Hello all,

i don't want to spread it that much but i want to talk about expectations / cultural differences and customers.

As you are all aware some people said very straight that they expect a basic knowledge of someone if he does something in the this article https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/brushfire-games-on-their-linux-sales-for-shipwreck-their-thoughts-on-linux.5615 .

To be honest here i can understand this , but i'm not willing to defend it. So lets start from the beginning.

I'm from germany and so is my social / cultural background. In germany in contrast to the united states is, you are nothing without a certificate which proof that you have learned something. That of cause lead's to a different view if a dev tells he has issues with setting up a development enviroment (basic knowledge you have as a profesional developer) on linux, cause from a german point of view he wouldn't be a profesional than. That should already be enough explination why someone might stumble.

In many other countries around the world the idea of someone's skills counting more than the certificate's is very common. In a way germany tries to addapt to this for years now but it kinda only works in the startup scene.

Since we are talking about indie dev's we need to take a look behind this group of people. These person's are mostly known for doing what they like and learning everything on the fly. Quiet a few never visited a course or a seperate training for what they are doing. (Basic definition of indie dev's before indie games became mainstream)

Today when we talk about indie productions there is a problem. The defintion gets more and more stretched. We still mean this people i meantioned above, but also we talk about profesionals leaving AAA development and even AAA Publisher abusing the term indie for products they don't want to spend a AAA budget on.

What we need to know is basically that Nick belongs to the first group. What we need to ask ourself is what can / should we expect from them? I can give the answer i found for myself:
1st) I realy love to support those guys in any way possible
2nd) I don't mind them asking questions and answering them , cause it show's dedication of them towards the platform i use
3rd) I'm willing to accept they aren't professionals. That useally shows in the way they handle PR , work with their customers and to some degree also in the products (eg: Gameidea > Presentation)

Now back to the issue: "Two souls alas! are dwelling in my breast."
* From a customer point of view i buy a product i pay for and i in a way expect the company/person who makes the product know what he is doing (german background).
* From someone who follow's many indie dev's i know i can't expect this and many other countries doesn't work this way.

In the end everyone needs to decide what he is more connected to.

I'm in a way not ok with makeing the person who expressed his concern's (neither in a good wording or in a bad wording) to be the bad guy here. Again i do understand his sentiment.

Lets imagine the following. You have exactly 5 bucks to spend for a game, cause your financial situation is very bad. Do you put it into someone who knows what he is doing or someone who shows that he needs to learn much more ?

So why this post? I suggest that GOL maybe gives a little more background informations on the dev's / companies (as long as they want) behind the games tested. Also some in deep interviews about how they got to make games and so on would be nice. Sometimes this happens out of itself (like for example the last article about Limit Theory) but often the tests focus only on the product. I hope that builds a better understanding how realistic our expectations on a product are. Example: I wouldn't expect a 1 man dev to fix a bug in a 1% marketshare in 2h while basically his 9x% marketshare product is broken too.

@EDIT: fixed some bad gramar