What You've Been Told About Devlogs is a LIE
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- Опубліковано 3 бер 2024
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Ever heard that devlogs are just for devs? Think again!
In this video, we dive deep into why this notion is WRONG and how it could be hindering your game's success.
We'll chat about the tough reality of indie game marketing, share some inspiring success stories, and show you how devlogs can boost your game's visibility, no matter who you are.
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#gamedev #gamedeveloper #gamedevelopment - Ігри
It's not a lie though. A large quantity of gamers would never follow devlogs, especially if a channel offers tutorials and what not more focused on development specifically. What _is_ a lie, is saying 70% are financial failures. It's more like 90%.
1:05 That's another lie and misconception. Word of mouth promotion doesn't work unless something really goes viral. Even something as basic as restaurant recommendations by friends will have to compete with the ratings and reviews online in Google. Traditional word of mouth marketing has been dead for years. It's why affiliate systems that actually reward people for actively spreading a product has become a thing.
In all other cases even an excellent game still needs sufficient enough marketing to see any kind of traction. The problem for 99% of all games really is that they are below average in terms of fun, content and gameplay, yet developers treat their projects are this godlike but very ugly baby. Most indie games are also niche games with little mass market potential, so even good games can end up financial duds. People often forget that and then wonder why their mediocre automation focused builder game failed very very hard.
The average person doesn't see 10k ads per day. Not even close to that.
And you didn't go deep into marketing. You barely scratched the surface. And no, UA-camrs you show as having an established following do not have an 'easier sell' of their games to their audience either. Still requires a good game. Still requires something worthwhile. It's like pretending an artist with a number one hit, will now only have number one hits from then onwards. Doesn't work like that, never will be easy.
@4:20 Sorry, but that's simply not true. Marketing is *not* random. It's why personalized advertising is a thing. It's why cookies and tracking is a thing. It's why selection by demographic target is a thing. It's why when you buy a product, you'll end up seeing ads of a specific type. It's why focusing on certain regions in the world is a thing. It's why trying to fit a genre makes sense, as your game might show up in similar recommendations etc. etc. Marketing is never random. Only poor marketing is random. And a devlog definitely will cater more to would-be developers and not so much gamers following your game at all. You can see this in wish lists vs purchases ratio. And even then people don't understand how most people putting a game on a wish list is to 1. not forget about it and 2. to buy at a steep discount. It is not about purchasing it for full price on launch at all.
@5:00 Based on what do you even say that? It's true how devlogs target the wrong audience. It's very very obvious. Essentially you were an aspiring dev, you just weren't aware yet. Did you buy every game that you ever followed a devlog for? You never thought they were asking too much money for a mediocre or sub-mediocre game?
@6:39 No no no, that's simply the UA-cam algorithm loving titles that are formulated like 'biggest lie in ... blablabla' or 'what you didn't know about ...blablabla' . It says nothing about potential buyer audience at all. It only shows some 'UA-camr success' for a single video. People that aren't even into videogames much could have seen such a video. And think about it... since when did Justin Bieber sold 3 billion records, just because his 'Sorry' song blew up to like 3.7 billion views on UA-cam? The correlation you are looking for literally doesn't exist. Even for demonstrably successful things.
Do you know any UA-camrs that do go into marketing?
I'm also quite curious where all this knowledge is coming from, it's well articulated and argued.
@tehufn I would guess he is just well articulated in general. Most of what he said is common sense + some knowledge of digital marketing.
I would advise you to study digital marketing in general. Don't look for specialized marketing for games. Most people that are big in gamedevelopment on social media, got their big hits by sheer luck, they didn't have a marketing plan.
I don't even see a problem in marketing to gamedevs. Often indie devs are very active indie gamers and even have a following.
have 2095 games on my Steam, and 132 hours on Backpack Battles Demo!!! ;) we live with games, and totally agree with you! (fingers crossed for the launch btw, can't wait!)
I play a lot of indie games. A lot of indie games.
Edit: For start I just find them inspirational and it's good to see what's possible.
I would love you to do a poll of your audience to see how many are game devs and how many are not.
Counter-point:
Every single channel you mentioned already has a huge online following. For them it doesn't matter what kind of good or bad content they post, they still get their views and eyeballs on the game.
If you are nobody with no online following/community, posting devlogs is like screaming into the void, a huge waste of time.
Still, not even with the views, the games are a guaranteed success. See how many of this big gamedev channels games fails.
So your argument is that to succeed in gamedev marketing, which is really hard, you should first succeed as a youtube content creator which is, you guessed it, really really hard. Nothing in your video disprove the obvious fact that for the vast majority of devlogs, the market will be other devs - or nobody. So what should a game dev use their limited energy and resources on, making a great game or becoming a top youtuber to market a game made from their leftover resources? There is no way around this problem: Games have the expense model of a tech company and the business model of a pop band. You have to both be very good and very lucky.
I agree , the idea that twitter is marketing for other game devs but UA-cam isn’t is kinda crazy to me. I think it’s important to distinguish a difference between a devlog and showcase. Devlogs will always drive heavy amounts of dev traffic. It’s in a game developers best interest to look at all kinds of games and how they are being made. Showcasing elements of a game you are making without showing what’s under the hood is not a devlog, this is going to still drive devs to a video but I feel is more likely to get some actual players interested as it may present the game as more professional. Pop albums to use your example, can actually hinder themselves by showing the creation of all elements all the time.
I strongly disagree with the whole 'get lucky' argument. As it's demonstrably simply not true. Show me 1 single game that blew up in sales, completely undeservingly because it was terrible? There is none. At best you'll find a meme game that people supported enough to spend some money on. But it would never work if it wasn't super cheap. Or at least somewhat good. Most indie devs have no self reflection on why their mediocre game fails. That's the problem. No amount of marketing will magically turn those games into gold.
@@PHeMoX well your game has to be good AND you need the luck of being discovered. While i do agree that most devs have no self reflection, success does often times comes down to marketing budget or luck
@@PHeMoXWhich is why I wrote "You have to both be very good and very lucky." But I guess reading all the words is hard.
This is for literally EVERY industry now bro... tech, healthcare, design, fashion... if u don't make content regularly ur gonna be stuck on the "average" carreer 4ver..m I agree it is sad and annoying, but it is what it is.
Thanks for the shout out Brandon ❤
From viewpoint of indie dev, video dev logs IMO are absolute no go with serious projects.They take too much time and require another skillset on top of everything else. Never done them myself and never will.
after trying it i gotta agree... though survivorship bias sugested otherwise
so what should u do instead? buy ads? get demo out to streamers? finish the goddamn game? 😂
@@TESkyrimizerIf you have the skills to make a good game, you defined should invest in paid adds. But you game has to be good all around, graphics, music, gameplay, story...
Otherwise, maybe keep pumping free tech demos until something goes viral?
Would a devlog help even if the game looks terrible? I always feel that time spent on creating videos could be devoted to moving the game along faster. But I guess if there is no audience for it, the speed wouldn't be worth it.
Depending on the genre Looks is not always the main attraction trigger.
Sometimes you want to showcase and interesting mechanic other times it may be story or content.
Many dev logs showcase their journey. Progress. Before / after. Failures. Etc.
So. Yes no need to focus solely on looks / art. Unless that's your primary selling point.
And yes try to get those prototypes or MVPs out faster to see it there's actual demand or interest.
You should measure it well. You don't have to make a video everyday or every week. Just do it when you have something interesting to show. This way you balance making good videos and progress.
I just discovered your podcast. I'm glad to see your subscriber count grew into the thousands. Thanks for all the great content!
I think the better topic for a video would be what makes a good devlog? Many of the instances where a game dev has successful devlogs are from channels that already have a large audience. Why are their devlogs successful versus someone else's?
The statement that a person sees on average 10 000 ads per day seems unrealistic. Even if you only spend 1 sec per ad, that would be 2 hours 46 min per day of just looking at ads and cannot be real
I think it’s also stuff you wouldn’t consider as an ad, like you open your fridge and see some food. That food may have a label, does that count as an ad? Did you just accidentally see 25 ads just by opening your fridge? Idk maybe. only way I can see this to be possible. You scroll through UA-cam homepage you may not pay attention to all the videos but the thumbnails are an ad for that video did you just scroll past 20 ads in a second? Idk does that count?
Maybe It’s a stretch but that’s all I can say as to why this statement may exist
It's because it is very obviously a totally made up number. No one see 10k ads per day.
Good point, in fact if you buy my book "How to avoid adverts!" right now you can get "Don't get caught out by marketing scams and free incentives" ABSOLUTELY FREE!
People are exposed to an ever increasing number of ads or paid sponsorships. Depending how much screen time on social media or UA-cam .
However it doesn't mean you're paying attention to all of them.
People pay more attention to novelty or stuff that people need or relevant to your current situation . Once your curiosity or need is satisfied you start to ignore most of those ads.
I have never understood the idea that devs aren't your target market. I'm a developer and i buy and play games all the time, I got into this because i love games! The other reasons i watch devlogs is so i have something interesting to listen to while i work, sometimes i learn something new and it also makes you feel connected to people with the same interests since a lot of us are just working solo. So keep at it, I'm more likely to buy a game where i know the backstory and see the struggles to make it, rather than splash 70 bucks on a game made by a team of hundreds
It shouldn't be your entire market. Game devs, despite how popular it's gotten, are and always going to be just a small fraction of people.
Hi! I love your channel! Are you planning to make a video about the save system in Unity ?
Marketing == Bringing Value
If you want people to play your games, you just need to bring more value than it costs them (money, time, focus, energy), and that's very very very HARD.
Devlogs, Advertising, and Paid Streamers won't help you if your game just doesn't bring value to anyone.
You should focus on the smallest viable player base and bring them so much value they will want to give you money.
By the way, the real potential of a game like Blood & Mead is very obvious. It's similar to the indie game We who are about to die, the gladiator game. Very high potential as far as style, theme and gameplay go, from pretty much the start of development. Assuming it ends up technically polished up enough, with enough content, Blood & Mead will have a very good chance of becoming successful. Especially if it is priced correctly. It simply looks good enough already. And I'm not talking strictly art direction and animations. I'm talking gameplay and look and feel of the game. From that point onwards it can focus on adding content. The idea that that game has a strong marketing through only a handful of devlogs is completely false. Some games have only their trailer and one or two gameplay videos that promote the game initially and from there are able to gain traction. Blood and Mead its Steam page is actually very minimalistic, but it might already work very well on Steam itself. Without any UA-cam video traffic going there.
I wanna make a devlog for my game but then it's like what approach do I take, chill with some gameplay a programming in the background or hyper editing
Tell the story in your own natural style. And please don't do the hyperactive editing. We have a billion copycat dev loggers who go out of their way to make their videos lack personality, and we don't need any more of that. Nor any more ADHD-inducing, irritating stuff. Use your own mind to come up with an original style. Don't base it off anyone else.
Simple “sollution” to complex problem.
If (your goal is sales && the time spent vlogging isn’t spent better elsewhere && it increases sales conversion rates then)
{
yes vlogging makes sense
}
else if (your goal is sales && time is better spent better elsewhere && vlogging doesn’t increase sales then)
{
vlogging doesn’t make sense
}
The recent GDC video on how to target indie-game customers showed that UA-cam is a massive source of knowledge about games and real gameplay is the primary decisionmaker for purchase. So getting youtubers to play your stuff is not just for their audience but also to get the people who search for the game with the purpose of seeing real gameplay.
Great advise, rhabk yiu! I just ordered my budget mic to start my game dev and voxel art channel. Thank you for inspiration!❤
You say we need to create good devlogs, but how do we go about it? Do you have a video on this topic or some more advice? What is a good devlog, what should it contain?
I think one more thing that could be mentioned is that while making devlogs you can also make a source of income to support your game and many other opportunities unlike twitter, if they get successful there's sponsors and youtube monetization, the guy that made cho choo charles probably lived off of youtube even without releasing the game, there's a lot of money when you consistently have millions of views on your videos. But even at 20-50k subs you can get sponsorships, and from there it can only get better. And I'm sure most people with a boring 9-5 would prefer to use that time to perfect their youtube channel, career and editing skills, not every gamedev has a software dev job. Also let's say you use twitter and somehow release a successful game, not stardew valley success, but enough to live and start working on another game, will twitter work for the next game too? On youtube you actually have people that watch your vids, and they will watch your next project too, maybe it brings even more people in, you finish a game and have a big community that follows your content, I think much more reliable than twitter.
This is very interesting! I just started an interesting game idea, and I'm really falling in love with it. Might as well give some time to start a devlog. I'm gonna check all channels you recomendad. Thank you very much for the info!
Great video! There is also the fact that making the devlog helps track your growth and lean from it, along with being part of a great community that helps you grow as well!
I think the biggest problem I'm having is finding a balance between when to game dev and when to UA-cam as they are both massive time sinks! love this video! Defo needed to hear it.
Something interesting to note is well, is that a lot of UA-camrs are often stepping into Game Development on the side now too. Bringing that same audience along for the story/ride of being inspired and wanting to create(That's how I've come to work on a project with a fellow UA-camr too).
I think it's about how you present your dev log too, for instance look how Code Monkey and Dani presents their videos. Code Monkey very informational and to the topic, where as Dani needs his Milk but builds the hype for the games, it's very interesting to see how marketing can be done these days.
Out of curiosity, do you have any specific examples of youtubers doing this?
It'sJustJORD! you're making glitched out rt? with SHB? love the Game so far!!!
I think saying 7%*30% commercially successful indie games being bad odds is unnecessarily demotivating when you put it this way. 2.1% of the total, or approx. 1 in 50 games. This means that there will be, on average, one commercially successful indie game released to Steam *per day*. I think it's quite awesome that indie success is nowadays *a daily occurrence*. It's all about perspective with numbers like this.
If you are talking about the whole indie scene is good odds. But individually, you don't have a shot at becoming successful everyday. Most games take years to make. So you have a shot every couple years.
I can confirm this isn't true. I'm in to Devlogs because I want to make games, I watch them on the TV a few of the games I follow my bf is interested in and he isn't in to making games.
I think its becoming more common for gamers to follow devlogs. even if they never intend to write code.
I guess its a little like following posts for games in Early Access on Steam.
Knowing whats being worked on can be just as exciting as playing the game XD
Here is a plot twist: game devs also play games.
oh so this video says devlogs are good
making good devlogs is very hard tho and u also cant build an audience overnight
so now you replaced the challenge of promoting your game with the challenge of promoting your youtube channel 😓
Game dev is also a gamer
Beautifully said.
From what I understand
UA-cam is another "Job"... Devlogs mess up the organic structure process of game development.
Don't expect riches (indies don't have C, B, A, AA or AAA budgets for marketing)
Its infuriating how many younger or new devs will follow this awful advice and waste hundreds of hours making videos instead of getting better at game dev and working on a quality product first. This narrative that every dev needs to also be a successful UA-camr is going to derail so many people that might otherwise make something good or actually finish their game.
6:34 "The biggest lie in video games" what this exemplifies is a cruel reality about how the social media algorithms work. That is: you are strongly incentivized to create click bait titles as such. You are led by the algorithm to create the most controversial or dramatic videos that will entice most users reactions, because that is what will give points to your channel, every time there is a reaction to your video, like a comment, your channel internal "score" is increased. And worse it will TAKE points from your your channel, every time a video does poorly in terms of views and "engagement". And this is cruel if you post videos you like but not a lot people watch, youtube will punish your channel with less views for your future, down the line videos. Not only youtube does this but also, twitter with tweets, and other social media sites do the same.
Awesome video, thank you so much!
True, especially for me am not a game developer but i do love watching devlogs. I just find them interesting.
This is genuinely bad advice. This is like if I want to sell burgers, rather than focusing on outreach for people to try my burgers, I go make a channel on making burgers. The audience I would build with that channel are people who also want to cook, and the product that makes most sense for that audience would be to sell them a cook book or a cooking course. This is what building a devlog channel does, it builds and audience of people who want to make games. Look at the screen at 3:50, most of them sell courses on making games. Many of the examples of game dev youtubers who were shown on this video aren't good examples to model a marketing campaign after. Most of the examples given, who have successful games, are due to building a giant audience of game developers over the course of years. What hasn't been discussed in this video is the conversion rate of game dev audience to people who want to buy your game. Also you don't discuss the time that these youtubers put in. I like John from Relic Games, but he's literally been working on the same game for years and only he knows how far along development he's at. He has a full time job, he does game dev as a hobby and he built an audience over the course of years from his game dev tutorials. This is not a good example of marketing a game. As Chris Zukowski explains, devlogs are "middle of the funnel" content. It's not what's going to catch your audience. What catches your audience is "top of the funnel" content. Devlogs are content for people who are already interested, it's not what gains people's interest. Also, Chris explains that the first step of the marketing ladder is to make a marketable game. If streamers and youtubers aren't playing your game because it's not marketable, then devlogs aren't going to attract your target audience of people who want to play your type of game. Step 1 is to make a game that's marketable. Game dev is a full time job, and so is UA-cam. Time is the most valuable resource we all have, and it's just bad advice to tell people to burn their time on trying to build a 2nd business, which that's what being a UA-camr is, a second and separate business with a different target audience that MIGHT have some overlap with the game you're making..
💯Completely agreed, creating ur own brand is the 🔑to everything.
From gathering wishlists to gaining Publisher's trust, if you have a brand, everything will fall into place.
How are you able to check what the top wishlisted indies games are?
curious to check where my game is at 🤔
Steamdb
Cool video, just commenting so more people see this!
If I'm the customer sure a Dev log can be interesting but the primary reason i would watch a devlog is for further insight into a game that I'm interested in. Whatever video i watch must ensnare my interest into making a purchase. I think making more than 8 Devlogs before launch is a mistake, every video on your UA-cam should be made with marketing in mind. A typical customer doesn't want to follow 15+ videos of a work in progress. They want a near finished game, with features being added ahead of launch. Customer don't want to hear the specifics about development they want to see cool features to look forward to.
Let's not delude ourselves, if the Devlog is ultimately intended for marketing then the devlog should be Crafted as a marketing tool not as a development diary. If you are to make a Devlog then the first channel video should go live when the game is at least 90+ percent done and a release date/month is set with a call to action. Maybe 3-6 logs in between a teaser and final game trailers over the course of 2-5 months alongside your other marketing strategies. Future update/logs would be perfectly fine. Twitter Dev post would also be fine
I think a real time Devlog is a really bad Idea. Save interesting footage and screenshots to put together at the end of development. Spending so much of your time marketing something you haven't even made yet can definitely impede development
My key takeaway: Make devlogs (and other content) for Indies AND Gamers. Indies may be your base starting out but the Gamers will come.
"Devlogs are not just for gamedevs" - anyway heres some gamedev specific merch 😎😎😎
Only joking, I agree!
Happy that someone is finally saying what I've been telling people for a while!
Well done devlogs are just as much for gamers as they are for other devs!
devlog is not 4# it should be like #12 on the list. it's not a good idea, unless you truly want to TEACH others how to make a game. the reason why is because all viewers are VIEWERS not promoters. they stay in their own world. so devlog is NOT an option to sell your game. it's simple. I keep telling this guy to stop making videos like this but doesn't listen. instead, creates pipe dream videos that don't help anyone out. Also, you try to back your point by saying some of the most popular games on steam have millions of devlog views. how do you talk about chance at the beginning of a video by saying "it's not enough", and then completely ignore that same logic on #4? oh yea... it's because that's what you do.
☝️☝️
u have to stop clickbaiting ur titles so hard. its really disingenuous and it doesnt encourage people to return to your channel
I agree. Like I get wanting views but they should focus on providing actually value not just filling in space...
First
Don’t take another game devs art and put it on your thumbnail.
IMO there’s nothing wrong with it in this context. He’s not trying to pass it off as his own art, and he references Jonas Tyroller in the video. Every game play video on UA-cam has the devs art in their thumbnail. It’s all good if you ask me.
first