Dissenting opinion incoming.
I was a fan of Super Mario Bros Z as well. I don't understand Alvin's breakdown. It'd make more sense to me if he just had real-life issues. He couldn't have been that attached to his fanbase, so much that fans would cause him stress. Now, people like Hideo Kojima and Masahiro Sakurai, who receive death threats and work at big-name video game companies? Them, I can see getting a lot of hate mail and stress from it. Because people really do go crazy over their work and attack them when they don't meet a fan's standards.
For someone like Alvin, flash artists, people who probably make minimal contact with fans outside of Paypal donations, deviantArt, submission portals, Youtube comments, and etc, I don't see how fans complaining about the wait for new content is enough to make the creator ragequit. Now if these fans were creating bad reviews of my creation solely based on my work ethic/update speed. That would be disconcerting.
edited 4th Mar '14 1:54:56 PM by FOFD
Because every time you receive one of those, "When are you going to update?" requests, even if it's the most civil email in the world, it's still putting pressure on you. To a creator, it's an attack on their insecurities. Sometimes art takes time. Sometimes you need to sit down and think about where you're going from here. Sometimes ideas have to be scrapped in favor of better ones. Sometimes you just plain lose your muse, and need to find it again. There are a lot of reasons why the art can be delayed, and when you're working to get it out, having that pressure weighing you down and making you feel like a terrible creator for not being able to do it faster only makes the entire process much less enjoyable to go through.
And let's be honest, those requests are rarely the most civil emails in the world. To a creator who distributes his work for free on the internet like Alvin, the answer to, "When is the next one coming?" is always, "When it's done." If there isn't an update schedule set in stone, then there is no day or time or promise of when it's going to be out, and asking that question over and over and over hundreds of times per day is just unneeded stress reminding the creator that the fans think he's not good enough.
edited 4th Mar '14 1:55:19 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Well there's the problem.
Better question, why is the creator so attached to his work that stress can result from it? An amateur creator isn't producing content for money, at best its for renown, practice, or self-indulgence. Creative back pressure can easily be fought by taking a break. Zealous fans shouldn't be blamed for writer's block (oppositely, nagging the creator incessantly won't make the work come along faster).
Why does this happen:
When an amateur creator usually does or knows this:
And we're not talking about Flame Bait like a fan saying that his work sucks and he should go kill himself. To my awareness, Alvin's case is just fans desperately begging for more content. That's not saying the creator isn't "good enough", that's saying "we want more".
Where in the creator's mind does a message that says "plz update/update now" become "your lack of work ethic disappoints me"? Must I create an award-winning fiction and have it be lambasted to see the transformation?
edited 4th Mar '14 2:31:47 PM by FOFD
A creator is so attached to his work because his work is him. We put a piece of ourselves into what we create. A work of art is a window into its creator's soul, and every character that exists within it is a voice that lives inside its creator. An amateur creator is creating because it is his passion; because he has a story that, to him, is worth telling. How can you not get attached to something after breathing life into it from your own heart and soul?
To an artist, the story is our passion, the characters are a piece of our own identity given life and form. You can actually tell a lot about an artist by what they create.
Where in the creator's mind does a message that says "plz update/update now" become "your lack of work ethic disappoints me"? Must I create an award-winning fiction and have it be lambasted to see the transformation?
But that's exactly what it is: constant demands for updates are the fans telling the creater, "You are not a fast enough creator. Create faster for my enjoyment!" Is it really that hard to understand why trying to force a deadline upon the creator generates stress?
edited 4th Mar '14 3:21:48 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Krillin's been playing Dead Space. It's kinda funny.
And Two Saiyans Playing Portal 2 even better.
edited 4th Mar '14 4:10:34 PM by unnoun
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A good question...
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Got to shrug here. I've never received that sort of stress from someone telling me to write chapters faster. Unless it's a detailed criticism of my work and/or hobby, I don't let that stress me at all - I see it as flattery. If it reaches vitriolic levels, they're still dependent on me to write the chapter, so the joke's on them really.
If there are really that many hobbyists suffering with stress from fans telling them to hurry up, someone should start a support group assuming there isn't one already.
On a list of things that would make Vegeta want to kill someone, playing Portal would definitely be up there. Nappa's screwed.
Should it be simply put: People don't like being rushed, they don't like to be constantly reminded that they need to finish something being worked on, they don't like that it keeps coming even though time and time again they've given the only answer needed to be said, they also don't like it when people who enjoy the work feel like they can demand faster releases of new content...its not something most people can just shrug off, because sooner or later they just won't be able to handle and decide that no matter how much they(the creator)enjoyed making the work before, there's no reason to put up with that constant nagging that makes the creator unnecessarily stressed.
I'm not an "artist" so I probably don't understand exactly how TFS or Tobias Drake feel, but I think it should be stated that they've gone on record as saying that an episode will come out every 4-6 weeks depending on length or if they have unexpected personal business, and with the exception of the working of Hellsing abridged or other specials, if you look at when the upload things, that's always been the case.
So you can't say they don't stick to a schedule because they do and I think from how they've described their process they go above and beyond. Personally if I were in there positions I probably would have already stopped making them when it became apparent that a week after every episode there are going to be tons of comments (and probably a few emails) bitching about how when the next episode is coming out and how we take forever. I wouldn't have the patience for it and I'm glad they do.
edited 7th Mar '14 1:57:04 PM by KBSL
Comments like this one piss me off and I think adequately some up the problem others were talking about with pressure,
"Almost 2 freaking months for 10 min wtf! Mean while y'all have like 20 other pointless videos that lose interest after the first 2 plays of the game,please get your shit together and do 1 of these, 1) make the videos longer or 2) take much less time to post another."
And now I won't bring it up anymore, because I'm pretty sure the discussion was over anyway.

I love 16 even more than the other two androids, actually. "Then I, too, hope it will be a truck." That line, it's just so... I dunno what word I wanna use, but I think hilaridorable would be close. :P
but HOW?