Is the Indie Game Dev Dream Worth It?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what's up guys we have thomas brush one of my good friends here and we are just going to shoot the breeze we're going to talk about probably revenue i'm going to talk about the mobile port and yeah i just wanted to catch up on with thomas and see how he's doing so what's up dude how you doing i am doing really really well um i'm glad 2020 is over um and i think most people are but it was a weird year because the game industry kind of flourished in a weird way um and it's kind of sad but it that's just how it worked out so you know i'm not sure about you but like i had a pretty good year in terms of building my business building my studio building the channel starting an online course and then i also i've got it right here uh pinstripe is coming out uh or it's already out physically a physical copy for nintendo switch in physical copy yeah that's so cool yeah it's in europe um so we haven't done us yet and you know i don't know if we're actually going to do it but this is for europe and i'm holding it up right now so it was it was a good year and i feel bad saying that you know but it was a good year yeah for me it was like the best of times and worst times i know because i had a by pure luck i had a nintendo switch sale right when the pandemic right one shutdown all over the world happened yeah and i'm sure it went very well oh i just couldn't believe it it was you know i had no idea i scheduled it months in advance and so when i checked the numbers for that month and it was across all platforms it was the second highest grossing month ever aside from my console launch month which blew my mind dude that's so crazy so that's got to be the weirdest feeling where it's like you know the world is suffering but the digital world isn't you know yeah it sucked like my neighbors were losing their job uh one of my neighbors died two days ago she was an older older lady of covid um yeah from cove oh man i don't know it's just it's hard because and my my other like one of my best friends he works at a nursing home facility and it's just been the worst year of his life yeah um but for me it's like well i'm i haven't i need i just need an internet connection i had my products on sale already but yeah it was it was weird because it's you know being a game developer you know you're not like curing cancer or anything but no you're not i mean you're actually you're helping entertain people and give them a little bit of entertainment during lockdown and stuff well i know that you i know that you and i both we we both launched our online courses and that's just like a side income as well in addition to making games and i like to think i like to think maybe this is just me trying to feel better about last year but i like to think that we're also teaching people how to bring in revenue and income by doing what they love even though there's a pandemic going on people can still you know even though you're stuck in your house for a lot of people uh you can still make games you know and start building a career in spite of what's going on yes definitely and like it's it's true like it can happen because you know it kind of it happened to us i have friends that are full-time indies which is crazy but at the same time i think it's important to be realistic yeah it is because it is the barrier of entry has never been lower right which to me is awesome it means like game development is being democratized like if you have the idea and the work ethic then you can go for it right at your home computer yeah which means everyone's doing it yeah and that means you have to stand out and that's kind of what i talk about in game dev unlocked like how important marketing is that's what i talked about in my gdc talk yeah and that's what you're talking about and um full-time game dev check out the website man it looks really nice i appreciate it man really cool yeah and just get it out of the way there's a discount below um for your subscribers so if they're interested they can learn how to make hopefully give it a shot you know make make video games full time and like you said you know there's no promises it the barrier of entry is so much uh what's the word lower it's lower than it's ever been but the thing is is it's so it's so crowded right now that it's important for people to figure out like how to this is a question i wanted to ask you actually regarding mobile how to get featured by these certain platforms because everybody's trying to do it you know and you got i noticed you got featured by apple for the mobile launch of the first tree and some you're you're really good at figuring out like the secrets of how to get featured um and there's there's a few other secrets that i've learned last year like one of them is how to partner with really big platforms like apple apple arcade and these these very streaming services and by the way i'm learning that and i don't know if you figured this out i think you told me this actually streaming is probably the next iteration of of how indies make money which is pretty participating with these platforms um and getting you know a big check from i don't know stadia so there's a ton of ways to make money and not just not just streaming but i also want to say like subscription services yes that's what i meant i don't like netflix yeah like xbox game pass and stuff correct yeah but you're right but stadia stadia is considered like a streaming subscription right yeah definitely yeah so but you didn't do that with apple like i did apple arcade but you just did apple like you just launched on apple and somehow you got featured and i would love to hear how that happened yeah definitely i i am jealous of the apple arcade thing that you got going on because believe it or not now it sounds cool and it sounds like apple's like really taking this subscription service seriously they are and guess what i did apply for apple arcade and i was turned down did you really usually yeah um they only won exclusives yeah yeah the first tree has already been i've been out on everything or they wanted like unreleased games that weren't available yet well i can't because you can still like you can still release like on pc and apple arcade simultaneously right uh correct you can't you can't release on a subscription platform though and i'm not sure if that's ndi sorry apple but i don't think that's nda i think that's just that that makes sense you can't release on a streaming or a subscription platform but you can release on steam if you want the question is though is steam eventually going to become a subscription model which i feel like they would be foolish not to do that you know yeah that would make so much sense everyone's doing it google play now has like their google play pass on android right right so how did you get the feature with apple i want to know that so this is probably something i'm still like analyzing it and then still like there's cool features that always happen like perpetually on apple at least on the app store so there's still like things i'm working on with getting featured and i'm still trying to figure out what was the secret ingredient yeah but it kind of comes down to the principles i talk about like on this youtube channel like of course you need striking graphics you need a hook you need just something that you know stops people in in their in their footsteps and says hey what is a game worth looking at right but other than that you're probably thinking about like mobile specific things or app store specific things yeah or did you have a relationship with apple like no relationships yeah in fact i've heard the editing team the curation team at apple i think this is kind of cool they have very strict rules so that they can keep their uh stay anonymous and that they're not um influenced by any outside really editors outside game developers it's almost impossible to contact them except for a couple of ways or like one way that i know of so anyway yeah i'll tell you yeah what helps with getting featured on the app store okay um there's a there's a few things and i'm gonna do like a bunch of lessons on my online school yeah on the paid school game of unlocked but here's two things that helped a lot uh first of all you are able to be a pre-order game on the app store and it takes a little bit extra work and filling out stuff to be in the pre-order section and if you do that there were so few paid games doing that that the editing team the editor team at apple like they'll take a look at it because there's a section on the app store for pre-order games now and right there i was able to stand out oh man by like a few i don't know there's probably a dozen or so i actually i don't know the total amount but the editing team will take the best ones that they think look interesting and they'll put it in that pre-order section so right there since it's a smaller pool the editing team could be like oh what's this first tree game yeah and then of course this is where like you basically have to brag or boast as much as possible without being insufferable and so for the sure enough the first thing i put in my description of the game is an ign quote there you go because i think getting getting a positive little quote from ign like that doesn't happen to a lot of indie games so it sets me apart right okay so i did that and then there's a second thing that's really important there is a form you can fill out and it's the only way to reach the editing team at apple and so if you're part of the app the dev developer app program you know and you're paying the hundred dollars a year there's like a random link and i'm not sure where to find it but it's kind of hidden away and it's just a little form you fill out like a contact form yeah and again it will ask you things like why should we feature you why is your game important what are you going to do to market your game if we feature you like making sure that you'll like put in the work yeah and sure enough i filled that out and again i did i did i boasted i bragged i said i've sold i sold this many units you know i gave estimates but i've sold this many units on console i was at the smithsonian american art museum stumped in that you know it just makes you stand out it's just whoa wow he did that and and it you know it's it's easy for me to say that now sitting here but those were like years of events and years of work yep and it's basically compiling it into like uh like a 10 sentence thing yeah whatever so it can sound overwhelming to a new game developer like a new game developer being like i'm not i haven't been to this the american art museum that's not possible but over years you basically you build up a resume you build up success stories and i even talked about my youtube channel i said i did a youtube channel and people find it inspiring so yeah i think people would find it inspiring if it's on the app store and i'll do youtube videos about it and like you just gotta think of it from apple's perspective it's like they're giving away valuable real estate to these to these games it's like they only want the best of the best because having guaranteed space on the app store that's that's worth a lot of money like aaa companies would spend i don't know hundreds of thousands of dollars for like a store feature or something yeah so to give it away to for free to some really small indie it's got to be worth it to them yeah and that's why you gotta brag you gotta you gotta boast in the best way you know that is i've i've been experiencing that the the pain of bragging and the pain of showing my products and my games lately i've been experiencing it more than usual like today i've been feeling really guilty about constantly posting on uh youtube and social media about all the products i offer including my games on nintendo switch and xbox playstation steam and my games are pinstripe and never song and then also my online course and i feel i don't know about you but like you seem like a really humble dude and i don't always come across humble to people um i don't know why it's i'm very confident i'm i'm really really confident in what i can achieve um but deep down i feel so sick to my stomach when i brag or when i push you know when i'm pushing my gains on social media hey wishlist wishlist wishlist and i think a lot of people when they're just starting out they they think that well maybe one day maybe in three years i'll feel comfortable and i'm not sure maybe some people feel comfortable but like i'm not sure indie game developers ever get to a point where they feel comfortable you always feel a little weird pushing your products and and part of the reason for me is because um and maybe you could tell me if you feel this way but when once you've made a game or you've made two games i know you have two games under your belt as do i and or i think two commercial releases right um and even when you have two games under your belt what happens is you get used to having them and then when you look at them you you see just a junky game that's not worth anybody's time you know and it feels weird asking for people's money selling a game or selling a product because in your head you're like this is junk but in reality you're just used to it and you're maybe you're jaded by it you know what i mean absolutely like i think the biggest thing i can tell you thomas is from all my experiences from all the people i've talked to you're 100 normal yeah and it's something like i struggle with and it's i i struggle with being confident and just it's honestly can be it's something i want to change about myself because it can almost be debilitating because it's like i i'll vote you know i'll get a hundred positive reviews but like only the three reviews that are negative that are insulting my character whatever that's kind of a stick in my head yeah and it's it's just here's the thing it's like it's because you're an artist and artists like they they want to share and they want they want to like you know they want goodwill to like these patrons and they want to give it away and like help people get through life and you know that's what you're doing as an artist you're a storyteller yeah and i've played your games but we live in a commercial world where we've agreed upon like oh let's let's create the like the abstract um idea of value and turn it into a physical object called cache and it's like now i'm like yeah especially lately oh yeah but yeah it's weird it's like art art and commercialization they've always been at odds for each at each other for like thousands of years like michelangelo he wanted to like do cool stuff but he you know he'd get like these clients to pay the bills and stuff yeah he wanted just to do whatever he wanted to do because you know he was a brilliant guy but well i think here i have a quick i'm sorry you could go ahead i'm sorry to interrupt you um and by the way if people are listening and they think i'm interrupting you or you're interrupting me whatever there's a delay so uh just so everybody knows there's a little bit of a delay here um but yeah like i think i think what artists do and what game developers do and i guess you and i are considered entrepreneurs now because we started our own you know online school as well and so we we are entrepreneurs and i think one of the biggest problems with entrepreneurs is they have a real hard time seeing the value that they offer and they feel a lot of i i know i do a lot of guilt um when things are going really really well um and i've had that for the past two weeks just feeling really down like feeling like a jerk for some reason because because things have been going so well with with my studio um and i i we're talking about it earlier it's like i feel like i'm offering up junk to and even when i post a youtube video like i posted a youtube video that i spent two weeks on i think i posted it i think it was earlier this week two days ago it's uh it's a cyberpunk 2077 remake but it's a thumbnail for that but it's in 2d um i even when i post a video i feel guilty like people shouldn't waste their time watching this and i don't know where it comes from but i just want to encourage people listening to know like i mean i guess you and i could pretty much say we've made it in quotes like we've made it like we're pretty comfortable things are going really well for us but even when you're in our in our shoes you're still gonna feel insecure and so what i what i teach my students and what i teach people on my youtube channel is you need to be on one side a very confident person on one side of your body you're just ridiculously confident like annoyingly so and it's almost like lying to yourself or tricking yourself and just just believing that what you offer that your games are awesome that you can do it that you're great but on the other side being willing to accept failure and defeat and be willing to accept that you're not perfect and that you need to be humble because i mean honestly i have so much to learn and i've learned a lot from you in the in the past couple years and so you have to be like two people at once if you're going to be a game developer an entrepreneur i'm curious what you think about that it's the famous old saying like fake it till you make it yep yeah because i definitely any and again going back to like this artist conundrum that's been going on for thousands of years like i can't think very very very few artists love this thing they make and are just perfectly satisfied with it there's like what's the other quote i have a lot of quotes if you didn't know like no idea you you're really good with jokes art is never finished it's only abandoned and that's that's like that's like a big principle yeah yeah i try to like teach people where wherever i'm just like finish your game because it's not going to be perfect and the more like the when you start finishing games that's when you can start learning and like i'm not perfect and you know i've been lucky it's a combination of luck and hard work i'm convinced of that but they're both you know key ingredients but like i'm still messing up i still kind of hate my own game and i the first tree especially like i i know the flaws like i know the problem there's problems with it and so what got me through it what got me through it was like sometimes you know i'm working on the game every night for like a year and a half but sometimes like i'd do a new thing or i'd put in a song like put in the music or do the sound effects and then i'd hit play and then all of a sudden i'd see like a glint of what the finished game would look and feel like to a new player and those were really important moments especially at the ending of the first tree where i was like okay this i think people like the game i saw it like kind of like this like the wool was taken from over my eyes and i could see it from what it was just for a second and like yeah what what else happened it's just it's totally normal like when i went to pax west for the first time in 2017 again i was like so excited me and my brothers went with me and we got like the exhibitors pass so we could just go straight past the line of like thousands of people waiting at 5 00 a.m to get in and it is like i just couldn't believe i was like why me like why do i deserve this and yeah and even though like i had people coming up to me and saying i've been following this for a long time and i like i couldn't believe it like i refused to believe it and then there was like by the end of like exhibiting you know ended this was in the indie mega booth by the end of like exhibiting at pax i like started like telling people yeah here's a flyer you can just throw it away if you want and i'd straight up say that because it just it's not in my wheelhouse to be like a sales guy or whatever and just say i love my game because the honest truth was no i knew it was flawed but i saw a glimpse of it of that it what it could be yeah and my brother's like my brothers would be like what did they start saying they started getting so upset with me they heard me say like oh yeah here's a button pin you just throw it away it probably sucks and my brothers were like david you say that one time i'll smack you hey how many brothers do you have i have two okay i've got three and a sister do you have any sisters yeah you have a sister one sister two brothers cool yeah similar similar family structure my my brother's considered me the sister [Music] so with similar family structure i was the youngest but you're the youngest you know i i don't know where you are position in your family but i'm the youngest and so i'm always always feeling a ton of insecurity but i don't i don't show it and so i push push push push like i push my content on youtube social media and like you i've got i've got my games on all these different platforms and i just say yes even though i feel a no so it's like i get my publisher reached down they're like thomas do you want to do you know pinstripe physical copy in europe and i'm like yes and there and i don't even know what it means i don't sometimes i get worried i'm gonna get sued or something like i don't know for like because uh the artwork here is you know someone illustrated the artwork and there's so many there's so many things that you gotta legal things you gotta think about and so my point is is that putting all of your content putting your games all over the world on everybody's device like your games uh the first tree like it's it's now on mobile do you feel like almost like you have to ignore ignore a sense of panic that your game that you created is is bringing in a ton of money and you're hoping that i don't know this is a weird maybe this is weird but you you're hoping you don't get found out i don't know if you've ever felt that way before you but but it's not real it's not real because what what what are they gonna find out that it's a bad game that it sucks that you're a fraud like it's such a weird feeling and i've been feeling that way and i don't know what it is um you know yeah you are describing something that i've heard a lot of game developers they have this feeling and i don't know if you've heard of it it's called imposter syndrome yeah yeah and that's what you're describing it sounds like textbook imposter syndrome and i i feel the same way i don't know i don't know what it is with game developers in particular but i'm sure it happens in every artistic discipline yeah but now you're like you're not and i feel like right it's not that i feel like an imposter it's that it even though i do agree that that is something that i struggle with it's more of a feeling of did i do something wrong to find success have you ever felt that way did i do something wrong to get where i'm at like to have games on nintendo switch to make to to make video games and be working doing it full time did i do something wrong it's a it's like i don't know what it is like i grew up in my family you never told a lie you did not lie that was like the biggest rule in my family growing up and so i i just am constantly feeling this weird sense that i'm not being me and that my games aren't good and that they're i'm taking people's money and it's probably because of youtube comments people being nasty but it's just a weird i don't know we could take this out of the podcast if you don't like it but it's just a it's a weird feeling and i don't understand it no i i totally get what you're saying i think it has to do it's one thing just to make games it's one thing just to release games and that's like your hobby yeah it's another thing to be an entrepreneur and you are like you're literally creating a studio like look at all the stuff you're doing thomas like you're making games you're making games on console which in my experience is very hard it's like the final boss of game development really it's pretty tough and then you're also doing a youtube channel i know a lot of full-time youtubers who have less subscribers than you you're also doing a full-time you know online school full-time game dev yeah which is a ton a ton of work i had no idea how much work would be i thought it'd be like for me personally because i'm doing the same thing i just like oh this will be like maybe less than a year that would be fun like another stream of revenue but it takes a lot of work to like teach people well and you know to get a good job and stuff so i it does i think and also like your your father your husband it's it's a lot of habits yeah and maybe you're just feeling maybe you feel that way just because there's so many things stretching you and you feel like you should be doing one thing 100 but that's not that's not life that's not life man and you shouldn't feel bad about dividing yourself and trying to conquer as many you know [Music] conquer these obstacles especially when digital you know digital entrepreneurship is so dependent on multiple streams of income which is again something that you're doing but no you're it's not unusual i here here's something that's helping me because i've talked to friends about this being like i just focus on the negative and i just only see the flaws and the stuff i make or i only focus on like the negative feedback which by the way side note i'm just not checking negative reviews or even i rarely check just on social media yeah just even on social media i just rarely check comments which i appreciate all the nice people saying nice things i really do right there's so much to do i can't check everything online do you want to know what i did about it david what did you do i hired a personal assistant to do it for me like for everything like email and stuff uh yep yep wow that's amazing um so i i did check all the comments for my latest video because i hired an editor for the video for the cyberpunk game cool that i made so i hired an editor for it because um because i just needed help but i checked the comments because i wanted to make sure that my new approach and his new approach was working and it is so that's good but yeah like i hired a personal assistant um to just read because i want to be informed like i want to know what people think about my games and i want to know what they think about the school and my youtube channel and the projects i'm working on it's important data because that's data that tells you how to improve it like you need to see it but without the personal insults i guess right exactly oh man you know i i gotta say i be sure to if you ever get a negative comment see if that's the same person over and over again because i've had okay so two of the really painful things and this person knows exactly what my insecurities are i don't know how they know but this person when they like when they comment on my projects on youtube they they push the perfect button to make me upset like to like hurt and i found out that it's the same person every time oh and i've never banned a person in my life that's control if they're doing it over and over again it's almost more than a troll it's it's like somebody who's it's almost like a brother or like somebody who's really close to you who knows what really pisses you off and makes you feel upset so anyway i uh for the first time in my life i banned this person and i was like you know what i i don't i'm okay with free speech and all that but at some point i just got to say look i can't handle this anymore so i'll see you later no that's okay like your mental health and just you know what you can handle that comes first so that's good so how how have the reviews been and how is the if you don't mind me asking the revenue been for your mobile launch i know we're talking about all these cool things and they all like they're all kind of related they really are but like yeah i was let's see we were talking about just putting yourself out there and you know i try to be pretty honest like self-evaluating myself and i do think i'm good at like even though i'm uncomfortable doing marketing and stuff i'd do it anyway because i know that's what you need to do to succeed now in indie games and so that's why that's why i like i don't particularly like posting on reddit and putting myself out there in front of hundreds of thousands of people where the majority of people are nice but some of them are really mean but anyway yeah it's important you just you just got to keep putting yourself out there and important thing i tell my students is like just get over yourself like make games like release them and if no if someone everyone hates it that's okay like you can make your next game better and that's that's what i'm learning like releasing my game still and you know i'm not still still learning a lot i'm still like what also this real quick and then i'll talk about sales stuff i know that's what everyone wants to hear about is revenue but no this is so interesting though cause i i do feel really alone right now and people are probably like man thomas is really emo today me too it was a it was a weird week and last week was kind of weird and dude by the way you and i both had a kid right yes uh and you had did you have a son you had a son it's on october 24th and i had a son october 8th and this kid this kid is kicking my butt david he is so and it's a good thing but he is so energetic and squirmy and it's so hard to get him to go to sleep and so it's i think i'm just sleep deprived and on top of all of the just regular entrepreneurship stuff you have the major insecurity the cherry on top of insecurity which is am i a good dad yeah which that's the biggest one so that's where i'm at right now yeah you're you're fine dude just the fact that you're asking am i a good dad am i a good you know game developer and stuff that means you're trying that means like you're probably good if you're even asking those questions so you're doing good man if you would have seen me at 3am two nights ago i uh i definitely i definitely screamed um sleep just remember and you know it's important everybody parents and non-parents alike sleep deprivation isn't a joke it's honestly sleep deprivation you know that's what they do in torture camps right it's like you're a prisoner of war i know they do sleep deprivation to make you go insane so it's serious did you know did you know the navy seals train with babies screaming but not uh like what on they don't have actual babies right well no no but they have them on the okay this is just what i heard they put them on the loudspeaker while they're training because it causes your adrenaline like dude i could lift a car if i needed to because it's not it's not it's not that you feel good when you hear a baby screaming but it definitely wakes you up and that's another problem with a baby crying at 3am is like my wife is really good she's so good at like she'll she'll she'll handle silas you know change his diaper feed him and she'll get back to sleep no problem but me when he's when silas is screaming what i'm i'm awake so it's like 3 a.m and i'm like awake so i have to spend another hour trying to get to sleep yeah you know dude it's hard fatherhood parenthood in general is the ultimate challenge but it's very realistic it's the ultimate reward in my opinion it's great it's great so dude i wish you luck no it's hard but don't don't feel bad that you're inadequate because we all are right but like you're trying you're doing good yeah it's it's it's tough balancing all these things and just to put in perspective because it's hard to talk about it especially with people who i want i want what you have you have the perfect life and and i do love my life and i'm really like blessed and fortunate but to put in perspective 2020 even though i was like had my dream job had a beautiful healthy baby boy it's the hardest year of my life easy like totally serious the hardest year of my life i'm having to make changes just like to keep my mental health up and being overwhelmed by all those like you know the business hats and making games and teaching people and having the internet so many people wanting your attention and stuff so yeah i don't know it's a big combination of things but yeah 2020 was hard it's probably hard for a lot of you guys and it was it was it was i know right it probably i mean i know my audience they i've heard a lot of stories of people who lost their jobs and some places like my my state isn't locked down anymore people don't really care here um people could take take that and do what they want with it but it's a it's a different per state and per country um but on top of all of the craziness you decided to do this mobile launch and so you started doing it and then i was like okay well i want to do a mobile launch and so dude it's been tough it's been really really tough and i'm curious about the development process because for me um i'm porting pinstripe to mobile and this game is from 2016. and so i had to upgrade my project from unity 2016. i think it was actually built in 2015. whatever that was called is that you're going to be five unity five okay and i'm i'm currently upgrading and i hired someone to help me and he's doing the majority of the work i'll be honest but he's doing the majority of the work and the budget keeps going up because he had to upgrade from five to 2017 yeah and i'm curious what your experience was with the upgrading process yeah i hear you that can i could kill a project upgrading that many versions i know um yeah so let's talk about mobile again like in retrospect doing the mobile port while having a brand new baby i really just wanted it done before the end of the year but now i'm just like that was too much um yeah so but i i did it and it was all because of the help of matt um from do games his nintendo switch optimizations were the only reason it was able to work on mobile and so that's what got me thinking about the idea and i also didn't think sorry go ahead i thought uh sorry to interrupt the your game seems very simplistic and clean and so i'm curious what kind of optimizations were needed oh like just when it first got when i first put the pc build on nintendo switch it was 9 frames a second there's a lot going on and yeah like it's low poly but what kills the game is real time shadows and that gives it that striking look is like it does all the tree like every leaf you know every leaf from the tree cards the leaf cards on the trees they're they're they're a real time shadow hitting the fox and so they sway in the wings and everything but it's not mobile friendly it wasn't even switch friendly for a while and so were the post processing effects a problem yeah all the post processing okay that all got removed for nintendo switch oh man i'm sorry dude because that that is that is how it helps i watched one of your yeah i watched one of your tutorials on your your online course and you you just you lathered on the image effects and it and rightfully so because it made it look gorgeous absolutely gorgeous and i know i do the same and so we were preparing uh me and my publisher we were preparing neversong for nintendo switch and what really killed performance on nintendo switch was the particle effects um and i i'm not sure what it is i think it's some kind of exponential decline in frame rate the more particles that are on top of each other with an additive filter yeah that's overdraw right like having transparent materials in front of transparent materials will kill right mobile performance and also also we were bringing it to apple as well and so um it was a real pain in the butt because we had to basically simulate part because i love putting particle effects in my game like uh in my games like uh like fog sort of rolling across the scene you know and what we had to do is we had to put a transparent png that looked like fog and loop it over the front of the screen because the particles just weren't working for switch or mobile and by the way though those are two two of our my highest grossing platforms and so you cannot you cannot say well we're just gonna not worry about those two platforms um apple is the highest highest grossing i can't per my nda i can't say how much apple makes but i will say that is my highest um grossing uh platform um and then switches i think switch is second or third steam is right in there in the middle i think yeah so those are the yeah there's yeah there's so many things to talk about whether it's optimizing and stuff but it's it's possible and you have to do lots of little tricks like all the particle effects in the first tree ford knit to no switch and thus mobile they all got turned into the mobile optimized shaders you can change those and that saves quite a bit um we had to do this is where matt's genius came in from due games we had to totally erase self shadows on trees which means going into the default shaders the tree shaders in unity and changing that and then we had to do this fake shadow proxy system which basically like instead of there's actually in the first tree mobile and switch every tree on the on the terrain there's actually an invisible 2d sprite next to each tree that is um that is faking the shadow that is cast on the on the environment in the fox so that right there that's what got us to 30 frames on switch oh i love that so you you could not let go of those shadows you wanted them so badly yeah that was the first plan yeah that was the first plan was matt matt uh tried it without any shadows at all and i was like this this isn't the same game we need the shadows yeah and so he came up well the long shadows make it look like the sun is is sort of setting and it's that twilight mood long shadows i i my shadows in my games i've never used lighting in my games because they're 2d um although i did discover 2d lighting finally and it's in unity and it's still in beta but it's awesome it's so cool but yeah in my games i always draw um there's an artist called his name is ivan to earl people should look him up he's incredible he's amazing he always has these really long shadows and what it does is it puts you in a dream a dream like state in your head and i'm not sure what it is or why we're that way but when there's long shadows suddenly we feel like we're in this twilight mood and so i i can understand why you you spent so much time trying to get those shadows in the game i think it's really important yeah no it's yeah it was a lot of work but switch switch is the reason i was able to quit my job and that was in so i released it in the end of 2018 which is where it before it got really saturated and all like you know there's all these industry awesome industry experts like i follow on twitter and stuff and they they follow all like the market and like how how each platform's doing and switch switch is not what it used to be and he said he's like i told him i was like here like this is kind of like the idea of like you know i did this pretty much this well on switch and he's like wow that is very unusual now that never happens even for big releases so that's that's where like the luck component came in where i got accepted on the switch a little earlier like before a lot of other people and it's yeah it's tough and what i'm saying that's kind of what i'm seeing now with mobile is because five years ago you would have seen all the articles online saying mobile mobile's dead you have to be free to play with in-app purchases to even have a shop paid apps don't really work anymore but here's the thing at least like you know with ios there is still like paid app sections and apple still they have a more they have they focus more on artistic gaming experiences and i think that was one of the reasons they made apple arcade was because they saw like the in-app you know the freemium freemium games flooding the market and they're like no yeah we there's room in the market for shorter artistic games that don't lend itself well to in-app purchases and i think that's why they made apple arcade like when they when i saw the video when they first announced it there's all these cool indie developers showing off their games i'm like these are all beautiful games and they're yeah they just they couldn't work as in you know freemium kind of titles well the i think the artsy game business model has completely i would say it's had a metamorphosis i think it's become better um becau because well it's been it's it's had a metamorphosis for some game developers and for others it's been a radical change that means that people aren't making as much money as they used to but i know that my games are are good to sell okay so far this is true it could i could be wrong in the future but for example neversong we were able to sell that to apple arcade um and because they were looking for an artistic genre type experience that was really moody really atmospheric and really artsy to be honest with my audience and your audience and i tell my students this you need to be careful making artsy games because you're not going to sell a ton of copies like individual copies it's it's unlikely i'm not saying it's not possible but it's unlikely however the the real money is finding platforms to partner with especially these new subscription models yeah because they're gonna be like hey it's a two hour game we can sell it we could offer it for free on our platform we'll give you 200 grand it's like hey you know a year of work i just made 200 grand so that's kind of where my head is um where i think game development's gonna go in a couple years what do you think absolutely that's it's the only logical way to think about it like you just you considered i don't know the death of blockbuster and renting games and the death people buying physical media people just they get all their media now from netflix or from streaming services and you think about honestly like i didn't even really think it was a viable you know you know whole industry marketing plan until xbox game pass came out and just it's killing it and they're getting like they bought bethesda like can you imagine like what yeah did you know about that i didn't know that no incredible microsoft bought bethesda creators of you know that's id software that's um yeah oblivion skyrim uh it's just so unbelievable so like now like imagine like the next doom game is like an exclusive to a subscription service yeah i don't know it's just you know and you know even now like you can watch something on netflix and still rent the copy on amazon or whatever but having those exclusives on these subscription services that's important and i think that this this brings uh an important point home which is it's really good to be friends like you and i are friends we're always talking either we're texting or on discord and i've got like 10 to no how many i think maybe 15 close game dev friends who are in the industry i could be wrong with that specific number but i think it's really important to have close friends in the industry because the big question with the subscription model is well what are platforms looking for what do they want because a lot of times the platforms like no we don't want artsy games anymore we're actually looking for you know you know multiplayer games so you never really know what they're looking for but i can say that i have friends who have who have told me um like some some friends that i guess i shouldn't say they are there are certain friends who have told me like hey this company is looking for this kind of game and i'm like oh really and so i realized oh i can make a 15-minute demo and pitch it to him and then sell it to him and so i think that's really important for your audience to hear this something i teach in my course which is you've got to get to know people in the industry and you've got to start holding hands with developers across the world to figure out what does you know epic games what are they looking for um what is stadia looking for what is apple arcade looking for i think that's really really important otherwise you're really shooting in the dark you know i totally agree and that's i don't particularly love you know social media or whatever but like i've created such amazing you know industry you know friendships and contacts over all these platforms including including you know include just talking to people on discord there's indie game marketing discord channels out there and then you know i that's that's part of the that's one of like the biggest reasons people love game dove unlocked is there's the discord community and we're all helping each other out giving each other feedback and that helps people finish games and so yeah maybe yeah i wanted i did want to i still want to talk about i'll we'll get to ios revenue i'm going to give like general numbers how my launch went with the future but also i wanted to talk to you about full-time game dev and how yeah if you're thinking like that community is helping you out and if it's helping each other out you know what i mean it's i well it's one of those things where it's like um it makes me kind of okay so you put in a ton of work up for your online course i think you said two and a half years of work um well i spent a lot of my revenue that i made from my games on hiring people to help me so i was able to put together my course in six months and and i just put so much effort and so a team together to build this thing and what i found is even though everything is beautiful and it's polished and i love the content i created i'm so proud of it what people what they value the most is they value the discord's community i think what makes it important is when this sounds really bad and i hope people don't take it wrong but this is just what i found it's true and i don't know what to do with it i don't know what it means but when you put a discord community behind a paywall what it does is it creates a bottleneck and the only people that get through are the people who really really care and like so all of the people in my game dev community are people who had to buy the course but because they spent the money they're really passionate about game development and so it's not um i can't swear it's not a cluster f it's it's actually a very it's a very helpful community and so yeah like that's that's probably the number one um one of the number one because i definitely don't want to you know devalue the course uh because people are they they've learned a lot from the course but just having that community is so important um and like you said social media sucks in so many ways like i'm i'm actually pretty much i i don't think i want to do i don't think i want my family to be a social media family i'm pr i'm one of the going to be one of those crazy dads where i'm like no social media because it's just so damaging yeah there's so many bad things with social media but what i can say is from a business perspective and like a networking perspective if you're not on board with social media you're going to have a really really hard time advancing in your indie game dev career it's going to be tough because i can't tell you how many times i've met somebody like i met you and then i also met um this dude named kevin and we i was i think i was i was at i was at pax east because kickstarter asked me to be at the booth at pax east to showcase my game that's awesome i was at pax east and i'm the guy who says don't go to trade shows they're a waste of money but i met kevin he just came up to my booth and said hey what's this game this is cool and a small conversation turned into three hundred thousand dollars plus of revenue uh was this some armor games was it something it wasn't uh it was a serenity forge oh man oh yeah yeah yeah of course and so all of these all of these tiny little conversations that you think don't matter can matter a ton a ton they can change your life and so if you're if you're insecure and you don't want to talk to people you need to break through that you need to get through that and talk to people it's hard it's the fake it till you make it thing because i'm i'm pretty shy that's right i'm not one to like just talk to strangers at a trade show but like these are like these are cool people we share the same interests and everyone 99 of them are super nice they want to help yeah man yeah serenity forge that's that's so cool and i've told you before like just emailing you you helped connect me to do games yeah and they i could not have ported my game without their help and that's the reason i quit my job was just it was yeah it actually scares the crap out of me because it was one email it was one email that changed my life like what if i just was sick that day or i was like i'm not going to email him i know i know and yeah for me like the you know elephant in the room my online course has really been doing well um i still the majority of my income does come from games um selling my games but the online course in the last two months is becoming a close second which i hate i hate that because i i don't want it to replace it but it's just been like i have i think i have 1200 students now so it's just been doing really well that's way more than me that's awesome i i could be wrong there it's hard to know what the date is because sometimes you can get a student but they didn't actually pay for the course but um which is a weird thing but anyway my point is is that that conversation that you and i had i i think i called called you or something and i asked you about your online course so my whole point is like it's these tiny little conversations with with and they're just friendly it's not like i'm like david will you be my mentor it's more like hey i want to talk to you about your course like how's that going for you and you just sort of chat and have a good conversation and suddenly your whole paradigm shifts here's a really cool story and i hate to derail the mobile converse i think we keep we keep it we keep talking i'm gonna do a separate youtube video all about it but i will talk about it by the end i will talk about it by the end of our podcast well i had i had the coolest conversation um i had the coolest conversation with somebody i i met him at the pool i was i was at my um my friend's house and we were just at his pool and there was a guy in the pool and he was the owner of a local pizza restaurant and just a normal dude right but this guy is easily multi-millionaire he's just killing it he's got he's got one of the most successful pizza places in my town and i'm in a small town but he's killing it and so i say hey man would you be willing to take me out to lunch and and i'll pay for you i'll take you out to lunch and i just want to ask you what's your paradigm where's your head space and it sounds like an odd thing to do because it's like thomas you're in games you sell games what does he know about games but we just got a pizza and he ended up buying it for me because it was his restaurant so he got me a pizza and a beer and we just sat there for an hour and he gave me so much good business advice and i posted this on twitter once it was easily worth 100 100 000 what he told me and and i don't want to get specific about what it is because there's a well it's fine he he told me that i need to start teaching game development as well and so he was like and in my head two years ago i was like that's a that's a stupid idea because because i hear about all these game developers who's all they do is sell games what he taught me was that you can sell games but you can also pursue other means of revenue and and that's when i started doing youtube that's when i started teaching and so i'm selling games and i'm also teaching how to sell games and my whole point in the story is that you should be listening to people who are successful no matter what industry they're in even if they're a successful pizzeria owner they're going to give you information that you just it's just not in your head and it could change your career dude that's like it's all about finding the balance between doing something you love but that there's also a market for and that you're able to do the middle of that venn diagram is that magic job that you should chase because like we do have to pay the bills and of course game development or youtube or whatever that could be a hobby but it takes on a new it's a new challenge it takes on new significance when it's your full-time job and that's why yeah like it's that's that's kind of why it's been a hard transition for me is it's like this was a hobby like it just was my creative outlet to make a game about a fox and now all of a sudden you know my the bills on that fall on my shoulders because i'm like the main breadwinner in my family it's like how am i gonna like pay for my kids education and pay the mortgage and stuff and it it does like there's a balance because i like i could just do whatever i wanted right and i'd probably just be playing bloodborne which i just got last night honestly i'd rather did you i'd rather be playing bloodborne today than like doing emails this morning but yeah i don't know yeah it's just like but i need to work i need to find you know commercial product that's also true to my you know intentions and my heart and it is it's i don't have an easy answer for it but it's possible it's possible it takes time you have to like find yourself and getting that advice from the community and from like people that you look up to that is always time well spent and so i've i've i just i think the community aspect also like the online courses and stuff that's been by far everyone's favorite part of my online school game of unlocked yeah and yeah i just think that's great you're doing that and yeah i full-time game dev i yeah i i do want to i did want to talk about it a little bit because you you did it for me you talked about games of unlocked which meant a lot so and i did like thomas is my friend but i've been a fan of thomas for a long time before i even talked to him and it is a good thing like i seriously i i looked through all the scripts i looked at all the videos i'm sorry i didn't have time to watch every video but i did read it the whole script and it's just so high quality and polished and i love like your little master class uh like the meetings you do doing the feedback session tomorrow awesome yeah so guys check out appreciate it check out full-time game dev he really is this isn't sponsored we're just two guys trying to make a living yeah thomas is doing a great job he really is like one of the hardest workers i know so i think you'd be i think you'd really love full-time game dev so link in the description and coupon code for sure well thanks man i appreciate that that means a lot um i'm how are you gonna give me those mobile numbers yeah um let's let's talk i wanna know the mobile numbers let's talk mobile numbers so let's see i i still don't know the exact rules about you know ios mda or whatever so i'm going to keep yeah if you don't want to if you david if you don't want to talk about them i'm just going to keep it general because people okay here's the thing i was my game for a few days was number 30 of all time underpaid apps not of all time but overall during those few days it was number 30 on the charts no way and you would think you're like wow number 30 of the what is a hundred thousand apps on the app store like yeah what does that look like you know number 30 game paid app and overall since i launched november 30th i have sold thousands of units but not tens of thousands of units right and it's a five dollar game so you can kind of do the math okay like we're looking at yeah you know like low to mid five figures so far yep and that actually like i was comparing it to like other platforms and it's very good ios being featured made all the difference in the world um and comparing it to other platforms i was like this was worth my time ios was worth my time apple arcade deal would have been better i think but that wasn't that wasn't an option for me so it was like i was excited i was really happy i did it because this is it's a small like it's dropped down considerably but maybe more features will happen in the future which that's a cool thing apple does yeah if you go to the adventure games tab you'll see something like exp like amazing exploration games and i'm sure maybe one day they'll put the first tree in a list like that and that's a lot of organic visibility right right exactly so it was worth my time for ios um and it it's kind of harder because steam and consoles is so 100 dependent on discount like discount driven revenue always yes and i don't ios doesn't really do that like they don't have a sales section you can just really can discount an app but there it won't even tell you that it's discounted you're just changing the price so you have to like make a ment you have to make an actual note in the description saying hey it's 30 off for whenever and it doesn't it doesn't draw people as much as like going on the sales page on a switch and seeing all these games for 70 off which that's when you really that's when you really make your revenue is through the sales so i i am curious i think it will continue to be right now daily amount it makes more than other than switch it makes more than all the platforms um individually so it was worth my crazy i didn't think mobile is that way i really didn't yeah but you do have to keep in mind this was like right now i think it's if you go it's those you can fix you can pick two sub genres and the subgenres i picked was adventure and then family for the first tree and right now i think the first tree is number 50 on the family one and it's off the charts on the best-selling charts now so it's not it's not that high but it still makes yeah i don't know it sells around you know a couple dozen units a day which that can add up and it's just it's a drop in the bucket right and so ios by itself even though i kind of won i guess you could say you won the jackpot i'm just trying to manage expectations because it is it's hard now and yeah if you were to get like that lucky you still wouldn't still want to be enough to quit your job obviously but right like you could that if you add that with ps4 and or i guess ps5 now like if you're targeting ps5 and the new xbox and then switch and steam all those things combine you're like and then you know i'm doing youtube now and i got the online course thing too and it's all these different revenue streams and they they make a difference and they add up that's and that's what that's what entrepreneurs definitely learn that's just that's what you have to do it wisely you have to tackle this problem and say okay how do i continue to add the passive income yeah i've had uh i've had uh some people like trolls on youtube say you could be a full-time game developer if you're if you're as uh obsessed with entrepreneurship as thomas and i think there's some truth to that like i'm looking at my numbers right now and i make money all over the place um like you know never song around six figures in the first uh seven months of launching on steam that's very respectable so few developers get that it's really hard yeah and it's not you know but it's not amazing either it's fine um pinstripe is about i could say about 300 000 gross on steam that's awesome um so those you know i'm getting those kind of numbers on steam but over the course of time with va tax and then um or and also retail units are up sorry not retail units returned units and then you know doing a cut with a publisher and then giving giving valve it's cut and then also taxes which depending on your tax bracket it could be upwards of 40 percent and then if you tithe at a church you know that's another ten percent so what ends up happening is i'm looking at my steam numbers these are not enough to support my family um they they seem like they are but once you start cutting down the cost of everything it's like well not really and so i'm looking at other other numbers here like i sold um i did a game with pewdiepie which was uh called zero deaths and that that game actually made eight thousand dollars even though it was free was that on um or was that like yeah i was on age so people just donated i've never heard of that many donations for a free game before my life they have to thank pewdiepie for that that's awesome but also never song you know i did kickstarter campaigns um and on kickstarter we raised 93 000. pinstripe raised a hundred thousand dollars um on kickstarter and then there's also prize money like my previous games one of them made twenty five thousand dollars that was skinny that was prize money um another game i you know made twenty thousand dollars in ad revenue and also a publishing agreement so my point saying all this and sort of revealing these numbers is these came from all these different sources and it comes back to like what i was talking about earlier where i feel panicked a lot um especially lately sorry if you could hear my dog he's barking no problem but part of the reason why i feel panicked a lot is because you've got all these plates spinning yeah and you're you're you're bringing in revenue from all of these different places and something i have to tell myself something i have to tell my students is it's okay it's not as scary as it seems it seems scary but if you take a couple days off from spinning plates and just chill go for a drive like everything's okay everything's okay and it's like you were saying earlier it's a drip of income that slowly just drips into your account and what what seems like you know a thousand dollars a month what it turns into is 200 000 in a year of just dripping from all of these different places and i think it was last year let me look at the numbers here last year well yeah 2020 was was my first year where i hit um over 300 000 in revenue wow um congratulations so it just keeps it just keeps building up you know yeah and it's coming from all of these different places um it's not just one game you know it's a lot of different places and i think that that is my method of being an indie game developer and by the way for your audience this isn't this does not include any online course stuff i can't stand people who sell online courses well okay i shouldn't say this i shouldn't say that i it's okay to sell online courses and not actually do it it happens but it does bother me when people sell online courses and they don't have proof that they know what they're doing so you and i both our primary source of income is from our game sales i think that's really important and my source of income for my games it's all over the place it's physical copies of pinstripe it's mobile launch which we're going to be doing here in a bit it's apple arcade it's xbox ps4 um and youtube driving wish lists which eventually convert to sales during a steam sales event you know so it's all over the place that's the wise way to do it in this crazy market just because like not only are you a game developer you're in all sorts of media you're doing the youtube thing and teaching and everything yeah so it's it's a lot it's a lot of plates you keep spinning you're right and right and i think people just i i get this too and i want to clarify for everybody you said 300 000 which that is that's a lot of money but like first of all in san francisco that's barely like maybe middle class i'm not sure but you're not in san francisco i think it is i think it is i'm not in san francisco yeah you're not in san francisco but still like money it can be so relative especially when you're a business owner you're putting that money back into the business and that's something i did like i'm i'm doing well and i'm really fortunate financially but uh this year like or like in the past few months i hired a unity guy who isn't cheap i hired a video editor and i heard a community manager and those are like it's it's weird when a business is also like your personal life but it is like you're running a business and that money goes back into the business too yeah so yeah yeah it's interesting paying for that paid for just porting my game was not wasn't cheap and that was an investment it was kind of a scary investment on my end yeah so just to clarify because it can sound like oh my gosh you are so rich but you're so rich and i i can imagine i can imagine you and i are more well off than most indie game developers i can imagine that's true but maybe i'm wrong but i can i can honestly say yeah like things are going really well for me but another thing to keep in mind is guys like just because you made a hundred thousand dollars in a year it's not it's not really a hundred thousand dollars yeah it's it's like sixty thousand or seventy thousand dollars after tax and then and then just all these other expenses just randomly come up and so i think it's really important i try and i try and tell people on youtube this all the time it's like you got to be brave and you got to enjoy the transition the process of slowly becoming a business owner because otherwise you get a panic and freak out because you're like wait i thought i had a hundred grand uh-huh and all of a sudden it's all of a sudden it's thirty thousand dollars and i've gotta pay myself a salary for a full year what am i gonna do you know so you've gotta figure out how it works and you've got to be okay you've got to be okay with treating money as an asset as seats and not as play money to go you know buy a new car that's not that's not the point of even though i'm probably going to do that eventually but you know starting out you've got to be willing to invest it back into your company and every game you make needs to get a little bit easier to make and a little bit more profitable it is it's it's truly a ladder you climb like every step every round on the ladder and that's why like you know you shouldn't newcomers shouldn't compare themselves to us and but eventually like you'll do you'll have one success lead to another success or you'll have another you have a failure and it kind of brings you back a little bit and that's okay you keep going and you keep going yeah and eventually you'll look behind you or in the case of a ladder you'll look below you and be like wow i am really high up and then they'll then you'll have people saying how did you do that how did you get your game like on this and how did you make this much money and it is it starts one step at a time and that's where like the motivation is required that's where the discipline is required and having it's just crazy like i didn't i still didn't quit my job after i released on steam and i had a great steam launch that like did yeah that did six figures that year and i still was nervous that you didn't quit i would have quit i don't know yeah i just i just felt i just knew like once the taxes and everything and then porting the consoles costed a lot i was like still still a risk and then after the launch did well i was like okay i i can quit my job now right exactly have you david have you heard of the 80 20 principle i'm sure you have yeah the uh pareto principle yeah pareto i think it's parent principle and i think most people have but i think it's relevant to this conversation because climbing the ladder is not you just slowly standing on top of cash it's not like a lot of people think get becoming successful just means you build wealth and then you're able to use that wealth to generate more wealth which is true like that's one way of doing it but another way of doing it is having the humility to identify where your flaws are where you suck so that you can really focus on the 20 the 80 20 principle is 20 of your input generates 80 of your output so really the reason most americans work 8 to 10 hour days is not it's probably not because the time is needed it's because we do so much with our time that is not related to our output but we think it is right yeah and so what ends up happening for me is i've learned through humility even though i can be a real cocky jerk sometimes but through humility i've learned what's that 20 percent that makes me valuable that makes my games valuable and i've identified that and i'm still learning but i've identified what makes me special as an indie game developer and i've thrown out the rest all the other junk that i do or used to do i don't do that stuff anymore i just focus on the 20 for me my 20 is working like six to eight hours a day i gotta be honest i only work like six hours lately um it's fine six six hours of that day is just making really high quality youtube videos about games while also working on selling the games that i already have this is actually a really interesting thing that i've been learning which is why are you making a new game thomas when you have two games that can be sold on other platforms as well right right that's kind of what and that's what you're doing is what made me go to mobile i was like okay this is my job now i need more revenue resources mobile like i haven't done mobile and also like i wanted i wanted to got to catch them all i wanted to self-publish on every platform just because i was being yeah just a goal of mine i really wanted to do that right that's kind of what determined that here's the thing like would i i've rather made a cool fun new game yeah probably but oh yeah i'm sure it's a balancing act right because now like i'm doing online school which i do enjoy like i love it i love video editing i've done film my whole career but also i want to make a new game like there's all these parts of me that i want to express and i want to i want to work on but i'm i think part of you know the entrepreneurship the business-minded thing is like hey what's the best order and so now when this online school is done which i'm i'm coming up to version 1.0 soon that's why i hired the video editor to help me finish it yeah we're going to make like a first tree inspired game and show people how to make it from beginning to end that's been nicely requested which i'm excited to do wow and then i have this new game idea which i can't wait to start on and yeah i'm just just looking forward to it but it takes it takes time to get there i'm still climbing that ladder that imaginary ladder and getting to the the point where i can work on whatever i want which is not are there any things are there any things that you've learned that you should not be doing yourself yes and so that was one of the big things where i made the goal in 2020 because i wasn't wasn't doing too hot and it was because i was stubborn in a lot of ways like what do you mean you weren't doing too hot what do you mean i just i just had a bad year mentally i'd never been more mentally mentally unhealthy in my life was 20 20. really yes see i didn't know that david and we talked a lot um i'm sorry that that was the case how did it feel um what was going through your head like what was the mental and wellness what did it feel like it was just being overwhelmed and like i was trying to save the world honestly i had to come to terms with a lot of like my personality flaws like because yeah i like i i i don't even know how much to go into detail i'm doing fine and like i never was like i never was like in a really horrible place but i just i wasn't as happy as i thought i would be doing my dream job that's really what it came down to yeah and the reason i laugh is because your personality seems like somebody who you you're always trying to help people yeah um and that's actually not my personality my personality is okay it's not my job like i can't answer it i can't answer every email like youtuber my youtube subscribers always email me and i have to just i just i just mark them as red i don't even open them because it's like there's so many and i'm like if i if i open these up i'm going to go crazy i mean it's just not possible i get it and i know like you care about people obviously but there's of course also not god you know yeah you have to set boundaries because everyone wants your help everyone like needs wants you to develop their game for you and stuff and you have to draw you have to make boundaries and you can still help people you know still like be a listening ear without like killing yourself to help all these people i don't know yeah i think your best way of helping people david is you're a really good content creator and so combining that coaching david which you coached me earlier in this video helping me you know feel more secure emotionally secure you're a really good coach but you're also a really good content creator like i'm when you first started launching youtube videos i was like i gotta get my together like i gotta get it together fast because this guy is gonna kick my butt and so and i love that healthy competition like i'm like if he surpasses me in subscribers i've really effed up because i had pewdiepie help me so thanks for that healthy competition love that algorithm yeah dude but my point is okay those two things you're a really good coach and you're a really good content creator combine both of those so that you can coach as many people as possible and just create content you know so the individual level coaching it's a beautiful thing and i think it's meant for a lot of people but for me personally i'm better suited and i think maybe you as well i don't want to tell you what to do but like i think you posting great content on youtube and encouraging hundreds of thousands of people is the way to go you know no i i appreciate that and that's kind of the realization i came to to was just i do need to ask for help and hire people and i was something i was kind of i was being a perfectionist i was also being selfish where i was like no it's mine like i want to do every i want to do every motion graphic and stuff in the course and it was it took a toll i didn't anticipate it and now i'm just learning to let go and not be so much of a perfectionist and then i'm real and then i'm like i'm like wanting to smack myself because i'm realizing like there's a lot of talented people out there who want to help and then like you pay them you know you you set up a job and then they're getting paid so they can help their family whatever and then they're doing a good job yeah so that's what i'm trying to do i got video editors helping me i have a unity guy who's helping me i have a community manager now who's helping me like with the discord community and making it as good as possible and i'm really i've never like i feel lighter than air now which is awesome that's great dude have you ever thought about what this business model's name is what like can we do yeah like i bet it just sort of struck me what we've created is maybe i might sound braggadocious i'll speak from you i'll speak about you what you've created what you've created is a community of people it's like a self i can't figure out what the word is it's like people who are passionate about making games while also a community of people interested in game developers and playing their games because a lot of people who play my games are interested in thomas you know they're not just interested in my games so i've got this community where it's like it's probably a mix though it's got to be it is it is a mix but it's like it's a it's um it's a or or maybe a better way of putting it is and this is what i would do if i was a triple a company and i think they're doing this they're starting brent youtube channels and brands where they talk about the creation of their projects and what it does is it drums up this army this this army of support that you've always got no matter what yeah and i love that i love that i've got youtube subscribers who love watching me make games and maybe a lot of them aren't interested in game development but they're interested in the process because like for me dude i used to i watched the i think we mentioned this in the last podcast but i watched the the making of lord of the rings documentaries oh yeah i love those um there i watched those things backwards and forwards and i wasn't i never became a filmmaker but it what it did is it made me love lord of the rings even more and so i think what you you and i have created is some kind of machine where it's like we create games and while we create those games we're we're drumming up support for the game even though it's not even made and then once it's launched that support propels it onto the steam front page and then you do it over and over and over again it's like this uh this squeaky it's a squeaky clean smooth system you're basically getting paid to make a game we are multimedia gaming digital video tycoon gurus i don't i don't know it's kind of crazy when you think about it because yeah 10 20 years ago this was like to do all this content is like separate departments at a whole studio but i know for uh for years for a couple years i was just doing everything myself and that includes the youtube stuff and the game updates and the console ports and then doing you know did a podcast with you and then doing sponsorships and it's like it's like three businesses in one and it's crazy we can do it all like i can be a live broadcaster now like one of my favorite parts of youtube is doing the live streams i love live streaming and it's just like it's it's so funny like you can buy the equipment you can even do it on your phone really you don't even need equipment and there now you're a broadcast newscaster i don't know it's just crazy to me well there's two things that's just great about live streaming and i haven't done it in a while because i haven't worked on a like full game yet like or in a while my third game i need to get back on it um but what's really cool about live streaming and i encourage anybody who's interested in trying it to give it a shot live streaming game dev is really cool because one you're paying for your game while you create it meaning you get super chats you also get ad revenue and more importantly you get wish lists yes so even though a wish list doesn't have a dollar value yet it will right so you're drumming up this support you're building income for your game while you're creating it that's the first thing that's amazing about live streaming the second thing and i don't know if you've noticed this yet the second theme about live streaming that i love is your game is better because you're constantly in a beta test that's true like you're getting feedback while you're making it which is unbelievably cool yeah that is that's so true i i do love you know like talking to everybody and just answering questions because people they want to learn and they're excited and yeah i didn't think about that that's that's goes along with like this new marketing tactic not a tactic but like this new marketing strategy is discord yeah like all these game developers they create a discord server and they have this community of people who are just excited and they talk in and they'll get new beta builds upload and they'll try stuff out and they'll send they'll send screenshots of bugs and like the creators of the game are there talking with everyone and that's an amazing way to market that's there's so many different tools to marketing and you just have to pick the one that you love the most and really stick with it for me that was yeah that was reddit and imager but there's people who've made huge successful launches with an email list email lists are amazingly effective and so is discord and so is uh like the live streaming like you're saying yeah well you know it may be a good word i think it's important we come up with a word here because i it's really hard for me on a daily basis to be like what am i doing it's because i i spend i spend my time doing videos and then i make a game and then i sell a game and then i and then i work with a publisher in colorado and then i work with a publisher in california and every day feels like random i'm just doing random stuff but it always pays off and it's always profitable so i'm trying to figure out what is this thing that i'm doing and what it feels like is it's like you're building a it's kind of like a church in the sense that it's like there's tons of people who follow you and they're passionate about what you are passionate about yeah so it's like you have a passionate person building something and and teaching about that thing that he's building and then you just have a big support base of all kinds of people game developers but also just people who like your games and so it's almost like a church or a community it's a weird it's like a fellowship and it's like this new thing that's come about because of youtube and discord and it's fascinating to me because it works like it really works um and everybody's happy about it you know it's not just working for me but like my subscribers excuse me on youtube it works for them they get value out of what i'm offering you know oh totally and it's it's kind of like you're like you make yourself a brand i don't know which one yeah it's not what i ever like intended but you know people like that's one of the strongest uh attributes of an indie game developer and that's kind of what i talked about you know about reddit and my gdc talk was you are pretty much one guy maybe you're a small team and even then it's like it's only like a couple friends you're like we i am one guy i worked on this project it's meant a lot for me it'd mean a lot for me if you wish listed it and and then people like that it's like a i don't know it's like this rallying cry to like support these earnest artists who are trying their best and it's it's so much more relatable than like hey i'm like the pr vice director of like this triple-a studio and that's that's where triple-a companies they have a harder time or they have whole divisions trying to like talk to people but there's legal complications if you're just a guy um just a person making games then that's people love that they want to get to know you they want to see how you're doing it and yeah i don't know it's inspiring i think the person who's doing it the best is danny he's the milk guy does he love milk that's right yeah he's like the pewdiepie of game dad his videos are so good like they're just so high-paced and so like frantic and energetic and i'm like man i don't have the energy to do that that's that's us yeah well i hired an editor to to help bring out more energy in me because you know i told you this last time somebody said i looked like a uh a stoner and they were mad they were mad at me a troll was mad at me on youtube they're like how dare you be a stoner and i'm like i'm not a stoner like i don't smoke tired i'm just sleep deprived well for me it's like my wife tells me i have sad eyes um it's just my face the way and the way i was born makes me look tired all the time that's funny and it also has helped it also helps in in in life because people are like thomas is sad you know don't don't make him upset and i'm like no i'm not i'm really not sad i'm fine it's just my eyes it doesn't help but anyway my point doesn't help that you're making bad games too no right i know but yeah like that that that chill vibe that uh i that sad vibe that a lot of my videos have it's great but it's not conducive to growth a lot of times and if you're interested in growth on youtube which at some point all of us are um you got to bring in a little bit more energy and so i'm trying that's why i hired an editor a week ago or two weeks ago to try and bring in a little bit more energy into my videos um and and that that comes back to like the conversation of um that balance of capitalism versus being an artist um you know making a commercial game is there is there a way to be an artist and also be ensure that your game is commercially viable you know i think there is i i really do believe that i do think there's small compromises you need to make along the way but like i i make the videos i want that reflects who i am which is honestly what people want to see they want to see who you are they're interested and maybe you won't appeal to as many people but like i think it's important to like be your best self and still be yourself like i'm not like danny but i'm glad danny's like danny and he's doing a great job oh yeah but like he's like i can learn from parts like attributes that i want to do better and like be a little more energetic i won't i don't want to be exactly like danny because that's not who i am but yeah that's that's what's so cool about indie games is like there's all these game developers there's maybe a bunch right now listening to this video and they're wondering my kids are like screaming like crazy maybe the mike's picking it up i can't hear them i can't hear them they must not scream as loud as my kids um there's all these indie game developers and they're wondering like do people care about my games and i'm like yeah i it's and i can tell them like i really do believe people need to play your game but it needs to be your game it needs to be from you yes and unique but also like your best self like improve like always try to improve yourself but make it your game and there is definitely 100 a market for that i really believe that yeah i i totally agree with that and my my two points there are the first one is there's probably a hundred thousand people out there who are just like you um you know the problem with game development isn't necessarily that you suck at making games i'm not you but like i'm talking about just people in general the problem isn't necessarily that people suck at making games although that's could be part of it but i think it's primarily just lack of information of people knowing you exist and that your games exist right um if i was really smart like if i was a genius especially with like google ads which i'm learning that lately i'm learning how to do google ads lately cool i could have sold i could have sold 200 000 copies of pinstripe really if i really knew where those people were right and that's that's the economic that's the major economic question which is like where are these people and how do you find them and the beauty of of the internet these days is you can find those people you've just got to figure it out and that's called marketing right that's marketing and learning marketing is so important you can make a mediocre game but you're really proud of it and you're passionate about it and it's who you are it's true to who you are but if you don't know how to market it if you don't learn how to get it to people who want it you're not gonna you're not gonna be successful yes um now if you wanna work with a publisher that's a totally different question but a lot of publishers actually suck at marketing um and that's probably a whole other conversation but i will say this there is a there is and i think we talked about this in last in our last podcast but it i think it should be repeated there's you should not feel guilty about being smart with a few aspects of your games to ensure that they sell well you could still be true to yourself while going okay look there's an opportunity here um what's what's really popular right now um are minecraft type games multiplayer type games um among us obviously is social games yeah social games and what i would argue is and i'm probably gonna make a video about this in my course is there a way to go i'm gonna make a social game that is streamable that is easily popular because it's it's kind of similar to something like among us but 80 of the game is just me being true to myself but there's that 20 which is what what makes it viral right and so i wonder if that's that's something that uh our listeners can do which is reconsider being a 100 purist you know yeah i i totally agree it's like being successful can mean so many things and i have to remind people like i do talk about the finances a lot because that's what people want to hear from me but yeah just in my online school it has been so rewarding to see like these you know sometimes they're younger guys sometimes they're 40 to 50 years old and they're like i've always wanted to make a game and then you do like i you know i help them like i just and you know you do this too you kind of like you show them shortcuts because you could learn everything on youtube and googling you could but this just speeds it up so they don't lose motivation and then when they release that game and they got it working and they show it to a friend they just start over the moon and they just to them that's success they're just like i fulfill a lifelong dream i have a video game that people can buy on the internet and they just and i just love that i love that feeling of like these people like it's so pure they just they want to be a game developer and that's what you can do now you can be a game developer oh man i i definitely i think at some point everybody loses their purity in their career at some point it doesn't mean you lose it permanently it's just hard when it's your full-time job when it's i know hobbies it's hard it's fun to make to make some money and so uh there's a balance of like after five years of doing it and i talked to my students about this a lot after doing making a game for five years it's like okay the the beauty and the charm of making a game is gone and it's like at least for me i don't want to speak for you but after you working on games for i think it's been actually a decade for me i'm at a point now where i'm like all right i want to make viable stuff it doesn't mean i don't need to be true to myself but i got to make some viable stuff that's okay because that's awesome because that creative energy it dries up especially when you're 30. um like or what i mean is like once you get out of your 20s i found i turned 30 in august last year and i'm just like i've noticed my creative energy is a little bit less probably actually a lot less it's probably 30 percent lower especially when you got kids and so it's like okay i've got this much creative energy i want to make sure i use it on something that's viable that i can actually sell and sell well and there are tricks to doing that and you've got to be intentional you got to read and research and be humble but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're being immoral or you're not being true to yourself it just means you're probably going to work smarter you know oh totally i hope if anyone has given you grief about that they're being stupid because 10 years 10 years is a long time to do anything and just yeah life is so rich there's so many things to experience and so many different interests to go into like i mean look at look at brackie's like brackie's had like the best youtube i know tutorials that about do you know like the biggest tutorial i don't i think he said they had that video and he explained it really plainly and it just sounds like hey no one's mad at each other we're just shutting down we've done this for a long long time we want to do new things yeah that's awesome like good for them i hope they find happiness in their next endeavors i don't know when i was in high school i was like i am never quitting skateboarding i'm going to skateboard the rest of my life and now i don't do that because i'm 30 32 with kids and stuff but you know it's just there's so many now i love doing other things i have other hobbies and interests and so you just only you can like make yourself happy and so yeah i i'm excited to see what you make and if it means more games i will happily play them if it means something else i'll probably make more games but i'll probably do it in a way that's more uh smart yeah that 80 20 principle where it's like i'm going to do the things that i know that i'm good at and you know to to your audience guys you're not going to know what you're good at until you fail so you've got to be in a position like david you and i are in this position now where it's like we failed a lot with our games in a lot of ways yeah and we know what that 20 is that makes us special and i want to encourage your audience to to really be willing to fall on your face yes and and fall on it hard and cold it's a it's a cold splash of water it's a cold fall like but it's so good because because then you know what you're good at then you know what you can be better at what to dis what to shed like a snake shade shedding its skin what are the things you don't need to be working on like why are you writing a soundtrack you know i'm not talking to you i'm like some people like they spend 40 hours a week writing soundtracks for the game and it's like do you really need to do that like seriously if you if you want to that's fine but if you think you need to do it you really might not need to do it right yes i could i could whatever what's that 20 that makes you special go find that and it's through failure you know i couldn't agree more that's why i always tell people release your game even if it's not great and then make another game like just do it yeah because yeah people forget and that's why people switch projects so many times where they give up on something and they're like got my new game idea and they leave their last game idea unfinished and the the simple truth is that making a game's hard and it stops being fun after a while it does and that's why like you know you need to discipline sometimes you need a coach which helps which i know that's what you're doing with full-time game dev and all that stuff helps you just to finish games and then if you can finish games you know you can do it then you can do it again and again and then one of those games will be successful like it wasn't until rovio the makers of angry bird angry birds their tenth game was angry birds the other nine were utter failures no one cared about them so yeah i said i said ten years it's actually i i've been making games since i was in middle school oh yeah the flash games and flash games yeah and there's so many that were bad um it wasn't until coma which was it's like my third or fourth game maybe and that one made twenty thousand dollars which i know that's a that's a lot of money were you in high school when that came out yeah dude and i felt like i was the coolest person ever that would have that would have blowed my mind i would have been so happy yeah that's amazing i know i'm not sure if i if i told this story in our last podcast but i remember i was driving i i made twenty thousand dollars and i was driving on the road and i looked to my right and there was a there was a person on the highway and they were they were driving a old beat up car and i thought to myself i go that person this is this me being honest by the way i'm not saying this is a good thought process i thought to myself i said that person can't afford a nice car like me and then you want to know what was the funniest part of the story is i was driving a beat-up car it was like it was it was beat up too and my point in telling the story is you should not judge you should not judge anybody based on how they act or look or anything and by the way that twenty thousand dollars was gone like that yeah because it was just life right you pay bills you had to pay for apartment um and so it just went away and so all you know the success you can't bring it with you especially after death you just can't bring it with you and so you've got to be okay with the process we were talking about this earlier you've got to be okay with being in transition always learning always growing if you're not okay with just saying i'm going to make games because i love it right and it because it's fun and i want to learn and i want to become better if that's not your truest deepest motivation then you probably shouldn't make games sure being successful and making a lot of money is is a lot of fun but the money goes away the success eventually becomes dull everything becomes dull everything loses its saltiness and so you just got to learn to be okay with enjoying your life and enjoying the process and that means failing a lot and enjoying failure too you know i couldn't agree more it's it's the journey right and that's right if that's anything and you know like i'm doing good 2020 was hard for a lot of people but i think it was just important i wanted to say that to people to say that i had a hard year because you can have your dream job and still kind of like be kind of like aimless be a little floundering and it really is it's something you know it's something you decide it's something you can train yourself to do like discipline and finishing a game and yeah it's just it's a crazy journey game development yeah yeah all right we've been talking for over an hour an hour and a half my friend should we should we end this thing well if we were smart like joe rogan we'd talk for three hours um is it three hour episodes he usually does three hour podcasts yeah but they're usually talking about aliens so um no this was great man i i i love talking to you you're you're always a blast to talk to likewise it's really fun insights um like honestly you talk about the business stuff and that's a new passion that you're following that's awesome i'm learning like i kind of there's times where i'm like i wish i went to business school that would have saved me so much that would have saved me so much pain but yeah well you know the struggle of hiring people which you mentioned you hired some people and and i i have part-time people um that help me contract workers i don't ever really hire employees i'm contractors by the way i'm not hiring full-time people right right because the government makes it so hard for you to have real employees it really does so i'm gonna sneak my way into doing it differently which is contract work um but anyway like the it's it's not fun finding people but when you find that person you really trust like i'm like best friends um with my personal assistant hector like we talk all day about everything not just work and it's so special because all of a sudden you're not lonely and you're not stressed right you're relaxed because you're doing what you're good at and he's doing he or she is doing what they're good at so it's it's uh my point is it's the business side of things is actually really fun once you figure it out once you get it working for you definitely and that's something i i had to learn i was stubborn everyone told me that you you told me that like you seriously did you told me that like dude yeah hire people and like focus on the stuff that you want to do and i was like yeah i was stubborn but now i'm like i'm learning like it is it's the can be the best thing in the world if you find the right people who help and everything so thank you that's right thank you yeah no problem and thanks for your help man today and helping me get through feeling a little today was a weird day i feel insecure today so i appreciate your kind words early because you're human i definitely yeah those days too yeah dude you're doing a good job just something a new i'll end with this little tip that i've been doing now is um there's a friend told me this um every time you have those negative thoughts and i convince myself that it's only negative you know ideas or feedback about me out in the world whether it's steam reviews or youtube comments or whatever i just have to remind myself i have to like like actually like say it i don't say it out loud but in my mind i'll say david you've done a lot of good too like think about all the positive reviews think about all the good emails you've received so i'm just replacing those negative thoughts with positive thoughts with the positive and that's actually how that's a good piece of it it's actually helped a lot it has to be really you have to like actually do it be like like you're mentally shifting all the way to a new compartment in your brain and it really does help so yeah that's helped me maybe help you when you're having the down days but you're doing a good job like just just hanging thanks man you are too you're killing it you're killing it obviously with mobile uh and then your course i mean you're just you're you're doing really really good man thanks no i'm fortunate but yeah like it's good to have people to you know the community like the feedback and absolutely yeah good luck to all the people out there making games um it's been great thanks for listening thomas brush everyone please subscribe to his channel and check out his online course and yeah i'll see you guys in the next video

Channel: Game Dev Unlocked

Views: 31,337

Keywords: full time indie game dev, depression in game dev, Neversong, How to get featured in the app store, Unity, Unreal indie dev, mobile game revenue, tips for the today tab, Apple Arcade, indie game development is hard, give up making games

Id: 6RzfPS-GHx4

Length: 103min 18sec (6198 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021