10 Years Of Game Dev Experience In 20 Minutes

if I started Game Dev over I would I would do it completely different and I would I would simplify the crap out of it like there would only be a few things I do okay and I'm going to tell you those three things and by the end of this video you're going to be like well it's going to you're going to feel like this is a totally different idea than what you've heard from other YouTubers now I can be I can be confident in what I tell you um because I'm doing it right now like I'm an indie game developer I've been a I've been a full-time indie game developer since 201 17 or 16 I've been making games for half of my life I'm 3 3 I just turned 34 uh I'm 34 I've been doing Game Dev way more than half of my life but doing it full time since 2017 and you know a lot of indie game developers especially right now the the economy and the the game industry is brutal a lot of indie game devs they make like one game and they barely scrape by and they can't do again um

they just they use their savings or they got some lucky deal or lucky break and then they just stop because it's just too much I'm going to show you the three sort of steps I would take if I started over to create a secure stressfree Game Dev machine okay and it's going to feel different than you'd expect okay so hang tight through the the whole video um okay so let me show you two things these two things before I get started on the three tips let me show you these two things that sort of represent what I'm all about when it comes to a sustainable Game Dev career you ready hang tight that's my there it is YouTube okay and games

this is it now I know what you're thinking well not all of us can have over 100,000 subscribers not all of us get lucky like Thomas well hang on you don't have you don't have to have a ton of subscribers on YouTube and you don't have to have a gang busters viral game my games were not viral they weren't viral um they were I mean if you if you look on Steam they did well in like terms of reviews but like I let's think here it's not like they made millions of dollars I think Never song almost hit a million in gross revenue I don't I wouldn't call that just steam sales like we had to do a lot of other stuff but they weren't particularly viral yet YouTube and games YouTube games it's it's created this machine where it's just like I just know we're going to make money and I know that we're going to be totally fine I'm talking about me and my my wife me and

my wife and kids we're going to be fine for a while um and I could just keep making games now here's the thing it seems like wow I can't do YouTube and games I can't build an audience and make games I don't even know how to make games yet and I know that that seems really really stressful so so I'm going to give you the three sort of steps to get there okay and it's going to feel weird just hang tight please hang tight and listen to these three steps and I'm I'm being completely honest with you I want to be open and honest with you about what I do exactly and how I run my business so that you can do it too and and well what you're going to be creating it's so cool you're going to create this little bubble and the reason I don't mind sharing these these sort of tips with you and how I do things cuz if you decided to do what I'm doing you're not encroaching on my space because I have my own little bubble I have my own

little audience okay and you have your audience and we're not competing okay the problem with steam and the problem with Game Dev in general is your game is competing with this game and this game is competing with this game and it's like thousands of games that are competing and suddenly you're not making money but what I'm going to share with you is well it's how you can build something that's sustainable and and it's safe it's almost like walled off it's this nice cozy bubble and that is an audience okay and so we're going to talk about why you want to build an audience before we build our audience step one let's finally get to step one now now that I'm done rambling let's get to Step One by the way if you want to go deeper into all this stuff um if you want to watch like a 45 minute webinar about how to make six figures with just a demo there's a link in the description um this could change your life I know that

if I saw if I saw this webinar and watched it it would change the way I did gamep when I first started so watch it below it teaches you how to make six figures with just just a demo it's not it's not a gimmick I swear to you because I've done it like three different times I just want I just want you to know about it how to make over $100,000 with just a demo I've done it several times there's several ways to do it and so click the link below and check that out okay let's let's keep talking if I had to start over as a Game Dev the first thing I the first thing I would do it gives me chills because it's so simple and and I I the reason it gives me chills is because I've been stressed out of my mind for 2 years and I'm in this simplification process in my brain of going it doesn't have to be this complicated so the first thing I would do if I started over is I would build two products okay before I build my audience I would build two products now the first product isn't even a product product it's a web

page I would build an opt-in page to get a free demo of my game the game doesn't even exist it's just an idea or a name and I would say get the free demo and it's an opt-in page or it directs the uh the the user to a steam page to wishlist a game so you'd create a a a wish list or a steam page for a game that doesn't even exist yet you can use concept art I've done this by the way you just put concept art up on Steam and make it look like an actual game set the Page live and start generating wish lists or you can create an opt-in page with Wix or Squarespace and just have people opting in you've heard me say this before but I'm just going to say it again for the billionth time an email list is it's like a magic wand here it's like a magic wand and when you launch the game you don't have to guess whether it's going to ignite and release your spell or not it Just will you know it

will if I have 10,000 wish lists I know I know that it's going to ignite email addresses wish list and by the way a wish list is basically an email list it's just steam owns it email lists are so freaking valuable because you can guarantee it's the law of averages you can guarantee that a percentage whether it's 1% to 10% depending on the product or maybe even 20% will convert to a sale so if I have 10,000 wish list by the way that should be your goal if I have 10,000 wish lists for my game and it launches I know I'm going to sell copies I know it now we can't guarantee the exact number but we know we're going to make something okay and I've done this multiple times with with my my game is never saw a pinstripe and I just every launch was was at least 10,000 20,000 to at $20,000

I can't remember and it depends on like whether it was a day or a week but ultimately those games made a decent amount of money more than most indie game devs because I I was focused on creating wish list okay so that's the first product it's an opt-in page or a steam page there's no game created yet nothing okay and you can start getting those wish lists so it's almost like money that hasn't been born yet it's like an embryo of money hasn't been born yet but it's still money it's just an embryo and you know it will become money so that's one product the second product you create you you create is you create a resource but Thomas I don't want to create a resource I don't want to be like you I don't want to be a sleazy YouTuber who sells sells resources that's annoying I know it's annoying but it creates a safe ecosystem for you to build your game and I'll explain why in just a sec but I want you to create

some kind of resource it's a asset pack it's a mini course it's like an hour two hours long and it's dedicated to teaching something that you know really really well okay now if you're going to create a technical course as opposed to like a career course so like a technical course is like how to code right a career course is like how to actually make money in the game industry or how to get a job in triaa those are much higher value courses and you can sell those for a premium but there's also small mini courses that you can sell for like 20 bucks okay and those $20 courses totally fine for you to create even if you're not a full-time game developer if you have something that you're really gifted at you can create look seriously just do a bunch of tutorials record your screen using OBS or streamlabs upload it to teachable or kajabi you've got an hourlong course where you teach something it doesn't have to be perfect I'll explain why in a sec it doesn't have to be perfect and call it something clever like five steps to C Mastery or

something like that or gdau Pro 2024 I don't care create some course or an asset pack or resources or something it doesn't matter and now you've got both this one's hosted on kajabi or teachable or something like that or maybe it's just a zip file I don't care and then this one is an opt-in page to collect email addresses now you've got two products what does that mean instead of taking sponsorship deals instead of well there's a lot of things instead of hoping and praying that your steam game actually makes money you actually have your own again it's like an ecosystem your own bubble your own products that you can sell and they're yours and you own them and you determine when and how you sell them to make money okay that's number one number two build an audience okay I would build an audience on the platform that you understand the most so

if you're a tick tock consumer which I am not and I don't understand it but if you're a Tik Tok consumer as long as you can put a link in the description and drive traffic from Tik Tok to those two products use it do it create Tik Tok content okay if you understand YouTube which probably the majority of you understand YouTube because you're on YouTube right now if you understand YouTube and by the way it's my favorite YouTube is a great way to drive traffic to those two digital products okay and so all you do is on Mondays here's here's your schedule okay this is what I would do if I started Game Dev over on Mondays I would create content and that's even if you're working a full-time job in the evening I would create some kind of content you talk to the camera and then what you drive traffic to those two products whether it's your wish lists for your game or resources okay you could alternate you

could do every other week is pointing to one or the other and I love both because it diversifies we'll talk about this in a second okay it diversifies that's why that's so important that's that's what separates this this video and what I'm teaching right now it separates it's separate from all the other game devs because all the other game devs are relying on these singular game projects and they're hoping and praying that they make money look I don't have to worry that my game's if my game doesn't do well because I've got other products I sell I don't just sell one game that's scary and I've done it it's terrifying instead we're going to sell multiple games micro games we'll talk about that and then also all these other resources you have and you can create multiple resources as your channel Grows All Right build your freaking audience you don't have to build a million subscribers you don't have to build what I have which is like close to 400,000 you can build an audience of 10,000 and by the way subscribers don't even matter what matters is in in the

financial sense what matters is driving traffic to those two digital products that's all that matters in ter again in in the financial sense not in the Goodwill Community sense and just loving YouTube and building a community and having fun and teaching and helping people but when it comes to actually generating Revenue what matters is not subscribers you got to get that out of your head that's called a vanity metric it's not real like subscribers who cares what matters in the financial sense is driving traffic to those two digital products okay all right so you're building your audience and you're driving traffic and collecting wish lists the goal is 10,000 wish lists to 20,000 for your game and then also selling those digital products generating a decent amount of Revenue what you'll find is those digital products will sustain you while you make your games okay so selling those digital products you can sell them for you could probably generate at least four grand a

month um from those digital products I know that sounds crazy it's not crazy everyone's doing it on YouTube okay I'm just being honest everyone's doing it and it's great because the audience who does purchase these resources they get a lot of value out of it but they also have someone they trust like if you really like a YouTuber and they're going to teach you something it's great because you feel like they're a friend and and you trust them right so your audience is going to be grateful for it and you're going to make four grand a month okay just from a few people who want to who want to purchase your your your resources that you have available um but then your games are going to be generating wish lless okay now number three number three now that you have a small little machine that's running where we're releasing a weekly video and you're doing it on Mondays and you're releasing a weekly video now that you have this machine running and it's generating some revenue for you but it's also building wish lists it's running

it's running it's running it's running what do you do now build your game that's number three you can build your game and hopefully go full-time because your your your social media presence your resources are generating revenue and you're also generating wish lists and we're going to make our game and we can even create content about making that game Isn't that cool now I know what you're thinking okay now I can make my big dream game well this is the third thing I would do differently if I had to start Game Dev over do you know what I would create micro games that's what I would generate micro games this is so funny because this is what I used to do when I was a teenager um when I was a teenager I would make things called flash games I don't know if anyone was in the industry

at the time but flash games were micro games they were tiny little 15minute games and you could make like 20 grand off these things um I know I did I made 20 grand on the first one 25 Grand on the second one coma and then skinny and I was like a teenager and then I was like in my early 20s micro games are great because as you're generating revenue from your YouTube channel YouTube ads but also resources that you're selling you're you're generating wish list for the micro game and so by the time the fourth uh by the time you know the quarter is up or maybe half a year is up or God forbid a year but let's say your micro game takes a year you generated wish list you used the revenue you created from your digital product to create the game and then you release the game and you know that the game is going to make at least like 10 grand on launch because of the what wish list that you were generating throughout the year doing a two-year project to three-year project is much riskier if

you make a massive game your dream game and you do it over the course of two years then you've spent a lot of money you've spent a lot of money and time creating this game and so it's just a bigger gamble so I like micro games I'm a big fan of micro games right now micro game being like an hour long two hours some little mini concept that's tight it's really really tight it's got a strong hook and it's tight okay that kind of a game excites me because it's a lowrisk game it's not a huge gamble so that's what I would do if I started Game Dev differently or started Game Dev over I'm not saying I wouldn't make a big game again but I'm saying if I started over eventually I might move to a bigger game and I might move out of this three-step business model but if I started over and I was starting completely fresh and solo that's what I would do and the micro games make it so much

simpler for you because you don't have to worry you don't have to worry how many of you are worried right now that your game is just not going to generate Revenue well if you make a micro game and you release it maybe in six months or maybe even four months or be three months for a quarter then you could say h too bad didn't make money but you learned a ton and what do you know now you know what to focus on see I'm all about this whole list this whole video I just spit but this whole video is about how to focus I'm so passionate about focusing and simplifying and cleaning up the process the framework of how you build your Game Dev business because I don't want you guys I don't want you to suffer like I did because it's like years and years of doing way too much and over complicating everything focusing on oh I got to make Instagram content Tik Tok content add uh create content for this platform or that platform and I need to make this huge game and it's going to cost a half a million dollars to create so I need to go get funding blah blah blah it's exhausting and I don't want you to

be exhausted I want you to focus so let's just review here create two digital products the first one is an opt-in page or a steam page to get wish lists and those wish lists will generate over the course of the creation of the game the second is some kind of a resource a mini course and you can sell this for three years if you want just a little mini course that's focused on what you're really good at I can make a mini course on creating uh super effective cut scenes like right here with Never song I could create a mini course course and sell it for 27 bucks and I could make that course in probably a week and I can guarantee you the students who purchase that will be thrilled about it because number one they purchased it they therefore they needed it and they wanted it but number two you're going to get people emailing you saying thank you so much for creating this it was so helpful I learned how to create this cut scene and now I can add these cut scenes to my game blah blah blah see so just find your Forte and you can create content about that to teach okay number two build your audience I I recommend YouTube what did I say I

said don't worry about vanity metrics okay just worry about optins this is for a Bu from the business perspective okay I'm not saying money is everything I'm saying that if you're going to build a business and you want to be a full-time Game Dev optins are what what matter so getting wish lists or people purchasing your courses or purchasing your resources all that that's the most important thing okay number three now that you've got a machine a small little machine gener revenue for you then you can start focusing on actually making that micro game that you're getting wish list for okay and then you launch it and you make more money we're creating two things here we're creating an evergreen model where we're selling something monthly and that monthly revenue is and by the way people are people are listening right now they're thinking this is this is outside of the scope of what's mainstream it's it's not in the sense

that like patreon everybody's got a patreon what I'm saying is basically patreon but you have control over the resource that you're selling and it's a higher value resource it's not just hey please support me please support me it's no I actually have something I want to teach you and it also supports me and that's what that resource is okay now number three generate micro games okay and you sell that based on the wish list you get throughout the through the production cycle okay um and that's done through YouTube so that's what I would do if I had to start Game Dev over okay I'm being completely honest with you guys I'm telling you exactly what I do okay and by the way I do this um micro games not yet but I'm hoping to do some micro games and that'll that'll that'll be really really fun um let's think here oh I wanted to tell you why um this matters like why why we're trying to create some kind of sustainable business model that isn't a a private or it's like it's like a safe

little bubble the reason we're doing this is because the indie game industry is really scary right now it's really really scary to make Indie Games why because you spend all this time and money building out a game over a year or two and then you release it and you make no money and this isn't just Indies this is like triaa right from Indie to triaa but it's particularly hard with Indies Indies spend all this time and money and they release a game and then they they make no money and then they're stuck right they're stuck at the end of the Finish Line with no money and they got to go get a real job and I don't want I don't want you to do that now the way I function the way my brain works is I'm paranoid and I know this is a problem i' I've talked about this with my wife I got to I got to you know work through this I'm a paranoid kind of person I always feel like I'm on thin ice and this has caused some problems in my life with anxiety and stress and

overthinking things but I am at a place now where I'm kind of grateful for for being that way my whole life because it's created this ability to focus on what really matters and create just a few safety nets and so I've what I've given you here is kind of a safe process as long as you keep your head head on straight and you don't burn out and you don't work too hard you just focus on what really matters you focus on creating a resource and getting wish lists and creating micro games and content on YouTube and you can create a sustainable business model okay that is all I wanted to share with you by the way guys lead magnets below call to action is below see I'm doing it right now uh if you want if you want to join the webinar Below on how to make six figures with just a demo and again I've done this multiple times if you want to learn how to do that click the link below and I'll show you how to do it it's totally free no gimmicks I'll see you on the other side cheers