itch.io Community » Game Development » Devlogs

Help us make devlogs better (What should we do with this board?) Sticky

leafo · 2018-07-07T20:26:55Z

Hello, thanks for taking a moment to check out this topic. When itch.io first launched its community , there was no way to post to a blog on project pages, so we added the Devlogs board for people to post their updates. Fast-forward a bit and we added the ability to post devlogs directly to project pages , and we integrated it into the creator dashboard. Over a thousand posts a week are published through it. I left this board around because there are a handful of people running interesting topics. It's pretty confusing that there are two places to post devlogs though. Additionally, there are some logistical issues with this board that we never really fixed. There are quite a few disadvantages with this board: Confusing with devlogs feature, should you be posting in both places? The rules aren't clear: should you post a new topic per update, or have one topic with posts for updates? (you should be posting in 1 topic!) We weren't strict about moderation: many of the topics are lower quality link dumps. The topic listing shows a lot of lower quality and abandoned posts that you need to sift through There's no way to sort the posts, and no clear way to follow the progress of the game. (For topics, you have to subscribe to get notifications, but I think it's more valuable to get people to follow your itch.io account) Where the best place to post to drive traffic to posts? This board could potentially be a source of traffic, but it's unclear how much. We've put more effort into making browsing tools for the proper devlogs feature: https://itch.io/devlogs I've created this topic to get to get feedback about what to do next. The devlogs feature on project page is here to stay, so I want to decide the fate of this board. The format of having a devlog be a message board post is used by a lot of older indie game communities, and has its merits. Do you like this format? Is it important that this board stays around? What are ways that it could be improved to make it more useful assuming it's kept? I'm also open exploring different ways to format this board. Maybe it could be used to share links to your devlog posts? By the way, here are some example topics that are doing a good job of having devlogs: https://itch.io/t/145701/no-love-jrpg-action-adventure https://itch.io/t/60734/delvedown-2d-platformer-downwellgameboy-inspired-game-is... https://itch.io/t/188623/epicinium-environmental-turn-based-strategy-beta https://itch.io/t/36171/battle-gem-ponies-devlog https://itch.io/t/26523/error-ware-2-try-the-demo If we make any big changes, then I'll definitely look for a way to make sure these posts are migrated and can live on. Thanks

A topic by leafo created Jul 07, 2018 Views: 11,709 Replies: 51

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Pion246 days ago

I think this forum should concentrate on the fact that you can post devlogs here for games that you haven't put up on itch.io yet, so for the projects that are not finished games yet (at least that's how I've experienced it, correct me if I'm wrong). Maybe you could build on that aspect and add additional features for promoting a not-finished product, I feel like itch is still lacking features for that

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IslandWind115 days ago (1 edit)

I think I would prefer if devlogs were automatically also put in this forum when you posted them. Or at least there could be a checkbox you could tick.

Alternatively (just brainstorming here), make it so that when I post a devlog, have a thread be generated here with either the full devlog or an except, and a link to the actual devlog on the project page where people can add comments and whatnot. The except would be written by the poster (have a separate textbook labeled Excerpt) or just be the first x words or whatever.

Also I like the idea of curated devlogs.

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