Babette N.
So, you’re on your game development journey! That’s awesome!
A very common process in creating games is a development deck, or a dev deck, which helps you and your team track progress and stay organized. A lot of people mistake their function, so we’re going to go over what a dev deck actually does!
A dev deck is far more important internally than for your viewers. It’s a way to track progress throughout the process of your game’s creation. Some people create a dev deck that updates by each goal met, others by time (week, day, month updates). Personally, I like to do weekly updates since it tracks exactly what I’ve gotten done in a specified amount of time, and highlights any new features or addons.
It’s also motivation for the unmotivated. A lot of folks may struggle to keep working on a project unless there’s tangible small-scope goals and visible progress met, and that’s where a dev deck shines. You can easily go back to see progress, and set small goals with yourself in accordance to a planned schedule or kanban/scrum board system.
At the end of the day, a dev deck should be telling other members of the team what is being implemented and done throughout the specified time period. Because of this, it doesn’t have to look nice! Just think of it as a blog post that you make to talk about the system.
Dev decks should have a TON of WIP and concept phase work! They are literally updating from 0, so you’re not expected to be showing off high gear work.
A lot of dev decks are shared publicly to keep fans in the loop, but this can also just purely be separated into update VLOGS, posts, or videos to keep things cleaner. Dev Decks are a little more nitty gritty and not necessarily in layman’s terms, and may include issues and bugs that you don’t want to share to your player base. However, it is still important to track these issues (especially before QA testing and external demos) so you need to put these somewhere — and that’s where a dev deck comes in!
Truly, a dev deck is what you make of it, and it should be made in a way most useful to you and your team. A lot of folks also just generally like reviewing dev decks to preview an upcoming game, or as junior designers themselves, and by providing a resource we continue to allow the open-source of game development processes to grow.
Jobs may also enjoy looking at your processes and want to preview exactly how you break things down and lead a team, and if that’s the case it’s always nice to hold onto a well-organized example of that work!
A dev deck is only as strong as the team wielding it, so good luck crafting!
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