Why live stream a devlog?

Last week, I shared a clip in which Gavin Eisenbeisz, creator of Choo-Choo Charles, Unreal, and Blueprint Prodigy, shares his thoughts on dev logs. Here's the clip if you want to rewatch it!

Although Gavin makes excellent points, I wanted to start live streaming my development work, but for different reasons.

Let me break down the idea for you. I think there are many benefits of doing devlogs, especially live devlogs, although not for the popular reason.

When thinking about devlogs and/or live streaming, people think about building an audience (which is always a good thing, as long as it happens) or creating a YouTube channel (which is a mediocre idea because most live streams are unjoyable to watch, and if devlogs are watchable it's because they are short and edited). These are great benefits, but I would treat them as bonuses because they're like winning the lottery - you might build an audience or not.

But I see better measurable reasons to start livestreaming!

Focus work

One reason to do that is to expose your time working on a game. You'll become discoverable, and when anyone can join your stream, you won't slack off (I know I would slack off, so that's a possible lifehack) 😉

I don't know if such a thing would help. It's wishful thinking, but it would be one reason to stream my work.

How much time did your game take?

At some point, you might have to answer this question: How many hours of actual work did it take? Of course, it's not mandatory to answer this. When you make your game only during those sessions, telling how many hours you spend making your game will be very easy.

Of course, this is not really an announcement. The only free time I have for that is in the evenings. I'd have to not talk at all to avoid waking anyone up. Which might result in the creepiest live stream/dev log.

So... why would you stream your game development time?