I don't believe anyone actually thought seriously about the question: are these reviews unprofessional? Important to recognize what we expect from professional criticism. An honest opinion for starters and that's certainly there. I have no reason whatsoever to believe either reviewer was paid off or compelled into lying or had any vindictive purpose in writing what they did. I wouldn't doubt a moment that every issue they brought up was indeed true. Assuming otherwise would be the height of foolishness.

Is it constructive? I would say, overall, yes but the particulars make it difficult to gain any positive benefit, benefit for the game, for the potential audience, for the developer, and for the movement that is indie game development. The concerns are all valid but the way they are voiced deadens their beneficial effect. What counter productive elements am I speaking of? We all get hung up on the score at the bottom but it's really the general tenor of the review that matters. Why then the puerile, unfunny, and unnecessary attempts at irreverence like "the controls are looser than a five dollar hooker?" Why the petty exaggerations likening the game to otherworldly hellish experiences? "Don't even say its name for that might give its already unholy form power?" That's not criticism. That's spiteful derision, only acceptable in a world where you never have to see the sadness of the person you're saying it to. You can't find anything good to say about the game? You're. Not. Looking. Hard enough. Because that is the refuge of people who enjoy pointing out failure as opposed to helping someone through that failure.

And that someone is hardly without blame himself. Luc, I can firmly and without reservation attest that PR is not your strong point and that, if possible, you should retain the service of someone far more capable than you of responding to something like this in a civilized manner. By communicating as you did, you merely reinforced the already overwhelming negativity towards your product. I understand that confidence is paramount when creating anything, without it you'd never get anything done and served up for public consumption, but you're teetering at the edge of arrogance. Please be careful.

And where does this leave us? An indie game developer who communicated with the Destructoid community now alienated and abused, childishly striking back at his tormentors as the ground crumbles underneath everything. Perhaps this particular developer was indeed a complete fucking moron who made a shitty fucking game. I don't know; I can't play it. But because we called him a complete fucking moron who made a shitty fucking game and we used words not that far removed from my profane exaggeration, why would anyone in their right minds ever want to share their dreams with us ever again?

I feel that, if this kind of interaction continues, the indie game movement will never take off. It'll never get the support that it needs from us, the people, because we won't be good enough to support it. When a small developer totally fucks up, we'll jump all over him and make him RUE the fucking day he decided to make a video game, the stupid bastard. And then the developer won't be thick skinned enough to exist on the internet, to take the good with the bad, to grow. We have to be better.

All of us, the reviewers, the audience, the developer, we all look at reviews as if they are the final judgement on a game. As if those 1's tell you everything that there will ever be of Eternity's Child. But development is iterative. Games are updated; transformed. Opinions change. The valid reviews posted yesterday are hopefully just the rough beginning of a pathway to something greater than what exists today.

Spero melior - I hope for better things