Has this ever happened to you? You produce a great title, only to have someone say, “your game is a piece of 💩?” If somebody does, don’t focus on that and read this instead. Or, you can cut them off by blocking them or filing a DMCA to them (not recommended). Boost Collective explained this in their video How To Deal With Haters As A Musician, and felt we decided to write a similar guide for the gaming industry, especially for indie developers like me. Can we apply the flow technique to you?
Remember, nobody’s perfect. Almost everyone who pursues a career in the gaming industry has had to deal with haters. Some of the hate can be justified and it usually happens on the things you care about, with some saying “nobody cares about your game.” If you’ve been a developer for any number of years, combating hate is your number one goal. Sometimes it can happen on a daily basis, and it’s not fun. Sometimes you might see “oh, it sucks so badly” with that person tarnishing what you care about. From this article, you can learn how to take that hate and brush it away! A lot of times for what we do with hate is make our games better. We always respond to criticism by improving the game to ensure our players get the best possible experience.
We used to get hit on all the time when Drillimation was in the GoAnimate field and it still happens today. Such comments like “cool down, bro” or “I don’t like it” seem normal. In more severe cases, every hate comment is like taking damage in any fighting game you can imagine before getting blown away with a finishing move. Don’t let that be their fatality move! This can affect anyone, regardless of whatever field of entertainment they’re in. If you have creative talent, your goal is to put out beautiful and amazing content that will draw the crowd you deserve. The funny thing is, for every follower you get on social media, there could be three other haters up their sleeves. That means you could only get 25% of whatever sales you need for your title. To continue growing, you must become familiar to what haters are saying and be able to dodge their fists and projectiles. They can come without warning so you better prepare yourself for them.
One strategy you can use is the hate matrix. This is a simple series of strategies for overcoming it. The first thing is to gain composure before you take your actions (hold steadiness), look at the situation from open-minded individuals (analyze), find the best way to deal with the haters (think), and take those actions (execute). Once you look at it for the first time after really bad cases of it, it will be a part of your system the next time. Once you get better reception, you’ll become more and more immune to it. Make sure you like and share this article, as the main point of it is to have all the knowledge in the world that could mean nothing unless you do something with it.
When your game gets hated on and you decide to ignore this advice, just forget it. I don’t know about you, but reading this can be a monumental and turning point of your advancing game development career. You can use all the hate and criticism you receive to empower yourself and like before, there is more hate than support. The more you channel that in, the better your career will be.
Every time you review the hate matrix, you’ll be trying a new tactic for each game you make. You get better over time. When you’re feeling hate from somebody else, try to go over the matrix. People say the same thing you should improve and if you want to improve your fanbase, be active on social media! Go and like posts, as that’s the best way to get noticed. Not everyone who sees your name in their notification inbox will follow you, but it’s enough to get your word out. This tactic helped us get nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter. Every time somebody unfollows you, they may be doing it just so they can boost their follower count. This is known as churning – following large numbers of accounts and then unfollowing them after they follow you back. Social media websites prohibit this and liking is the only strategy if you want to get 10,000 followers! As you grow and grow, so does the hate. This article should’ve taught you how to deal with the most problematic haters.
Is there anything we left out? Let us know in the comments!
Drillimation Systems 