Strawpoll: Pre-Devlog

Hi all,

I was wondering what peoples' interest would be in a devblog focused on preproduction and design? When I first started in the industry I was interested in the scoping and design phase, but aside from high-level GDC talks, it's rare to see much of the design/preproduction phase being recorded in devlogs.

I have one of those gigantic-scope, will-probably-never-be-completed games that I've been working on some design for. I've been using it as a learning opportunity for improving my documentation and design skills, as well as getting to work on interesting tech demos in my spare time.

As the scope is a little too big for solo/small team development, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in seeing a sort of 'pre-devblog'. It'd start out high-level, and then get into finer and finer details. I'll try to cover as many aspects of the design phase as I can, including system architecture, narrative design and concept art.

In terms of format it'd be mainly delivered through video, with a written version available too.

Let me know what you think, any input is appreciated

 

Yes, I am hungry for content like this. I don't have tons of time to watch so highly condensed stuff is good for me. better to say too little and leave want for more, than say too much and bore.

 

My interest would depend on your ability to execute said plan. Especially for a mid-size scoped project.

Seeing someone pour over pre-planning without seeing those plans crashing against reality after a year of production work is not so interesting for me.

Seeing how you adapt to change, how you handle the valleys and how much of your original document survives the process would be the interesting bit.

My interest goes up if you're a professional with real experience, and down to nothing if you have no track record for executing mid+ sized projects.

 

Yeah I'm thinking an average of 6-7 minutes. Most around 5 with some stretching to 10 if it's a deep dive on a subject.

Good point. I guess it's a good deal of buildup that needs some payoff. Maybe the end result could be the creation of a vertical slice. Again, the project is far too big in scope for a spare time project (which is why I had this one in mind for the preproduction series), but it'd be good to see the expectation vs. reality aspect of preproduction vs. production.

I've been in the industry for five years, mainly working in Unity. Probably the largest (in terms of budget and content) project I've been lead on was TitanicVR, which had about 5-6 hours of content and about a two year production cycle.

 

That sounds good. Without naming any names, I've seen a lot of people on game development forums trying to make numerous authoritative posts on game design, but without the benefit of any game development experience (amateur or otherwise). These posts are usually met with a lot of skepticism. I tend to be skeptical too, though I usually keep it to myself.

I think someone who's pro will be well-received, though, especially if you can share anecdotes about certain planning that demonstrably paid-off, or types of planning that practically turned out to be a waste of time, or just got in the way.

In any case, I'd probably be interested, just because I'm also working on designs for overly ambitious projects.