I think the context of the speaker matters. If this were Tokyo Game Show, you'd probably see a very pacific, sanitized statement that tries not to ruffle any feathers in addressing this issue. Considering this is an indie scene, I imagine the opinions are unvarnished, maybe even crass. It could also be dark comedy. "Taking the piss out of America" is rightfully in vogue nowadays.

It's not like the Japanese are united in their hatred or xenophobia. Not everyone from one culture has a uniform opinion on others.

I mean I see it all the time in steam forums and social media.

Gamers taking one look at a screenshot or trailer video, and immediately giving their take about how it "should be".

Weird. When I went to PAX back in the day and a dev asked what I thought about the game, I felt like it was really difficult to say that I didn't like it, even if it's what they wanted and needed to hear.

I think it's partly attitude and partly luck. I think devs should be open to feedback but they also need to expect to smile and nod but ultimately ignore most of it. Just let the person be heard and move on. I do get genuinely good feedback from some users, good ideas that never occurred to me.

That doesn't sound like the kind of person the article is referring to.

The condescending preachy people will barely even look at the game and tell the developer what they need to add/change, which are usually things from whatever their favorite genre or AAA game is. Its not real feedback because they aren't trying to push the game in a better direction (they usually won't even play what the dev has), they just want someone to hear their grand ideas. The dev has to maintain the demo booth and (usually) has to try and be formal and so the preachy person has them trapped.

Your experience seems like legitimate feedback that the dev wouldn't hear out, which sucks. Unfortunately I've seen a lot of devs that aren't great at social events and its hard to keep it up for the whole duration of an expo.

There's definitely a time and a place for playtesting, and "user was confused about which way to go (water looked inaccessible)" would be the kind of note I'd expect them to take out of such a session. If I were the developer and I saw my player struggle like that, I'd be kicking myself for that design.

I think TGD is only trying to say that the show floor isn't the time or place for playtesting. One would hope that that has already been accomplished by that point.

Nah you're good, I have a feeling there is significant overlap between "unsolicited advice dudes" and chuds who screech about Sweet Baby.

Day9 has nice talk about giving good feedback, and commands or commands hidden as rhetorical question are not one of them.

The right feedback would be something like: "Oh, this confused me. I did not expect the cliff edge to be the goal.

Not more, because you don't know the intended. Maybe the dev wanted you to be confused or you were one of ten people to not go down the cliff.

Describe your experience and your expectations, not a solution to something that might not be a problem.

I mean by definition you are - so start in that situation by asking „are you looking for feedback?“

Could be something like "Karen" or "boomer" where you're just using the predominant demographic of a behaviour as a label for anyone who engages in it.

Did you turn on optimizations?

Oh just turn on optimizations?

"You need to tighten up the graphics on level 3!"

You should update the code to run on an entirely different engine and get rid of all the spaghetti code. Do you even play test your game???

Does this actually relate to indie development? Theres definitely shitty monetization in Asian gacha games, but I don’t think of any of them as indie.

I have actually played crummy games by budding Japanese devs and some of them are true underdog stories with fun gameplay concepts (and often poor translation)

It's not the developers who enshittify games, it's the suits.