Be confident, be real

Shenoy mentions the risk of sending out Dejobaan's game at the tentative alpha stage – namely, the heightened chance of a poor audience reception. "We shared some concern about whether people would get past the "rough edges" in the alpha to the real stuff, but based on priorities decided it was ok for us to be rough in the alpha stage."

The risk turned out to be worth the reward: "We found about 30% of people did complain about deficiencies in menus/controls, but most also gave us good feedback on other aspects."

It's not just alphas that are at risk of receiving negative feedback, however. Just about every game developer out there can expect negative responses at some point or another, no matter how high-profile their releases are. Carlos Bordeu from ACE Team (the devs behind 1st-person indie brawler Zeno Clash) puts things into perspective.

"We knew (way before any review of the game was published) that the game would be criticized for its length ... We don't really mind when people say the game is short, as long as they put the length in context with the game's cost.

"I doubt that any game has ever escaped being criticized by a very vocal and unforgiving individual. It would be unrealistic to expect everybody to like what you do. As long as you have a big percentage of people that like it, you are OK. For every 'hate mail' we get, we easily get 50 ones of people who enjoyed the game very much. After release, a couple of guys wrote to us saying they had lost faith in the videogame industry for the past 5 years, and that Zeno Clash had revived their interests in becoming game developers. If you can have that sort of impact on someone, you did your job well."

Edmund McMillen

Our concerns about getting shot down are shared by just about every other developer out there. Consider Edmund McMillen, somebody who can boast (amongst many other things) being the force behind high-profile indie games such as Gish and the upcoming Super Meat Boy. He has taken his fair share of criticism when it comes to his work, particularly in a recent project, Spewer. He puts it simply: "No matter how good your game is, no matter how much time and heart you put into your work, people will find a way to bash it."

This is not to say that criticism should always be received poorly, but rather in context. "In a way, criticism is a great thing. It's VERY hard to deal with when starting out, but over time you kind of loosen up and pick apart what they are saying. The only way to learn from your mistakes is by accepting them, and criticism is a good way to realize where you need work.

"But there is an art to criticize something effectively, and the anonymity of the Internet tends to bring the worst out in jealous, angry people with too much time on their hands."

In an extensive TIGSource business piece, Moonpod's artist, Nick Tipping, also cautions against treating all advice as sacred. In game development, the customer isn't always right, particularly when it comes to advice about marketing your game.

Moonpod's Starscape

"When we started, I used to hang out on the Dexterity forums (now the Indiegamer forums), which was the place to learn about building up a shareware games business. I was very much in awe of all the senior members - they always had something to say, and some of them had post counts in the thousands - so surely they knew what they are talking about?

"Well, not quite. There are a lot of people who want to be indie developers, and have been trying to finish their first game for years. That doesn't stop them posting on forums. Within a few months of releasing our first game, most of what I had thought to be true turned out to be complete bollocks."

The ultimate way of dealing with negative criticism or bad choices? "Cry yourself to sleep," McMillen jokes. "There should be a support group for artist like us!"