May 2025 Newsletter (Patreon)

Ah, the month of May. A month for sunshine, game development, and reading a newsletter.I've laxed a bit on this one, having been waylaid by the end of CollabJam as well as the usual raft of unexpected personal nonsense. Last month I started experimenting with some different formats. As well as the usual regular streams, we got some narrative design material about worldbuilding and creating characters and dialogue. I delivered these initially as live workshops, with attendees helping out with questions and suggestions, and then also created edited-down versions for YouTube. The lives are still up, but the edited versions are perhaps a bit more friendly to new viewers or those with less time. Those of you who are paid members will have access to the ad-free versions of these videos over in the Learning Materials section of this Patreon, as well as the slides (thanks to a Discord member for requesting these; they're easy to add as a perk because I have to make them for the presentation anyway!)I hope you've found these lecture-format videos helpful. I know "lecture" is a dirty word... (so much so that when I checked YouTube's "held comments" section this week, a post saying "I really appreciate these lecture-format videos" had been flagged as potentially inflammatory). It seems like most of you get more value from these. While I'd personally like to be doing more in the way of skits, and more traditional games journalism content with a lot of moving game footage and greenscreen action [think Any Austin or bdg] it's just way more time-intensive to produce that kind of stuff, and not realistic until I'm working from a studio instead of my front room. I try to be as engaging and entertaining as possible, but this is primarily an educational platform, so I have to focus on what provides the most value for the people who really want to learn. If I used a lot more game footage, the channel would be more in-line with what a general games audience on YouTube wants, and I'd probably do better algorithmically, but I'd rather focus (for now) on what best serves the audience who support the channel here. You're paying to support the creation of some relatively niche content. Sometimes that looks less like a hype-edited collection of famous indie games, and more like a PowerPoint slideshow! You are my core audience, and if anything does well on YouTube that's just a bonus. I'll keep this one short and just close with a reminder that the book-club style Game Developers' Library podcast starts this month, with Spelunky by Derek Yu. If you're a member of our Discord, there's a channel to discuss the book in, if you want to ahead of time! You can subscribe to the podcast's RSS feed here: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/the-game-developers-libraryCheers! - Joe