Good Morning Gato # 98 – Comfy Kitty
Welcome to GMG number 98! Just two more posts until we have written 100 of these suckers! I realize that if our posting frequency wasn’t nearly as haphazard we would have gotten to this number much sooner but almost 100 posts is still nothing to sneeze at! Gato, however, is completely comfortable with the number, as she is with all numbers (except irrationals, but that’s a pretty normal cat thing).
Charlie Murder Teasers
If you’ve played the demos at PAX and PAX East, you might have seen a bit of exposition. What’s Charlie Murder about?
Envy. The “save your girlfriend” thing is out, replaced with bitter, sticky, ugly rock ‘n’ roll rivalry. Charlie Murder delivers its exposition through rhythm minigames, and those lucky enough to try it out at last PAX East got to tap out the band’s genesis, from Charlie’s pencil-to-notepad musings to the band’s utterly perfect first dive bar gig.
But sometimes friends get left behind, and sometimes friends get bitter. Envy is a poison, and Charlie Murder’s meteoric rise to fame might just unwittingly fuel a jealousy-born rage that would reduce the world to ashes and blood a million times if it only hurt one special person.
A meteoric rise is a wonderful thing, but they all come to an end, and some ends are worse than others. So fly high, Charlie, but be wary when your world comes crashing down, for the ghosts of the past are hungry.
The Internet
Hopefully, everyone knows you should not take ANYTHING you read on the internet personally. Most of the time, James and I are pretty good at laughing in the face of would-be trolls but every once in a while, something gets through. The topic of how to handle negative comments as an indie dev was brought up on the recent “Open Development for Indies: Why Cooperative Trumps Competitive” PAX panel that James took part on. The discussion covered ignoring and moving on, hiring your own community manager to take the heat, and turning your biggest trolls into your greatest allies. Responding to negative comments, aka “feeding the trolls”, is often not a good idea. It’s extremely tempting to respond to trolls. 99.5% of the time it’s also extremely stupid to respond to trolls.
We are the peeps making games no one cares about in this post.
The 0.5% of the time when it is fruitful to respond to trolls is when what was perceived as the trolliest of trolls is actually a big misunderstanding, and the troll is actually just a human making an innocent observation, not a bridge dwelling mythical creature with regenerative capabilities, weakness to fire, and an insatiable appetite for human flesh.
It’s not usually a good idea to respond to negativity but in some cases, it can lead to better understanding. My conclusion here: it just depends. If the negative thing is a flat out insult with no valid criticism, let it pass you by. If, however, there seems to be an underlying message, explore it and grow from it. This was all pretty much said and covered on the panel but I had to say it for myself. So there. 😀
