|
Having met with some rather harsh comments on my own game, I decided to take a look around Steam Greenlight to see what kinds of comments other games were getting; wondering if my game had drawn a particular type of hatred somehow. Nope. Not just me. I was upset by what I found.
I decided to compile some of the worst into one place, if nothing else but for my own validation. As you read these comments, try to picture them being aimed at a real person and their work.
Now give the author of these little gems the opportunity to hit the big 'thumbs down' button to get the added satisfaction of voting the game down. Then, tell me how this is 'progress' in terms of how we view the value of games and how they are published. It's the gamification of trolling. Or the trollification of gaming, as my good friend Sergey pointed out on Twitter.
- 0% original and you know it.
- This company is so funny. Every single game they posted looks like complete shit.
- Really shitty graphics for a 2012 game. It looks like an original Xbox game or worse...
- There's a point where something has gone so horribly awry with a game that constructive criticism is of no use, and the only recourse is to burn the thing down, disassemble the foundation, and start again at the drawing board. This game has pretty clearly reached that point. This trite dialogue. This horrendous voice acting. This terrible artwork reminiscent of those "How to Draw Anime" tutorial books. Even if I liked visual novels, I still doubt I'd have anything nice to say.
- OH MY GOD WHO REALLY THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD GAME. I WISH I NEVER WATCHED THE VIDEO THAT WAS SO BAD THIS GAME LOOKS SO BAD. NOT JUST NO BUT HELL NO
- how can somebodey say awesome for this? go back to newgrounds and dont come back
- There's a difference between amateur games (in this case ULTRA amateur) and indie games...
- meh, feels like something I'd be forced into via bundle, downvoting for a better future.
- It's ugly and non-fun for my taste. And trailer's soundtrack is annoying.
- Generic, ugly, and it looks slow as molasses.
- My cat came up with better art when it walked across my keyboard when I left Windows Paint up by accident.
- 300 games are waiting for my vote. 90% are just so bad and they are waisting my time. This is one of them.
- graphics look like MS paint.. no sorry
- I hate furries and this game looks like ass, so a hard downvote from me.
- Dull and uninteresting textures, generic electronic music taken from 3rd parties I assume without permission, and a "Furries fighting for thur freedumb aginst the hoomans!" plot. I don't think I have ever downvoted something so quickly before.
- I've lost my will to live after seeing this.
- Just when you thought simulation games couldn't get any more boring. This happened.
- Bullshit VN pandering to lonely weaboo shitnerds. No thanks.
- he looks like my uncle that molested me =(
- Every time I think I've found the worst Greenlight has to offer, the next page has something even more dire.
- Get your iOSWare out of Steam you fuck.
- Quite possibly the worst submission yet. Do us all a favor and just take it down.
- what the hell is this crap.
- pretentious name, no footage, shit graphics
- Old gameplay with just another design.. downvote
- Another bad game that took no imagination to make and takes no skill to play.I would not recommend this for steam.
- >game in development for 6 months - NIGGA MOST INDY GAMES ARE IN DEVELOPMENT FOR YEARS.
- Game looks like it was made in a week, boring textures, not all that innovative either. Should have put your game on greenlight at a later date. Downvoted.
- wow this looks like shit.
- This game makes the Pope sad. : (
- Looks like a lame Portal clone.
- Thumbs down for ripping off eve online
- I would love this if they made it F2P! But it´s not.... SO C´YA!
- Looks like someone added a SuperFX chip... oh wait this isn't the 90s
- Oh god. Please fuck off with this trash... this is steam, NOT FUCKING FACEBOOK.
- You're a bloody idiot if you think this will actually become even remotely popular.
- that game sucks like hell
- What the HELL it is???????????
- NO! just no. this game sucks and its overpriced
- A 3079 based video game with 1960 graphix? wft
- why are you making this fucking shit?
- So, you're ripping off other games, openly admitting you do and 62 people favorited this game?
- Looks unoriginal and bland.
- I hate that title image...
- Didn't games like this used to be FREE?
- This game is bad and you should feel bad.
- Just reading the title gave me cancer in my boredom gland.
- This looks like a game I made when I was ten.
- What...? Get this off of here.
- No. This is incredibly, incredibly redundant. We have a million games like this. This is undergraduate level game-development.
- Seriously Steam, you have to put something in greenlight so we can block people who make shit like this
- Keep the trash games away form steam!
- Damn, look at those textures! Thumbs up! No. Down. Always down.
- Hell no. Make better graphics and make it moar original...
- No online = no good. With this day and age, there isnt any excuess why you dont include it in your game. Seems like your just out for money. People will buy this game, complain there isnt any online, then you guys are like "ITS IN THE SEQUAL". Naww Im good, downvote from me.
- Steam doesn't need kongregate games, sorry. Also no matter how many times you delete comments it isn't going to change anything.
- "ANOTHER FUCKING 2D GAME?"
There is certainly a leaning toward attacking games that don't have the best graphics (probably easier targets) and anything that looks as though it may have been or could be an iOS game is a particularly strong target and the same with Flash games. The trolls are extremely Flashist. If you don't have multi-player in a racing game or a shooter, you're most likely in for a rough time too.
A lot of commenters complain about games being too expensive- the games on here don't list pricing and it is prior to pricing being agreed or advertised. Some commenters down vote purely because games aren't in the free to play section.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of stats Valve end up releasing to the public about the trending of particular game types etc., but for now all I can say is .. to avoid the trollification, you need to make AAA quality awesome, innovative games with original storylines, 12 hours of gameplay, great voice acting and never-seen before gameplay. But stay indie as you do it, of course.
I love games and I love making games. I love people who make games! To see this Greenlight mess really saddens me. All we want to do is have our games played and hopefully make enough money to make more games because we love what we do - why do people have to be so hateful about it? Really sad.
Someone asked me why I care about comments like this. I say that if someone came into your place of work and started hurling abuse at you and your colleagues, you’d want to say something about it too. I don’t think for a second that we should be as weak as to just say ‘This is the internet’ and let this happen. Especially in an environment like Steam, where there should be more moderation to kick these users and ban them from writing anything more offensive.
Another comment I've heard is 'some of the games on there deserve it'. Really? Comments like 'Fuck you.', 'Get your iOSWare out of Steam you fuck.', 'he looks like my uncle that molested me' and 'Just reading the title gave me cancer in my boredom gland.'? Does anyone deserve that? Should we just allow abusive comments because the game doesn't meet our own idea of quality?
I think that there needs to be a method in place to report these users and get them banned for life, with their votes discounted from the system. Will anyone do anything about it? I'm a realist- I doubt it. But if we don't push for more moderation on sites like this, there's never any consequence for trolling.
On Steam Greenlight I believe that the 'vote down' button actually makes being an ass a rewarding and fun experience - which is why I call it the 'gamification of trolling'.
|
So its 3d DX11 for me.
But I know that in the indie scene there are lot of small even 2D games wich make sense to me. But isn't the stuf I'am looking for. Because little dev's hobby indies start often small. Me as novice hobby one man team need to start simple and small with short project.
So dissing small project in the indie scene make no sense to me. Even as GFX minded I am.
But I Know lot of people do retro and love small indie games. Just not me.
Bashing latest COD games wich have enough fund rescources to do a DX11 port for the PC version. Make more sense to me. But even that not my thing bashing, I play that game to.
Am I supposed to only rate games and vote for those that I like?
For example, I am not that much into first person shooters. So should I downvote all shooters I see because I would not buy them if they were on steam or should I just ignore those?
On the topic:
From a gametesters viewpoint I am quiet used to critizising games.
But criticism and what you have posted up there are two really different things I guess.
Unfortunately, 99% of the users don't seem to be capable of providing constructive criticism. In addition most of those comments seem to be based on a brief impression of the game or maybe just looking at the provided video. And while your video should provide vital information about your title, I doubt that it is sufficient for a proper comment.
But if you are lucky you may be able to filter out that 1% that might help you improve your game.
There was one in particular called "space taxi" or something. It was truely awful. The graphics were worst than the Amiga remake, and some said even the C64 original.
There is a lot of rubbish on there that barely constitutes a game.
Part of the problem comes from the fact that it is a rating system for these games to be on steam, and most of them are unfinished.
No-one wants an unfinished game on steam.
"Steam Greenlight also helps developers get feedback from potential customers and start creating an active community around their game as early in the development process as they like." (http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/about/?appid=765§ion=faq)
In other words Steam doesn't expect all these submissions to be finished games anyways so "To be fair, a lot fo your sentences are worse than I can paint n MS paint and I've seen better and more original comments than yours in C64 games". How do you like it?
;-p
I think there is a tendency for people to take a single metric that is okay to use in some cases and then apply it to everything. For rating games it's often the graphics, even though there have been several games I've played that felt like they suffered for it. In FPS games I've found that people tend to always determine performance based on kills as though they were playing basic Death Match regardless of which game type is actually is. In MMOs it seems to be DPS meters rather than actual contribution to the team. It seems to me that in most cases it stems from a lack of understanding about whatever it is.
Players don't seem to understand that taking/defending a node in Domination is the only thing that contributes to winning and that their kill counts mean nothing. Same goes for tracking DPS in MMOs in any situation where pure DPS is not the victory condition (which is most situations if there is any attempt to have players do anything other than stand in place and spam a rotation). Players will write off a game that has massive amounts of depth, or back end tech that would have been unheard of a few years ago just because of the graphics. It often appears that anything that isn't instantly visible just doesn't have any meaning for them.
I think what bothers me the most about comments like these is that they so often not only reek of ignorance of how games (or software in general) are made, but they come from people who have certainly never created a game before and likely haven't even created an idea for something and they personally attack the developers of the games.
You should Greenlight a game like this.
...I should Greenlight a game like this.
- Male
- In their teens
- Have either too little or WAY too much self-esteem
- Play games in order to NOT have to deal with real-life
Now, I remember how I was when I was a teenager, and I know for a fact that I was a complete Fuckwad until sometime in my early twenties. Do we really expect constructive discourse from this demographic?
If anything, I hope this is a good heads up for anyone who goes to Greenlight and experiences the kind of serial trolling I'm talking about. Indie devs can all take comfort in the fact that this is caused by:
a) Trolls, plain and simple folk out to cause troll-like silliness (trolliness).
or
b) People who are incapable of expressing themselves without being total asses about it.
I guess asking Valve to put it up was the way it was done earlier, and worst case they would just say no. With Greenlight it seems like you have to participate in "Indy Idol", and have all your friends vote you up before you are even considered.
Luckily (for indy-devs) GOG is now also an option.
The experience at Newgrounds seems to indicate that trolls lack real power to hurt decent games, though. The vast silent majority vote reasonably, the trolls are just more likely to leave a comment in addition to voting. A Reddit-style comment rating system would definitely help fight this.
It is worth the effort to stomp on jerky behaviour. It builds a better community by making one of its founding principles mutual respect not Lord of the Flies-type anarchy.
I don't deem the game I am just about to finish suitable for Greenlight so I'll wait till the next to start putting something on there.
Sadly, there *are* some terrible games on Greenlight, but I'm not about to spit out my troll dummy and start swearing at the creators. I'm just going to 1) not vote it up and 2) go find something more positive to spend my time doing, like finding a game I actually *do* like and up voting it.
If a troll doesn't like it, a troll should go somewhere else and leave the creative people to be creative. Abusive troll should be banned and sent back under the bridge to wait for goats. Trolling deserves a penalty. A ban from what they enjoy doing (trolling), not just the humiliation of the world seeing their name and knowing what a trolling arse they are.
"..so they definitely deserve criticism"
Calling somebody's game $hit isn't constructive criticism and that is the only kind that is acceptable. If your words are hurtful then they are hurtful and there is no justification for that when commenting on other people's hard work.
I completely agree with this article, and that statement. Unfortunately I also agree with the comment:
"Will anyone do anything about it? I'm a realist- I doubt it."
Steam will never ban users - that causes a loss of profit. Personally I'd suggest just getting rid of the 'rewarding asses' button, that way you can ONLY 'vote up', and if you don't like it, feel free to comment where I can ignore idiots / take in constructive critisism, but you don't destroy my chances of getting on Steam.
So let's assume that button gets removed anyway. People can still leave comments that hurt your feelings. Should comments also be removed then? Just the same as the downvote button, they bear no effect on the outcome.
I'm sad that developers feel this way about the gaming community. If you were ever a part of it before becoming a developer, then you'd know that this is how a large portion of gamers express themselves. If you weren't ever a part of it, then it's time you educate yourself. Greenlight could be the exact tool you need to learn.
Welcome to the gaming community.
It was also featured in indiegame the movie.
Don't let the naysayers & trolls bring you down.
edit: and yes, the vote down should definitely go
Always going to have haters - just have to learn to deal with it. And if the 'vote down' goes so they don't hurt my business, I'm even willing to accept / deal with them even here on Greenlight!
First, you definitely need to fix whatever it is that people are complaining about. One, two, maybe even three unnecessary comments about something wrong with a game...you could probably just blow those off. But if negative comments are a pattern in your comments section, then it seems like there is a common thing that everyone is obviously noticing that they don't think is great. Address it.
Second, harsh comments, profanity, non-constructive feedback, etc. are all what you define as trolling. You need to teach yourself the real meaning of that word. If these people were trolling you they'd stick around and continue to prod. But your game left such a bad impression on them that they felt the need to share their feelings with you. And then what? Have you gotten into back-and-forth arguments with them where at some point you realized they were trolling(under the real definition, not yours) you the whole time? Nope. What actually happens is that these people leave their comments and never return to view your terrible game. Trolls need a reaction. People leaving comments about a terrible game don't.
I wish people would understand what a troll is. Someone that disagrees with your opinion that your game is a good game...is not trolling. Someone that leaves a nasty comment about your game...is not trolling. Someone that has his feelings hurt because people say mean things then writes an entire article dedicated to criticizing these people...could be trolling. After all, you've elicited a decent response...which is the hallmark of any real troll.
By writing this article you've lumped up large groups of people(read: customers) into a bunch you call "trolls". By writing this sentence, I'm rolling you up into a group I like to call "terrible developers". Am I trolling you? Everyone has their own opinion, I suppose, like your terrible one from the article, but have I not stated my case clearly enough? Instead of taking any of this feedback, good or bad, from the users and deciding what and how to change you decided to return the criticism. Imagine if you will:
CEO of Ford: Here is our new 2013 Ford Pinto! Isn't it amazing?
Regular Person: OMG it's sofa king ugly I'm not buying one of those that looks like a car I drove when I was 10.
CEO of Ford: Wow you're such a troll. I wish I could kick you out of here forever with your trolling. Troll!
Do you think Regular Person purchased, or maybe even just reconsidered purchasing, a 2013 Ford Pinto that day? Maybe if the CEO would have been a little more understanding and responsive to the feedback, no matter how negative, it could have played out differently. Anyway...
Are you new to Steam? There are several reporting features for troublesome users. And as submitter of a game, you can remove comments and ban users from commenting on your game.(Go ahead, though...be that guy and see how well it works out.) You started off your article with: "Having met with some rather harsh comments on my own game", so I decided to head over to your game's page and see what people have had to say. Oops, looks like I'm too late. I don't even see a single negative comment on Headlong.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92944381
It appears that your comments section has been sanitized. Unless your definition of "rather harsh" is: "The graphics need much more polish (a custom font and better lighting at least), but other than that, this looks great!" Am I missing the "harsh comments"? Could you quote a couple of the "harsh comments" from your game? I can't find any.
What a mess this article was. You demonize the exact same people you expect to hand over their cash. Furthermore, your company, PsychicParrot games, seems to be focused on the mobile market. In my experience, mobile games generally don't translate very well over on PC. But that's what people see when they visit your Greenlight game page. And since people are browsing Greenlight from a PC, they aren't so fond of seeing their favorite PC game store flooded with mobile games who's original design was based around the limitations and constraints of a mobile device. What were you expecting?
But where we are at now is that you got a lot of criticism on your game, deleted it and then wrote an article about how terrible your potential customers are.
What I said was "You started off your article with: "Having met with some rather harsh comments on my own game", so I decided to head over to your game's page and see what people have had to say." What that means is that you started off your article with: "Having met with some rather harsh comments on my own game", so I decided to head over to your game's page and see what people have had to say. And I don't see a single harsh comment on your game's Greenlight page. Could you quote some of them for me? I read each and every comment on your game and I didn't see a single thing that any rational person could consider harsh. So if you have the time, I'm curious to see which of the comments currently there are ones you'd consider harsh.
But I know you understood my response to your article. It's a funny response you gave, though. From this chair it looks like you are criticizing my response for the same thing you are guilty of. The only difference being that I was able to properly comprehend your rant. At any point did I mention or even speculate that the comments you quoted were from your game? Of course I didn't. I'm not even sure how that was extrapolated from my original response. I was mostly criticizing you for not understanding the community while being deceptive to a different set of people that aren't exactly your target audience(Gamasutra).
No wonder you aren't having any luck on Greenlight. You don't understand a thing about this community and expect everyone to not share their comments, constructive or not. You weren't blaming Valve for allowing any of this to happen, you were placing the blame squarely on the community. Well you did blame Valve a little bit when you mentioned that there should be more moderation. Which is weird, because you've clearly moderated your own game's page to remove any of the negative comments people have left.
I'm sorry if people from the Steam Community have hurt your feelings. You're trying to sell a product to PC gamers and it sounds like they don't appreciate the work you've done. But your expectations are unrealistic. Terrible games make it to Steam all the time and this is just the community's way of saying they don't want another one.
Personally, I think you just need to grow to accept that your game might not be wanted. I converse with developers on a daily basis. We discuss things like the sort of feedback they get from their communities. The comments they get are a lot more harsh than anything I've seen so far on your game's Greenlight page and not once have I seen them blog about it with such contempt for their target audience. They do their best to understand the constructive criticism and they glance over the rest. They understand that their software isn't for everyone and not everyone will always be satisfied with their decisions. They don't universally pan the community as a whole because of a few rabble-rousers. They can accept that they don't always have the best ideas and sometimes have to change their strategy to better suit the desires of their market.
Your entire article reeks of you taking this personally. Have a peek over at the popular games that people want to be able to purchase on Steam. Project Zomboid, Postal 2, Routine, etc. ...they all have negative comments and nowhere is a developer of any of these taking the negative, unconstructive feedback personally. Some of the negativity might be hard to find as these have generated a lot more interest than your game, so comments can be hundreds of pages long on these games' Greenlight pages. But it's there.
I just don't understand your position. You've criticized the community for leaving harsh comments and took the time to throw a little jab in at Valve. But harsh comments are nowhere to be found on your game's page so it's clear that you've taken measures to ensure only positive feedback is seen on there. Which means you know that other developers who've submitted games also have this same ability. So you went around and collected various quotes from around the community and shared them with Gamasutra. And what did this prove? To me, it proved that other devs have much thicker skin, and integrity, than do you. Or maybe they just don't care. Either way, aside from alienating your potential future customers(sadly, a large majority of them will never see this), what have you accomplished by posting this?
Also, if you remember, please quote some of those harsh comments on your game's page.
This bit will probably get some heated comments but here we go. I know we all want to make our own games the way we want to with the graphics, story, mechanic we think are cool, but we also have to remember that if we are asking people to spend their money on said game, and expect them to do so, we have to cater a little to what they want. I get rather tired of people complaining about how no one understands their art/game/writing and why they aren't making money from it. Well if no one understands/buys it then the creator did something wrong in selling or even creating it. Its the selling ice to Eskimos kind of thing. One really needs to understand the market that they are selling to. Steam is a very "hardcore" group of gamers (for the most part). That group of gamers aren't really sold on indie games and want their AAA games. Why would a creator target that platform if their creation isn't even in the same ballpark as those games? Not really a big question, its money. The idea is that getting onto Steam equals getting their game in front of millions of potential customers who, because of Steam's approval process, believe that even an indie game is worth a shot, and then buy it, thus making tons of money (whatever the creators intentions for that money are; good or evil). Take that belief away and we get the iOS market. Not every game can fit on Steam because their customers don't want every game. Its a sad reality, but it is a reality. If it isn't your market don't be surprised at the rejection. Take the game and go where there is a market for it.
Some games need more work than others, certainly, and the whole thing is a process for developers, but all that's largely disconnected from the commentary trolling, which is just the backwash of humanity.
It's not about deleting bad comments or 'censoring' thoughts. It's about deleting comments that are deliberately offensive to the developer for NO OTHER REASON than the troll doesn't like the game. Tell devs what you don't like (try to form sentences without swear words or three word comments like 'graphics iz badz') and the devs will most likely try to fix it or at least look at the problem to see if it's something shared with other gamers or something that they can actually address. Since most indies are on a budget just above zero (if we're lucky) it may not even be possible to solve some of the issues - despite troll thinking, indie devs are usually less than minimum wage workers doing the job because they love it.
Most of the games on Greenlight are made by regular people who just want to make a good game. They're not out to steal from us, cheat us or eat the cat. It isn't wrong for them to want to charge you for their games, either - it takes A LOT of work to make a game. Sadly, it seems that this is something that the average troll doesn't realize.
I've been a gamer since the 1980's and I refuse to accept the argument that "to be a gamer, this is how you have to treat other humans". That's not the behaviour of a gamer, that's the behaviour of a person who has issues and wants to take out their frustrations on someone. If you want to take out your anger on someone, go do something worthwhile like emailing your MP about the education system. You're wasting your energy trying to offend game devs because at the end of the day your comment will be deleted and the dev will still be the creative winner having actually made something and spent their time productively and creatively.
This 'it's OK to offend the indie devs because we don't like their games' community also needs to be made aware that, despite what they may think, comments like "look pretty retarded" are not going to help us in getting better games.
Sorry, but yes, this IS censorship. I don't like trolling either. The real problem (an Internet problem, actually) is that people say and write whatever they want but, most of the time, they don't suffer the consequences of their words. If, in real life, outside the Internet, I want to say harsh and offencive words to you for no other reason than "I don't like you", I can do that. But most certainly, I would be sued for that. The real problem here is that the sueing part is missing. So the review system is broken, not that the comments are wrong because they make you sad (even if you're wright about everything you wrote on the article). Change the way people pay for their words. Don't forbid them say whatever they want.
Don't confuse your "right to free speech" with posting on Steam or any other forum. What is the purpose of Greenlight? Is it to subject hopeful developers to lowest common denominator? Why do you think the eholes in a community need to have the "right" to post their servile crap?
It's really about trying to convince people to support your game. If someone's message in not effective say it's not effective, it is that simple. Personal attacks, profanity, unrelated rants are all counter-productive and do not belong in a conversation about whether a game should be up-voted or not.
No it's not. Only the government can censor. Free speech applies only to the government; a private entity like Valve can generally impose whatever restrictions it feels like.
@Adam, I agree with you when you say that Valve, being a private corporation, can make any rules they want, and if you don't like that, go somewhere else. So if they don't want to allow trolling, they won't and my whole point about letting people saying what they think doesn't apply. Yeah, I'll give you that. But it's not only government that censor. Any hierarchical organization, if it was formed democratically, can practice censorship when members start forgetting what democracy means. Power corrupts and Absolute Power corrupts absolutely.
Silly example, sure, but the point is, the venue, in this case Steam Greenlight, dictates the behaviour. It isn't censorship to want the discourse to adhere to some basic principles of civility. If I said to you at the outset, I will delete any post with profanity, that is offtopic or a personal attack is that censorship?
Breakdown of quotes (note that my use of "you" and "your" is not directed at you per se, but at the hypothetical developer who receives these comments):
"0% original and you know it."
Harsh, but not trolling. This person is telling you to improve your game by researching other games. It's hard to say whether the "and you know it" is trolling without context. A lot of games are pitched as "It's a game with retro-style/steampunk/anime/other-pre-define-art-style-graphics!" or "A game with mechanics!" I've seen tons of games pitched these ways, and pitch is supposed to be where you summarize what makes your game unique. If your pitches sound anything like what I mentioned, then your game is probably unoriginal and yes, you know it.
"This company is so funny. Every single game they posted looks like complete shit."
Badly constructed, yes. But it's the equivalent of saying "I hate Zynga games, they're so mindless." They're pointing out a consistency that they don't like about your games, be it lack of polish, 0 attention to graphics because "I'm just one programmer/designer, I no artist" excuse, or that your games just aren't to their taste.
"horrible"
Not trolling, it's an opinion.
"Really shitty graphics for a 2012 game. It looks like an original Xbox game or worse..."
Badly constructed, yes. Not trolling, they are telling you that you have technology/means to push your artwork to a higher level.
"shitty"
An opinion. Would be more professional without the cussing, but still just an opinion. Not trolling.
"There's a point where something has gone so horribly awry with a game that constructive criticism is of no use, and the only recourse is to burn the thing down, disassemble the foundation, and start again at the drawing board. This game has pretty clearly reached that point. This trite dialogue. This horrendous voice acting. This terrible artwork reminiscent of those "How to Draw Anime" tutorial books. Even if I liked visual novels, I still doubt I'd have anything nice to say."
While the commenter claims constructive criticism is no use, this is actually the most constructive comment of the bunch. He/she/it points out why they don't like your game, and telling you that your core failed. Could they have said it in a nicer way? Definitely. Are they trolling? No.
"OH MY GOD WHO REALLY THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD GAME. I WISH I NEVER WATCHED THE VIDEO THAT WAS SO BAD THIS GAME LOOKS SO BAD. NOT JUST NO BUT HELL NO"
This is trolling.
"how can somebodey say awesome for this? go back to newgrounds and dont come back"
This is trolling, especially since it's insulting another games portal.
"There's a difference between amateur games (in this case ULTRA amateur) and indie games..."
Harsh, but not trolling. This person is saying they recognize you're not trying to be Call of Duty, but your game still doesn't make the cut.
"Fuck no."
They don't like what you were trying to go for. Slightly insulting, but not really trolling.
"This looks awful"
Not constructive, but not trolling. An opinion.
"meh, feels like something I'd be forced into via bundle, downvoting for a better future."
Trolling.
"It's ugly and non-fun for my taste. And trailer's soundtrack is annoying."
This is legitimate feedback, not trolling.
"Generic, ugly, and it looks slow as molasses."
This is legitimate feedback, not trolling.
"0/10"
An opinion. Not trolling.
"Go away."
Trolling.
"My cat came up with better art when it walked across my keyboard when I left Windows Paint up by accident."
Trolling.
"pfffff boring"
An opinion. Not trolling.
"300 games are waiting for my vote. 90% are just so bad and they are waisting my time. This is one of them."
Trolling.
"graphics look like MS paint.. no sorry"
Not trolling. Unlike the previous comment, they are not making an outrageous statement for the point of insulting you "My cat can do better..." but are saying they don't like your art style.
"I hate furries and this game looks like ass, so a hard downvote from me."
Trolling.
"Dull and uninteresting textures, generic electronic music taken from 3rd parties I assume without permission, and a "Furries fighting for thur freedumb aginst the hoomans!" plot. I don't think I have ever downvoted something so quickly before."
Aside from the last sentence, this is legitimate feedback.
"I've lost my will to live after seeing this."
Trolling
"Just when you thought simulation games couldn't get any more boring. This happened."
Trolling.
"Bullshit VN pandering to lonely weaboo shitnerds. No thanks."
Trolling.
"he looks like my uncle that molested me =("
Trolling, due to irrelevance.
"Every time I think I've found the worst Greenlight has to offer, the next page has something even more dire."
Trolling.
"Get your iOSWare out of Steam you fuck."
Trolling.
"Quite possibly the worst submission yet. Do us all a favor and just take it down."
Trolling.
"what the hell is this crap."
Trolling.
"pretentious name, no footage, shit graphics"
Legitimate feedback.
"Old gameplay with just another design.. downvote"
Obscure feedback, but not trolling.
"Another bad game that took no imagination to make and takes no skill to play.I would not recommend this for steam."
An opinion, not trolling.
"looks like sperm"
Trolling.
"game in development for 6 months - NIGGA MOST INDY GAMES ARE IN DEVELOPMENT FOR YEARS."
The "NIGGA" part is racist/insulting language, which makes this trolling. Otherwise this is feedback to spend more time polishing your game.
"Game looks like it was made in a week, boring textures, not all that innovative either. Should have put your game on greenlight at a later date. Downvoted."
Legitimate feedback.
"wow this looks like shit."
Harsh, but an opinion. Not trolling.
"graphic look like trash"
An opinion, not trolling.
"Fuck you."
Trolling.
"This game makes the Pope sad. : ("
Trolling.
"Looks like a lame Portal clone."
Not trolling. An opinion, and feedback that your game is too similar to another.
"Thumbs down for ripping off eve online"
Not trolling. An opinion, and feedback that your game is too similar to another.
"I would love this if they made it F2P! But it´s not.... SO C´YA!"
Not trolling, they just don't like your business model.
"Looks like someone added a SuperFX chip... oh wait this isn't the 90s"
Harsh, but not trolling.
"Oh god. Please fuck off with this trash... this is steam, NOT FUCKING FACEBOOK."
Trolling.
"pffff bullshit"
An opinion. Not trolling.
"You're a bloody idiot if you think this will actually become even remotely popular."
Trolling.
"that game sucks like hell"
Mean, but an opinion, not trolling.
"What the HELL it is???????????"
Trolling.
"NO! just no. this game sucks and its overpriced"
Not trolling.
"look pretty retarded!"
Not sure if trolling or opinion.
"A 3079 based video game with 1960 graphix? wft"
They don't like your art style. Not trolling.
"Free please"
Not trolling.
"VOTE THIS GAME DOWN!!!"
Trolling.
"why are you making this fucking shit?"
Trolling.
"So, you're ripping off other games, openly admitting you do and 62 people favorited this game?"
Not trolling. They don't like your "creative" process.
"Looks unoriginal and bland."
An opinion, not trolling.
"I hate that title image..."
Legitimate feedback.
"this looks awful."
An opinion, not trolling.
"Didn't games like this used to be FREE?"
I'm actually not sure if this is trolling or not.
"This game is bad and you should feel bad."
Trolling.
"The colors are terrible."
Legit feedback
"Just reading the title gave me cancer in my boredom gland."
Trolling.
"suck"
An opinion, not trolling.
"This looks like a game I made when I was ten."
Trolling.
"lame"
An opinion, not trolling.
"iPhone shit. Good god."
Trolling.
"What...? Get this off of here."
Trolling.
"No. This is incredibly, incredibly redundant. We have a million games like this. This is undergraduate level game-development."
Not trolling.
"Seriously Steam, you have to put something in greenlight so we can block people who make shit like this"
Trolling.
"Keep the trash games away form steam!"
Trolling.
"Damn, look at those textures! Thumbs up! No. Down. Always down."
Trolling.
"Hell no. Make better graphics and make it moar original...
No online = no good. With this day and age, there isnt any excuess why you dont include it in your game. Seems like your just out for money. People will buy this game, complain there isnt any online, then you guys are like "ITS IN THE SEQUAL". Naww Im good, downvote from me."
Legitimate feedback.
"Steam doesn't need kongregate games, sorry. Also no matter how many times you delete comments it isn't going to change anything."
Trolling.
"ANOTHER FUCKING 2D GAME?"
Trolling.
So some of my trolls calls can be debated, but the point is that a troll insults for the sake of insulting, not really because they don't like your game. Or they extend their negativity from your work to you as a person or make vast generalizations about "people like you". Saying "this game sucks." is not constructive, but definitely not trolling.
The presence of taboo words in a sentence doesn't automatically mean the sentence has nothing constructive to say.
Have a look at Regretsy sometime, where the language flying around will curl your hair -- but I'd value those "fat jealous losers" over anyone else for honest critique of my artwork.
Just because someone's language isn't up to your specification doesn't invalidate their opinion. God forbid someone actually have an emotional response to an infuriating event...
So someone says 'this game controls like crap' and you stick your fingers in your ears and sing Mary Had a Little Lamb until they leave?
I generally try to keep a family-friendly appearence online, but to set up an absolute in which to dismiss others, ever, is beyond childish.
As Richard Eid pointed out, this may be a good moment for reflection. Of course there are excessively harsh wording on the samples you brought to the article. OTOH, you should try to look beyond the swearing and extract any useful hints in the comments about what, in the target audience opinion, is wrong with your work. Of course it hurts when people bashes your hard worked game; but try to focus in find out what can be done to improve it, polish it, make it shine. I like to remember how Blizzard was bashed by public and press back in 1995 (1996? Can't remember exactly right now) when they showed the first version of Starcraft; and how despite all the hard work the team already did on the game, they came back to home and scrapped everything to restart from zero and bring us the classic we all know.
Again, this 'it's OK to offend the indie devs because we don't like their games' community needs to be made aware that, despite what they may think, comments like "look pretty retarded" are not going to help us in getting better games.
in the information age, we are now surrounded by millions of people and their opinions, and each person wants their voice to be heard.
but just as if you were trying to give feedback to a band while they are in the middle of a rock concert
1) you have to SCREAM IT so that people hear you
2) you have to say something CHOCK FULL OF HYPERBOLE so that it doesn't get dismissed as normal banter
3) you have to try and say something CLEVER so that it is memorable
basically people realize that to get your voice heard you have to do one or all of these things and suddenly, their voice matters (and they matter by proxy)
you don't listen to or remember people who mention "Ahh they are OK", or "Yeah, they are pretty decent" concerning feedback... plus it is much easier to spout out a bunch on non-thoughtful, non-intelligent feedback, than it is to have a well informed well thought out and communicated opinion or feedback.
anyways, while i agree that it's great to have a free society where people can freely express their opinions, i wonder whether we (as a society) sometimes suffer because those who are more interested in just "being heard/being important" are drowning out those who actually have informative and interesting feedback to offer. (but such is the state of the internet)
and now that indie development is close to feeling established like the non indies, the.. "gamer who has the right to an oppinion and is a consumer who knows what's best for him" became.. the offender.
i am sorry anyone gets such feedback. it is true the internet is full of haters, and it is also true that it is very hard to prove these days who is trolling whom. the "developer" with a crappy game? or the forum poster? but instead of protesting it is best to try to turn it around.
i also aspire to bring my very own game to the public, not on steam/gl or kickstarter, but directly to sale, and i hope my project doesn't get the same treatment, but if it does, i sure as hell am not going to come and complain here.
With that said, there's no call for telling a developer they need to stop making games or that they're a disgrace to the discipline. If you, as a gamer, weren't entertained, then you weren't entertained. It doesn't mean the developer should die a fiery death. Part of the problem is with people's tendency to present opinion ("Frankly, I think your game sucks") as accepted fact ("Your game sucks. Accept that fact.") There's also no call for people telling others to vote a game down. "Oh, I was thinking of playing this game, but someone said it was terrible and told me to vote it down, so I'll just do that instead. That saves me a lot of time and trouble."
Excuse me for a moment, but I do have to say this...I noted that comment somewhere back there about gamers being akin to "serfs" or "slaves" in relation to game developers. You're free to argue this point, but if you assume this relationship can't be applied equally to any other form of media, you're frankly on very shaky ground. To think that the gamer has less control over the way a game is constructed than, say, a moviegoer has over the way a movie is made...I just don't see it. All of the movies that people want to make, but don't for the sake of satisfying the audience, all of the stories authors want to write, but can't for the sake of satisfying readers with "a happy ending"...to think that game developers aren't at least as significantly swayed by the needs of gamers, I do find a bit offensive. If you truly believe there's a plague of game designers creating games based on their own rules and for their own needs, I think your expectations are a bit skewed.
But as for the topic at hand, there are some compromises yet to be made. Like every argument, there are two sides to this one. On one side, you have the need for developers to accept some pretty harsh criticism and understand that, perhaps, some of that harshness is warranted. On the other hand, you have people who are just plain bullies who should not, by any means, be tolerated. Sometimes, it can be hard to draw the line between someone who felt genuinely offended by their experience with your game and someone who just wants to rid the world of their least favorite genre, but it's an important distinction to make. The bullying encouraged by the presumed anonymity of the Internet isn't an industry problem, but a societal one.
Developers are painted as greedy, prideful, egotistical, tone-deaf, uncaring etc... mostly greedy though. Most of the general complaints about developers should be attributed to publishers, the retailers (or like your comment to other industries), or the hardware manufacturers.
Even on Steam, where DRM is built-in on all games, indies are inexplicably adding additional, third-party DRM on top of that. Stardock, for example (which very recently published most of its back catalogue on Steam), requires that users register a serial key and create a Stardock account before any of their games will run.
I wish someone would explain that logic to me. Galactic Civilizations II is a six year-old game. It has been pirated to death by now. DRM serves absolutely zero purpose except to add an additional point of failure on which the game will cease to function. Why would an indie include additional DRM on any of their games, let alone one that is six years old??
This is legit opinion. They aren't trying to get a response, they are vomiting negativity over a developter from a game they probably wouldn't play anyway.
While I tend to respect all opinions, even those that are hateful for I believe we could all do some "thick skinning", I think this would be more produtive if instead of hating on games you dislike, these people should give critique and commentary to the games they enjoy, to make them better. To question the developter, to try to help them with some short of feedback.
Going to a game page, hating on it, does nothing to no one.
I knew comments like this were going to shine the moment Greenlight was released. I know it's harsh to say, but this reality was needed. Congratulations, indie developers, you are now competing against developers with more money and resources. Either go make games for flash sites, free game sites, for mobiles, or invest in making a game with some form of collective professionalism. This means, look for some of the major parts of a game developer team, get a working plan of milestones and your target audience, use some art style, 2D or 3D, that will look unique yet not cheap alongside today's graphics, and other such things. And most of all, start prototyping early.
If 10% of your user's comments are harsh, that's pretty freaking good. If 75% - 90% are negative, that probably means that you need to get back in the lab and get back to work.
The guys who always get my attention are the ones who know how to respond positively and professionally to such comments.
Until that is fixed, time to HTFU ladies and gents. We're in for a bumpy ride.
That is where I have to disagree. I think if people are so mean on the internet, it is mainly because people don't realize they're talking to other, actual people.
What the difference is, is that in person comments like that could have swift physical corrections. On the internet, nothing. There is no negative to posting a trolling comment.