Game Developers Refuge

I'll be chatting more about this at the source soon, but a problem I've had with Ludum Dare is figuring out what it can do to generate income, that isn't completely shitty and terrible. In essence, we have a lot of value to our users, but I'm thinking we can create even more value and have companies pay for it.

The answer is always "do more work", and the more work I've decided on is to start taking the educating angle seriously. It's easy to get people to sign up for our events, but once you do, there's a completely missed opportunity for us to teach you things. How to use your tools better, other tools that might make your job easier, etc.

It's still early, but I've started writing and producing some short video tutorials on how to do things that aren't super obvious. Eventually these will be paired with articles on the main website that describe the same thing, but it's 2021 and TL;DR so everything needs to be a video too.

That said, the videos are on YouTube, and I've been doing my homework on how to give videos the best chance to blow-up in their niche.

Video #1 I quietly posted Tuesday morning. Video #2 is in progress.

With my first videos I've started with a question that seems to come up while running Ludum Dare: How do I actually use GitHub as a gamedev?

Video #3 will be an actual game making topic.



I kept quiet about posting this because at the end of the video I make a callout to the next video, so I didn't want to bring attention to the fact that the callout is a dead end yet.

This video actually took me 3 attempts to record. The first attempt my audio was completely messed up and wouldn't sync with the video. The 2nd attempt I ran out of time and had to leave, and it just made more sense to re-record a 3rd time. That said, the video was filmed and edited in one day (Monday), but the outline and thumbnail were created previously. A big thing I need to work in is how quickly I can go from outline+research, filming, editing, to posting.

I have some critiques.

• The little video glitch thing at the start I wouldn't do again. I kept it in because of the way the video is timed to the music, it wouldn't remove cleanly.
• The music is a little too... dark? Again, what's done is done. Better to have a video with a dark backing track than no video at all.
• I mention "packages", but I think this is unnecessary. I would have removed it, but the way I recorded my lines didn't give me a clean way to cut it out. Again, better to have something than nothing, constantly dwelling on the changes.
• The emphasis on uploading source and downloading source wasn't enough.
• I'm a bit too inconsistent with my use of Installer vs Package vs Download vs Binary, especially since I never mentioned Binary at all earlier in the video.
• I could have clarified github tags better, but at the same time not dwelling was important.
• I need to just do this more to make my speaking sound more natural. Oof.
• Maybe some more at the end? Or not!

That said there are some things I like:

• I like that the video is 3 minutes. YouTube logic suggests you should shoot for 8+ minutes because of advertising, but I've decided I don't care.
• I like my thumbnail. Most people might not realize that's the GitHub mascot Octocat, but I like it.
• I didn't talk too fast! Phew! I speak very quickly IRL, and it's a problem. I also watch many YouTube videos at 2x speed. I'm happy I managed to slow my ass down enough. I'd say I'm understandable when the video is played back at 1.5x, which is a victory for fast-talking-Mike.
• This was a recent decision, but I like that I immediately jump into a "what you should do next" after declaring the video done. Video retention is big deal in YouTube metrics. As soon as you declare the video over, many viewers will close the video.
• I like that I'm not wasting the viewers time with "like and subscribe" BS, but I'll have to decide on some sort of callout at some point. My channel has 400'ish subscribers, and I need to reach 1000 to unlock some additional features.

I'll stop there.

The next video is on publishing a web-game (or static webpage) on GitHub. I'd say it's about half written, but I've finished researching. Once the cat leaves me alone, I'm going to dive into recording this. My goal is to SOMEHOW finish and upload this tonight, even if it's at stupid-o-clock. That way it can go live Thursday (tomorrow) morning. I don't intend to keep up doing 2x videos per week, but I do need a library of videos quickly to prove a point.

Pretty cool. Some comments:

- Quality is very nice. Good job!

- LOL, GitHub looks annoying! I can’t believe it’s so obtuse there needs to be a tutorial on how do to this.

- While video is a big thing and you don’t really have a way around it, I’m kind of a video grump and don’t want to spend even 3 minutes watching something I could read in 3 *seconds*: “click releases, enter tag, upload binary, done”. That said, this is nice and concise and I appreciate the lack of fluffy nonsense YouTube attention stuff like like/subscribe/intro/outro/etc. Is there a text version to go along with the video?

- There were a few cuts to you speaking that felt too short/were jarring. Seems like it could have stayed as voice over on top of your screen.

- In one cut your gaze looks up away from the camera (maybe your reading prompt is up there?). Not necessarily bad but very noticeable.

- One suggestion: any chance to find some way to darken the areas of the screen that don’t matter? Maybe in post? There’s a lot of mouse wiggling to get my attention to where I should look, but it’s less of a hunt if the thing I’m supposed to care about is more visibly lit than the rest of the screen that I’m not supposed to be caring about. :]

- LOL, GitHub looks annoying! I can’t believe it’s so obtuse there needs to be a tutorial on how do to this.

Haha! I actually don't think it's too bad, but 100% GIT/Open Source projects do things in a not so obvious way.

Designed by Programmers.

- There were a few cuts to you speaking that felt too short/were jarring. Seems like it could have stayed as voice over on top of your screen.

Agreed. I expect with more practice I'll be able to make it more natural.

In one cut your gaze looks up away from the camera (maybe your reading prompt is up there?)

Ha, actually I have a tiny monitor above my camera. I need to consciously remember to stare at the lens, and most of the footage I do manage to do that, but yeah I did leave that "tip" clip in with the upward gaze.

One suggestion: any chance to find some way to darken the areas of the screen that don’t matter? Maybe in post? There’s a lot of mouse wiggling to get my attention to where I should look, but it’s less of a hunt if the thing I’m supposed to care about is more visibly lit than the rest of the screen that I’m not supposed to be caring about. :]

Yes. I'll give that a try in the next one. I wasn't sure how important it was, and though I was afraid it was going to inflate my editing time, you noticed and I agree it'll make things easier to follow.

And now for less nit picky / criticizing stuff:

- Reiterating that the overall quality is very good
- Pacing of speaking is quite good, keep that up and I think your delivery will get more natural over time
- Audio quality is very good
- Overlay effects and such are pretty neat (like the file icons when you’re talking about exes and installers). Continue doing that as it adds some little extra oomph to the production value
- Good job keeping your PC/terminal UI clean. I stopped the video to snoop and see if I could find stuff you wouldn’t want showing, and it’s devoid of personal files/data/etc.

:]

Overlay effects and such are pretty neat. Continue doing that as it adds some little extra oomph to the production value

Agreed. This next video includes a gag with them, as well as a cut-away to some software/website.

On that note, I have to say, Unreal Engine has an eye-catching website:

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/

I mean damn. I had to try to find an alternative website so Unity wouldn't look so ... boring.

- Good job keeping your PC/terminal UI clean. I stopped the video to snoop and see if I could find stuff you wouldn’t want showing, and it’s devoid of personal files/data/etc.

Ha! The one thing that did sneak through was my email address. Any time you edit a file and do a commit from GitHub's website, it reveals my email.

Ah well, I don't exactly hide my email anyway.

***

Anyway, I was not able to finish the 2nd video this evening. I managed to film and edit what I had (from zero to https://interactivesnacks.github.io), but unfortunately something messed up and I lost some camera recordings.

EDIT: Actually I didn't lose anything. I just forgot that my camera is clever, and after running out of space it wrote the files to the other memory card.

Phew!

Okay, so I will be able to recover those, but I'm cutting myself off for the night.

That said I did make another mistake: there's a tool I need to run to make my giant mouse cursor appear on the screen. Unfortunately all of my captured footage has no mouse cursors. I can fake it in post, but oof!

My edit sits at about 3:30, but I expect to trim that. I'd also say I'm half done the content. I'm expecting the final video to be just shy of 6 minutes.

I guess this also means I'm currently averaging 3 minutes of edited video content per day. I blame the cat.

The way GitHub handles custom domains is strange, so I've decided to make that its own separate video. A video #2.5 if you will (but I'm not 100% sure I'll be making this video yet, 'cause I really should do a real gamedev video next).


I haven't started the thumbnail. Will probably use the GitHub avatar maker again. I'm just not sure what the short quip will be.

I'm also thinking I should make some title/section graphics, since my editing style seems to be leaning towards clear-cut sections.