This is one of those posts that I'm not particularly happy with, read at your own risk, I probably said at least one or two things that are really stupid.  But whatever.

 

Sometimes a vocal corner of the internet ends up getting up in arms about some thing or another and I get wind of it.  Often I never bother actually looking at what the actual discussions are, because I already know there is not really anything to be gained from it.  This is no exception.

There are times when it pays to understand discourse and debate, so that we can better educate ourselves.  The rather short-lived (.....) BLM "uprising" was an example of something that was an issue about which many people were woefully uneducated (not surprising, when you think about the structure of our education), and could stand to learn more about abolition, the prison-industrial complex, the Tuskegee Study, etc etc.

Then there are the threads that pop up when "Media figure X purportedly did something terrible, but victim Y has a different story".  Learning about these situations has got to be about as useful as following tabloid stories in magazines about random celebrities (i.e. not very).  Yes, the truth can affect how much you respect or trust a responsible party.  That matters if, for example, you are choosing whether or not to directly support that person (purchasing their works, for example?).  Otherwise, it really can't....can it?

Ah, maybe it's because people feel that "someone is wrong on the internet".

...

Anyways, there has been some talk involving creators and gamedevs, so I thought I'd write something about that general subject (which is maybe unrelated to whatever is going on).

As a creator of various distributed content (games, music, etc...) I'm well aware that there are many struggles when it comes to releasing your works to the outside world -- and subsequently, getting "feedback" on those works.  This is something that is universally difficult for any sort of creator.  Receiving negative criticism, for example, is understandably difficult (to put it lightly) for many people.

To some extent, these are inherent problems that come as part of the deal.  Sometimes these are "skills" that can be nurtured (or neglected).  Learning to deal with your own ego, as well as having to decide on your beliefs of what an artist <-> consumer relationship should entail, I would argue are hard but important struggles for creators to go through.

...And at the same time, there are things that I really believe creators shouldn't have to go through.  Things like being denied basic levels of human respect, dealing with extreme entitlement, dealing with toxic behavior, etc.  I know this because both myself and other creators within my circles have to deal with these things constantly (to varying degrees).

When I talk about this issue with friends, it's really hard for me to know what I can say is the right way to move forward in terms of even doing anything about this problem.  Yeah, I wish I could just tell everyone "hey, be nicer to creators and respect their time", but obviously that is both ineffectual and ignores a lot of nuance.  Lately I've really just begun to think that a large root of the problem is perhaps due to a lack of empathy (and dare I say, compassion) for creators.  In other words, it's hard to know how damaging your behavior can be to a creator without having been on the other side of the interaction.  Anecdotally, a large portion (maybe all...) of transgressions that I've experienced in this way as a creator were not intended to harm.

I'd be remiss to directly parallel toxic/entitled behavior toward creators with racism, but I can't help but draw the parallel and use similar terms here.  I've been talking with a close friend a lot about marginalized groups and their (our?) struggles to be understood by those in power (white men...), even those who are "trying to understand".  And it's extremely frustrating sometimes trying to explain seemingly basic concepts to people who then double down on their stance, start gaslighting you, or mansplaining, ...  And a large part of this perhaps stems from (white) priviledge and the fact that those in power often can't really empathize with something they've never actually encountered or experienced for themselves.

We already know that creators are an extreme minority.  It may feel weird to talk about them as a marginalized group in the sense that consumers of content are the "people in power", but honestly with the power dynamics that are set up nowadays, it's perhaps not that far off from the truth.  And just as (white) privilege can make it difficult (?) for people to properly empathize with minorities, I think audiences perhaps lack a proper understanding of what their interactions look like from the other side of things.

I'd like you to look at the comments and feedback on a piece of content (a game, a video, an article, a piece of art), and ask yourself how many of these messages are written with the explicit intent of actually benefiting the creator in question in a helpful way.  Overwhelmingly, I find that most of them are not, and I think this speaks to what I see as a problem.

Let me take some sample comments from my works as case studies.  Brace yourselves....here we go:

"is there a way too full screen?? im on mac and i want full experience lol ;p" 

Well, this one's easy.  This person just plain wants me to directly offer them tech support.  Now, I'm not opposed to answering questions, but typing in incomplete sentences with poor grammar really doesn't encourage me to want to help.  This comment also incorrectly assumes that running a game in fullscreen is the "full experience".

"just lacking a windows build for people like me that dosen't like to be connected...."

This one is "just pointing out something they want", right?  Well, there's a good reason I don't provide standalone builds for all of my WebGL games -- that's 4 times the number of builds to maintain and update (webgl + windows + osx + linux).  But of course, it probably doesn't occur to this person that they're asking me to maintain 60+ builds instead of ~15, nor do they understand the time involved in this.  They're just "letting me know".  ...in other words, they're saying it would be nice if I could do all of this extra work for free.  No thanks, but I can at least give them an option:

My response: "Feel free to download the html5 version, either directly or via the itch app."
Their reply: "thanks but I don't understand how..."

.......great.

Ok, let's look at something a little better instead:

"thank you for this interactive fiction
it's a great way to deal with the theme of (lost+renewed) friendship"

Wow, this one IS actually written to benefit me -- this person actually said "thank you" for all of the hours that I sank into making this game (and telling a personal story).  That makes me feel great.

Alright, what about this one?

"STOP IVE NEVER CRIED THIS MUCH OVER A GAME WHAT"

I get a lot of comments like this where people are commenting on their reactions (hopefully positive??) to my work.  While I certainly don't mind hearing good things about my work, I would argue that a large portion of these messages are written as a form of self-expression for the commenter rather than a message that's actually for the purpose of helping the creator.  Maybe I'm just arguing semantics here, but I really feel a distinction between the previous message, which thanked me for what I did, versus these message that simply comments on what the poster's opinion was.

Here's one on a "One Hour Compo" music track that I created in one hour:

"The first 5 seconds really set the tempo for the level. Up until 1:16 I felt like I was listening to a Megaman 3 track, but the minute after before looping is odd and feels a bit out of place. It's too extended. I like the sfx and etc could be condensed to 30~ seconds max, and serve as a better bridge to loop back to the quick tempo. Started at 10/10, ends at a 7/10."

It's an honest critique and review.  That has to be helpful to the artist, right?  Sadly...no, it's really not.  This is really the kind of stuff I'm talking about.  This person honestly could have been thinking "hey, I see a way in which I think this artist could improve their craft, let me help them out by providing my feedback".  It's hard for me to "blame" this person, but I have to point out that there are many reasons why this is not helpful to me.  Here are some:

- Providing feedback on a timed musical sketch that was done in an hour is like taking an artist's one-minute figure sketch and saying "Yeah, I feel like the lines could be cleaner and you could add more detail.  Also why is it not colored?"
- Who do you think understands how to make the music that I want to make better, a random person on the internet, or myself who has been writing music and exploring my own tastes and creativity since 2004??

Something that I really want to point out about this message is the lack of qualifiers and the way that it states opinion as fact.  This person did not write, "I don't know if you feel this way too but I personally thought this section sounded odd".  They stated facts: "It's too extended".  "It's odd and feels out of place."  I used to speak like this too, until I realized that it sounds really presumptuous to state your opinions as facts (especially after you later realize you were wrong...).

But either way, what good does it serve me to hear your negative feedback on my song?  Do I really need to hear that you didn't like something I made?  No...this is not useful to me.  This may shock you to hear, but not all creators are posting their works with the express intent of gathering opinions from the general public in order to inform their process.

Something you need to understand about the dynamics of these situations is that a given creator can receive hundreds if not thousands of comments on their works.  A good rule of thumb here is to imagine that 100 different people write a similar comment to yours and imagine how you would feel?  If I get a new critique on every single one of the songs that I post that details everything I did "wrong" in it I'm going to get tired REALLLL fast.

 

Let's look at some bug reports:

I found a bug, and I'm now softlocked. I'll attach a picture, basically I collected the egg on the bottom left, then died to the knives  on the way back and respawned at the top (where I entered the room from),  but I can't move or shapeshift anymore.

Edit: I lost the screenshot and I reloaded the page to log in to itch.io, so I can't take a new one. The bug happened in the door where you get the IV shape. After getting it you go left, then down, and it's in a room where there's an egg at the bottom left part, in a narrow hallway with knives coming out of the top.

I'll be the first to admit I don't like hearing about bugs in my games, but this comment is actually very helpful.  This person is providing information that will help me improve my game (if I so choose...remember, this is a game jam game that I made for free...I'm not obligated to do anything with it...).  They've provided the exact scenario of the bug and described the conditions for reproducing it (even if their screenshot upload failed).  I was able to address this bug and fix it.  Hooray!

Contrast to the "bug reports" that simply say "Help it doesn't work", or "Game is broken".  No repro information, no browser version, no stacktrace, nothing.  You're implying that a dev should do all this work for you.  For free.

I'm not sure I remember what the point of this whole post was as it has seemingly just turned into a pointless rant about dealing with entitlement and stupidity.  I guess what I was hoping to illustrate is how feedback is not inherently helpful to a creator.  There is a time and place for well-written and constructive criticism, but I think the systems that we have in place do not facilitate this, as the pattern of interaction seems to revolve around people simply saying whatever they want to say, rather than what will actually help the creator.  It doesn't help when these feedbacks are stated as fact without taking context into account or being prompted.

If you really have some ideas that you think would help benefit a creator to do better work (unlikely, but possible), you can present them as possible ideas (with the understanding that they can and will be ignored) without criticizing the content that this person has provided (oftentimes for free...).

At some point the cons will start to far outweigh the pros of these channels of communication and when that happens I simply start disengaging (read: disable comments on everything).  The message that actually help me are the ones that people would actually mail to me personally ("thank you", "hey, I just wanted to let you know that this work really meant something to me"), and everything else seems less and less and less useful, if at all.

I don't know, maybe I "just need to have less of an ego", but honestly I feel like that rhetoric feels like gaslighting.  Maybe people just need to be less entitled and more empathetic.

But that's the problem -- how can everyone understand what it's like to receive harsh comments on their personal artistic work when so few people have actually done that?  How would you feel if you posted a video of yourself performing something and people just started commenting "Needs work, 5/10" and "lol you look dumb".  Frighteningly, that sort of thing probably happens on a daily basis...

The sad part is that I'm afraid that even when people DO have that negative experience, they just double down on it by saying "fuck these people, they're all wrong", and maybe proceed to "get their revenge" by inflicting the same harsh sentiments on others' works, putting them down to protect their own ego.

...yeah maybe I should just disengage with all feedback.