Why is telling him that he doesn't know what he is talking about is rude? Exactly?

Zurtan said:
Why is telling him that he doesn't know what he is talking about is rude? Exactly?

Are you being serious right now? You complain about people saying “your game is boring” being the same as a personal insult on your wifes looks; but you don't think telling someone they don't know what they are talking about is rude?

But I'm a sucker for overexplaining myself, so here you go:

It's rude because a) you are escalating something that is not personal (criticism of a game) to a personal attack (telling someone they don't know what they are talking about)
b) You are trying to argue with someone that is giving you feedback on your game. Thats not the point of feedback. If I tell you what I think about your game, I don't want you to debate me and prove me that my opinion is wrong; I just tell you what I think about a game. Is not like in a forum where if you ask a question, a debate happens. Unless its happening in a context where people are supposed to debate about the game in question, then trying to argue with someone giving you feedback unless its factually wrong (which a perception of boredom is not, as that is subjective) is inappropriate.

I mean, can you imagine a professional company going around telling their customers they are stupid for not liking their project? Spoiler alert, it happens and gives them terrible PR and for good reasons.

So what is appropriate to response to such things? I mean, its pretty much the same that you want yourself to be treated: Something like “I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the game. Can you tell me a bit more about exactly you found boring?”. And if they then respond rudely or don't give more detail; yeah at that point you can assume their input is void or unhelpful. But if your default response to someone perceiving your game as boring is “you don't know what you are talking about”, i don't know what to say.

I don't recall the conversation.

But the fact he said “This game is boring” and that he is being honest. He is not stating it as an opinion, he is stating it as a fact.

He didn't actually say “looking” boring, he said it IS boring.

I just asked for what people think on a developer discord chat, he didn't have to reply at all.

I think his reply is a bit vicious, that's why I replied with the same brutal honesty.

If you want to be brutal honest and state your opinions as fact with over confidence, then I will be brutal honest with you as well.

Zurtan said:

But the fact he said “This game is boring” and that he is being honest. He is not stating it as an opinion, he is stating it as a fact.

He didn't actually say “looking” boring, he said it IS boring.

Oh come now, that is just semantics.
Now, I can really sympathize with that point because I make the same mistake myself a lot (that is, assuming that people are stating opinions as fact)

. But just because somebody doesn't begin a statement with “I think…” “In my opinion…" or such, doesn't mean that its stating a fact. People will always say that something is when talking about subjective things. While I agree that this is a problem for policitical/scientific topics, when dealing with reviews or criticism again I don't think its the fault of this people but rather you having to learn that say “your game is boring” doesn't mean “your game is boring in general and to everyone" but “your game is boring to me”.

I mean, do you always specifically state that something is your opinion in every sentence that you say/write? Of course not. That would be silly and unpractical.

Zurtan said:

If you want to be brutal honest and state your opinions as fact with over confidence, then I will be brutal honest with you as well.

Well, I'm laughing because you have now deconstructed your own initial argument. Because now you are saying yourself that people are being honest, while you initial claimed they weren't. Now at least you admitted yourself that you just don't like people being honest. And thats honestly my only reason for still replying here, because I'm just being proven right all from the get go. You constructed that narrative where people were being bashing your game maliciously while the more details you provide, the more it becomes clear that you really just have a problem dealing with criticism.

I don't know how often I can pretty much just reword the same point so to not constantly repeat myself, but yeah. That makes you a rude asshole. People are free to express their opinions however they like, unless they cross a line like by making personal threats or something. If you then attack them “back”; then you are in the wrong. As simple as that.

I mean, by god. Just think about what your whole sentiment implies. “I'm gonna ask what people think of my game. If you dare to say what you really think and its not nice, I'm going to attack you personally and treat you like an idiot”. Do you honestly think thats a mature way to handle things?

You have constructed an argument to try and catch me in your spiked pit.

Brutally honest doesn't mean you what you are saying is true. It's what you are saying is true to you at that moment.

I am not sure if the guy is thinking to himself “Hmm… I don't like him or his game… what can I say that will trash his game the most?”

Or it's a subconscious process of general disgust that make you think of the first bad thing you can say about the game.

Let's say I had a bad day and I tell you “go to hell” when you talk to me, I am being brutal honest at that moment, but I don't really think about sending you to hell.

I guess you can be an honest asshole. You just spit whatever filth you have in your mind at that very moment.

I wasn't being a rude asshole, the guy was being in your face and “brutal honest”, so I responded that I think he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Was that rude? Ok, I guess.

You need to be rude to people who are shitting on you. The same way you are shitting on me now.

Flames, flames everywhere…

“Don't allow other ppl opinions to became your reality”.

Our minds are tricky and writes some weird stories about ‘what other ppl thinks about me’ - and usually those are not a praising stories.
How to deal with it? Maybe just ask some specific questions? Or maybe just keep a healthy distance to those opinions or try to digest only the main thought behind it?

Your actions talks about you, not about others.
So if someone is saying ‘your game is a piece of crap' it means that they don't like your game. But if you are crying about it and blaming this person for having such opinion - it means that you cant cope with criticism. If you require a criticism to be in a well defined form and words - and you wont accept it if it doesn't follow your standards - then you are closing yourself in a perfect world in which your game is really nice…

Just sayin'

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I need to have the option to say I don't agree with someone's feedback without it going to “Oh you are anti feedback now? You will never learn then.”

There's feedback, and there's useless value judgments by people with poor communication skills. “It's boring," “it sucks," “it's stupid," and “you don't know what you're talking about” fall into the latter category.

I say “useless” because useful feedback gives me information that I can use to make a decision to change something. “Your game sucks” (no other details) tells me that you don't like the game, but if you don't like something and you won't tell me why you don't like it, there's nothing for me to do about it. Such “feedback” is not worth consideration. Unfortunately, “gamer culture” is full of people who make such useless value judgments and have poor communication skills, resulting either from youth or lack of incentive to develop them. As game developers, when something we made gets visibility we are inescapably going to be subject to this. It can be hard on our self-esteems and I've seen developers get really down when the masses scream at the thing they made. As much as I don't think it should be this way, I don't know how to fix it and I don't see it changing any time soon, so we should all be prepared to deal with these morale blows.

Incidentally, good feedback looks like this:

• “I couldn't tell during the fight what my health was without moving my eyes far away from the battle and it was really easy to miss what was going on just because I was checking my health.”
• “When I used my special ability, I moved across the screen so fast that I had trouble following my character and got disoriented. ”
• “This lore that the game forces me to read is really long and the text on the screen is tiny. I have to strain to read it and that makes the game more exhausting than fun when this comes up."
• "I don't really care that much about lore and just want to beat up demons.”

See, these things are actionable. I can move the health bar closer to the player's field of view to solve that problem. I can slow down the player's special ability so they don't get disoriented, or if that isn't an option I can add a subtle “tell" as they charge up the special ability so that they can move their eyes to the right place beforehand. I can make the lore dump shorter, so players can scan it at a glance. I can increase the font size so the visually-impaired don't have to squint. I can add a “skip lore dump button” for the people who genuinely don't care about it.

Good feedback goes beyond mere “diplomacy,” it demonstrates engagement and understanding of what the person is trying to do. Many developers know how to give feedback like that, because they have to in order to have a productive working relationship with each other; many of our customers sadly do not. The result: devs appear nicer than players when giving feedback.

Zurtan said:

Why is telling him that he doesn't know what he is talking about is rude? Exactly?

Because it's making a value judgment of the person rather than what they are saying, first off. Also, people will take it as a “power move"; an attempt to marginalize them by reputation damage. Obviously, they will not react well to that. If you must say such things to someone, at least don't say them publicly as that makes it far clearer to them that your intent is to shut them up without considering what they're saying. But I highly recommend never saying “you don't know what you're talking about” to a person's face, or… ever, actually. It's much better to just tell them what they're wrong about and why. Avoid emotionally charged preambles to doing so. You simply don't need to say things that hurt people's feelings without giving them information to help them do better; it's a waste of your own time to say those things.

Phrasing is important if you care about your intent being understood, and it's not what you say, it's what they hear. Going both ways, in fact.

The examples above are all design and user experienced related, but all of this applies to code reviews, as well! Never tell someone their code “sucks;" tell them what is wrong with it.