How to react when people say my game looks like shit?

Oh my gosh EddieK this happens to me all the time, but instead of other people calling my game shitty it's actually my own thoughts. Take my main project unirule for example. I am very proud of all that I've accomplished and often times when I show people who I know they're always like 'er, that's nice.... anyways'. lol, you'll never win over everyone. Just don't lose focus.

I always say my games look crap in advance.

16 minutes ago, EddieK said:

And somebody made a comment about how my game looks like shit.

If that's all he has to say i would just ignore him. It's hip to be toxic but there should be always better critique around, and people say the same about upcoming AAA games as well.

6 minutes ago, Awoken said:

Oh my gosh EddieK this happens to me all the time, but instead of other people calling my game shitty it's actually my own thoughts. Take my main project unirule for example. I am very proud of all that I've accomplished and often times when I show people who I know they're always like 'er, that's nice.... anyways'. lol, you'll never win over everyone. Just don't lose focus.

I feel you... The problem is that non developers don't understand how much effort it takes to make a game and they don't appreciate it as much as we do. But as the saying goes "The customer is always right"

Eddie, Reddit is the home of the keyboard warrior so take it with a pinch of salt. GameDev is a dedicated site and so as long as you can handle honest criticism let us take a look at your work.

8 minutes ago, JoeJ said:

If that's all he has to say i would just ignore him. It's hip to be toxic but there should be always better critique around, and people say the same about upcoming AAA games as well.

Yeah I agree with you. Constructive feedback would be nice, like what exactly the person doesn't like or what do they think is missing. I think I'm being a bit over sensitive at this point. After I release my game on steam, I think I will get much more negative feedback but hopefully at least with more details.

6 minutes ago, Anri said:

Eddie, Reddit is the home of the keyboard warrior so take it with a pinch of salt. GameDev is a dedicated site and so as long as you can handle honest criticism let us take a look at your work.

You can see some of the screenshots here:

https://www.gamedev.net/gallery/album/1966-tower-defense/

What do you guys think I could add to make it more appealing?

Not the most amazing thing I have ever seen, Eddie, but its a clean job. Its recognisable as a tower defence game and the only thing I would recommend is more time on the models and their textures.

Do you have a youtube video so we can see the performance of your game?

5 minutes ago, EddieK said:

What do you guys think I could add to make it more appealing?

Yeah... programmer art but i agree its decent.

Many details are just too small. You could make the turrets larger. Actually their boring quadratic bases dominate the screen. (Those bases are your main problem i think - one alone may look good, but arranged in repetive rows they look bad).

Textures have too much high frequency details (turrets structures and jeeps camouflage).

The stripe pattern colored borders on the bases is a bit annoying - maybe just the color without the stripes. You could also Make larger bulbs or glowing areas on the turrets itself instead.

The rings on the glowing towers could be thicker, and form a curved cone profile instead a straight line to be more interesting.

The green grass could use some low frequency variation, like being darker to wards the corners of the playfield (like a vignette effect).

The wall modules have some brightness mismatches, this looks unintended. Their sides could be angles at beginning and ends eventually.

1 minute ago, JoeJ said:

Yeah... programmer art but i agree its decent.

Many details are just too small. You could make the turrets larger. Actually their boring quadratic bases dominate the screen. (Those bases are your main problem i think - one alone may look good, but arranged in repetive rows they look bad).

Textures have too much high frequency details (turrets structures and jeeps camouflage).

The stripe pattern colored borders on the bases is a bit annoying - maybe just the color without the stripes. You could also Make larger bulbs or glowing areas on the turrets itself instead.

The rings on the glowing towers could be thicker, and form a curved cone profile instead a straight line to be more interesting.

The green grass could use some low frequency variation, like being darker to wards the corners of the playfield (like a vignette effect).

The wall modules have some brightness mismatches, this looks unintended. Their sides could be angles at beginning and ends eventually.

Wow, thanks for all the great feedback! I really appreciate it and I will will try to adress all of these issues. I also should either go find someone who does modelling, or try to improve my own modelling skills to make the game more appealing to the eye.

2 minutes ago, EddieK said:

I will will try to adress all of these issues.

All? I don't wanna throw infinite work on you

One tip: The art is to fix things by not spending too much work... don't get lost in details, they don't matter. It's always the bigger picture that matters the most.

1 minute ago, JoeJ said:

All? I don't wanna throw infinite work on you

One tip: The art is to fix things by not spending too much work... don't get lost in details, they don't matter. It's always the bigger picture that matters the most.

Well maybe not ALL the issues, but few of them at least I agree that these squary looking tower bases don't look very aesthetic, and the grass could be improved. I will start working on those for now, and will see how it goes. Thanks, again

Perfect choice!

Great advice JoeJ,

One thing I'd consider changing is the surrounding wall. maybe make it the edge of cliffs and you could then have rock formations blocking the grid in a random fashion. Make it look more like something in the middle of the desert or something.

As soon as you consider selling the game on Steam player expectations are going to go way-way up because their going to have to fork over money for it. And they warn each-other of duds. To avoid this fate I'd recommending spending a lot of time fine-tuning the game play and mechanics to make sure the game is well-rounded and enjoyable.

2 minutes ago, Awoken said:

Great advice JoeJ,

One thing I'd consider changing is the surrounding wall. maybe make it the edge of cliffs and you could then have rock formations blocking the grid in a random fashion. Make it look more like something in the middle of the desert or something.

Another great advice! I will try experimenting with different ideas, including yours, and will see which one looks the best

In my opinion the only crap thing is the grass. I would Change it for an asfalt floor With an attractive texture and the overall appearearance would improve very much

5 minutes ago, Julito said:

In my opinion the only crap thing is the grass. I would Change it for an asfalt floor With an attractive texture and the overall appearearance would improve very much

Hmm, I started changing the grass texture so now it looks like this (attached an image). I'll try to make it asphalt and see if it looks any better. But I don't think it will change much from what it was before, because asphalt is mainly grey color with some very tiny details which won't be seen from such great distance.

As of now, the grass looks pretty good, but its style is somehow different from towers'. But I guess it's not a problem for now, since I will be changing the towers and their textures anyways.

3 hours ago, EddieK said:

So today I posted a post on reddit (which I really don't do often) with a gif of my current state of the game, I know it doesn't look VERY good, but it's... decent I guess. And somebody made a comment about how my game looks like shit. On one side it's motivating because I want to make something that doesn't look like crap, but on the other side it can be really demotivating. Have you ever had people say this stuff to you? If so, how did you feel?

For starters, the internet is a place were all kinds of people gather with a variety of intentions and little to no fear for any form of backlash for their actions. Reddit hasn't been known as the best place to get encouragement, and I usually find nothing but toxic trolls and elitists on there within their "respective" communities.

Now if someone provides negative feedback without any ideas on how to "improve" your art, then the feedback really isn't worth paying attention to because that individual isn't helping you improve. The world is full of naysayers and Debbie Downers, but it's up to you to weed threw the meaningful feedback, and the ones which are blatantly worthless and add no value.

Does that mean if someone says your graphics could use more work that it's just someone being toxic? No, but you need to consider the full context of their advice, as well as the source in which the advice is coming from. When you're dealing in commercial games and your target audience most likely wont care how many hours you put into the project, they only care about the production value. If a majority are not happy with the look then you as a business person need to decide what to do. If you're just making the game as a hobbyist project, I wouldn't even care because you're not making the game to compete for market space financially. Just be happy with what you're doing and pay attention to those that really want to help you. I know it's easier said than done, but remember that a lot of negative people are miserable with their own lives and they're just looking to spread the love. After all, misery loves company.

My final piece on this... I've personally found this to be true though many years working with different people. When you're doing well other people can get jealous of your progress, and even if the advice is true or not they will do things to bring you down. I had a long time friend and business partner in which I parted ways with because the individual was giving negative feedback on very good projects I did for clients in order to bring me down, in order for me to outsource the project over to their company as my work wasn't "good enough". My clients have always been happy with my work despite the feedback, so I considered the motive behind the "feedback" and just ignored it.

You're doing a great job with your game, and I'm enjoying the updates you put forth on your blog. Keep up the great work!

2 minutes ago, Rutin said:

For starters, the internet is a place were all kinds of people gather with a variety of intentions and little to no fear for any form of backlash for their actions. Reddit hasn't been known as the best place to get encouragement, and I usually find nothing but toxic trolls and elitists on there within their "respective" communities.

Now if someone provides negative feedback without any ideas on how to "improve" your art, then the feedback really isn't worth paying attention to because that individual isn't helping you improve. The world is full of naysayers and Debbie Downers, but it's up to you to weed threw the meaningful feedback, and the ones which are blatantly worthless and add no value.

Does that mean if someone says your graphics could use more work that it's just something being toxic? No, but you need to consider the full context of their advice, as well the source in which the advice is coming from. When you're dealing in commercial games and your target audience most likely wont care how many hours you put into the project, they only care about the production value. If a majority are not happy with the look then you as a business person need to decide what to do. If you're just making the game as a hobbyist project, I wouldn't even care because you're not making the game to compete for market space financially. Just be happy with what you're doing and pay attention to those that really want to help you. I know it's easier said than done, but remember that a lot of negative people are miserable with their own lives and they're just looking to spread the love. After all, misery loves company.

My final piece on this... I've personally found this to be true though many years working with different people. When you're doing well other people can get jealous of your progress, and even if the advice is true or not they will do things to bring you down. I had a long time friend and business partner in which I parted ways with because the individual was giving negative feedback on very good projects I did for clients in order to bring me down, in order for me to outsource the project over to their company as my work wasn't "good enough". My clients have always been happy with my work despite the feedback, so I considered the motive behind the "feedback" and just ignored it.

You're doing a great job with your game, and I'm enjoying the updates you put forth on your blog. Keep up the great work!

I think at some points in life we all had to deal with such people. I guess I'll take your advice and try not to think too much about these naysayers. Anyways, thanks for the uplifting post, it somehow made me feel better

Compared to other projects it's not bad at all. I would not worry about the graphics in your case.

That said I'm from the other side. I feel it's bad if people shrug off all negative critics and think people are just "nay sayers" or "idiots" although their project "really" does suck or is mediocre. Too many people nowadays think they can do games and the result is indeed bad but they play deaf to any kind of negative critics. This fosters this "kindergarten" syndrome. Nothing wrong with people doing things for learning. But if they think they do a great title and it's definitely not things get annoying.

That said if it's really good it's not always considered good. So the truth is in the middle. What goes for me I'm always interested only in negative critics. This is because positive critics never help you get better. Only negative critics can do this.