Thoughts on criticism in the fuzzy online world of indie games discussion
Tags: posts, from dreamwidth, twitter, meta,
A thread I posted on twitter, unrolled under the cut.
A quote tweet from friede led to some extra discussion.
So far all the discussion I've seen of my games has been overall positive, and the few critical comments have been helpful and/or mild. I like to think I am, and come across as, someone who would be open to constructive criticism. And in general, people obviously do harshly criticise indie games all the time. But I do wonder how much of a chilling effect us all being in each other's spaces may be having on criticism. I know I feel very aware that any other VN dev whose games I criticise, at least on this account, will plausibly read it.
Also there's some point I want to make about the difference between review, feedback, and more (abstract? literary?) analysis, and how these all have different relationships with consumers, fans, authors, etc but it's not coming together.
I'm mostly talking about like...good faith/reasonable criticism, though I do also think people should be able to be like 'GOD that Northanger Abbey game is BORING' or whatever without me coming into their DMs to explain how it's actually super fun. WHICH IT IS, of course, but still.
Oh and of course it's not all bad! The melting pot of ideas/games/criticism is interesting and inspiring too. (I am remembering why I hate twitter threads I always have extra thoughts and can't EDIT)