3 Ways Your Crappy Game Can Make Millionz $$$$

hey guys my name is Thomas brush I'm the creator of a game called pinstripe pinch tag was released earlier this year on Steam and it's coming out to console early next year so I want to say something that might be a little heretical in the game in the game industry and that is that I believe that a crappy game can make a million bucks your crappy game can make a million bucks I'm not saying your game is crap but I definitely know how it feels after five years of working on my project I certainly felt me insecure about the project and I felt like it really was a piece of crap now there are a lot of games out there that are crap but they made a million bucks I think the reason why is because not because the game is good but because it was sold well so the first way is hooks understand hooks when I was a I went to California a couple months ago and I met with this guy named David Perry and David Perry is kind of an industry legend and certainly has had his fair share of success in the industry and his

first game was actually earthworm jim got to meet him and he took me out to lunch and he told me over and over again the importance of hooks so what is a hook well it's basically something that makes your game special what makes it shiny not necessarily shiny to players when they're playing the game but mainly when you're trying to sell the game so in marketing so a really good way to think about it is what is one sentence that describes your game or even better what is the subject line of an email that you're gonna send to the press so let's say you're emailing PC Gamer what are you gonna say in that short subject line that's special about your game so in the case of what's a cup head cup head was really special because of not necessarily gameplay mechanics but style so even though the gameplay mechanics for cup head are amazing what really makes it stand out is the style so it's like a 1930s animated to be adventure

game so if you don't know a hook for your game I'd highly suggest sitting down spending a couple hours trying to figure out what really makes your game special for a lot of us we have special games we just don't know how to sell that hook or we don't even know that the hook is there really look at your game and figure out what makes it special and hone in on that one special thing so the second way that your crappy game can make a million bucks is books I think a lot of us when we're making games all we think about is the game we don't really think about research or understanding how to run a business or understanding how to be an entrepreneur or find people to work with we just think I just want to work on this game and that's a great way to think if all you want to do is make games but if you want to be an indie game developer and actually build a business or a studio around your project I'd really suggest reading some books so I just want to tell you a couple of my favorite books the first one is called the 4-hour workweek some of you know Tim Ferriss

he's an incredible podcaster and he also has lots of businesses and he's just really successful guy a quote from that book I really really like is person success in life can be measured by the number of conversations he or she is willing to have and that's huge that's actually the next point that I'm going to be making you know it's a it's about just getting to know people in the industry another book I really like is called Think and Grow Rich this is like a classic business book and it's about sort of bringing your ideas into reality and really focusing positively on what you want to achieve in our case it's probably making the video game or building a video game studio it's important to really visualize what you actually want to create if you don't actually think about what your projects gonna be in the future it's unlikely that it will be anything and will bring in any income for your studio my favorite quote from thinking grow riches create a definite plan for carrying out

your desire and begin at once ready or not to put this plan into action that's huge a lot of us we sit in me or we're going to bed at night we look at the ceiling and we think about all these wonderful things that we want to achieve but we don't know how to actually put them into action write it down get a business plan together a video game development plan together and make it happen then finally the book I'm reading right now let's go Rich Dad Poor Dad again these are like classic kind of old books but they they definitely sort of stood the test of time my favorite quote from that is the rich don't work for money money works for them and that's especially true in game development you don't really just want to work your butt off to make money any money you make really should be used to work for you use money as a resource to accumulate more money not to be greedy and wealthy but to continue to be able to make games money should work for you you should not work for money for me

it's so funny because uh sometimes I'll get a little worried about my studio or about money or making games and I'll lay awake at night and I can't figure out a solution well it's crazy cuz you just got to go to audible.com and like find their coolest business books and just listen to them and suddenly you just feel like jeez you feel a little bit more relaxed and you realize I'm not the only person out there trying to make it there's there's millions of a notch entrepreneurs in the world and there's so much information to learn and there's so many different ways to keep a project to flow and to finish a project and and essentially you know one day hopefully make a million bucks the third way your crappy game can make a million bucks is reach out to successful people it's so crazy because I have a like a lot of friends in the industry and some of them also have you know reaching out to a successful people really worked out for me they helped me out they gave me advice and I learned a lot from them and people smiling not and then will never actually do anything about it if you're not reaching out to

successful people go do it now and see what happens I dare you reach out to ten successful people go find their email it's not hard or tweeked to them or something and say hey I'd really like to get to know you do you have any advice for me about making games it's crazy this sort of chain reaction that happens when you reach out to one person if you get to know this person and let's say you have a phone conversation with them the first time this happened was Tom full owner of new grounds I just sent an email inside hand well I get to know you won't want to see if you have any advice he is the one who introduced me to so many people he introduced me to PewDiePie that's that's how crazy it is I emailed Tom full a year or two years later pewdiepie and pewdiepie did voice acting for pinstripe whoever you want to get to know you can you can get to know them you just have to take the step in email them make sure you have some quality work to show them but reach out to them tell them you want to get to know them tell them you need their advice the best way to get to know

people more successful than yourself is to ask them for advice so obviously we want to get to know industry veterans because you know maybe one day you could sit on their shoulders and their influence can help you but it's also important to remember that just getting advices is always extremely crucial I remember I was struggling to make ends meet and I was trying so hard to work my butt off to make Pinstripe and I was working like you know in the night because I was working a day job and I I went and met somebody someone in the industry who was more successful than myself and I asked him for advice and he told me that I needed to do a Kickstarter campaign at the time you know I was told that Kickstarter was basically impossible to achieve and so I never really thought up got much of it until I actually said you know what I'm gonna listen to this guy and I did the Kickstarter and that's sort of what made my studio get off the ground so that one piece of advice sort of dictated what happened with my my whole studio for years to come and so that's really what

these three reasons are it's really how you sell your game that makes the difference [Music] take a look a Reading Rainbow