Any advice for creating gameplay videos?

I'm thinking of creating gameplay videos for my current project, but I've never done one before. The only things I've thought of so far is to put together a script beforehand, and to make a few dry runs before the "real thing". I haven't even decided where to upload them yet, though that will probably be Youtube.

Does anyone have any general advice for creating them?

 

There're some advice out there... Mine: make sure you record in 1080p 60fps. YouTube will scale down automatically if needed but for most current hardware your videos will shine.

I use ScreenFlick for Mac. It's quite effective.

 

I've never done something like this but was thinking about it after watching other videos. I think the key is it being like a good story, catchy beginning, middle, and a good end, but not too much to ruin any spoilers.

Some intros are even almost cinematic, in the way they introduce the game, the plot the music, the action scenes. I'm not sure if people play small clips of the game and stitch them together using video editing software, which is what I assume most do, as writing a script to do this wouldn't be that efficient or flexible.
Good luck though

 

I thought this was rather helpful.
http://www.kertgartner.com/making-entertaining-and-engaging-video-game-trailers/

 

I like Open Broadcast Software (OBS) as it's powerful, stable, well-supported, and best of all free. It's used most often for livestreams, but it has options to record to file as well. All you need is some video editing software, audio processing software, and a good eye to take it further from there.

 

creating gameplay videos only requires a decent hardware, a good recorder and a game to record. It as simple as that. But it's necessary to add charm to your video if you really want it to shine out. I don't have any exp. with gameplay videos but I think it's the commentary that adds charm to any gameplay video. Be sure not to make a boring gameplay video, a boring gameplay video has serious effect on impression of your game much more than not creating a video at all.

 

That's a very useful link, @iamthwee, and I've bookmarked it for future reference. The script I have in mind is more like a rough guideline of what to show, so I'm not waddling around like a drunken n00b-bot for more than two minutes, going "Um" every five seconds.

I'm planning to do this mainly for the Feedback Friday threads, at least at first. So I could probably do worse than look back through them for examples.

 

Are you on Windows? Do you actually need help with the technical part?

I'm writing an article about this as we speak because I wanted to learn the very same thing, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I anticipated so I'm writing it down in case anyone else is interested in the things I learned. It's sort of Windows only because I'm writing about the Windows version of Open Broadcaster Software. I think you can do the same things with the multi-platform version, but I've become familiar with the Windows only version.

I'm also adding a section on how to create high quality gameplay gifs (that are not actually gifs) using gfycat.

I can't help you with the script part as I feel that's very subjective. My article is about achieving the highest possible video quality, suitable for Youtube or anything else.

 

@TwiiK, I'm running on Linux Mint. I did try OBS after seeing it recommended elsewhere on the forums, but the resulting videos had no image or sound no matter what I tweaked. After an hour, I gave up and installed SimpleScreenRecorder, which took less than five minutes to configure, and I've had no issue with that yet. That said, it sounds like that article you're working one would be interesting to read anyway.

 

Take a look at greenlight and see what gets greenlight and what doesn't. I found that shorter vids seemed to get greenlight, this one was only 15 seconds and got greenlight
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=573317502

 

Here's my article: http://twiik.net/articles/recording-high-quality-videos-with-open-broadcaster-software

It may or may not be of any interest. It makes no mention of how to get audio working in OBS, setting up hotkeys or anything to do with basic usage of the software. I assume the reader has gotten that information someplace else. The article is about my slightly insane struggle towards squeezing out the last possible drop of quality from the recorded video using advanced settings in OBS. I guess I should make that clear in the beginning of the article. The quality of the video doesn't have to be lossless (although you can do that with these settings) because I'm uploading it to Youtube anyway, but the frame rate should be 60fps and smooth and that was what I struggled the most with.

But in the end I'm fairly happy. As I noted in the the article I still have a tiny issue with the videos being ever so slightly desaturated compared to the source material, but I'm unsure whether or not I'll bother trying to track that one down.

 

It's a very useful article, particularly the parts about bit rates and CRF. Definitely worth reading!

 

My advice is not from the perspective of someone who makes videos, but from someone who consumes them. I buy quite a few games, but I'm also a cynical fellow who doesn't like feeling that watching the video was a waste.

From the perspective of a viewer, you've got thirty seconds to grab my attention. That's it. Anything longer and I feel like you're wasting my time and I may be reaching to turn off the video.

If the game seems interesting, you've got till about the forty-five or sixty second mark to have me hooked. That doesn't just mean telling me how shiny your game is and showing me concept art and cut scenes. If I don't see actual gameplay, preferably a solid amount of it, in that first minute, I'm questioning your game already.

Your video shouldn't be crossing the two minute mark, unless it's one of those videos that you produce to show sections of your game in detail. Some games have the short promo video and the longer "this is how our X system works" type ones; that's fine because I can skip the detailed ones unless I'm really interested.

Your video is a commercial. Think of it like a TV commercial and you'll be partway there.

Two other things I'd suggest are:

1) Pay for the license for the recording software if you're using some. Nothing says "don't take me seriously" like a Bandicamp or whatever watermark across the top of the entire video.

2) Make the video end gracefully. So many of the bad Greenlight trailers I see just end abruptly like someone flipped a switch. It's jarring. (Check out the Jim Sterling channel for some really badly done Greenlight trailers. His commentary is very much not safe for work.)

 

Besides the above great advice, I would reiterate about the gameplay. You need more gameplay than anything. And if it happens to be really nice, lots of eye candy, awesome lighting effects, whatever, you can advertise that by specifically putting a bit of text saying that it is actual gameplay footage. Some videos don't put any gameplay, and some that do don't put enough and don't mention anywhere that it is actual gameplay, so you may not know what is game and what is drawings, concepts, whatever. You might have a few seconds of concepts at the beginning, like if it is an RPG, the beautiful concepts of characters or something, but pretty quickly dig into the gameplay itself.

About that gameplay, you need to show off the best parts, and likely only the best parts. The only exception to that might be a form of stating that it is the gameplay, in the form of the menu. Say you are making a really intense space shooter, or FPS, or something with lots of action, bullets, particles, etc... You might intro with maybe 1 or 2 seconds of the game menu, and selecting game start or whatever. And then you go straight to videos of action.

About the actual meat of it, it needs to be the best parts. So for an FPS, don't show the guy walking around. Show what the game is about, shooting aliens, the powerful guns, etc... This serves the purpose of bringing them into the game, as well as keeping the playing once they do, because they will want to play in order to see that really beefy gun in the video, and said gun may not be available at the very beginning of the game.

The same applies to other genres. For a top-down RPG, I would focus primarily on battles, and primarily the special battles with the cool looking big bosses. The only dialogs and town walking I would show is just a few seconds maybe to show that it isn't just a battle simulator, maybe as in intro to a battle(similar to the menu screens intro I mention above), and maybe to make a point about the game's story, like if the hero loses his family, maybe show some dialog from that or something similar.

Last thing, it applies to any genre. Think of it like a portfolio of sorts for the game. An artist's(or whatever) portfolio generally only shows the best work they have. They don't show what they did while learning, nor do they show things that are old and demonstrate skills that have been bettered by now. The final game trailer should show only the very best that the game has to offer.

 

Check out steam greenlight trailers for examples of what not to do.