I did a short devlog a couple of days before, just a youtube clip, I didn’t even talk in it.
Posted it on reddit, it got massive feedback and views. It have now surpassed our 1 month old devlog that in my opinion is a better devlog. Here is the one that got views
Here is the old one more than a month old and with less views, both posted to reddit offcourse
To me there is more eye candy in the old video, etc, I really dont understand why the new blog got so much attention. Its really hard to predict what your target audience will like apparently.
I’ve watched the first video and it does indeed have a mesmerizing quality to it. You see actions and feedback. It makes me think “that’s something I’d enjoy playing around with if I had a vive”. And it was over reasonably quick. No fluff, decent pacing, doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. The second video doesn’t have much happening in the first minute and to be honest at that point I already don’t want to watch anymore. “show - don’t tell” is a good general rule for narrative design. Maybe try for the next video to cut away all fluff and just show the cool interactions your game can offer. Cut out all idle time inbetween. If you think something makes no sense without commentary, maybe rethink how that thing could be redesigned.
The second aspect is that youtube is not very transparent with its algorithms. I’ve heard that it will do things like “test screen” a video to 5% of your subscribers, and if they don’t like it (e.g. don’t watch till the end or skip through it), it might not even be shown to the rest of your subscribers. In the podcast where I heard that they said Facebook is very similar but they are upfront about it and tell you something along the lines of “you can pay us to show this to the rest of your followers”.
Since I didn’t watch the whole of the second video I have to ask: does your game have throwing knives? I think it needs throwing knives (or regular knives that can be thrown).
It is possible your first video is gathering a lot more attention (at least in a short period of tie) than the other video because it was interesting to game devs.
When I see the titles of those videos… Virtual Warfighter Update 8 Give me a hand! sounds like it is content focused specifically on this game. And would appeal more to gamers or at least to gamers following this particular game.
Devlog #4 More stable physics seems like a much more generic topic that would be interesting to a lot of game devs who may have at one point, may be currently, or may want to prepare in case they do… struggle with unstable physics. From this perspective this video is of much more interest to these people.
Again just my quick 2 cents on it. I think these videos may be hitting different audiences.
Hmm, you are probably right, but the strange thing is I posted both on a none dev part of reddit. Maybe none devs are more prone to devlogs than update related logs… hmmm
Great points, I will start by cutting down the VWF logo to 2.5 seonds insteads of five. Than try to keep it shorter. But its hard if you have alot of stuff in the changelog! Will try for next video, it’s actually live in a day or two so can post here too.
That’s easy. Because people who watch dev logs are often devs themselves. So will be more interested in a video about “more stable physics” than “Give me a hand” whatever that means.
You could try to split it up into 1 minute videos and just make 2 or 3 if you have enough features in an update. Also lists… people love lists. “5 new things you can do in War Warfighter Update 9”. Just don’t go too clickbaity, that wouldn’t suit your product imho.
i think its about the title. No clue what “Give me a hand would contain” but “more stable physics” i see that and think there might be something i can learn from it, or that it would be nice to see how a other dev handles the same problems i worked with before.
Your absolute numbers are all still low enough to chalk this up to random statistical anomalies. Chasing down the details of such small numbers on YouTube can lead to madness.
But if you really want to know, start with YouTube analytics. Check out the discovery section. Where are your views coming from? It’s entirely possible that it has nothing to do with the Reddit posts.
Once you find out where the views are coming from, we can start work on the why.
Got ya. So for all intents and purposes, reddit is the only source worth worrying about. So the next question is how did views look on the two reddit posts. Did the second one have a better click through rate or more total views?
Imho it’s still way too long (got even longer than the last one). If these are supposed to be part of your marketing I’d strongly suggest to not perform them on the fly and instead record footage first, trim down to just the most interesting bits, and then do the voice over afterwards like all the professionals do, and edit the hell out of it to have snappy timing and cut out every uhm and ah. Also there is no reason for you to stare at a boring wall while you tell the boring stuff at the beginning (personally I’d just get rid of as much of it as you can bear and focus on the fun parts), you could tell that as well over gameplay footage of someone actually shooting people or a supercut of cool things that happend during beta tests. Also it’s starting to become common technique to deliver a one or two sentence sneek peek of what’s gonna be interesting in the video at the start, just a few seconds (5 to 10 at most I’d say) to have something engaging there as a promise like “just stick with us, it’s gonna be worth it”.
And then I feel like I have to comment on the choice to make weapons drop by getting stuck at objects. I understand why you did that and I understand your reasoning for blance, but I would almost be willing to bet money that a majority of players will absolutely hate that. It looks like something that can happen outside your field of view and lead to your ingame death when you expect to be able to defend yourself but no longer have a gun in your hand, even though you didn’t feel it fall out of your hand. That must be super immersion-breaking and frustrating. I don’t know if the controllers have some kind of rumble function, but if they have, and I can’t talk you out of the feature, I’d suggest to make them rumble in a pulsating pattern like a warning to make the player look there and see they’ve lost their gun.
Losing a rifle in DayZ without noticing due to the dumb inventory system, or dying in Insurgency because my weapon got auto-raised because I was too close to a wall, or I started auto-crawling because I looked to the side and now the leg part of the world-player-model sticks in a wall and tries to move out, were some of my most frustrating moments in gaming, and I’ve played through two Dark Souls games.
Seeing your game really makes me wish I had a Vive, I hope they get a lot cheaper in the coming years.
I agree it sounds boring, but its very important, controls in VR are everything, and that we let you configure every aspect of it is pretty rare. So we need to cover it somehow. its a complex mechanic and its very hard to shorten it down. I tried prerecord and add voice over, but it became very stale and mechanic. I need to practice that
Our game is a hardcore sim, so its not for everyone, we will add collision sounds when objects hit other objects, so it should be a little more clear when you hit something And haptic feedback is a good idea! Added it to our trello rightaway
Glad it makes you wanna buy a VR headset after watching our game
Will try for next video, it’s actually live in a day or two so can post here too.
