Gauging community feelings regarding development logs, video content, progress updates.

[Cheruboom]

Whew, it's been a while

As per the title I'm interested to hear what people think about Dev-Logs and other forms of progress updates.
Assuming the update has a structure of some sort, which would be preferrable?

A weekly round-up of the progress that's been made, broken down day-by-day. Where the dev more or less details everything they worked on and got done over the week, presumably in a chronological order.

-or-

A weekly showcase of whichever feature the dev feels like showing off that week. Not necessarily something that got done any time around when the dev-log is released, but something that is at a point where it's worth showing and could provide value/entertainment to the audience?

For some personal context I'm currently more thinking of this from the perspective of YouTube videos, as opposed to Patreon, so the goal is much more about providing something of interest to any audience, and less about a good-faith showing of progress being made to Patrons or Supporters.

I'm sure there are plenty more ways that things could be organized as well, and would be happy to hear any thoughts or feedback on the idea

 

[Tompte]

My answer is: I don't really care, to be honest.

Nine times out of ten, it's just someone wanting a little validation for their work. I rarely come across dev logs from an experienced developer. It's usually someone's first game. So I don't expect dev logs to follow any kind of structure or schedule, nor do I expect anyone to actually finish their game. I just like to offer praise when deserved, and cheer people on if their game shows promise. Having to spend time making up posts every day or week seems like a waste of time that could be spent working on the game instead.

Appeasing Patreon subscribers should probably happen on Patreon and not here, imo.

 

[DotingDomme]

I think feature showcases are a better idea.

Depending on how invested the end user is, I've known people who love seeing bug fixes and updated/new features. But I can't imagine wanting a day to day report of the dev's work. What would the end user gain from that information?

Unfortunately, as game devs, we do a lot of invisible work that the end user just isn't interested in seeing. It's cool to see a new character or new weapon or new chapter, but I'm not really invested in how many hours the dev put into writing the script.

 

[Cheruboom]

But I can't imagine wanting a day to day report of the dev's work. What would the end user gain from that information?

I do see where you're coming from, but that describes a significant number of Dev-logs that do exist, either in text form or on YouTube, and some of them seem to get the job done quite well.

I think part of it might be failing to come across from the idea of "day to day" making it inherently sound kind of... dry? Or mundane? But mostly I just intended it as: "Present progress made chronologically, showing things that aren't finished". I view it as the more transparent and honest version.

Whereas on the other hand if you're only ever showing off things that are ready to be shown off, then you're giving a false impression that everything comes together neat and tidily as they're presented in the devlog

Appeasing Patreon subscribers should probably happen on Patreon and not here, imo.

And yes, I agree. Also I wasn't really talking about either, since I was more interested in YouTube devlogs, but admittedly maybe those are a bit too niche (and I understand the foolishness of asking about non-F95zone devlogs on F95zone presumably if I made something I'd post about it here as well, but yeah)

 

[Tompte]

And yes, I agree. Also I wasn't really talking about either, since I was more interested in YouTube devlogs, but admittedly maybe those are a bit too niche (and I understand the foolishness of asking about non-F95zone devlogs on F95zone presumably if I made something I'd post about it here as well, but yeah)

Ah, right you are. Apparently I can't read. There are tons of people posting dev logs on this forum (sometimes even before they've started) and I guess that colored my impression of what you were saying.

I think you'll find that there are people who would be super interested in the behind-scenes of making a game and will gladly watch regular update videos, and there are people who only cares about knowing when they can play it.

I'm not in either camp, myself. I can be kind of a pretentious viewer who'd want to reach in through the screen and correct what I would see as mistakes, or offer unwarranted advice. I watched a bunch of Yandere Simulator updates and while they were interesting, they also hurt me inside.