Should You Start A Devlog For Your Indie Game?

The question is, should I start making devlogs on YouTube while I'm working on a commercial game that I want to release? Um, and there was pretty significant amount of uploads here. So, I think a lot of you are curious. Well, no. I think the answer is is absolutely not. If it's your first commercial release, I I wouldn't do it. Um, well, okay, let me let me sort of define that. Absolutely not. If you're a normal person, if you're normal, like your skill sets are pretty normal, you wouldn't consider yourself hyper talented. And I think the majority of you guys are probably would look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know, I'm not the most talented person I know. Maybe you're really good at one thing, but you're not good at all things, then no, you shouldn't do it. Now, if you're somebody who's just really good at a lot of things, and this is the important point, if you're somebody who has a lot of energy and doesn't burn out easily and follows through on most projects, then I would say sure, go for it. But I think the majority of you guys

and the majority of the world is not that way. In fact, I think the number one risk for most indie game developers is that you're going to quit your project. Not your YouTube channel, not your social media account, not Tik Tok, all that other stuff takes a ton of work and effort, but just your game. Just your game. That the first and most important project in terms of becoming an indie game developer, if you can't even finish that, you shouldn't be starting anything else, right? But once you finish your first game and you one know how it feels, you get that rush and then you want that rush again. There's a rush, by the way, when you release a game and it feels pretty great and it's kind of like a runner's high. You want to keep doing it, but also not only you learn how to release your first game, but also you kind of know what it takes, right? You know, you know how it feels to release a game, but you also know what it takes, how much work is

involved, what a schedule looks like for your next game, even a budget. Despite the fact that maybe you're not getting, you know, paying yourself a salary or anything, you still should have a budget in your head or even an imaginary hourly rate. Once you know that and once you've released your first game, then you know what your second game is going to take, right? all of the budgets, the emotional budget, the spiritual budget, the financial budget, the time budget. Once you know all those things, then you can consider starting a YouTube channel. So, if you start a YouTube channel, let's say you want to not take my advice and you're going to start your YouTube channel anyway, um here are some tips on getting started. All right, the first tip is to release content and just release a lot of it. Um, I think it was Mr. Beast who said, "If you don't release a 100red videos on your YouTube channel, you can't call yourself a YouTuber." Um, don't quote me on that.

Maybe correct me in the comments, but I think that's what he said. If you don't have a 100 videos on your YouTube channel, don't call yourself a YouTuber. Um, because you need to just release a bunch of crappy videos. And it's very similar to making making indie games. Release a bunch of crappy crappy videos. And uh slowly the point the point here by the way is slowly you learn what your audience enjoys, what the YouTube algorithm enjoys and what what works for your schedule. See the thing is my YouTube channel um doesn't get like Danny views. It doesn't even get Jonas Tyroller views, right? And I say it doesn't even because me and Jonas have about the same amount of subscribers. Actually, I think he has less than me and he's getting better views than me. But for me personally, I actually just enjoy releasing content quickly. I live stream. I'll do Q&As's like this. I'll just release content and just shoot it out there like a shotgun approach.

That's my style for everything. That's how I approach things. So, starting your YouTube channel should really be easy for you. It shouldn't stress you out. The things that are going to stress you out are finishing your game or making another game. So, your channel really should be secondary. But there's a huge butt here. It may be the most valuable thing that you have in the long run. And I know that's true for me. So, I'm recording this content right now, and in my head, I know that this is actually the most important conversation, even though I'm talking to a camera, I'm talking to you guys, the most important conversation I'm going to have uh this week because I get views from this and those views convert into an army. So, this is my final po point with this video. Um, my my final big tip is the value of having

a YouTube channel, aka a YouTube channel army. I like to call it an army. It's an it's a it's um a group of thousands of people who support you, support your work, and this is the important part, your future work. Okay? Don't underestimate the value of that. It's so much easier to make and release games. Um, when you know you have an army, first I say make because it's easy to make a game when you know you have a built-in audience already ready to buy your game when you release it. Let me know in the comments below how it feels currently for a lot of you making an indie game when you don't have really any audience members. You don't know who's going to like your game. You don't know if what you're making is valuable to anybody except for you. By the way, I know that feeling because everybody starts somewhere and I I started there. I know that feeling. I know how it feels to not know uh if anyone's going to like

your work. So, I I understand that you guys might feel that. Let me know in the comments if you feel that. But having an army and slowly building up a reputation on YouTube or Tik Tok or Instagram or Twitter, by the way, I recommend you do all of them eventually, not with your first game, but eventually slowly. Well, at the very least with your first game, do Twitter and Instagram for sure. But once you have that audience built in, it's so much easier to just make games and say, "You know what? I'm going to make this game." And then you share it with your audience on YouTube and then you get feedback and they tell you if they like it and then you start getting wish lists because people click the link below, right? All the links below my videos are just different ways that my army can engage with my content. So, that's obviously one of the one of the main reasons why you want an army is it's going to motivate you and encourage you to keep making games. But the second reason you want an army is because they

can they can well purchase your game when it's completed. And I think it'd be foolish to assume that a lot of these game developers on YouTube who have their own YouTube channel, myself included, aren't benefiting financially from their viewership. I know personally if I wasn't benefiting financially from my viewers, I don't think I'd be making content. And I I think that that's a really honest thing to say, but but I'm not going to lie, like YouTube is incredibly beneficial to me and my family uh and my studio. Um, so it's really a massive billboard for you and your studio to ultimately sell games, to sell products, to sell tools. It's a storefront. Well, it's not really a storefront. It's the door to your storefront. Now, obviously, that's not the only reason I make YouTube content. I genuinely enjoy it, and I genuinely love you guys and enjoy you guys, uh, especially hanging out during live

streams, but ultimately, it is a billboard for your products. So, yes, I do recommend people start making devlogs on YouTube, but I don't recommend it for your first game unless you're a genius. That's that's the short of it. Anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed this video. Um, leave a like, subscribe for more content like this. And if you want to download my free 2D game kit below, it's totally free. You can use this game kit however you want. I use this game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days. And I actually got to play it with him on his channel, which was really cool. That same game kit, it's totally free. Just click below. You can download it, use it whenever you want, store it on your computer, save it for later, make a million bucks off the game kit. I really don't care. And if 2D isn't your thing, there's also a 3D free course below. totally free 3D course where you're going to learn how to make a 3D game with no knowledge of 3D modeling. All right, guys. I'll talk to you later. Cheers. Get over here. [Music] Hey, thanks for watching. By the way, if you haven't downloaded that free 2D game

kit below, click below. It's my treat to you. I used this game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days. And I actually got to play it with him in front of his audience, which was really cool. This game kit is totally free. It's my treat to you and you can use it however you want. You can make a commercial game and make a million bucks off this game kit. I don't care. Or you could just use it for a hobby project. It's my treat to you. And by the way, if you haven't clicked like, that would mean a ton to me. Hit subscribe. And also, this is important. Hit that notification bell. Here's why. If you get notified of when I'm live, you can watch me make my next game. and let me know in the chat what you think about the game or any ideas you have. And you might just show up, your chat might just show up in the next video that I upload. All right, I'll talk to you later. Bye. I love you, too.