[arg_discuss] Communities and resources

[Andrea Phillips]

On Apr 11, 2006, at 4:20 AM, Adrian Hon wrote:

>
> As I said in my other emails, I think that critical reviews are  
> more important (again, witness the amount of space and time given  
> to reviews vs. previews in any games site or magazine). Now, by  
> critical I don't mean 'negative', I just mean more thorough. Jon said:
>
>
> Incidentally, I did like the most recent PXC article that got some  
> positive and negative quotes about our new Story So Far as well  
> though (honestly!) - I think that sort of thing helps us, and it  
> helps other developers as well.
>

To expand a little on what Adrian said -- this is an issue I've had  
with trying to find helpful (by which I think I mean "actionable")  
criticism in writing pretty much all my life. I would personally  
*love* to have somebody look at Perplex City and say "Well, the  
puzzles are fun but you need to make more of them at the green  
difficulty, and the pacing on the story could be improved by doing X,  
Y, Z." Or, you know, whatever.

Most criticism we receive is either thumbs-up or thumbs-down, or are  
smaller-scale complaints that don't really let you assess how you're  
doing on a broader scale. ("That live event ruled!/There's a grammar  
error!") I guess it's the nature of instant feedback to be more spur- 
of-the-moment; but it would be terrific to have a more measured,  
longer view from someone on the outside, and I think that's what  
Adrian means when he's talking about how useful a critical review  
would be. (And the truth hurts sometimes, but you can't improve  
without hearing what you did wrong.)

It's like when you're writing a novel; "This sucks," "This is  
awesome," and "You're missing commas here, here, and here," are  
really not very helpful. But "You need to make it clearer why Sarah  
hates Bob so much, and everything kind of drags from page 120 to page  
180," is *really* helpful. The first is interesting, but the second  
kind of criticism allows you to qualitatively improve your work.

And right now we all get truckloads of criticism type 1, and hardly  
any of type 2, except maybe internally. In the case of an ARG, we  
can't always improve mid-stream; what's done is done... but all of us  
are learning to make a better play experience for the next time.

--
Andrea Phillips
http://www.perplexcity.com
http://www.deusexmachinatio.com