Should you use Unreal Engine 5? (Live Q&A)

so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey how's it going oh man it's been a while since i've done a public youtube one this is great how are you guys doing i got the chat window here um i think my camera's working it did freeze just five minutes before the stream but yeah it's good to see you guys this is exciting is it working welcome to just live q a nothing super crazy planned i just want to hang out with you guys i want to talk about unreal engine i want to talk about the projects i've been working on i want to hear what you guys are working on and i want to just hear any questions you have right and i want to try to help as much as i can probably do this for an hour or two and yeah maybe there'll be a couple surprises along the way um but yeah how are you how are you guys doing hi from brazil oh it's good to see you guys hey dustin thanks for joining the stream it's nice you to join um yeah unity never will die i kind of agree with that i do love unity still of course but i do want to talk about the exciting new features for unreal engine i think that's really exciting hi we got people man this is awesome hi from israel the uk argentina india california this is sweet this is awesome um yeah and we got i'm trying slow mode and we have a moderator we have arcania helping so yeah try not to spam or you'll get the little get the little boot but um i'll try to answer as many questions as i can um cool yeah it's good to see you guys man people from all over this is sweet what have i been up to i have um i did a big hike i've always wanted to do i lived near the wasatch front in utah like the rocky mountains and i always wanted to go from one part of the mountain range to the other like one shot it's 15 miles and it took eight and a half hours but i did it with my friend and that was really like a cool accomplishment another big thing i did last week is um for the past like eight years i've always wanted to beat the hardest level i've ever seen in a mario game which is champions road in super mario 3d world and i i played it on wii u years ago and i could not i literally couldn't do it i could not beat the level and i gave up then i got it on switch and i was like i'm doing it i'm gonna beat this super hard level have you guys have you guys gotten to to crown world and super mario 3d world it was real like i just felt like i was like like i had like i was shaking i like had this electricity in my body after i finished beating it and i was pretty proud of myself you gotta love mario right and i'm playing um shadow of the colossus for the first time on playstation 4. i actually got a ps5 somehow which i'm super pumped about i had i was checking like the stock retweet that like the twitter accounts first restocks for weeks and i got a ps5 and i know shadow of the colossus isn't ps5 but i'm playing it anyway and i'm going to play resident evil 8 soon on ps5 i love shadow of the colossus like what a masterpiece i think i'm like a third of the way done but it's so like it's those kind of games i like where it's like it's just one gameplay loop which is defeat the bosses it's like a boss rush game and you just and it's just and it's just so atmospheric and the music and it's kind of lonely and melancholy i love shadow of the colossus you guys should play that game um yeah so how you guys doing um you guys talking about got some beginners in here that's sweet um we got questions about unreal engine jordan just finished the last guardian yeah that game looks cool too been meaning to play that one same developers um yeah hi from pakistan did you ever play eco no i heard about that that was yeah that was before shout out the colossus that game looks cool too kind of like sad like dreary atmospheric storytelling game in and out thank you five dollars you're not you're not the in and out are you [Laughter] um that'd be awesome if you are did you ever contract with any programmers when making the last tree that's a common mistake most people call it the last tree it's called the first tree um programmers no like and i like i guess you have to consider like i used a lot of asset packs so if you consider buying asset packs that are available to anyone as contractors and yeah tons of assets in the first tree but did i actually i hired one person i did hire my friend my college roommate he was a really talented php programmer and he knew like my sequel and stuff and i did that because at the end of the first tree there's a very special internet connectivity internet connectivity feature that was a big part of the story it's a big part of the theme of the game which is like you're united by loss and so there's a database of people's statements and i needed a web programmer to help me with that and he he helped me do that which was awesome and i bought the web domain and everything and he helped write the c sharp to make it work in unity but that was the only custom real like i did custom code too like a few lines here and there but i almost did all of it in playmaker like i'm a i'm not the best c-sharp developer i'm a visual script kind of guy which i've been thinking about unreal and thinking about blueprints and everything so i want to get your thoughts on that stuff so we'll we'll see i love in and out by the way great burgers um yeah lots lots of good questions how many people we got 200 awesome 193. this is sweet um yeah this is great there's gonna be so many questions i'm sorry if i don't get to him i wish i could help everybody and before i got to do this i have my online school right i spent instead of making a new game i put everything i learned into this online school which is called games of unlocked and it's the premium online school and it is paid but i've put every every i brain dumped everything i learned and it kind of started with my gdc talk and just people kept asking so i was like i'm gonna make a school like an amazing resource for people to learn from so i didn't want to show you one video about our students like real people that join the school and then i have 15 coupon codes available and then they're gone and it's 40 off which it almost never is cheaper than that really so 15 seats we'd love to have the have you join us i do a members only live stream and those are like these are fun don't get me wrong youtube's fun but like the members only streams are like just relax there's like 20 30 of us and we really go in depth about questions people have about game development um we'd love to have you join there's lots of cool features so i did want to show you this little uh this little like testimonial trailer and then i'll answer all your questions for an hour or two all right let's watch this so i first discovered david when i was watching some gdc talks and i saw his talk about how he made the first tree while working a full-time job and ended up having tremendous success with it hi i'm cliff bailey i want to talk to you about game dev unlocked i wanted to share with you how much game dev unlocked has helped me to actually land my own projects i saw one of david's videos on youtube and immediately i wanted to join the course and basically said that he was going to create this course to share all the things he learned about making a game package it all into one product and sell it to the public and i thought i'm in right like i don't care what it costs get me in on that it was one of the best decisions i ever made i highly recommend joining the course and community his approach to making games made it feel possible for someone like me at 35 working a full-time job with the baby on the way to actually make and finish a game [Music] i'm not a coder and it turns out dave's not either one of the pillars of his course is programming with visual scripting i never had coded or worked with the game engine before so the course helped me a lot with that it's a great starting point if you've never made a game before like i had at the time and along the way it also how to pick color schemes for like an art style and how to make your games look consistent and nice everything i have seen in the course i have put in practice the community is the best i can ask anything and there is always someone ready to help you know i've been doing game development now for maybe a little over two years and there are so many things i've learned in that course where it's just like i never would have even thought of doing that and i can say that it's helped me to stay motivated when i made my game and it helped me to make my first game core mechanica had i not known about this i probably would have still been procrastinating about what game i should make having that direction and being able to have a course that laid everything out from start to finish hey here's everything you need to make your very first five minute game with the guidance in the game dev unlocked i actually feel like i can complete this game i feel like i can release this game on time and make it something that i'm going to be very proud of i'm just here to let you know how happy i am that i've joined game devon lot thanks to this awesome community and with the help of david i have just released the first chapter of my next game wilders and i'm currently running a kickstarter campaign which is about to be successful so i want to say thank you again david thank you game dev force for being part of this awesome community keep up the good work there's just something about the way david approaches game development and how he teaches it it helped unblock me from over scoping and just being able to get stuff done i'm honestly having such a wonderful time with gamedev unlocked i am learning new skills i am creating games and i'm making friends along the way the reason fantastic community was even more valuable than the actual course itself was the game devon lost community everyone on there has been super nice and super helpful and made the journey into game development a lot easier i've made some amazing friends in this class like not just like peers but actual like friends i would say you know like people that i talk to just about every day now that i didn't know before from all over the world there's so much help there everybody cares everybody's excited and that alone honestly is so worth the value of the course [Music] [Music] if you are on the fence if you haven't made a game before if you're a little shaky or if you're just like i was when you're super duper overwhelmed and you don't know where to start start with the course we have an amazing community as you can tell and i'm i'm really lucky so many awesome people joined the course so we'd love to have you too um 15 seats today and yeah 40 off it's pretty you get a lot of cool stuff with it all right what can i help you guys with what can i uh yeah i want to talk about unreal engine and honestly i'm kind of thinking this will be more like a q a for you guys because i have used unreal engine before i worked at the void a vr studio right and i used it a little bit for seek to the empire decided to wear my shirt to talk about it and that was awesome like that was a dream come true working with lucasfilm and i lmx lab and stuff um yeah i don't unfortunately the void went bankrupt but uh it's yeah it's not available anymore but i think there's a vr thing called vader immortal which is pretty similar or i think you go to mustafar on darth vader's home planet but i used unreal a little bit for that and we did a couple other like experiences that used on real engine but at the void we used unity and unreal and most of my work was in unity and of course i made my games in unity but um yeah i'm thinking about diving in into unreal engine five just because honestly i'll tell you like the nanite stuff is cool i like the nanite stuff but the big one um and lumen global illumination like it just blows my mind like one directional light and like if you have like a house and you're trying to make the cinematic lighting like that's what good cinematic lighting is it's like i think of there's some films like there's a movie called the tree of life by terence malik and the goal with from the cinematographer which he won an oscar for i think he won i think he won an oscar for best cinematography he only used all natural light and that can look good you know it takes a lot of prep of course but that looks organic and natural and beautiful and it only works because of the way light bounces off materials and objects and walls and you you can kind of get that when you bake light and that's what i did like in the first tree there's like i do a lot of light baking in the epilogue level and i spent i spent weeks maybe months fine-tuning the lighting on that level of the house that you're in but the idea of just doing like one directional light and it just works and lumen that just blows my mind so i'll admit it i haven't messed around with unreal engine 5 yet i've been really busy but i want to hear what you guys think and what you're most excited about and what questions you have because i i've read a lot about it i haven't messed around with it yet but i've read a lot about unreal engine 5. so yeah matt sanders i'd miss c sharp if i move to unreal i know and that's that's honestly like i've told you guys i'm not you know i'm not the best programmer out there and then with unity i know there's bolt which is visual scripting and i know c sharp is pretty easy compared to other programming languages but unreal engine scares me just because the c plus plus and then i heard blueprints was still kind of there's a learning curve still it's like yeah if it's anything like bolt it's nothing like playmaker which is like playmaker is human language it's not very machine friendly but it's like novice friendly i guess playmaker and you can still do a lot of stuff with playmaker as like you know finite state machines kind of like nodes that go to different states and activate through trans transitions and stuff that made a lot of sense to me because of my background like doing after effects do a little bit of expressions like programming expressions and after effects motion graphics and stuff like that we just signed up awesome thanks dustin i hope you like it um yeah what else we got here i'm gonna try i'm gonna miss comments i'm sorry guys is your course in unity yes um there's like three sections on making three different games but i really want to add an unreal section so coming soon and then i'll probably raise the price because it'll be a lot more content so yeah coming soon i do want to add unreal engine crash course and i will that's why i got to like learn i got to like make a small game in unreal engine right but it'd be cool i just think it'd be cool to have like the two big heavy hitters 3d game engines out there unity unreal and then have one course to cover it so anyway yeah um clean game reviews ue4 was so hard to work in is ue5 gonna be better i've heard the ui is more user user-friendly um i don't know like yeah i i do i from what i've done and unreal i prefer unity still but like if you can just get past the hard you know there's a lot of great software that has a steep learning curve like i think of maya like i still i really like blender but mine is what i started in for 3d modeling and yeah maya is just it takes a while and you just you hit a wall over and over again and so yeah i was i'm thinking unreal engine maybe it could be the same way whereas steep learning curve and it doesn't make sense and then one day like clicks you know what i mean people are asking what do you think the best 2d engine with lights and shadows is that i know for sure and that's unity unity is excellent for 2d games and so here's what i've learned like here's like my sense of the industry unity is still amazing for beginners um i love playmaker i love the unity asset store it's huge the unity asset store is how you make and finish games um unreal engine there are different strengths and of course like the photo realism is unmatched and like epic games has put a lot of work into the shaders the default shaders in unreal the the the gist of it i've got from for unreal is that you have to do it their way and so you can't like you have to use you know i don't know their components they're they're features they're shaders you can't mess around too much but if you do it if you do it unreal's way then it can be a really friendly game engine especially with multiplayer especially with photo realistic games especially with first person and third person games um unity way better for mobile games way better for like a first time game developer yeah that's kind of how i see it the the you know like the learning the gradual like the learning transition um start with unity and play maker maybe do unity and bolt then maybe do unity and c sharp make casual games mobile games and then um go to unreal and after you know you've learned a little bit about game engines and lighting and and you know the code i don't know yeah like optimizing your code and using the profiler in unity and then in unreal you can just go for it you know what i mean and then you'll be like at a more at a better place i do think unreal is a little more advanced um but it's stronger for certain types of games and so yeah photo realistic games 3d first person third person so yeah it's amazing tool there's tons there's tons of game developers that use both and they do fine and that's that's a common question i get that's probably the most common question i get all the time hey i'm just starting off should i use unreal or unity and i do have an faq on the gamed of unlocked website and i do like a long answer why i think unity is the best one to start off with and i kind of just explained it now but i do say in the faq too like it doesn't matter what really matters like the true like the most honest thing i can tell you is you need to pick a tool that you'll finish a game in and if it comes really naturally to you that you want to use unreal and you're like this is better i should use this i'll finish a game in unreal then that's definitely 100 the right choice um but i generally i think people find unity a little more user-friendly at the beginning but it's still a lot to learn unity can still now there's like lots of different rendering pipelines and there's different um like there's different you use the package manager to pick and choose like the features you want in the engine and that can get overwhelming for some people okay sorry if i missed your questions i'm scrolling down i'm scrolling down um is gdu useful for unreal engine users not yet but i want to add a crash course that's what i'm going to learn i think i'm gonna start messing around with unreal engine 5 really soon it'll be great um there's only an eight percent drop in performance blueprints versus c plus and yeah and again a big thing i like teaching i i try to be an advocate for this what discouraged me so much when i first started game development is that there's a lot of people saying you're doing this wrong like this is unoptimized you're wasting frames and then it like i don't know when i first started like messing around i realized like like i don't know like frames from one thread on a programming like on like a co-routine or something it just didn't add up that much like optimization like it scared me away at first but then i realized oh like i'll be fine like if i can optimize by you know adjusting the shadow quality that had a way bigger impact than like optimizing a few scripts and i think a lot of computer engineers they get you know it's what they love right it's what they're passionate about like optimizing scripts making the most efficient machine possible which i i get it i respect that but if it gets in the way of you finishing your game and because you're like oh this this code's not good enough then i think that can be a problem because i want you guys to finish games and i know there's like a right way and they're like the wrong way to do everything but i think the worst thing you could do is not finish your game and get discouraged because you're too in your head about what's right and wrong in game development so that's that's my opinion i think the worst the worst optimization mistake you could make is not finish your game so yeah that's that's what i think in and out again thanks for another five dollars [Music] um was the look of the first tree inspired by zelda breath of the wild um i know i did i play when did breath of the wild come out 2017 it came out on wii u and switch uh not particularly no it was more inspired by journey and firewatch those are two huge games that had a giant impact on me this one i was a poor college student and so i couldn't even afford a playstation 4 but i went to a rent-a-center and rented one so i could play all these exclusives that i'd missed and i played a lot of them and one of those was journey another one was everybody's gone to the rapture and then i played firewatch on my pc and those games had a huge i just they were gorgeous firewatch especially because it was made in unity and it used the i think it uses the unity terrain system or at least maybe a modified version of it that's what's so cool about unity and like indie game development now is like you can use the same tools that the developers at firewatch used and they used an asset called um ultimate first person shooter ufps and that's used in so many things it's used in gone home it's used in slenderman um it's used in tons of other indie shooters like immortal redneck and stuff you can use the same tools that these games that sold tens of millions of dollars worth of games like they're proven tools and you can use them in your own games and it's only like 50 bucks like how amazing is that you don't have to make any everything from scratch that's a big thing in the game game development locked is like trying to utilize those tools so that you can finish a game get it out there start selling it maybe port it to consoles as well that's like i just i started the course because i didn't see anything like that there was just countless udemy tutorials of being like here let's custom make a game every little bit from scratch which is cool that's a huge like help if you want to start you know if you want to be a 3d artist for a aaa studio or you want to start coding your own game engines like you want to learn that stuff but what if you want to finish games and you want to tell your story that's that's why i made the course i didn't see anything like that on the internet and it's helped a lot of people i think i think yeah i'm talking a lot about the course but i did just want to help you guys um lady vantablack david slightly silly question because i know you've mentioned this how many hours a day were you working during the first tree i know you had a family time juggled juggled as well yeah it was it's one of those things where i look back i'm like how did i do that um i was working full-time at the void i started i was a technical artist at the void and then i moved to a different role as a video editor like a motion graphics artist and i was working 40 hours a week sometimes 50 hours a week for deadlines and so i would work on the first tree at night um i'd probably put in an hour or two every night which kind of meant i missed out on a lot of the cool tv shows my co-workers were talking about um people would be doing activities and at night you know stuff they wanted to do playing games i didn't play a lot of games while i was making the first tree but i work on it almost every night and then on the weekends i'd probably put in another three three to four hours so that totaled about 10 to 14 hours a week and i worked on the first tree for 18 months and that included marketing i tried to do two to three hours a week of marketing that was a thing i didn't do on my first game and i found out if you market a game consistently and it has a good hook and the graphics are striking then that's how you can be successful on steam it's a game changer jordan i really want in and out right now i might use the ten dollars they've given me for an in-n-out meal um yeah i still need to play firewatch yes i encourage you to play it it's so awesome and again it's just exploring a forest and learning about these characters i love games like that and a lot of people liked it too some people didn't like the ending and stuff but a lot of people get freaked out like my game doesn't have enough interactivity and you don't need as much as you think you don't need to have a level up systems tree and multiplayer and side missions that can overwhelm you you won't finish your game if you have you feel like you have to do that so yeah crypto matrix with unreal engine i can use the same tools used by the mandalorian i know like unreal engine it blows my mind like the uh the you get all this stuff for free you get the was it meta metahumans that looks cool you get the quixl all the quicksilver assets for free and then i originally i didn't like unreal engine because they did require a royalty um oh 250 people thanks for watching um unreal engine did require a royalty and i think it was five percent if you made more than three thousand dollars but then just recently they announced um you don't have to pay a royalty unless you make more than a million dollars off your game which is which is awesome so yeah that's like the reasons for not touching unreal engine the list grows smaller those reasons because there's so many cool things to do i do think you know if you're doing 2d game unity is the way to go um and i still think if you're a beginner i do think unity is where you should start off with but you know there's different tools for different uses and that's what i learned like as a video editor i did i i got to do some really cool video editing jobs at the beginning of my career like i got to do stuff in times square like the big screens in new york city and times square i worked on ghostbusters a little bit um i did did stuff on cnn you know like commercials whatever so that was cool like seeing that stuff you know be on these big channels big screens and everything um and there's a big there's a video editor war and it's between it used to be now it's not so much anymore there used to be two main editors that hollywood used and it was final cut pro on apple and also um avid and avid was like the the go-to but then these indie filmmakers started using um final cut pro like napoleon dynamite was the first like major hollywood hit edited with final cut pro i believe and people would like get in these arguments like no final cut pro is better no avid is the best it's like it's a serious tool no it sucks um anyway i bring that up because then after i talked to a few like hollywood editors want you know like i just asked them about their insights on like what software to use they'd be like i use both i use both they're they're different tools for different uses um and yeah there was different strengths and weaknesses but they both were very capable so i think that's a good way to look at unreal and and and unity i think i think a game developer especially one who wants to get into the industry i think they should be familiar with both um if epic still keeps this course of making unreal like most feature heavy free features no royalty to a million dollars they keep like pushing all this these awesome features i could see it you know being the dominant engine but i think now unity is still dominant like 70 i think it was 70 of nintendo switch games are made with unity isn't that crazy so yeah they're both they're both great tools though all right uh okay did i miss anything talking about godot um this hey david getting access to console sdks for playstation xbox is it challenging um man this is a big question getting access to them it depends on your game um i talk about this in the course because this is a common question i get like how did you get on nintendo switch and i'm going to tell you like nintendo switch that's the reason i quit my full-time job it was because of nintendo switch revenue even right now i have it on sale and i'm going to check it in a few days to see if it's on the how far it is up on the charts hoping it gets high up but anyway console was a huge blessing but it was also the most challenging thing i've ever done in my career easily hardest thing i've ever done and i was working full time while i did the console ports and i got help i didn't do it by myself by the way that would have been impossible i could not have done it by myself and i i hired uh i worked with do games which did amazing and they helped me with certification which is all the complex programming to like pass cert you know pass their approval to put your game on their console um but uh i did all the publishing which i think is unusual i don't think there's a lot of solo indie devs who self-publish a game on all three consoles and launch on the same day i'm really proud of that actually and i even launched in japan without a translator so i had to like hire a translator to translate my email so i could get the approval to release in japan through the government that was really hard i can't believe i did all that um but it was definitely like the most one of the most rewarding things i've done um to get access to get started again there's like i have lots of tips in the course but basically you need a you need a proven game so that the company like x like sony and microsoft they're like okay this game seems like a fairly big deal i will we will put company resources because there's it's not automated like steam you have actual people you're emailing the whole time trying to get your game on xbox and playstation and so think about it from their perspective they have limited employees with limited man hours and so how are they going to how are they going to like make sure that everyone's taken care of and then they're satisfied developers on their platform they can't take everybody on they can't it's not automated they they you it's me it's a very very manual process so that's why they want to only choose the best of the best to make sure that they get a return on their investment and like that they're giving your game like they're using valuable store real estate on their stores to make sure that it's going to the right games that sell lots of copies so you need a proven game and you're probably asking what does that mean like well i approached consoles after my game hit the front page of steam and i was like hey look at my game yeah i'm small but um look how well it did it sold this many copies and i'd love to put it on xbox or switch and it took some time but and then you there's lots of to self-publish like to get the sdks and everything um you there's certain things you need here i'll tell you right now you can't have a gmail email address if it's if it ends at gmail that won't work so you need to pay for like google g suite to get like a a domain name like or squarespace um for sony you need a static ip address and that's a huge pain you cannot log on to the dev kit website or like the dev websites unless you have a static ip address so you need to get that through your isp um what else there is there's a list of strict rules about like storing the um the dev kits and locking doors so that stuff is protected because this is a very serious contract you sign with the consul to the consul companies um so you probably it's probably wise to have a lawyer like hire a lawyer which is probably thousands of dollars like look over the stuff and then getting your um i had to get my game rated now they have a new system called iarc which is amazing now it's like free and it can kind of be automated where you just fill out a questionnaire and you self rate your game as e for everybody or t for teen now um well i did do that for most of the games i think xbox and switch had iarc but playstation only in europe wait was that right shoot i don't remember i think it was only playstation in europe you had to go through peggy and that was a long process to submit all the papers pay a lot of money to get it rated and then i was able to release my game in europe on playstation 4. yeah does it can i can that it starts to add up right um was it worth it yes um maybe should i have quit my job after the steam release and focused purely on console releases i could have i really enjoyed working at the void though but that was probably a time when i was most stretched then because i still had a baby i had my little girl i was still working full time and i was porting the consoles oh yeah you could just hire a hybrid console publisher porting partner and they exist and they do an awesome job that might be the smartest thing to do actually um yeah hope that's hope that's helping i hope that's helpful i love talking about consoles because it's such people love like they think of they they dream of putting their game on to no switch and let me tell you it was it was a dream come true to see my game working on a nintendo console like it just it's like one of those moments you never forget in your career and that's why like i put i i wanted to add those videos into the course because i want people to get to that stage one day because it's so rewarding um yeah okay what else we got okay i'm going down the bottom sorry if i missed your questions um yeah so you inspire me a lot by saying in a video that you can make 2d games to start with even if you have a computer that barely runs minecraft i super think people just need a few words to change um yeah i didn't understand that last part but i hope the video helped yeah making 2d games is a great way to start especially casual games i like i'm personally like i love story driven 3d games i love first person games so those are the games i'm drawn to but i know a lot of people they love 2d games and the thing is though like if it's making a 2d game you need to have a hook because i think man what was it people have analyzed all the data on steam by tag and i think like the least successful genre you can pick on steam is a 2d platformer and that's just the data talking right so the goal you should be thinking of is how can i make a 2d platformer that's unique that people will be like oh i haven't played a 2d platformer like this before and yeah there's thought exercises you could do where it's like what if i combined hollow knight with animal crossing you know like something weird and that can get the idea rolling where it's like oh that's unique i never thought of something like that um and it'd be in one player players want to play that especially if it's like two games that they like and it's combined in an interesting way that's just like a brainstorming technique you can use like to make a game that's unique but if your game is just gonna be exactly like every other 2d platformer out there then you're going to struggle like just just being honest you gotta you need the hook and the graphics help a lot too to get people's attention when you're marketing so yeah hope that helps um dj i'm not great at code getting my as my associates i have used python what advice for complete startups do you have i'm really bad at code i like visual scripting tools and i think unity is the best tool to start with playmaker is paid you have to pay for it but that's the tool i really do love that tool and it's just easy to to read um but you do have a little bit of programming experience if you've done python c sharp's not that much farther off and i've made python scripts too and c-sharp like i'm learning i'm trying to learn get good at code but uh you could just go straight to c-sharp i know people like bolt and that's visual scripting but it's it's it's i recommend people like if you have no idea how to start with code then start with playmaker and then maybe go to bolt but honestly you might be better off just going from playmaker to c sharp directly um bolt is free though which is awesome um but bolt is it's it has all the idiosyncrasies and the syntax and the the weird programming grammar that confused the crap out of me when i started off it has all that stuff and that's what kind of threw me off was the syntax where people assume you're like duh like don't you you can't you can't just wait like for three seconds in a script david come on don't be stupid and i was like i didn't know i just thought you could do a line of code that says wait for seconds and then you find out no duh you need to use a co-routine i'd like i didn't know what a co-routine was i didn't i still i kind of now i know a little bit more about computer engineering and why you need to do stuff like that but at the time i didn't know any of that stuff and play maker was just straight up you hit a button wait for three seconds then it goes to the next state and that made sense to me that was like this amazing miracle it was like this eureka light bulb going off moment for me but i know everyone's different i know people like they're really good at code and that's amazing like i don't have that gift um so yeah just i just experiment but i would definitely encourage you to download unity it's a great beginner tool for sure um yeah let's see what else we got here is steam and starlight z is steam and android ios enough to live from fr with a 2d game can you live decent with only these revenues depends on the game like stardew valley that's a 2d game but he makes probably 10 million a month off that game um maybe not 10 million but millions a month that's a 2d game right um the average casual 2d platformer game on steam probably sells 100 to 1 000 copies ever so that depends what part of the country you're in or what part of the world you're in depends on your expenses if you have children or a mortgage um but there's also 2d games like what's big right now are like strategy games like because there's such there's fewer strategy games out there you could make a 2d game that's strategy like real time strategy or turn based or simulation type games that are 2d and they will um like those will probably do well and you could probably sell over 10 000 units on steam android's really hard that's been the only platform i've made a game for that failed utterly and i wouldn't recommend it all the other platforms have been great um that was my 3d game the first tree ios has done great and it's because they featured me it's comparable to xbox and playstation revenue which is awesome um ios has been good but it it draws a certain type of game it's it draws story driven 3d games usually for ios so yeah a 2d game might be harder i don't know it's it's hard it's different for every game but yeah 2d i will say it gives you kind of a disadvantage just because there's so many more 2d games out there if that makes sense hope that helps um can you build a game on your own without any artistic background yes that's why i made the course actually in the let's dev intermediate you make a gorgeous game by customizing assets so you put your own creative touch on it and you don't need to know any art you don't really need any i explain artistic basics which of course help and you learn over time but yeah you definitely can do that in the course coupon codes below only 15. um they'll probably fill out fast i'm hoping last live stream i i we sold 15 seats pretty fast but yeah we'd love to have you guys um what else we got here did you antonio says did you throw any games out before your hit game oh yeah well i did prototypes um when i told myself i will finish this game that was the game i finished which was home is where one starts in 2015. um yeah that was that was the game i said i will finish this and i did finish it but before that i made a ton of experiments to see what i could do and those are lost to time probably a dozen pro small projects where i'd like get something working like it'd be like different random things like light switch flipper or door opener game and 2d games just to get stuff working but then i would you know they were just prototypes they were just experiments so yeah i guess have i started a game that i wanted to finish and i didn't know i've been committed to finishing them but i think i only had that plan because i experimented a lot beforehand all right what else we got okay i'm scrolling down will you use unreal engine yes i'm going to i'm going to mess around with it experiment and i'd hope to add new videos to the course the full online school um a crash course on how to use unreal engine 5 so keep it up to date and use lumen and everything and use the unreal marketplace that's a big part of game dove unlocked is use the asset store to finish stuff like you got to or else you won't finish games um jordan marsh 15 seats using fomo david yeah and like i believe in the program like people love it we just did it have we have amazing testimonials and if you if you have the funds we'd love to have you if not i'll still be doing stuff on youtube of course i try to market you know people think since the first tree i made a name for myself for being like the marketing guy and like i spoke at gdc and everything um here's a secret i hate marketing i don't want to do it and people think oh man you love marketing oh you should market my game for free it's like no i i hate doing it but i do it because it's necessary like your game will fail if you don't market it and any online product which is kind of the same with my online school like people will not you can't just build something and they will come that never happens anymore you have to put it out there and give incentives give limited time coupon codes i mean it's the same on steam right like how many games have you bought because you saw it super cheap on the steam winter like the winter christmas sale or the summer sale yeah it's just those are marketing they're not tricks but they're just you know you just want to find a price that people agree with and then they join and and it should help them so yeah that's just i don't like marketing but you got to and i'm if i didn't market the first tree it wouldn't have done as well as it did it wouldn't have gotten the steam front page and then console deals wouldn't have happened and the epic free games deal wouldn't have happened and humble bundle like it all started with my steam launch and it's because i marketed it uh once you know regularly every week for a year pretty much try to get those wish lists up all right what else we got here unreal an engine already has free courses yeah i'm gonna take those i'm actually gonna buy a couple like the udemy ones and jump in and see what those are like and then there's a guy on youtube i really like called unreal sensei um he just did a big unreal five like four hour tutorial which i think you guys should check out that one looks awesome um what else we got here do you recommend using assets yes definitely you can't finish your game without using assets and every game developer who's released a successful game maybe like there's a handful of exceptions like stardew valley and minecraft those are exceptions but every other big game like fire watch and and you know i'm drawing a blank but hollow knight hollow knight used playmaker did you guys know that um you need to use assets you need to use these tools because they save you time and you need as much time as possible to build a game um what else we got here um okay cool is it harder christian says is it harder to get your game on gog and epic game store than steam um yeah because there's there's people there's like a human element of curation um gog approached me actually after the steam launch did well and so i i don't think they would have accepted my game until my steam launch did well so that that's hard you know you have to get to get on their platform and then epic games i submitted my game in the submission form on their website for the epic game store and then they got back to me which was surprising that that never works okay what else we got here um you're striking visuals by redhead tama your striking visuals made a huge difference to your marketing have you seen the trailers for omno another great looking indie title oh yeah i love how omno looks another solo developer um i think we talked a bit on twitter he's really talented um yeah those graphics that that stylized it's kind of cell shaded but also like painterly backgrounds volumetric light really good post processing those things they all add up to make like a really visually striking game and on the youtube channel i have like a video where i like make a barn at dusk um you guys should watch it because i talk about post processing at the end and people said that really helped them up the visual quality of their environments and stuff so yeah check that out if you want um yeah what else we got here have you ever tried to make a game and failed home is where my first game didn't do that great and that was in 2015 when it should have just sold because that was a different era in steam where any game would usually sell decently um and that game didn't do great i was my expectations were out of place too i remember telling my wife like we're gonna make a hundred thousand dollars off this game price it at three dollars i don't know why i thought that um i did my best like i emailed press outlets and stuff and people just they just didn't cover the game it was kind of you know experimental slow pace first person exploration game um yeah and like it was a success to me because i released something i was really proud of that like i didn't think i could finish something so yeah um i wouldn't consider a failure but it wasn't a financial success like the first tree all right thanks for your question um the list game thanks for a donation you didn't have to do that hi david i'll be releasing my first game at the end of the month but i'm worried it's too niche for an unknown dev to find that niche audience via social media any advice and he recommends unreal engine all right let me let me try to think of some good advice i can give you the cool thing about steam is there is so many games but because of that that means there's a game for everybody who likes all sorts of weird games like i never would have thought visual novel games would explode the way they have but they have the biggest audience ever on steam and there's tons of other weird games i didn't think walking simulator games would find a huge audience and people still are like oh you gotta gotta try out these games they're awesome stanley parable d-rester so i don't know how niche your game is maybe it's very really complex like uh what's that dwarf now i'm drawing a blank the you know like the the the text art with the like the really complex strategy dwarf cavern or something sorry i i can't remember um there's a there there is a niche for everybody social media so you're asking about social media though dwarf fortress thank you um you're asking about social media for some niche genres you know like types of games there's sometimes there's a hashtag and here's the cool thing about a niche audience is because there's a drought of that specific game they will buy anything that's part of that sub genre right so you need to find out where they congregate and there's usually a subreddit on reddit for everything sometimes not often but there's a twitter hashtag you could use your best bet might be finding a subreddit a small subreddit and if you're really friendly and you follow the rules on the subreddit and just say hey i know you guys like these kind of you know unusual games here's something for you i'd love it if you checked it out and if you had like a cool gif like your best gift of your game that could be really successful and then hopefully word would spread if like the the sub genre is niche enough you know what i mean so yeah i would encourage you to find us like a small subreddit on subreddit on reddit and maybe find a forum that's that's another thing too if sometimes like there's a website called like adventure game or adventuregamers.com they have a forum where they're always trying to find another point point and click 2d adventure games and other adventure games like that and that's like that's where your audience is you know what i mean so yeah that's what i'd recommend thanks for the donation um what else we got here should i switch from unity to unreal five um how far along is your game if you just barely started like seriously like last week i maybe consider it but if you've put in like a month or two into your game then don't do it just finish the game but it doesn't people always ask me which engine is best but honestly i feel like what whatever engine will help you finish the game fastest that's the engine you want to use definitely um okay cool thanks for all these questions guys 250 people thank you super nice you guys to be watching um what are your thoughts on making games on dreams on ps4 you know i've never tried dreams and it looks like a more am i wrong in saying this looks like a more mature version of roblox you know like it's like a game engine game where you can share your creations with everybody i've seen like the stuff people have made with it and it's like it blows my mind i'm like how did you make that on a console like it doesn't even make sense to me i'd love to like see someone play dreams and just see how it works um there's no monetization right i know like people can make money off their roblox creations can you make money from dreams like if you want to make games just for fun you know there was a time where super mario maker 2 came out and i spent like a week making a level and it was just for fun it was just just got this creative energy out right um if you want to make money as a game developer um then you got to do you got to do the whole charade and that means marketing it and trying to find an audience and setting up your steam page and making a trailer like that's if that's the goal then that's what i think you should work towards but if you just want to have fun and make stuff and dreams then you should do that for sure what else we got here what are good and easy ways to market man easy there is no such thing as easy marketing there's only slow drop by drop accumulations um you have to be consistent you'll have to put in dozens of hours over the course of several several months maybe a year to get good traction you'll have to experiment this is what this is what's exhausting about it it's honestly it's exhausting with my online course because i'm trying to figure out how to market it and it's been just kind of difficult you have to try all these different strategies and a lot of them will fail but some of them will stick and you know you could hire a marketer to help you with that that costs a lot of money i believe in like self marketing because as a solo developer or as a small team like people find that inspiring they're like oh he's not some company trying to grab my cash he's just a guy um oh yeah i like his game that's pretty cool he's just trying to follow his dream and that could be like a great strength people want to talk to other people and they they love rooting for the underdog right um so yeah what's an easy way to market there's not um you can focus like i think there's simple goals and i think the goal should be getting as many wish lists as possible all your marketing efforts should be for that but you'll have to experiment and find out what sticks some audiences you know like some some games like this they just don't do well on certain platforms like a mobile game on steam that's not going to do well people aren't going to buy that game for the most part but yeah like you need to commit to like where like find out where your audience resides and just try to either get a wish list from them on steam or try to get their email address and use a free service like mailchimp and those are like your fans right and that's when you can tell everybody hey my game came out and you do an email blast with mailchimp which is free if you have less than 2 000 people and then you say hey if you could buy my game right now this would help a lot and then they all buy your game the same day the steam algorithm takes notice and says oh okay there's a lot of people buying this game in this one hour and then they decide to promote it to see if it continues to convert people and get clicks and purchases and it's like this snowball rolling down a hill and you're like all your goal for like your whole goal in marketing is to like just push that snowball off a cliff and then hopefully it turns into something gigantic as it rolls down the mountain anyway hope that helps um i think did i get another donation thank you for the donation i just saw something up in the chat there i don't know who did that but thank you um [Music] yeah what else we got oh here it is sorry suzuki hi david thank you for being the inspiration of why i'm trying game dev once again oh awesome i'm happy to help i'm currently planning to make an open world rpg any advice um yeah my main advice is to be careful that this idea isn't too big um a good exercise you can do is to make sure that uh you can cut your game idea in half and like cut it in half like three or four times because there was a time where i had the first tree and i wanted it to be like a journey and i wanted to have like i don't know i wanted a lot of stuff i wanted like characters and all these puzzles and side quests and new abilities you could you could earn and then as i just started started to make the game i was like there's no way that will happen it's impossible so what i did is i focused on one aspect of the game that i was most passionate about and that people still were most were kind of interested in which was the storytelling part of it and so it was just walking around a landscape and what you earn like you don't level up you don't get side quests what you earn are snippets of the story and that's what drives that's the driving force the motivating factor the carrot on the stick if you will so cut your game idea in half open world rpg that for a solo developer i'm my first and like my first initial inclination is to say like just be careful like make one part of an open world rpg if that makes sense um and if you do that then i think you'll be fine like pick one part of it that you really like and yeah just a lot of game developers they start with like their first game's going to be an open world rpg and i think if you did use a lot of assets from the asset store and still try to like add your own personality and kind of add a hook to it i think it could still do well because there are like on unity asset store there are like open world rpg frameworks you can buy for sure okay thanks for your question all right what else we got um the list game on the topic of unreal versus unity if you go to unreal i will say the marketplace is not as large as unity with far less being free but i think unreal engine 4 is much more starter friendly okay that's good to know because yeah we used unreal engine 4 for at the void but i was thinking i was like should i just start with four should i go to five and yeah i i've i've looked at lots of stuff at the marketplace and it looks high quality it looks it looks great yeah it's for those reasons though i do recommend beginners check out unity in the unity asset store all right um thanks for all these questions guys we've been doing this an hour cool i like live streams it's just i used to love i used to love i i still do love video editing but i edited like out like i did the most intense editing for like months straight for the online course and now i'm just too tired to make edit videos and i i know i there's people in the chat saying no make more videos and i want to i might hire a video editor or something but live streams you just hang out and it's just it's just like just fast and just off the cuff i think that's cool all right um do you think artur says or do you think photo realistic games are easier to sell than stylized ones ooh i think stylized ones do a little better just like that's my first initial reaction they mark it better at least and it's because it just it's it's striking it's usually like bright beautiful colors um beautiful like there's contrast meaning like some parts of the image are really dark while other parts of the image are really white so it has like a full range of of darks and lights um and those games like they can be visual like they can be stunning you know what i mean like photorealistic games though with mega scans and unreal and everything like quicksole that's a big deal like it makes those games actually like doable for like a solo dev to just make something really quick which is one of the reasons i want to get into unreal engine 5. i was thinking also of speaking of live streaming i was thinking of as i learned on real engine i was thinking of doing live streams um would you guys want to watch that like me floundering in unreal engine 5 and messing around with with uh like qixel and you know the lumen and all those things i think it'd be fun to make stuff an unreal engine and then maybe i don't know maybe it'll be something i use in my next game i'm not sure but i do want to mess around with unreal engine 5 for sure um yes please please make yes yes yes and those are easier for me to make because editing a video like a you know like a nicely edited tutorial which i still do want to make it's just i have no time this has been such a difficulty in my life like balancing my game stuff online course stuff youtube stuff i think i might have been off more than i can chew especially with the pandemic and helping my family and i just had a third baby recently life's crazy um all right i want to answer more questions i'll probably do this for 30 more minutes does that sound good cool um more bot gaming says do you use some sort of design document to plan out your game if so is there a template you use or can recommend i don't i'm at the void we used we call them you know gdds game design documents and those are important when you're working with a team here's my opinion on this matter one of the greatest strengths as working solo like truly like this is the thing that can really help is like you can move fast there's no meetings there's no conversations you have to have it's literally all in your head and you can just go you can just go and work and i know like you won't have a team and that can be you know of course that can mess you up too but when you have a team that means you have disagreements and it means you have to to have conversations and everything that's when a gdd comes in handy i would say or maybe if you're pitching to a publisher they want to see a game design document what i did is i just um i just kept i just kept a uh google doc i just keep my notes there and they're like literally just bullet points so i don't forget and i would do an outline maybe of my levels so i guess you could say i do have a gdd i had like a google doc but it was the most ugly bullet point list of of um yeah just just bullet points that's it but it's different for each person a lot of a lot of developers they use trello just to organize and maybe like keep their notes or tasks and maybe you know like overall design document of the game so yeah hope that helps um pedro do you have plans to work or build a bigger studio with more people that's a good question something i think about a lot something i talked to my wife about a lot about like what i want like the crossroads i'm at because i'm a full-time indie game developer and it's like what do you do from here um i i do like i do like working with the team i miss like my friends from the void and sometimes i hear they're working on other projects i'm like i want to do that i miss working with a good team do i want to lead a team or direct a team no i don't i'd rather if i'm gonna make my own stuff i think i'd rather work solo or maybe just hire a contractor just to help for like a really small part like you know i did get help like with the console porting for instance and i needed their help that was really hard so yeah i like working solo and i like using the asset store um but yeah maybe i think about doing like a little bit of work with another team that'd be cool um cool have you had any good game design recommendations a book or course well funny you should say that um yeah i like helping you guys out but i also hope to get a few enrollments from this so it can help pay the bills so if you guys want to use the coupon code um in the description there's 15 seats available for the live you know during this yeah it probably will go fast 40 off and that in my humble opinion i put i made it very focused on beginners and so making their very first game kind of like how i did it where i didn't know anything i was a filmmaker film student at school and i was able to finish a game finished two games and so yeah we'd love for you to join the course there's descript there's a coupon code below that's what i think is the best if you're on a budget which i understand brackies on youtube best tutorials out there unity learn has lots of in-depth stuff i think i even have a few videos from the course on unity learn by the way um yeah yeah those are free things honestly the thing that's going to be your biggest hang up they're probably your biggest roadblock is like there's so much free information you don't know what will help you or what's gonna like keep you dedicated to the goal of releasing finishing a game and it's easy to get overwhelmed because you search for one thing on youtube you get a million different tutorials and you don't know which one's right um those are like the downsides of free tutorials it can like you just waste your time that's what i did like i taught myself using youtube right i didn't have a game of unlocked um and it took a lot longer it took me 18 months to make my 30 minute game home is where one starts and then by then i knew a lot more and i was able to spend 18 months on a much bigger game that was two to three hours same amount of time but because i taught myself i knew what to do by that point see i hope that makes sense um do you think it's necessary to get a master's degree in game dev to break into the game dev industry um good question omar i actually i do i answer this in the faq on my game of unlocked website because that's a there's a common one they're like oh if i get a if i get a degree or i go to like get them fancy masters for game design um i'm not one of those people that will say school is pointless because it's not like you meet you meet people you form like net you know people always ask how do you network well one way to network is to go to school with a bunch of other game designers that's an amazing way to can make connections with talented people um and i that's what happened with me like i i would not have been able to work at the void if it wasn't for the people i met at at school um so yeah uh will someone hire you because you have a masters no they definitely will not they won't care about that that will be kind of like a third priority thing on the list of list of important things on your resume the number one thing by far is your portfolio and so you need to be making stuff to show and even it doesn't have to be like triple a games it doesn't even have to be like a released game on steam although that helps a lot um what you need is finished projects stuff that people can look at online and be like oh you made this okay cool like that's a portfolio it's your finished work that is what will get you a job a hundred percent and i i i interviewed people at the void which was kind of a funny experience because i didn't feel like i was up to the task didn't feel worthy and you could tell like the people that were professionals who were like oh we could hire them and they would get the job done and compared to people who were just kind of hopefuls where they were like oh it'd be cool to get this job it's like those people that were professionals they had finished work and they had a portfolio they could show us and they could talk about the success of those projects and the failures what they learned and how they're improving like those things that impresses uh an employer you know what i mean it impresses the interviewer so yeah portfolio definitely um but school can be useful it can you can meet people and then you can make projects finish projects and then you can show those to employers too um yeah but a masters by itself yeah not not especially helpful by itself um do you know if unreal with the c-sharp plug-in is good or not i didn't know there was a c-sharp plug-in that's news to me uh david was the next project you're working on i'm still working on the online course which i told myself oh i forgot i was gonna do something okay i emailed a bunch of people i'm sorry are you guys still waiting i emailed people this sorry i didn't finish the question i just remembered i got caught up i got caught up and i'm answering questions um if you guys are not part of my email list i try to send like little articles i write or like free stuff so i gave some people a sneak peek of what i was gonna do right now are you guys ready my email list people ready um here's some free steam keys um i want to just give them to you guys say thank you for watching um these are some of the people that helped partner with me at gamedev unlocked and so you can redeem these on steam and yeah i hope i hope you like them these are really amazing games some of them solo developers in fact i think most of them solo developers and what else we got here yeah one screen platformer um that's by chris zukowski he has an awesome i think he has a youtube channel really talented marketing genius and he made an awesome game uh sagebrush one of my favorite first person story driven games music machine by david zimanski the maker of dusk music machines again another amazing story driven first person exploration game with amazing striking graphics that are insanely simple you won't believe how like you can get striking graphics and how simple it can be um indecision was made by gdu student um it's a it's a platformer with a unique twist and that's it's really cool leaving lindau is the maker of east shade and that's another like story driven first-person adventure game um beautiful environments made by one guy uh danny danny weinbaum maybe he i think he had help i don't want to say he was a solo developer but he did most of the game by himself then hidden pause was made by uh i want to say husband and wife is that right husband and wife made this awesome finding game so yeah i just thought um i thought you guys would appreciate that and if you guys want heads up on cool stuff like this um go to thegamedovenlock.com and join the email list and i try to try to send stuff like that once in a while everyone's redeeming keys chad is silent um joe josie cohen hey dave i just want to let you know anyone that hutchins institute verification form also works to get access to autodesk software did not know that i should talk to them yeah we partnered together and they've been awesome that's part of the perks of joining online school is you get adobe software for the student discount which is you save like almost 400 bucks a year getting that which almost it pays for the course itself after a year pretty much i didn't know about that i should ask about autodesk software that's a that's a big deal i'll look into that um all right all gone yeah i thought they would go fast um yeah i'm just reading the chat opinion on buildbox is that like a no code game engine i don't know anything about buildbox sorry i don't know much about it i won't i'd be curious if there's any successful games on steam that have used buildbox or on mobile what do you think about kojima games do you think he struggled a lot where he is with his own production company i love i love kojima i love death stranding i love metal gear solid stuff i was just thinking recently i was just thinking about silent hills you know pt the playable teaser or whatever and how that was directed by kojima and it was a silent hill game and it still it breaks my heart like i just i get really sad when i think about what could have what could have been i would have loved that game i know it would have been like one of my favorite games of all time but that stranny was pretty cool too i think he's awesome no he's i think he's a genius i love kojima i'm sure he struggled he was struggling with his publisher and everything and now he's independent but there's going independent you know i'm a full-time indie game dev and people be like wow you're living the dream and it is cool don't get me wrong but there's other like i don't know what's that phrase wherever you go there you are you still have the same personality the same insecurities the same flaws so you have to like come to terms with it got the music machine thank you good i love that game definitely play it and it's by an amazing one of my favorite solo developers david zymanski from pennsylvania um he was he's a huge inspiration for me because he made a lot of short simple games at first like that every like the blueprint is so clear to me and i just people always like saying like i just don't know what to do it's like we'll just make super small games make games that you want to make that are super small and this is what david did he made games that were story driven started off small he only released him on i think on itch.io at the beginning name your own price and then he released it on steam and they did okay um he still was like i think he was still working a day job and he was you know newly married had a baby on the way a lot like myself and i loved his games because i love story driven first person games they're kind of horror like kind of like horror games and then he learned a lot from this game he released six or seven games the music machine being one of them and they did good like they did fine but it wasn't like a hit and then with all the stuff he had learned he was you know he knew how to program he used what he was good at which was making like retro simple 3d polygon like playstation like you know like quake like quake inspired 3d models and he made a game called dusk and dusk is one of like the most acclaimed popular retro fps games ever made and i love dusk i think it's one of the best fps games i've played in a long time and he did it almost all by himself and it's probably he's probably a millionaire by now he's probably made a lot of money he worked with a good team he did like you know he got help of course he had a composer he had play testers he had uh i i think he had help he's ported it to the nintendo switch right now which will probably sell a lot of copies there and yeah like i think he bought a house and everything like he's living the dream too but he started off making tons of small games and i think that's really cool it's inspirational the music machine is amazing definitely play that game um ego i go oh i just watched your video about your career and i cried you're awesome man i dream on public i dream about publishing one of my game stories i started writing in high school and you just inspired me oh thank you i'm really i'm flattered i'm glad it helped there will be a time where the motivation dries up and that's where discipline like you need to keep working every day even if you don't want to really and just do a little bit just so you can keep going and finish your project but it could pay off like it just it's crazy how can pay off if you don't give up right of course take breaks don't don't kill yourself don't you know don't have mentally you know a mental health episode you gotta pace yourselves right but yeah i think that's what i did after i finished my first game i was burnt out and i took a long break but then i started feeling good and i was like i want to make a new game i want to make this first tree this game about a about a fox oh is is e3 starting i didn't is that is that going on right now um yeah maybe i guess still got 240 people thanks for watching um are you switching to unreal five no i don't nothing i'm not i'm not announcing anything like that but unreal engine five with lumen that looks amazing um i will be experimenting and i'll probably be live streaming a little bit about it and and what else and then in the online school i'm going to add i want to add an unreal crash course excuse me i want to add an unreal crash course section so people can get started with unreal engine with the same principles we teach in a game of unlocked and which is like how to finish games fast and usually without code or artistic experience yeah it's going it's going great i have amazing community in in the school thanks for joining for the people in the chat that are members i appreciate it oh it says e3 is this weekend it's not starting today right someone just said that i thought it was for some reason how old were you when you released the first tree i released it in 2017 how old was i i was 29 is that right yeah 29 just had my first uh baby a little girl it was a big it's a big life transition um yeah i'm really fortunate you're not doing feedback fridays anymore right yeah that was the thing i did for like the beta testers in the school then i realized i think it was it's more helpful for people if we could combine q a with like feedback that people need so you're still like you're welcome to submit your game or like in the course this is for this is for like members of the online school by the way um you're you know you're welcome to submit your questions and like submit your cop build or your game or your steam store page and i'll like review it we can talk about it in the members only stream but yeah feedback fridays here on youtube they're discontinued i think this is just better for me to pace myself because there's a lot going on a lot of stuff from balancing with game dev and the school and youtube all right oh it starts june 12th okay cool people you got me i was like it's starting today yeah in the list game he says that's probably the biggest reason i want to change i just want to experiment is like baking light sucks baking lines like you won't believe the crap i had to go through in the epilogue level the first tree because i did a lot of baked lights there because i wanted it to look really nice like it was like you know like the moonlight is bouncing off the inside of this cabin in alaska and it took a lot of work and then i had to do i forgot why i did it this way i had to do a prefab system with the cabin why did i do that there was a really important reason like where the light light baking system it wouldn't work because the the cabin was too far away from the origin point of zero zero zero in the world space so light baking would not work i would bake and it'd be like like staticky all over the walls instead of nice you know nice lights being bounced off the walls or whatever so i had to do this prefab system where it applies the light maps um on and and then it instantiates that cabin it was confusing i had to get these custom scripts from the unity forums and fine-tune it but then i got it working then it caused problems on the console version because it didn't like that like instantiating such a big cabin with all the all like the props inside of it it was i hate light baking so lumen on unreal engine 5 that's the big thing i'm super excited about like just do one directional light the sun and then it just makes a gorgeous interior of your house with all natural light that'd be cool um yeah how you guys doing um yeah we got still got people got i did not expect donations thank you i was hoping for a couple enrollments to the school so we'd love to have you join and if not that's okay but thank you for the donations this has been awesome keith says yeah baking lights is super annoying and when you change something you have to do it again it's it's horrible i'm really not a fan of that because that's i think i used to experiment with like doing 3d renders and maya which was fun because it looks so nice um you know you just get that nice you know it's like make a pixar scene or whatever but i love game engines because it's just real time you just drop in a light and it's cool it looks great and especially if you have like the pb the pbr oh man is that that what it is you know you just have those like the photorealistic like texture maps on with the normal maps and everything and then it looks it looks good like it just looks good automatically there's no rendering waiting for three minutes for a frame and so yeah unreal engine 5 has cool potential um pbr yeah that's it worst is baking lights then you find out there's shadows coming from somewhere you don't even know where they came from yeah it gets confusing light baking can i've been thinking about that recently i was trying to think of a way to word it um all the weird tricks we do in game development that makes it unintuitive in the first place it's like it's all because of optimization it's because we're trying to make it real time because computers are not infinitely fast because when i first started game development when i first started working on my first game i'd i'd find a free model on blendswap.com and it had like a million triangles and i'd just be like oh well i'll just put it in there it's fine this is what computers do and then it just gets so boggy and it was like a fishing rod with literally like the most insane amount of triangles ever and it just like it was you know that it made me start to realize like all the weird things we do that are unintuitive or it's like okay you need to combine meshes like why because a draw calls duh it's like what's a draw call i don't know what that is i just want to drop something in and i want it to work and then those are the things you have to learn along the way and i wish there was an easy way to learn um but you just got to put time into it to learn all those little tricks and those tips for optimization so yeah that's what i learned i'm like oh you have to decimate decimate a mesh to make it like smaller so that's when you learn these tricks and and it just makes me think i'm like what if game engines were smart enough where you could just drop in a million polygon fishing rod and it would just work and how much easier and more accessible that would make game engines to people instead of all like the roadblocks you hit because of weird optimization things that no one knows about you know as a beginner and that's what unreal engine 5 gets it gets exciting for me because you can drop in billion polygon meshes and it apparently it does it automatically there's other downsides to that like apparently it's a 100 gigabyte project folder and you need minimum 64 gigabytes of ram to open up that sample project for unreal engine 5. what's crazy to me is like i have my computer here this is my home office i have another computer elsewhere my nice thread ripper and that one has 64 gigs of ram this one at home has 32 gigs so i couldn't even open up that sample project here if i wanted to and i thought i had a nice computer here i got a to the sky lake you know it's like an i7 quad core but it would not work it would not open up that sample project apparently i had to buy 32 gigs of ram because when baking global illumination in my first game my pc crashed yep i you need the ram game development right jordan says it's funny to say that as a non-game dev you appreciate the power computers as a game dev you wonder why the hell computers are still so slow that is so true that makes you think it's still like i game development has taught me so much about computers like it seriously it gets me excited i did not understand why you needed binary why you even needed hexadecimal it did it made no sense to me it's like why do you need why do you need hexadecimal why you need an a and a b and that makes so much sense like it just it makes sense now and it is like i do think about you write a script and it's like every frame do this math and it's still like i know there's you know sometimes they're slow with certain things but other things you're like man computers are amazing i love how fast they can do certain things and i think we do get a lot of developers that get uptight about oh you need to optimize the code it's like computers are fast some things are not fast on like real-time shadows be careful that stuff be careful with the unity terrain system and having a million trees rendered at once you know you got to do the billboard system 2d 2d sprites to cut down on that kind of stuff but for the most part scripting can be fast if you're not doing something stupid in the update in the update method or whatever like doing stuff every frame but yeah playmaker kind of protects you a little bit from that stuff you can still do bad loops that really drag on performance 128 gigabytes of ram is the new standard man i thought 64 was insane amount from for my for my system the threadripper is nice though especially with video editing it renders so fast um unity will have a response to unreal engine 5 especially with lumen and nanite you know unity had real-time global illumination and from what i can tell is is it gone is it legacy like obsolete um yeah i played around with it but none of my games enabled real-time global illumination for unity it was exciting at the time when i watched like the unity 5 trailer video but i don't know using it in in practice it just is kind of it was just a little slow there would be like a delay i don't know yeah i just wasn't tempted to use it but under lumen though that's like again it's tempting me to be like i can make should i make a game just using lumen and everything nanite's cool too i'm not as interested in that i'm more interested in the lighting but that's because i guess i'm more of a cinematographer i'm more of a storyteller and that gets me excited for laying out a beautiful scene using only like natural light for instance all right it is deprecated man unity that that confuses people another reason i made the course is because people are like i don't know do i pick built-in renderer what is a built-in renderer do i have to use the high you know the high definition one or the universal one it is it's confusing i will i will not lie so yeah in the course i try to explain that stuff to give you like a good starting point like what to use for like what purpose and everything but yeah there is documentation and everything yeah gamer maddox says i have a question when will we see something of your new game i'm still working on online course um but yeah first off i i have a lot of good ideas ideas i'm really excited about because i kind of miss making games it will be different from the first tree um there was a time where i was considered making there's actually like a fake trailer for this game called the last waterfall you can see it in my last edited video about storytelling story writing 101 um check it out on youtube and there's like a trailer i made for this game that probably will never be released i'm sorry i'm just so tired of animal games maybe i'll make an animal game later but i have other ideas that i'm really excited about but something that will never change is i love storytelling i love atmosphere i love beautiful music and games and that's what i'm going to shoot for for my next game and i'm yeah i don't have anything to announce but i'm 99 sure what my next game will be and i will announce more as i have stuff i don't really have anything to show for it actually but yeah that's a big part of marketing too is like right when you have something to show you show it and i start asking for wishlists and posting gifs on twitter and reddit and imager yeah thanks for your question for caring about my next game i do have like i have a lot of concerns if this next game if i can even market it right i don't know i just watched a ted talk by the author of the book eat pray love and you know i don't i didn't read the book i'm not really interested in that book but the author she was so poised and intelligent and had such a good head on her shoulders regarding success and how like you can have explosive success and it could be like a one-time thing and that's okay and what's important is like you work on the stuff that you love but also like you know i still think it's important like to find an audience make something that people want to play want to play but also something that is true to you and that's something that you want to make um yeah it's it's a bound it's a balancing on a tight rope because the first tree wasn't i wanted it i wanted it to be different um i wanted it to be better than it was like i know it's not perfect game um i know the camera controls kind of suck i know it can be boring at times but it was presentable and it was there are parts i'm proud of too like i'm proud of the ending of that game um and i'm proud of like how many lives it's touched and i'm like if i had hadn't compromised my vision in a bit in a way then it would have never come out and it wouldn't have ever affected those people's lives and like i still get i don't know i used to care that people would leave negative steam reviews but now it's like i've seen what the game has done for people and they've let me know over email how it's affected their life and like i don't care if someone hated the game because i know like there was enough people that found a lot of joy and meaning in it and that makes me happy i released it but it's not perfect and it's up to you guys whether you think your game is presentable or not to help change lives and you know it and then also the first tree adds an emotional story driven game uh just making a really fun mobile game that doesn't have a ten intense deep story like you're you're helping people have fun and get their mind off things like that's an act of service to those people you know so yeah it doesn't have to be like my game but in a way like you know you're entertaining people and you're telling stories and you're helping them have fun and forget the crappy day at work they had or help them forget about something bad that happened in their lives and whether it's a distraction or it helps them meditate that's an amazing thing making games is is awesome i just i just love it uh giralt of rivia oh wait oh it got got deleted don't spam you guys or arcania will get you um he did say um have you switched from scripting to a from playmake from playmaker to scripting uh no i still like playmaker it just works with my brain it's fast um i am like i do more lines of code when i need it sometimes like it will be sometimes like because i do know more about c sharp now it's easier for me just to be like okay yeah let's uh let's um let's just do it in c sharp real quick and that will be faster like it just depends though i state machines are amazing for like time-based interactions and like for cut scenes that makes so much more sense to me visually is like a little state store a little state system saying wait five seconds start the music wait 0.1 seconds play a sound effect that like i love seeing like the state and playmaker the states move from transition to transition you know what i mean so yeah i hope that helps thanks in-n-out are you are you the in and out is this legit can i like click on your profile i'm curious if you're really like the social media manager at in-n-out um thanks for the donation what are some must-have assets on the asset store all right here we go if you're not a developer i highly recommend playmaker that's like essential because it's just human readable visual scripting to make games and interactions in unity and then the most important asset the next important asset is you need to what was i going to say you need to pick a framework for the type of game you want because there's so many frameworks that do all the hard work with all the custom code and it's done and so then you can focus on fine tuning like the gameplay with you know by adjusting variables in the framework and by adding art and adding your personality to it and adding the sound effects and all that stuff so for instance if you're making a horror game which is they're insanely popular on h.i.o i would definitely say um get the horror kit um the 3d horror kit asset which i think is that free that might be free on the unity asset store and then you can adjust it because you shouldn't use assets by themselves like without any any adjustments because they've been used a lot right like that's kind of like their strength and their weakness so make sure to like change simple graphics and like if there's like a note if there's like a like a you know in a horror game you usually pick up notes to read notes that people are like that are left in the environment use a different paper texture like don't use the stock one and that's like an easy fix that makes your game that like it makes it unique no one no one can know now that it's like that that horror kit that you got for free you know what i mean um yeah i hope that helps so yeah playmaker if you don't know how to code and then i would say you need a framework asset and so there's tons of them there's there's a real-time strategy framework asset there's a first-person shooter asset there's a third person asset there's a animal adventure game asset a lot like the first tree that came out so yeah i hope hope that helps thanks in and out you should make a burger game um yeah what else we got here uh pros robot can you describe your gamedev journey in one minute oh i don't know i'm a filmmaker started as a filmmaker i did make mods for games as a kid but those were mods right it wasn't a full game i could sell but i loved in exploring environments it wasn't until i saw dear esther which was like this experimental film made into a game where i like i got so excited i was like this this is an exciting medium and there was like an audience for everything it was niche you know it was something that not everyone liked and that was okay because i really liked it i thought it was really cool so then i played more of those kind of games and i made my first game which was a lot like gone home and dear esther was called home is where one starts and it didn't do too great i took a break and then i decided i had another game idea pop up in my head after playing journey and fire watch called the first tree and i put a lot of myself into it like how my dad passed away from a heart attack unexpectedly when i was in college about me becoming a dad for the first time about me feeling like lost in life and i had me and my wife do the voice acting in it and that game resonated with people and i don't know if it was it probably was a combination of things but people seem to like the fox they like the music they like the graphics they like the story and that game has sold 500 000 copies which i'm really honored i'm flattered that has happened so yeah i'm really excited about that that's my game dev journey in one minute um i probably would have kept making games though if the first tree failed because i still have game ideas i'm really excited about i've taken a sabbatical from games to make the course because gdc was such a cool experience i had i kept getting emails from hundreds maybe thousands of people asking me how to do it and i wasn't ever planning on that but i do love youtube like i've told you i'm a filmmaker so i always wanted to make a youtube channel and that's why i made game dev unlocked and yeah it's just i'm it's cool that the youtube channel kind of exploded there was a time when no one was no one was watching my my videos and now they seem to you know we seem to have a lot of a lot of subscribers which is great thanks for watching means a lot um i won't talk about money just because the ndas for consoles are really strict um but steem steem i think is okay with sharing sales numbers now they use that used to be against their non-disclosure agreement and i made six figures from steam um how much exactly i don't i don't even know i'd have to check but it's made over 200 000 300 000 something like that and that's before like taxes and everything yeah i think that's right and that's before yeah taxes take a huge chunk um but yeah no it's really it's fortunate i think it's like in the top it's the first tree in the top 20 of performing games on steam i don't know and it's crazy to think there's games that do way better than that you know what i mean phasmaphobia have you guys played that game i love phasmaphobia and it was because this genius idea it is like it's complex don't get me wrong because there's multiplayer but he uses photon a really easy to integrate multiplayer system for unity he uses tons of assets you know those you know those environments they're unity assets right and no one no one seems to get mad or upset about it it's because the game is good um i don't even know if he adjusted those unity environments that much like the prison and the cabin and then there's of course there's the residential house hq which is almost a meme with horror games at this point but no one cares because the game is awesome the gameplay is so much fun it uses like a little the hook is like you speak to the ghosts it uses all these unity assets man i love phasmaphobia and that guy has probably made 50 million dollars literally from that game that game exploded it went viral um you guys even if you guys don't like horror it is it is scary though but you play with friends and it's so great i love it thank you in and out for another donation that's 20 bucks thank you yeah have you guys played phasmaphobia i do want to hear your thoughts on it though because it uses unity assets no one cares because the game's awesome and it's so much fun in-n-out asks any youtube channels on gamedev that you recommend for example do you watch code monkey or ai and games i like code monkey um i haven't heard of ai and games my favorite youtube channels i'm friends with thomas brush i think a lot of you guys know that um i like thomas just because before i was even a developer anyone cared about i emailed him and he like sent a really nice message to me back and he helped me and i was a no-name guy like i was like hey i'm working on this game but i like i just thomas was just i just thought he was so cool from that unity documentary because he was like this guy living in south carolina and i was like this guy from southern i grew up in central virginia in the middle of nowhere but i still loved all my friends they were riding dirt bikes and playing paintball and hunting like shooting deer and stuff but i i wanted to make mods for games like far cry and jedi knight i wasn't into that stuff i was into skateboarding and making movies and games um so i saw a lot of myself and thomas and he was really nice to respond and he helped me out a lot when i was working on my games so yeah thomas brush he's one of my favorites brackies best tutorials on youtube i can't believe the amount of quality content bracky's pumped out over several years and then um what else there yeah those are i don't watch too much youtube like game dev stuff but i do like code monkey he's really code focused and i'm like the opposite i just suck at code but yeah if you guys have any suggestions of your favorite channels you can put them you can put them in the chat the emo kid yeah virginia yeah andrew i'm wondering how you know that movie that was a movie i made in high school um sent it to the to the yeah to the regional high school film festival danny oh danny is of course danny is like another level because he's like he's an entertainer and that's why he's has two million subscribers now it blows my mind how fast he works he must he must work 18-hour days like he must get a game idea and he makes the video and he i wonder if he edits it all or if he has help i don't know he's really funny and he's tapped into like the kid he's tapped into like the kids who love youtube and hopefully get them into game development like danny could reach a huge audience like a new generation of game developers okay i'm probably gonna probably gonna call it quits soon it's almost been two hours i'm getting hungry but thanks for doing this um yeah i'll answer a few questions and then could i show you guys a trailer for the course maybe convince you guys to join us we have like exclusive streams and stuff we can i can answer questions there and everything yeah let me let me watch this video real quick and then um after the video i'll just answer a couple more questions and we'll call it good all right cool i'm proud to announce that my online school gamedev unlocked just hit version 1.0 i've put countless hours into this and i tried my best to make it the most accessible useful resource ever made for indie devs new and experienced alike everything is covered including coming up with the perfect game idea mastering social media how to reach the front page of steam how to publish on consoles like nintendo switch and much much more i spent years polishing these videos and making them as useful as possible so your time isn't wasted digging through boring outdated tutorials in the let's dev sections i also show you how to make a fun casual game called fruit dodger in only one day without any code or artistic experience then we move on to the intermediate module where we study how to make a first person thriller game and you follow along to challenge slides and assignments so it's done and being sold on itch.io in only seven days and finally the crown jewel of my online course is the advanced section where i show you every step on making a beautiful exploration game just like my previous one the first tree every step is covered including 3d modeling environment design sound mixing writing a script editing the trailer and publishing on steam there's never been an online course quite as complete as gdu we'd also love to have you join what my students consider the best game dev community they've ever been in there's no judgement here only kindness encouragement and useful advice if you enroll now you can get some special bonuses before they run out perks include eight free steam keys discounts on tons of valuable assets and an exclusive student discount for adobe creative cloud which includes tools like photoshop there's lots more i could show you but i wanted to give you a heads up and let you know how much we'd love to have you join our community there's never been a better time to jump into game development even as a complete noob and i can't wait to see what you create check out the coupon code in the video description to get started and i will see you there thanks for watching that um i checked i checked the sales and yeah it's filling up fast like for real thank you guys for joining um there's only actually like a few seats left so we'd love to have you guys i hope this helped um yeah i there's not much i can do to help you finish your game i hope like little bits of advice can i encourage you and inspire you because it is possible like if it's if some filmmaker who can't code can like release their game on consoles and get featured by apple and have the president of xbox play their game like like any like i do feel like like it's a it's it's available to anyone with like the dedication to put to it and it takes work there are so many days where like i was i would have rather watch a tv show than work on the first tree i was so tired from having a new baby and working full-time but i don't know it worked out it blows my mind and i you know i'm not going to say that i like deserved it and there's like there is like a bit of luck like anything to life but i did work really hard on it and it's cool that it resonated with people and so yeah i just want to ask you guys what can you like what do you want to share with the world like what's the game that you want to make that you know it doesn't have to be the best most amazing open world rpg ever but like what's a small thing that you can share that would make an impact on people and it can be like a story from your life or it could just be a really fun arcade game that helps people forget you know like a crappy day at work or whatever those are like the cool things about making games you can like you can just talk to millions of people and they'll listen and you know talking meaning they'll play your game and they'll take them to another world for just a few minutes i just i love that about games so yeah just a couple more questions yes the present xbox did play my game phil spencer um i didn't know it someone on twitter tweeted at me and said hey look what phil spencer's playing right now and they took a screenshot they took a screenshot of his what you know what he was playing in xbox dashboard and it said the first tree i don't know if he liked it it's possible he didn't but maybe he did he seems to play a lot of games like i really i appreciate all microsoft does because i've gotten really cl you know familiar with the dev tools with xbox and they care a lot they care a lot about indies and about helping game developers make have good tools and systems and um they've man for no reason i don't know how this happened um yeah one of the indie account managers he like just when i said this when i said this uh i was sorry i'm trying to remember what i was gonna say i got featured on the xbox main menu the dashboard like if you were to like go log on to xbox it would have the first tree and that was up for a week or so and that's when sales exploded that was crazy um and i just tweeted i was like who did this like oh my gosh i can't believe it's featured on the main main menu of xbox on the dashboard and then i just like my one of my account managers over indie games for xbox he just did like a little smiley face like a little wink emoji and i'm like you knew about this that's what's cool about consoles is you work with real people and it was always a dream of mine to like work you know i as a kid i was like i want to work you know i want to work for nintendo everyone has that dream but then i was actually like talking and having nice conversations and partnering up with with nintendo employees and with xbox and playstation employees it was really cool i love consoles is it's the next frontier for indie game developers i think but it's getting easier which means it will get more competitive kind of like how steam and the app store opens up the launch the flood gates so yeah it's getting it's getting easier to self-publish on those consoles i kind of did it in a weird time where it was still kind of hard but still not impossible if that makes sense so yeah in and out 25 bucks total thank you in a now do you believe this is such a this is such a genius marketing idea to like spend five dollar increments and then yeah you get the you get to get the burger name out there do you believe in the power of positive thinking um yeah definitely like i don't know i'm kind of like a realist as well because i get down on myself i have i have imposter syndrome big time and it doesn't it doesn't help that the internet can be a mean place and they'll just they'll tell you all your insecurities and be like i don't know i've had people commenting to me directly saying you're such a fraud you don't deserve any of this and those are like those are my those are my like my deepest fears you know so you're probably asking well how do you overcome that and i don't know honestly i think the answer was to disconnect a bit from the internet not read every single steam review that helps with positive thinking um focus on the positive focus on what like what actually people are saying and you know i've gotten like the most amazing emails of my life from people who played my game so i'm glad i focus on those instead of people who hate the game which that's okay they can hate the game it's not for everybody um if you're just getting started though like this i'm talking about post release if you're working on your game and you need positive thinking to finish it uh what helped me was visualizing my launch day and just saying man it's being like i can't wait for people to play the game i can't wait for people to try it out and for people to leave a review like when i got my first download on my first game that was monumental and i was so excited for that because i was anticipating it and then probably like one of the best memories of my game dev career it was also like the most frazzled i'd been i'm a streamer on twitch the very first streamer ever played my first game in 2015 and i just like i stood there watching them play like this like i just couldn't stop watching but i was freaked out i think at one point i even like got up out of my chair and i was like i can't watch this is freaking me out too much i was too nervous and then he played it he beat it and he was like he got quiet and the stream was just like that was really nice i really that was that's not what i was expecting but that was just a pleasant game and right there like that stuck with me the rest of my life that helped me want to keep making games so yeah visualize those kind of accomplishments don't don't visualize a million dollars i think that can be a distraction because that's very unlikely and you should be the people that make the people that do make lots of money from games they're the people that do it because they love it in the first place and the money was kind of a side effect if that makes sense um and i do love making the games if the first tree didn't wasn't a huge hit i still would have i still would have kept keep making games because i love telling stories and i love people hearing my stories over games yeah hope that helps in and out um okay a couple more i'm just catching up on the chat could you give me some tips on making ui and a menu screen is it really important to make it look good is it worth it oh yeah ui i've actually i have this theory that somebody like they'll make when someone opens up your game for the first time they make a knee-jerk reaction whether it's subconsciously or consciously and they'll decide right then and there if the game is high quality or not and i know that's not fair and i know you can like some people will be like okay this game is high quality but if the menu kind of sucks or is ugly then you're at a disadvantage right so i did i really enjoy ui and i enjoy menu designing and i love ux um and so i did like i i made i made sure the menu looked good in the first tree and i think that helped people be like it sets the tone and helps them like get ready for what kind of game it's going to be and that'll be polished and dramatic and cinematic i don't know does that make sense so if you're probably thinking oh i hate ui i don't like doing it then i would recommend going to the unity asset store because there's some amazing ui packs that have everything set up there's a game one of our jdu students made a game called mortal sin and his menu looks so good i was like is this custom made he's like oh no it's just the asset pack but he replaced certain graphics to fit the style of his game and i just think i just love that menu and i love the visual aesthetic of the game and it all meshes together perfectly you guys should check out mortal sin is that what it's called i hope so it's really cool um yeah um jordan marsh our community is mostly awesome sucks to hear that there are people like that david it's okay it's the internet that's that's honestly it's the hardest part of like i was so excited to like have a viral post on reddit but at the same time it kind of sucks because yeah you're getting like millions of impressions people are seeing your game like hundreds of thousands of people clicking on your game but then you're just you're a target and you have the spotlight on you and you get thousands and thousands of angry people not actually sorry let me i gotta be clear i don't wanna over exaggerate you get thousands of comments like i probably get five up to five thousand comments on a viral post on reddit but probably five percent of them would be really hateful and they're just angry and they're mad because they think you're an ad they think you're a liar and they just want you to know it and i don't know i'm not like that online i don't want to like teach anyone a lesson but there are people like that that do that every day on the internet so whatever you just gotta you know ignore the haters um cool studio primitive what about visualizing a billion dollars i don't know if that would help either let's see everyone always says man you can make so you can make millions from games just look at notch and he did make billions literally um but don't that's an exception to the rule uh that's probably the exception to indie game wealth because even the most successful indie games of all time they're probably making they're making 50 million maybe i don't know i wish yeah 50 million would be nice those are like the one like those are like the amazing classic like the perfectly made games like hollow knight and stardew valley made by small teams or solo developers anyway okay cool how about how about one more yeah undertale exploded two good point going viral is a frightening thought just because of the trolls yeah i don't particularly like it to be honest but like i've said i don't like marketing but i'm willing to do what it takes to um to like share my game with people because if i didn't market it then so many people wouldn't have found it who loved the game you know what i mean do i like like pushing myself into the internet be like hey listen to me like buy my game no not particularly i wish i could just release something and that people would magically like find the game and love it you know but i don't know i'm willing to do what it takes i guess to share my game and help people find it i don't want people who hate the game to buy it i don't want that obviously i'm i love the steam refund system but i want as many people to know about it so that the right people find the game and that's kind of what marketing is right okay sorry one more question it's been a yeah two hours this has been fun thanks for thanks for hanging out with me guys um if you have an app idea but i don't have the money to do what kind of yeah okay this will be the last question if i have an app idea but i don't have money to do it what can i do well you actually well first of all there will always be at least a small cost to getting your app published unless you go to itch.io which is totally free you'll need a paypal account to earn funds to earn money but there's tons of websites that have free assets and you don't even have to buy anything you could go to turbo squid sort by free tons of 3d models you can go to opengameart.org tons of free it's all free sorry it's open all free game assets there unity is free you can use bolt instead of play maker if you don't know how to code um and then but remember there is a cost like even on android which is probably the lowest uh barrier you know entry to entry fee is 25 for lifetime membership to android store play store that's 25 bucks and apple is is it 100 a year or is it 49 a year i think it's 100 a year for apple and then steam is 100 per game which you can earn back if you make more than a thousand bucks so i don't know i get i don't want to say i get frustrated but there's a lot of people that say like oh i can't spend one penny on my game it's like you gotta you gotta spend a little bit you can't even publish on android unless you spend 25 bucks but if you really like can't spend one penny on a game then do itch.io and use those websites i talked about and then you'll get a bunch of free assets and then you're good you you will spend literally no money and you'll be able to release a game and maybe make a profit but yeah you kind of got to spend money to make money a little bit and you know i spent you know i won't say how much i spent on the console ports but it was it's a it was a scary amount of money to me and my wife and when i told my wife like how much money it would be we were kind of like we got it got really sobering you know what i mean um but then i was like i feel good about it i think the game will make the money back on switch at least because i didn't know if it would do well and sure enough it was an investment i paid a big chunk of money and i got a bigger chunk of money back and it was kind of it was because it was kind of a risk but it was totally worth it you know what i mean so yeah um thank you jordan marsh um okay this will be you did a donation i appreciate it jordan can you share some more gdc-like tips for what content your reddit post should show how do you get those juicy upvotes yeah if you've watched the gdc talk that's i kind of boiled down everything in that one talk but here's another here's a new thing since that talk came out a lot of people you know they try to they try to copy the formula which is okay that's why i shared it but with that comes saturation and with that comes lots of the same posts and that's what i've learned about markets and social media in general and like like trends die like think of a meme like a meme can be super hot a million people sharing it and then it just dies off and people are looking for the next thing and that's true for marketing your game as well um if your game is especially visually striking then it will almost always do good regardless of like your title if your game like doesn't have like the graphics or the hook where it's like oh man what a good hook i didn't think i never thought of that then um if you don't have the hook or the graphics then it will be hard to get the upvotes and then you'll probably need to do different things um you're probably wondering what kind of different things can you do and that's like you know i i i don't know what the next big marketing tactic will be especially like with reddit to get people to like to want to click on it and that it resonates with people um funny posts do always do great um that was one of my viral posts on reddit was making something humorous where's the giant bunny the giant bunny gift did really well that was retweeted by the official reddit twitter account too which i thought was cool and that got people being like what kind of game is this there's a million bunnies this is so funny and so yeah funny gifts do great the one that's been oversaturated is and now you get a lot of hate comments if by saying doing the same thing which i've done before and now it doesn't work as well you say hi guys i'm like a solo developer i'm working on this game at night i just had a baby this is my game i'm making and it comes off a little bit too much as like you're fishing for upvotes and it's too much like of a pity party um and that's that's what i did like one of my most viral gifts on reddit was it doesn't look like a lot but i got footsteps working on my fox adventure game and it was like leave a footprint of snow with the fox and that that gifted great now if you do that it kind of like i think it just it annoys a lot of the redditors who are so they're like you know it's it's oversaturated it's been done to deaths so yeah to answer your question like what could you do to get the juicy up votes you have to be like kind of counterculture and you have to like think of things that like still like give value to redditors which usually is like a laugh or something interesting and then focus on that asking for pity up votes doesn't work as well anymore something you could do is like make fun of those things and this is where i mean like you know like how meme like in its life cycle it will be the same meme and then somebody will make like a meme making fun of that meme so you could do like a gif like making fun of those pity posts being like hey guys i made this game while i lived in a garbage can only only eating twinkie wrappers uh it'd be cool if you upload it and people would upload it just because it's funny and it's kind of like it's a reactionary it's kind of making fun of those kind of things um you could do what else i had a thought recently i've read it and and i'm not saying like the normal you know doing like a normal post won't work you'll just have to be like it has to be extreme it has to be beautiful looking and it has to be very clever and you know i check you know i check reddit every day and every day i see something on our gaming going viral of an indie games indie game devs game and it's usually like there's something that's really cool like it's like oh i loved i loved small was it was that game called small soldiers where he plays the green plastic army men and i was like on playstation and nintendo 64. and they're like we're making like an like a multiplayer inspired by small wait what was it called again small army like sarge's heroes and stuff i gotta look it up real quick army men it was just called army men um yeah and they're like i loved army men growing up and then you get all these comments and like people appreciate because the value you brought was like nostalgia you brought back oh man i love i loved army men games everyone hated him when i was a kid but i thought they were great and so it's like and look at this game we're making for fans of army men back from the n64 days and stuff does that make sense it's it takes experimenting and as you know from my gdc talk there are so many gifts that did not work and you just got to keep trying trying new things and smaller subreddits are way friendlier than r gaming i talk about that all in the course by the way is how to use reddit focus on the smaller subreddits that will get you friendlier more receptive people and then how to prepare and prep for the huge r gaming the subreddit gaming sorry the gaming subreddit post which takes prep takes time but if you can pull it off you'll get hundreds of thousands of views on your game which is pretty crazy sarge is heroes yep okay okay i'm gonna go lady vantablack said i should stop doing these before i eat which is true um but yeah i wanted to do this and i appreciate the people who signed up for the course i appreciate all the questions appreciate the donations thank you so much for watching and yeah i just i hope uh good luck with your games i'm gonna be messing around with unreal engine soon and i'm still working on the course i'm still adding stuff but i'm really looking forward to making games and maybe sharing the journey along with you guys with game development so yeah take care and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: David Wehle

Views: 14,893

Keywords: the first tree, game development, epic games store, indie dev q&a, unity game development, making your first game, unreal engine, unreal engine 5, quixel, how to make a game

Id: 37yPeB4bkKI

Length: 127min 51sec (7671 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021