Hi, so I want to create a developer blog for creating small scope games (1 month-ish). I was wondering if people could give me tips on what makes a good game developer blog. I'm trying to make it a weekly thing where I would spend half a day just video editing / choosing segments from my weekly coding (I am a programmer to be specific). I'm trying to figure out what kind of content people would actually stay attentive to and help bring value (educational or something else) towards people who come to my blog.
Creating a Blog
I would lean towards pointing out any interesting gotchas or useful patterns that you encountered during that week. I.e. here's a weird bug I found with texture rendering using XYZ, or here was a useful place to apply design pattern ABC.
Odds are, if you restrict yourself to talking about your particular project, it's not going to get the same kind of reach, because most people are just not going to care that much about your specific approach to flobbing the frobulinators in Unnamed Indie Game X. But if you go wider and generalize more, it could be very useful. There's a sort of dearth of good, non-beginner, and non-academic material in a lot of areas relating to gamedev.
Some of the more popular things tend to be when you've tackled a difficult problem, done something interesting, or used a technique in an unusual way.
More experienced developers usually appreciate things they can relate to or things that can be applied to their own projects.
Beginners tend to appreciate insights into a more experienced developer's process, or detailed walk-throughs of things they can try to implement.
Outsiders (gamers, media) will usually be less interested in technical details, and more interested in the human side of things - a "look behind the curtain" at the process.
I hope you'll consider our blogging section. We've got an existing audience of fellow developers, and aim to bring exposure to quality entries through front page exposure and social sharing. 
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1 hour ago, jbadams said:I hope you'll consider our blogging section. We've got an existing audience of fellow developers, and aim to bring exposure to quality entries through front page exposure and social sharing.
I'm actually going to spend some of my down-time to watch some of the blogs to get some ideas of how I want to make mine. I kind of want to make my video more oriented to experienced developers though.
Cool. For a more experienced audience I think they would generally prefer technical details - interesting problems you've solved, or unusual approaches for certain techniques, etc. You could also sometimes share problems you're struggling to solve or haven't chosen the best approach for yet; experienced developers often like to give input and share their knowledge.
The other thing that will be popular with experienced developers is the personal details and story behind the project - I think slayemin's blog is a really great example of this.
I'd say just discuss what you're going through, i.e. the process making the games and working through such a time frame. Along the way if you find interesting things, or things you learn, or frustrations, or whatever, just discuss that.
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5 hours ago, 0r0d said:I'd say just discuss what you're going through, i.e. the process making the games and working through such a time frame. Along the way if you find interesting things, or things you learn, or frustrations, or whatever, just discuss that.
Some developers kind of get a bit really personal with their situation. Do you think I should add that as well? There are some blogs that just get a bit too depressing sometimes but others know how to control the flow of their video / blog
You seem to be really into the idea of a video blog/stream. I would urge you to reconsider that. Text is king. Especially for anything programming related. It's an unbelievable bear to try and watch a video of somebody coding or or even walking through some steps in a screen cast (people that do *nix command-line tutorials this way drive me insane), and get the necessary level of detail.
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15 minutes ago, ericrrichards22 said:You seem to be really into the idea of a video blog/stream. I would urge you to reconsider that. Text is king. Especially for anything programming related. It's an unbelievable bear to try and watch a video of somebody coding or or even walking through some steps in a screen cast (people that do *nix command-line tutorials this way drive me insane), and get the necessary level of detail.
The idea of the video isn't for a tutorial. It probably would be used for updates on my progress. Of course I would leave anything programming related in text. I've had my own experience looking at programming tutorials on Youtube and its such a pain in the ass to even follow sometimes because the creator has a hard time conveying their message.
5 hours ago, MintyLyton said:Some developers kind of get a bit really personal with their situation. Do you think I should add that as well? There are some blogs that just get a bit too depressing sometimes but others know how to control the flow of their video / blog
Yeah I'd say dont get too personal, just stick to the process of making the games. Within that topic there's a lot you can talk about.
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