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Discouragement
Max McGee- 01/05/2012 06:25 PM
- 20643 views
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CloseGames have many elements, so I work on another aspect. If I'm not jiving with the game side of it, I might make graphics or whatever for a week or more. Still progress, but satisfying in a different way. I do more procrastinating than working anyway. Also: Nobody cares that you're sad. This should've been drilled into you before you became a teenager, let alone a grown man.
Also: Nobody cares that you're sad. This should've been drilled into you before you became a teenager, let alone a grown man.
You're welcome to your opinion although it's kind of worthless coming from someone who's never had to deal with discouragement in this arena because your only game has received nothing but effusive praise and bootlicking. And even if you were absolutely right and not one single solitary person in the whole world gave one solitary fuck that I felt sad, I still wouldn't feel obligated to keep my feelings to myself; you may not give a shit, but that won't stop me from talking about it.
Ah, "Nobody Cares That You're Sad". What a wonderfully telling phrase. See, there are the people who think this is an unchangeable fact of life and the people who think that it's good and proper and the way it should be. I'm in neither camp.
I happen to think the world would suck less if this were not the case; I try to do what little things I can to change the awful callousness of everybody at all times, like around here for instance. I'm no saint myself when it comes to being ridiculously insensitive to the feelings of others, and I'm not effecting much change in the way people behave, but at least I'm trying. Anyway: whether or not anyone does or should care that anyone else is sad is outside the scope of this website.
Games have many elements, so I work on another aspect. If I'm not jiving with the game side of it, I might make graphics or whatever for a week or more. Still progress, but satisfying in a different way.
The terrible thing about me is that my natural tendency is to just move on to other games. I have to constantly fight it.
EDIT: I'm not looking to start a fight.
One who bootlicks is not necessarily a bootlicker, don't twist my words brah.
It's not like I haven't given out my fair share of effusive glowing gushing praise aka bootlicking myself.
Anyway I was just making the point that so many of the people telling me to "get over it" have never had it happen to them, so their telling me to get over it is patently ridiculous; they don't know what it's like. (There are a very few exceptions.)
EDIT: I'm not looking to start a fight.
It's not like I haven't given out my fair share of effusive glowing gushing praise aka bootlicking myself.
Anyway I was just making the point that so many of the people telling me to "get over it" have never had it happen to them, so their telling me to get over it is patently ridiculous; they don't know what it's like. (There are a very few exceptions.)
EDIT: I'm not looking to start a fight.
"Anyway: whether or not anyone does or should care that anyone else is sad is outside the scope of this website."
Then what was the point of this blog in the first place if people caring about the fact that you're sad is outside the scope of this website? Was this blog post not one to try and gain sympathy from folks, hoping they would care that you were sad?
Then what was the point of this blog in the first place if people caring about the fact that you're sad is outside the scope of this website? Was this blog post not one to try and gain sympathy from folks, hoping they would care that you were sad?
I have been somewhat away from RMN, so I didn't follow most of the buzz on this game, but I did play the first test version, so I know what it's like.
After I read this post, I read the two reviews it got, and also Max's long reply to the first one.
In short, I'll say I agree with emmych's review, and I don't think it was disrespectful at any moment.
I never had great hopes for this game, as I have expressed in my first post about it (in which I agreed with DE). I just didn't think the general idea was good. After I played it, I admit I was entertained, but not impressed, and my views about the game didn't really change. But I could appreciate Max's effort in this project, and even more interestingly, his effort into becoming a likeable RMN member for the sake of also making his games more likeable.
But apart from some clearly personal comments (like Jude's), I don't think there's anything personal in any of the reviews. You (Max) said RMN sucks, RMN's memberbase attitude sucks, but I don't agree and I really don't understand why would you think that.
I do understand that you're sad and discouraged, and you have every right to be. But that's an obstacle you should be ready to face considering the type of game you're making. This game is not really artistic or innovative or expressive (IMO), it's just a dry mixture of old RPG/strategy that make games addictive. You hoped for it to result into an addictive game. If that was your goal (making an addictive game), you should be 100% concerned with the players' opinions, and not dismissive of it. All feedback you got so far is very constructive, in the way it points you in the direction of making the right changes. It doesn't seem as "Sisyphean" as you say. You can either use the suggestions you got and try to make it a better game, or keep true to your original idea and be happy with it regardless of whether other people will also be.
But I'm surprised you got this freaked out by midly negative feedback, considering you you're not a newb game dev. I guess you're just making everything too personal.
After I read this post, I read the two reviews it got, and also Max's long reply to the first one.
In short, I'll say I agree with emmych's review, and I don't think it was disrespectful at any moment.
I never had great hopes for this game, as I have expressed in my first post about it (in which I agreed with DE). I just didn't think the general idea was good. After I played it, I admit I was entertained, but not impressed, and my views about the game didn't really change. But I could appreciate Max's effort in this project, and even more interestingly, his effort into becoming a likeable RMN member for the sake of also making his games more likeable.
But apart from some clearly personal comments (like Jude's), I don't think there's anything personal in any of the reviews. You (Max) said RMN sucks, RMN's memberbase attitude sucks, but I don't agree and I really don't understand why would you think that.
I do understand that you're sad and discouraged, and you have every right to be. But that's an obstacle you should be ready to face considering the type of game you're making. This game is not really artistic or innovative or expressive (IMO), it's just a dry mixture of old RPG/strategy that make games addictive. You hoped for it to result into an addictive game. If that was your goal (making an addictive game), you should be 100% concerned with the players' opinions, and not dismissive of it. All feedback you got so far is very constructive, in the way it points you in the direction of making the right changes. It doesn't seem as "Sisyphean" as you say. You can either use the suggestions you got and try to make it a better game, or keep true to your original idea and be happy with it regardless of whether other people will also be.
But I'm surprised you got this freaked out by midly negative feedback, considering you you're not a newb game dev. I guess you're just making everything too personal.
I think it goes back to calling this game quite possibly the best game ever created or ever will be. Hype down, not up.
Volrath
2760
For Christ's sake people, put the claws down. This is perfectly legitimate territory for a developlment blog. Everyone had their chance to spew and scold in the comments for the review, no need to carry that over here.
I haven't yet played this (with MotW done there are a LOT of projects I want to check out but I also just got a new computer like last week and have yet to install any RM programs on it), but I hope you don't give up just cause of the review and subsequent drama. It's probably wise not to read the comments following your uh...venting...but it was mostly about the ever-persistent topic of how to give/take criticism and less about the actual content of Emmy's review, so I don't think it's necessarily a foregone conclusion that the community at large agrees with the review's content. As for the review itself, it was a little condescending and had some problematic elements (the "dickbro" thing is the EXACT reason why I never allow players to name the protagonists in my games...it's way too easy to outright kill the drama with a ridiculous name), but I think there was some legitimate feedback and suggestions within it that are worth considering. Once the emotional reaction to it cools off, it may be easier to pick that stuff out.
If you do wind up starting a new project, I think I would enjoy seeing something driven more by story and characters. It's obvious from your posts that you're a skilled writer, and I think our projects need to play to our strengths. Or at least that's how I justify all the cutscenes in MotW. :P
I haven't yet played this (with MotW done there are a LOT of projects I want to check out but I also just got a new computer like last week and have yet to install any RM programs on it), but I hope you don't give up just cause of the review and subsequent drama. It's probably wise not to read the comments following your uh...venting...but it was mostly about the ever-persistent topic of how to give/take criticism and less about the actual content of Emmy's review, so I don't think it's necessarily a foregone conclusion that the community at large agrees with the review's content. As for the review itself, it was a little condescending and had some problematic elements (the "dickbro" thing is the EXACT reason why I never allow players to name the protagonists in my games...it's way too easy to outright kill the drama with a ridiculous name), but I think there was some legitimate feedback and suggestions within it that are worth considering. Once the emotional reaction to it cools off, it may be easier to pick that stuff out.
If you do wind up starting a new project, I think I would enjoy seeing something driven more by story and characters. It's obvious from your posts that you're a skilled writer, and I think our projects need to play to our strengths. Or at least that's how I justify all the cutscenes in MotW. :P
I think it goes back to calling this game quite possibly the best game ever created or ever will be. Hype down, not up.
If anyone couldn't tell I was kidding, I seriously question their sense of humor. The truth is, the "marketing" style of this project and Mage Duel Extreme was intentionally self-deprecating in the extreme. I'm not sure how much more humble I can get than jokingly calling something "Codename: The Greatest Game That Ever Was Or Will Be".
All feedback you got so far is very constructive, in the way it points you in the direction of making the right changes.
I emphatically disagree; the majority of actionable feedback was actioned as of the last release. Most of the rest of the feedback I've received that hasn't been actioned already is feedback that I've deemed inactionable. I.E. things I cannot or will not change for various reasons I don't want to discuss in-depth here.
But there hasn't been even a blip of improvement of attitude for any of the requested changes I've made to "my" game.
Anyway...
The truth is, I firmly believe that RMN taken as a whole, as a hive-mind entity will never like anything I produce, regardless of its quality, because RMN doesn't like me and is all and all intellectually dishonest in the extreme. This is a generalization, and is not meant to refer to every single individual user of RMN; many of them are really decent people. I'm not even saying that *I* dislike *RMN*. I really enjoy conversing with many of you both on the forums and in IRC. But in general the PH of this community is very acidic, at least to me personally, at least toward my games.
So making better games/new games/different games seems pointless because the response I get is always completely unrelated to the quality of the game in question. Journeyman is technically speaking hugely better than games I've made in the past that have been better received; the reason it's technically better is because it incorporates feedback from past reviews of past games. Nonetheless, its reception is worse, because RMN as a whole likes me even less now than it did then; I grow more hated with each post, it seems, and if there's anything I should really work on, it's that.
Don't bother calling me "delusional" or calling this a "rationalization" or making lengthy arguments about this, you won't sway me. At this point there is absolutely no way to convince me that the amount of flak my games have gotten is totally or even mostly related to their own merits. If anyone else had released To Arms! or Journeyman I think that people would by and large have eaten them up and they'd be immensely popular; there'd certainly be less controversy. But I am, unfortunately, a controversial character.
I'm pretty sure I could demonstrably prove all of this if I really wanted to, but I'd rather make games than win an argument on the internet. The only thing that slows me down in doing so is the chip on my shoulder the size of a dumptruck. Sometimes that chip gets caught on things, and bashes out posts like this one.
At the risk of sounding trite, the worst case scenario of some part of this post offending someone seems to be that there will be seventy or a hundred posts flaming me after this one; as that might cause someone who would actually *like* this game to download it, that's an acceptable risk.
RPG Maker, its games and their makers have been something I've followed for about twelve years now, and I've had a fair bit of time to judge games and their quality. I like all sorts of games, one of which being the Harvest Moon series.. Playing them, I found that something was always missing. It was nice at first, but after a day I'd get bored. So I lurk around RMN, looking for games that provide 'fun'.. storyline and graphics aren't too important, I just want something to enjoy and take my mind off of life. This game has struck me as one of the most fun games I've ever seen made through RPG Maker.
I want to clarify that this post was not made through sympathy or wanting to 'lick boot' (no offense, you're great and all but that's not my style :P). I made this post because if you stop working on this game, I will lose a bit more hope for the RPG Maker world of games and stop believing that games that are pure 'fun' can be made.
This is not flamebait nor, as I said, bootlicking. This is my own selfish desire for a fun game to continue development.
I want to clarify that this post was not made through sympathy or wanting to 'lick boot' (no offense, you're great and all but that's not my style :P). I made this post because if you stop working on this game, I will lose a bit more hope for the RPG Maker world of games and stop believing that games that are pure 'fun' can be made.
This is not flamebait nor, as I said, bootlicking. This is my own selfish desire for a fun game to continue development.
kumada
3917
Hang on, Max. Treating the RMN community as a whole--and assigning it a personality as a whole--is absolutely not a good idea. Groups of people have never been particularly nice or reasonable things when compared with the individual persons that make them up, and trying to reason with or interact with a group instead of the persons that make it up can be frustrating as hell.
Not to mention, it's easier to slip into a mode where you treat the persons as the group.
Incidentally, I agree with you completely on the "nobody cares when you're sad" issue. It's an uphill struggle, but yeah. If people weren't so wrapped up in their own stuff that they ignored other people's issues, there'd be a lot more problems solved overall.
/gets down from soapbox
Not to mention, it's easier to slip into a mode where you treat the persons as the group.
Incidentally, I agree with you completely on the "nobody cares when you're sad" issue. It's an uphill struggle, but yeah. If people weren't so wrapped up in their own stuff that they ignored other people's issues, there'd be a lot more problems solved overall.
/gets down from soapbox
emmych
817
I need to address this.
How I interpret this statement is you thinking your game is "the greatest game of all time ever" and refusing to believe otherwise because your ego is getting in the way. And you know what, that's not conducive to good game development! The way I see it, in order to make a good game, you must be willing to consider cutting/reworking everything, even the things and ideas you are most in love with. Let me give you a personal example - I'm an artist. I am a visually thinking gal. I made some character designs for my game that I was in love with. Someone mentioned the hero looked too much like Locke Cole from FF6 and the heroine looked too much like Terra (in a not so nice way, mind you!), and you know what? They were right. I was ridic discouraged by this, I was super upset, but they were still right. So, instead of moping, I changed the character designs. I fiddled with palettes, tweaked haircuts, blah dee blah dee boom baddly boom and hey, look at that, I ACTUALLY LIKE THEM BETTER NOW.
I'm not saying that every bit of criticism must mean you change your game (because pffffft will you ever finish anything that way? NO.), but you do need to be willing to change things. If you go into something believing you've made the game the best it can be without much feedback, you are letting your ego get in the way, and that is the worst possible thing an artist can do!
Don't see the community as being out to get you, see it for what it really is - people want you to succeed. They want you to make your game the best it can be. I'm not even that active on this site (I'm actually a moderator elsewhere, and I would consider myself more attached to that community by virtue of having been active there longer), I wasn't aware of any drama attached to you or your games, I didn't even realize that this was Codename: Greatest Game Ever until AFTER I'd written the review and had been dicking through the pages looking for any extra information because I pay that little attention. So please, realize, I did what I did to help you. I would still be willing to help you if you wanted it, even after that rather nasty e-mail exchange.
author=Max McGeeI think this is the real issue here, and I think you're misjudging where the problem is. The problem here is your attitude, not the community's. (The vitriol that was spewed in the latter half of the review thread? Perhaps. But that was probably more because you told everyone to go fuck themselves and said they were all a hive mind.)
The truth is, I firmly believe that RMN taken as a whole, as a hive-mind entity will never like anything I produce, regardless of its quality, because RMN doesn't like me and is all and all intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
How I interpret this statement is you thinking your game is "the greatest game of all time ever" and refusing to believe otherwise because your ego is getting in the way. And you know what, that's not conducive to good game development! The way I see it, in order to make a good game, you must be willing to consider cutting/reworking everything, even the things and ideas you are most in love with. Let me give you a personal example - I'm an artist. I am a visually thinking gal. I made some character designs for my game that I was in love with. Someone mentioned the hero looked too much like Locke Cole from FF6 and the heroine looked too much like Terra (in a not so nice way, mind you!), and you know what? They were right. I was ridic discouraged by this, I was super upset, but they were still right. So, instead of moping, I changed the character designs. I fiddled with palettes, tweaked haircuts, blah dee blah dee boom baddly boom and hey, look at that, I ACTUALLY LIKE THEM BETTER NOW.
I'm not saying that every bit of criticism must mean you change your game (because pffffft will you ever finish anything that way? NO.), but you do need to be willing to change things. If you go into something believing you've made the game the best it can be without much feedback, you are letting your ego get in the way, and that is the worst possible thing an artist can do!
Don't see the community as being out to get you, see it for what it really is - people want you to succeed. They want you to make your game the best it can be. I'm not even that active on this site (I'm actually a moderator elsewhere, and I would consider myself more attached to that community by virtue of having been active there longer), I wasn't aware of any drama attached to you or your games, I didn't even realize that this was Codename: Greatest Game Ever until AFTER I'd written the review and had been dicking through the pages looking for any extra information because I pay that little attention. So please, realize, I did what I did to help you. I would still be willing to help you if you wanted it, even after that rather nasty e-mail exchange.
TheNecromancer
3160
Wow, I'm not even going to bother responding to that whole "I'm a victim of the hive-mind RMN machine" remark. It's a trap.
but
Maybe you haven't done enough to warrant a change in attitude? Maybe.
Yes, this is "your" game. You made it...for other people. If you expect people to like it, and obviously you do, then you are shooting yourself in the foot by holding this "it's my game and I'll do what I want" attitude. A game doesn't become popular by magic. If you don't want to make a crowd pleaser, don't expect a huge following.
You could not do the opposite of what it means to be humble. hah
but
things I cannot or will not change for various reasons I don't want to discuss in-depth here.
But there hasn't been even a blip of improvement of attitude for any of the requested changes I've made to "my" game.
Maybe you haven't done enough to warrant a change in attitude? Maybe.
Yes, this is "your" game. You made it...for other people. If you expect people to like it, and obviously you do, then you are shooting yourself in the foot by holding this "it's my game and I'll do what I want" attitude. A game doesn't become popular by magic. If you don't want to make a crowd pleaser, don't expect a huge following.
I'm not sure how much more humble I can get than jokingly calling something "Codename: The Greatest Game That Ever Was Or Will Be".
You could not do the opposite of what it means to be humble. hah
Cozzer
0
No, seriously, were people really bothered by the codename thing? °°
Leaving the review drama aside, I think you really can't take that project nickname as serious if you aren't intentionally trolling.
Leaving the review drama aside, I think you really can't take that project nickname as serious if you aren't intentionally trolling.
author=Max McGee
So making better games/new games/different games seems pointless because the response I get is always completely unrelated to the quality of the game in question. Journeyman is technically speaking hugely better than games I've made in the past that have been better received; the reason it's technically better is because it incorporates feedback from past reviews of past games. Nonetheless, its reception is worse, because RMN as a whole likes me even less now than it did then; I grow more hated with each post, it seems, and if there's anything I should really work on, it's that.
You are delusional, and this is purely false.
Speaking as a person who has no reason to defend or attack the "RMN hive mind" and as someone who doesn't hold a strong negative or positive attitude towards you, I can rationally and safely say that, in this matter, everyone is right, and you are wrong.
I know you won't be convinced, and I'll leave it at that.
kumada
3917
Uh, Calunio, do you mean everyone as in 'everyone the hivemind, which doesn't really exist,' or everyone as in 'everyone who's commented in one of these threads, including the people who like the game, and including any conflicting viewpoints'? Is it maybe 'everyone who's critiqued this game, but not the people who liked it' or perhaps 'everyone who's weighed in so far on whether there's a hivemind at all'?
I'm seeing at least four ways to read that last remark, and I kinda want to ask for clarification.
I'm seeing at least four ways to read that last remark, and I kinda want to ask for clarification.
I read both reviews. One of the authors said he liked the game, the other one said he didn't have a lot of fun. But objectively speaking, they had very smiliar point of views. I didn't see anyone praising this game too much, and no one saying it was terrible, most people said it's ok but needs some fine-tuning. I didn't see any actual conflicting viewpoints.
Max McGee
But in general the PH of this community is very acidic, at least to me personally, at least toward my games.
It's "pH."
***
Also, make better games and the community will probably like them more. And you think this game is polished...? Warcraft III is polished. Megaman X is polished. Chrono Trigger is polished. This is a bunch of scripts thrown together based on a fever dream of an idea.
Re: Hivemind, this is one of the least hivemindy RM* sites. So, uh, seriously. Get over it.
McGee
I'm not sure how much more humble I can get than jokingly calling something "Codename: The Greatest Game That Ever Was Or Will Be".
Quote of the year.
