Bloodstained Developer Diaries

PLEASE NO!!!!
I don't know what you mean by a "developer diary" exactly, but with the exception of "The witcher 3"
and its development of CD PROJEKT on youtube, i somewhat have a golden rule that has yet to fail me so far..

when you see developers blabaring about their game DEVELOPMENT PROCESS on youtube, and "The feelings" they want to give the player.
and what they are currently doing and working on.
and when you see a douche developer giving 3 hours speech on youtube video clip with the words "We are working on X so the player will be able to do Y"

You can rest assure the game will fail big time, 100%, when you are too busy in PR`ing yourself and showcase your "in-development" product.

The reason for that is mind-set, if you are aware of it or not, it changes slowly from "working on the game" to "showing off the progress of the game"


Its those things that come quietly, after a lot of work put into internal development that usually take us by surprise  

Edit : This may sound a bit selfish but, if the development team got a few secs to spare on a diary, i would prefer if they would redirect the extra few secs to the game.

i wouldnt mind a peek into like a meeting where they stuck a camera in the corner and forgot it was there, a truly honest dev diary though would be boring as shit to most people because it wouldnt be the devs hamming it up for the camera but actually doing dev work, like 2 hours of adjusting values and testing, adjusting navmesh and testing, adjusting model and testing, painting a new piece of concept art, looking at wireframes and swatches, looking at a whiteboard and walls of pictures deciding if they like path a or path b better, maybe a glimpse at the random injokes and funny placeholders devs use until the actual assets are finished

i do agree with ill though, i dont want the added stress on the team to ham things up to make things seem more interesting to people, game dev is often very tedious work obsessing over details most people run past without noticing, and occasionally one of the injokes or flourishes makes it all the way to release as an easter egg like the bugs in the opening of sotn >P

(The quote system is bugged for me, please do a follow-up : I tried to remove my own nested-quote (a quote within a quote) so it won't get to a wall-of-text form while responding, but failed to do so)

1.)Examples? sure i guess we can go with not just one, just pick any known "expo" that you want that showcase a game (during development).

2.)If someone pissed me off? well a lot of developers as i wrote above, that during development, claim how innovation is important
and how they wanted to "give me a feeling or x/y/z" (buzzwords, buzzwordz, buzzwords), Instead of letting me get my own impression when the game COMES OUT.

3.)This part only became popular during the social media in gaming uprising, and then people are surprised to why games are unfinished or getting delayed all the time.
Because as claimed above, they are too busy maintaining & building consumer/backer confidence.
YES, it is false to assume that's the sole reason but its part of the reason, its part of the time/money budget (development diary).

(Did any of the previous iga-games required any consumer confidence that the game will be good? (I can't say backers in previous instances obviously).

4.)That's pretty much a statement so i can't respond to it.

5.)Not as much as an assumption as a reminder that a lot of amazing games came out before the whole video diary concept took over
A lot of amazing games also came up in this day and age when such practice became popular, sure.
But again as you mentioned yourself, Even if the developers can  multi-task just fine, there is still extra work to be done, may as well
put it into the game, AND IF SOMEONE else is doing the editing, save that money on someone else and invest it into development.
(ITS A TRADEOFF, THERE IS A BUDGET, AND TIME is part of the budget, there is a reason why they say "Time is money")
assuming that making a diary is close-to-zero-payload work is a false one.

Examples of big talk in-development are out there, starting from something old like "supreme commander 2 interview"
planetary annihilation development diary.
Civ beyond earth progress interviews.
watch-dogs development progress.

Just pick an expo / interview of people showcasing unfinished games and talking highly at them,
Yes, i refer to them as development diaries.

I am in favor of developers "post-production-diary" , with iga and his his team sitting down and explaining
about the development AFTER game came out, like in SOTN.

For me, they are "a metric for how good or bad a game will be", my personal belief is that if you are doing something, you should focus only on your end goal objective.

To address the other point.
my favorite thing in igavania games is the "boss rush" mode , a side mode that i spend a lot of time beating my own record.
Yes, its pretty awesome "extra" and i enjoy it very much. Would i prefer if instead of doing it, they would add another element to the game itself?
hmmm yea, Because overall, the boss rush mode does add A LOT without a doubt, But its still the main game that i wish to play the most.

I'm skeptical about how much you know about game development (or even more broadly project management in general) illasera. I bet you are the type of person who complain about clones in fighting games too ;-)

Anyway, part of creating a product is actually advertising and selling it. If you make a game and nobody buys it you're finished. Word of mouth can be helpful for some titles but you need to do the bulk of your advertising before the game comes out. What is this game? What does it play like? Why should I care about it? These are all questions that developers and publishers aim to answer. When you make something you intend to share with the world, you have to let the world actually know about it and why they should care. Or else you might as well just throw it in the trash or in a vault when you're done (after all that effort and money that went into creating it). That's why things like "developer diaries" and trade shows exist - so that companies can inform consumers and other industry people about their project and advertise them. It also offers a great opportunity for feedback. You can complain all you want about "why aren't they working on the game" but such complaints have no merit - doing these sorts of things are actively good for the game, the developer, the publishers and the consumers.

With regards specifically to crowdfunded projects, its the responsibility of the developers to inform the backers on what they are doing and their progress. They took backer money upfront, we have to keep them honest to make sure they are on track. Crowdfunding is ALL about trust and if that is lost or damaged in any way, things start to spiral out of control VERY fast. Furthermore, the communication between backers and developers is intimate enough that feedback is a very important and real aspect of a crowdfund project's development - more so than most traditional publisher funded games.

This is to say nothing of the fact that time spent promoting the game regardless of the method (something with tangible and very important benefits) isn't necessarily time that could have been spent developing the game be it due to diminishing returns, specialization in role and function, how such developer interaction can improve the base quality of the game, etc.

I'm also not sure you have a good understanding about the relative effort that goes into crating different types of content. Boss Rush Mode is basically putting a timer down and making a few rooms to hold bosses you already had to create for the main game. It's a staple of games like these and its absence would have been sorely missed. It broadens the appeal and increases the value of the product but doesn't cost a lot of relative time or effort to make. The additional modes funded that are likely to cost the most time and money are stuff like the online modes (online programmers aren't going to be working on the main game anyway so there's no lost dev time or conflict) and stuff like the Rogue-like mode (which can add a massive amount of value to the game). There's no real reason for concern aside from paranoia. Keep calm and rational my friend