How do you experience good and bad reviews and feedback on your games? Are you ecstatic or proud when reading positive reviews? Is it difficult to read reviews listing a lot of negative points?
How does it depend on the proportion of your contributions to the project?
I've occasionally wondered about team titles, how individual developers feel when reviews turn out majority or overwhelmingly negative. For very small teams and individual devs, I've often wondered how they feel when receiving "negative" feedback, especially reviews pointing out many flaws.
Today, I posted a Steam review with a long list of things the title is lacking. Personally, I would have never released a title in that state, and for money. I feel bad about pointing out many flaws on indie titles. But I also see no way around it. It's only honest to list what I see and notice. For a review, honesty is key, and allows others to see these things that are not visible from a store page or game trailer.
I'm interested to hear your thoughts and experiences.
So, to me game development is just a hobby, and I haven't been active for about a year now - and one problem leading to that hiatus is actually positive feedback I got on my games. (Other things were giving up smoking, exacerbated health problems, personal issues in life completely unrelated to developing - just to not overstate the effect of the feedback).
There is something wrong with my psyche somewhere, unsure how fundamentally, but a livetime of psychologists and psychiatrists haven't helped so far - where as soon as something feels expected of me, feels "real" - I freeze up, up to the point of genuine feelings of mortal terror even (but without concrete thoughts of anxiety like explicit consequences that are feared). What makes this complicated is, that I still like the appreciation in the moment, when reading positive feedback, in the first moments at least, before this feeling of "oh no, now there are eyes on me and my work" cripples me. The same dynamic has held me back enormously in general - where working on free projects and helping people out has been relatively easy to me, but as soon as I get money for something with an attached expectation, I turn into a bit of a mess and it takes conscious work and effort.
Negative feedback hurts, of course, and it has other problems attached. But it at least has not turned out to be as crippling to my abilities. Without knowing the title you reviewed - I think your review is definitely fair - as a bit of a perfectionist, I am also sometimes confused by what people release with actually taking money for it. I think, if I were the recipient here, I'd definitely feel a bit of shame, but mostly because of the high price point of the game. In general, I feel appreciative of feedback, like most people here I'd wager. But again, sometimes there is this weird thing, where good, constructive criticism can make me freeze up, because it feels like now there is this expectation in the room. Dismissive reviews, I can strangely live with more easily, because it's easier to just imagine them not being my target audience to begin with, or not having engaged with my work.
Okay, this has turned out to be a bit of a therapeutic traumadump, hope it still was interesting as a perspective, and maybe someone shares the same basic experience. In general, I try to engage in good faith with feedback, both giving an taking - unless what I am engaging with is clearly not doing that to begin with. Making games is hard, and unless you are trying to rip people off, everyone needs their cringey and bad projects on their way to their better ones and I think that should be respected. Also: Even cringey and bad games have some value in my eyes, and not simply as mockery. I enjoy the humanity expressed in some of them very much.
Thank you for sharing. Your views and experience were very interesting and insightful.
I wanted to pick up on some of your points, but I can't seem to grasp fitting responses or meaningful thought continuations.