Criticism has zero inherent value. It’s easy to assume that stuff people like is inherently better, but anything with widespread appeal ends up really bland. You can’t do better than simply ok while making everyone happy.

This obviously gives rise to picking an audience, but this idea goes beyond just demographics. There is no greatest book of all time only individual preference which doesn’t result in an absolute rank.

Commercial art is at best a compromise. No artist is going to inherently prefer exactly what the market wants directly, they only want the indirect things associated with that. Aka money, fame etc.

> This obviously gives rise to picking an audience

Even that is hard. App stores are full of negative reviews for apps because X app is not just like Y app…. when X app isn’t at all supposed to be Y app. Or situations where the user simply misunderstood how the app works and etc.

It’s so hard to get things in front of the right audience who understand.

Yes, and it is very very hard to tell prospective customers that a product is not for them. The temptation is always to cast as wide of a net as possible and sell product X as being product Y, often with the best intentions of evolving to be X+Y in a future revision.

>Criticism has zero inherent value.

I get what you're saying here, but part of any art program is critical review of each others' works. You don't have to change what you created, but to hear other perspectives on how it is received is important.

One professor told me how it is, partly, about keeping the artist from falling down their own rabbit hole. Sort of like the story about the servant who followed Marcus Aurelius around to whisper "you are but a man" in his ear. Highly creative types tend to have somewhat fragile mental states, and they can spiral out if not kept in check.

Criticism from a professor is useful for passing, and some things are simply errors in technique.

But from students the content of their critique is less important than what it implies. Did they fail to notice something you were trying to make obvious? That’s useful feedback which can’t be directly included in their criticism. The actual content may also be useful, but it isn’t guaranteed.

So it’s definitely a useful, but not necessary useful as criticism.

I don't get how someone could get really, really good at any sort of creative process without the benefit of encountering and engaging in criticism, of one's own works and of others'. Simply calling out what does and does not work, and why, is criticism and is super helpful for learning how to do things right.

Feedback can tell you if something does or doesn’t work independently from being criticism. For example asking someone to summarize a story you wrote is a great way to see what is or isn’t clear. How would you describe character X’s motivations is another approach.

People naturally want to provide criticism, but it’s surprisingly inefficient without a great deal of context.

One small point.

> If people have the means to complain, they have the right to. You can ignore them (unless you depend on them) but others might not.

Having the means to do something in no way gives you the right to do so. I have the means to speed in my car. I have the means to murder someone. I don't have the _right_ in either case to do so.

I think they are talking specifically about complaining though, not about anything in general

I would absolutely say that having the means to complain does not inherently give you the right to complain.

Right is earned through investment.

A creator invests a substantial amount of time and effort into something.

A complainer can invest no time or effort into something.

And specific to the gaming community, there's a distinction between investing consumption time (e.g. playing) and creation time (e.g. modding or building).

I'd allow that playing confers substantial rights ("I've played this game over 1,000 hours and I think..."), but those rights should never be confused with creator rights.

Which is what makes amateur game criticism so toxic to me ("I can't do what you do, nor have any interest in investing the effort, but let me tell you how to spend your time to do what I want").

Especially in the performance-limited era of Half Life, most gamers didn't know a damn thing about the boundary of the possible.

You still have the right to complain, you just don't have the right for anybody else to care about your complaint.

The ability to complain doesn't need to be earned, only the respect itself needs to be earned.

The wrinkle is zero-context internet, where there's little ability to tell what respect someone is due, which leads to people who aren't due it assuming they should get it (because they also don't know what others complaining have done).

Which I guess boils down to "Don't listen to the internet."

Regardless of knowing what's possible, this is the origin of "the customer is always right in matters of taste".

You don't have to have invested in creation to know what you like and you don't. Claiming that the creators are the only ones who understand things enough to critique them is vanity and is toxic to projects.

Every time I've seen project leaders talk like that it's been a disaster. Jensen Harris et. al used that language to dismiss feedback about the Windows 8 Star Screen, for example.

> Right is earned through investment.

Rights are absolutely not earned, they are granted. You do not earn the right to vote, or to have legal protection. A right is granted either by the state, by society, or by 'god'.

History whitewashing. The right to vote was won/taken by people who fought for it. “The state” (?) then doesn’t get credit for “granting” it, as if the state was the from-nothing cause.

That kind of theoretical nonsense might be how certain sociologists of state discuss it. But no normal person cares about that.

Excuse me, but you don't earn yourself the right to vote by fighting for it until you take it. However it came about in law, it is granted to you. Whether it was fought for or not, your forefathers do not come back from the grave and allow you to have it after you pass some ritual test -- the state grants it to you when you turn a certain age. In fact, voting would be completely pointless if there were no 'state' to grant it. Making this into some sort of weird history lesson and berating "the state" (?) is not helpful.

> Excuse me, but you don't earn yourself the right to vote by fighting for it until you take it.

I didn’t say that I earned it.

> Making this into some sort of weird history lesson and berating "the state" (?) is not helpful.

Weird? It’s about the causal origin of rights, i.e. history.

Weird philosophy lessons on “rights” are not helpful.

This makes no sense. If you didn't earn them, then what does 'earn' mean? Other people cannot earn something for you.

Makers (HN supermen): the strong make what they want; the weak endure the fruits of that (as they must).

Complainers: I am certainly strong enough to complain your ears off.

Makers: No, not like that! That’s immoral!

* * *

I don't disagree, but I think you are largely conflating the right to speak complaints with the right to be an entitled jerk.

Few creators will object to criticism that shows an understanding of the work/product. Most will object to personal abuse empty of any actual criticism.

Understanding the context of a product makes for better complaints. Just venting is not helpful and often abusive.

I think you two may have a confusion of terms. I'm just guessing here, but I suspect the complaining they are referring to is the zero content anger spew some people think is appropriate, not critique.

I see it a lot in small communities centered around open source games. It is easy for some one to vent their anger in a useless fashion (can we agree that pr teams calling it passion is a euphemism they use to avoid insulting people giving them money?), and comparatively difficult and rare for people to put their experience into relatable terms or to criticize a change as it pertains to the project's goals.