How This Game Dev Sold 200,000 Copies of His Game

okay well let's go ahead and get started david thanks for being willing to to talk to me like i i've heard a lot of people in my audience um are really interested in your story because you have sort of a really uh you have a very entrepreneurial sense of how to make games and um i think a lot of game developers don't really have that unfortunately and i've learned a ton from you you've like advised me you you advised me on pinstripe's nintendo switch launch which went really well and then you also advised me on neversong's steam launch and so that's sort of how i know you is david is really good at entrepreneurship and creating games um and not only creating them but selling them so that's how i know you and again your name your full name is david whaley if people don't know you um do you want to introduce do you want to introduce yourself and sort of give everybody an idea of what you've accomplished and achieve yeah no i that's super nice you to say those things i i before i introduce myself i think giving context to how i know you i think that's important too because yeah sure if if someone if someone like put a gun to my head and said you have to pick your favorite game developer i'd probably i'd probably pick you and i think and i think it started it started because unity flew out of film crew to your home right in south carolina yeah and they did that sweet like inspiring documentary oh man dude they made me look so cool because i can tell you cool i can tell you i wasn't that cool well like i look back and i kind of cringe on that whole experience because i was so i was so i felt like i was so small because i'm in south carolina and you and i are both on the east coast right so i'm in utah now but i oh okay okay all my formative years was in the middle of nowhere in virginia and like my games are about that too like it's just about growing up in the country and like yeah this americana flavor of just being in the middle of nowhere where there's there's lots of like the trees and everything and yep and when i saw that that mini documentary i was like man this guy is a lot like me and he's living in the middle of nowhere he's not in san francisco like the like a lot of other typical game developers and it really like it connected with me and so i thought that was the coolest thing and i loved like you were doing everything yourself that was that was the other big thing and i think that's yeah one of the differences between me and you and you do it in a in this amazing way where everything's handmade and it's truly like all your heart is put into it and that's it blows my mind it really is like it's an amazing well it's not it's not it's not well thank you but it's definitely not a healthy thing so like uh that's that's the difference between like uh you know we were talking about san francisco and and like you know the east coast or the rural americana feel is for me like i i didn't nobody that i knew of in south carolina and you probably felt this way when you were in utah right when you made the first tree right correct yep so like i'm sure that there was a feeling of like you kind of have to like pick yourself up what's the phrase pick yourself up by your bootstraps and do it completely alone and that's how it felt at the time instead of and so when all these this film crew came over from uh los angeles to film and they they were hired by unity for me it felt like i was so i felt like a fraud i felt like i was faking it you know um because you just you grow up and for me you grew up in south carolina you don't feel like you're cool enough uh you don't have enough resources you don't know people in the industry and what i'm learning and i think your channel does a really good job and by the way guys if you want to check out david's channel um click the link in the description it's called gamedev unlocked he's got some really cool resources um but my your channel and my channel basically focus on you know starting a game from scratch and doing it alone and it's totally possible and so you taught me and i don't want to get too much in the weeds here but what you taught me was after the nightmare of creating pinstripe completely alone everything from scratch i learned that that is cool and it's it shows that it's possible but it's not really a the best way to go about it and so i've started applying a ton of business principles that you've taught me of how to make games in an efficient way without spending you know 300 000 of your salary for over the period of five years to make a game when you can just spend maybe two thousand dollars on assets from the asset store and we can talk about all of that in this pocket like really what i want to talk about this podcast is just how all of the entrepreneurial stuff that you've figured out um and how you've created like created so a huge successful um studio and sold a ton of copies just by doing it in a smart way alone but you did make a game called first tree right you want to tell the audience a little bit about that and also if you want to talk about your youtube channel and just really quick so people know yeah quick rundown i i consider myself a hobbyist for a long time and i found unity through work and i thought it was the coolest thing ever because like growing up in virginia i was just i was making i was like the only kid i knew that was making mods for all these existing old 3d games like far cry and dark forces 2 and stuff and i loved it like i loved it it was like legos on crack like you just could do anything you wanted and exactly what it feels like and then anyway like i wanted to film later in the school and i love film still too but then i found unity i was like man this is a free commercial use engine this is mind-blowing and then i top myself and then i made a really short 30-minute game called home is where one starts and i spent 18 months and i was crappy at code so i used playmaker i used a lot of assets to save me time because i just had a baby i was working full time 40 hours a week and but i wanted to finish something i was like what's a wise shortcut i can do so i can still make a game and put my personality in my story i wanna i was i'm a storyteller like i wanted to tell a story yeah but also like i couldn't i didn't have the funds to hire anybody i couldn't i just it was very do it yourself duct tape together a game and see how it does right and that game released in 2015 it it did okay like nothing huge like it made don't have a bonus yeah you don't have you don't have to disclose the exact number if you don't want to i'm just curious if you're willing to just because a lot of people want to know how much the their first games made yeah is that something you willing to discuss oh sure um like the first tree because there's like consoles involved i don't like talking about that but one is where one started titan but yeah right one starts on steam i did like it probably took a year and a half to make fifteen thousand dollars and i did a bundle deal with indiegogo as well so that was like 2 000 of those about 15k yeah and that's pretty depressing dude like here's the thing though i wasn't depressed and here's why like i was still like i had a safe full-time job that i was still doing it was just bonus money on top of my salary and i was actually like if it was full-time yes i would have been terrified i would have been like sweating bullets but like for me i was like oh sweet like this game i i was going to release it for free by the way i was like i'll just release it for free on itch that would be cool that'll be dude and then someone said i think my wife convinced me like just pay it was steem green light back then it's like pay the hundred dollars and that's right yeah it's like a hundred bucks i don't want to spend a hundred bucks but i did it and then it got voted in and even 2015 is so much different than 2020 when you talk about like very different it's insanely different so it's still like even back then it didn't do great but but to me i was so excited because i was like i could build a i could build a really nice computer with this and i and i saved the rest i saved the rest of the money and i was burnt out and then that's when i said you know i have another game idea i want to i have this idea about a fox and this second story that runs parallel to it about a son reconnecting with his estranged father in alaska and i was like this is a cool story i love telling stories and i had a plan i was like i'm going to use assets again the same time because i was still working full time and we had another baby so yeah see that's the situation i'm in now is we're about to have our second kid and i'm like i literally laid on the fl i laid on the floor of my office today with my dog i was talking to my dog his name is jeb i said jeb i don't want to do this anymore i'm just i'm so exhausted like entrepreneur it's mainly entrepreneurship it's not the it's not necessarily and you probably know this feeling it's not necessarily making games that wears you out while you're a dad it's that that entrepreneur feeling of like i've got to make sure that i don't screw this up um and even when it's going good for you like it's it's it's going good for both of us um i think we could both say that like things are going good financially and finally things have stabilized for my studio and i don't i don't i don't technically have to worry but it's still there that feeling of okay things are good now don't don't screw up what you've already done that's good like keep keep it going and and keep doing it well and so i always have in my head this especially when i have two kids and like you like i think you have two kids right is it did you have a third yet third's coming in october wow oh dude that's crazy really then i think we're done three kids is a lot i just do what my wife says like if she wants five kids i have to do it no my third or my second kid is uh arriving in october as well uh little scientists so that is so congrats to you that's really cool man i did i didn't i guess maybe we talked about this on discord i don't know but that's pretty cool but i guess my whole point is like um when you have people dependent on you it changes your whole focus with game development um and i just i just want to encourage my audience like if you don't have kids and you don't have people dependent on you then have some fun like really really go for it and make a great game and don't worry too much about the finances i don't know if you agree with me but once you have kids you got to start being more practical or once you get married or whatever you gotta start being practical about how you create games you can't spend you know five years full time on a game obviously when you're married and you have kids you gotta i guess you gotta provide you know yeah and that was something important too is like i had a choice i was like okay i was saying i was like man i wish i wish i could be like thomas brush and make everything like because i i like composing too i've done music before for years and i love and i'm i was a technical artist at my job like i know how to model i know how to do this stuff and i love it but like after eight hours at a job and then taking care of kids and stuff i was like i still want to tell my story i still want to release and finish my game and and i don't want to neglect my family and that's something entrepreneurs of all kind they have that problem right of of course 80 hour weeks and they like they're not seeing their kids at all and i i really don't want to do that obviously but me neither but that's why i like okay i need i need to compromise my vision this is what i tell some of my viewers too i'm like it's okay to compromise your vision if you're getting like 90 of the way there like if you're almost there and it's not totally perfect then finish it anyway because finishing and releasing a game is by far the best way to learn that's how you teach yourself game dev is to finish a project because it it takes discipline like making the first tree and then being a dad and working full-time it was it was not fun after a while that's what that's why i totally agree with you like if you're just single and you're going to school or something that is like the season to just dive in yeah and work your butt off it's yeah it's it was hard i i even like right now i'm thinking back on i'm like how did i do that i don't know i feel the same way man like i was and i was a bad husband at the time we didn't have kids when i was making pinstripe like you can ask my wife i was so involved and so obsessed with getting everything perfect with that game and i look back on it like you said you've gotta compromise uh and i want i want your audience and i want my audience to know like it's it's the it's similar to the feeling of like when you're in a fight with a family member or you're in a fight with a friend or your your spouse or something it's really heated and you're seeing red right and you just want you want to win that argument that same feeling is is what it is for me when i want to get something right with a game i'm not i'm not necessarily rational i'm not necessarily rational in decision making and so i look back on all the decision decisions i made with pinstripe and i'm like why did i spend so much time on those things like little tiny things to make it my way and and i look back on it i'm like people don't care about those tiny little things now obviously it's a balance like if you had decided to not make the fox in in first tree look so beautiful then and just it i i think the fox is really what sold that game um and by the way if my audience doesn't know that game is really popular on switch steam did you release on xbox and ps4 yeah it's on not on mobile but everywhere else yeah yeah so you're in terms of like success like you've you've nailed it and you've you've done a really good job with with promoting that game and selling it but if you hadn't focused on if you hadn't focused on i think if you hadn't focused on making that that fox as beautiful as it was then i don't think that game would have sold as well as it did um so there's certain things to not compromise on and certain things you compromise on and understanding where those things should be compromised i think is what what separates the great developers from the failed ones yeah i i really like that thought it's and i think a way to figure out what you can and can't skip is to release games and that's my first game yeah it was a financial failure like i was happy i did it but it i wasn't quitting my job i was like okay i'll just keep doing my thing that's cool but what it taught me it taught me things and i was able to use that data it was it was real data to say okay here's what i did wrong i didn't market it i didn't have a lead character to rally around like a fox it was a first person game um that made it that made a huge difference um it wasn't as colorful and i think those things that helps grab attention and esteem thumbnail it was it was lots of little things and i guess maybe you know i think every game developer has to be an entrepreneur of some kind but i am like i'm very analytical and i'm saying like okay that didn't work here's why didn't that why did that not work and it was satisfying to be like i made a list of like okay here's the stuff i want to fix for the first tree like i want to market it regularly i want the i want to spend a lot of time on the fox because that's the whole that's the focal point of the whole game um but other things i was like okay i can't can't do that i can't compose all the music i'm gonna license the music i can't do the sound effects and go out in my backyard and like make jumping sound effects with rocks or whatever i have to license those it was it was a lot of stuff and it's still and you might you might not like this thomas but um i thought i was terrified of using all the assets because i just knew everyone would know right yeah everyone would everyone know the feeling everyone would know i was like oh i'm an i'm an asset flipper even though i tried hard to modif i tried really hard to modify them but it was still the same geometry same meshes yeah but well the reason why i don't do asset like i've i've pretty much decided i'm probably not gonna do it be an asset flip kind of guy um the reason why i don't is is because the things that i'm really gifted at are are illustrate like i don't know where your giftings are or where your talents are it's probably storytelling um and setting the mood those things and you also said you're really interested in music yeah like i'm not really sure where all of your where you believe all of your skill sets are but for me it's definitely in the art side of things and so i feel like it would be a mistake for me to to pull away from where i'm gifted and what really separates my style out from others but the thing is is that i'm totally fine using assets that are like code assets right and back end assets so what i tell my audience is find out where your gifting is where you're talented and lean heavily into that making that custom but everything else that you feel like you're not your strong suits it's just like a regular business right you need to outsource it you need to hire people well in in our case we can't really probably can't afford to hire a couple people for our studios so go quote unquote hire people by just buying their assets on the asset store and they they actually will they will help you out like if you email these developers you just spent 20 on an asset and i learned this from you by the way because you we had a meeting in i think it was a year ago and you told me all about your your mentality with assets i started downloading certain assets that i use now and i'll email these developers and they will treat me like i'm their boss almost they'll help me out and write custom stuff for that asset and help me out which is insane you're using third person controller right by opsiiv yeah i was i was using that um there was a couple things he did so much with the fox shoes because i was like one of the first people to put a quadruped an animal as the controller and he was like really yeah like and he he added stuff later to make it more compatible but i found out a lot of stuff and so he helped me a ton and i i like to think maybe i gave him some information so he can make the asset better and yeah but no you're you're you're totally right and that's that's the cool part about this internet age is there's all these resources and you're helping these other developers and they make a living by selling in bulk right they sell by quantity with these licensing these assets and it's cool like you can go to all these like freesound.org like a lot of them just ask to be credited and you have you have whole sound studios and musicians and everything at your fingertips right on right from the internet it's this it's this new age of just you know you can be a one-man mega studio in a way by getting by like crowdsourcing all these people's help and paying paying them what they request which is usually like i don't know 50 bucks for a unity asset or 50 bucks for licensing a song on audio jungle or pond5 or whatever so it's it's exciting and yeah and i was going to say about you know i was always terrified about the environment packs like everyone would notice and the nobody did the fact is you know i read maybe 10 000 comments over the course of a few years like from reddit and emails and twitter i yeah not not all of them but only like a handful like five to ten people said oh that's that that's that nature pack from unity right no one really cared and and pinstripe i i loved pinstripe i played it with my girl like thank you i'd get evelyn on my on my lap and we go play i'll be like hey what game do you want oh really yeah i'd be like we could play um east shade or we could play this game and she always said pinstripe i want to play pinstripe and i as an artist i noticed all your touches and i was amazed by it and that's why you're one of my favorite devs but and i want you to like yeah to know like it's hard because the lay person like the gamer who just wants to have a good time and feel some feels you know go on a field trip or whatever because i make i make emotional games i think you have you make games with a lot of heart too they're story driven right right and i think that's what that's well it depends like it really depends on on where you where your target market is like right now i think my i've made two i've made two like feels games like that have heavy stories very emotional poignant endings and i think what i'm gonna do and you've kind of gone down this path as well is i want to try and make some money in the game industry this year and like make this year like maybe that's not what you're doing but like in terms of making you know your your courses but for me this year i want to focus on the business side of things the entrepreneurship side of things of how do i maybe maybe do a little bit of experimentation so for me i'm going to try and hit like four games or three games in the next year and a half just pop them out like it's awesome fun little fun little short games um because i want to see i want to see what happens right i mean i think it's important for game developers to this is something i was actually wanted to talk to you about is i'm i'm of the opinion that game developers indie game developers tend to take themselves way too seriously um like for me i used to be like i'm gonna be a prophet of the game industry like i'm gonna make or like a poet like i'm gonna be the one who makes games that really hit people in the fields and change people's lives and what i've learned is i think i'm taking myself a little bit too seriously i think i just need to make games and people are going to enjoy them and maybe i'll look back one day and say that you know it was better for me to focus on super highly emotional games that change the world as opposed to just fun games you know short fun games maybe i'll look back and say that but right now i don't know the answer i don't know what my role is or my calling is in the game industry and i think that uh like you said it's important to just release games and not take yourself so seriously like for you you could have been really cocky and said i'm not gonna use any assets from the asset store but instead you were like no i just need to get this done and i think that that is what i think that is the minority of game developers the way that they think most game developers are way too principled they they care way too much about doing things from scratch and it leads them to never release stuff and never finish stuff i think i think those principles can be if you're too stubborn with your principles it can be dangerous if it never leads to you finishing and releasing a game right and yeah i i used you know i used to beat myself up a lot i think every creative they have the imposter syndrome yeah and and of course i did because you know i was just trying i was like you know throwing this stuff together because i wanted to tell my story but it wasn't as it wasn't high art enough it wasn't it wasn't principled enough and me and my wife she's an artist and you know she's a traditional artist she does collage with a paper and it's fine art that's awesome and she's she's she's awesome she's done you know she's in galleries and stuff and we have these conversations all the time like what's the balance between art and commercialization and it's it's hard i i don't i don't know if i know all the answers but i know like i love telling my story i love i don't want to rip people off but i want to use these resources available from the asset store and i want to make them original somehow and i i don't and i would rather a game that's imperfect be released than not released at all and then no one would know that story even if it was even if it's not as high art or as principled principled as other games if you know what i mean yeah and that was like kind of the decisions i had to make those are the i call them like compromising your vision a little bit and i'm glad i did because if i didn't my life would have never changed from releasing my imperfect honest you know beautiful game the first tree yeah so i'm so glad i did that that's why i you know if if you're if you're listening to this and you're 20 years old don't take this advice but i i tend to tell a lot of people like go start a family because when you have a family suddenly your games are not your babies anymore um they're babies are your babies exactly that's true your babies are your babies and and maybe maybe if you don't want to get married or don't want to have a family or whatever then instead maybe start volunteering somewhere or helping out in a community like being with people as opposed to just working on your game because in reality it's not even your game at that point it's just you focusing on you it's like all self-consumed what what am i trying to tell the world what's my game supposed to be about how much money is my game going to make and i mean i've been in that mentality even now sometimes of being super like selfish of how i make games and then all of a sudden i'll go hang out with my daughter or my wife or i like yesterday i went and saw an ultrasound of of my baby boy uh silas like all of a sudden so that that feeling of my games are all about me is stripped away and it's like no no no my games don't belong to me they belong to the people who play them they belong to my family in the sense that it provides for them um they're really not mine and i think that that's a really good way to approach game development because you don't get so panicky about every little decision it's it's much more relaxed and i learned a ton of that from you and our call last year because your approach to games is so what's the word it's um your objective about your games it's at least it seems that way very you're very business-minded um maybe i'm wrong but that's how i feel my perception no no i and yeah i don't i guess i don't think of it like that yeah i guess but you know what it is and yeah i never even considered myself like an official entrepreneur you know put in my linkedin profile entrepreneur like hustle like hashtag hustling or whatever yeah but yeah but it is like that's what it became after i quit my day job because the first tree did well enough because i'm super risk-averse i was like i'm not going to cry unless we have money in the bank and we have enough that we can live off for a few years and i was like okay i'm going to try this but yeah the the the business stuff i i don't know i i do think having a like having dependence and providing for your family that changes everything yeah but but also at the at the end of the day you just you want to make you want to make this game that you love but i don't know i try to explain to people like there's three like a three imagine three circles in a venn diagram and you're trying to find the perfect idea of a game that you're passionate about in one of the circles yep a game that you're actually able to make with your resources and then a game in the other third circle the game that will actually mark it well or that has like a hook that people actually want to pay money for and that's like the magic that's the magic ingredients if you can find a game idea that fits all three of those circles put it in the middle then you are you have something special and you need to just chase it and and yeah i guess like discipline comes into entrepreneurship or you just work even when you don't want to but yeah like the idea of like the fin hitting the finish line that's really important to me and i think that's also why that's that's also why like i wanted i didn't want to like give up and i also had a plan and that's why i can't like i wanted to do things fast because if i don't if i don't finish this then all the work was for nothing and i knew finishing i knew finishing was rewarding because i released a really small game beforehand and that's why i tell tell people over and over and over again like finish a game so you know you can finish a game then you can go do that in your next game then you learn from that and you do your third game fourth game and i yeah if you do that i really don't see how you can't find critical and financial success it will take a while but it will definitely happen yeah well tell me a little bit about i've been curious what that feeling was like when the first tree just went gangbusters um it did really really well on its steam launch um and i i remember when we were talking when i first met you you still were working your day job when it went really well right yes yeah so what was that process like because you said you're risk-averse um for me i would have just quit my job immediately like on day one on launch day seeing the numbers come in you know what was that like yeah that process oh man i took a day off it took a day of pto to launch my game just one day yeah just one day um yeah so yeah steam released late 2017 and here's the thing like i was hoping i was like crossing my fingers that it would go popular it would be popular and by popular i meant it would hit the front page of steam yeah all of my efforts for like a year of marketing was for one day and that was launch day i wanted it to hit the front page of the in the new and trending tab yeah and so it happened and i had a game plan i had like i call it my launch blitz checklist right and you actually uh helped me out with my launch with never song yeah i i actually used your course uh which again for my audience it's in the description i used david's course uh to teach me sort of the things like you said the the launch blitz checklist and i used that for never song and i mean like clockwork man i was on the front page uh for five days that was exciting five days five days dude it was the same as me five days on the front page of steam with the first tree and of course like you are like an extremely hard worker like that was you that was your youtube channel like all your fans i don't know i don't know i was talking i was talking to another developer uh on the phone yesterday um talking to joe russ and he made a game called jenny leclew and he was like man that's a great game he was like he's like man it seems i actually talked about you to him on the phone i said he needs to get in contact with you because there's a lot to learn for all of us um he's awesome i was talking he's he's really a just a fascinating and brilliant game developer um but he said on the phone he was like man it seems like you just work all the time like uh you're doing youtube and you're making games and i i just admitted to them and i'll admit it to you now i work seven hours a day lately that's good right i wake up i it is good i mean i think i wake up at 8 30 lately i get off at five o'clock i'll i'll work out in the middle of my day so i take take an hour and a half off and cool it's like what i'm learning is uh i i need to start rewarding myself a little bit uh i don't have to be in the grind all the time like my wife was like let's tell my wife i was like i feel like i'm not working enough and she was like well why did you work so hard at the beginning and i was like i guess to achieve this and she was like yeah so enjoy it so that's good that's just nice yeah that's a little side note i i don't work that much anymore and it's uh because i've learned to work smarter you know no that's good and a lot of that was a lot of that was with your advice and also the course you you did oh good just really helpful i'm glad it helped and honestly after so you know i was working full time and then i do about 10 hours a week on my game so it was 50 hour weeks for for you know a few years like not yeah you know extra but it wasn't impossible now just 10 hours just 10 hours on the first street 10 hours a week like maybe 10 to 14 because i'd work on a saturday yeah that's good and so that's doable and that's why it sucks when people ask me they're like oh i'm going to do it your way i want to make a game but i'm working 50 60 hour weeks at my day i'm like i don't think you can do it like i really yeah i don't think that's possible like i think i've quit get another day job that's 40 hours a week yeah dude i've heard that that's i've heard that's the norm and maybe people in the comments can let us know how much they're working um but i had a job where my boss was like you shouldn't be working more than 40 hours and so we would clock out at all of us there was 25 employees uh we would clock out at five o'clock every day um and that's that's what allowed me to go home and have the energy to make pinstripes absolutely so that is an important i like putting that disclaimer out there because yeah i was working full-time but i wasn't doing crunch like i'm not like at rockstar games or naughty dog and they're like killing themselves all the time you can't you can't make it in the game on that kind of schedule on in your free time well it's just not i don't think it's it's possible to have that kind of creative energy no you're right it's just not so but now like i'm full time now which is still crazy to me and i do about seven hours a day um yeah you're pre when it's your own business you're so much more productive than if you're doing meetings all day at a at an office it's very productive seven hours i would say i agree i really do agree and i've learned that when you're working in an eight-hour day at a at a desk job you're gonna bs your way through the day so you're just gonna i used to jump on social media and just sort of chill a little bit and take my time because i knew the deadline was that for a project was like two weeks so i would make it happen in two weeks when i really probably could have gone got it done in a week you know right i think everyone does that a little bit there's just there's over there's overhead to when working with that many people in a company yeah there's red tape but when you quit your job and and jumped into running your own studio i'm sure you felt like this desire to be like okay i can't screw this up i gotta work hard and get things done right yeah it's scary um what gives me a little bit of relaxation is that we have savings and that if you know if disaster happened i would be okay for a couple years and then i'd be like okay i'm getting another job we ran out of money yep it is it's stressful it's the entrepreneur part of being an indie game developer and that's why and i think this is cool because you're doing the same thing you're you have your fingers and a lot of pies because not one source of income can really support a mortgage and children children are expensive houses are yes they are so yeah i like what you're doing and this kind of goes back to game gamedev unlocked is i i want to diversify just income streams because honestly that's what a lot of content creators do nowadays like even youtubers they'll just say like oh yeah ads barely anything we got merch patreon we got all sorts of other little things and so game dev unlocked it came from this idea of me like i love to help people i i answer emails every it's hard because my youtube channel my youtube channel has been exploding and now i'm getting to a breaking point yeah um yeah but i love helping people and that's why i spoke at gdc i i couldn't wait to like explain everything i learned about the first treat because i wanted to help other developers because i kept getting emails and they were like how did you do it this is so inspiring i'm like well it's a lot of luck but luck isn't the only thing there's a lot of hard work involved in like analysis and data so yeah gamedov unlocked was like okay i can't i can answer emails all day for the rest of my life or i can make this learning resource and make it really good like put in you know tons of money and time into this online school that answers it's everything i've learned like every little thing i've learned i put in the game dev unlocked and there is like there's the paid school which again that will help sustain my family but i also want to do like youtube videos like what you're doing like i love that you're sharing that with the world it's just it's exciting to talk to these excited new con newcomers with game development oh yeah oh yeah and that's that's what i've learned is is uh people are game development is apparently like a rock star job title um like uh it's it's it is weird because it's like no i'm just like a sweaty nerd sitting in front of a computer all day like someone commented on one of my videos said i looked like a philly cheesesteak i don't know what that mean i don't know what that means but i can i can i can gather that it's just game developers and like myself we just sit in front of a computer all day and and just get greasy while we make games like it's the complete i saw your the hobo comment they're like you look like a trained hobo people think i look like a pothead hobo philly cheesesteak but my whole point in saying that is that it it it isn't a rock star job in the slightest um it's really cool when you launch a game and people love it um but i i i learned that you know i talked i talked to some some guy came over to my house to spray for spiders and bugs and he just talked to me he was a young kid and just wanted to talk about game development he thought it was so cool and that's the best handling yeah people people love it and what i've learned is it's really cool sounds cool and it is cool like you and i have a really cool job like it's it's awesome but like you said you really have to if you want to be successful you've got to have your finger in a lot of different pies and you've got to learn to be okay with taking your time on things that aren't necessarily glamorous to keep to keep your studio going um like all of us can't be as successful as you even though you're still putting your fingers in a lot of pies you don't necessarily have to but for me um for a while i had to do that like i had to do youtube and patreon and so what are the what's the list for me it's patreon youtube ads youtube sponsorships um kickstarter campaigns every like two or three years uh revenue from all different platforms and then i would take on freelance every once in a while so there's just a ton of different places that the revenue is dripping in from and it adds up and i don't know like do you have do you have any advice for my audience about various places that they can be picking revenue from while they're while they're launching their game let's say they've launched their game and it's not making enough money do you have any ideas for them about picking revenue from various places or should they just keep their job oh man it's a big question because it's it's different it's different for everybody um here's what worked for me even i'll go back back kind of going back to the original question when the first tree launched on steam it did well i still didn't quit my job because i was so scared and it was i made like low six figures but after taxes and then i was like wow what can we use this money for let's put a down payment on a house that was the big thing yeah almost a ton of the money went to that and then it was gone good still it still had a mortgage and stuff it wasn't that much money oh really so you took the money from is so you're saying you took the money from first tree and put it into a house yeah just distance just a down payment of a house yeah and that was really cool huge investment yeah it was scary because i never spent that much money on something but it felt like the right thing to do with their family and then correct and then i did the same thing with pinstripe by the way we were able to we were able to put like 20 into a house as a down payment and but it also set us into put us into this really risky position of like okay can i still support the family though full-time game dev you know but anyway yeah and so i still kept my job because i was really enjoying it too i was at the void vr a vr like interactive thing in utah cool that's awesome um but i it's funny like how even like a dream launch scenario the money can run out that fast and so i still didn't i still didn't quit my job but then it wasn't until console launch which that again that was a scary thing and here's here's another reason thomas why you're my favorite game developer you you introduced me to matthew ty from do games he is one of the best people i've met he makes your life so much easier he's a genius and he's so polite and nice he is and he is he helped me like he took on the first tree and i told him i was like because i do things the wrong way it's the worst unity project you've ever seen in your life and he's like i told him the same thing man and i told him i was like and i'm like and i'm crap at c sharp so it's a lot of play maker stuff he's like okay i think we could work around that yeah um and he helped he made it happen and i self-published on consoles that was that was the hardest that's amazing i've done and that's the hardest thing i've done in my career and it really it pushed me to the breaking point because i was still working full-time we had two babies but i was able to do it and we were launched on console and then i was like okay now i can quit my job so it i i think i want to tell your viewers going back to your question it's it's a it's a it's each rung on the ladder is small like it's step by step it's not going to seem like a lot but then eventually you'll get to the top of this ladder which is like financial freedom or ability to quit your job but i me personally like the game of unlocked way i tell people is don't quit your job like keep like it's so risky out there it is hard for new game developers it's harder than it was for me in 2017 a lot has changed and yeah that's why i say like okay if you can do you can make a game wisely like time efficiently and you take wise shortcuts and then you can still work your full-time job or even do part-time do 20 hours a week then you could like still work on your game and not get burnt out and not neglect your family right so that's like i think personally i would not quit a job even if you know even if you made like a few thousand from your game you're like oh it might go up like after launch it's probably not going to go up like you just need to make more games that's one of my favorite quotes is from a book about pixar creativity inc have you read that uh no but i've i've watched like youtube summaries of it and it's what helped it's what helped uh pinstripe's story come to fruition no way oh that's awesome yeah i believe so i i could be wrong but i watched some some really really helpful disney videos there were summaries of how they do storytelling right oh that's cool i love that it's a great book i think you'd like it and there's a part where there's the brain team at pixar animation studios and they talk about the one of the most important things you can do as a creative is to fail early and fail fast yeah and that's why like i i love pinstripe but i start to get like anxiety i get an anxiety attack that you like you've worked on it for five years it seriously like freaks me out like i couldn't have done that and i would have given up and you kept with it which is why your achievement is monumental but it was not you were not failing fast or failing early it was it was just scary yeah that you did that and i don't know what do you think about that i think uh i think that you're right and i think that i i wouldn't i used to do videos of like like go for it solo developers you could achieve your dreams quit your job you've got this and that was like immediately after i like you know did a kickstarter campaign with pinch pinstripe and and some money came in and i signed with a publisher so it really helped out and i felt good i felt like i had done it you know but it looking back in hindsight i'm like i wouldn't wish five years of solo development on anybody um that it's it's really hard and you know i'd i'd have my dad was really supportive but and and and there was a lot of people around me who were like you've got this thomas but after four years of working on it i remember my dad was like what are you doing are you good he called me on the phone i remember i was in my car at our rental home and i was like 23 or something i don't even remember and i was just on my phone and he said you gotta finish this thomas like oh man you're making me nervous and my brother said the same thing i have three older brothers one of my brothers was like are you gonna finish the game and i realized at that point that all right this is enough like it's time it's time to wrap this up and so i scrambled to get it done and that is i think the point of um again separating out successful game developers from failed ones which is you got to just start finishing stuff and you've got to get it done there's there's really not a lot of value i don't think in making a really great game over the course of what five to ten years of your life like that's a huge gamble not everyone's gonna be what was it owlboy or stardew valley one of those games took forever and they got really they both they made a great game yeah they made a great game but it got lucky i mean lucky in the sense that one from a launch perspective and just getting the visibility at the right time but they were also lucky that their vision was good and they had good instincts most game developers they don't have the luck of good instincts and good vision and so you've really got to form that over a long period of time of releasing content and reading like you said reading comments um thousands of comments that turn your stomach upside down yeah uh i hate it i try not to i try not to anymore but you just can't help you just can't help it when like a reddit post going viral you just gotta look a little bit oh dude you said the word reddit just now and literally my stomach like i got a pain in my stomach i'm gonna be sick i need to go yeah well it's reddit okay so what i've learned and maybe we could talk about this from a marketing perspective uh because you're a marketing genius um reddit is reddit is the place to catch fire but it's also terrifying because it can like your it can catch fire and then start like collapsing into dust your reddit post into ash with like just comments of of people that could be rude or mean or or you know put ill will on you or make you feel like a fraud it's the same is true with twitter twitter is a mess um yes but uh i got i got death threats for making a fox game and i just don't think that's right wait wait what where oh like when you have every every like you know bored internet troll and you're on the front page you're an easy target and so people are just like i'm gonna kill you for making this stupid indie game or something like i don't know i don't remember it's probably not like probably shouldn't laugh about it but i don't know what else to do like it's just that's what happens when everyone's targeting you i laugh because that's like the only thing i can do because when i've been from with your help by the way with your advice i've been front page three times on reddit three times and three times and i think two of them was with your advice of like make sure your gift looks this way and make sure you've got a cool title and and uh you know it drove sales like we had a really good switch launch with uh pinstripe but the one of the common comments i get on reddit and twitter is like why do we need all these stupid hipster games like why do we need all these trendy artsy fartsy games uh why do they all look the same you know and i get it like it's a good comment i mean it makes sense if you're not into those kinds of games uh but people can be hurtful you know and people can be hurtful on youtube as well yeah um and you know what's crazy is after three i've been making games for 10 years but it has it's been like four years of actually being exposed to a community critiquing me right um even after four years i still like last night somebody said something on twitter or something and it really bugged me it like kind of hurt me and i like reached out to them like hey what's going on like can we talk about this um things still bother me and so my skin is not thick enough yet and i need to keep putting out content so hopefully one day it won't bother me so much and a lot of indie developers out there are scared of one single comment that crushes their ego you know i i would say that was me and i'm still like i'm just a super i'm just really sensitive emotionally me too i have like i've gotten better because i i'd rather feel uncomfortable or get a hateful comment if that means that people who do love my game find my game and that's what you got to remind yourself like you know i could focus on the negative reviews on steam and they probably have a lot they have a lot of good points like my game's not perfect but then i think about all the people like i get the most amazing messages from people all over the world and they're like you like you saved me from like a really dangerous depression i thought i was gonna kill myself like your game helped bring that you helped bring me out of that thank you you'll always have my debt i will take 500 million hateful messages if it means that if it means that like a handful of people are like you like saved me you like yeah i don't know like i got another email last week this mother with a a little girl with severe autism like she just she has a really hard time connecting with people she doesn't talk much and she just said like she just plays my game all day and now like she's happier and she's talking more and that she's reaching out to people and giving hugs more and it's it just blew my mind and that's amazing man and it's the best it's the best feeling in the world and i know like you know people it's a free country they can hate my game they can hate how i make my games they can hate that it's artsy but i'm making the game i wanted to make like a hundred percent and that's and it's just and it's amazing i feel i'm very blessed i'm very fortunate that people liked it too i got i got lucky i put a lot of work in but i got lucky as well and i'm i'm really fortunate and i think you would say you're you're fortunate and lucky too yeah no i am i'm i'm really lucky i'm mainly lucky because you know a lot of people think of themselves and this might be a little bit too philosophical for some people in the audience maybe it's not i don't know but you know i like to think that my my my fortitude got me through game development and i pushed through and i worked hard you did that is true it is true it's it's one of the dominoes that fell but there were a ton of other dominoes that fell i'm really blessed and lucky that i was born into a family where my dad told me that i could do this stuff like he was very my dad was really encouraging i remember when i released coma my first game which was a flash game in 2010 or 2009 i released that game and it made like ten thousand dollars like whoa where did that come from and we went out to lunch we went out to lunch and he was like you should try this like do this as a job and i don't know if i would have done that if he hadn't told me to give it a shot you know and believed in me and i i hope that people like you and me can be that sort of figure to people who don't have that you know and and we can say you can actually do this you can make games um and you know mentor people i know i've mentored a few people and my goal is to just say you can do this you don't like you say you don't have to quit your job you don't have to go nuts you don't have to be this crazy entrepreneur you don't have to be crazy talented all you got to do is have some some discipline some follow through um make a small patient yeah make a small game make another one make another one and like you said you're climbing the ladder yeah and uh hopefully hopefully you know you you get to the top of that ladder and then you find another one or i don't know how long the ladder is what the la i guess the ladder depends on what you want to achieve uh yeah but uh yeah i just i just got my first you know it's you're right i was just thinking about the new ladder and you like you're very you know you have a high quality youtube channel established fan base but i just got partnered which was a really big deal to me because i've always wanted to do youtube it's kind of been like another dream of mine and i just like blowing up for you man oh it's crazy but i got like a ten i got ten dollars in ad revenue so i went to taco bell and got a five dollar box and i'm like yes youtube ad revenue paid for my taco bell that was a good feeling it's like the little the little the little wins that keep you want to make you keep going yeah and stuff and those those little wins no those little i was just gonna say those little wins are little drips of income that slowly create a pond you know and maybe an ocean yeah exactly it is drop by drop and you know you weren't successful the first game i can't think of one like mega hit indie developer that was the first game was yeah was all that and made you know you know i can't either what about jonathan blow he made a ton of games before that oh really yeah like before braid brad i do feel like braid was like his major release where he hired an artist and stuff but he has tons of games before that right okay yeah i i had released uh and this is something you know our the people listening the audience listening to this need to realize is you're right most game developers are going to spend you know several years maybe three years just sort of goofing off making weird games releasing them getting bad reviews i i know i made i mean coma was my first game in in quotes there but before that i had other games that i had released on newgrounds.com um that was junk you know i released horrible i'm gonna do a video about it on my channel soon i want to show all my first mods that i released yeah and they're the worst in fact it was a it's community from 2000 like 2001. it's like 20 years old and everything's still there including the user comments yeah they're always like the meanest thing saying like this isn't like this is this isn't even a level it should be removed it was something like i've worked my butt off that's it's part of the process you fail a ton and that's okay and you just keep making stuff and you know you need your love for it you know you want to do the things you love but if you love making games then just keep doing it it will work out yeah and i remember i remember it when i was a at my day job i had to pull i had to print out quotes and stick them all over my cubicle of like quotes about failure and why failure is good because i felt like a failure all the time um when i was because i had you know until you release your first game or your second game you don't really know who you are in terms of a game developer you don't know what you're capable of i keep forgetting that like i have a view of myself right now in my head um and it's based on years of experience of discovering my talents as a game developer um from feedback right but when you don't have that feedback you don't know who you are as a game developer if you're even capable of making something good and so it's the it's those failures that are going to inform you of what you're good at what you're not good at and where to get some help where to download some assets and we're not you know absolutely it's it's cool it's it's real-time data and i don't know i've worked for companies where they pay like six figures to get useful data like that but for an indiv indie developer you can get data just by releasing a simple game looking at engagement looking at your analytics i i so when the first tree launched on steam i i had an inkling it would do well i didn't know so i was still like sick to my stomach but i knew because i had i'd posted gifts regularly for like over a year and i kept posting i was like okay that actually went viral that that twitter gif went viral oh i got on the reddit front page i think that's a good sign it was data really it said okay there's interest and that's why i was like i need to finish this because now i have this information that tells me hey people might want to buy it and that's like and i kept it you know it's just maybe that's where like the entrepreneur like the business minded stuff comes because you create you want to grab you marketing isn't like this evil thing it's not this dirty word it's just finding people that will love your product and you just need to tell them hey my product exists thank you for telling me i love it i'm so glad you told me to me that's that's marketing you need to find that audience right and what's uh what are what are some things that you did for first tree uh that what are some some marketing things that you did um did you do a lot of prep like did you did you spend a year just putting out gifts how long did you how long was the marketing process i guess what did you do man yeah it's it's a big question um really simply i started with a visuals first development style whereas like and because i'm more of an artist anyway i was making the visuals first so i had stuff to show first yeah um and then i'd fine-tune like gameplay mechanics and level design later but yeah so i had stuff as soon as possible i set up a steam store page as soon as possible and a website because that's that's how you funnel that's right that's how you funnel in people who are interested you you have a place for them to go and they give you give them your email or a wish list on steam so you need those places and then i i marketed concurrently during development so i'd make work on my game for about seven hours a week and then i'd make gifts for two to three hours a week and i usually posted yeah i usually post it in a variety of places i tried them all really like tumblr twitter imager reddit nine gag even which actually had a few viral gifs on nine gag i don't even i i remember you gave me the list i was like what's nine gag it's like is it like 4chan no not not 4chan but it's that yeah i'm not going to do that but uh yeah 4chan was it's just a meme site where you can i got you off um cool and i learned like you know what what helped because i had analytics right i could look at my email list or my wish list and be like okay okay imager got me a lot of wishlist maybe i'll keep focusing on that then yeah and you just i maybe the best way to put it is and this applies to any creative job really like it includes youtube it includes game development i think the ability to honestly self-evaluate and to pivot is one of the greatest indicators of success man dude it seems so simple but yeah most people don't they don't look at themselves from an objective point of view mm-hmm you're right it's hard and i guess maybe it comes i don't know maybe it comes a little easier for me i don't know i i just know that it's cutthroat out there you need to do everything in your power to stand out because the floodgates are open like game development's been democratized crazy and it's cool i love that i love that yeah but it means it's hard you have to you have to show off your you know show off your feathers like get get attention like you have to shout almost say hey look at my game and it's it's like some advice to me with with never song with marketing you said uh don't beg your audience to wishlist the game thomas but kinda do you know you gotta really put yourself out there and it can feel embarrassing but you've got to sell it you've got to sell it because otherwise you won't you wear a lot of hat you wear a lot of hats like you're a solo entrepreneur solo game developer and i know actually you worked with serenity forage they're awesome i'll probably keep doing that i love partnering with studios now as long as i can be the art director i love partnering it's it's just it it goes so much faster see that's something i'm i'm actually looking into that's something i'll probably be asking you in the future because for the first time i wanted i want to do something like that yeah it's uh i actually talked to a pretty big studio um people would know the name and i just can't say who it is they said that they're considering making that part of their business plan uh just partnering up with developers um and so behaving as it's like it's like instead of going and hiring developers you just say hey let's split the revenue make a game twice as fast you know oh cool that's interesting anyway that's exciting yeah yeah it's you wear a lot of hats as a game developer and one of those hats you're a salesman and i hate sales personally but i love making games and i want people to play them so i'll i'll wear that hat reluctantly but i'll i'll wear it so people play my game and also so i can feed my children that's something yeah exactly well i've learned you know this is gonna be so bad but i don't care um i the older i get the more fun it is to make money um like when i was younger i didn't really think about money it didn't really cross my mind and the older i get it's like yeah let's let's do some marketing today and and see if we could sell some games it's just a little bit funner i don't know why i think it's probably just having a family or or whatever but it's not it shouldn't be a bad thing to want to make some money because it means you can make you can make games because you make money you know oh yeah like um my home is where one starts money i put it towards the first tree and i was able to pay for it i don't think i would have been comfortable paying you know i spent around 10 000 on the first tree i don't think i would have been comfortable if i was just using my personal money for that you know money yeah money buys you experiences it buys you freedom and it buys you you know the ability to be a storyteller so it's not a bad right right you know it's funny when you say it was ten thousand dollars to make first tree technically it wasn't though be right because you spent five hours a week and what's your billable rate you know that's true that's 10 something in 10 hours a week i i've had this discussion before and i i i kind of go here hear me out on this if you love i could be wrong and people in the comments can say if i'm being wrong yeah i i do like i do freelance and stuff but like do you expect to get paid when you're like loving like you're playing mario maker two on switch and you're just making these levels and you're just loving it and you're like okay that'll be thirty dollars an hour for my time making money make your levels i don't know like i i loved making the games it was my question is right but for me i've had the question come to me which is like especially when you're full-time game dev um because then your time is really valuable uh because it's like it's during hours that you could be spending making money somewhere else yeah so eight to five o'clock what's your billable rate so for me i've started to build like think of a billable rate for me um and the reason why is because when you partner with other development studios they're gonna ask you what your budget is if you say your budget is 10 grand they're gonna be like what so you have to be like so you have to be like okay well actually i make what fifty thousand dollars a year or whatever minimum that's that's and if i spend a year and a half it's actually going to be you know whatever i can't even do the math there seventy five eighty thousand dollars or whatever um that's interesting 75 000 uh for the budget that's the budget because i am making money or i am i would be making money somewhere else if i wasn't making you're working on a project that will generate revenue correct that and that makes sense and i learned that from will dubai i think he gets how you say his name dubai d-u-b-e he's uh in canada and he made it he he's the ceo of thunder lotus games and he made um he made i think you and i talked about him at one point he made this game called uh yo jotin oh yeah the yeah the viking game with the traditional animation yeah it looks correct and right and he he he he uh was advising me once this was like two or three years ago and he said okay so uh what's your billable rate and i was like what i don't do that i'm not charging myself and he's like yeah you are i mean you're you're paying your mortgage you you're paying you're living a life and but at the same time you're working to pay for that so what is your billable rate so i had to figure out what's my time worth and that really helped me realize like when i was spending time you know being a perfectionist about something i was like wait if i had a client who i was making a game for would i be doing this would i be that's good obsessing it's interesting right so it's helped me a lot be more i think the word is objective with my who i am and and who i am as a game developer and what my project is about because if time is money you got to be a lot more careful with your decision making you know yeah that you know and here's this reminds me of something that i love you know celebrating our similarities me and thomas brush i think that's cool we have so much ins yeah we have so much you know that's similar but i think the biggest difference between us is you're very experienced and you're very like publisher driven and i've and i tell people exactly the opposite i said i say people you do not need a publisher right i'd love to hear your thoughts on like you you're like a big you're a big cheerleader for publishers and for the smaller i am publishers and i'm i feel like i'm the opposite where i'm like publishers they're a middleman you can you can self-publish on consoles by yourself you don't need them well it depends right so uh and then i'd love i would love to hear your opinion the other side of it um so for me publishers provide two things and these are not traditional things traditionally a publisher provides you with marketing distribution blah blah blah that's not really what a publisher in my opinion should be offering you as a game developer because you don't really need not really you don't really need someone to help you with distribution in quotes like that's that's basically a glittering generality that means nothing now because steam is handling your distribution switch is handling your distribution if you were selling books you would need help but you're not selling books you're selling digital copies little little keys of your game right so what a publisher for me what a publisher where a publisher provides value is they give you money so that you can quit your job so you don't have to be miserable that's the first part so 50 000 to like 200 grand bang in your account and you can get started they're going to take 30 of your revenue or 50 or whatever but at least you can quit your job and make your game twice as fast full-time right yeah full-time with a so basically you're working for a publisher now right yeah and then what they're going to do is they're going to recoup that so not only are they going to take 40 they're also going to recoup it up so when i launched pinstripe i had to recoup a certain amount of money that i can't disclose and it was so painful because it was like four months of not making any of that money but i realized i was like well at least at least i was able to quit my job and finish this thing because i wouldn't have finished it otherwise you know so that's the first step or the first reason why i love publishers is just money so basically they're just investors really they're not really publishing they're just investing so the big number one thing is like the freedom to focus full-time on your game yep yep and you get rid of that misery uh and so like now the question is well thomas why do you want to work with publishers again when you said you were in a really good position financially well i'm only going to work with a publisher if they can provide developers so in this in a sense i'm not really partnering with publishers anymore i'm partnering with developers that work at a publisher so that's why i love serenityforge serenityforge handles publishing and they handle development if you're willing to negotiate a reasonable revenue share i've come to discover that sometimes almost half of the revenue is reasonable because they double they they cut your development time down you don't have to worry about all of these different variables about making a game because they're handling a huge boulder of um of development that you otherwise couldn't do you know so that's that's my only two reasons that makes sense i yeah like for yeah it's just interesting there's so many ways to go around it because i i i like i don't know i like staying independent i i did i tell you i had some big i had big publishers approach me for the first tree one was so big i don't even know if i can say it but they do aaa games and i was so freaked out by it because i was like oh this could be life changing but then i started thinking about it and how i liked the hobbyist aspect of it and how like i didn't have to answer to anybody i think what's cool about your deal with trinity forge is you're you're the creative director like you you have full creative control is that right i've never yeah so i i've uh okay i've signed three publisher agreements in the past um one of them i got completely screwed over and i learned my lesson right and my and i had an attorney for all three and so um the first attorney was like for the first publishing agreement was like thomas be careful of all of these things and i ignored him and just signed anyway that was a terrible agreement this the other two that i signed the other two that i signed my attorney was like you've gotta tell them that you're in complete control of everything and i said okay and so i i told the i told the publisher i told armor games and serenity forge and they're this is fine they wouldn't mind me telling you i i told them that i was in complete control and they were like we trust you i don't know why that's awesome that's like a dream yeah no it's amazing and so it's not it wasn't even it wasn't just control of the art or the game it was control over the schedule everything so like i didn't even have a schedule in the contract a lot of publishers will be like and you know this is fair if i was a publisher i would demand this i would say look if i'm gonna give you a hundred grand you need to get the game done in a year like i can't i can't just sit here and wait for four years to get my money back so i get that from a publisher perspective but the publishers i've worked with um serenity forge and armor games i connected really well with the ceos like we we're like friends like i text armor games ceo all the time i t uh serenity forge's ceo his name is uh awesome he's so nice he's so great and he's he's probably uh we're all kind of the same age i think um so we we sort of are in a similar uh like a age group and and uh we just at least me and z i mean we connect really well drive we just jive and so there wasn't a need for him to go well i want you to have the game done in you know a year and i i want this what the budget is and and i want i want to have you know a say in the creative direction he didn't say any of that he just said make a great game thomas and and here's a developer to help you out and to me you know that that is a really great deal and i i when i signed the deal with serenity forge i was like wait is this a bad idea because i gave up a good chunk of revenue and over the years i learned this was the best thing that could have happened because we made a really good game with the help of eric who was the developer uh the coder eric programmed an amazing game and i was able to focus all my attention on what i do well right and and we now we saw you know we we partnered with apple we got a front page on steam for five days we're about to launch on switch and that's amazing and a few other platforms so it's just indeed success that's an indie success by far yeah and so i want to know your perspective on things though like do you feel like if so if a publisher would have said i want you to have full creative control would you have considered signing with them oh man that's that's interesting question i'm just i'm thinking about how it worked out for you and how it's been great here's something i do want to say this is to everybody listening if you're if it's your very first game and you're just getting out of you know you're just finally entering this whole new world of game development and you get a bunch of publishers that you've never heard of saying hey let me help you with marketing and publishing yeah i would say 99.9 that is a not a deal you want to make yes and i would say you have an awesome partnership with serenity forge and it does it sounds awesome i might be tainted by when i was working on homes where one starts countless publishers saying oh you need us like you're not going to succeed without us and they just all they do is siphon it's all they do is they they've slapped their name on it on the steam page and they siphon 40 of your funds for no reason but what you did is you made games first and you made a name for yourself you had unity fly out make a film about you and then and you finished games that's the way to get a publisher i would agree with that yeah what i would say is when you're first starting off making your very first small games i don't think there's any reason to get a publisher at the beginning yeah that's a really really good point and a really good perspective you know i always say uh me and my wife talk about this what i talk about work online she's she probably gets annoyed like my wife uh-huh yeah okay um but uh when we talk i always say i'm just so lucky to have a really dedicated youtube audience because if i ever get screwed over by a publisher they're not gonna be happy my my my backers people who got my back and so i always say if you're if you're gonna you know if you're going to partner up with a company that you don't know be sure you've got some ammunition yeah because they do i promise you they do they've got money they've got a team of people lawyers they've got lawyers they've got everybody and this is not true for serenity forge or armored games at all but i can speak to having experience with another publisher where behind closed doors like i'm in south carolina they're off in california or somewhere or where were they they were somewhere in the in the midwest and i knew i knew that they were talking about what they were going to do to screw me over and they didn't see it that way they just saw it as business as usual but what they were doing to screw over an 18 year old well i didn't know any of that and so i wasn't talking to them and so they had all this ammunition against me this power and so it's really important for any developers to have power behind them and it doesn't necessarily have to be cash it definitely can be a lawyer that you paid four thousand dollars to to help you out but it can also be in the form of a social media following which is so huge and you're doing that right now and you're killing it you're doing a really good job and i just i want i want all of my uh all of the people watching this or listening to this podcast to to know that you can't put a price tag on an army that supports you you know cool no i i'm seeing the vision and just you know i you know this about me i suck at programming so the idea of having somebody trust and that's the hard part too you're like who can you who can you really trust but having someone if you found that person and a team that like supports you and got your back and did serenity forge help with the apple thing by the way i can't talk about that okay um but they probably helped they helped in a lot of ways i'm sure they helped they that you know here's what i'll say uh conversations that i don't want to have i don't have to have that's enough uh yeah and i'm i'm learning that it's almost like what you would think of as a writer like i i always wanted to be like basically what a writer in my head was walking around a pajama smoking a pipe and you just go and you you sit on your typewriter and you you write you write for a couple hours then you go outside and sit on a hammock and then you know you get up out of bed at 3 a.m have an idea write it down and other than the pipe which that would be awesome other than the pipe that that's my life now is i get to walk around in my pajamas come up with fun ideas i don't have to talk to anybody um i do youtube and stuff and i mean come on though i think you've got it too right things are working well for you it's just yeah it's i'm such an introvert and yeah but also you get a little lonely i don't it's this weird it's the paradox of game development where you you just i don't know it's the it's the paradox of being an introverted entrepreneur of a business person and that's what it is but no you're you're right that's it's what i i never thought it could happen i really didn't yeah that's why i kept my job i was like oh well you know there's no way this is real that my steam launch did well so i'm just gonna keep my job because there's you know there's why how could this ever be a full-time thing but it does happen and i do sometimes i get bummed that there's so much negativity and i know it's people trying to protect other people because it is it's crowded there's a lot of indie games out there there really is but at the same time i i have this impression that it's easier to make a successful indie game than it is to be a successful rock band or write a successful book on amazon or to make a successful indie film that actually makes enough money like all the arts are crowded they are and i think it's easier with indie games because there's a lot to learn you have to not only are you doing art but you're you have to do like code and and like sound effect mixing and i don't there's just and i love that i love all the different hats and it is hard and i know like there's there's a lot of negativity about oh don't indie games yeah right you're stupid for pursuing that but it's possible there are there are success cases and it happens to even really small developers you just got to put in the time and put in the passion and then put in the discipline i totally agree with you i don't know if you've learned anything about having kids but like i've learned that my wife taught me this is we would have a problem where like liv our daughter wasn't sleeping for the first six months which is like normal right hardest thing in the universe and you and i will be experiencing that in october for sure yeah right there with you brother but she would my wife was like well it doesn't have to be this way let's let's just research and let's learn and let's take a course and this is a great segue into you like you have this course gamedev unlocked link in the description and it's it's a little bit of money for potentially a career changing um uh path for my my audience and the same is true with having kids or any life decision is stop trying to figure things out completely alone stop pretending that you have all the answers and go take a course go learn from other people or in my case my favorite thing to do is just get to know people in the industry because they're going to tell you the secrets they're going to tell you hey there's money over here or hey you should go talk to this guy because he can he can connect you with these people and then those people connect you with those people like i would have never met pewdiepie had i not first reached out to tom fulp oh really i wanted to i didn't know that yeah i reached out to tom fult the creator of newgrounds and i said can you be my mentor for a couple weeks and just tell me about games and this is i was 22 and i had i was working a desk job and i remember talking to him on the phone on a hot summer day in my car with the car off sweating bullets talking to tom fulp i can't imagine the feeling after that yeah it was it was cool i mean this guy is really successful he created newgrounds.com and then he messaged me two years later three years later and said hey i don't know if you care but felix pewdiepie wants to do voice acting would you be willing to let him do voice acting for your game and now you know pewdiepie and i have a very mild like small email relationship and that was because i reached out to people you know i reached out to people and you're right and my life changed because i reached out to you and this is why i try to answer all my emails even when there's a million emails but um i was a new scared indie game developer hobbyist and i i emailed you i actually looked it up recently because i was like what what did i say again it was in 2015 or 2016. and i asked you about the south by southwest um game festival and i was like hey man i'm a big fan thomas you're awesome i don't remember this at all this is the first this is the email there's the first email i sent you cause you keep you keep saying you were a fan but i'm like i remember being a fan of david so i think it was reversed yeah i emailed you asking questions about south by southwest because they invited me and i was like should i do this that's a lot of money i don't have any money but it'd be cool to show it and i asked you i was like you did you showed pinstripe at south by southwest did you like it and you you were so and you were just you were nice you were encouraging you gave helpful information and oh and then yeah so i appreciate that thank you thomas no thank you and that connects thanks for being nice and then later you were you know you'd ask me questions and i loved helping you but then you introduced me to matt tai we talked about who helped me with consoles and so i i'm not over exaggerating this like you this connection with you like you know and it's not like i hate the term networking i don't like that like i just i want to talk to you i don't either i want to talk to people i admire and because i want to get to know them because they're really talented and they're nice well it's funny yeah go ahead no go ahead and you just showed me matt tai and you introduced me to him and it it without exaggeration it changed my life so i i owe a lot to you thomas and i appreciate it and you're right like that's it's those connections of like good people that can change your life right it totally is and again it i think networking is a bad word because i was on i was actually on discord last night on my phone and me and my wife were like in bed watching tv and she looked at me and she said i thought you said you were gonna be working on your phone you know after five o'clock because i have this problem where i keep working um when i'm on my phone she's like i wish she was like i wish she would do that and i she said who are you talking to i think i was messaging you and i scrolled through i should i went no i'm not working and i scrolled through my phone and showed her all of my discord friends and they are my work we're also working together all of my friends but we're also friends and so it's all very friendly relationships with people who could make you a lot of money as a game developer at the same time right so it's it's really about just being friends with people in the industry now obviously you know you want to be friends with people who don't have any connections but you want to try and form friendships with people who do have connections because they're gonna they're gonna make your life a lot easier and when i say quote unquote make you a lot of money i'm just i'm being hyperbolic but sure is how you say that hyperbolic but like it's it it could very well mean that you hit a pocket of income that you needed desperately because you knew the right person to to steer you to that pocket of income you know you're totally right like i i just love talking to people who have a passion for this doesn't matter where they are on their journey and you know and i'm and you you talked to me even though you were like who's this guy i don't know but i'll i'll help him out and that's like i try i answer every email i can maybe a few slipped through the cracks but it's just it's exciting it's exciting helping people but it's your time is finite your time is finite i understand well i was curious i wanted to ask you a question so i've had people on youtube go if thomas was a successful game developer he wouldn't be teaching it oh i hate that's don't like that argument at all i i'm like i don't want to show you my bank account but i've i can sh i could i could prove to you that i've i'm doing quite well with revenue from games but i also enjoy teaching it you know it's a and it's a straw man because i don't need to do this like it'd be nice to diversify you know just a little bit of side income but i'm doing this because i love teaching and i love sharing with people what i learned because i want to help people or else i want to answer emails every morning for hours for i'm not getting not getting paid for that because i let me let me know let me know next year if you're still doing that i stopped doing that no it's our time i wish i had clones of me to do all my work i know i know but yeah but yeah you you got to do it you got to keep your sanity but i try my best at least to at least answer a sincere question that i get yeah well listen man we i think uh let's wrap up here um if you're cool with that yeah i could turn great hours i can talk for hours do you want to do you want to um sort of make a big pitch for or uh gamedev unlocked because i've used i just wanna i'll say this first um again to my audience link is in the description david was nice enough to give me portions of his course or the launch of never song and i literally just took that course and followed the steps and obviously there's luck involved and there's your game has to be good but i took those steps especially when it comes to marketing never song and i put them into practice and lo and behold i got exactly what david told me i was going to get which is five five days front page on steam um which is the whole was the whole goal of the steps he gave me so i just recommend to my audience who um and by the way this isn't sponsored this is actually a negative sponsorship because i want to make my own course i want to make my own course one day i was gonna i want david to steal my customers i was gonna ask if i would if you had an online course and it was like you know the videos and the lessons i would i'd buy that in a heartbeat i really would i think a lot of yeah i think a lot of your followers would probably a lot of people have asked for it um but for now for now i think it's important that my audience consider the idea that how much is the course by the way i think you have a price i'm gonna have a coupon code and i can give it to you in the description okay i'm still you know what it's just me like i'm just figuring stuff out i may change the price but it is i'll probably around 300 to 400 dollars okay so and i've i've by the way i've checked out this course and it's it's ridiculously high value it's not like some small udemy course um it's really really good it here's the thing and this is i'm talking to my audience here it's it's one of those things where is it worth the risk of spending a couple hundred bucks to to learn the things that most game developers don't learn and here's the thing here's the second thing a lot of these youtube channels and a lot of them are amazing uh they're great content i actually use them all the time for tutorials and stuff but a lot of these youtube channels don't have never released a game and so for you you've specifically released a game not only released a game but made plenty of income off of it to go full time and you've you've basically put all those secrets essentially a mentorship program into this course is that correct yeah it's man yeah i where do i even start uh this i've put so much time and money into it and i like i don't like some people are like oh why would i you know and you could just google stuff for free and learn that's how i did it but yeah i put a lot of time and money to make this the best it could and so it is like it's mostly there's a private discord server and all of us are together and we're like sharing each other's games and i do feedback fridays with the students games and it's fun it's it's it's fun and i don't it isn't about the money like that's why i'm doing youtube as well i'm gonna be putting tons of free stuff on there this is something to like take you to the next level i guess yeah and yeah i've you get free steam keys and you have and we do case studies i've built out this system like i don't know it's i'm really proud of it and yeah but i don't want people like i don't want people to feel like oh the fomo like oh i gotta i gotta join the program and pay that money and stuff no and it's it's there's tons of i'm i'm i love helping everybody and i'm going to be doing stuff on youtube for free so you know are you going to be the school is awesome like if you guys want to check it out that'd mean the world to me if you don't then if you just subscribe to gamedove unlocked on youtube that would be amazing i would so appreciate that because i love making these videos and people people watching them it's exciting i love it it is a lot of fun youtube and you know it's i was actually thinking yesterday i saw uh the some of your videos are doing really well and i was pissed algorithm the algorithm picked it up because those videos did because you're david you always you always hit the algorithm with things it just was weird those videos like no one was watching them for six months and then yeah dude that's that could be another discussion on its own oh algorithms yeah let's talk about algorithms and and how different platforms uh but to my audience yeah like i want to say that i was pissed that you were doing so well i was like man how did he how did he pull this off because it took it took a while for me maybe it didn't i maybe my uh my memory isn't serving me correctly but i i was and i'm being hyper bullet or like i'm joking about being pissed but it was kind of like it was like david will probably have a million subscribers and i'll have to i'll have 200 000. who knows your content is very your content is very precise i think it's a good word it's it's uh i sometimes i speak in in generalities and abstractions because i'm lazy but your your content is like bang bang bang bang bang like these are all the things you need to do specifics especially your online course very specific and that is the kind of content especially from someone who's done well on steam and console that is the kind of content that youtube needs to help people learn how to make games um so i think your channel and is definitely going to be separated out um from the rest and because again you've made a game and you've done it well that's very rare you have two man and you know i love your youtube channel and i'm just you know i'm trying stuff out i i'm excited to do youtube just because i've always wanted to but man you've you also like you have i just i love the content you make and i i was reminded of something was like this is one of the best parts of indie game development is like we're community and we just support each other so much uh this is like my life this is my last story uh i went to gdc and i was speaking so i was like sick to my stomach i was pretty nervous but then but then unity unity tweeted from their official account like hey we're bringing some influencers some game dev influencers and you were on the list yeah and i was so i was so excited i was like oh maybe i can meet you know i was with matt as well matt tai yeah oh maybe we could meet thomas it'd be so great to meet him in person and so i go to the park outside the moscone convention center and then brac bracky brackies was there and those guys and my wife asks like hey where's thomas brush and um and then he's like oh yeah he couldn't make it he just pulled out last minute i was like oh i'm really bummed about that but here's the thing i i checked your youtube channel it was right then during gdc and that's when the pewdiepie video went live yeah and i was like i said i was in the hotel room i was like oh my gosh thomas brush he's getting like 100 000 subscribers in a day i was so excited for you and i just was maybe i was a little pissed too i was pissed i was pissed slash really happy for you i've had the sense i don't know how much you can sense through discord but like a lot of my friends who do youtube i'm like i wonder if there's like a man you got so lucky with it was pewdiepie which i was it was really hard work but man i was obviously getting a reply from pewdiepie you made a game yeah in two weeks right yeah but it means unbelievable that's amazing yeah well i'm sorry i wasn't there i i really wanted to go i did go to san francisco that i did go to gdc it's just i didn't go to that event oh cool i didn't know that so i was there me and my wife were there and and unity flew us out there and they they gave us an amazing hotel nice oh man that's that's like the one little rocks that that's like rock star right there but the rest is greasy philly cheesesteak sitting alone in your office making games but it's cool like we're all friends and you know i like to get i like to think of the people who watch my videos like the ones that are nice not not the mean ones on reddit give me death threats yeah once we're just we can be kind of part of a family and yeah that's what i want to do with the school that's what i want to do with youtube and i think you've done a great job of that so i want to try to recreate it well thank you thank you and i i think you're doing a great job you'll you're your channel is going to explode and um all of my subscribers go over subscribe to david's channel um it is really honestly again this is not sponsored by you you're not going to give me anything in return i'm telling my audience this is really good and so thank you that's so nice i appreciate it so yeah no problem man um you want to wrap it up yeah this is great um thanks thomas for having me here uh you're one of my game dev heroes and if there's anything same thing if there's anything i can do to help you just let me know good luck with the family it sounds like life's going really well i'm so excited that never song launched well yeah thanks for your help with that man you were really helpful thanks for chatting this was good yeah all right see ya

Channel: Thomas Brush

Views: 122,687

Keywords: thomas, brush, indie game marketing, front page of steam, the first tree gdc, front page of reddit indie games, going viral on imgur, going viral, make a living from indie game development, marketing with $0 budget, Daily Deal on Steam, r/gaming indie game marketing, going viral on twitter for indie games, going viral on imgur for indie games, marketing, Making gifs for indie games, full-time indie developer, marketing first Unity game

Id: igRBWT6TDy4

Length: 99min 9sec (5949 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/JordyLakiereArt]

Good quality podcast and a decent listen but be warned: not much concrete information (in fact it feels intentionally omitted, focusing a lot on their achievements and not how they got there) and feels like a plug for a course that will tell you the 'secrets' alluded to in the rest of the podcast on how to get front page of steam. (near literal quote)

Even the things briefly touched on were super obvious things, like posting on all sites, making good gifs and good titles... Also talks about making a game with a few grand, but then offers a super niche online course for hundreds of dollars. Big red flags/alarm bells for me there. There are no such secrets, be cautious! I'll give you that one free of charge :)

I'm 4 years deep into a project (first game) and though they touched on stuff that was relevant and this course should be perfectly aimed for me, I cant help but feel repelled by the way they are trying to sell it here. Nonetheless good content, I just wanted to voice some concern before someone drops their last few hundred bucks of a project into something like this.

[u/CopyingJax]

So before I go off, I don't hate the creator of the first tree at all; He's actually the reason why I'm going really hard in game dev. He's a huge inspiration for me and I was one of the many people to sub to him when his first video blew up. I researched the first tree and how it was released. I was truly fascinated about his story and still am.

But with all the talk about his program I feel a little off. Not giving the guy flack, for what he has done with such a small portfolio is amazing but I don't think that justifies the price tag for his course.

He has only published (in my knowledge) 2 games. Even in his GDC talk he admits luck was a significant factor in the first tree.

I wish him well with this course none the less but I rather spend 14 dollars on content rich courses on Udemy who have a bigger resume and knowledge within the indie Dev field then sending several hundred dollars on how to release a game.

(I know this isn't true but his website for his course looks like a get rich quick type deal atleast from how the marketing is. Learn how to make a story game within 7 days)

Maybe I'm wrong. Thoughts anyone?

Edit (from his Friday Feedback #3 @ 18:15) "And maybe it looked like I knew what I was doing in the steam store page and the trailer - but here's the truth I really didn't. I just knew what was cinematic because I had alot of practice."

Edit 2: Then seconds later he talks about how people make clones usually for their first game. Why would someone play your flappy bird game if you could just play flappy bird?

Man I understand what he's trying to say but this isn't how you tell new game developers to over achieve right out of the gate.

[u/gleavegames]

Shame the game was so shit

[u/serocsband]

This guy really is squeezing every last penny out of that game.

Also there’s someone on reddit posting some wolf game that looks like a clone of this

[u/WingersAbsNotches]

I couldn’t get past the voiceover for this game. I loved the style as soon as I saw screen caps on Reddit originally but I really wish he would have hired a VO artist on fiver or something. His wife actually did a pretty good job with the female VO but yeah... rough.

[u/kaitoren]

The video lasts an hour and a half. Are they really talking about the reason for the success of the game or is it just clickbait?

This genre of atmospheric adventure has never been particularly appealing to me. I find them boring, repetitive and with huge scenarios where there is little content, relaxing games where you just walk around the map are not for me, although I understand that there is a market for them.

But this one in particular catches my attention because I don't find the art attractive at all, which is one of the success keys to this subgenre: artistic quality. Games like Gris or ABZU have an incomparable beauty like no other game that for some people already justifies the purchase. But in this one, watching the trailer, the low-poly scenario it offers (trees and mountains) looks like free and totally made of generic assets from Unity Store. Besides, I see that the same author is also the publisher, and has not needed the help of a big publisher to release 2 successful games. It's rare to see a solo-developer to be so successful in their first game.

Is there a post-mortem of this game available?

[u/Planebagels1]

All the games I make are open source lol.

[u/[deleted]]

ok I want to earn shirt privileges like that

[u/axteryo]

Make one hit and now acts like an Indie god lmao. And yes i'm jealous :(