I've noticed that there are a lot of areas in my discipline where I am an encyclopedia of things to be careful of, pitfalls to watch out for, bad design patterns, and the like. I don't always feel like I can contribute meaningfully in how to do something well, but I often have lots of bruises and scars from learning how not to do it. My concern is that only ever being the person to try to warn of potential hazards makes me look negative or toxic, but I also don't want people to lose their time and sanity failing in ways I have failed first. What say you, single digit followers? Am I worrying unnecessarily?
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in reply to @GravenImageRD's post:
if you know the wrong ways of doing it and not the right way then it might be a little more open to phrase it as a question: "how do we do x and not run into the issue where such and such happens?". just putting the question into others' minds will 1. alert them to the pitfall 2. get more people brainstorming so you have a much better shot at triangulating some method that avoids all the downsides. and hey sometimes there's tradeoffs and the best thing to do is to knowingly eat the least-bad pitfall with full awareness of the consequences, which would put your knowledge in a constructive rather than destructive position
I feel this!! It's easy to see how things can go wrong, but I lack any confidence about what is "right" esp. in the big picture of game dev.
As for your worry, I think it's valid. That is, it's always worth trying to be aware of how you impact the folks around you -- which is not to say you shouldn't try to warn folks from repeating your mistakes! Rather, I wonder if you can embrace that protective, supportive instinct and use it to build folks up even as you warn of hazards ahead.
What I've found that works for me is to default to excitement and enthusiastic support when I hear someone talk about their work. I look for the parts that are interesting or exciting or admirable and I say those out loud. That way when I later say, "I think X won't work because Y", I hope it comes off more as friendly advice from an ally -- not criticism from a critic.