Indie Game Developer VS. AAA Developer: Which Path Is Right For You?

question that's been haunting game developers for centuries well not really 20 or so years which career path should you take indie game development or work for a triple a studio should you suffer through the grind of building your own Indie studio living in a dumpster on scraps of old cheeseburgers drinking sewage dreaming of one day owning your own Indie Studio or should you work for the fat cats at EA Games Activision or blizzard working through the night to hit your deadlines only to release a buggy piece of crap that not even your mother would be proud of who can answer such a question please give a round of applause for Jason Wyman AAA veteran whose fingerprints have touched the likes of EverQuest II and Vanguard and Thomas brush Indie Game Dev extraordinaire developer of pinstripe and neversock a debate for the a battle to the death can they answer this age-old question only time will tell let the fight begin uh but first I was gonna say I think it's going to be interesting because I don't know that much on the Indie side of it and you said not a lot of your friends are AAA developers most of my friends are AAA developers not a lot of merindia developers so it's a it's nice to be able to come and get this completely opposite perspective um I started working on games a long time ago the first AAA game I got to work on was Vanguard Saga of Heroes at Sony and then I got to work on a bunch of the other MMOs there um we're done a bunch of other games since then in the last 10 15 years but nothing that was super exciting that I like to talk about that that much like the the first ones working on Everquest 2 was a blast and was probably one of the most exciting times where I learned the most like in the actual big AAA time and I spent a lot of time doing that but since then like I said worked on a bunch of other things and now I I like to just do mostly YouTube I I like to say I make games for fun and YouTube videos for a living so it's a it's fun stuff but I really love the AAA field and almost like I said most of my friends that I talk to daily are working on some AAA project or another or just coming off of one or some of them are looking at Indie stuff though so this is going to be fun cool well guys stick around to the end of this video because I think it's going to be a huge knowledge dump for all of us including myself about you know I guess I mean there's a lot of misconceptions about AAA maybe some of them are true though and we're going to find out but before we jump into the conversation I want to let you guys know that Jason and I have a massive program called The Ultimate Game Dev course and it is oh there's 24 hours left really right there's just one day left to join this program and it's crazy you know we've we've had over 100 students already sign up um probably at the time of recording this video there's something like 20 seats left 30 seats left and after that we don't know if we're going to do this event again but the course is all about indie game development and AAA right it's it's it's everything right it's not just indie game development if you guys want to get a triple a job or you want to learn about how to make a game with I guess the professionalism of AAA Studio or you want to learn how to start your own game Studio from scratch you can learn from both of us the cool thing about our course is not only do we have 10 000 students worldwide and not only is it massive it's going to take you more than a couple months to finish these courses but the cool thing is it's actually taught by you know game developers who have been in the trenches and me I'm currently like in the trenches making my next indie game and I know Jason is making games as well so be sure to click the link below to take advantage of this massive sale event and join over 10 000 students worldwide all right Jason you ready to debate I am very ready I've been waiting for this for a while good me too I'm excited okay so the first big question I think everybody wants to know and I'd actually don't know the answer to it so I'll just let you answer this what what defines AAA right oh okay well and I think that in general most people when they're thinking of AAA games are just thinking of companies with large budgets and large teams and there's probably some very specific definition that you could get down to but in general you're looking at teams that have you know 50 to 300 400 people on them and multi-million dollar budgets usually with a big publisher and somewhat of a success record I think most AAA Studios start off as smaller Indie Studios and they get a big success they make a couple big hits and they go from being this 20 man or 10-man team to 300 or 500 people working on four different games so when you get to AAA it's really at that that large scale where things are more defined as far as roles there's a lot more of the kind of middle management too which one of the the negatives I think um but you've also got like full teams that can support and build all of the different parts and you're not trying to have one person or a couple people put something together or grow their skills beyond what they already are to be able to accomplish the project usually AAA team is going to already have the people and the skills required to get the project done there might be a little bit of learning and experimenting but for the most part like they know what they're going to do they know how to do it and they're they're going to be able to build it but they also have a huge budget and uh yeah a large team so it's it's really a question of just budget basically to hit those budgets though they're going to be the games that are going out to consoles that are going out to Playstation Xbox um the Nintendo platforms and everything else or that are going to be big um may be big on Steam some of this big gun Steam games though I would say classify more as indie games where they have nice small teams they don't necessarily have to be huge but those console ones tend to be big AAA teams for the most part yeah so there's not really a clear-cut definition right I mean an indie Studio can make a five million dollar game right sure sure they could yeah but I think uh five million dollars would still be kind of at the low very bottom end of a triple A game you're probably talking to tens of millions um and much bigger team yeah okay and I think I think specifically and this this will be related to our next talking point um your your discussion of defined roles it's really interesting because in the indie game sphere um like I have like 20 different roles right I do the music and the art and the story and I do some of the code I used to do all the code I do the marketing um I do the the communications for so in social media management so there's just a ton of stuff you have to do as an 80 game developer whereas with AAA I guess because the budget is big it's much more specific and targeted for a very sort of Niche role right right yeah you could be doing just UI art and all you do all day every day is make the UI as as beautiful as possible and just focus on that nothing else or I think of the programming teams on a triple A game versus an indie game programming team on an indie game they're probably going to be bouncing in and changing things kind of everywhere working on all of the different systems we're on a big AAA game you're going to have like a lead programmer that never even writes code that just talks to the other programmers and keeps track of what they're doing and making sure that they're doing the right things like yeah a totally different scale Indy one the lead programmer is going to be writing most of the code or a big chunk of it adding things in importing Pro stuff into the project making design decisions and all kinds of stuff where in AAA part you're probably just going to be doing code reviews and making sure that your programmers are doing well right right and for a personality like me like and I'm sure a lot of my subscribers feel the same way I do it it sounds like a frustrating position to be in because like I want to I kind of want to be in charge of everything and to only focus on one thing to me sounds really boring um was it boring for you uh no not at all when I started out at least because there was there was only one thing to focus on but there was a ton of stuff to do so working on um when I started off I was doing tools programming so I was working on tools for the designers of making it easier for them to put stuff in and there was a ridiculous amount of stuff just to do with that and then I found out there were all kinds of other tools that the code team needed and the production team needed have found just a ton of stuff that I could come up with and kind of get into and experiment with and learn from there and then when you get into the gameplay coding side when you start actually putting in the game systems if if the game is of big enough scale it takes so much time to put in these big things and put in all of these different systems that you'd never really like run out of interesting things to do I have seen people who get stuck on like a really boring long running long term project um but it's very rare in games I can think of like two scenarios outside of the games though in like inner Enterprise development see that all the time people working on big long boring things that will run on for like four years and they're doing the same thing but in games it's usually adding this cool new system matting flying mounts to it I'm adding a city combat system you're going in and like creating this thing taking a designer's idea and then making it into something that works and then the artists are making it beautiful on top of it so right it makes it be it's a lot more fun and it's really rewarding because you see a lot of stuff happening and a lot of accomplishment even when you're not doing the work you know okay I mean that's that's so different like that's so different than my experience of making games but then again you know my games are much smaller and they take a really long time to make but now that we know what AAA well we kind of have an idea of what AAA is um let's jump into like the top loaded question that I asked my audience or that my audience wanted to ask you um and I'll throw in uh some answers as well from my perspective um uh the first question is I would like to know what is the best way to enter working uh in AAA studio um as there are obviously differences when it comes to Indy and AAA and there's clarification here is it qualification is it experience is it both um so yeah I guess the question here is like yeah what's the best way to enter working your AAA Studio I think the person asking the question missed the most important one before qualifications or experience which is uh connections okay really the number one the best it makes me sad it is but it's like that with everything that I mean there isn't there are very few professions out there where connections aren't the best way to to get in if you already know somebody who works at a triple a studio and you're applying for it talk to those people have those people put in a good word for you have them to say to their manager hey just talk to this person at least you know give them an interview it's not necessarily that it's going to get you the job but it'll help you kind of get your foot in the door um and be able to be seen in front of people outside of that if you don't have any connections at all having some experience on your resume is going to be better than just qualify like certifications or qualifications or schooling having some projects that you've actually completed on your own input out there even if they weren't you know big Triple A or even big Indie projects just being able to show that you were able to get things done and get that finishes good but I think the the best thing if you don't know anybody there and you can't get in try to get in through the QA department or the customer service department or any of those other ones because if you do that and you actually talk to people you'll make those connections really quickly and end up getting promoted or getting into the positions I know a lot of people just emailing customer service with you no go get a job as a customer service right oh okay go go get a job there and ideally like in their QA department or maybe like their platform Management Department a lot of companies the bigger ones they'll have these smaller teams that kind of do the the grunt work that other people don't really want to do there's not that much demand for those jobs people don't apply for them heavily if you get in there you'll learn who the people are meet the right people and I know a lot of people that are you know directors CEOs and other things that started off in QA they started off like no experience no idea what they were doing no qualifications they got in they just started talking to people making friends learning the job and uh leveled up really quickly like that my first Game Dev job was in QA you know really lasted like three weeks and then I got hired as a programmer well I was I was gonna disagree with you about the connections are relevant for every job because I was at first I was like with any game development all you got to do is for me it was like build your own audience and and make great games and and and that audience will Propel your project to to go viral on Steam which is kind of My Method but then I realized as you were talking it was only because I had a ton of connections that these projects were even possible and I didn't get these can like for example like connections with Publishers for example you know Armor Games funded pinstripe my first game um if I hadn't known armor games or the CEO I probably wouldn't have ever been able to do the project right um but but you know I don't know where you you recommend finding connections um but for the indie game sphere um I found all my connections by just asking for advice well most of them right so like just emailing people and saying hey can I chat with you for like an hour um and just I just want to learn from you and suddenly that builds a friendship with these people who are a little bit higher up on the latter so I'm curious if you've experienced that where you just asked for mentorship or just kind of befriended somebody at a at a I don't know an event or conference or something without a doubt yeah especially at events but so the first place is at work so one of the biggest benefits I just want to call this out of AAA Studios is that you're working with and you're going into an office with dozens or hundreds of people who are in the industry a lot of them have been in the industry for a long time have worked on games that you've played you know they've made your favorite game or been a part of that and it's going to be people from like hundreds of different games that are also leaving and going to hundreds of different companies and if you're going out to lunch with them talking with them and making friends with them you're going to make connections faster than just about anything of course if you you know stay at your desk and Herm it up then that won't happen but if you just take the opportunity to be friendly with co-workers and make a huge huge difference but the other one if you're not already in there is the meetups and these they kind of changed with all the the coveted crap but seems like it's kind of come back and meetups are starting to reappear but in person meetups have and events even if it's just like a talk somebody's giving and everybody's hanging out there and hanging out for an hour before and after chatting a great way to meet lots of people and make lots of connections actually um I met one of the guys from Odin at a Meetup just happened to it I was like oh that's a different mode and somebody was like oh oh let's go talk to him go talk to him he made friends Brian he's a great dude it just happened to be at an event and we started talking um and it's I've met a lot of my friends just at these events you know talking to them and also gone through tons of opportunities and they've presented plenty of opportunities that I've passed on to other friends so I highly recommend going to meet up and stuff like that it's true and it's uh you know my style with with the indie game side of this question um you know because the the real topic here is like which is easier like when it comes to like networking for example like if we apply this to the title of this video when it comes to networking which one is harder to do AAA networking or Indy networking because for me when I think about Indie like the Indie side of networking it's meeting Publishers so these aren't AAA Studios these are just you know small Studios with money right who can Market your game meeting publishers it really happens not at like I don't think I I don't know exactly where where these happen but for me they happened at like Pax um game developer conference but also just putting my work out there online my portfolio like I put out free games and so I highly recommend anybody listening release crappy games on hio just do it and make them free and uh see see who reaches out to you even and says hey we saw your game we might want to publish it make it bigger because that's happened to me multiple times but I think the big question here is like is Triple A networking accessible so what I mean is like do you have to already know somebody to go to a networking event or can you just find them online and go to the city and go to these events that's the so I I think that it depends a lot on where you are and I've got a weird like I'm personally in a bubble being like an hour out of La where there's meetups all the time that are hosted by AAA companies or by people that work at AAA companies and attended by them um and it's a relatively regular thing I could probably find a couple each month that are just within a 20 30 minute drive but for regular people it's probably much much more difficult I think you actually have to put in some effort and probably start also attending some like so you said some of those bigger events going to Pax going to GDC in-person unite events things like that where you can actually get around and talk to people it was one of those few opportunities but if you happen to be in an area that has AAA Studios I would start looking to look on meetup.com is a great place to just find game developer meetups there's probably some other ones out there but that's the main one we've used there are also some online ones I know I've hosted an online Game Dev meetups they're not necessarily AAA but some of the people who attended them regularly are AAA developers you could also probably start your own but that might feel a little bit harder I guess but yeah it depends where you are probably exactly yeah and you have the benefit of being in Southern California right right and for those of you who are curious where I'm at I'm on the complete opposite side of America I'm in South Carolina so it's like the last place you want to be to to you know join the AAA industry so it's an interesting discussion because you know for you Jason getting into AAA made sense right because the industry is basically shrouding you for me I said I didn't I didn't live here when I got into it I moved the second I got an opportunity I got an opportunity for a job working on QA and a triple A game that I wanted to work on I said all right let's go we're moving we moved straight down here it was uh crazy and and wild my wife is super supportive though um yeah I I just figured hey worst case it falls apart and I can move back like you can always feel like would you move back somewhere Washington State so there was not not any game development at all where I was um Seattle right kind of but not real it was still really far and there's very limited there were like you know three game studios up there yeah and they were well you know that that makes me like think about the path that I took and why I took it you know I always wanted to make games but I've been in South Carolina my whole life I love it here uh and I can't I can't get myself to leave just because the quality of life here is really good the prices are low um but that I think that's part of the reason why I did indie game development because I was like I'm gonna do this regardless of of what company I work for like I'm gonna make games no matter what I don't care where I live and fortunately like it's getting easier and easier to do that um for from my perspective if if you guys listening instead of doing AAA you want to start your own game studio and you want to make connections the way that I recommend people do it is just make really really good demos for like your portfolio because when I get emails from people who want to like you know get advice from me or they want to maybe work with me do contract work if I don't see a portfolio I won't frankly I won't even consider the email um because it's like look you didn't even send me anything um so I don't I don't really have the time to go back and forth to try and figure out what you have to offer um so a great portfolio will get you those connections and it's just through email right so all of my connections well ninety percent of my indie game connections for my career have been through email including this one right um so I don't know if that's similar to AAA but email is is a huge aspect of it yeah email has been not as big for me I think just because probably the people with those email boxes don't care they don't read stuff that comes from outside the company um yeah unless you know but that's interesting yeah I was kind of curious um on your end though about getting a job at an indie place because I mean you're an indie developer who hires Indie people so have money I mean like it's I'm just being frank like whenever I get emails people saying hey can we work with you I'm like in it like I have maybe enough money to pay me and one other person and my 3D artist um is you know full time but that's that's about all we've we've got or I'm comfortable that's all I'm comfortable with spending especially on a risky project like making a game is a risky ordeal and so AAA Studios when they throw a hundred million dollars at something I'm pretty sure they know that it's gonna succeed well that's a question for you really do that what what gives them this confidence to make a gamble on a 100 million dollar project and hire all these people you know yeah I think it's usually the success of a p of a previous project so they just kind of assumed that like this last one made 200 million so the next one's got to make 400 million so obviously we can spend 100 on it it'd be no problem yeah not realizing that maybe that all the people that so sometimes the problem is like all the people that made that first one left and made their own Studio they didn't get enough of that that 200 million and they left and made their own but um yeah a lot of time I don't know that they necessarily know it but I'd also um one of the things I've done a couple times is work in some smaller Studios that I would consider them to be more Indie Studios you know where they had maybe a million or two million in funding and those ones I found the hiring process is quite a bit easier easier than the AAA ones and it's largely because the number of applicants that come in you put out a job opening at a triple a studio and you're going to get at least a couple hundred people applying put out one for these smaller ones and you get maybe like a dozen or two dozen people applying to the applicant's pool is much much smaller probably because the visibility is small not a lot of people going searching for you know my little fishing game right well that also brings the conversation back to connections which is like a lot of times these smaller Studios this is my assumption this is just my experience a lot of the Indie Studios if they do need work they've already got a list of 12 people that they know of that they would reach out to right so it's not like this massive listing that's you know put on online on a list somewhere right it's they're reaching out to people or their community that they know I guess I'm not so sure yeah that's usually the case that there are posting they might post the job online and then also reach out to the people that they think might be a good fit and have them apply and then if some somebody applies a lot of the time I'd say probably 50 of the time somebody at the company knows knew somebody that was hired the other 50 of the time it was just somebody who applied and you know had a really good resume and a good interview um okay just just depended well you know now that we know that connections are the scaffolding that basically holds up anybody's career in the game industry and I'll like I'm assuming that's what you're saying and I'm saying that if you're going to make an indie game Studio you need to start to get to know people like that's how it works um if that's the case let's move on to the next tier which is I would assume and this is a question that I got from one of my subscribers let's move on to the skills required so we've got connections but what are the skills so the question is what are the skills a Game Dev should have to work in a triple A or even a small indie game studio so I guess we could both answer this question but let's let's hear from you what are the skills a Game Dev should have when working in AAA well I think it's probably a little bit different than the the Indie ones and you talk about that because it's going to be more specific when you're applying for an indie Game Dev or AAA Game Dev job on the job description it's going to give you like the first probably the first two things on that job description are the things that they they care about it's the stuff that you're actually going to be doing day to day whether that's making tools for the designers or adding in new systems or optimizing networking or whatever the hell it is it could be designing content if it's a game design job right it could be content design or level design or whatever it's going to be those the the two things like right up at the top are usually the the primary skills and it's going to vary a lot from job to job it's an arts art job could be anything from needing specific 2D art skills and being able to make a specific 2D art style or maybe making um characters like if you look at AAA Studios a character artists environment artist almost never the same person it's almost the character artist I think the person best at making characters because there's tons of characters to make there's no end to the amount of characters make same with environment there's like a person that's going to do that the best when it comes to game programming you're going to have or the programming side you're gonna have people that are focused heavily on the graphics that are just focused on making the visuals look great and run really well have other people that are just focused on gameplay content stuff you'll have people that are focused on server side or networking stuff if it's a multiplayer game which most of the AAA games end up being they have some networking component you know some multiplayer component or a big part of it is multiplayer yeah people that are very focused on those and you have to have the skills for the specific job that you're applying for is really the kind of the the core thing but there's not like a specific like you need to know this one thing it really depends on the role that you're applying for and you need to tailor your resume and your what your cover letter that you're sending in to highlight and focus on those specific skills too you can't just send out the same generic one and you happen to have those skills somewhere in the list right man I mean what about the Indy though I assume that you thinking way different though right well it I mean yeah it's like when I was looking for a 3D artist for my next game which is called father but it the name is changing to happy hotel or something like that we're still trying to figure out the name when I hired Felipe my 3D artist um I wanted a a friend because uh that's the first thing I want to know I'm paying for friends here no I wanted a friend because I wanted someone I could get a beer with um because first off when the indie game life is a lonely life um because oftentimes you're you're working on one project that has like five hundred thousand dollars of funding and so you have a small little team um and it's contract workers meaning like you're not paying for their health insurance or anything you're just paying them um you know like like you would a like a contract worker right um so I'm looking for somebody who I'm gonna spend a lot of time with um that I'm going to be you know having conversations with all day about tiny little granular things covering a variety of aspects of game development now most of you listening are probably thinking oh so like you need an artist and you also need somebody who can like touch the code and maybe somebody who can maybe animate a little bit and I'm like no I need that but I also need somebody who wants to help with social media and I need somebody who can help with email and hey maybe you can do a YouTube devlog for me um oh and by the way uh can can you help me um grapple with you know putting together a presentation for you know a pitch deck to a publisher right I need somebody who can basically be me but like a smaller scale and I'm not saying that in like a a diminishing way it's just that a business owner or like an indie Studio owner like myself I should never expect my team members to put as much pressure on themselves as I put on me because it's my studio but I do want it to be a smaller scale version of that so it's like I need you to basically I'm just saying I need you to wear 10 hats and so that's what I told Felipe his just the greatest team member ever I love working with Felipe it's been such a blast working with it for the last year and uh I told him at the beginning when I hired him I was like you need to be okay with feeling constantly like the wind is changing like if we were on a boat and we were sailing to a destination you need to be okay with it feeling like really confusing because we're like touching so many things together right he's doing right now he's really focused on Art um but he did he did like um he helped me create resources as well and we sold resources um just to bring in extra funding for the studio he did YouTube videos for me as well so he just does a lot of different things and so for those of you who want to get a job in an indie Studio or for those of you who want to start a studio you need to know that if you have a versatile set of skills um then you're going to thrive but if you have a very specific targeted set of skills that you're obsessed with like really good code you're probably gonna at least struggle in an indie environment because you're going to be spending all your time on code and then you're going to be wondering why nothing else is getting done and you're going to launch a great game but nobody's going to see it because nobody was focused on marketing so I think it I think it's like a totally different a mindset for the Indie side and personally I love the Indie side like I love that feeling I I sometimes I think of it as like you're like a pirate and you're just like sailing the Open Seas and you're looking for the booty you're looking for the treasure chests and you're finding where all the cash is and where all the opportunities are but you're constantly doing so many different things and you're definitely Rogue I think that's a good word word to describe it whereas an indie AAA Studio from what I can gather it's it's more like you do what your job is and it's cleanly defined for you and you don't have to worry if they're like hey there's some treasure over there with the spy glass until the dude over there in the boat yeah anchor down go grab it yeah so I'd say I would say personally like which is easier to thrive in like to answer the question of the title to thrive as an indie developer I would argue it's harder because it's not necessarily harder it's just a smaller minority of people who can handle that kind of it's not necessarily pressure it's constant change you're just like one day you're doing another thing and the next day you're doing another thing whereas with AAA am I right here it's like that's not the way it is no might be one week you're doing one thing one week you're doing the next thing but they're going to be mostly aligned for the most part yeah it's gonna be like hey I'm adding an inventory system oh now I'm adding banking to my inventory system thing after thing and like oh now I'm gonna go look at the thing marketing sent out a about it what you're doing right now though you're you're you're behaving in an indie way right now you're doing YouTube videos you have your online school you make uh these games do you enjoy personally do you enjoy which one did you enjoy the most oh I think that I enjoyed the AAA stuff a lot at the beginning I really liked the structure the the learning and being able to get a lot out of um out of other people like being able to figure out like how to make games and really see how it's done um that was really really helpful now I feel like now I've gotten to the point where I'm I'm too old and uh disorganized I can't I couldn't go back to it um long term and just be in in a box anymore but I think that it's a great place to um kind of grow and learn a lot there's just I I also get this urge to just want to do more after a while and after quite a while even while I was doing AAA programming stuff I would still randomly if I got bored I'm just like hey I'm gonna do some design work guys um and if you guys want to throw it away you can but I'm going to do it anyway just hop in and just do do the other things that are interesting once you've been there for a little while and you've made different friendships it's really easy to just kind of explore and expand out into the other things and I found that a lot of that stuff was fun too and wanted to kind of Branch out a little bit I guess so cool well before we move into sort of this shock we're going to do like a shotgun approach with other questions and we're going to try and answer those quickly before we do that let's let's try and do a final verdict here um which is easier to start and I guess we should sort of add an additional word which is easier to start and thrive in AAA or indie game I'm gonna give you my answer um I was gonna say well it depends but I'm just gonna say right now after this conversation I I think that it's Indie I think it's harder to do Indie um to thrive in Indian to maintain funding and to contend and to suffer through the loneliness of it I'm gonna say Indy what's your verdict I think I agree I think that especially if thriving involves um you know just having a nice steady stream of income with AAA there's just lots of money there so they can pay you a nice steady program or salary just like anywhere else with all the benefits and job security so it's a it's certainly I think easier but maybe not as uh exciting and free yep yep cool well um let's move on to these these shotgun questions and by the way guys if you haven't hit like and left a comment uh any other questions you have or thoughts you have be sure to do that and also subscribe for more indie game development videos that'd be awesome um and let Jason know uh that you're thankful for him hanging out this has been really really fun so let's jump into these questions here um it's a great question I have some some fantastic game ideas but I don't know programming what should I do and where can I sell my ideas um first you can't sell your ideas nobody will buy them and you should either learn programming or find a programmer and figure out what it is that you want to do on the game because if all you have is ideas and you're not going to bring anything towards actually building the game you're not going to do the art the code or the design and design including the implementation of the design you're going to have a really really hard time then the only way to do it is with lots of money you're gonna have to pay all that I will say that for you I will argue with you a little bit here if you're on your like third commercial game you can sell your ideas that's true yes if you have right you've got to have that cred though you got to have that cred like me no you gotta at least release two games or maybe even three games for you to be able to just give a screenshot to somebody or a title or a hook with like it's called a pitch deck but like for me like I I still will do a 15 minute demo like I'll have a demo made are a prototype made for the game so if you want to sell an idea make sure your idea comes with a demo some credibility and a great hook um and a pitch deck which is just a website with all the screenshots and descriptions and stuff but you're right like an idea in and of itself no you can't sell that yeah well everybody's got them and everybody in every game company probably has half a dozen game ideas that they would love for the company to build no company wants to buy your ideas they might I said like you were saying if you've got a pitch deck you have a demo and a proven track record that you could actually build it you could definitely sell it to a publisher right you can get next I don't necessarily consider that selling your ideas more as just a uh I guess you're kind of selling it but you still own it really like you're making the game and having them publish it for you um but yeah I think in general you're gonna have to learn one of the Specialties or you're going to have to have a lot of money to hire people to do it and you're gonna have a hard time without knowing the details of what it is that you're paying them to do exactly I think we should clarify I don't think you can sell ideas to AAA Studios I think you can sell Tech to AAA Studios right yes like portal for example portal was purchased that the tech behind Portal was purchased by Valve from a a small group of like students I believe whereas with the Indie side of things yes you can sell ideas to Publishers but they're not going to buy the idea they're going to buy the demo and then the right for for you for them to get a royalty when you finish the game right so you've got to eventually you've got to make a game a full game for these Indies for these Publishers so yeah cool okay next question I love this question because I don't even know the answer is crunch inherent to gamedev because of the problems of estimating deadlines or is it completely cultural and if it's the former how can an indie developer without experience in the industry avoid it so crunch in Game Dev um I think that crunch in all software development largely comes from a lack of actually estimating deadlines and properly estimating them and then also changing them and it happens more in game development that things change that you know you're 75 percent done implementing a system and then that system is just you guys decide it's not fun it's not what you needed and it has to change and gets changed again so I think that a lot of the time the crunch happens just because of that that failure to plan but it's not nearly as bad as people think outside of or at least in AAA in AAA I know a lot of AAA developers all of them have crunched at least a little bit some of them have horror stories but 99 of the time they're working 40 hours a week or less you know they're not they're not working crazy crazy hours not working 60 80 hours yes not months and months of crunching I think it used to be worse a long time ago lots of stories came out and in my experience I've never had anybody who was like you have to come in and you have to work you know 16 hours a day or 12 hours a day or anything like that it's just you have these tasks to get done you get the tasks done and as long as they're done nobody cares how long it took and there are some people I know I've got at least one friend who like can't resist working 60 hours a week no matter what like minimum and I think that that's much more likely to happen as an indie Game Dev because you've got so much to do and you don't just have like your list of tasks and know that the the Project's going to keep going on and and getting built when you go home when you're the Indie Dev it's like as soon as nobody's working on it like it has stopped it's paused and you know somebody's got to get to it so you may as well do it and there's no reason to wait or AAA it's like oh yeah that makes me think you know with the Indie side there's less obligation to outside contracts um for example like if you're making a triple A game you've got this massive marketing side of things PR companies are involved you're launching on certain platforms you're doing events there's a whole strategy right to launch a AAA game whereas with the Indie side of things you might have a contract with let's say like epic right um for the Epic store you might have a contract like I did with apple arcade but those contracts sort of come later that's what I've found for me and so the obligations to hit all these deadlines aren't nearly as intense on the Indie side so I've actually never experienced crunch like this like what this individual is describing for me it's just like I was I just call my publisher and say it's going to be late like give me two more months and then I would call again give me two more months and then I'd call again give me two more months so I was and I would work 40 hours a week so it's like there wasn't a lot of intensity there because it's not like we were going to miss a deadline with with Microsoft right or Sony or something so yeah I know I think more it becomes an issue with Indies when they're um when they're in a rush to make money especially pre-making cash when they're pre-pre-revenue and they're trying to get to that you know we've got to get this out got it it's either gotta we got to launch this game in the next year or this company is going under and that kind of thing those are the ones where I find people like crunching and working like 80 hours you know plus and they're somewhat voluntarily because they they want that company to succeed or their their position is sometimes they own the company you know yeah they really want it to succeed so they're working their ass off um but yeah games other than like right before the release of a game I would say always like the last month or so before the release of a game you probably expect that some some subset of people are going to be working overtime but that could just be that those people have too much work and it's definitely not the entire team at least nowhere that I have been like I'm sure there's some horror stories out there though oh yeah I'm sure well in conclusion guys um you know this this was just really like generous of Jason to join us so be sure to say thank you to Jason below um and ask me any questions below and I'll try and answer them comments the cool part is is we have another debate on Jason's channel that you guys can watch the link is in the description so be sure to check that out we're going to talk about a totally different topic but there will be some overlapping as well um just discussing AAA so there's a ton of more information in that podcast or that interview or debate or whatever whatever you guys want to call it um and also be sure just to remember just a reminder that there's just one day left for the Ultimate Game Dev course and that's me and Jason's massive bundle of all of our programs that's 3D art that's 2D art that's how to start a indie game Studio that's how to um be proficient in the technical aspects of making games in the AAA environment and that's what Jason teaches so you're gonna go from zero to 100 zero being you know nothing about game development 100 being you know enough to start an indie game studio and do what I do or work in the AAA environment like Jason did so be sure to check that out below there's like 20 30 seats left depending on when you're watching this video and we will see you there with over 10 000 other students worldwide Jason I appreciate your time man this was really really fun hey thanks for having me I had a blast it's a lot of fun having these conversations cheers

Channel: Thomas Brush

Views: 25,372

Keywords: thomas, brush, Unity, Unity game dev, Gamedev, indie gamedev, indie game devlog, he said i couldn't make a 3d game, how to make a game, software engineering, computer science, computer programming, tutorial, how to, develop games, brackeys, dani2, devlog, game, game career, Triple A, AAA, get a game dev job, jason weimann, interview, podcast, game devlog, indie devlog, unity devlog, game dev, game development, indie game, gamedev, indie dev, unity, devlog 1, dev log

Id: b60o6VOqwDI

Length: 45min 25sec (2725 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022