itch.io

Every sort of criticism is obviously going to be subjective to some degree, but it seems like a lot of people sometimes forget what "constructive criticism" actually means. It isn't just expressing your opinion in a polite manner, it's explaining WHY you think the way you do.

In a political debate, you can't just calmly claim that your opponent is wrong without providing EVIDENCE for it. Then you have to agree on what the goal of the political issue is and how "success" should be measured, otherwise you'd just be going back and forth. In a book, movie, game and any sort of narrative story, the "goal" of it is to reach what the creator intended, and the "success" is measured through how well that is being delivered to the consumer. If the criticism is "I don't like this kind of content, the game should be different", then that's certainly a fair opinion but it's not constructive. However, saying "If this is what you want out of the story, then maybe this narrative structure, this pacing, this scene or this way of doing it wasn't the best, and here's why it doesn't work!"

You need a perimeter from which to measure the the success of the story, and that perimeter should always be what the creator wanted out of it. You may not like what that vision was, and that's fine.

Let's take a different criticism. "I feel like this new update was a bit too heavily focused on the serious aspects of the story, and it felt like it could've done better with a little bit more lighthearted content to balance out the emotional scenes. It would give the player some time to take in what they just read and get them mentally ready for the next heavy parts." I may not actually agree with that particular criticism myself, but it's articulated in such a way that it takes what the point of the entire work is and what the writer wants and gives a suggestion on how that goal could've been reached more effectively.

To sum it up, every criticism is going to be somewhat subjective but the point of CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is to make is as LEAST subjective as possible, by everyone agreeing on certain guidelines and measurements from which to approach it.