I’ve seen a lot of folks online who think they can teach developers how to develop, but I didn’t imagine the problem was so bad in face-to-face interactions.
As spotted by Game*Spark, Tokyo Game Dungeon’s official X account made a statement on May 5 saying that despite the organizers’ efforts to raise awareness about the issue of “preachy dudes” over the past two years, they still haven’t been able to eliminate the problem at their events. According to their definition, “preachy dudes”(jp: sekkyo ojisan) are people of any age and gender who find it acceptable to badger developers with condescending, unsolicited “advice” on their abilities and work.
Well, yeah? That’s not really their job. All users did is buy a thing, they didn’t also sign up to be free QA.
Edit: this adage is used to say explicitly what I am meaning. I didn’t get that, whoops.
The point is that some users like acting like QA, having an active role in the development of a game. And an easily persuaded developer might assume they ought to cater to the feedback they receive, but the adage is meant to signal to developers that they should take their user’s feedback with a grain of salt. It stands in opposition to another adage: “the customer is always right.”
That hasn’t been true in the US in a very long time. Here, it’s “The shareholders are always right.”
I thought it was “[…] in matters of taste”. As in, if you want to buy this ugly thing, we will gladly take your money for it.
Okay, that makes sense. I understood the article, but I was missing context on how that adage is used. If it’s meant to say “don’t let the user design the solution for you” instead of “user feedback is useless unless they suggest solutions”, then that’s great!
Oh yeah, I’ve only ever seen this adage used with the former implication rather than the latter.
That’s great, because my first read of that adage was definitely the interpretation “don’t listen to user feedback”. But then again I don’t work in game dev. Or QA. Also I’m autistic.
The article is saying that’s what the users are doing, and the developers don’t want them to.
To rephrase, tell us what doesn’t work, but don’t tell us how we should fix it. We’ll figure out an appropriate fix.