Should you make a dev log?
And will it help you get more wishlists
There are a non-trivial number of people who get into game dev from watching dev logs. This often romanticized view of game development attracts people with flashy visuals and exciting headlines. Even if that’s not what brought you to game dev, you’ll hear about them in no time.
Then you think, should I make one of these?
As you no doubt guessed, you’re about to read about my thoughts on that. Or listen, which I recently found out you can do on the Substack mobile app.
So should I?
First up, no probably not. At least not the high production kind that you see on YouTube. If you want to be a YouTuber and you want to make a game dev entertainment channel then by all means go for it. If you’re doing it because you want to get more wishlists for your game then I think there are better, less time-intensive ways.
For most games, probably the best way for you to do this is through cold emailing content creators to play your demo or a pre-release build. You simply cold email them and make your ask. The worst thing that happens is they ignore you. I talked about that a little more another article if you’re interested in going deeper:
Instead of thinking wishlists for the rest of this, let’s talk about something potentially more valuable. Community.
Communities are good
Alright so let’s back that up a little bit. Regardless of what you’re doing, game dev or making the next best garden rake, having a community is a very good thing. Talking about your work publicly is a good thing. Getting feedback on your work is a good thing.
Both of these help you build a community, not only of potential customers but other people who are building like you are. There are many options you can (and should) pursue to do this which won’t take a huge amount of time.
The easiest way to get started is posting your work on socials. Starting out, it doesn’t matter too much which one you pick. If you’re just starting out with socials, I suggest you try them all for a month then pick the one that works the best for you. The “rules” for growing accounts on each platform varies a little, but the common thread is quantity over quality at first.
Another way you could do this is through a newsletter, like this one. Longer term you’ll likely combine all of these things of course, but you can start getting sign ups for a mailing list for your game and share content to your list. You can grow that list over time as you meet more people online or in real life.
I’ll talk about mailing lists another time, but for now I just want to say these are a very good thing. You own the means of contact for your audience, as opposed to social platforms in which the platform could make an algorithmic change that removes your access to the audience you’ve worked to build.
At minimum, hopefully I’ve at least convinced you to start your first public post (or reminded you to get back to it) about your game. If you have any other ideas for building community let me know down in the comments! Always fun to hear what people are trying.
Affiliate Links
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