Critiquing vs Criticizing

General
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It’s worth noting that intentions are important concerning feedback and how those intentions are conveyed.

I cited earlier the definitions of critique versus criticism:

In a nutshell, critique is when you’re intention is to help the author. Criticism is when you’re intention to tell the author what they did wrong or what they’re not doing right according to your standards.

The other thing I want to touch on is someone might write what they think is a critique but it comes across as a criticism for whatever reason despite that not being the intention. I think that conveying your intention if you’re giving feedback is a fundamental, if not the fundamental, pillar of being a voluntary tester.

In some cases, I would even go so far as to say that conveying your intention is as important as the feedback you’re giving to an author.

If you can’t get your message across even if it was the most well-meaning and sincere thing you could ever say and no one would ever call it otherwise, that doesn’t get you far in the long run if you fail to convey your intention to the author.

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Yeah, I call it constructive criticism, as a remnant of Old Fanfiction :tm: days. In reality, critique is a more nuanced term.

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The whole critique vs criticizing thing is very interesting, and I do believe different people put different meaning into those terms, like with eveything else.

The talk about different cultures made me think about how danish uses the same word for both of those terms, namely “kritik”, and so I don’t really think about them as different things, more as “constructive vs negative”.

So, along with culturel differences, we also have to remember that people might think of words differently because of how the language they grew up with uses the “equal” of that word.

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I know this might not be the right place to post this, but I rarely ever see wips on here get feedback. I noticed that authors will typically put feedback needed or wanted in their thread but they never really receive it and if it’s a extremely favored game they will just get a bunch of likes. Of course this isn’t just a ‘this site’ problem since this happen on every other writing website but I feel like if more people gave feedback in general more people would be willing to compete their work.
(And this isn’t to blame anyone after all I never offer feedback as well)

But uh back to the subject:
I feel like critique and criticize mean different things for different people. I believe that even the most brutal criticism(“this work is trash because of…” “you need to fix this because…” etc.) is still critique and I enjoy getting those type of criticism but I know everyones not me and not everyone enjoy that type of criticism/critique. So it’s hard to say what’s criticism and what’s critique.

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I mean… we could argue that 'till we’re all blue in the face :cold_face: of what a good and fair critique should look like based on the dictionary definition, but there’s a ton of outside factors to step back and consider in terms of any type of feedback.

Maybe not enough time to time out something that’s paragraphs long. Maybe they feel that their insight isn’t valuable or worthwhile or just a rehash of what someone else has said. The list goes on and on and on.

Ultimately, feedback is subjective since it’s based upon opinion and opinions aren’t something that can be proven to be right or wrong.

And just to double down on my previous point, you could think of giving feedback in two very extreme examples as either being a drill sergeant in an army and screaming in someone’s face or just glossing over what could be improved, reinforcing that nothing needs improvement and that everyone who thinks so is just mean.

Ideally, feedback shouldn’t on either end of these two extremes for obvious reasons.

If your feedback mimics a drill sergeant, the author will ignore you, think that you’re the problem, and will probably never listen to you from that point forward. If your feedback is just sweeping everything that could be improved under the rug, you’re basically helping them put out a “faulty” product and you’re not helping them improve to be a better writer.

It’s been brought up a couple of times, but I’d like to chime in and say a 5 Star rating system is not a very good system to begin with for various reasons. The most relevant to an author is that it encourages buyers to do the bare minimum (just leave a star or several) without going into detail as to why they gave the product that rating.

The 5 Star system is most appropriate for products that are tangible i.e. DVDs, a phone, etc. since it’s probably easier to understand why you gave something a 1 Star if the product had a giant crack down the middle of it.

And let’s not get started on customer by customer “standards” of how something should qualify as a 1 Star or 5 Star. :star::star::star::star::star:

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The thing is, no one is saying beta testers shouldn’t be sincere, what people is saying is, a beta tester shouldn’t do more harm than good. And if you go full blunt with negative points about the game, that is more likely going to ruin the author, rather than helping them, since the chances of it coming off as plain hate are higher.

Is not the same to have someone tell you a loved one has died in a delicate, compassionate way, than just tell you “your sister died, bye”.

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And As i can’t stop adding I am saying be sincere POSITIVE negative and posible options.

Sincerity doesnt mean be an ass. Or spit fire breath

For instance sincerity is

I found this scene lack in a evil choice I will like have a option to be more grumpy there because my character don’t like that character trying to flirt with her.

I like X it is very well designed and has a good development . I found also Leon incredible cute…

So well thats part of my this weekend feedback to Keepers … I have not eaten alive Also Similar example you could see in Six game .

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Then I think is all a misunderstanding :smiley:

No one is saying to not be sincere, being delicate or sugar coating, as others describe it, doesn’t mean you are lying at all, it just means you are being tactful. Being sincere and tactful are not opposites after all :smiley:

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Of course I am being more tactful later. Tactful is sincere too. What i was trying to say with Sincere is not rude It is say the truth clearly not trying to hide it with white noise.

Being tactful and CLEAR because if you aren’t clear author can’t understand really what are you saying.

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I wouldn’t say that it’s really necessary to rigidly adhere to the sandwich structure, but I think that including some positives alongside the negatives is important, and beginning with the positives is going to be a lot more encouraging than the reverse. (The close, on the other hand, I think just some polite “good luck with the rest of your writing” or suchlike can be enough.)

As for why positive feedback is important, well, I’ll quote myself so I don’t need to type it all out again…

Really, if an author receives some feedback that is nothing but negatives, the author is liable to conclude “well, this reader isn’t part of my audience anyway, so I’ll may more attention to suggestions from people who are interested.”

As far as structuring feedback, I also usually move from the big level feedback toward the small level stuff. Typos and bug fixes can generally just be plopped at the end, under a [details][/details] tag, as you don’t really need them to take up a big bunch of space in the thread.

Oh yeah, and even giving more neutral impressions can still be useful. Just things like what you think characters are like, or what you think is going on in the story, etc. Sometimes what the author intends to convey isn’t matching what the reader is getting out of it, and you’ll never know it unless you check.

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I know that everyone will have differing opinions regarding the positive to negative feedback ratio, but there have been lots of studies done on how people learn and develop ideas depending on feedback received.

I got to sit in on a live VR-based study several years ago, where subjects were asked to solve a particular problem. When they were wrong, a big red ‘x’ appeared and a buzz sounded. When they were right, a green checkmark appeared and a little dingy sounded. The experiments were still in the early stages, but the info they had gathered was that the subjects were (predictably) more receptive to the positive reinforcement.

Studies I searched up had different results, largely focusing on the importance of a mix of positive and negative feedback. Hard to improve if you dont know what you’ve done wrong, but also humans are silly and like the green checkmarks. If the point of critiquing and providing feedback to WIPs is to help the author learn to produce a better product, I think it’s worth it to take into consideration how people work.

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Haven’t read the links, but shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s been known for a long, long time and that’s why slot machines are designed the way they are with all their jingling sounds and flashing lights. You don’t get buzzers for non-successful runs, only re-enforcement for the successful ones. (That’s not the only thing they use, but it’s definitely a factor.) But yeah, there is still a balance to be made between encouragement and the information needed (which is often crit) so you can efficiently improve.

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A lot has already been said on the topic and reading everyone’s opinions definitely made me think how to improve my own feedback-giving-skills AND how to ask the right questions to get the answers I need to improve my story.

As an author, I appreciate all types of comments, from “I liked it” to “Can we do x?” or “Why did you do that?”.

I would definitely like to hear what didn’t work for people, because I can’t fix it otherwise. I’m new to writing for public consumption, so any kind of feedback is valuable. As long as the reader doesn’t say “Your story sucks” (not that I have seen it happen on this forums) and stops at that. At least tell me why do you think it’s bad. The more specific you get, the better.

As a reader I struggle with listing the negatives because a) maybe what bothers me is simply a result of difference in tastes, b) my lack of experience in both writing and giving high leveled feedback. Knowing which things I should pay attention to (eg. pacing, story inconstancy, grammar) definitely helps.

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On a related note:

How many people check a game’s code (as spoilery as it is) when/before giving feedback?

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I still have major problems accomplishing this on published games. I’ve only successfully looked at code a few times, even with over a hundred attempts so far.

For WiP, I don’t do this unless the author requests it; I try to keep my feedback linked to a “in the wild” read instead of a “behind the curtain” read.

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What about Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven ? I can understand for other games, but seeing how you are (partly) involved in its development… just curious is all.

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That is different. With Part 2 material, I had to understand the code better to write. Even so, Jim is in complete control of the code because he is a wiz at it and I was best at writing.

Going forward I will be moving back into the shadows, testing as before.

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to me it’s become a bit of a habit (and I hope it is okay with the staff and authors) to dive into the code when i find something odd. Just to see ‘okay, we have all screamed at code after we missed something, let’s see what it is, maybe i can suggest some fix’

And I know that people checking my code helped me with a lot of things

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I personally only look code if authors asks for. Most of my feedback comes from perspective of someone blind and or a role player being blind and ss see my reaction to plot twist are far useful from a blind perspective. Is also good when I make what i called testing coherence.

I choose conflicting choices and not what is looking more logical to see if game has coherence o balance choices. For instance if @Cataphrak guns I found A loop of death in one scene if you hadn’t the best stats you could ended in a eternal returning to chapter after dying in battle.

Another important check of coherence is If opposites stats shifting that could cause in game like empyrean in same scene be a great lockpicker to have never seen a lock and have no idea how use the tools. Those are details that need a game running and aren’t visible code wise.

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Informed feedback is very helpful. Many, if not most people who are active testers here do it.

Which is why I often do not.

The author usually needs both categories of feedback - and often both types are helpful in different ways.

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