So today, let’s do something we haven’t done for awhile. I’m in the mood for a good bit of ranting and it’s probably tied to the fact that my lower back is so tied up in knots it could probably hoist and hold a galleon’s main sail.

Furthermore, I was seeing some discussion and I wanted to address some of the criticism being offered. But first, some context!

I was speaking with Derek, oh, years ago now and he was commenting on how poorly our modern education system was doing in actual education. In particular, our schools do a good job of informing us of culture but it leaves us poorly adept for processing said culture. Now, Kait is a teacher, so I have some basis for understanding how our education is laid out. And, at least for our neck of the woods, there’s been a recognition of this very shortcoming.

For our interests today, my annoyance arises when people want to give feedback on the entertainment they consume today.

Now, I’m not fully throwing every individual out there as being uneducated. I’m not even going to lay all of this at the feet of the education system. There is indubitably a finite amount of time in which to teach a whole slew of skills and knowledge to a general populace. Expecting analytical dissection of media from your average person is like expecting me to walk away from a workshop class with any understanding of how a car works. I put key in whole and thing moves. We’re all going to have our blind spots. It’s just an unfortunate fact of life.

Thus, I’m not expecting this rant to suddenly elucidate a whole new generation of bright and critical minds. No, my whole goal for this post is to accomplish just one thing:

I don’t want to hear people talk about Negative Play Experiences ever again.

I hate this term. I hate it with a passion. I hated the time before this term’s existence when people groped around for some manner to convey this insipid idea. I’ve seen it referenced as anti-fun (probably from some physics enthusiast dweeb), use pattern mis-match or any number of other vague, jingoistic terms that are never well defined and used as though everyone understands what on earth you’re discussing.

And thus, I’d love to give you a definition of Negative Play Experience. But I’ve never found one. I mean, sure, I’ve read people answer that it’s “anything a game does that bores or frustrates one or more players.”

That’s it. That’s pretty much all the definition you’ll get. Except you’ll have lots of people swoop into a conversation and emphatically state “This game did poorly because it’s full of Negative Play Experiences!” And they almost never get challenged because it’s the sort of criticism that appears to carry meaningful messaging.

I shouldn’t have to point how Negative Play Experiences should be laughed at. But let’s breakdown why treating “anything that bores and frustrates you” isn’t a valid criticism. First, boredom and frustration are two different emotions and conflating the two of them together diminishes the issues behind either. Second, boredom and frustration aren’t cardinal sins in entertainment. This might come across as controversial but stay with me.

Let’s address boredom. Sure, it is pretty antithetical to the whole purpose of entertainment. I would readily agree that if entertainment is boring you then it’s probably not the entertainment for you. The caveat, however, is that just because you find something boring doesn’t necessarily make it bad.

We all come to our experiences, not as blank slates as those Tabula Rasa philosophers once naively believed. We carry with us a mountain of baggage formed from the experiences and education we’ve received to that point. Someone born and raised in the nicest Swiss chalet is going to certainly have different interests than myself. What I find interesting, they’ll probably find boring. This is why entertainment is focused on markets. In fact, a common criticism for a lot of popular media is when it gets too broad in its appeal and loses its interest for everyone. It is not just better to be liked by some and hated by others but I’d argue that’s ideal. The last thing you ever want to make as a creator is something that no one hates. In all likelihood, all you’ve managed to do is make something so bland and banal that it simply elicits no emotion from your audience.

And that is bad.

So I may have no interest in handegg or race cars, and such things may bore me, but others find it exciting. Saying that you find something is boring is actually fine. Perhaps it is ideal. It’s no reflection on the quality of that object, however. It’s merely a reflection of you with that object. By acknowledging boredom you’re just summing up in fewer words that a product or piece of entertainment isn’t for you.

As a point of criticism, however, a creator can’t really take anything from that. So if you’re expecting a creator to take you complaint that “you’re bored,” don’t really expect to be rocking anyone’s world here.

There are, of course, places where boredom can be appropriate feedback. Off the top of my head, if you’re already an established audience then you can comment on changes by the creator that effect your engagement with the product. “I really enjoyed putting digital hats on my soldiers but I find painting nails on their digital pets that you only see on loading screens as a boring replacement” is fine feedback. But even with this example, we’ve already progressed well past decrying nail painting as a “Negative Play Experience” and provided something actually damn useful.

As for frustration, I’m really surprised to see it listed as a problem.

Well, I’m not masochistic enough to be baffled that people hate frustration. I know I don’t like being frustrated.

However, I’m surprised to see people who make a hobby of gaming to be so against frustration. I can’t think of any game that hasn’t frustrated me. In fact, part of the point of games is to create frustration. That’s where the whole sense of challenge arises. If you aren’t overcoming anything then you’re not really gaming. You may be having an experience but I’d be hard pressed to consider it a game. And all of my most rewarding experiences with the hobby has been overcoming great adversity.

Some of the most celebrated video games are also ones with great reputations for causing frustration. Dark Souls made an entire franchise on frustrating the player. And of course there is the whole “bullet hell” genre. And this isn’t even touching multiplayer games where, by necessity, competition between other people is going to cause frustration. And I don’t have any experience with them but the “simulation” games seem to have game play solely around being frustrating to handle.

Of course, there is some frustration that may not be ideal. For example, if say the keybinding for actions are poorly spaced on the keyboard and you’re constantly reaching across fingers to try and do anything, constantly hitting the wrong button and accidentally killing yourself, I can see that being unnecessary frustration. Some things aren’t meant to frustrate and if they do, then of course that is valid criticism to provide. But that’s just the ticket, explain why said thing is frustrating to you.

If your problem is that “I don’t like X because I lose to it.” Well, that could very well be on you, cupcake. On the other hand, if you’re providing feedback like “I take this path in the game and it takes twice as long to achieve half the success as my opponent doing this path which is a fraction of the challenge even though the game encourages this action,” that is likely a good frustration to report.

That really is the nature of proper criticism, however. Blandly stating “this thing is bad and the creators are idiots for doing it” is not proper criticism. It’s noise. And I’m a strong proponent of the vast, vast, vast majority of feedback that creators get is useless noise. My stance is, listen to what your audience is telling you but never do what they say. The audience is often decent at pointing at something which is not working. They’re horrible at explaining why or offering successful fixes. Partly, they lack the full picture of design. Which isn’t that surprising if you consider their background. Most consumers are only familiar with consumption. They can tell if it upsets their stomach but they have no idea what is going on in their digestion.

So if all of them are saying that your creation isn’t working, they’re probably right. But most of the time they can’t pinpoint what’s wrong. So don’t listen to their fixes. Hell, a lot of the time the misdiagnose the issue in the first place.

So if you want to help creators, if you want to reduce your own noise output, just think of criticism sort of like a doctor’s visit. You know your body the best. You know when something isn’t working as it should. But you don’t know all the diseases and ailments that it could possibly be. So explain all the symptoms and how they deviate from the normal.

But by goodness, don’t come in with your diagnosis.

And please don’t call the next mechanic you lose to in a game a “Negative Play Experience.”