What else can I add that hasn’t been said already? Oh, I know… it was Christmas 1986 and, after lunch, I showed my family my BASIC program drawing a Xmas tree and playing Jingle Bells on my C128. 38 years later it still sucks to realize that they didn’t even understand what was going on on screen …
Bottom line, forget friends, relatives, colleagues and the likes. It’s not their world, no matter what.
Cheers
Welcome, @Hedwyn !
You’ve discovered this the hard way, but ‘civilians’ are not going to be your best beta testers if they have had no previous experience with the type of IF you are writing. A partner of mine once asked me to critique the prose she was writing for her friend’s MUD and it was very rudimentary location descriptions that were so specific to task that there wasn’t feedback I could give. “Cool, this room has a desk…”
Sometimes there is good feedback to be had by occasionally throwing your game in front of a civilian you trust if they are game and perhaps willing to let you watch over their shoulder and backseat drive if they have trouble to see if they can get the hang of it.
I love this definition of ‘civilians’. It reminds me of the ‘Yakuza’ series on the PlayStation… LOL!
Welcome, Hedwyn! I was and still am in your shoes.
In addition to the great responses here, I’d like to add that no one player is guaranteed nor obligated to enjoy your game. It’s not even guaranteed that you’ll like it yourself!
So what’s left if there’s no guarantee that anyone will like what you made? Rather than focusing on the final output, nowadays I’m finding value in learning to enjoy the process instead. I may not end up making a great game but I can at least have fun making what I think is a great game.
And that’s the funny part of it. Creators often assume that joy is found in providing a fun fantasy for others. But often that joy can also be found in creating a fun fantasy for ourselves, a brief period of play where our inner children can explore as they wish. Maybe that’s why it stings when someone criticizes what we make, our inner children are playing games of creation while our audience is playing games of consumption.
Don’t give up. You have the rest of your life to enjoy making games (among other things!).
Welcome @Hedwyn.
“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” Mahatma Ghandi.
This quote sits above my computer screen and I have to say that it sustained me many times during the 3+ years that I worked part-time on my first Inform game, The Time Machine.
I wrote version 1.0 for ParserComp 2021 and I didn’t have any problems sustaining my energy and enthusiasm for the game during those twelve months of development since it was all new. Aside from some previous tinkering for Cragne Manor, I was an Inform novice and every day was a new adventure. Problems that baffled me one day would be solved the next and I was always able to find answers on this forum. While I had to cut down my original concept to make the contest date, I was pleased with what resulted and quite surprise that my game ranked 6th out of 18 submissions.
For some reason I decided that I needed to work on a v2.0. I wanted to make the game better and I figured it would only take me a few months. Looking back at my original notes for this version I listed the following goals:
Halfway through version 2.0 I also decided to add images for rooms and characters to give me a chance to experiment with Midjourney and generative AI.
By the time I submitted version 2.0 to Spring Thing 2024’s New Game Plus section I was sick of this game. Many times over the past two and a half years I wondered why I was putting in nights and weekends on a project that wouldn’t earn me any money, a project that even my family would probably not play unless I begged them. And every time that thought crossed my mind I raised my eyes to the Ghandi quote, probably muttered “F–k it” under my breath, and moved forward.
Aside from the learning and the problems solved, what makes it worthwhile for me is this community of like-minded people. There are people here who will volunteer to beta test your game and then be so diligent that you receive hundreds of bugs that you didn’t know existed. There are people here who will answer your questions or point you in a direction that helps you arrive at a solution. And there are people here who will play your game in a competition and either write a review or recommend a ribbon that surprises the hell out of you and makes you feel that someone, somewhere understands why you did this.
You are doing this for yourself for some reason. Keep at it and you’ll be amazed at what you discover about yourself, about your game, and about this community.
I’m currently working on my second game. Hopefully it won’t take three and a half years for me to finish it.
Two things, on top of everything everybody has already said:
Consider who your work is for. Then find places where that target audience is gathering, and search for beta readers there, instead of just asking the people around you.
This is acutely important for my current work, which I am not going to describe here in any detail because it is absolutely gonna make two thirds of this forum go “ew, gross”, and which I will not bring up to my friends anytime soon.
Those friends who just didn’t give you any feedback? Yeah, that happens. Playing and criticizing someone’s beta game thing is a time commitment and an emotional investment. Sometimes people just say “yes” when you ask them, then can’t find the time. That’s fine. See point #1. Personally I am absolutely someone who procrastinates and then forgets about that kind of responsibility, so when others ask me to take a look at their work, i either give them a polite no, or a disclaimer that i can’t make any promises.
It’s important to realize the difference between useful feedback and people just not liking the basic premise of your work. “This bit of the text could be truncated a bit” is useful feedback, “I’d prefer if it was a crime thriller in the format of a first-person shooter” is not. It seems like some of the feedback you got falls more into the second category. See also: “No work of art is for everybody.”
Yeah, those are actually three points, I guess. Sorry.
Hi again, I have a little update. First I wanted to delete this post, but then nobody would see the helpful and supportive comments. So I wanted to say that my friends do actually care and that the two guys who hadn’t replied, replied today and gave me great feedback. Actually I think they were a bit too nice. ^^ They are both good with coding so that may be a reason, why they are more familiar with the medium. The other friend still hasn’t finished my short intro but said that he would like to write a soundtrack for the game and nailed the vibe with his first attempts.
Sooo i feel a bit overdramatic and awkward now. I was in a bad space mentally as well, at the time. But I am going to leave this post open. Thanks again, to all of you 
I think your first point is absolutely true. I don’t think anybody owes somebody that kind of appreciation.
Glad to hear things worked out for you!
I honestly wouldn’t worry about that! You brought up very good point that new IF authors may find insightful.
No matter how good your game is, here will be someone who doesn’t like it, not necessarily because it’s bad, but simply because it’s not to their tastes.
Take Counterfeit Monkey for example. There are likely those who are not a fan of it, despite it being the best IF game in existence (at least according to IFDB).
Feel free to ask for beta testers here and my beta testing offer still stands!
All the best!
Thank you, I will.
