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[Aik]

Failure's great - so long as you're humble about it and not jerking off about how you're the greatest designer evar.

OTOH, being humble seems to be at odds with marketing. I'm not sure how to reconcile that.

[Zaphos]

I am a failureware engineer.

[Dragonmaw]

Making anything is like life. You fail and fail and fail until you finally manage to overcome the failures to make a success. It can be either a minor success (where it still fails in some areas) or a major one (few areas).

Funnily enough, thinking about this brings to mind a Tim and Eric song called "All The Food Is Poison." All games are failures in some way. Live and learn.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

I don't think they failed. They may not have created the World's Greatest Game but they did create something interesting, at least on some level. Some of my favorite video games and game series got pretty lackluster reviews. Such as the Tenchu series, which still sells quite well despite those reviews. It may not be a success by journalism standards but people still love them some Tenchu.

Exactly why I canceled my subscriptions to gaming magazines. Most of them didn't reflect my viewpoint.

[AndrewFM]

It depends on the situation in which you're developing the game.

If you're making freeware games, it's perfectly okay to fail. In fact, failure is usually a good thing in that situation, as many others have already said. That's what makes freeware so great; the only penalty to the player is a small loss of time. So you're free to experiment endlessly, and take gigantic risks. If your game is a bust, no one really cares. (Well, except maybe the developers)

However, if you're making any kind of games that cost money (even if it's a mere $1 or something), that's when things change. For the most part, people are pretty stingy when it comes to money, and they're not happy at all when they feel like they wasted some. Experimentation becomes a very touchy matter when any kind of money is involved. Your game has to be good. However, you obviously can't please everyone, so either way, prepare for those angry people.

And going all the way here... if you're working for any kind of game company, forget it. You fail, you're fired.

[starsrift]

Regarding the massive critic Tale of tales had receive about their artware (or any other artware actually) for not being good enough.

It depends on where you go for your 'massive critics'(critiques?). For diehard gamers, yeah, they're not gonna be happy with it. They've recieved good reviews outside of the "hardcore" crowd. They have their fans - I don't think they've failed, and they certainly don't think so. They've just found a niche and are happy to occupy it.

[Jason Bakker]

Failure is good! At the same time, releasing anything, regardless of quality, is a bad idea if you don't want to be criticized. It's good, at the end of the day, that there are places like TIGSource around where people understand the value of failure.

That said, I think it's important to fail loudly - to view the flaws of something that you've created subjectively, and use that to further the medium, either through your own work or letting other people know about it. Postmortems are great for this...

[hatu]

When you claim loudly that what you've made is art and games, you should get critiqued much harsher and on more scales than someone claiming to make just games.

[increpare]

When you claim loudly that what you've made is art and games, you should get critiqued much harsher and on more scales than someone claiming to make just games.

Why more harshly?

[hatu]

When you claim loudly that what you've made is art and games, you should get critiqued much harsher and on more scales than someone claiming to make just games.

Why more harshly?

Well with games it's usually enough for the game to be entertaining to get praise. With art it needs to have like meaning and stuff. I'm not much of an art critic but basically you have to be great on two "fields" instead of one.

[Willy95]

I agree with Alec, I think the "controversy" is just part of the there is no such thing as bad publicity.

[Rob Lach]

As I read through this thread I kept thinking about Howard Roark's speech at the end of The Fountainhead.

[Overkill]

Dumping my thoughts on this.

I think it's perfectly okay to fail. If you don't fail at something, how can you improve? It's almost impossible to complete the first few game projects you've ever conceived. However, the horrible odds don't stop people, since surprisingly a lot of developers come back after their initial disappointment with a better, more polished idea.

In the case of released work, I think it's perfectly okay to fail at that point too. If you release something, you are at least a moderate success. It takes committment to actually finish the ideas you've started, especially when you start to notice flaws and discouraging dull moments along the way. A finished, crappy game is more valuable than that abandoned game project with awesome ideas you've had for years. Both are failures, but a completed failure can be appreciated more.

The only thing that annoys me is when authors don't act humbly about their work, and ignore criticism (even positive criticism) from other people. This sort of arrogance is what rubs people the wrong way.

And of course, most of what I said does not apply to business. In that case early feedback is critical. I'd imagine if a person or company wants to ensure sales, they should at least get some testers outside of the development.

[LemonScented]

OOT, but didn't Thomas Edison steal most of his 'inventions', including the light bulb that he stole from Nikola Tesla, then proceeded to discredit and persecute Tesla for many years?

At least that's the story I heard.

Not quite. They were rivals, and there was a lot of maneuvering between the two of them to try to put out competing projects which solved problems in different ways (due to one side or the other getting patents first). Many of Tesla's solutions were better than Edison's, but whilst Tesla was arguably the better inventor, Edison was a better businessman, so it was his ideas which were widely adopted. The discrediting and persecution part is true, and Tesla died bitter and peniless as a result, but I'm not convinced that Edison was a plagiarist - his inventions were his own, even if many of them were inferior.

On topic: Failure is fine (for whatever your definition of failure is - be that critical, commercial or technical), but I would dearly like to see more people with the ability to have a bit of humility about it. I don't know much about how Tale of Tales present themselves to their critics, but I do remember Luc Bernard and his response to the reviews of Eternity's Child, in which he basically blamed everyone but himself for the poor reviews - the journalists, his own programmers, the audience for being overly critical. He's not the only one, I see game designers (both indie and "industry") talking about less-than-stellar game projects in blog posts and comment threads where they imply or outright say that the imperfections in the game weren't their fault... But you know that if the game had been successful they'd happily step into the limelight to take the lion's share of the credit.

I think I'd have a lot more respect for game developers (like Edmund in this very thread) who are able to look at past projects, throw their hands up and say "You know what? It could have been better. My bad. I've learnt some lessons for next time".

[Hajo]

Is it still okay to fail and being praise for the effort, instead of being point for not being good and living up the expectation? especially when we shoot for something radically different? Can we simply tell them nice try but not quite there? a part of being indie is to try new things and being able to fail, don't you think so?

Todays society is geared towards having success. From children age, school, higher training, work, career, each and everywhere we are trained to become successful.

This society has only little places for people who ... um, fail. The effort is usually not regarded, it's about the results.

I, personally, think this is very wrong. Success is overrated, and in the end, leads to a less humane society. Weaker people have no place, and get no support.

In my opinion, the path should be more important that the result. And people should learn to appreciate other peoples ides, regardless if they are successful or not, but for the novelty, uniqueness, or even their social or cultural value.

[Gnarf]

Yes to a society geared towards failure! Vote Saqqaq two thousand and wah!

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Part of the reason why indies are doing so well right now is because we have the ability to fail. The mainstream industry doesn't. You can't spend 100 million funding a risky project, which is why all the mainstream games are mostly shooters and unreal engine games.

HOWEVER: If you are not prepared to accept failure as an option, that's when people get annoyed with you.

Tale of Tales as an example again:
They know their games aren't the type of thing people will buy, yet they still charge money for them. And surprise, when nobody buys them, they bitch and moan about how people don't know enough to see why their games are good, and claim that games as art are dead, and start bitching and moaning.

That's not the way to handle yourself. It's childish and immature, and probably one of the reasons why they have a larger hatebase than a fanbase.

As a counter example, look at daniel benmergui. His stuff is abstract and arty too, but it doesn't "try too hard" like tale of tales, and he's nice and not egotistical about it. He puts it out for free and asks for donations because he knows his stuff isn't the kind of stuff that can sell, and understands that he can reach a wider audience (isn't that the point of art?) by just letting people have it.


When I buy an indie game, I'll buy it either to get a great game, or to support the person(s) who made it. If your game sucks, AND you're unlikable, then tough shit, either make a better game, get a better personality, or accept the fact that your game will sell worse than a dog scrotum on a stick and quit bitching about it.

[Dragonmaw]

Tale of Tales as an example again:
They know their games aren't the type of thing people will buy, yet they still charge money for them. And surprise, when nobody buys them, they bitch and moan about how people don't know enough to see why their games are good, and claim that games as art are dead, and start bitching and moaning.

That's not the way to handle yourself. It's childish and immature, and probably one of the reasons why they have a larger hatebase than a fanbase.

As a counter example, look at daniel benmergui. His stuff is abstract and arty too, but it doesn't "try too hard" like tale of tales, and he's nice and not egotistical about it. He puts it out for free and asks for donations because he knows his stuff isn't the kind of stuff that can sell, and understands that he can reach a wider audience (isn't that the point of art?) by just letting people have it.

When I buy an indie game, I'll buy it either to get a great game, or to support the person(s) who made it. If your game sucks, AND you're unlikable, then tough shit, either make a better game, get a better personality, or accept the fact that your game will sell worse than a dog scrotum on a stick and quit bitching about it.

Unfortunately, Tale of Tales' petulant brat behavior gets them more notice.

[unsilentwill]

Tesla worked for Edison and fixed the DC system and was never paid the enormous sum Edison owed him.

[I_smell]

A game review- or any game coverage- isn't there to grade the developer on how well they're doing. It's there to tell players whether they'd like it or not.

As if a blog's gonna say "You should play this- but don't expect to like it, cos it's not great. Play it anyway though, he spent ages!"

If it was aimed at the developer it would sound like that, but it never ever is. That's why it sounds harsh to us when people talk about games.
Not to sound like a dick, but I think it's that simple.

Edit- y'know what; we've started talkin about something completely different, so never mind.