Solo Development: Myths, Reality and Survival Strategies

[Music] hello good afternoon and welcome everyone to this panel dedicated to the life and works of solo developers aptly called cellular development myths reality and survival tactics i'm your moderator for today my name is eric bartelson i'm editor-in-chief of the gaming b2b website premortem.games before we get started i would like to point out that this panel was co-organized by alessandra van otterlo who would also be doing the moderation but unfortunately she had to return home due to family circumstances and we would like to wish her well from all of us here okay let me give you an overview of what we're going to do in the coming hour we have four amazing developers all solo developers that will share their insights on on the challenges and opportunities of doing game development by themselves first they will take turns and do a short presentation on one particular topic after that after the micro talks we will dive in deeper and talk in more detail about the realities of um of being a solo game developer and after that if time permits um we will be taking questions from the audience as well there are microphones here and there but i'll let you know when it's time for the for the questions from the audience first let me introduce you the four solo developers on this panel joe winter creator of song of iron megan fox developer of skateboard among other titles neil jones creator of aerial knights never yield and tomasala developer of the falconer so to kick things off i would like to invite joe winter to take the virtual stage and talk about starting a project joe hey thank you very much for the intro and i'm super excited to be here um i'm gonna be talking about the beginning stages of development and um but first i guess it's good to talk about why i'm here and and what i've done uh you go to the next five um who am i my name is joe winter and uh i've been in the game industry for 15 years now as an animator here's a bunch of the games that i've worked on but the reason i'm in this panel you can go to the next one is song of iron which is the game i released at the end of last year which is my first solo project and my first indie game i was really excited to work on and i used a lot of these things that i'm about to talk about to get it to be a thing that i could actually publish and release now you can go to the next one thomas again i'm talking about the beginning of the game of developing a game and it's one of the most exciting times to develop especially the soil developer everything is sort of sort of to you like it's all up to you to make whatever you want but i think it's also one of the easiest times to quit and sort of leave a project behind so i really want to focus on the survival tactics that helped me get through it for song of iron and you go to the next one the first one is art from the start this is i there's a various there's tons of good reasons to do art really early on in the game but as far as surviving um the early development i think can go to the next one it's really important because it gives you uh something tangible to look at something tangible to see to share with friends or the internet or whatever it might be and it also it just makes it feel like you're developing a game compared to doing a bunch of tutorials if you stick with you know the the unreal mannequin or whatever sort of generic stuff you can really feel like all you're doing is tutorials and when you look at your game versus other stuff it all feels the same and so you won't feel as as as proud of what you're working on you go to the next one it doesn't always have to be a super elaborate um art this is some examples of something i'm working on on the side right now it's five things it's a tree a rock bush and some grass but it's able to populate an entire environment it has a mood it has a feel and the game kind of has an identity already so if any problems come up i can always come back to this and feel really good about what i'm working on and that will keep me going through what could be hard times in the beginning stages the next thing i want to talk about is limits you can go to excellent tunnels like i said this limits will set you free i think as any solar developer we really have to understand that we have limitations we only can do so much there's only one of us so it's really important to do this really early on you can go to the next one with song of iron i said some really broad and really extreme limitations i can go back one sorry um brought in some really like sort of wide reaching limitations on myself no customization no inventory no multiplayer it's gonna be a side scroller i wanted a linear story so it was really simple um and so i've kind of got this really narrow pie slice left of what i could possibly make from a game and now i can go to the next one but as that pie slice sort of goes outward you're gonna constantly find more and more and more potential with like no matter how narrow of a scope you create there's an infinite amount of game to be developed there um and there's a there's a couple more a list of what i did for song of iron so it's just like don't be afraid of cutting yourself off from a good experience there is good experiences everywhere and restriction always makes creative things kind of blossom when you wouldn't expect it and then the last thing you can go to the next one thomas is i'm flying through this and i'm trying to do this exact thing right now which is keeping my momentum um this is i actually think one of the silent killers of early projects uh you go to the next one it's just the idea that the beginning of any development it's fueled by inspiration of something you've seen or excitement of making a game in general and it's so easy for all that to go away if you hit a a pitfall along the way um sometimes this is just getting overly caught up on some tech you really want i remember i basically quit a project cause i couldn't get a cake to look good i'd only been working on it for a few months but that the week i spent on this tape basically took all my momentum away and i lost all passion for the project so there's a there's a variety of reasons this will happen but i think it's really worth being aware of and watching out for yourself getting stuck anywhere so that you can move on to something else do some art which works great for the first point do some other system whatever it might be like watch out for those things you can trip over early in development and again these are really fast micro talks so that's it um we're moving along but it's just i think those three things are huge key things that kept me going at the beginning stages of song of iron and honestly built towards making uh the game a success for me in in the long run thanks all right all right um thank you joe you really put the micro in the micro talk here race through it all right thank you um we will go over to megan fox who will talk about platform deals megan so yeah hello i'm megan fox i'm glass bottom meg on twitter uh i made skatebird go to escape for rocks you want to learn more you've probably heard of it ah discord anyways i worked usb triple a i worked there for three years that was playable studios and it was also net devil and there was other some other name went through a lot of names made lego universe if you remember that that's about it though then i've been indie ever since about 10 years uh my first game was jones on fire which was totally solo except for i think music after that was hopped in the roof which was less solo spartan fist a bit more solo and skatebird which is less solo but started more solo a lot of my stuff is the way i start is i try to neck it down to a point where i can make this game on my own if i need to and then based on initial hype i will pull on contractors or whatever to do that little piece of work that i can't do myself a lot of other social developers might instead use asset store stuff which also works if that's what your preference is also it's usually cheaper to do that um but just kind of depends on the kind of person you are which brings us to platform deals uh what joe was talking about with making it pretty first and how that helps him it'll also help you with platform deals uh generally speaking you want to make a polished prototype you want to do marketing first which was the talk i just did which basically just means make it pretty and make it look like a complete game before you start showing to other people so that they can kind of anchor in the idea that this is a complete game it's huge and big instead of seeing the shitty prototype and having to imagine how this is going to become something larger uh it also helps before you have a deal if you've got something on a buzz that doesn't mean you have to have a lot of buzz but if you've at least announced something that looks pretty and looks like a complete game even if it very much isn't uh you'll have an easier time talking to platforms because you can say look at this thing which theoretically exists and you understand it instead of look at these two cubes which are awkwardly bumping into each other i promise this is gonna be a great game give me three hundred thousand dollars that's a much harder conversation also uh platform fit matters so obviously what apple cares about is different from what xbox cares about sony you might think they're identical to xbox but no what kind of game that sony cares about is very different from the kind of game xbox cares about they all have their own style and vibe and you kind of need to pick your targets well that doesn't mean that you shouldn't like for a wide net driver one but you're more likely to get with whichever platform is closest to the viber considering so look at the games they funded and try to work out what they tend to like usually you can figure something out from that now how to make the approach uh that's going to be uh well if you have a friend that really helps that's generally going to be someone who's made a deal before uh if you know someone like this you probably do and if you don't you don't so harping on this isn't useful you can also approach at a convention with a demo this is a little harder your pitch better be locked in perfect because you're gonna get disregarded really quickly if you're not careful usually you're not looking for like a big two-hour demo at this point you're looking for like it sells the game in 30 seconds and maybe there's five to ten more minutes of gameplay if they care because if you can get people to sit with you that long it's gonna be amazing usually this kind of meeting is something you said ahead of time with a platform person which you hopefully interact with an email and like it'll be a coffee meeting that kind of thing and theoretically the block will say 30 minutes but you've got like five maybe so again pitch better be locked down your other option is to be a licensed platform dev and then cold email apart the the group in question and good luck this can work uh if you need help finding these emails again talk to someone who's done the deal before but you really want an intro if possible so yeah now is how as far as these deals look uh there's variance in this most of them are going to be limited to no upfront and all back end which means xbox or sony or amazon might say we will give you the hundred thousand dollars or whatever when the game launches which means you have to get from here to there you know without that money there's a bunch of ways of doing that i've used kickstarter in the past your strategies may vary but you generally need to plan for this if you're going for platform money that doesn't make it impossible but it does mean that your strategy needs to you know consider that uh also remember that some deals can overlap and some don't uh so don't go pissing off one platform because you think you're going to get a deal with another platform like clearly you might think sony and xbox don't overlap that's not necessarily true it depends which deal um and even apple and other stuff apple it's harder to get to if you don't start with them first but often that can go to other places so again don't burn bridges just don't which is pretty much the gist of how to do uh how these deals work more detail you know is more involved but five minute macro talk so yeah all right all right thank you megan and now it's time for neil jones and his presentation on porting neil yo what's good everybody um thanks for being here i want to shout out joe and megan those presentations are awesome i agree with everything they said but you know in a more deep sexy black man voice um um so uh yeah can you can you go to the next slide for me please um oh no that one yeah so i'm neil i go by ariel knight online i create this game called aerial nice never yoke it's a super dope amazing game um i'm super amazing everything about it is amazing uh you should definitely check it out um but no i i i came from um you know just a student type of background just like i'm sure most of you in the audience where i tried for 10 years to get to the game industry it's really rough it's really hard um it's a struggle you know that um so you know i kind of made the pivot to trying to make games my my by myself uh so like what was previously stated um i started off just trying to make something simple something i could do by myself um and you know i went through the processes that were just explained um and i made it to the point where i was ready to do ports i landed a publisher uh i had this dope trailer everybody was hyped about my game but now i had to get it onto all these platforms and as you see on the slide um never yield made it onto um the the epic game store xbox nintendo switch steam playstation is coming out uh later this week on mobile devices or next week i don't know what day it is it doesn't matter but it's coming out on mobile devices as well um the the important thing that the the thing i want you to take away from importing is that it sucks it's terrible and it is the the worst experience uh because you would think that it's easy um if you look online it's just just you know hit the button and it's done but no each of these platforms have really specific requests um not even just um as far as code and making sure that it works on the platforms but as far as marketing as far as you know your contact with the the the person um who is your direct contact for that platform um you need specific trailers you have there's rules and all of the platforms have different rules um it's just a really rough experience so um one you know only go down that route if you have to and two um start with a base platform um base platforms i think i like to think of it as like pokemon like pick a base platform that you're happy with because you're gonna be stuck with it for a while um but if you go go on to the next slide for me please um the the pros and cons the pros everybody knows pros you more pr more platforms more revenue um but the cons is is it worth it um do you want to put all of your energy into launching um on playstation at the same time that you're launching it uh on mobile because there's going to be a price difference there's a different audience you have to juggle both of those communities at the same time and you know community management and talking about the game also ties heavily into the platforms when do you want to launch on mobile when do you want to launch on switch do you want to do all of these at the same time um are you going to do this alone or are you going to hire people to help you um and you go on to the next slide for me please um so yeah i listed out a bunch of reasons these this is not even half the reasons uh why reporting sucks um but you know you have to track bugs update the game and like all of these updates aren't one-to-one even if they're on a similar platform like steam and uh epic game store uh just because it's a pc doesn't mean that the storefronts uh support the same kind of uh way to update it so it's worked no matter what platform you're doing these updates for so if you launch on five different platforms there's five different versions for your game that needs to be made and each of them might have different bugs and you have to track what's going on wrong where um and a really important thing that a lot of people try to keep track of is um just uh keeping the experience the same that's a big struggle i faced with uh doing multiple platforms um making sure that the experience was the same from the switch to the playstation to mobile um and again um uh there's different rules so the switch doesn't have achievements in trophy hunting um but playstation does and xbox does are those achievements going to be the same are they going to be different or what what is easier what's harder to do um and if one achievement doesn't work as you know people who play my game um you you have to address that even if it's just for one platform um and launching at the same time this is the biggest sticking point i don't uh from my experience i don't think i will want to launch a game on multiple platforms more than two at the same time again as a solo developer i had help from a publisher to get to the point where i could launch on multiple platforms but even with that it was still extreme hassle and put a more more burden on me unnecessarily when i could have done a rolling launch launching on multiple platforms at the same time is a really big burden to put on yourself and if you can i would say just pick one or two platforms start with that track the bugs get all your fixes out the way and then launch on your next platforms um i'm almost i can go to the next slide for me um asking for help um as solo developers we want to be you know that fantasy of i did it all by myself you know i did no help i'm this master coder master artist um i'm you know i'm that person i'm that uh that uh that dev but it's it's not bad to ask for help i think all of us uh get help in some form um be it the asset store or when it comes to porting or getting trailers made we're getting help some way somehow anyway so if you're doing porting there's no harm in reaching out to you know a smaller studio or another individual who can help you with that burden so you can put more of your focus on marketing which is something that indie devs are terrible at um and you can go to the last live for me so yeah just to sum it all up just uh choose your starting uh platform wisely remember the pokemon reference uh take your time uh so that you can focus on the platforms you did launch on um and you know take your time rolling it out for other platforms my uh my mobile version is launching a year after the base version um and uh get help and it's always cool to just reach out to people ask for help thanks all right thanks uh neil thanks and to talk about that post launch period here is tomasala hi everybody um i'm tomasala i created a game called the falconer and i'm busy creating another game called the falconer bulwark i've been in industry a long time doing all these side jobs work for hire kind of stuff ended up doing a lot of vr mobile games serious games educational games even i am from the netherlands so sorry for the accent i co-founded the studio back in 2001 before self-publishing uh so uh um at some point i got really inspired by all the indies and what everybody else was doing i i want that uh eventually i did it's an interesting journey um i kind of started that by doing modding for skyrim that's how 12 years ago 10 years 10 years ago i also don't like texture so that's something i'm talking about tomorrow in another talk um i'm going to talk about what happens after release so you finish your game you've ported it you might even have had a platform deal and now it's going out into the world so let me start off the first thing if you ever finish the game and release the game you need to give yourself an applause because that is a momentous achievement and that is something that often gets lost because there is no such thing as a good launch i've i've there's a metro magical thing of a you know a perfect launch i've never seen it ever when you release a game it's going to impact you by the nature of being by yourself regardless if you have a publisher a great family a support network you're going to get hit um and things will go wrong you know uh it is a given part of that which is going to happen that if you are by yourself and i found this distinct from working in a studio is that your expectations are going wild when you are together with a group you can moderate each other you know you can you get realism if you're by yourself you're going to walk on down the street after your game is done before it's launched you think i'm getting a what game award is it's just your mind is going imagining all the stuff that might happen and then you're not allowing your okay also again i hear there's emotionally stable people i am not one of those so if you are super stable this is not you know excellent um so your expectations will never match reality no matter how good the reality is we will always look but yeah this other guy he saw the million or this guy or person or she sold 10 000 copies i'm only selling a thousand copies there is you know that is uh and it is it is momentous you can't run away from that and it will hurt you and it will cause um i call it uh emotional situations we need to deal with and affect your mental health basically to be honest when i launched the falconer and it was an xbox launch title in 2020 i spend a week or longer just on the couch under a blanket shaking and it's this actually happened you know part of that is your own expectations things go wrong you see your own mistakes you are your own worst enemy you will see every mistake you make then you have reviews i make the joke you know a good review goes like it's great oh a little endorphin oh someone liked it then a bad review stays with you for days so and you will always have bad reviews and you will always have good reviews so that that that becomes you know the more successful you are the more reviews you get you it doesn't matter if it's a user review or you go on reddit because you're gonna and search your own game and find someone it sucks uh doesn't matter each one of those is a cumulative hit and you're by yourself and like i said there's no personal distance because you're also the only one responsible if you are in a group you can help each other and say you know okay it's the art or it's the publisher you can blame someone if you're by yourself you're going to blame yourself and it'd be true that book that killed it i launched got sick fixed the ai but accidentally made them killer so that showed up in the reviews no one to blame but myself you said that that that you know i quickly fixed this before you know with the final update before it goes into cert i shouldn't have done that um so everything will hit on a personal level this is also your art yeah i'm a big favor saying this is not art like art with a big a you're making something it is your emotional expression into the world and there will be pain so a good thing to do i have no other than is prepare for this no it will happen if it's big or small you know if it's just your first each game you will have all these things happen you know if it's your you know you got a platform deal when you're going to e3 for me i think it will always happen um so so make space for them find a support network and figure out how to survive that uh i i think it's something we should said at organizations like gdc mental health is important you know and we need to figure out how to do that um so that's one so then you know you've launched you've waken up after two weeks read all the reviews uh and you want to run but you got to be a good dev you got to support your game and you got to grow it we live in a uh you know a games as a surface world and i've said this it's easier to do games as a server if it's just you there's no committee nobody's there a bug comes in you see it you fix it you update it and you send it off for certification if you're on console that is a mixed bag because it requires you to open up to all the negativity that's coming from and the most useful things are the worst one you know the worst bug you made you know no another person said thomas you know your mouse and keyboard sucks why did i buy this game because you know thomas made it on control um the thing is you start talking and figuring out you have to listen and um and that hurts so that is another thing which is prepare yourself and my advice some people say just don't do anything just hide i'll get to that in lights last light why i don't feel you should do that there is a positive there you know they're scrolling their stuff you will find comments on your steam reviews that will make you go that won't go out one year and you know that will remain with you and keep you going you know um and that is you know uh i don't ethics we don't have time for examples but you will find them and so you cherish them and uh you know you thank them um and uh they will help so going in isn't all evil you know you can find great people they'll come to your discord and it will help um and like i said it's a you develop you've spent a year two years three years four years five years in a bubble it's just you and your this is going to be amazing and trying to hype yourself up you're going to be you know the other stuff joe said it's going to go bad you're going to get stuck and then you're there and you've been in a bubble and then you have to go out so that's bubble's going to burst regardless because it's artificial um after if you don't know all the support for the falconer i've done dozens of updates a bunch of dlc and suddenly you know some things actually help your sales you can actually you know it gets better if you have bundles and special editions when you have more dlc and more updates people will enjoy it and you know you get to be a good dev because there's nothing that people when people someone comes to you this sucks because it's buggy they actually want it to be fixed and if you then fix it you know they can try to love what you made so um you've done all that then you need to prepare graciously to detach at some point you need to make a new game and there's a graceful exit at some point um i don't know how to do that it's just slowly drift off and do it but i like to think that i could do some things graciously um i want to handle it because i'm not as fast when you're a solid development everything you make is yours you are not spinning off stuff that you know let's see if it's stick you know that's the the term we're using the games let's make a demo see a prototype see if it sticks but you know i've consciously chosen to call myself thomas not you know whatever studio it's just me uh you're bailed you're building nervous uh i don't know how it's saying in american uh you are building on yourself and everybody that's gonna go back in history is gonna see every game you made so it's not about firing forgetting it's about building out your catalogue so that people come from you because that is you are and i like to say i aspire to be so like a fantasy author you love your favorite fantasy authors they make seven book deals because they know people come back and one of the books in the middle might be not as good not to your liking but you keep coming back because you're invested in the world i truly believe for solo development that is a valid path to aspire to and make sure that whatever you know the the gracious exit being that you're happy where the game ended up you made sure the bugs got fixed it's your best games and you know that if you make something even better in the future and people go back to play your first game it all fits and makes sense and it's something you're proud of so yeah building upward so that's my micro truck [Music] all right thank you thomas um well we have prepared a couple of talking points and i will dive in a little deeper and see what makes you guys stick what motivates you what scares you what drives you and what going solo means for your mental health and your creativity your finances so let me kick off with a question directed to uh all four of you um so when you started your journey as a solo developer was there anything that uh caught you off guard that you didn't expect uh let's start with uh megan yeah so whenever i made jones unfuck whenever i made skatebird what it was supposed to be was a little itty bitty game i could manage on my own because previous game i just failed i had to let everyone go it was just me again just like jones on fire and then it grew and like i still didn't have a team it was just me so that was fun so we had to i will i had to find a way to flex and meet audience interest and expectation without undercutting what makes my studio work which is i don't have employees because i don't have the kind of burn rate or income to make employees work so that whole thing i i don't want to scale i can't scale without destroying what i am so i ended up collaborating with other tiny indies other people that are essentially like me we kind of voltron together to make something bigger and then we go our separate ways after i found that other people that are our size tend to do that it works pretty well but yeah your mileage may vary for me that's how i got around it but it was terrifying at first all right um neil yeah so uh i didn't know how depressing it was like tommy said um uh i started making the game and you know i was really hyped up about it then i got real sad um in the middle of making it then i got real excited like towards the end and then i didn't feel like finished feel like finishing it but i got pressured because people were expecting it but when i finished it it was just like like like he said i didn't feel like doing anything i was just like sitting there sad watching scandal uh it's a good show um but uh yeah i just watched like the whole season scandaled and i was just like depressed and i didn't want to look at any of the reviews um but people were giving me good reviews i got like awards and stuff but i didn't care about any of it and i wasn't expecting not to care about any of it um i thought i was going to be super excited about everything but you know you know you finish the game and it's like the thing that she like has been you for so long and it's not you anymore it's like just out there uh and it's is it's like it's pretty depressing i wasn't expecting that that makes you want to do another game it doesn't joe uh yeah i mean i'll echo the emotional rollercoaster that's definitely a thing that i think i might be one of the people that thomas has heard about i feel like i'm a fairly stable emotional person but this uh surprised me a lot and uh honestly i owe thomas huge thankful thanks because he was messaging me on my release telling all the bad viewers to to you know go away and and just you know he was walking me through it and it honestly it probably had saved me i you know it was so great uh but what the other thing i'll mention um is how like how much stuff is outside of what you think of when you're thinking about making a game there's all like supporting is one of those things and talking about hiring people or getting contracts like there's all these little things you have to be ready for that i didn't you don't think about when you're just like animating something for fun and all of a sudden it's a project and you have expectations and so being prepared for that sort of stuff once it starts going somewhere is worth it you know having a lawyer all that kind of crazy stuff it's they will save you the stress of the unknown which is all that sort of stuff all right thomas i think for me the biggest surprise was that i could actually do it because i'm very insecure person so i always think i can't do this i can't do this and then i'm not a good programmer and then i turn out if you do something good enough you can actually do it and you learn and you get better and i do a lot of what called wall bashing it's just until something works and at some point that oh it's becoming a game and that's super motivating and when you're you're stuck you can actually you know get yourself out of strum just right but i'm actually doing it uh and that is i find that mysterious and i still do that you know at the end and like i said when you finish a game you need to applaud yourself because it's it's like you look at it and god it's an achievement right yeah you have no idea it's like really how does this when did this happen well three years or something yeah three years you know like joe said at some point the person that started it isn't the person that's finishing it you know so yeah that's a big surprise that you can actually do it look at you with the deep comments i gotta write that one down that's going on t-shirt yeah it's fun as well right to be a solo developer we'll get to that absolutely it absolutely is all right the next question is um i guess for joe and megan um as a solo developer you're by definition you're alone right and so how do you bind bounce ideas of uh of you know how does the creative feedback loop works for you so for me it's uh family and friends mostly family i bounce a lot of my partners and if i can't sell them on a game idea and get them to understand what it is and why it's fun i tend to take that as a big warning sign the regular people in your circle tend to become unwitting and possibly unwilling victims for you to inflict your ideas upon and just hold on does this sound cool okay but wait what if i did this does that sound cool and they're like okay okay i'm gonna go to my job now and you're like okay this is my job and yeah it gets but yeah the kind of them and if you've got a local development group anything like that that helps but that may be like i live in a little tiny town there's no game development group here so it's kind of just us and yeah i like uh you call them regular people [Laughter] uh joe uh yeah i mean ideally you have a huge group of people to slowly rotate through so you don't burn any of your friends out of like your constant interaction but i for me it really was just a few friends from the industry mostly animators so there's sort of an inherent bias from them they're all developers which will skew their opinion a certain way they're all animators so they're all just judging my animation and not worrying about if the game's good or not um so they're they're like with any feedback though you're you're translating what people are saying right um and and just running ideas through people to see if if it sounds good i think one of the best sort of tests if an idea is good if they like it and then they re-explain it to you this like what you thought or if they go what would be also cool would be this you go oh so you don't really care about this idea you're already off to some other thing so it's this great kind of are you paying attention and listening or did you did i lose your interest even telling you the idea um and then something that that kind of popped up for me late in production uh as far as kind of getting feedback was this and thomas kind of mentioned it that i said it was like this idea that there was different people creating this game even though it was always me and one of them was the designer who came up with all the ideas and built all the systems and then late when i was burnt out i was stressed i couldn't i didn't know if the game was good anymore i i had to just trust this older version of myself or this earlier version of myself that thought the good it was a good idea and i just kept building the game believing that i was right before and like i just couldn't judge the game anymore so that so i became my own sort of like like person i guess too in a funny way well it worked thank you um um so this one is for neil and thomas um what's the effect we touch upon this a bit uh what's the effect of being uh so uh of being a solo death what's the effect on your mental health um neil no no thomas closed first so he can like be a downer i i think uh i'll try to be cheerful so it's a huge effect on you know your self-esteem insecurities and it does force you to confront all that because there's nobody else to you know you can't really explain it to other people when you're already on that train ride so it it it you are you're going to do a lot of growing and learning and stuff so it's it's it's intense i've now done it once so you know looking forward to the second time what can i say yeah the dev for cloud cloud punk i think it was he said that thing where you hate it for three months and then you start to love it again it took me over six months you know to re-engage with it uh but now i love it again and i i feel it did you know i i'm back to enjoying it i can even look at it again uh so you do grow you know and now i'm i'm happier than ever because there's you know great advantages you can be with your kids you're at home all the stuff we've wet i'm just making it permanent you know i don't ever gonna want to go to an office again so uh yeah it's it's it's it's heavy but if you get through it it is great in a sense as well but it's a bit of a up and down as well you know depending on where you are in the development um you're now in a in a situation where you start out with a new game right every every yeah well yeah definitely the new game phase is the best everything is hype you everything i didn't think about other epic you know just one creative ride uh and it's just you know look this the bloody 20 uh it's where all the heavy work gets done and what what joe said where you you go you lose the ability to gauge if your own game is or not uh and you run around god it's it's it's anyway about five days of going and you do something like the giant crap town excellent oh it's epic and then so it's it's a it's a roller coaster yeah all right so uh neil yeah um what uh you know we keep saying that it's depressing i think everybody gets to that point um but uh what made me feel better because uh like like thomas said after my game came out i was just real sad um and i didn't i couldn't even look at it i was like you know it is what it is it's done my name's on it for all the reasons thomas said i put my name on it um i just was i just kind of washed my hands of it i was like maybe i'll look at it later a couple a couple weeks later i started going on twitch and just watching people play and watching how excited people were about it you know and it got me back into it i was like well maybe this is good maybe i did do something here um and then i got a uh email from like this mom who was like my kid been playing your game and then he found out that you look like him and and he was so excited and i hopped on a call with the kid and he was like super excited and stuff like that you know he said he once started making games and i followed him on itch and i was like i can't wait for you to make a game i'm going to be the first one to play it and it was like really inspirational and i like oh man i kind of want to make a game now that's awesome nice oh so this next one is for um i guess from megan and joe so how do you handle the the internal discussion between your inner producer and the one who wants to do everything on time and the the inner designer who wants to keep working on it and make it better and better so how do you handle the handle this um well megan okay so i'm one of the weird ones that likes organization i use toggle to time box tasks and often i'll pre-plan a day with like i need to do this this and this they each get their own tasks so that at any given time i can look in there and go okay this is what you're working on and this is what comes next and so on and so forth i also use trello to list out all the things that i think i'm going to need at the start of the game so that at any given time i can look at this and go ah it's about maybe a couple of years or something left and i can see it shrink and when i get to the last six months i can go okay this isn't important and this isn't important to know that's a terrible idea and i can kind of shrink the list down to something that maybe is doable by our launch day and then of course we delay twice because it doesn't matter but still at least i'm within like six months to a year instead of three or four years over i'm one of the the designers that i like limitations i like painting within the lines i also like drawing the lines but i'm more creative if i start by drawing the outline of okay this is roughly the shape and then i figure out how to work within that space that's how i work i don't know about others well you're actually your own producer there yeah uh joe uh i don't think that we could be much different probably from our our methods um i very much and i kind of talked about it in my thing i'm very much a work on what feels the most important at the moment type of a person um i i do not have a schedule i've loaded trello like three times and then forgot i put anything in it kind of thing um but i for me it's it's a much more fluid and it's much more fast-paced work style to work on what i'm the most interested in because i think when passion's involved uh work is always done quicker and and more on target i think what helped me be like that is setting those really strict limits on myself early on like i had a really clean picture of the scope of the game so i i was good at never trying to add anything that would distract and would uh kind of outscale myself but once i got in that box i just sort of did whatever was feeling was feeling right i did i would track some stuff once in a while it would be like i'm doing a lighting pass on the entire game i got through a third of it it took me this long i'll just multiply it and i'll guess that it'll take me another week or whatever it might be and then and then i would like to extrapolate that a few times and be like i should be able to be done by launch and that's i mean it sounds so crazy but it's it's it's really just a an excitement and a passion fuel development for me and i i always love working like that with animation with whatever it is and i feel like i i work better that way all right the best is when you learn something new and then you're like oh i can add this to my game and you just throw it in your whole game you can't do it resist resist but it's so fun i know save it for the next one i do have a huge notes of like when i have more time in the next project uh thing and that helps because i'm my game is supposed to be a trilogy so it was really easy that which maybe helped to go this can be in part two or something you know like it would still work but i'll save it for the for the next part but you did set a sort of release date right you had a schedule to did you made your uh make your uh release date or no no i delayed i had like a tentative spring of last year that got pushed uh out when i knew a little bit more about how the true pace of the game was going and then i delayed like one more time by a month it was just like i'm just gonna be coming in way too screaming hot and so before i announced i pushed it like one more month all right okay so it wasn't that bad the whole development was like two years and a few months so indeed side things that's pretty fast i think all right so um this one is for neil and thomas um how do you manage the combination of having complete creative freedom on the one hand and and your own limitations as a as a developer on the other hand how do you manage them um i'm looking at you thomas so uh i am not megan i can't do lists um and i i can't do limitations i made a game about wanting to be free and that's a struggle uh so i i found this way to get myself to just by allowing myself to faff off and and i learned that it's a new word it's a proper word uh and and intellectually pursue whatever i want to pursue i just a lot but i have just like i think the theme is there's limitations are important so i have limitations i use no textures or whatever and then allow myself within those rules to do whatever they want you know i need to wake up i i literally i it's something running on my mind i'll go to bed and i wake up i gotta do this and then i have to do it because that's what i enjoy i gotta go do it so if there's not if that means like look if this is possible or if i've connect you know at some point someone on discord said you know why why didn't don't the ships and the guns have spotlights or floodlights or whatever yeah is it i'll just sit there go floodlights gotta do it and i'll allow myself just to take the and do it because it's enjoyable and you know you're you're a frail creative person you need to go out you need that you know acknowledgement that i can make something cool even when you're stuck in making systems and those are the worst things for me is you know i went to my partner said okay the next three to six months i am making systems i'm going to be angry i am going to be sad i'm going to be frustrated it's really hard but i got to do it uh so you know you got to prep and get through that and but i also do that but even then i said okay now make a crazy cool town because that's you know i'm down gotta make something cool uh and that's you know sometimes you gotta let yourself go and try to be free and then afterwards it's a damage control just people ask why is the here so big why is it so much it's just me i gotta make something and then afterwards okay i gotta give it a space in the world okay so there's another cool place nice i don't know what to do with it uh but that that's how stuff grows for me yeah it doesn't feel like limitations at all right um i i can be very harsh for it but it's it's it's usually very unlimited what about you neil yeah same with me no no no lists no lists over here um i kind of just um time i box myself into levels i i kind of you know after i started the game i figured out how many how much time is it going to take me to make a level um and then i kind of base that off of like how much time until i want the game to come out and then with you know adjustments uh but i would pretty much just have an idea and i was like well whatever i was going to do i need to do this now because this is all i'm thinking about um uh and that's that's kind of how the update um i had this giant free update that came out that's kind of how that came about uh people uh didn't like the ending uh so i was like well this is gonna bug me forever uh so i spent like three months making a whole new ending to the game and uh changing the story and doing a bunch of new cutscenes and stuff like that because it's all i could think about and nothing else mattered uh i knew um because you you kind of want to you know want to have a happy ending with your game uh i can use better phrasing than that uh you want to you want to have a good conclusion as far as the story of how you made your game um and i i really wanted it to be like you know i saw the flaws i heard the feedback and i uh made adjustments uh that made me happy and people who play my game happy so the fact that the uh the game ending the first time wasn't good enough it wasn't good it was trash but does the was that because of your limitation as a developer at that point yeah i ran out of time and um my original ending i was like oh i'm gonna be all you know artistic and mysterious and and whatever and then i show people the ending i showed my friend dan who did all the music uh and he was like uh yeah you could do that if you want to and i changed the ending like eight times and i kept showing it to people in the the last uh the last ending before the update um i was like you know i got enough time to change it again and if y'all i don't care if y'all like it i think somebody out there will like it and i was wrong i think you know it's all for the best nothing wrong to admit that so guys um um we're kind of running out of time i think so to wrap this up a final question directed to all of you um taking everything uh what we heard today do you still want to continue as a solo developer um megan yeah hell yeah i really like working working as a solo developer working as a small micro whatever means that i can survive off a very very small success which means that i keep doing this forever hopefully at least the bars lower to keep surviving and i can work on weirder stuff like if i was working on a 10 person about 100 000 ahead million dollars a year kind of studio there's only so many game concepts you can make that have a million dollar a year revenue that would keep you alive or you got to score a bunch of publisher deals and then they're going to tell you oh you can't put a bird on the skateboard because that's dumb and well i like dumb stuff so i'm gonna keep making dumb stuff so yeah definitely all right uh neil no um i i go back and forth every day with it um i don't really think any development is worth it unless it's a hobby um just because the the money isn't what people think it is um there's a lot of hidden costs a lot of tax costs that you know you don't consider um i think i'm still gonna make some stuff but i definitely have a cap i i think you know by the time i turn you know a certain age i'm i don't know pick a random number uh i'm gonna say you know i'm retiring from this or i'm kind of done with this um and you know it's not good for your mental health i i need some kind of team or something like that uh to take some of the stress and some of the responsibilities off of me uh but that's me personally i think everybody got their own kind of thing with that sure yeah okay um joe yeah absolutely i um i think part of the learning process was learning about the emotional sort of rollercoaster and that's why a lot of us were talking about it because it was a a big surprise and it's sort of one of the realities of solo development um but that's not to outshine the you know 24 months of total enjoyment i had building the game learning new stuff all the time me and some of my other solo dev friends talk about how this is the game we're playing now instead of playing call of duty all night together we're all sort of on discord while we work on our games and there's i've been playing games forever and now i'm making them for the same enjoyment factor and uh i don't unless i have to stop i i don't plan on it all right then don't uh thomas i i'm never gonna stop this i i recently started you know i took a long break you know six months which is that i got depressed from not doing anything and i started up again and then people talk mojo and whatever and not can i do something again can i be creative and to i start making something and it all came flowing back and it's faster than ever you know it's just like i'm city builder and it's exciting and it's all that passing that you know i want that and you know and then preferably without the stress and mental health issues uh but that you know it's that is the the core of my life just making that and i i love people i love having people around me i love working with people i'm just not super organized and you know kitted out to be a super good team member uh but i love that you know you you get a picture you know during corona that's a bit tough uh but you know that why why would you take publisher so you have someone to talk to uh and for me that helps uh so yeah i'm definitely gonna do it again i i i enjoy it a lot cool um i think we have time for one or two questions from the audience do we yeah um if you have a question could you please walk onto the microphone and speak into the microphone i think you were first yeah sorry i was really excited when you said that first time um so one of the things for me is as a solo solo developer i kind of fell into leading my own project and everything like that at first it just started as a passion project as mentioned earlier the whole idea of doing it all on your own is that it's an idea usually behind the scenes there is a small team or people that you're getting help from so my question is is for the indie side of things when you know you're completely on your own um do you have any advice or personal experience in terms of making sure that the people you help are properly compensated especially when it's coming out of your own pocket slash is there a way to get funding for your individual game yeah there's a there's a lot of different ways to get funding um you know there's a bunch of funds out there that you can kind of apply for um and get just a little bit of money but as far as like um getting people to help you and paying them i i had a rule that like anybody who touched my game outside of me was gonna get paid um i would ask them and say hey this is what i need um if their their price was too high or like not too high but something that i couldn't like afford on my budget um i would just say you know thank you you know you're awesome i just can't afford it with the money that i'm working with um so i would either save up some more money to try to kind of meet that cost or kind of find someone within my budget if i can add to that i always say everybody i meet i i started well i still was working doing in the evenings this is a high-risk business do not borrow money put up your house or do anything this is your mental health as well one of the stresses i had at the end is we're running out of money i've got three kids i've got a mortgage luckily i had a publisher step in and help me out there be careful with what you do and be careful with the people around with what you commit to you know if you don't have the money for other people to help you don't do it and you know when you have people working for you allow them to be creatively free so that you respect their progress their input and if you can't do that i have problems with that then uh don't do that you know because you're not going to be a good uh alcoholic employer or whatever and the other thing is you know there are lots of ways to get money down and i hear people do rev share it's good but make sure you pay people and that people don't do work for free ever all right so cut you short thank you okay because we're only we're running out of time so i'm trying to get as many questions as we can in a couple minutes we have left please um so i'm working on my first solo game and i'm actually making a tabletop rpg um i was wondering if any of you have experience with the tabletop side of things because i know you know from the talk it's a lot different than making computer game and if you could uh if you do have experience what can i carry over from the talk when it comes to looking to publish my first tabletop game all right i'm looking at the panelists any table toppers around joe i i don't have a tabletop experience but i and if somebody else does please jump in but i i think almost all of it's going to carry over to some degree in a lot of ways it this some of the stuff is core just business practices like getting yourself out there as early as you can having fun the whole time understanding like what it truly takes to make a tabletop game not just designing it and creating the pieces but like what does it mean to distribute that because that'd be something that's pretty different for us where we probably are all digital only i'm guessing i know thomas did a little printing but um i think for the most part it's all it all is pretty relevant except for the delivering of the product which is where you really run into problems i've had a couple of friends that have done board get like me personally i've never done it but i have a couple friends that do this the gist is you need to be in a position where you can spend years play testing because it will take you that long to slowly figure out what works with the game and what doesn't so you're probably going to want to develop a close group of friends that you can do this with you can either be online with one of the tabletop simulators or in person i've seen both work the really hard part though is publisher because there's this massive bar between i'm going to sell my own game and i'm going to get a publishing deal getting publishing deal is super hard almost no one scores them be prepared for that not to happen so again like thomas said don't risk your own money towards this keep it very cheap try to keep it as an evening's thing until you have a game that is like there and then i'll try to go the publisher and it may not work out but doesn't mean i'll try just go in with eyes open okay all right very much thank you final question i'm afraid uh after this we'll uh there's a in the breakout room we can you can talk to thomas if you want a final question yes hi um question about narrative design and sort of designing the mechanics of your game when do the mechanics inform the narrative you're trying to present and where does the narrative inform the design that you're presenting go ahead because uh i think that the thing with that those kinds of questions they're different for everybody and you're by yourself you get to decide uh i've heard many good talks on narrative mechanics conflicts at gdc before uh but yeah you're you're it's there is no right answer to me you know it is what you want to do be the artist it's a story driven game mechanical game they're all fine yeah that's pretty much what i was going to say all right so i'm afraid we have come to an end to this uh panel i would like to uh thank uh megan uh fox joe winter neil jones and thomas uh salah for uh uh thomas will be around afterwards to answer any additional questions uh please fill in the evaluation form thanks again and enjoy the rest of uh gdc thanks guys thanks everybody [Music] you

Channel: GDC

Views: 52,810

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design

Id: YaUdstkv1RE

Length: 61min 34sec (3694 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2022