Time, Life, and Footage
In my last post, I mentioned I would be uploading a devlog for Roshambo Adventure to my YouTube channel. So where is it? I had planned for that video to be different from my previous devlogs. Rather than a short feature showcase of what I had worked on in the past week or two, I wanted it to be more of a look into my thought process and how my ideas changed and developed over time into the game that exists today.
It turns out that making that kind of a video is really difficult if you have no footage of the actual development process. I contemplated trying to rebuild some of the earlier versions of the game that I had gone through to record footage, but that seemed like a lot of work in the wrong direction just for a video. While I was debating how to approach this devlog, some things came up in my day job and my daily life that left me with less time and motivation than I would have preferred to work on the game and make blog or video content. Hence “the next few days” for a video turning into a month for a blog post explaining why there is no video.
I came across a post on r/gamedev1I don’t have a link to the actual thread, but I’ll update this post if I come across it again. that I thought was particularly insightful. The thread topic was about how to balance time between making a game and making devlogs. The post suggested that the key is to focus on your goal. If your goal is to make videos, then stop making games and make videos. If your goal is to make games, then stop making videos and make games. Every minute you spend making a video about your game is another minute closer to done your game could have been.
This insight made me realize that to make a video I would be happy with posting, the time investment is not worth the return. Blog posts here, however, are much easier to put together so I think going forward I’m going to favor blog posts for development content, and save videos for major milestone feature showcases.
In contrast to the previous times I’ve found motivation fleeting however, this time it’s not a function of having no direction. I find that my vision for what I would like Roshambo Adventure to be is still clear as day, and when I do sit down to work on it I don’t feel like I’m banging my head trying to figure out what I want the game to be or what I should work on next.
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