WHEN DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF "GOOD" AT SOMETHING?

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pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
I have a very simple and short answer: I consider myself to be good at something when people I can trust to be objective consider me to be good at it. This is because I've always firmly believed in the philosophy that we are our own worst judges of ability.
You're only considered good at something when you put in more effort than someone who doesn't really give a damn. There are far more ideas/concepts that never leave people's minds then there are ones that were actually implemented and failed.

If you put even a little effort in something someone out there is going to think you're good at it. Whether or not they bother to tell you or not is a different issue.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
There is also this difference between being good at something and being good enough.

Sometimes its better to stick with feeling good. The other uses of the word are usually judgements or compliments.
Hmm, that's an interesting question actually.

With graphics it's like that for me. I never did any graphics and always said I suck at graphics. I always tried to find an artist for my games, but they all proved to be unreliable when I don't pay them (all didn't meet the deadlines and disappeared eventually).

One day, I decided to try to remake one of my old RPG Maker 95 games which was lost during a HD crash and rather spontaneously decided to try and do all the graphics myself. I read a lot of pixel tutorials and trained my skills. I talked with artists I admired and learned that they invest 1 hour for a single 20x20 maptile. So I decided to see how far I can get by just investing a lot of time. And time I invested. I drew and drew for hundreds of hours, trying to copy existing styles but still places every single pixel manually. In the end I had all the graphics available for a village, the world map and a dungeon (including characters and monster sprites). I created the game as far as I could with those graphics and released it as a demo. I thought the game looks pretty good and people even complimented me on the graphics. But still... I realized I really truly hate creating graphics, just as much as I had writing dialogues. Even though with a lot of time investment I can write a good story and I can draw amazing graphics, it's nothing I enjoy.

So would I say I'm good at graphics? Maybe I think it when I'm by myself, but the official statement will remain that I suck at graphics and need an artist to ever make a game with graphics again.

And honestly I think that everybody can do "good" if he really wants to. If I managed to do good pixel art, then anyone can. It's all just about willpower and dedication.
I consider myself good at something when I think I can do it at a professional level. I think it's important to recognize your shortcomings and continuously seek to improve, though.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
IMO there are a lot of professional game designers who are unbelievably bad at game deisgn.
Haha, well, I didn't say all professionals operate at a professional level.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
author=Perihelion
I consider myself good at something when I think I can do it at a professional level.


Interesting. What would you consider to be at a professional level? If you can take an honest assessment of yourself and look at someone who is making their living off of the same thing and say, "I can do that just as well." Or if you are being hired, contracted, etc. for your skillset? Or is there some other criteria?


I think it's important to recognize your shortcomings and continuously seek to improve, though.


No argument here!
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

When doing it becomes so normal you don't consider what your doing special or unique in any way.
Ironically, a person that considers himself good at something is very likely to not be good at it. The human psyche works in a way that when you first start something and sort of reach the first plateau of skill where you're far from good at something people will consider themselves the 2nd coming of Jesus.

It's a very common thing, because they don't know enough about their craft yet to know how high the skill-ceiling is. People in this phase are also very likely to respond negatively to criticism, because they think they have nothing more to learn.

For some great examples of people that reached that first plateau, look at alot of the people here on RMN that respond very badly to negative feedback on their games, or look at people on art sites that will howl banshees when they are told that their work is not perfect.

If they don't get too complacent and continue to train, they will usually find out just how wrong they were. After this period, they will fall to the bottom, thinking themselves dirt on the boots of a shit-golem. They will then slowly climb higher and higher, raising their confidence again, but rarely will they consider themselves as good as the first time they reached a skill-plateau. Once they reach this top, they will once again fall to the bottom, and so on and so forth, but the plateau gets lower and lower every time until it's kinda like a low hill.

That's why people that are truly great at something will often tell you they are only decent.
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