I’m a fan of the Extra Credits videos found on Youtube- and I love their Design Club episodes (before they moved to twitch) because they are really tightly focused- they hit a series of really good points and use game footage to illustrate.
I’m asking around to see if a channel that does the following might find an audience:
Analyze well known games with an eye to design and mechanics.
Plan a simple design that applies what was learned
Provides brief Unity tutorials on how to implement similar mechanics yourself.
For instance, looking at a 3D Mario game and analyzing his movement mechanics- why does he have so much mobility? Long Jumps, wall kicks, ground pound, triple jump- what do they add?
Plan a simple character and timed obstacle race that simulates the value of “advanced” mobility. (eg. 2D “blockman” must get through a platforming segment using running, jumping, and a third “advanced” option such as a triple jump or wall kick. The level design would provide the opportunity to use the advanced movement to great benefit.)
Go through Unity tutorial building a prototype of the planned design.
These goals would be accomplished through multiple video segments- perhaps 1 episode for the analytics + planning, and a second dedicated to the tutorial/execution. They would preferably be around 20min in length, though the tutorials might sometimes require 30 - 45. I would try to cut down on length by showing just the operations and doing a voiceover afterwards. I dislike tutorials where I have to wait for a mouthbreather to dig through menus or sit through a bunch of uhms and ahs while he works out a bug. I’d try to stick to just the meat, so to speak.
If you guys love the idea, I would attempt to do several videos- and should they find an audience, I would probably try to Paetron them into a long term thing. If it’s already been done, I would love links! Thanks all. -Luke
The idea itself is not bad. But easier said than done. Maybe you could do a “pilot” in youtube, and let people leave their suggestions in the comment section.
My only suggestion, and this is personal but still, I would rather have 5 minutes that are easy to digest, than a 20-30+ mins exhaustive analysis .
Agree, shorter chunks is better. I have a long list of bookmarked videos 10min+ that I get time to start but never finish due to interruptions. Well done, informative, short videos would also be useful for students who tend to study areas in bite sized chunks. I’m definitely interested tho, the more info/skills I get/learn the more likely it is I will one day be confident enough to show my stuff.
Also interested. And notice I tend to ‘bookmark’ videos that are 10+ but will watch/listen to others that are less than 10.
5 seems a little too short for the subject but could fit if done well.
I initially liked the extra credit videos but as I watched more it started to feel like they were less about game design/development and more about some kind of personal, political/social, acceptance, assemilation.
Just started to feel less meaningful to devs looking to create a great game and more geared towards thought experiment type games.
Somebody finally read my post where I said that YouTube tutorials were a better money makers then games.
I’m actually interested to see the series. You can still find an audience on YouTube for a lot of Unity game dev stuff. Especially quality made stuff, there is a bunch of poor quality material out there.
Thanks so much for the feedback! I really appreciate it.
As BoredMormon pointed out, there’s a glut of poor quality content out there that fails to deliver concise, clear, accurate instruction. I was a digital film student once upon a time, and I think there’s a lot I can do to improve on the quality of what’s available.
I’m by no means the greatest dev of them all with just 4-ish years on me, but I never would have got this far without the freely available tutorials online. Ive become quite competent and I’d love to be able to give something back. I’m hoping if I can paetron or even just ad Rev. To cover my time I could afford to do videos on a regular basis.That’s assuming I can attract people on a regular basis as well.
Something that bothers me is that I’ve never gone back to a tutorialist’s channel. I really doubt anybody watches a tutorial that they didn’t think they could use right away. So doing tutorials isn’t enough on its own to build a regular audience on. That’s why I wanted to expand to include analysis and design concepts.
Hey L Man. Just an opposing view. I watch tutorials all the time - that I don’t have an immediate use for. And if done well I frequent the youtuber’s channel often. LaneFox has some great videos for PlayMaker I know I’ve watched nearly all of them more than 3 times each.
Hey I appreciate opposing views even more than the average view! I guess it is possible to build a consistent audience- I should check out those playmaker videos and see what I can learn from the way they are made.
I’m a mix, I tend to watch what I need but sometimes get distracted if I find something interesting that I don’t need but want to know about (usually found by accident & about things I never knew could be done). Grouping them as playlists will also help e.g. On tigger enter, exit, stay could each be a short tutorial explaining when to use them, how to use them & then an episode showing how to use them in conjunction with each other. Then group them into a playlist for triggers. Repeat for colliders, repeat for 2D (with extra ones for effectors) etc. I’d definitely bookmark playlists that were grouped & focused rather than bookmark a channel that I then had to sort through looking for what I want.
Good luck
You can find an audience for pretty much anything on YouTube providing that it is entertaining. As long as you can engage your audience, keep them interested for the length of the video and have enough engagement to keep them coming back then it will be successful.
Good content on it’s own is never enough though, still need the avenues to get exposure to build up the initial sub base.
