Widunder

Developer Diaries is a really good idea, in my opinion. I really enjoy watching interviews and videos about developers. The sad thing is that most of the time developers seem to talk only about things that puts the game on a pedestal. I don’t blame them (or the publishers, who’s probably resonsible for most of the content in these videos) though, as the purpose of developer diaries is to promote the game at hand. Why else do the diaries?

BUT, I think that you can still promote a game by talking honestly about the developing process. For me personally I enjoy this more than just pure promotion talk. I would rather hear about the hardships of the development process and what problems they had to overcome. And how they solved their greatest obstacles.

Good example:

He’s talking about how they came up with the idea, what tricks they used and how they came up with the name. He talks about the earlier stages of the development process. This gets me more interested in the game, and in the developer as well. Because they share more information than they need to and for me the prooves that they really wants people to develop games and that they want people to play their game, not just spend money on it. Of course, they want people to spend money on it, but it’s not that very obvious.

Bad example:

In this one they say things like “It’s not a game, it’s not a movie, it’s an experience…” and “We decided to push the limits” as well as “We don’t see it as they are making a movie and we’re making a game. We see it as we’re building a world together”

This is the kind of quotes which makes it really obvious that they are only interested in selling the game and to hype it as much as they can. Again, it’s probably because of a push from the publisher. Of course, it’s always about the money. A developer and a publisher is always mainly interested in the money. But, as I mentioned before, you can make it less obvious to the audience.
“We decided to push the limits” for example. Well of course you did! What else would you be doing? Making something really basic and bland with intent? Of course you push technology and ideas in order to make something new and really awesome that will sell. They also talk about that they are sharing assets in the production, between the movie and the game, as if that would be something new and unique that they figured out. Which it really isn’t. This is the most common way if producing a game based on a movie.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m not the target audience for these movies (since I think most developers are really critical about these things) that they just don’t do it for me. I only get more and more skeptical about a game when I see this. I have no idea how big of an impact a developer diary has on sales for a game or if the majority of gamers likes diaries, but I guess it’s not a big difference from a regular trailer.

As I said before, I don’t blame the developers for doing this as I understand the purpose. And I don’t despite the Avatar devs for their video, and I hope that they don’t take offence if they read this. I just don’t agree with the way their doing this.