Quick update to this thread, also some thoughts in general about content creation!
It’s been a few years since I’ve uploaded anything, but I plan to start again. I really enjoy making videos, but making high-quality tutorials takes a lot of time and effort. I don’t have the kind of free time that I used to, so lately I’ve been brainstorming ways to get back into it without suffering from the following negatives:
- Too much time investment. I have more productive and relevant things to do that would have a bigger impact on my life and goals.
- Stress of quality. Creating something useful is one thing, but polishing it, making it presentable, and maintaining it into the future is pretty stressful.
- Lack of fun. I’ve been making videos for as long as I can remember, but the times when I was genuinely having a blast was when I was just making stuff without thinking about analytics, judgement, extreme accuracy of the content, etc.
- Lack of relevance. If the stuff I create in my videos isn’t directly applicable to some greater goal, then I somewhat dread working on it because it pushes me farther away from reaching whatever goals I might have at the time.
I have been racking my brain over the past couple months about how I could start making videos again and returning to that feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction that I used to have long before I created this particular channel. I think I have a good answer to all of the problems listed above, but I can’t be sure until I give it a shot.
Throughout those couple weeks of building Defold Rendy, I was posting development updates to this thread. About half way through, I realized how fulfilling and enjoyable it was to log my progress and write out how things were working on a technical level. I thought maybe I should start some kind of programming blog, but after some research I concluded that this probably isn’t the best way to find an audience or encourage discussion in the modern Internet landscape. It is the 2nd best choice since it would meet that “make it fun and satisfying” requirement and wouldn’t require all the editing and additional work that making a YouTube video requires.
At least, that’s how I thought about it a week or so ago. But what if I could make videos that don’t necessarily require writing a script, investing a bunch of time into editing, and all the rest? I’ve only ever made videos with big scripts and voiceovers. If I could find a way to blend my normal game development routine with YouTube that doesn’t cause tangential problems or stress, then that would be great.
I’m going to try to make a series of videos developing my next Defold game from scratch, including explanations and brainstorming, similar to how I was logging my progress with Rendy. Maybe this way I can combine many fun things into one. If it doesn’t work out, then so be it.
I’d also like to hear what @Pawel’s thoughts are on this, since he has been making some excellent Defold-related videos lately. Do you also often run into any of the problems I listed? How do you handle them? Anyone else is welcome to comment as well of course. 