The Unseen Dangers of Devlogging 

Thanks for watching through this one. I know it's a bit different from the usual Project Feline happenings but there are many sides to developing a game. I've had to learn a lot about Unreal and Blender to make progress, and I've equally learned a lot from sharing Project Feline's progress with you guys online. Thanks for helping me grow and challenging me to become a capable game developer. Working on more devlogs which I hope to share soon!

This video applies not only to game developers but to creatives in general.

Developer casually notices they've become an artist

It's a very different video than usual, but I feel it's more important than other devlogs. Thanks for showing your perspective about this

So happy you talked about, especially "Handling Praise". I appreciate you even more than ever!

I can’t believe how much this echos my journey over the past few years - ESPECIALLY the part about praise and validation and the way it can pull you off the path towards your destination (and how it can create a false sense of worth). Would love to share more for context but taking time to face inwards and rekindle the flame is worth more than obligations to communicate with full transparency

I could be entirely wrong, but I feel like the praise angle hints at another danger of inducing an artifical development hell when making devlogs. A devlog series that drives a lot of views and monetary support will consciously or not incentivize a developer to keep it going for longer, with assets, features and levels taking a backseat to reinventing every system possible, experimental features that go nowhere or adding fluff and filler that attracts an audience to pad out development time. The validation and praise are just one angle, but the monetary gain from long term support is a very powerful incentive too. It could be to squeeze more in-dev support, fear of sales underperforming, fear of committing to the project or something else, there could definitely be reasons developers would prefer to make their devlogs eternal and the game essentially just a storytelling tool.

One point that I am a little surprised that you did not mention is the possibility that some bad actor with more resources than you will just pick up whatever unique thing that you are working on, plug it into their project and bring that to market first, making you look like a copy cat of your own thing when you eventually bring yours to market.

I'd honestly love to see more videos like this

Rare but great topic to cover. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

i’ve been here since day one and it has been so satisfying to see it grow

7:51 to 8:46 is so important for improving any skill. Yeah doing the fun flashy stuff is cool, but the nitty gritty boring improvement cycle is not something the masses always wanna see. And it’s hard when the positive feedback loop only seems to work with the flashy stuff. It really does come down to short term gratification vs long term growth

I really enjoy these vlogs about the mentality of being a creative, and the struggles and insights you develop along your journey. Hearing your thoughts out loud totally makes sense, if I was in the same position I probably would've thought the same thing, but not come up with the same solutions/conclusions you have. Hearing you share your struggles and how you're trying to work through it mentally also helps me re-examine my own problems and how I can do better too. Hope you do more of this format :)

Nice to have a more personal, less edited video. Kinda reminds me of how the first few devlogs were It'd be great to have more of these every now and then, especially if they take less time away from devving and/or from your personal time

This was a really interesting video actually. I’ve heard some of these things before with the Mouthfools podcast talking about being youtubers and streamers and their struggles with validation and motivation. I understand your situation a lot better now, and I wish you luck in both your game dev and youtube endeavors.

Good points! Heck even making a dev log takes work away from the project. I made some for a game called silent whispers. Take your time, lower quality and personal stuff like this is good once a while. I'm excited to see what's next for the project.

Those new clips look great. Your dedication to this project is inspiring. Keep up the great work!

Powerful insight. It’s super important to keep these things in mind as your game gains following of any size. Thanks as always!

Excellent video. Having your motivations right and understanding yourself I find to be increasingly important for successful and sustainable creative labor.

Thanks for the video. This actually teach a lot. And good luck on your game too.

Was wondering what you were up to for the past couple months. Glad to hear things are still going well behind the scenes!

This is probably one of the best videos I've seen in a while! I started my devlogging like 2 years ago and my channel and interest saw tons of growth and exposure - I loved it and it really motivated me to keep working on it and show off everything I did! However after a while I was having trouble maintaining all the expectations and feedback - when I realized my project had become severely taken by scope creep it killed all motivation for a long time. I've gotten back into it now, however I am now more careful of what I'm saying and promising - just trying to get back to the point where I had FUN developing with my audience. Thanks a lot for making this video! Subbed!

Thank you for opening up on these problems, but i personally think that you were able to handle these challenges really well so far. Don't let anything take away your energy. You'll reach your goals at some point! =)

This was a great devlog! Thanks for sharing. Some brilliant insights about the invisible choices of what to spend your time on and how you’ve learned over the years. Really refreshing and, as I said, insightful. Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for sharing this with us, it's worth knowing

very insightful and interesting to learn! thank you

really good video! im not a dev but i found myself relating to much more of these self worth questions than i thought i would

A lot of good points to bring up. I'm going to start my own devlog, where the goal is the devlog. There's a possibility I may release my game for free, and also it's going to be full of spoilers, as I'm doing a point-and-click adventure. So if I don't receive some validation, I may lose motivation because, I'm wanting to appeal to people that love behind the scenes content, or like the process of something being made. So even though I share all of the story arcs and things, which means you may not want to play it purely to play it after I release, you may want to just because you saw everything that went into it. I guarantee you almost no story-based game that has a devlog, tells you everything. I don't know if you follow adventure games at all (maybe you're too young or it's just not your cup of tea), but I was disappointed with the Broken Age (aka DoubleFine adventure) documentary. Didn't tell me anything of how Tim Schafer went about coming up with his story, what kind of methods he used, etc. This was supposedly for people who had contributed to the kickstarter, so presumably you would have already played the game before watching the documentary, but whatever. Apologies for such a long comment.

I appreciate this video so much. I'm in a very similar situation. Solo dev, RU-vidr, making a movement based game in Unreal, and I'm trying to figure out how much I want to show people and worrying about how the reaction's going to be. These are kind of the conclusions I'm coming to as well, but it's nice to hear that I'm not alone in these feelings. Stay strong my guy, and good luck on your development!

Thanks!

Thank you for this video! I'd love a follow up that discusses how we can develop a better sense of self-worth, or at least, ways that you've developed it for yourself.

This is great! As a solodev myself I agree with pretty much everything you said!

As someone entering the field of creatives, just like yourself, this video was really great and i think it has allowed me to better prepare myself for the future. As strong or smart of a person i may consider myself to be, neither criticism NOR praise are things i have really experienced in any meaningful amounts as of yet, but their effect on me, if i reach such a level of attention, is bound to be pretty significant. I'm glad ive gotten to reflect and prepare through this video, and i appreciate you for making it

The things you talked about in the video are so real. When i was starting out i made so many mistakes because of the way i handled positive feedback, its cost me months of work, but i didnt realise that until recently. But i do think this is something everyone needs to experience once to actually understand the issue for themselves. Love the game btw

very well spoken and insightful. also pretty smart way to teach your subscribers.

another thing i think that hurts devvlogging is that the surprise and shock and magic of the game is sort of watered away as the game is more and more exposed and showcased in all kinds of manners, people like to disregard it but what makes alot of games fun are discoveries and exploring the games content to learn and mine away all there is to logisitically register from the product. As a fellow dev who started just around when you did and saw you as a rival of sorts, i learned far too much about the inner working of game design philopshies and play as a concept; i realized the reason why games of old revealed and showed their games they way they did back in the day. giving away too much of the inner working of your game can damage its overall success when the game does launch as so much of the mystery, interest, curiousity, and exploration you feel or wander towards when playing a game is already accounted for and explained or explored away through the devlogging progress. So i understand the position your in as a devlogger but id try to retain the most important or core aspects that would make someone want to actually buy and or play your game, giving away too much can make it feel silly to buy it but giving too little or worst giving away information that isnt all that interesting or curiousity peaking can also stump your launch; i say this to you because i do really want to see you succeed when the time comes around for your offocial launch, but i thought for the first time that id share my thoughts on your project instead of watching from the side line as I grind away as well on my project. my last bit of advice and this is something i learned from listening to veterans talk about the game, is when gamers or players usually complain about issues with a game; or they request and talk about what systems should or could be in the game think moreso about not about what their asking or saying in its totality but the idea and conceptual origin of that request or complaint, for example if their saying hey add more skins and some sexy outfits, than think about why would they want the game to appeal to a more mature or adult audience is it because theres too many games that feel for children and not enough mature games, do they feel the game seems like it lacks depth or abilities to augment and or dive deeper in a more personalized way when playing your game that feels like they can put themselves into the game a bit moreso, it couldnt be about skins at all but moreso that they want to play for differing characters to get some perspectives of the world that isnt seen just from one angle or that the ways your game explores the world feels a bit shallow and as if i cant get deeper into the woods of the world and its inner workings fashion is a good way to get an understadning of what exactly this world is all about or how the people feel about the world. this is my food for thought i hope its useful to you~ I wish you the absolute best on your project it looks very interesting!

Aw yeah s introspectiveness !!!! I like this journey you've been on, very kewl s

As someone who has been doing devlog and public playtests for 5 years noow and now have my main Table top game project be in beta for 2 months... You are 100% right and from my place feedback is feedback it does not matter if it's posticve or negative most people want to help you succeed... Like my game would have never been as good as it is with out all the feedback I got...

Great video! It's hard to balance the invisible tasks with devlog worthy content, my devlogs have become shorter and less technical to help with video retention but it means devlogs need more time to be made

I really appreciate this commentary. It's actually a part of why I don't make devlogs myself. (Though, the main reason is that my voice doesn't record well...) I want to be as honest about what I'm giving players as I can be so I try to show aspects of my games that are mostly finished rather than while I'm working on them. When I show a mechanic or a piece of art, I want players to know that that's most of the way to what they're getting, for better or worse. I usually do tweak and improve things after I start showing them off widely, but the core's pretty much always there. It does make it a bit more difficult to get feedback during development, but I'd rather not make false promises or end up working on something that hurts the game because of misleading feedback. As much as I would love to sell people on my vision for a game, the realities of solo development on a schedule means that, unfortunately, what I intend versus what I release never match up as much as I'd like them to.

I think I've learned a lesson from your video. Thanks Raymond

I understand wanting to focus on the development and having time for yourself when necessary. Like I am, I'm sure others are also looking forward to more devlogs as they come out.

Simple editing is best IMO. I don’t watch streams so enjoy the videos a lot. 🙂

While making a product I often would get suggestions which I'd immediately reject because they're not "part of my vision" or would make the product design "less clean", but after thinking about them for a while I'd figure that the requests were actually useful and I'd end up implementing most of them eventually, benefiting both the product and its users.

Really interesting Video.

It's interesting to hear your perspective on handling criticism. You put into words something that I've always felt, when someone is super defensive or aggressive when responding to criticism, it makes them look really weak and it's embarrassing to watch - because it validates the criticism.

Thanks for talking about something close to the heart of creatives. It's good to know how seriously you take the game and the community 💖 ON AN UNRELATED NOTE GABI HAS A SIDE TURN NOW AND HER FLIP IS PRETTIER???

I've been contemplating going public with my project but I've felt really nervous about doing so, I'm really slow when it comes to making progress with my project, so slow that I haven't even made the animations for my character yet (even though the model and rig is pretty much done and has been done for the past month or so :p) so I'm not entirely sure if I should go public with it and talk about what my project is, I feel like it could help with motivation but I don't want to upload a single video about it and then never talk about it again and have people wonder where the hell it went :p

1:31 Expectation and Critical Thinking ("Thinking with filters") *literally* inhibits creativity, as you don't diverge from known/proven paths, to comply with them. While developing something new it can completely stop you in your tracks and cause writers block, as nothing seems enough / worth trying. If you face this while creating: Yeet critizism out the window and just do what feels interesting - even if its "wrong and weird and too much and whatever" - do it anyways and follow what engages you - do what's fun and build up on that. When you have come up with a concept that is stable enough on its own - THEN you can use critical thinking to filter away what's not needed to get the essence of the idea.

good video, interesting ideas

Hi Raymond, I am looking into being a game artist and was wondering if you have any advice about the subject, weather that is about the Do's and don'ts, pasts experiences and anything in general. I am currently a first year student doing a game art and animation course AIE. If you are interested in answering this question I would appreciate😊

YandereDev is perfect example of what not to do as a solo dev lol

Both giving and taking feedback are skills.

I think the main danger of dev-logs, that you get wishlists from your fellow indie developers, but not your future players. It can be really tricky, they add your game to wishlists because of the sense of support, but not because they want to buy the game. And when the release day comes it can turn against you

I'm also starting my journey and I can agree with the points that you've made. I also had to deal criticism before doing RU-vid and learned to build a filter. Some is valid and some are not. Of course you need to be confident on RU-vid and making games and if you're not, then you will fail because you lack integrity.

thanks for sharing your toughts and experince Focus on what u think its right, Skins or just collor swaps /color pic system would be nice, but getting everything to work has priorety also As VIP supporter, you wrote my name wrong :/ the "a" is actually a "4" would love to see that fixed in the next one

This video should have a sponsor 😉

good video

Have you stopped streaming? It's been a while since the last stream

What he says about attention can be related to as being a RU-vidr too.

Well screw the discussion about your game, you're actually very smart, and even if your game launches and it is not what I expected, I think knowing the person behind it so closely changes how I play or see things within the game. (and when I say so closely I don't mean personally, just way more than your usual game dev).

I think one of the issues with getting the spotlight shone on you is the capacity for self-delusion. You’re tempted to think anything is possible, but the reality is that attention doesn’t always translate to resources. Also, you’d be surprised how quickly your fans will white knight for you, defend each and every decision, no matter how stupid it was, lol. Finally, you have to be careful if you’re the kind of person who ideates out loud. People will confuse your entertaining of possibilities with promises. EDIT: final final tip, when it comes to community, your attention is oxygen for the fire. Anything you reply to you’re encouraging, even if you’re coming down on it. So generally don’t respond to behavior you don’t like.

I think it is unfair to assume if a creator tries to argue against criticism that automatically means the complaints are correct, IMO that is only the case half the time. Some creators simply dislike misinformation getting spread or just want to try explaining the reasons behind their ideas. However I have witnessed creators absurdly overreacting to criticism to the point I had to assume it hit a sore spot. For example one time I criticized a indie dev who repetitiously kept calling their own WIP characters memorable & iconic despite seeming generic in every way from what we could see as viewers... and as you may guess they freaked out on me, going as far even calling me an annoying child. Like wow, the guy was insecure as hell.

Don’t call me a feline 😂

funny vhs tape hair.

*cough*yanderedev*cough*

mmhmm

Danger of not making devlogs

i wonder when its finished, i mean its been a few years、i guess you cant really finish it since what next will you be developing? its a bit of a toxic cycle i think to be a public developer, since if you finish your game, the social media is finished isnt it?

Is the person who can't take criticism bethesda?