INTERNET DRAMA

author=Sidewinder

author=StormCrow
They're causing him pain and who are they really helping?

Other developers?

I'd be lying if I said I didn't learn a thing or two from watching Liberty's event streams or reading over reviews of other people's games.

I don't know. To me, having one more object example for other developers to learn from is not worth making another human being feel like their life is a living hell: there are hundreds of other reviews of bad games you could comb through if you're looking to learn to git gud. To me, that really negates the argument that this one person's reviews need to stay up.

They've already received the review and taken away whatever they're going to take away from it, so they've had at least an opportunity to grow as a developer.

I don't think it's appropriate to force them to accept criticism: it is not our job to police, foment, or oversee anyone's personal growth or maturity.

If someone is at a point where they're not able to take anything away from a critical review than pain, then yes, that person has some maturing to do, but we're not their aunts and uncles. If right now, they just want the pain to go away, that seems like a reasonable request.

Of course, I do have, believe it or not, an abnormal excess of empathy for my fellow humans (a category that no longer includes anyone who voted for Trump but that's really neither here nor there). That might come off as surprising since I can be pretty abrasive on here but...yeah.

author=Sooz
If you release a work to the public, you have to be ready to deal with the public. And some of the public is gonna be harshly vocal about what it thinks. You don't need to be unfazed by it, but you do need to be able to keep your rage and tears to private areas, if only because reacting dramatically in public attracts the kind of asshole who just wants to see you react dramatically again.

(Emphasis mine.)

I don't really disagree with any of this, but I think the kind of asshole mentioned in your last sentence, namely shitty sadistic abusive trolls that get off on provoking oversensitive/defensive creators, are a much bigger problem than well...oversensitive/defensive creators. If effort is to be put into ridding our site of one of these groups of people, it should be the trolling sadists, not the immature devs. The devs are adding games to our site, even if they're bad games. The trolls are just creating a more toxic atmosphere.

author=Aegix_Drakan
I remember that my first release on this site (For the VX Ace event) got semi-mauled by Libby during her let's play of the event games (She ragequit the second boss).

But hey, a lot of her complaints were valid. Rather than have such pride in my work that I'd deny this chance to improve the game, I went out of my way to go back and fix them. And what do you know, Illusions of Loyalty is now a 4/5 star game.

I'm glad this was a learning experience for you. On the other hand I felt pretty scorched watching Liberty stream Chapelwaite. I had just recently dove back into the community and that experience had me seriously poised to dive right back out. Then the game got a legitimate scare out of her at the very very end of my game's stream, which was enough for me not to feel like I had completely and utterly failed at making the horror game that I'd put in 100+ hours of unpaid labor trying to make scary. And that was enough for me to stick around long enough for the game to be featured on the site's front page which was enormously encouraging.

Another factor in how one takes criticism is very simply how long have you been doing this. When I'd been doing this less than five years, I was much more likely to simply absorb and internalize criticism than now that I've been doing this for more than fifteen years. I still think I can take criticism reasonably well--and, if it's fair criticism, without publicly freaking out--but I also have more confidence and more of a sense of what I'm doing, and I'm more likely to push back on critique I disagree with.

Again, all of these arguments represent my feelings about a nameless general case. And I do recognize already that my opinion is in the minority, so there is no need for further concerted effort to shout me down, I get it and this was the last I had to say 'bout this.

I don't care at all about the specific redwall10/sacred lobo situation. I wasn't kidding when I said earlier (in other words) that if unity dislikes someone, they lose all of my sympathy. unity is like the nicest person ever and my hero.

(Liberty's current avatar is so cool...)

It is not our job to tell people to take criticism but it is also not our job to tell people they can't give criticism. As long as it's within the bounds of the site rules, it's fine. Which, as I said, when redwall first asked me to remove the videos, I checked to make sure they were.

There wasn't bullying or hateful comments. There was critique and banter. That's just how it is and if you can't put up with something like that, that's fine, don't watch the videos. Simple.

The reason that redwall didn't want them up, as he told me, was because he thought it would stop people playing his game. He was more concerned about the fact that seeing the lacking quality of his game without downloading the game would cause his numbers to drop.

The fact of the matter is that you're arguing a moot point completely because one moment you're saying 'fuck redwall' but the next moment you keep arguing for a non-existent person who maybe exists somewhere? Or something. IDEK.

I think there has been a topic on this before, I swear it. And this has happened soo many times with this guy. He should be banned from submitting games or something.

I have had some devs personally PM me to complain about a review or ask me to redo it, etc... I just ignored them and moved on with my day. I get bad reviews all the time. Gotta grow a spine.

I also think there's a fine line between legit criticism and people just being cruel and dunking on stuff, and sometimes a review can contain both, but in an ideal situation where the reviewer is being fair, I still see a lot of devs lose their mind over the criticisms.

It's a great point that, if it's really affecting someone's well-being or mental state, that by all means, pull it. Do what's right for you. But if you want to grow in any creative field, learning to take criticism is pretty darn vital to growth. So my advice would to be to rip that metaphorical band-aid off as soon as possible and learn to be cool with constructive crit.

As an example, in my late teens, I tried sharing my art on the internet, and it was baaaaad. The first response I saw to it was people openly mocking it, and that almost destroyed me and made me not want to draw anymore. But I eventually got actual, constructive criticism. It stung still, but I was able to take that and improve, and every future bit of constructive crit stung just a little less.

If you want to do something 100% for fun and have zero interest in learning or growing, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but you have to be wary about where you share it, and if it's a site like this with reviews and scores, you're just going to have to roll with that, even if it means getting some 1s and 2s for review scores.

Even on sites with no such scoring, people can still comment and critique if you leave something in public view on the internet. If someone can't deal with that, then their game/art/whatever is best shared just among friends privately (tho my friends still criticized the hell out of my old RPG Maker projects that I shared XD)

tldr: There's a difference between people dunking on stuff and constructive critisism, and learning to take constructive criticism is good.

Apparently, writing a critique, uploading it, and then not taking it down when someone whines is FORCING people to accept your criticism.

author=thesacredlobo

author=kory_toombs
I think there has been a topic on this before, I swear it. And this has happened soo many times with this guy.

Maybe your remembering the time he edited his profile to claim he had passed away and got nailed by the moderators for using both it and a new account at the same time.

"Hey everyone. If you're wondering why I haven't posted in a while, it's because I died."

I don't know who you're talking about - I just find this concept hilarious.

spam

author=Sooz
Stormy, I feel like you're having an argument that is not only tangential to the subject of the OP, but is also discussing things that nobody here actually said.

It would not be the first time, my friend. It would not be the first time.

Anyway, the only part of what I was saying that matters is this: in a general case, I don't think keeping a review of an RM game online is worth causing someone emotional pain or distress. This Redwall person might be a jerkass and that is certainly an extenuating circumstance, but in general I think that if someone asks with a "please" and not an "or else", taking down a review that's causing someone pain or distress seems to me like the right thing to do. Life is too short for drama. Buttressing a testimony to the mediocrity or outright shittiness of a game no one is likely to play anyway is of less value to society than lessening the distress of the bad game's creator. In general, when someone says something as trivial as an RMN review "making their life a living hell", well, they're being hyperbolic and melodramatic and silly. I understand the urge to say "toughen up, buttercup, if that's your biggest problem in life then you're swimming in gravy". However I also hear a clear communication in those words that they're in genuine emotional pain. That's just my opinion, of course, and I'm happy to leave it at that.

I think I just did that thing where I say the same thing five times consecutively in five slightly different ways? Unsure.

Without even skimming the topic, I realize that the dev in question is guilty of all sorts of other bad behavior so yes, my reasoning above would not and does not apply in this case.

*spam, spam, spam, spam, spam*