New GMTK video, and some GMTK changes (Patreon)

Hello!

I've got a new video coming out in a bit. But you can check it out right now. It's called "How Video Game Economies are Designed", and it's a 101 crash course in designing resource management systems - and squeezing them for interesting gameplay.

I'll give you a little behind the scenes story on it. As I've said, I was invited to give a series of lectures at BUAS university in The Netherlands. Each fortnight, I'd ask the lecturer what he wanted from the next talk. The first was general design analysis. Fine! Then UI and menus. No sweat, I've done that. Then... economy design. Eek. I've never done anything like that on GMTK! I have no idea how to talk about that stuff.

And so I had no choice but to write back and say... "Sure! No problem!"

So, I spent the next few days in my little Amsterdam studio apartment reading everything I could find about economy design, talking to some smart devs over email, and watching GDC talks. Oh, and ignoring all the junk about free-to-play and blockchain economies. Eventually, though, I put together a talk that I think explains the ins and outs of economy design in a way that's pretty clear and easy to digest. 

And so I decided to turn that talk into a video! So here we are. I really hope you dig it.

While I've got you, I've got a couple bits of housekeeping.

GMTK Playlist 

So if you're on the $3 Tier (or similar in your local currency), you receive a monthly "Playlist" video where I talk about some games I've been playing lately.

Unfortunately, I've been really struggling to make this video work for a while now. My game-playing time is... inconsistent. I'll have months where I play loads of brand new stuff, and months where I hardly play anything as I'm spending that time working on videos, travelling, or - increasingly! - coding. 

Also, sometimes the games I'm playing are for videos so it doesn't make sense to talk about, say, Deathloop... when I'm working on a whole video about Deathloop.

So! I'm changing the reward from a monthly Playlist Video, to simply a monthly Bonus Video. 

From now on you will receive at least one video of some kind on the $3 tier. It could be a recording of a lecture, it could be a full version of an interview with a developer, it could be a tutorial, it could be something to do with my game, it could be a mini episode of GMTK, or it could - once I've played a few games - be something similar to the Playlist. I'll also continue my game of the year videos every December.

I hope that works for you. If you liked the playlist and your pledge was dependent on that reward I totally understand if you want to drop GMTK from your Patreon list - and I'd also happily offer a refund for April. Either use Patreon's built-in system or get in touch via DMs,

YouTube Ads

Another thing I've been grappling with is YouTube ads. I've turned them on and off in various experiments. But I've finally come to a decision.

First, the decision. When a video has been on YouTube for more than one year, I will turn on advertising for that video. This will be skippable adverts at the beginning, only. 

As for the why. Well, for one thing - more money is good. Let's not try to dress that up as anything more than it is! And diversifying my income streams is a smart choice as a business owner. That's why I joined Nebula, for example.

But, obviously, there's endless things I could do to get money out of GMTK. I could stuff the videos with unskippable mid-roll ads. I could try to sell you a VPN or Hello Fresh or RAID Shadow Legends. I could mint my videos as NFTs. That last one... is a real thing someone has asked me to do! Which is... lol!

So it's a balancing act. Where is the line between getting money for my work, and spoiling the quality/integrity of the work? 

For me, personally, I've decided that a skippable YouTube ad, on my legacy content, is totally on the line. Other stuff, like sponsored ad sections and mid-roll adverts, is over the line. (Again, personally). 

A tangent that is kind of about ads but also just about being creative

A little while back I read this cute comic (source here, thanks NotQuiteCool!), that was about how to finish work. And one of the panels, above, just completely, utterly resonated with me: "get rid of secret rules".

Sometimes we impose rules on ourselves, and our work. For example, when I was starting GMTK I had the rule of making sure I personally recorded every single piece of gameplay footage on the channel. I would sometimes buy a game and play it for hours just to get a few seconds of footage. One time, though, I let myself break that rule. I downloaded footage off of YouTube and used that.

And... no one cared? Like, not a single person cared?

I didn't really realise at the time, not until I read that comic, that I had given myself a secret rule. A rule that felt important to me - but wasn't actually that important to anyone else. And so it just slowed me down and gave me extra work, for basically no upside.

Now, I'm not saying that you should just slack off and do as little as people will let you get away with. It's important to have standards, and rules, and integrity. There's that story about how Steve Jobs would carefully design the bits of Macs that most customers would never even see.

But I think you should do it because it's important to you, not because you've imposed it on yourself. Like, in the video above, I did a pretty silly thing. As I describe the basic elements of the economy, I play a single song, but add in more instruments as the elements are introduced. It's just drums for the tap. Then I bring in the bass for the inventory. Then the melody for convertors, and so on.

It's dumb! No one will notice, I bet. But I wanted to do it. 

Meanwhile, I had set myself a rule that I needed to put unique music in every video I make. Yo, that gets pretty tough when you're 150 videos deep into a YouTube channel! So I let myself off with Developing - I basically just use the same music every time. That's fine, I add in creativity and panache and hard work elsewhere in the series.  

Anyway. The point is, not having any adverts on YouTube was a secret rule - and so I'm breaking it. Just a little bit. But I wonder if you have any secret rules in your work - and are they making you more creative? Or are they just slowing you down? Would love to hear. It's quite possible that I'm just a bit odd?

Coming soon

Finally, a look at what's happening next on GMTK.

So, I'm still planning to do that video on menu design. That's in the works. But I also decided to do a new episode of my level design interview series On The Level. I'm recording the call later this week and so will aim to have that up in early May.

I'm also hard at work on the next bit of Developing. The aim for this one is to chat about stuff that most game devs skip over. Stuff that's not particularly exciting or glamorous, and doesn't make for good video. Like saving and loading, doing level transitions, and making tools. 

Sure, it's probably a dumb idea to do an entire video about all the "boring" bits. But, hey, Developing is supposed to be a true, unvarnished, and transparent look at game dev. So, it's gotta be done! I'll try to make it interesting.

Oh, and the GMTK Game Jam for 2022 will be announced in May! Just gotta decide on the colour scheme and then I can reveal the date to the world. And before you ask - no, I'm not taking part! :P

Anyhoo. Let me know any thoughts or feelings about anything in this post. And I'll speak to you soon.

Mark