Critique about Guest Post

General (non-technical) Off-Topic
#1

I’m making this forum because it has come to my concern that the majority of app developers here do not appreciate the work of others (mine).

It seems some of you don’t appreciate my work that I have done. I had enough with the bad critique. I’m new to everything in the gaming industry. I’m not like some of you that started at age 7,8,9 programing then was expert at 15 or 16. No my story is true I really had no knowledge when it came to programming. I started at 14 my company with a Macbook Pro, and no knowledge or a single vocabulary of programming language. Programming was the hardest thing, is still a bit hard because I had no background of it. Now with graphics that another thing. I tried many techniques to make graphics, and spent a lot of money to find techniques of how to make quality graphics, in which all fell into a disastrous. Learning to do digital drawing is one of the hardest thing to do unless I’m taught.

Realize this I’m new in gaming industry. Try to see my view I have little resources to make high end apps. If you only have bad things to say then say it because your just wasting your time. I see my apps are doing fine, with decent to awesome rating. [import]uid: 17058 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 328821[/import]

#2

@BoltVisiual But at least my apps are not false. Have you not seen the app how is filling with apps that are false with 1 star rating and ranking top 70. That is cheating right their. I’m not it takes me literally hours to create these apps with hours come weeks.The reviews that my customer leave I take them serious to “Improve” not like the false apps. [import]uid: 17058 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116132[/import]

#3

You do not need feeling diminished: Corona SDK is quite simple to learn (compared to other engines) and not so difficult to master. So carry on, really, and enjoy the ride.

That said, we are in a free market and money does the talk, competition is fierce, quality needs to be as high as possible no matter where you do start from.

Good luck! [import]uid: 67641 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116131[/import]

#4

You would do better to ignore all non-constructive criticism instead of making a defensive post in rebuttal. It’s not worth the time. [import]uid: 147305 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116139[/import]

#5

Kudos to any kid who can get inspired, learn to program, create products that other people want, and ship them, all from their couch!

There’s a lot to learn to be successful making apps and as indy developers we are not going to be great at every aspect, but we can all learn from each other and our mistakes. I’ve been in the game industry for 20 years and still have a LOT to learn.

One thing I’m grateful for is that any of us can potentially have success in the app market even though we’re up against the EAs of the world. There are no guarantees, and we can certainly pour lots of time and money into a project that doesn’t get any downloads or respect. But, for now, the field is even enough that a 14-year-old can still have a fighting chance (and maybe a crusty old guy like me does too!) [import]uid: 9422 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116141[/import]

#6

Same as with @Stephen and @Iseemtobeaverb, I’m happy for kids who’re starting early in our industry. When I was your age I also started programming and dreamt of making games. You’re lucky, I wish I had something like Corona back then… we only had GeoCities-like websites and used search engines like altavista… haha!

I think the comments were also pointed at Ansca’s blog in general though, since it’s another young-developer-makes-an-app-that-gets-downloaded-thousands-of-times entry. I’m quite new here, but I for one would like to see a blog entry about an awesome professional-looking indie game made from Corona. [import]uid: 144908 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116163[/import]

#7

@bfintal well if you look deep into Corona SDK you will see more professional app made here and also BLOGGED about than my apps like mine.

This goes for all the people I was going to keepmy fame in peace but I was encouraged by someone to have my fame be shared to Corona. So that person gave me the contacts to the people that write the blogs in I was willing to do it, but now realizing all I’m getting ignorants comments. All the people that negatively commented are the ones with high quality apps that spender tons of money on quality apps attacking a kid like me. I checked their websites and realizes that some of them just want me to be like them.

One last thing I got to say is the money Im making is not for me I have not spent a single penny. The reason for that is I made commitment to my parents that with the money I’m making is going to the house I’m buying so me, my brother, and my parents can live in. [import]uid: 17058 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116171[/import]

#8

I’d like to echo Stephen’s comments, I think it’s great that you’re building a business for yourself at such a young age. It’s deplorable that people would criticize you for working hard and following your passion.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that has no shortage of critics. If you do something successful, there will be critics that are resentful of that success. If you do something that people disagree with, there will be critics jumping at the chance to tell you how horrible you are.

The funny thing is, if those negative critics would spend more time working on their own dreams instead of criticizing the dreams of others, they probably would have a lot more to be happy about.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t take these negative comments to heart. You have to build a thick skin when you follow your own path. [import]uid: 14700 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116148[/import]

#9

Nice! Hey, just keep up the good work and don’t mind the comments too much. Just make your apps better and better, the negativity will go away for sure :slight_smile: [import]uid: 144908 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116172[/import]

#10

Sebastian, as difficult as this may be right now, it’s a great lesson to learn at such a young age. No matter what you do in life there will always be plenty of people eager to tear you down. The more successful you become, the louder they will be. Don’t listen to them. They’re not worth your time. There’s a huge difference between constructive criticism and jealousy laced negativity. Focus on the feedback that helps you and ignore the rest. Good luck! [import]uid: 40137 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116191[/import]

#11

A couple of things. You’re young and just started learning Corona without any background in Computer Science whatsoever. Did you really expect that in a year you would be developing top-notch high quality apps? If you did, you better quit now, or face the fact that you still have a lot to learn.

You can’t please everyone. If you think everybody has to like what you do then you better quit now, because even if you developed the most perfect game ever seen by mankind there would still be someone who wouldn’t like it. Also, your work, or what you do, isn’t you so you have to keep that in mind when someone is criticizing your work. You will learn a lot once you do this. When someone says “bad things” about your work, they don’t know you and don’t know anything about you, so they’re just analyzing what’s in front of them. If you can’t filter the harshness to see what it is that people are really saying, then you still have a lot to learn.

Finally, you have to ask yourself if there’s anything in your apps that you would like to improve or that you think isn’t as good. If you can’t come up with something then you better quit being a software developer now. If you can think of some things then work towards improving them, but don’t expect that those things will improve on their own or that someone has to pass you the knowledge. You have to do all the work yourself.

Steve Wozniak recently said: “If you have college courses in CS, buy the books and spend day and night the few days before class going through the books and taking notes and answering questions and programming examples before the first class even starts. If you really want to do this in your life, that’s what you should do, not just wait for the education to be handed you. Those who finish at the top will always be in high demand. You can learn outside of school too but you have to put a lot of time into it. It doesn’t come easily. Small steps, each improving on the other, is what to expect, not instant understanding and expertise.” [import]uid: 61899 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116220[/import]

#12

@ClueelessIdeas your point is pretty strong but you know what I don’t care what they say about me… I’am still going to continue making games. I knew making a top notch app would take a while. But I never in a year I’ll have a best selling app. Never knew that. I just know that I will rise, before some people that tried a lot. [import]uid: 17058 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116224[/import]

#13

Seb - I think there’s a little bit of that for sure.

However while I’m never a fan of jumping on a popular bandwagon just to shift a few apps like you’ve done with Minecraft, I’m not about to criticise you for doing so - if the rules allow it, then go for it, it’s a sign of a good entrepreneur, spotting an opportunity, and you’re only 15.

One thing to remember however is that by releasing products/opinions/things/etc… you’re putting yourself on a pedestal, and with that comes the likelihood of opinions that you might not necessarily want to hear.

Don’t let it deter you, take on board any criticsm you believe is justified and try not to let other things bother you too much - it helps to build up a tough hide in any profession that deals with producing things for public consumption.

Like a few people have said on this forum, I wish I had that drive when I was a 15 year old.

P.S I genuinely don’t believe any of the harsh words are being directed specifically at you, I think it’s more to do with the way in which Corona is promoting it. I have to admit that having spent a year working on a game, it will be hard to suffer if I only get a handful of downloads. I think some people are probably just a little peeved that they put a lot of time and effort and don’t necessarily get the rewards, and then comes another “kid success” story (no malice intended) and it just belittles the experience for some.

Just keep on going and keep on trying to get better - that’s all everybody can do. [import]uid: 33275 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116228[/import]

#14

Seb - congratulations on your downloads! I think it’s great that you’re getting such an encouragement from the market so early in the beginning of your learning process.
I agree with SegaBoy that most of the negative comments are aimed at CoronaLabs, not at your work (well you also got a fair share of criticism, but mostly constructive).

One reason for negative comments is that many of us thrive and get inspired by stories about creative and/or technical excellence, and would love to see more of that kind of content on this website. However, we are mostly being served sales-pitch type of stories, and sometimes it gets tiresome, not because actual content of your blog post (personally as I said above I think it’s great that in the process of learning you are getting good results too!), but because of the marketing message that CoronaLabs is sending: and that is the one of ever-increasing focus on beginners market.

I too used to fiercely criticize, in several similar occasiona, Corona for this approach, for a very practical reason: focus on beginners market also mean that SDK itself will head into that high-level API direction, and being a black-box type of SDK means that if some advanced feature is not there, it may simply block entire project. Eventually I just started using different SDKs for different needs, but that’s already off the point… :slight_smile:

The point is that there may be many different motives behind the bad comments, and these motives may not always be obvious. But definitely most of them don’t mean anything bad to you, or bad about your work - sometimes it just can be against the way your work is being used to market the product that many businesses depend on.

So again to repat what SegaBoy said: keep on doing it, and doing it better each time :slight_smile:
[import]uid: 80100 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116263[/import]

#15

I was bewildered by some of the repugnant comments on your post. As a 15 year old developer as well, my advice is to abstain from using trademarks. Upon reading the comments, a saw a lot of things like “Anything with minecraft in the name will sell” and I think people who are inventing their own concepts feel your apps will be instantly popular regardless of quality. Though it is true that your apps will be more popular for using minecraft, I think jealousy is most likely the explanation for the hostility of some of those comments. And also, why care what anyone thinks if you making money and getting downloads? Just keep working hard.

Cheers,
Scott [import]uid: 59735 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116130[/import]

#16

Hi everyone - I’m glad to see that the discussion here has been positive. As we posted on the blog, we think it’s very commendable that Sebastian has decided to learn how to code and publish apps at a young age. That is what we are celebrating with his post and we stand by it. Keep on working hard Sebastian!

As for criticisms of Corona Labs - that’s ok. We are big boys and can take it :slight_smile:

I’ll say this - we are not trying to focus on the beginner’s market by any means. If you look at some recent apps we have featured, like “GG Bridge”, they are very professional. We are trying to make the point that Corona can serve a very wide range of developers, which is something fairly unique in the market. If we are coming across as overly promotional, I apologize. We’ll pay more attention to that.

On the other side, we now have Corona Enterprise - which is certainly not a beginner’s tool. And we have more news coming soon on who is using it (both bigger guys AND indies) and some very high quality apps coming from it. In fact, I’m afraid that some people are going to say (and have already!) that we are abandoning the indie market (which is NOT REMOTELY true). Sometimes you end up getting criticism from all sides :slight_smile:

Have a great weekend everyone,

David [import]uid: 10668 topic_id: 28821 reply_id: 116283[/import]