A shift in attitude
I recently released the latest version of Novelty, my visual novel maker. More features, video playback and an improved UI are among the updates.
Unfortunately, some users experienced problems running Novelty on older (or new+cheap) hardware and I’ve had to spend my time on improving compatibility rather than on new fun features and you know what? That’s totally fine! Ever since I started working on Novelty I’ve noticed a shift in my attitude towards my end-users.
When I was a novice programmer and still in school, I didn’t really understand DirectX or hardware in general. I was focused on making kickass games. Whenever someone had problems running my games, that ran perfectly fine on my computer, my attitude was this: “Tough luck. If you can’t run my game then that’s your problem.”
Any game developer with a hint of self respect should cringe at that last sentence. I do too. I get it now.
Ever since I released the first alpha version of Novelty, the development has been a constant ball game between myself and my users. While I’ve been blessed with a low frequency of problems they do occur and I get immense satisfaction solving them.
As the sole developer it’s impossible for me to catch every little thing before I put the code online for everyone to download. Hardware issues is a good example. That’s why user feedback is so important and this is something I’ve been good at from the very beginning.
From day one I’ve always been clear with my users that what they’re downloading is an unfinished work in progress and they should expect bugs and even crashes. Because Novelty is a creative tool a crash can be especially destructive so early on I implemented an autosaving feature and that has been greatly appreciated.
Novelty is not and never were a tool that I made for myself or to show off (showing off is a common activity for programmers). It’s all about the users and giving them the best tool for making visual novels. That’s the difference in attitude.
Update:
“Whooo! The latest update works for me now, thanks so much. ^^”
- Novelty forum member
See? It’s not a problem once you’ve fixed it!
