I’ve designed a card game and for the past few weeks, I’ve been pimping myself out like a whore testing it in game groups.
After rejecting a specific feedback, a guy told me, “I guess you’re just not open to criticism.” To which I promptly flipped him off.
See, flipped.
Out of the 5 suggestions I received in that specific session, I had accepted 3 of them and rejected the 2. Not because I couldn’t handle those. But from my years of experience in doing creative stuff, I learned that not listening sometimes is actually the right way.
Know Your Vision
I’m not saying this in a hippie, art school, vision-board kind of way. It’s about knowing what your work is about. Not the end product, but the goal of the art itself.
Take the card game I’m designing for example. It is meant to teach and bring newcomers to the more complex games of tabletop RPGs, such as Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a simple, easy to pick-up, team game.
But one of the criticism I get was that there was not enough power-up cards for every one. But that’s the thing. It’s not suppose to. The players decide who to get which card. The players decide how to structure their team.
Structured fabulously.
That feedback was rejected because it was not part of my goal for a team oriented game.
It simply wasn’t part of the vision
You Cannot Please Everyone
One of the things I learned as a writer is that not everyone will like what you write. If you take the criticism of every person who will ever dislike your work and attempt to write around them, you will never finish.
There will always be at least a person who dislike your creation. The question then becomes: “What do you want your creation to be about?”
If you just want to make money from the largest group possible, go with the market. If your goal is to make an educational game, don’t get complicated. If you want a dark and serious action movie, don’t add too many jokes.
You cannot please everyone. So take the feedback you need and throw everything else away.
To Critics
Uh… calm down?
Whatever you are reviewing, it’s not made for you.
One of the great flaws of most critics these days – to simply put it – is their snobbishness. Critics are limited in their experiences and can only like what they like.
I hate The Lord of the Rings books. I think it’s cliche, and the narration drags. The English is old and boring. But if you asked me to review it, I would probably give it a 90/100.
That’s because those books weren’t meant for me. It wasn’t meant for my time. And as much as I hate them now, I can appreciate them for the work they were meant to be.
Meinkampf is a bad book, just not a badly written book.
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