Games Under Construction Changes. Options

[kaz]

We are making some changes to Games Under Construction, starting with OUR definition of "under construction".

As it stands at the moment, you could open a copy of VX (for example) stick Ralph on a basic map and take a screenshot and post it with a sentence saying" boy travels to other lands to kill evil man". and post it in GUC.

What does that tell us ? - nothing.

What happens next? - straight away we have to ask for more information, because there is nothing of any substance to comment on.
If you want help and C&C with a project you need to show it off, make it interesting and full of information, The consequences for topics that are substandard is the inevitable "bump" "bump" " what is no one interested" - well of course not,

What we are going to do is set a minimum criteria that has to be met and a template will be provided to help.

In brief- whatever stage a game is at you will always have a story, even if it is in rough stages. This is to be a compulsory requirement, along with character descriptions, and which game maker you are using,

We would like you to add screenshots or concept artwork, something that shows you have made some progress.

Basically showpiece your game, get people interested and everyone should benefit.

The forum will go onto Mod Preview and the mods will decide if a project can be accepted or not. (note if any are accepted without screenshots for example please do not report the thread- it just means that the mods have decided enough of the criteria has been met and that the project is of a standard to be approved).

[Rob_Riv]

Hopefully this will improve the quality of projects in that forum.

[Ratty524]

Hopefully this will improve the quality of projects in that forum.

Hopefully it will. In all honesty, some of the project threads that get posted there are terrible enough to make my head explode. These new set of rules are there to make sure we don't get complete half-assery on that forum, which it lately has been getting.

[Kread-EX]

It's not a matter of being some sort of "content police", but simply a genuine worry about the overall quality of the site's content (especially the content gamemaking-related).

Hopefully this will work, like Robin said.

[Adrien.]

I think with this change following simmilar to what rpgvx forums does is going to help make people think about what their posting and as others have said increase the quality of the game from crap-tacular to rather amazing. (crap-tacular being the example kaz gave)

[Amy Pond]

We [hb] tried something before (2009?) but at the time we didn't have the time to commit to make it work and it ended up just a mess as nobody read announcements and staff weren't around to enforce it; but our idea was basically to have a seperate forum for "proper works" and "casual works" - where casual works demand a lot less harsh criticism and have a lot more room for slackness and first time users etc to get a hand at game making. I think it really could have worked, but in the run it didn't. People didn't like that their games had to be either "serious" or "casual", and in the end everyone just posted their projects in the "serious" forum. Although, as I said, it was mainly that we weren't really all there to enforce it at the time.

I think your post is a great idea though and a good step forward. It's nice to have casual projects but it's also nice to know people are putting thought and effort into works that they think the general public will want to play etc.

[kaz]

We [hb] tried something before (2009?) but at the time we didn't have the time to commit to make it work and it ended up just a mess as nobody read announcements and staff weren't around to enforce it; but our idea was basically to have a seperate forum for "proper works" and "casual works" - where casual works demand a lot less harsh criticism and have a lot more room for slackness and first time users etc to get a hand at game making. I think it really could have worked, but in the run it didn't. People didn't like that their games had to be either "serious" or "casual", and in the end everyone just posted their projects in the "serious" forum. Although, as I said, it was mainly that we weren't really all there to enforce it at the time.

I think your post is a great idea though and a good step forward. It's nice to have casual projects but it's also nice to know people are putting thought and effort into works that they think the general public will want to play etc.

We used to have the Sandbox- but it just became full of half started games similar to what I described- was a bloody mess to be honest.

The bare bones of games and game design can be sorted in Theory and Design, and then even games with little progress at least will be presented better in GUC.

It eliminates the "oh luk I mad game" topics,

[Amy Pond]

That does make a lot more sense to be honest, building up the very basics of a game in the theory and design board. After all, until a game reaches the stage you describe for the GUC board, it isn't really a game at all, just a concept or group of concepts.

[Axerax]

I like this, it's exactly how I would of done this. I hope it keeps things in check, so tired of reading just a title of a game and knowing before I click the link it will be utterly terrible.

[Adrien.]

I like this, it's exactly how I would of done this. I hope it keeps things in check, so tired of reading just a title of a game and knowing before I click the link it will be utterly terrible.

it wont stop terrible games from coming through - how ever it will stop terrible thread structures from coming through

[Jonnie19]

It isn't just the game threads that need to improve, people reactions had to change; so many people focus on the negatives of a project not focusing on what could be a great start; many don't read stories and skip straight to screenshots...yeah I am just as bad.
We need to also work on our quality of feedback....and also actually giving feedback there, Adrien noted that there is a lack of feedback in the section. That is because people aren't commenting on projects, and they are just left updating on their own...because their projects may not be more than just the RTP.
I try my hardest when giving feedback, to Compliment what they have done right, whether it is their story or the screenshots or the character descriptions.
"Bad Games" don't really exist, it is no feedback...if the game's story isn't good enough help improve it, give advice not just criticisms...

With the changes that have been place in effect, others should be stepping up and giving feedback on projects, so that these games which may start off with being "cliche" can improve and become stronger.

Just my two pence

[Kread-EX]

It isn't just the game threads that need to improve, people reactions had to change; so many people focus on the negatives of a project not focusing on what could be a great start; many don't read stories and skip straight to screenshots...

Because it's a completely natural reaction. Knowing that, one would think the easiest way to catch attention is to polish the screenshots don't you think?

We need to also work on our quality of feedback....and also actually giving feedback there, Adrien noted that there is a lack of feedback in the section. That is because people aren't commenting on projects, and they are just left updating on their own...because their projects may not be more than just the RTP.

Giving quality feedback takes a lot of effort, effort which goes to waste in a large proportion of cases. Yeah it sucks, but it doesn't mean people don't look at projects either - if somebody continually updates (and if the updates are worthwhile), their project will eventually catch attention.
Bottom line, getting feedback is not a due.

"Bad Games" don't really exist, it is no feedback...if the game's story isn't good enough help improve it, give advice not just criticisms...

Uh yeah, bad games do exist. Not only RM games but professional games too can be bad and even shitty. And criticism is advice. Think about it: if you don't know what you do wrong, how are you supposed to fix it?

Like a lot of people, you seem to think something along the lines of "good feedback must contain praise". Criticism in its purest (and most effective) form is utterly devoid of praise to concentrate on what need to be worked on. Of course, there is a line beyond criticism ceases to be constructive and becomes useless and insulting ("Adrien's way" you could say).
Send a GDD to professionals and ask for criticism. If your work sucks they won't even bother replying but if it doesn't you will receive pages and pages dissecting and crushing everything you've made. This is a particularly interesting and enlightening experience.

[Adrien.]

It isn't just the game threads that need to improve, people reactions had to change; so many people focus on the negatives of a project not focusing on what could be a great start; many don't read stories and skip straight to screenshots...yeah I am just as bad.

"If you cannot take the heat, get out of the kitchen." When I buy a book for example, I want to see the cover of that book. because the cover tells me right then and there what's it largley about. The screen shots in some cases can do the same thing. The mapping alone either makes or breaks a game. If your just as bad, then maybe you shouldn't be posting this comment??

We need to also work on our quality of feedback....and also actually giving feedback there, Adrien noted that there is a lack of feedback in the section. That is because people aren't commenting on projects, and they are just left updating on their own...because their projects may not be more than just the RTP.

Lack of commenting can because of many factors. Some examples: You are not liked, your project is that bad that wasting your time writing feed back isnt worth it, you dont have time to comment on EVERY project, the forums are dying, no ones in that forum at that time, their are other, more interesting projects. These are a few of the millions of reasons. Every project, no matter how good or bad, always gets feed back at some point. Some people may just be waiting for the download.

I try my hardest when giving feedback, to Compliment what they have done right, whether it is their story or the screenshots or the character descriptions.
"Bad Games" don't really exist, it is no feedback...if the game's story isn't good enough help improve it, give advice not just criticisms...

Yes they do. I just found a bad game which I gave feed back to. People may be following the rules in terms of posting for their games, how ever with that said the games that get "accepted" generally suck. Why? poor stories, mapping, characters and so on. People need to work on quality not quantity. For example 1 skill over 500 is better.

With the changes that have been place in effect, others should be stepping up and giving feedback on projects, so that these games which may start off with being "cliche" can improve and become stronger.

A lot of people that post have post counts of 1 - 100, meaning they are new. some of these people do not take feed back or like the feed back and whip lash with anger. this means that we assume every new person is like this and thus we do not like to give feed back. Other reasons people ignore these threads is because we have seen enough "horrible" games.

Just my two pence

Comments are in red.

Now for some more input:

RPG Maker is meant to be a hobby. It is not meant to be used as a professional game making tool you can put on your resume. The only thing you can take from this is if you are a scriptor. then you have learned a language and you can use that to learn other languages which can go on your resume. Assuming you were looking for work as a Software developer (you would put proficient in ruby).

People take RPG Maker seriously and expect a certian amount of quality when people post games. the quality has gone up and up with parallax mapping becoming the "new thing" in RPG Maker VX. we do not see a lot of this in XP because XP has layers. People want quality over quantity.

[amerk]

To Adrien: While XP does have layers, you are still more or less confined within the 32*32 pixel requirements. While I haven't done a lot with parallax yet, as I'm still learning, one thing I have learned is that in addition to unlimited layers, you or free from the constraits of a grid and can paste images to the map wherever you'd like (whether they come out looking good or not is another thing).

I did sort of my very first editing by pasting the RTP TileB into an image program, reduced the grid to 16*16, copied half of the green pine tree onto one half of the white/snowy one (I was trying to go for a pine tree that was half green and half white. It looks like shit, so I still have work to do, but just knowing now how easy it is to frankensprite opens up a lot of doors.

To Jonnie19: I think the better way to look at it is to provide "constructive" feedback. Just saying it looks bad and it sucks without telling them why won't help. They need to know what they did wrong, and what they can do to fix it. However, unwarranted praise just to make sure the developer doesn't get offended doesn't help either. I've seen far too many game threads where people offer nothing but praise on one aspect of a game while failing to provide insight about other areas. And then somebody posts a negative about the other areas, and the developer suddenly gets defensive.

[The Law G14]

Ooh, couldn't help but post because some things really caught my attention here. There are a couple things I want to adress and point out. First, good graphics =/= great game, actually on most cases, not at all. It may be natural reaction to look at screenshots first, but all people are looking for is new graphics and non-rtp work. Even if you've polished your screenshots and made the map itself look outstanding, people would hardly care unless they actually looked into it which means they were actually going through your thread to begin with. The point is that, it's not a matter of how you make your screenshot, but what you make your screenshot with. I think this is a serious problem, but we can't change people's reactions, the only thing we can do is suggest people to provide more feedback or at least provide an incentive for doing so.

Next, feedback is really imporant. In most cases, yea some games end up not being finished or whatever, but that doesn't mean the feedback was necessarily wasted. Not only did the person most likely gain something as a whole from the feedback, they also could learn to be more welcoming to criticism. Not everything has to be centered on the actual game, as most of us here are just doing gaming as a fun hobby. The small percent of others that really want to become a professional at gaming, probably only use RM as a stepping stone into more advanced gaming software. There is also another plus to provided quality feedback, it motivates the person to continue going on with the game. When no one posts and you're just updating all the time, you start asking yourself "Why am I doing this if no one even cares?". This eventually leads to people not finishing their games as either they lost interest or they lost motivation due to lack of community support. And even better, if the person stops because of the lack of feeback, that would completely bust the idea that feeback would be wasted. Because either you provide feedback and you can not only provide something of quality for their game, but something that will help their character in real life, so it wouldn't matter if they stopped the game. Or you can not provide feedback and their surely to quit sooner or later on most cases. So basically it's a win/win situation when providing feedback.

Additionally, bad games do kind of exist, but that only depends on how you define "bad". Techinically speaking, we shouldn't even use bad or good because anything can be better and anything can be worse. The point is that feedback and criticism provide a baseline for what you can reach, the more criticism, the more limits you can break. Without criticism and feeback, you'll be left with a game that hasn't reached it's potential which is bad for community that wants quality games.

Basically, all I'm saying is that feedback to all projects no matter how bad you think it is in your perception or how good you think it is in your perception should be tried to be given some feedback. I think feeback should really be advocated around here and I also feel that "graphics" in no, way, shape or form should judge whether you give feedback or not. There's a fine line between good mapping and good graphics. Of course, graphics can be the deciding factor between two great games, but all in all, the actual qaulity within the game (gameplay, story, characters, etc.) should be what we provide our criteria, if we have one, for feedback.

[TheBen]

I think feeback should really be advocated around here and I also feel that "graphics" in no, way, shape or form should judge whether you give feedback or not. There's a fine line between good mapping and good graphics. Of course, graphics can be the deciding factor between two great games, but all in all, the actual qaulity within the game (gameplay, story, characters, etc.) should be what we provide our criteria, if we have one, for feedback.

I second that motion. The graphics are important for first impressions, but with indy games, quality equals profit.

Feedback is the centrepiece of playtesting. Playtesting is one of the most crucial components in making a game - just try playing through a Valve game with the developer commentary on and you'll see what I mean. The problem is, as Jesse Schell puts it, is that having people playtest your game is like sending out cordial invitations "to tell me why I suck". Some people don't realize that the point of playtesting is criticism; ergo, they clam up at the first sign of complaint, furiously defending their games without really fixing anything. This, in turn, means that not a lot of people will want to give constructive criticism, so no one will get any real feedback on their project.

I think the best form of feedback should start with what you liked about the project - if you grew up in America, then you know that teachers prefer it if you try to say "at least 3[or 1] positive thing[s] about the project/the movie/whatever" when giving feedback. It is kind of childish, I know, but it does have a purpose - if you say something good about the project first (building trust with the developer), they will be more likely to accept criticism when you dole it out later.

This post has been edited by TheBen: Aug 31 2011, 05:08 AM