GMTK Year in Review - 2018 (Patreon)

The year is coming to a close, which can only mean one thing: an obsessively detailed, brutally honest, statistically overloaded look at my last year’s worth of work. 

Let’s jump right into it.

What did I make this year

In 2018 I made 15 episodes of Game Maker’s Toolkit. You can see them all above.

9 of the videos are “topic” videos, where I explore an idea or concept through the lens of lots of games. That’s feedback loops, systemic games, assist mode, puzzles, engagement, combat systems, score systems, mistakes, and skill trees.

The remaining 6 are “analysis” videos, where I look at a single game or series - Rayman Legends, God of War, Overcooked, Spider-Man, Mega Man 11, and Return of the Obra Dinn.

Last year I wasn’t pleased with the ratio between the two types of videos, as I had way more analysis videos than topic videos. Probably down to the fact that 2017 had a deluge of amazing games.

But topic videos are where GMTK started (with my video on adaptive soundtracks) and are what makes GMTK stand out. Where many other channels look at individual games, I look at entire topics and bring in loads of different games for unique perspectives. So while they often take longer to make, they should be my focus and, happily, that’s what happened in 2018!

As for the actual videos, this year I made some of the best videos on the channel, in my opinion.

I love the episode on Feedback Loops, which I think does a good job of explaining a relatively complex and misunderstood concept. Assist Mode talks clearly about a topic I find really interesting - balancing designer intent and player accessibility - and it has already inspired titles like Furi and CrossCode. Puzzle Design is a really tricky topic, and I think I did it justice by exploring concepts I haven’t seen talked about before, like the way puzzles misdirect you.

I also really like the editing in Mega Man 11 and God of War’s videos. They look professional. And I was pleased with the reception of the systemic games episode, where designers said it did a good job of explaining the basics of the topic.

But this year, I also made some videos I’m not especially proud of. Keeping Players Engaged and Building Better Skill Trees are my weakest. Neither are awful videos (though, the Skill Trees episode got a lot of dislikes because of something I said about Path of Exile) but I don’t think they’re up to my high standards.

The truth is: they were the result of being pushed for time, feeling a need to get a video up on the channel, and doing a topic that I could tackle without a tremendous amounts of research. 

So they don’t have that feeling of a GMTK episode - where it’s like I’ve locked myself in a room for a week playing puzzle games or detective games until I emerge - unshaven and unwashed - with some secret formula that makes games great. And that’s not good enough.

I’ll talk more about this later. But for now, let’s just say that in 2019, I’m going to try to manage my time better so this situation doesn’t arise again.

I also have issues with the Spider-Man video. I feel like I maybe reviewed a game I wanted to exist (a bonkers, expressive, web-swinging platformer like Mirror’s Edge), rather than the game that the developer was actually making. And that’s not on. Will try not to fall into that trap again

I also made 5 episodes of Boss Keys. I “finished” Boss Keys Season 1 by talking about Breath of the Wild, did a mid season special on Dark Souls, and then started Season 2 by talking about Metroid and Castlevania.

I say “finished”, because I didn’t complete the entire series. You see, Boss Keys was supposed to be my research for a GMTK episode on Zelda dungeons. But I still haven’t done that episode. The truth is, I just got burned out on Zelda dungeons. I’m sure I’ll do that final wrap-up video one day, but I need something (maybe the announcement of a new Zelda game) to spur me on.

I really like the video about Dark Souls’s world design. It’s a complex, tricky subject - with lots to discuss, like how it helps you navigate, fast travel, difficulty curves, non-linearity - but I think I did a good job. I also like the video’s style. I think it matches the game well.

The new season is going well. Started off a little iffy - I understand the feedback that I didn’t talk enough about Zero Mission’s sequence breaking stuff - but is rolling along nicely with Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. The main thing this time is to not take on too much. I won’t be playing every Metroid game, or every indie Metroidvania - just some select titles that I think hold significance. 

I estimate that I will play Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, the GBA Castlevania games, the DS Castlevania games, Axiom Verge, and Hollow Knight. And then leave it there. I don’t want to talk about locks and keys forever

Also this year, I made 3 episodes of Designing for Disability - on auditory, visual, and motor disabilities. 

This is a topic that I am passionate about. People I love live with disabilities, and I have RSI myself, so I know too well how games can be made accessible or inaccessible through their design and options. And thus, I wanted to create an easy resource for developers to reference when making games.

I’ve had a lot of help on this - every episode has involved getting tips and feedback from gamers who live with the disabilities mentioned and from accessibility consultant Ian Hamilton.  

And I think it’s just gone down really well. They don’t see as many views as my other videos, but still - getting over 100,000 views on each video, for stuff about disabilities? That’s amazing! It’s really hard to get people to care about this stuff.

The videos are now floating around different game studios, according to designers who have DMed and emailed me. And so hopefully we’ll see even more accessibility options in future games. I’m really pleased, in particular, to hear that the videos were shown at id Software. Here’s hoping DOOM Eternal has better colourblind support!

I’ve got one more episode in the series to do - script is written, I just need to apply the feedback I’ve been given. But I’ve got more to do on this topic. I’m thinking about doing a video on accessibility myths (It’s expensive! Players will use it to cheat! Hardy anyone uses this stuff!), a quick-fire “top 10 options to add” video, and then round-ups in the future (like “accessibility in 2019’s games” type stuff)

And finally, the GMTK Game Jam! I made four videos (announcement, jam start, voting start, best games), but only the best games video is still online. The rest have been hidden. 

I’ve talked about the jam at length before. Basically: hooray, it was bigger than before! But I still need to work on some stuff like voting. The jam will obviously be back in 2019 and will hopefully run smoother than ever.

Overall, that’s 24 videos on the channel (excluding those removed game jam videos, and a delisted update video about Twitch). That’s my target - an average of two a month. But it’s also the bare minimum and lower than previous years.

In 2017 I made 29 videos (though, one was a short bonus ep, and Dead Space was split into three videos), in 2016 I made 27 videos, and in 2015 I made 22. 

Who watched the videos?

Let’s talk stats! 

Up to December 16th, GMTK had 18.7 million views. That’s up from 16.5 million in 2017! The average view duration was 58% of the video (down from 2017’s 59%), and I had 89,000 comments (up from last year’s 73,000).

Most of the views, like 95-97%, came from YouTube itself - a very small number came from Reddit, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. 38% of my views came from the US, and the other most popular countries are UK (8%), Canada (6%), Germany (5%), and Australia (3%).

Most people watch on a computer (Windows, by and large), Android is way bigger than iPhone, but iPad is the most popular tablet, and almost double the number of people watched GMTK on a PlayStation, compared to an Xbox. 

My top 10 most viewed videos in 2018 were:

• How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves (2017) - 1.2 million
• How to Keep Players Engaged (Without Being Evil) - 511,000
• What Make a Good Puzzle? - 450,000
• The Rise of the Systemic Game - 450,000
• What Makes Good AI? (2017) - 422,000
• How Games Use Feedback Loops - 421,000
• The World Design of Dark Souls - 415,000
• What Makes a Good Combat System? - 396,000
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s dungeon design - 380,000
• What Makes Celeste’s Assist Mode Special - 374,000

Mostly new videos! But some vids have long legs and I’m still pulling in views from last year’s videos. The one on protecting players is now past 2 million views. That’s cool. The Resident Evil 4 train finally hit a dead end, with just 279,000 views this year.

This year, I started putting other people’s videos into my end screen, under the tag “Mark Recommends”. These have been pretty successful and get clicked on way more often than links to my own videos.

Here are the 5 most popular recommended videos

• The Importance of Keyframes (Dan Root) - 13,000 clicks
• The first non-Valve game on Steam (People Make Games) - 8,400 clicks
• What Makes a Good Platformer Boss? (Skip the Tutorial) - 7,600 clicks
• Stalking for Love (Pop Culture Detective) - 7,500 clicks
• What Makes A Game Punk? (Writing on Games) - 6,300 clicks

GMTK also hit half a million subscribers which is, just, wow. That was one of my goals for the whole year but I passed it months ago. 

What games did I talk about?

Something I try to be cognisant of is not just talking about the same games over and over again. GMTK almost has a “canon” of favourite design-y games like Spelunky, Hitman, Far Cry 2, Breath of the Wild, Dark Souls, and XCOM.

Happily, I only mentioned Spelunky in two videos, Far Cry 2 in three videos, Hitman in four videos, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild and XCOM games in five videos each.

My most referenced games were MGS V and God of War (6 videos each), and Uncharted 4, Dark Souls (whoops), Assassin’s Creed Origins (7 videos each).

I showed 299 unique games - from 1978’s Space Invaders to 2018’s Return of the Obra Dinn. I mostly talked about recently released games, as you can see from this graph. Would be nice to discuss more retro games

I’m still mostly talking about single player, character-driven games. These sorts of games are just my wheelhouse, but I always want to leave my comfort zone, explore new things, and learn. So I’m going to try to surprise you with the types of games I talk about going forward.

I was pleased to make a video specifically about co-op in the Overcooked episode. And now I have a whole series planned about multiplayer for 2019.

Also, I like that GMTK can be talking about the big new releases - and from a different, more design-focused perspective than other channels. So this year I had videos on God of War, Celeste’s Assist Mode, Spider-Man, Mega Man 11, and Obra Dinn.

I have lots of thoughts about Red Dead Redemption 2, but I think it’s actually part of a larger conversation on open world design and the pursuit of realism, so that can come later. And I do want to do more on Celeste’s actual game design. I was also working with IO on a video about Hitman 2 but working with PR and publishers is so slow.

There are more games I could have talked about but, as ever, I’m not gonna make stuff just because it’s in the news or everyone else is covering it. I’ve gotta have an angle I care about, first!

What else did I do in 2018?

Oh my, so much.

So for most of GMTK’s existence, work has been my life. I pored a lot of myself into my career - both as a games journalist and then as a video maker. And I missed out on a lot of stuff because of this.

For 2018, I knew it was time to make a change. I moved into my own place. I bought a car and passed my driving test. I’ve met the love of my life, and we’ve been exploring the world together. And I’ve been exploring new hobbies, and trying to make sure that work time is work time, and leisure time is leisure time.

This has had a knock on effect on GMTK. Hence the lower number of videos compared to last year, and the two videos I admit that I rushed out the door. I was probably busy getting driving lessons, or going on a much needed holiday, or whatever. 

Now, in some ways I don’t regret it at all. GMTK 2014-2017 is the result of a person working almost exclusively on the channel. And GMTK 2018 is a person who is living a more normal and healthy life, with breaks and weekends and other things in his life. And so I can’t expect to have the same level of productivity.

However, I am learning how to get more done in the time I am giving myself. I’m working smarter, not harder. And learning to manage my time better. So I’m confident that I can keep up a really good workflow of great episodes in the new year. And I just won’t be rushing videos just so I have something new on the channel.

Anyway! What else did I do?

Well, I was lucky enough to be invited to two different universities to speak about games. I chatted to students in Breda’s NHTV and London’s UAL College of Communications. I love doing this, and want to do more going forward.

I also spoke at AdventureX, about detective games. And TechShare Pro, about accessibility. I’ve got more events planned in 2019, including an awesome speaking appearance at a major (major!) video game studio in January!

I also started doing some writing work again. After I quit Pocket Gamer at the end of 2016, I’ve only written scripts and tweets. But when Polygon asked me to write about Tomb Raider’s grisly death scenes I was like, eh, why not! And I enjoyed it. So when Medium asked me to write about Nintendo’s approach to accessibility I was like, sure! I’ll continue to do this here and there.

Oh, and live streaming is going well. I bounced from YouTube to Twitch, and back to YouTube again. It’s fun. I don’t take it too seriously, and enjoy the audience interaction a lot. I’ll try to do it every week.

In conclusion

2018 was an incredible year for me - both personally and for the channel. But I readily admit that my personal life had an effect on my work life. Going forward, I will work really hard to find the right balance between the two. I appreciate your patience and support this year - it’s been incredible. I hope to make you proud going forward.

Major goals for 2019 are - three overseas speaking roles. 750,000 subscribers. Start at least 2 new series. Start learning how to make a game!

Eek. We’ll see how I get on.

Mark