Is a $20,000 marketing budget small/okay/big for an indie who typically spends $0? (OR - As business owners, should we rethink Steam's 30% cut compared to the competition?)

Okay. I know you're frustrated with the responses you're getting here, but before you assume that the people who don't perform as expected are stupid, I'd suggest looking to your own communication style.

What does my own communication style have to do with their initial posts?

They are making comments that are perfectly fine, if they would simply elaborate beyond some empty opinion.

It is impossible to find fault in anyone else except the person who makes a brief, empty comment. Unless this was some kind of poll or something. If they were answering the question "Is 20k a lot of money?" with a brief yes/no, that isn't all that bad. However, very few answered that question. Most simply made a brief statement "Steam's 30% is worth it." without explaining why. Those who did explain why, ignored the fact that competition does the exact same things.

I literally could do nothing else but ask them "Why?" or "Please explain in more detail." I did this.

How could I have possibly communicated better? Asking them to explain in more detail is all that one could say.

However, they insist on regurgitating the same invalid points that were already explained as irrelevant. Unable to actually give any reasonable discussion. This is when frustration occurs and I realize they must be either really dumb or mere trolls. To me, both are trolls all the same.

So please, explain to me how my lack of communication skills somehow created their lazy posts before I was even able to reply. Do you expect someone to be so amazing at communication, they transcend time & space to peer into the future and send a personal message to someone before they make their first post?

/r/gamedev Thread Parent