How to Handle Negative Player Feedback as an Indie Game Developer
135Getting negative comments is an unavoidable side of being an indie game developer (or any type of content creator). In this video I will talk about how to handle negative player feedback.
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0:00 Intro
0:49 Amount of Negativity
In my experience, the majority of comments are generally always positive, maybe like 90% of all the comments you get are positive. That then leaves the 10% that are negative. But of that 10%, the majority, around 90%, are negative in a reasonable way. Maybe they don’t agree with how you have handled something or they think you should be doing better in some regard or whatever. The point is that they have a valid reason for being negative.
That leaves the last 10% of negative comments that account for only 1% of all comments. There are the ones that exist just for spewing hate. They might even throw in some arguments but it’s often clear that their main motivator is just to make you feel bad. For whatever reason they might have for wanting that.
There are of course also neutral comments and often many comments have both positive and negative things in them, but for the sake of making a point, I am dividing everything into either positive or negative here.
2:36 Negativity Bias
The positive comments outweigh the negative by a very good margin. That's great, right? Well, that would be a comforting fact, if it wasn’t for a thing called “Negativity Bias”.
So what is that? Basically, it’s the human tendency to register negative things with more intensity than positive things. In practice this could mean that you can read nine positive comments about you without much effect at all but then when you read one negative comment of equal value, you will dwell on it and it will ruin your whole day. It’s not always necessarily so dramatic, but you get the point, negativity, unfortunately, has more influence than positivity.
3:45 Handling Negativity
If you do some googling, you can find a lot of tips and topics about the subject. These can help, but the truth is that there really isn’t an easy way to overcome it. Feelings are feelings after all. You can get better at handling your emotions, but you cannot outright block the negative feelings.
The way most people get past it is by just encountering negative things, gaining experience in how to handle those situations and thanks to that also learning how to handle their own emotions better. Commonly this is called “growing a thicker skin”.
I know it’s not the silver bullet solution that some of you might have hoped for, but at least personally I feel like it’s already helpful to realize that most people go through things like this and they experience them in the same way you do. After a little bit of discomfort, they get through it and next time it’s slightly less discomfort. This will be true for you also. Just accept the discomfort and realize that it's a normal, momentary thing.
4:57 Getting Negative Comments
So, what should you do when you get a negative comment? The first thing you should do is deduce if the comment contains constructive criticism or if it is mostly just unconstructive hate. While it can be unpleasant, getting constructive criticism is actually a good thing and you shouldn’t dismiss it as it is important for your growth and it can help you steer your designs into a better direction.
What you should also really internalize is that almost always constructive criticism is aimed at your game, not at you as a developer or as a person. Your game is a piece of entertainment art that you put out there so people will critique it. And when they do, you shouldn’t take it personally. Whatever faults your game has, they are not faults in you as a person. Also remember: No game is perfect.
7:42 Responding to Negative Comments
9:35 Reacting to Negative Comments