Responding to Every Steam Review. (The End of Gameplay.)

[droqen]

Start of the project, the first 18 reviews.

[droqen]

"The End of Gameplay is itself about a shared struggle. I made it BECAUSE I wanted to talk about something important & vital that was hard to talk about."

I would not have made The End of Gameplay without "kill gameplay." I made it because I was no good at explaining or describing or even understanding, myself, what I meant or what I wanted. Now that it's done and out, when people leave reviews of the game & reply to me, it feels like an extension of that larger conversation.

So, I recently received a negative review... on May 21, now it's May 23. I've been sort of obsessively thinking about it for that two-day period. Two days can seem like a short time or it can seem like forever. Of course, I am still living life. I am going on long walks with my partner in the rain. I am cooking and eating food. I am buying groceries. I don't mean to say that I'm sitting in a concrete box alone with nothing but my thoughts and My First Negative Steam Review. But it sits in the mind and lingers. It's easy to have openness and love for positive reviews, to interpret a "thank you" with generosity and kindness, but can I do the same for a review that is, more than negative, sort of insulting?

I think it is possible. I'm making a video on it, and then I will perhaps respond to other Steam reviews without responses. This has been an emotionally productive (and emotionally expensive) side-project.