I’ve seen a lot of folks online who think they can teach developers how to develop, but I didn’t imagine the problem was so bad in face-to-face interactions.
As spotted by Game*Spark, Tokyo Game Dungeon’s official X account made a statement on May 5 saying that despite the organizers’ efforts to raise awareness about the issue of “preachy dudes” over the past two years, they still haven’t been able to eliminate the problem at their events. According to their definition, “preachy dudes”(jp: sekkyo ojisan) are people of any age and gender who find it acceptable to badger developers with condescending, unsolicited “advice” on their abilities and work.
The article actually talks about how these preachy dudes haven’t even played the game they are criticizing. That’s actually pretty ridiculous.
I mean I see it all the time in steam forums and social media.
Gamers taking one look at a screenshot or trailer video, and immediately giving their take about how it “should be”.
Gaem looks fun! But only one isue. It loks to woke. Also can you add some LGBLT rerpesention? To these bloxk puzzles?
Kids tends to have strong imaginations.
What’s the old adage? Users are very good at telling you what doesn’t work and very bad at telling you how it should be improved.
In my experience, it’s much better to watch and listen to your playtesters as they interact with the game rather than listen to what they have to say afterwards. Always try to get a recording of them playing the game.
Well, yeah? That’s not really their job. All users did is buy a thing, they didn’t also sign up to be free QA.
Edit: this adage is used to say explicitly what I am meaning. I didn’t get that, whoops.
The point is that some users like acting like QA, having an active role in the development of a game. And an easily persuaded developer might assume they ought to cater to the feedback they receive, but the adage is meant to signal to developers that they should take their user’s feedback with a grain of salt. It stands in opposition to another adage: “the customer is always right.”
Its actually literally the same as the customer is always right. The customer is always right means that a customer can tell you they want a device that functions as a vacuum cleaner. But can’t tell you what kind.
They arnt an expert they don’t actually understand what they are buying, just that they need a thing that does a function and they think a thing they are buying will do that function. Regardless if it will or will not. Your job ass a salesman is to see though the stupid shit the customer is saying and sell them something that will do the function they want and in a manner they find acceptable. With out driectly explaining to them why they are wrong about something.
The full proper saying is the customer is always right in matters of taste(opinion/preferences).
“The customer is always right.”
That hasn’t been true in the US in a very long time. Here, it’s “The shareholders are always right.”
I thought it was “[…] in matters of taste”. As in, if you want to buy this ugly thing, we will gladly take your money for it.
The original intent was to bend over backwards for the customer, because they’re the ones who pay you.
Okay, that makes sense. I understood the article, but I was missing context on how that adage is used. If it’s meant to say “don’t let the user design the solution for you” instead of “user feedback is useless unless they suggest solutions”, then that’s great!
Oh yeah, I’ve only ever seen this adage used with the former implication rather than the latter.
That’s great, because my first read of that adage was definitely the interpretation “don’t listen to user feedback”. But then again I don’t work in game dev. Or QA. Also I’m autistic.
The article is saying that’s what the users are doing, and the developers don’t want them to.
To rephrase, tell us what doesn’t work, but don’t tell us how we should fix it. We’ll figure out an appropriate fix.
I’m reminded of this story about the Thompson SMG in Wolfenstein Enemy Territory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDxiuHdR_T4
Highlights it perfectly!
Am I an unsolicited advice dude? I was at a convention playing an indie demo. The game had an island on a 2D field, with an invisible wall on the left, and a very clear cliffside and water on the right.
I spent a good 5 minutes looking like an idiot trying to figure out where to go, testing the borders, picking up the only item, putting down the only item, before giving up. The dev said to just go into the water. I asked “Why not make that cliff a gradual beach into the water to indicate it’s not a hazard?” and I got a brutal “the game already shipped and I’m not here for feedback” which immediately soured the whole experience. It’s like… why are you here then? Just set up the demo on steam and skip the fan interaction completely.
Day9 has nice talk about giving good feedback, and commands or commands hidden as rhetorical question are not one of them.
The right feedback would be something like: "Oh, this confused me. I did not expect the cliff edge to be the goal.
Not more, because you don’t know the intended. Maybe the dev wanted you to be confused or you were one of ten people to not go down the cliff.
Describe your experience and your expectations, not a solution to something that might not be a problem.
But see, that’s an almost naive take. A convention is not a professional environment. The social contract isn’t set, so it is two strangers meeting each other for the first time. The dev watched me flail about for five minutes before finally giving me the answer, so if I turn around and state the obvious “I was confused and didn’t realize the water wasn’t hazardous” it could easily be taken as a condescending statement. A belief that I think the dev is so stupid that he can’t figure out why I was having trouble.
So I had just a mere moment to figure out whether the dev understood where the problem was, and break it to him if he didn’t. Hence the question. Not a rhetorical question, mind you… a question hiding my information with a get out of jail free card. We were both there watching me humiliate myself, so how do I say most people are taught not to launch others into water without confirming they can swim, with this dev possibly being thin-skinned and unprofessional?
Ask a question. Why not make the cliff a gradual beach into the water to indicate it’s not a hazard?
The dev could have easily answered with:
I reused the cliff from elsewhere to save memory
or
I wanted to give people a chance to familiarize themselves with the controls before moving on
or even
I didn’t have enough colors
and that would have been the end of the exchange. The information was passed, we both knew I struggled, and now we both know why.
That doesn’t sound like the kind of person the article is referring to.
The condescending preachy people will barely even look at the game and tell the developer what they need to add/change, which are usually things from whatever their favorite genre or AAA game is. Its not real feedback because they aren’t trying to push the game in a better direction (they usually won’t even play what the dev has), they just want someone to hear their grand ideas. The dev has to maintain the demo booth and (usually) has to try and be formal and so the preachy person has them trapped.
Your experience seems like legitimate feedback that the dev wouldn’t hear out, which sucks. Unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of devs that aren’t great at social events and its hard to keep it up for the whole duration of an expo.
There’s definitely a time and a place for playtesting, and “user was confused about which way to go (water looked inaccessible)” would be the kind of note I’d expect them to take out of such a session. If I were the developer and I saw my player struggle like that, I’d be kicking myself for that design.
I think TGD is only trying to say that the show floor isn’t the time or place for playtesting. One would hope that that has already been accomplished by that point.
Maybe that event is different and only for final products? My convention had so many booths, with a wide range between this is the final game; buy it right here all the way to wishlist this for 2028 release. There were a few booths I saw evolve over 3 years. Really neat.
Nah you’re good, I have a feeling there is significant overlap between “unsolicited advice dudes” and chuds who screech about Sweet Baby.
What is Sweet Baby?
Its a narrative consulting company based in Canada that right wing chuds think is ruining games by forcing wokeism into games because Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League was a bad game.
Sweet Baby Inc, the company that is usually accused of forcefully making games woke
I mean by definition you are - so start in that situation by asking „are you looking for feedback?“
It works be better if people went there just to shit on them for ruining everything with their mechanics and monetization policies. They can obviously make the games, that doesn’t make them not assholes.
Does this actually relate to indie development? Theres definitely shitty monetization in Asian gacha games, but I don’t think of any of them as indie.
I have actually played crummy games by budding Japanese devs and some of them are true underdog stories with fun gameplay concepts (and often poor translation)
It’s not the developers who enshittify games, it’s the suits.
I’ve presented games at a few expos and have got some wild, and frustrating, takes from people trying to tell you how it is. It is definitely deflating.
I think it’s partly attitude and partly luck. I think devs should be open to feedback but they also need to expect to smile and nod but ultimately ignore most of it. Just let the person be heard and move on. I do get genuinely good feedback from some users, good ideas that never occurred to me.
Oh absolutely! You get a weird variety of responses from expos and while many are not super useful, sometimes standing back and looking at them all gives a better picture.
Weird. When I went to PAX back in the day and a dev asked what I thought about the game, I felt like it was really difficult to say that I didn’t like it, even if it’s what they wanted and needed to hear.
Game events are magnets for the kind of people who cannot read social cues and have strong opinions they are compelled to share.
The biggest mistake I ever made was bring my kid to a non-official Pokemon TCG event.
A dozen of sweaty nerds all gave my kid unsolicited advice. My kid is under 10 and collects cards based on how attractive the art is. Like chill the fuck out.
I think its perfectly fine to say its not your kind of game, most devs will understand that, even if you don’t have a particular reason why the game doesn’t click with you.
I agree, but it’s still difficult to tell someone who spent years of their life building something that it isn’t very good.
(jp: sekkyo ojisan) are people of any age and gender
It’s kind of funny to me they used the word ojisan which normally means an older man, but the connotation is that it applies to anyone and describes their behavior as being “old man”-like. Like if you called someone Unc or Gramps.
Or maybe this is just speculation on the part of the article author?Edit: nope, they are explicit in the original tweet lolCould be something like “Karen” or “boomer” where you’re just using the predominant demographic of a behaviour as a label for anyone who engages in it.
it was translated about as “preachy dude” but would “Backseating Boomer” work too?
Armchair Quarterback seems pretty apt.
“Have you tried enabling multi-threading? Did you turn on optimizations?” Ugh…
You should update the code to run on an entirely different engine and get rid of all the spaghetti code. Do you even play test your game???
Did you turn on optimizations?
Oh just turn on optimizations?
To be fair, I think they’re referring to compiler optimization levels but then again with the kind of people that make these comments…
Hey they forgot to do that for mario64 if Nintendo can fuck up clearly anyone can!
I don’t think they know that compilers have a setting to optimize their results
“You need to tighten up the graphics on level 3!”
That’s a blast from the past…
Yet reassuring that this is a global epidemic 🥴
Even if the guy is right this really isn’t the hill to die on. Take the feedback politely and move on with more important things.
You should try giving better feedback.
Oh yeah because thats the issue here…
Whoosh
