Streaming Map Making

[Bakadayo]

Hi everyone,

I found that certain folks in the game art world are making money by doing live streams of their art and art creation process. Some popular game artists on Polycount and other websites put up a wallet or kickstarter or some meathod of getting a few dollars for admission. Then inviting all of the donators to watch a live stream of their process creating a new asset, texture, or whatever.

Would anyone be interested in doing something similar to this? I was reading about these other events and was thinking, "Man, I would totally drop $5 to see some of these guys stream their work on new maps!" So I am here just to see if anyone has done before, or is possibly thinking of doing it in the future. There are so many talented guys here, it would be very cool to see a collaborative teaching enviroment that could provide. AND it puts some money in their pocket to make it worth while for them.

What does everyone think?

Edited November 8, 2012 by Bakadayo

[2d-chris]

I dunno i'd feel kinda ripoff charging for something like this. if it's a short session anyway. To do anything decent for level design would be insanely complex and time consuming I think, art can be very focused and generalised so would defo work better IMO.

I meant to do such things but without charging, just right now I've just started crunch mode ^^

[FMPONE]

It takes too long to do good work in level design. It's hard to put an hour total on it. And what you're doing is random. Loading up the game, noticing you misaligned a texture, noticing you run up against a wall, loading the editor and tweaking it, rinse and repeat. It's mind numbing work to get to a final finished product, only an insane person would watch someone else do such work when they could possibly be doing such work themselves, and therefore making it less boring.

Some techniques I've seen to make it more tenable would be to fast-forward the process. This could indeed be fascinating, and probably hugely cool, but time consuming as well and incredibly useless for somebody who is trying to learn. It would be for entertainment value. If I had the initiative to do some such thing, I might. In fact it sounds kind of cool.

Edited November 9, 2012 by FMPONE

[Kedhrin]

yeah i've done 10 hour, 1080p streams on making levels in Nexuiz quite a few times actually... i wouldn't pay to watch it. But, i also wouldn't make people pay to watch me... its cool to get tips i guess.

i can see students or people with high levels of curiosty paying, or they're just high five happy

[2d-chris]

I suppose you could give actual advise into level design, not the art part, which I don;t do that much of today anyway. I could quite easily in a few hours go over how to design say, a crysis 3 or 2 single player mission and start to block some initial ideas out, pacings, where to leave off before art comes into the mix etc.

[PhilipK]

Wouldn't pay for that. This stuff should be free IMO

[madgernader]

Yea, I watched some of Kedhrin's live stream, and while it was really cool watching someone who knew what they where doing working on stuff, it was something I jumped in and out of and not something I'd want to pay to watch.

[Bakadayo]

I suppose you could give actual advise into level design, not the art part, which I don;t do that much of today anyway. I could quite easily in a few hours go over how to design say, a crysis 3 or 2 single player mission and start to block some initial ideas out, pacings, where to leave off before art comes into the mix etc.

This was more of what I was thinking. As the stream is going the person usually gives a lot of commentary on what/how they are doing certain things. It often becomes Train of Thought, as they just say what they are thinking in their head. "This looks too big" "Maybe this hallways should look..." "This texture is being a jerk". Also, if it is a stream on something like twitch.tv it can be interactive where viewers can ask questions, or the streamer can get feedback/suggestions.

Just an idea. And if someone wants to do it for free, that's even better.

[Erratic]

I'm gonna be the communist and ask why everyone feels they need to be paid for every little thing they can possibly do with their time.

brb gonna Kickstart my garden.

Edited November 9, 2012 by Erratic

[Sentura]

not gonna make an argument against payment, but honestly a few bucks for some hours of work doesn't seem worth it. why not just make some weapon in tf2 or dota2 and earn a butthaul of dullyrs that way?

[cincinnati]

I'm gonna be the communist and ask why everyone feels they need to be paid for every little thing they can possibly do with their time.

brb gonna Kickstart my garden.

will there be gourds? if so, i'm all in.

[FMPONE]

This sort of illustrates the problem:

On the one hand, it's watchable... but there are issues. You don't know exactly what you're watching unless you're already sort of initiated and know the editor. Sure, you're seeing something come together, but it's not educational because it's happening too fast, and it's not really entertaining to see some random shit happening on an extended basis.

Watching it more slowly it's the same problem, just taking 9x as long to happen. So no, I don't think level design is as compelling to watch ultimately as someone making a gun model and having it slam together relatively quickly.

[mjens]

Making stuff without a plan or making not interesting things like placing lights is boring. I was making few timelapses and each had a plan what to do, what asset to use and I was trying not to move the camera and don't look for assets/stuff to long. Here you go:

[Psy]

Watching people map is boring as fuck, tbh.

[AlexM]

yeah I made a video about me updating a map for FAS. I bored myself to death. Constant slight tweaks to terrain and texture coordinates are not fun to watch.

Blocking would be a lot more fun to watch.