Hey there, been awhile.
No I did not get sniped by Tux, I am still alive.
Which is the opposite of my devlog series on my games.
You made devlogs?
Yeah, I've made a few.
Mostly 2 for a delisted game I won't speak of and I think around 3-4 for Time Cowboy. They weren't anything really special, but I did enjoy doing them.
(aside from recording the takes themselves, i hated that)
Usually they'd take me about a week to do over 1-2 hours a day, from writing, to recording, to gathering clips, to editing, to thumbnail creation and finally uploading.
It did take awhile todo and a lot of time away from just making the game or working on it more.
I only really made them as it seemed at the time (est 2020-2022) that making a devlog was a great choice and that you'd be a fool not to make one.
As well I also enjoyed Dani's Devlogs, but mostly Jonas Tyroller's Devlogs and General Game Dev videos. They were the ones to inspire me to create devlogs and continue making games.
So why'd you stop?
For a couple reasons, mostly because I sucked at them, took too long and the defining reason why, the return was just not good.
When I say return, I don't mean money, but mostly views & interactions. I know I know, very artificial of me to do stuff for views & interactions, but if I'm spending that much time on something, I'd like to get something out of it.
And I just didn't get that much out of long form devlogs unfortunately. A devlog that'd take me a week to make would only return 10-30 views and rarely any comments or likes.
Compare that to Youtube Shorts/TikToks where I can get 100-2k views with 5-10 likes and a few comments I can respond to (Not that I always do). Those quick 30s videos take me like max 30 minutes to record footage, edit it a bit and post quickly.
It's not like I enjoy making them. They're very boring to make and out of the dozen I've made, I only remember the early access skit with my fruitcup cause it took more effort and was actually fun to make and record. But that flopped and didn't really tell what the game was about, so I stopped that.
It's not really the fault of anybody, Viewers scrolling on YT Shorts or Tiktok are probably doing so to watch something funny or just doing so out of boredom while doing something else. I just don't like the entire Quirky Fast Paced Overly-Edited Devlogs/Shorts of now as they kind of feel like they're demanding my attention instead of gaining it.
Not that my devlogs/shorts are any better, it's hard to keep people in a scrolling mood to stay for more than a second and encourage them to make the leap from Tiktok to Steam. That's always going to be a hard task.
What now?
Aside from working on Time Cowboy, I have been taking a long hiatus from doing shorts/tiktoks. For as quick they are to make, they are still just draining creatively and get very repetitive to make.
I am planning to go back to making the shorts/tiktoks, but once Time Cowboy is actually nearer to completion than it is now. Even if I do hate making those videos a lot.
This isn't meant to discourage other game devs who want to make devlogs, please do so! I do still enjoy watching devlogs, just please do it in your own style and not the countless Dani clones floating around. Or at the very least, put your own spin on it and not just repeat the same "thicc" and "boi" jokes.
And with that,