You can increase your knowledge by using various resources such as articles, webinars, online courses, but that’s not all. devtodev’s analyst Konstantin Kochurov will give you his list of best game design YouTube channels. We hope they will be useful for you, whether you work in gamedev or just like games.
1. Game Maker's Toolkit
Game Maker's Toolkit is one of the most popular game design channels on YouTube. Mark Brown, the host, is a former game journalist who contributed to publications on websites like Edge, Eurogamer, Wired, Pocket Gamer and The Escapist. In each episode, Mark analyzes various video games and reveals how they are organized in terms of their game design. There you can come across deconstructions of Cuphead, God of War, Dark Souls and some other games. These videos are interesting for both gamers willing to learn more about their favorite games, and game designers interested in challenging game mechanics, creating new impressions and telling fascinating stories.
2. GDC
GDC, or Game Developers Conference, is one of the most important game industry events. GDC YouTube channel is an excellent resource for finding not only video reports and speeches from GDC conference, but also episodes on developing games. Game designers, artists, programmers and other gamedev professionals meet there and exchange ideas. This channel has a great number of videos on topics ranging from game mechanics analysis to programming. If you are interested in gamedev, diving into these in-depth talks and inspirational lectures from experts is definitely worth your time.
3. Snoman Gaming
Snowman Gaming is another notable YouTube channel on game design. It features videos about various gameplay analysis with a focus on indie studios and Nintendo games. Channel’s author tells us exactly what makes a game so popular and exciting. There’s also a video series about bad game design. Besides, you may find there channel playlists about games speedrun and video series You Need to Play that are worth seeing if you want to discover something new.
4. New Frame Plus
It feels like when we talk about the game design, we neglect to mention the animation. If you just want to enjoy a game animation analysis or upgrade your artist’s skills, we can recommend you New Frame Plus channel created by Daniel Floyd, a professional animator and one of those who created Extra Credits and Video Game Animation Study channels. New Frame Plus authors take a specific game as an example and analyse it, discuss good and bad decisions in animation and look into its history.
5. The Cherno
This truly incredible channel belongs to a video producer and software engineer Yan Chernikov from Australia. He makes at least a couple of videos a week covering the whole range of topics from game engines to 3D game programming. He worked at EA Melbourne for almost five years and then started to pursue his own projects.
6. Noclip
Noclip is for those who are interested in documentaries about video games and in stories about people who create and play them. Here you can watch series of documentary videos, where the author interviews people participated in the creation of The Witcher, Half-Life, Fallout, Telltale and some other projects. This channel was launched in 2016 by game journalist Danny O'Dwyer. It’s a crowdfunding based project without any advertising.
7. AI and Games
Artificial intelligence is perhaps the most discussed topic in a wide variety of circles, including video games. However, figuring out how AI works is not a trivial task at all. If you want to know how they implement AI in games, we can recommend the “AI and Games” channel. There are two main video formats about AI. First of all, there are videos where the author deconstructs the AI mechanics using popular games, such as: Hitman, Half-Life, Mario, Horizon Zero Dawn, Halo 3, etc. The second video type tells us about the game AI in terms of game design.
8. Extra Credits
Extra Credits might be the channel that will help you learn the basics of game development at all it’s stages. Every week they release a video showing how aspiring developers, game designers and people interested in game development make games better. The channel is focused on three main aspects: game development, game design, and popular games analysis. Despite the fact that all the videos are animation styled and may seem childish at first, they are filled with high-quality content. We should say that the channel also features videos not related to gamedev. That’s why we recommend you to focus on the following playlists:
- Game Design for Producers & Business Folks
- Game Design Highlights
- Game Careers
- Games You Might Not Have Tried
9. Design Doc
If you have not yet heard about the Design Doc channel, we highly recommend checking it out. The author of this channel makes game deconstructions not only from game mechanics and game design points of view, he also highlights narrower aspects of games, such as UI / UX inventory design, boss fighting, optimal game pace, dialogs. The videos are friendly organized into a number of playlists, and you will definitely find something interesting here. Here are some of them: Game Mechanics, Indie Games, A Dive Into Game Design, Good Design, Bad Design.
10. devtodev education center
At the end of this list we would like to add the Youtube channel of devtodev analytics platform. There you can find recorded webinars about game design, game analytics and game industry as a whole. Their speakers touch on various questions - from in-game offers and battle pass to tips on developing a gaming community and important metrics for a successful game life. This channel will be interesting mainly to those already working in the industry. However, newbies will also find something useful for them.
We hope you find our recommendations useful!
