… you don’t leave a comment on games you rate.

Ok that may be a tiny bit too strong. But people are waiting for your comments! Don’t you love comments? You’re obsessively refreshing the page to check your vote count, and you see you have one more. Then you open your game’s page and it’s all sadness and disappointment and crying puppies, because there’s nothing new.

I think some people don’t leave comments because they didn’t like the game, and don’t want to leave something negative. But that’s the kind of feedback that can be most useful to the developer, and there are ways to phrase it so that you don’t crush their souls into a million pieces.

Here’s how I usually structure my comments:

<What I liked><Suggestions for improvement><End with something positive>

Example:

Fun to play, I really liked the sound effects. I would have liked it to be faster paced though. Nice job overall!

Even if you didn’t like the game, you can always find something positive to say, even if it’s just that one sprite or sound effect. And if you really really can’t,  you can congratulate them on making a game in 48/72 hours, because that’s always an achievement worth celebrating.