recognize the enemy, and go cautiously, always ready to jump back to avoid getting sucked in. For me, work is the go to answer. When I get caught up in details and subsequent emotions, it's time to stop thinking and do some busy work. If I'm too tired of work, it's time to go outside and do something engaging enough to totally forget about the work.

 

In all honesty, I think this "double edged sword" thing is true of almost every aspect that makes people successful. If something is a strength or a weakness depend a lot more on the exact circumstances than most ppl think.

Sometimes the difference between strength and weakness can really be nothing more than the result of a coin flip. If you win the bet, it's a strength, if you lose the bet, it's a weakness.

 

I feel ya brah. Have you considered downscaling. Like I mean, simplifying your game so it just a bunch of cubes interacting with a scene. I think @neggy said it best when you just strip it down to cube like low poly characters (if you check out his WIPs in his signatures )with no textures and it's fun to play, you've got a game.

 

You clearly haven't searched for "top games that were broken at launch".

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/8-games-with-completely-broken-releases

Skyrim, despite being massively successful, was completely unplayable on PS3 once you went past about 50 hours.

 

Well here's the other thing, I've done a couple of game jams for a laugh (including cube based madness).. Originally I made a top down game in about three months and because it was simple I just switched off / got bored. I need to balance that fine line of challenge vs. pecking off more than you can chew.

Also dropping past baggage, Unity 3.X / 4.X was absolutely amazing for small (like the top down game) / mobile games but for larger more intricate projects I'm sorry it was a POS.. A friends MMO project got moved over because the performance was dire and the editor flopped like a fish (these are just one of MANY reasons).. Today I've seen some impressive projects come out of Unity, I think I'd hit my limits long before Unity does although I can be a bit skittish where it's concerned.

Hence why I jump around a lot.

So I've not fully commited for a long while (like I originally did), that's just something I need to shut the hell up about and commit fully. Finally projects aren't perfect (I need to get that through my thick skull), Skyrim had issues galore across the board and it's far from the only top dollar games to have them.. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but there's no denying it did well because the holistic picture is stronger than the sum of it's parts.

 

I know I've said that to you in the past, but that never was meant as subtle criticism and rather as reminder that you easily get sidetracked into areas like polish or tool building. I myself struggle even more with prioritizing my efforts towards the right thing. I often feel like at least 80% of what I do in gamedev nowadays is misplaced effort to some degree, because I find polishing and optimizing more rewarding than prototyping gameplay. Interestingly I am much better at this with work where I a) have more experience in and b) do it for a client on a fixed budget.

I have not yet figured out what the solution for that is or if there even is one for me. But at the moment I think I feel better if I do some dev work regularly, even if it's rather futile and I'll never show anyone. At the end of the day I feel better when I did some programming in my free time and not just spent it all on the internet.

I never manage to believe in a game idea that I have long enough to find out if someone else thinks it was a good one. I usually come to the conclusion that it's crap on my own and stop working on it. Since my motivation is so fragile I tend to avoid asking for feedback in the first place.



One idea that I found really interesting is what Yahtzee once said (paraphrased from my memory) "You don't need to worry about the people visibly complaining about what you do, you need to worry about the people that just silently stop playing your game or stop watching your videos because that silent majority is both much larger and much more important.".
Though that's data you only can get with analytics, and collecting those has just become much more of a pain with GDPR.

 

You're not wrong, this thread is all about just laying it out on the line for me.. So I'll admit some of the daft stuff I've done, for e.g. in UE 4.9 I believe there was a massive issue with overdraw when it came to foliage.. I mean you couldn't have more than a hundred instances of foliage before the thing tanked. So I spent four months ripping apart and reverse engineering their renderer fixing the issue, I did it in the end..

Then I decided Lightmass wasn't going to cut it and started having a crack at their DFGI / LPV (one of the two) solutions, to be honest it was beyond me (it's a very large codebase and I got lost).. Two months later I gave up, just wasted about six months.

Hindsights a **** ain't it? Knowing what I know now I would of finished off my own engine in QT or LWJGL, I know, I know a lot of people would say you're crazy or that it's too much work.. Y'know what it's not the black box voodoo it used to be, there's actual how to build an engine for dummies guides.. There's beginners video channels that take you through every single step of setting up a modular framework, there's a bunch of implementation guides for API's like bullet / GUI's etc.

I'd actually say if you got the gaul to build a modern RPG you could probably build an engine (framework / whatever).

It doesn't have to be complicated only aiming for a single platform and it only has to do one single thing for your single game (not for whatever someone else dreams up), you don't worry about abstaction to end users and the most important thing is you know how it's built from top to tale.. Also the performance is ridiculous (in a good way), most of the issues would of come from modern rendering techniques in which they are hard to understand (even from tutorials).. Luckily there are MIT implementations of such things (even in other engines / frameworks), you can go have a nosey at or use.

Too late now, the limitations in modern engines are all but extinct.. Ultimatley though with the amount of time I spent messing about, I could be through an engine and half way through a game by now.

Point being, I think it's a process.. Half the battle is deciding what you want to do and the rest is how to go about it.

It all depends on a couple of fundamental questions which I've still not really got the answers to myself, what do you want out of this and what are you willing to compromise to do so? @hippocoder said I'm all about the story, which he's right I like graphics and story.. So they're my primary focus, instead of trying to make every single piece as good as the rest that's where I will from now on focus my efforts.

Of course gameplay is important (in a game LOL) but my original concept was a Dragon Age Origins style game, in which the gameplay wasn't bad but it was obviously second to the story. It doesn't need a TRILLION SQ KM terrain to tell it ..

 

I regularly tell people that they're putting their effort into the wrong place. I don't do that as criticism, I do that to be helpful. I know that when I'm working on my own stuff I see a creator's incredibly narrow perspective. That makes it super easy to think something is a big deal when it's not. It also makes it super easy to overlook little things that make a big difference to people who aren't us.

So when I tell someone I think they shoud re-align their efforts I'm not criticising them at all. I'm trying to lend them my eyes to save them a bunch of effort.

What kind of project management or task tracking systems do you have among your team? I find that getting some semi-objective process in place to help make decisions about what to do next is really helpful. This is partly because we've got stuff on our current project that's been a "known issue" or other opportunity for improvement for over a year. We really want to improve those things. But our process makes it abundantly clear that there's more important stuff to do now, and since dev time is limited we try to be disciplined about chasing our tails.

On that note, are you working in a team or solo at the moment? I find that even having just one other team member is really helpful, if for no other reason than because it gives you someone else impacted by your decisions who you have to justify them to. I'm not suggesting you get someone to nitpick how you spend every minute of your day. Just someone you have regular quick catch-ups with to explain what you've done and what you're moving on to, who has enough knowledge about these things to say "I think X is a more important place to focus our efforts than Y".

That, of course, relies on your projects having some kind of structure.

A part of me is surprised that I don't get asked the same thing here. My answer is simple - my current project is stonkingly huge. I assumed either that you were also working on something that just isn't done yet, or that you do show it off and talk about it... just not here.

 

It looks like this is turning into a "Why Haven't You Released Anything?" thread. In that case, my answer is partially that I have GDADD, and partly that I'm super busy, and can't devote a lot of time to game dev, and partly that that busy-ness is mostly in semi-creative pursuits (work, writing papers and doing research, and making a program) so I feel a little burnt out when I think about game dev, and partly that currently even my "simplest" project requires a lot of not-actual-game-dev work beforehand (I recently mentioned I have 5 games planned in a series...well, I need to do the worldbuilding for that series, which involves getting a world map (which I already have), seeding it with natural resources, building a climate, adding flora and fauna, installing humans, and then building a world history over thousands of years), and I'm struggling to find the motivation for that.

Back on the original topic, though...

One thing I think is important is to examine how the criticism aligns with your view of the game. If someone thinks a fundamental part of your game should be removed, or you should expand on something that's really only a side thing, even if they are suggesting "good things" it may not be what the project is aimed at, so it's not something to worry about following.

However, also important:

I think it's important to think about why they had the perception they did. If they want this big, key thing removed, maybe you haven't made it as "big" and "key" as you thought.

 

I envy and try to emulate what a professional at an office would do. Get in your stuffy little cubicle, take your lower back medicine and keep working.

When something means a lot to you of course it's gonna effect you, that's natural, but it doesn't mean you're gonna stop programming your number of hours in your day. Life isn't just a wonderland of positive emotions all the time, and I feel like the more you just allow yourself to go through the pain the more it will pass and you'll come to terms with it, and maybe even be man enough to examine the mechanics of what's going on, why it effects you, what happened.

If you really enjoy the process and are filling the quota you need to fill in your production every week, I think the rest falls into place.

Also, always know that you can create something better and be focused on improvement as well as your goals. Personally, I want to create a finished polished product that people enjoy. I am trying to please people...not just myself...so I have to see what the reaction is and in a quality control kind of manner look at the result I'm getting and the result I want, then look at my product and see what in the manufacturing of said product could change to get the reaction that I want, so long as the essence and the point I'm trying to get across as an artist is unhindered.

If you view it as like the economics of time, the problem arises when you spend an allotted large amount of time on something that means a lot to you, and somewhere in there you want to please others in some way. Work every day at what you love I guess, but then don't just blindly work at it. You have something that you want, be specific. If you want to be a professional game designer cranking out hit games like the <1% get to do, don't be shy, study what you want, either modify what you're wanting out of it or look at what you might be doing that isn't getting the reaction that you'd like. Don't be shy about your goals, about what you actually want to get as far as a reaction out of an audience. Be honest with yourself, you're obviously not where you want to be in the moment that you're taking criticism in a painful way.

I would study what successful businesses with a long standing positive reputation do with criticism, how they handle it, and try to emulate that. I personally watch a lot of sports so I just try to emulate the pros. They lose all the time, but whenever there's a loss you see what they say "We're gonna look over the tapes, see what we could have done better, and go back out there tomorrow and do what we do". I think that's a really healthy mindset.

With all that said, with trolls, just f*ck'm, seriously.

I guess you said already what my thoughts were.

 

I find most criticism from "gamers" or even broader "customers" is incoherent and lacks knowledge one gets from analytics. A lot of it is specifically only from their perspective and narrow field of view. I generally ignore it because I either already know about whatever issues they are having with the game or it's just vitriol being thrown by someone frustrated.

The rest that are helpful I add to the backlog with a priority that fits it if there is scope to take care of it. Any personal attacks\death threats are dealt with account\forum bans and that's it.

 

If its constructive criticism I'll take it on board and if it makes sense to me and is inline with my game, I'll make the changes to the game.

If it is negative name-calling useless feedback, I'll just ignore it, or delete it.

 

Sure is!

Yeah, I don't really know either. I'm not even sure what I hope to gain by doing it.

Story ranks far down my own list. I'm more interested in immersion and gamefeel. Breaking down visual things and coming up with viable solutions to represent them ingame is something that I enjoy and think I'm reasonably good at, and I like playing with diferent aesthetics, but I suck at the "making it a game" part. And frankly I don't really enjoy the gamedesign part either. It's too "open and creative" for me, I never feel like I'm doing something right there. I would like my games to have complex systems-driven gamedesign with emergent solutions to challenging problems, but that might be out of my reach. It certainly is for a "first" game.



What I'm currently wondering is how to decide whether an idea is worth "just making it anyway", even if I think it's not a game I would enjoy playing myself.

 

Sure but for ShadowK he was focussing only on tech and art, when really he wanted to be able to tell a story (he is really big into RPGs so story is a big deal).

 

I think there's a couple of key points, I owned a software development company in the IT field which did very well for itself.. As much as I wanted the company to succeed it felt in every way like a job, I of course always did the best I could but I can't deny I wasn't all that into it.

If somebody did criticise me or get shirty I'd of course be professional, take it on board and rectify if need be or let it roll off like rainwater.. Same goes for a game jam, it's a bit of fun but I don't take it seriously and I do surprise myself what I can get through when I take a step back.

I'm also a musician, have been ever since I can remember.. I'm at the same point with music as I am with my games, I procrastinate a lot / get side tracked and it's a bit of a loop as well.. I released a demo years back that got some nasty criticism (which looking back was "ok" but lacking) and I've been constantly trying harder to the point it leads to frustration.

Music doesn't require the same amount of commitment a role playing game does, so I don't even think scope is the major issue here.

Logic and creativity is in my soul, it's not something I can just get rid off.. If I do it'll spin around in my head at 3AM and then I don't sleep.. So I wish I could just quit, it would be so simple / spend all day drinking beer with friends, it sounds kinda nice .!

Over the space of many years you tend to improve a lot, even looking at the screenshots from my first attempt at a solo game to where I am now it's night and day. It does make me realise you / I have to get to a point where you transition from learner / to experienced and make the best of what you can there and then. Not in a continuous loop of trying to improve.

It's not always easy to know when to justify criticism (in the extremely rare instance you get valuable feedback), some of it can be genuine and something you're not aware of.. Thinking about this thread, I think I know what my sticking point is.. You're right, I need to treat it more like a business and less like an extremely personal project which stacks my reputation on the line.

 

Humans are better giving advice than taking it, but FWIW do you really need to "gain" anything? Are you fiscally entangled by your projects? There's always going to be a certain amount of monotony in this whole thing, personally next time I start a project I'm going to assume I know nothing.. Start from scratch, work my way through it before jumping to conclusions..

What comes at the end of it doesn't matter as long as you get through it, if you have a finished project you can either keep it for reference / re-use the art / scripts / sell it whatever.. Doesn't matter, you have a foundation..

Motivation is already hard enough to come by, the last thing you want to do is give yourself more reasons not to do it.. Either do what you want to do or don't bother..

 

I'm not quitting my day job so I don't "need" to gain anything from it, but I think I "need to think" that I'm gaining something from it because: "Positive emotions are created from the idea of a better future and delivering yourself the evidence that you are moving towards it."
I was there once, I think I'd like to reach that state again, but I don't know how because I'm absolutely not an optimist.

Yes, good points. These were part of the reasons why I was considering making something that I don't think would make a "great" game. I mean I gotta finish something at some point.

You're probably right and on top of that I did a quick test and feel like I've sufficiently discouraged myself from the idea to put it to rest. Thanks!

 

If you are fixated on external criticism, it's likely you just lack confidence in what you do. Just getting to a level of proficiency and experience usually remedies this.

With experience this morphs into self inflicted criticism from watching peers and competitors do better and not miss things you missed. You become your own worst critic. Self inflicted also hits you harder because it's not just customers that don't understand your trade anyways. It's people who do. So it can be rather humbling and/or infuriating. A good amount of beating yourself up is healthy, you just need to distinguish between what you could/should have known and what you really had no chance of knowing.

Anyone who is a bit competitive has to deal with this basically forever. I fixate/beat myself up regularly, just not from things customers say.

 

Step one : Draw the line between actual criticism and hate
Step Two : Filter both of them
Step Three : Listen to both of them carefully, especially valid criticism
Step Four : Ignore un-useful hate and improve your project(s) using criticism and what made your player angry with your project.

 

Gotta admit, this has been an epic thread.. Extremely helpful, very civil and understanding. Restores your faith in virtual presence a little bit..

Also one of the many reasons I stick around the Unity forums. I think the thought of failure, with a project so close to you can be a daunting prospect.. Ultimatley you can't control it, I've seen simple 2D games earn a fortune all the way to multi-million dollar titles flop.

So when it comes to criticism, unless something is well and truly bad (which anyone could notice) who can say what the right direction is? I know exactly what I'm going to do, see you in a while ..

 

I linked this article to someone else a couple of weeks ago, but I think it's especially relevant here: 5 Ways You're Sabotaging Your Life (Without Knowing It).

Two things in that article that I think are especially worth consideration:

• The two different meanings of the word "want" - passive preference vs. active, driving desire. In what context do you want to make games? For me it's definitely the "invisible gun" scenario. I do it because I enjoy it, but also because I want it. For people who do it just 'cause it's fun then that's totally cool, but I would suggest not worrying about things like "success" because it'll just spoil the fun.
  
  
• The sacrifices people don't realise that they have to make. Most of these are in terms of time, and for some reason people just don't think of time as a resource. Making games takes hundreds or even thousands of hours. More for those who have to learn the basic skills as they go. Where is that time going to come from? What will you give up - leisure time, sleep/health, time with your loved ones, socialisation, playing games, hobbies, employment..?

None of that stuff is meant to be doom-and-gloom. I read that article years ago and it does a great job of articulating what I've been using as a filter for ages - my time is important, where will I spend it? If I want to be really good or successful at something it's likely to need a lot of time, so what really matters to me and what won't I miss if I leave it behind? And, tangential but of critical importance, what does "success" mean to me?

Building on that, when someone criticised me I then have a filter: does this contain information that helps direct me towards "success" in less time, or not? If yes then I don't really care how it's delivered. Also, I can't help but grin if someone is trying to tear me down and accidentally helps me out. If not then... whatever, I don't have time to get stuck on every hater's vitriol. I'm not perfect at letting it go, but looking back it's certainly the good or useful stuff that's stuck with me far, far more than the bad.

 

Nice, good luck buddy.

 

5 out of the 8 in that article already had an established fan-base.

Skyrim looked good to begin with. I believe that's why they obtained their initial fan-base.

Battle Cruiser and 2 Worlds... I never heard of those before, nor since.

Don't you think it lost credibility? Damn right they did and I know they had a loss in sales when that happened.

They had to pay additional funding and go into PR repair mode to cover + recover their losses, which they did... except Battle Cruise Worlds 2. I wont even bother looking them up.

 

Do you think it was a mistake to release that demo back then?



I don't identify as a musician, but I occasionally make music. I always wanted to make an impressive bombastic game with a suitably epic soundtrack, to at least once bring all my various interests together in one place. But so far that's not been possible for various reasons.

I always found that with music I personally get my best "bang for the buck" in terms of satisfaction that I can derive from the end product of my own work. But I rarely share the things I make with more than 2 persons (if any at all). It's a mix of dreading a negative reaction and not knowing what I'd hope to get out of sharing it. I'm really torn on whether I should post an example here or not, and I don't really "want" to, but maybe that means I should? (I once read a book called "the war of art" which makes the point that you'll always find artistic growth in the directions where you feel the biggest resistance.)

https://soundcloud.com/user355544729/orchestral-template-v40

Normally after I've exported a new audio file I'd wait a few days before I share anything, to give it another listen with fresh ears. This one is from today, but I think if I waited that long I wouldn't post it anymore x].

 

I'm in two minds about it, looking back there were things I needed to improve on and I wouldn't of gotten to where I am without that push. The issue then is deciding when it's good enough.!

The second half of the composition is absolutely fine, enough dynamic range contrast to make sure the mix pops where it needs to.. I don't see any amateur mistakes in the engineering, like no high pass filters or extensive amounts of limiting / compression / artifical widening.. You obviously understand pan law..

On the whole I have heard far worse from people who do this as a job, if I had to criticise you just need to work on using instruments with a better slew rate (as it can sound a little out of time) and articulations, like some of the repeating patterns sound fake and that's because it's a VSTI ochestral synth..

Getting those to sound anyway realistic is an artform in itself, when using staccato make sure it's variable length (midi).. Layer the instruments (with different forms of the same instrument), use decent reverbs and make sure the midi velocities are random (within a certain amount lets say 118 to 125).. You never play an instrument the exact same way, that's part of the beauty..

It actually leads me to another point, I don't think it's difficult being a beginner (there are tutorials galore) I believe things get truely rough when you hit the semi-advanced to experienced stage. Where you need a response like I just gave you, which not only tells you what the potential issues are but how to fix them and it's rare that happens.. Because they would of had to work on a project similar to yours, in the same engine facing the same issues.

Also when you work on something more than your average mobile game, you're spread so thin you forget a lot of stuff.. We all have our strengths / weaknesses and it's fine to admit both sides, one thing I don't struggle with is memory.. Well in the context of a photographic nature, it's more the how and why which gets purged from my system.. It can be annoying .

 

Wow, thanks a lot for your kind words and the awesome feedback! I tried to incorporate it into the next version:

https://soundcloud.com/user355544729/orchestral-template-v42

Never heard of it, had to read the wikipedia article ^^.

Completely agree on that one. I already had variations in the note velocity and layered different sections and velocity layers of the VSL strings that come with Kontakt and layered the staccato patch from NI Action Strings on top of that. In trying to fix it I tried how it sounds when I play it just on an eighth note repetition pattern of Actions Strings, which is supposed to fix this by playing samples of a string section actually playing out the pattern for a longer time instead of repeating the same small round robin sample pool over and over, but it still sounded fake so I concluded it must be a composition issue. I ended up removing that part altogether. And I replaced all other staccato string parts with a different library. I did some other tweaks here and there too, like removing notes from the choir that were too short to sound good on the articulation and I did some minor manual shifting notes off the grid to counteract the "slew" you've mentioned. Hope that works better now .

I'm very happy to hear the mixing and mastering isn't terrible, because I've learned a lot about that in the recent months and tried to improve that aspect. Though I can't take full credit for it because much of it just is Ozone Elements doing it's preset-based magic ^^. Originally I wanted to re-build my orchestral template (maybe sixth time now) and get a more realistic spatial distribution of instruments by routing each individual section through a binaural panner. After I did that I looked at a few dozen midi lanes and thought "how the hell am I supposed to handle that?" because I'm having trouble to work with setups that require the midi input to be spread out over so many different places. I then started again from scratch with the goal to build Kontakt multis that allow me to make orchestral sketches with the least amount of midi lanes. The v40 that I uploaded was less than 10 midi lanes iirc. The crescendo / diminuendo strings at the beginning were just one patch with long attack and release times, not even any CC automation. For v42 I redid that part and moved it over to the part of the setup where I had done the binaural panning on the different sections. Do you think that works well enough from the audio engineering side?

To sum it up, I think I might need a 2-stage approach for composing: sketching out the general idea of a track in a setup that requires minimal midi-fiddling, and then going one step further and orchestrating at least some of it on a slightly more elaborate but still relatively simple routing setup.

I've seen a tutorial once where a composer did one short string section part with almost two dozen midi lanes, taking a little over half an hour for a rather short piece of music, and then said "I'm just doing this super quickly for the tutorial, normally I'd spent 20 hours on this to do it properly". I don't have the time for that. With music I'm very aware that I'm aiming only for a "good enough" result, not even trying to get the last 20% that take 80% of the time. With music I feel like this comes much easier to me than with visual art, because I have no professional background in music and I'm not "supposed to be" able to get a 100% result on anything.

Thanks again!

Now I'm listening to some classical music that a friend recommended to me as feedback to the track. Might do another iteration on it after that.

 

They are criticizing what you knew yesterday, not what you will know tomorrow.

 

Even now you might look at your work and think 'wow, that's great' but a month down the line you'll be thinking 'what the hell.'

This is the artist's curse. i'm doing that a lot now but over the space of days.