How to deal with critique? Well, you can milk it!

I don't call this newsletter Gamedev DAIRY for nothing ;-)

I have this method of dealing with critique. When someone asks me how I deal with it, I answer: I milk it!

The idea is to take every possible critique, extract what is useful to you, and discard everything else.

It requires some preparation.

What you will need:

• Separate yourself from your work and your goal is to improve yourself or the quality of your work (not necessarily at the same time)

• You must have a vision of your work, know what you want to achieve, and understand what you don't want. The vision doesn't have to be precise; if you're working on it alone, it can remain intuitive and linger in your mind, although it's better to write down its assumptions.

• Understand, the audience also has a certain vision of the work they reach for. There is a gap between what the artist wants to offer and what the audience would like to receive.

• These differences can be minimized, e.g., through marketing, press materials, and good contact with the audience. We will focus on what to do when this fails.

Break down criticism into arguments!

Good criticism you receive contains steps you can take to improve your work because everything can be improved (including your work, your technical skills, etc.).

The fact that the work is not yet perfect is not something bad. It means it was good enough when it launched, and it wasn't the work of a perfectionist (they rarely reach the audience because they never leave the drawer).

Write down every point from the criticism. Everyone. If what you receive points to you as a person, you can put it in the trash 99% of the time. The rest most probably will be of two types.

Some of them can be formulated in the form:

If I change X, I will gain Y.

For each sentence like that you write, recall your vision, and ask yourself the question:

Is Y consistent with my vision?

Always validate conclusions and questions with your vision.

The second type of criticism that you will write down will sound like:

X did Y better!

This is a very complex form of criticism. It requires familiarity with X. You can certainly learn a lot from others. But it's not always necessary. Especially, when the result would ruin your vision!

Don't treat this criticism as a whole. It's not about making your work the same as X. Rather, it's about Y lacking something. Perhaps you can improve it and get even closer to your vision.

Remember!

The vision above all!

Right behind it, is humility towards craftsmanship!

The author's feelings beyond the podium!

And that's it. Criticism milked!