It's My First Time; Be Brutal
I mentioned Kloonigames in my recent item on “The Truth About Game Development,” a very simple but well-executed game of wage slave abuse. Crayon physics, the latest addition to his game-a-week schedule, is the best so far, or would be if it weren’t painfully short. Like TAGD, it employs a simple engine, as you might expect for a game created in a week. Like TAGD, it sells itself on presentation, in this case the appearance of a child’s crayon drawing. You try to manipulate a red circle onto one or more stars by drawing crayon rectangles with your mouse. Both the ball and your rectangles are subject to “gravity,” sliding down ramps and falling off the bottom of the page if there’s nothing to support them. The idea is good, and it deserves more attention, and definitely deserves another twenty screens or more.
I bring it up not to praise the game, but to praise the designer’s attitude to criticism. He invites it, and asks that it be as harsh as possible, on the understanding that praise is nice, but complaint is the route to improvement.
I’ve never understood people who ask for criticism followed in the same breath by a request to be gentle—“it’s my first attempt.” If this is your first novel, or your first home-made game map, or your first creative enterprise of any kind, it won’t be good. Okay? It’s going to suck. Depending on your level of talent, it might suck just a little bit, or it might suck a whole lot, but it will suck. That doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you human.
The guy who spares your feelings by pretending your first attempt is great is not your friend; neither is the guy who says it’s great because he doesn’t know the difference. Your friend is the guy who sits down with his blue pencil and marks it all up; if he’s very generous, he’ll offer thorough explanations of why he marked things up. Then you can fix the problems, and produce something much better. With luck, you’ll learn a big lesson of the “Wow! That never would have occurred to me!” variety.
My writer’s group meets several times a week, on different days. I only attend once. This is not for want of time, but because the different sessions have different members, and very different characters. The Tuesday morning sessions are more support group than writer’s group, where everyone reassures one another that we’re all good people, with really good ideas, and…er…very neat typing. I’m happier with the Thursday evening group, one that will savage mistakes if need be.
“Murder your darlings,” goes one bit of writing advice; eliminate the cute turns of phrase of which you are too proud. A friend who can wield the bloody, blue pencil for you makes it a lot easier.