Game Oven closed down, but left us with a wealth of knowledge!

edited in General
http://adriaandejongh.nl/closing-Game-Oven-numbers-and-struggles

It's interesting (among other things) that he talks about the Dutch game community not quite fulfilling their needs for critique. Obviously he isn't blaming anyone, but just the idea that some more frank critique could have saved them from investing in their unsuccessful (in his words) games is interesting.

I wonder if this community would have given him better advice. (My guess is that we wouldn't have, and we would have let them invest in and release those games, this isn't an accusation, I'm a part of this community as well. It's really hard to give bad news, and makes you feel like a jerk, it's much much easier to offer platitudes).

I propose a task force that will randomly select South African game developers, enter their homes/offices, by coercion or force, and check what they're working on, and then offer unsolicited critique about the prospects of the project.

Though seriously, are we grinfucking too much as a community? Obviously we want a lot of enthusiasm and support here, but if people are withholding their more concerned thoughts that's not good for anyone. I don't have a good answer.

That's by no means the gist of the article though! There's a lot of other rad information in there. Anything else that spikes anyone's fancy about the article?

Comments

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    Though seriously, are we grinfucking too much as a community? Obviously we want a lot of enthusiasm and support here, but if people are withholding their more concerned thoughts that's not good for anyone. I don't have a good answer.
    We are now almost at the end of the period spending time with 100 other startups, and we (@jsgbailey and I) talk about risk a lot partly because we are almost always on the edge of the cliff, and partly because we have seen a lot of different ways to approach the cliff now from others. (It's not game dev specific, but I believe the same principles apply). One thing that is striking is how many people lost that original glist of optimism (it's not been replaced by cynicism, to be clear, but rather something just a tiny bit more "serious"), and how starkly we all contrast against the next 100 companies. (http://www.startupchile.org/ if you don't know what I'm talking about).

    I used to be a big proponent of understanding risk and making choices taking that into account, and I guess I still am... but a few things have flavored my thinking a bit lately. The one is that you actually need people that are a bit naive or crazy, and yes, even misunderstand what they are getting themselves into, so that they would get into it and make the wonderful things they make, so that the handful of ones that actually prosper from it enriches society. Also, so that we get wonderful things even though they have no economic right to exist (such as Van Gogh paintings). So not raising concerns is not necessarily "not good for everyone", it is maybe just not good for the actual person taking the risk.

    But this stance would be very selfish, and we should definitely not do it!

    It would be helpful if more people were open about the dark side of their endeavors, rather than necessarily just raising concerns. (Which I know is difficult to do, not only because failure is embarrassing, but also because dark times often requires a lot of work to get through, with little time to talk about it!)

    Of course, we hear some stories from the outside world, but more stories from our own community will make things more relatable. To me it's one thing if some famous dev could't pay health care for years and nearly died; it's quite another thing when I hear somebody I know personally had to sell their car, or max out all their credit cards, or dodge their landlords, or have not been on a beach holiday for some years. If it's somebody you know it's easier to contemplate that it may happen to you too.

    @BlackShipsFilltheSky It's a wonderful article, tanks for posting!
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    From experience of living / working in various countries...

    I do think a community like makegamessa would have been able to offer more honest, upfront critique to one another. In SA we have greater geographical distances, greater separations between developers within a town or city because it's a less common profession / pastime, and we're physically isolated from other countries where gamedev is big / established. That tightens a community like this where we are bound both by our interest and our nationality / shared culture.

    "Grinfucking" is a very apt term and something that happens a lot more as you get closer to the centre of the first world. In those situations I've found a lot more under-the-radar competition, and a lot more professional caution -- the last thing you want to do is offend people who may be connected to other people you need, especially in a place like London or Amsterdam where the industry at large is well-connected. A book like "Watching the English" also offers some good cultural insights into this. There are Western European cultures with similarities, where it is common to find any given individual telling you what they think you want to hear, rather than what you need to hear. One example is asking for directions on the street; for some cultures, it can be hard to admit "I don't know" to a question, so instead you will receive false directions just so that the mini-conversation rounds off well, and they save face. From observing English and South Africans in Britain, we tend (usually) to say exactly what we mean, and not always sugar-coated in politeness either, and so are often considered blunt... not to say we're impolite by comparison with the rest of the world, but our tipping point in ordinary conversation between "let's be real now" and "let's be polite now" leans more toward the former.

    It's important to understand that these cultural norms "work" within the culture they are intended for; but don't work as well interculturally, where bare-faced honesty and giving people the benefit of the doubt is the better policy to avoid miscommunication and conflict. TBH I found that NL was a mix of these two aspects; some people were very feet-on-the-ground, others not at all so. SE Asia was again a whole other story, in my experience, but that's a story for another day.

    There was another thread on here a while ago about taking critique without taking offense, and I think that's also central to this discussion.
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