[trjordan]

As a pratical lens on this advice: people are excellent at giving feedback on their problems. They are terrible at identifying how to fix it.

"It felt too long" was right. The solution was not to make the story shorter. The solution was to look at the parts that felt long, and believe that feedback.

If you're building something, and your users tell you it's complicated or it's slow or it's not useful, they're right! The fix may or may not be to make it simpler, faster, or more useful. Maybe it needs to be organized better, or to create deliberate moments of action, or to be used at a different time. The problems are real, but the obvious solutions are not always right.

[justonceokay]

I’ve heard exactly the same advice re: focus groups. A focus group can give excellent feedback but terrible advice. Probably applies to comment sections in the modern day too.

So if they didn’t like your movie the movie probably is bad. But don’t listen to them about what they would change about the movie. They don’t know anything about the creative process.

[theluketaylor]

A phrase I heard from a tv writer on a podcast was "note behind the note".

The gist of the conversation was about TV execs giving all sorts of bonkers notes all the time that are usually terrible. This writer tried to think about what might have triggered the exec to make a note. Maybe the characters are not engrossing enough, or the plot is too complex, or the dialogue isn't snappy enough. If the exec had been engrossed in the story they wouldn't have made a note. This writer rarely implemented any note from an exec, but did make all sorts of changes in and around noted sections.

[twoodfin]

This reminds me of the infamous Sid Sheinberg memo to Steven Speilberg and Bob Zemeckis on changing the title of “Back to the Future”.

https://imgur.com/gallery/producers-memo-to-speilberg-during...

“Behind the note”, it’s about emphasizing the goofy fun of the film, rather than the genre elements, and in that it’s right on.

[NordStreamYacht]

I would never have gone to see a spaceman from Pluto.

[bonesss]

Based on how “Pluto Nash” performed: that’s a deeply and widely held sentiment.

[vintermann]

The strength of a focus group is (or should be, anyway) that it's representative. It makes sense that their overall reception of a work is a more accurate estimate of its eventual popularity than the maker's.

However, the maker has tried many things, and among them will be things which are obviously bad (to anyone) if you actually try it.

Story time: in 2008, I went to the big board game fair in Essen and got to try the then-new game Dominion. I think most people who did, knew that this game was going to be hugely popular and influential, which it was. Donald X. Vaccarino is a really, really good game designer. And sure enough, it spawned the genre of deck building games, games where you build a deck as you play (as opposed to collectible card games, which are an important ancestor). But the first few attempts to adopt improve on the formula were pretty lousy.

What's interesting is that Donald X. posted dev diaries, writing at length about what he had tried and rejected. And although I'm pretty sure he did not follow the Dominion-likes closely (the dev diaries may even have been written before many of them), the things he'd tried and rejected were exactly what the Dominion-likes tried to add as their twist. Multiple currencies, like Thunderstone had, he'd tried rejected because it was too high variance. "Pick one of the cards on offer" like Ascension had, he'd also tried first, and found that the game was deeper and more fun if everyone had access to buy the same cards. (The "Pick one of three" mechanic would turn out to work much better in solo/computer games, however, as Slay the Spire's success is proof of!)

[TulliusCicero]

This is true for casual users, but if you're getting feedback from enthusiasts or even experts, their solutions are often -- not always, but often -- quite good.

[SJMG]

Yes. People who live and breathe your product should absolutely be listened to. Especially when they don't have the super-user tools you do for support (or unconsciously rounding off sharp edges).

[vintermann]

But they may not be a very representative user. Especially for things like games, they may be far removed from what originally got them into it.

Fan-modded games are often great fun if you're seriously into a game. But they're rarely better if you've never played the game.

[SJMG]

It's true. There's probably not a clean rule for when to listen and when not to.

I would propose as a heuristic that for the early stage, when your product relies on true-fans, you at least consider the content of a complaint more and don't just treat it as a signal that something somewhere is wrong. Bringing it back to the OP, I'm sure this is what Card did himself.

[dorksquad]

> "It felt too long" was right. The solution was not to make the story shorter. The solution was to look at the parts that felt long, and believe that feedback.

smells like LLM

[peddling-brink]

> Smells like LLM

Smells like not adding value to the discussion.

[dorksquad]

LLM writing is not adding value to the discussion.

The slightly inflated rhetoric whose tells are false contrast and unnecessary parallelism let me know that a human did not spend time writing that comment. Why should humans spend time reading it?

[peddling-brink]

I read the same thing and didn’t get that vibe. The parent comment added to the discussion regardless of origin.

[trjordan]

lol sorry, I just spend to much time on LinkedIn, I think. I promise this was 100% human-written.