4 CRITICAL LESSONS I've Learned (After 10 Years Of Making Indie Games)

I've been a game developer for more than 10 years I've only ever done indie game development this is my game pinstripe released on Nintendo switch Xbox PlayStation and steam Never song same thing but we also released on Apple arcade as well which is really cool and we're currently working on a game called Twisted Tower this has been easily the hardest week honestly it just keeps getting harder but this has been the hardest week of my Game Dev career easily so I wanted to give you guys some critical lessons that I've learned in these last 10 plus years as a game developer the first one the first thing and I've been thinking about this a lot lately especially this week prove 15 minutes of the game okay so prove just 15 minutes of your game what I mean by this is prove to yourself and to a small Alpha Testing or just a tiny little sample of testers prove that your game is actually good now Twisted Tower is

great I love it uh it's really really fun the first 15 minutes of the game are really really fun but I will be honest with you and say that at the beginning of this year it wasn't and it's been years of development and those first 15 minutes of the game are just not fun so your goal should be to prove those first 15 minutes and the reason I say this is because I don't want you to spend any more time effort or Creative Energy on your game if those 15 minutes are not proven so what does it mean to be proven what are we looking for we're looking for a couple things the first thing we're looking for is players getting a smile on their face just a smile and what's funny is even though my game Twisted Tower is creepy and spooky and kind of a horror game it still creates a smile and that's my goal right and so I had a player yesterday playing the game and they were grinning while they played the game we didn't used to get that response now we do and that's a good thing right that should be your goal so that's number one this that's the first

way to know that it's proven right the second way is that the 15 minutes doesn't turn into an hour okay that's the second way you know that your demo or these first 15 minutes are proven that it takes as long as it takes you to play those 15 minutes otherwise what's going to happen and this happened to me what's going to happen is all of the sudden this delicious I I think of it as a milkshake okay this delicious 15-minute milkshake is watered down and what ends up happening imagine if you had to drink a small like Chick-fil-A milkshake but in a gallon of water it's still the same ingredients except a ton of water and suddenly it's disgusting right the same is true with your 15 minutes make sure it's actually 15 minutes make sure it's really condensed and tight now once you've proven those first 15 minutes you've tested with an audience or a small sample size even your friends and family once you've done that you can actually take those 15 minutes and seek out funding if you want

by the way there's a link below on how to get funding for your game whether it's with a publisher an investor a platform crowdfunding which is Kickstarter I've done all of these things um so click the link below if you want to take a look at that webinar it's going to help you a ton but you can take that first 15 minutes and turn it into actual income in fact a full-time salary I've done this multiple times before you even finish your game so check that out below but number two the number two critical lesson is after we have those 15 minutes right that are proven number two is to expand on what's proven don't create more content to prove but rather just expand those 15 minutes that you've proven I don't want you and I don't want me ever again because I've done this with multiple games made big mistakes where I've expanded something that's not proven this is a a terrible idea it's kind of like building a mansion when you haven't proven to yourself that you know how to do the framework right so you

build up this entire mansion and then it gets blown over by a small storm the same is true with your game only build up and expand on that 15 minutes if it's actually proven and that it's solid I know this sounds silly and I know that it sounds obvious but so many game developers including myself after 10 years still impulsively expand on something we think is fun when in reality we didn't test it so you've got to test it number three the critical lesson I've learned okay now that that we have proven the 15 minutes and we've expanded on those 15 minutes I want to talk about where to focus your expansion now I know that sounds confusing but let's let's think on this let's say you're making a linear narrative game you want to expand on that 15 minutes that solid 15 minutes that's proven but the question is where do you expand do you focus on the middle of the game do you focus on the climax of the story where do you focus well for me I've learned that you need to focus on the book ends focus on this is particularly

true with narrative games but it's also true with honestly any game because there's a a life cycle of your game for a player and it's based on the time spent in the game so you need to be thinking how do I number one get them really invested at the beginning the first book end and how do I make sure that they feel like it was a solid experience and they got their money's worth so they don't go 2 hours of playing the game and refund the game on Steam so the question is where do we focus our energy in the games development and the answer is for me in the bookends when they start playing the game give them plenty to smile about make them feel like they're frankly a god it doesn't matter what the game is you want to give them plenty of rewards for their actions and it doesn't mean you can't start them in a sort of dire situation where they really suck maybe they they just suck as a player and that's totally fine but you want to reward them pretty quickly in those first 15 30 minutes of game play so that's the front end of the game the back end the goal is to get them to the

tail end of the game so hopefully the beginning incentivizes them to get to the end but once they get to the end of the game or the end of their gameplay experience you want them to feel like you paid attention to that as well you want them to feel like they got their money's worth in the game and got value out of the game you might be wondering why this is important to know where to focus well I personally have spent so much time focusing on the middle of a game and really work workshopping and reworking and Rew working a level that's at the middle of the game when in reality that's the time when the player is willing to grind if you've incentivized them and given them a lot of rewards at the beginning of the game created an Intrigue and mystery and got them paying attention they'll grind through the middle and when they get to the end as long as the ending is it pays off they feel like they got their money's worth even though the middle was kind of a grind and I've seen this with a lot of games a lot of games have a grind at the middle this isn't ideal but if you're an indie game developer with a limited budget and schedule focus on the book ends at least that's what I'm going to do for my future games all right the

final critical lesson that I've learned once you've proven your 15 minutes once you've expanded on what's proven and once you've once you've focused on those book ends and you've pretty much wrapped up your game this is very specific but I recommend it to anybody who's about to release their game I want you to incentivize 200 Giants and what I mean by that is I need you to incentivize 200 High Caliber YouTubers streamers members of the press although frankly I I would just worry about YouTubers streamers now you'll notice that I didn't say send your game to these streamers I said incentivize now the way you incentivize is number one obviously you send them an email but there are two big ways to incentivize a streamer first it's to ask for their advice or their opinion somehow some way this has always worked for me when I send out an email to streamers I say what do you think about this game and can I get your advice do you think that this game is fun just asking for their feedback gets them invested in the project and they actually want to see you succeed because they are in a way

partnering with you by just giving you advice but the second biggest way to incentivize is to put something about that person in the game now I know that sounds expensive but here's a really simple way to do this let's say in your game you have a portrait or maybe a TV let's use this TV in the background let's say you have a TV in the background or in your game it doesn't matter whether it's 2D or 3D what you do is you have a Sprite on that TV or a texture swap out you could even do a hundred different images it's totally fine and it features a stupid image like a silly memy image of the YouTuber and it's the first thing they see in the game or you could put a video clip that plays a video in like sort of a video texture in unity or I've even gone so far as to make the entire character's clothing change to look like the streamer this is especially valuable for bigger streamers like Jack sepy now the question is okay how do I need to send them a separate build the answer is just make a cheat code in the main menu okay

so have a main menu or a text box appear in the main menu when you press let's say forward slash and if you type PewDiePie and press enter it says cheat code enabled and then when you play the game the portrait or the TV for example is now showing PewDiePie and he's officially in the game that's how you incentivize YouTubers to play your game now what you do is you show them a screenshot of this before you even ask them to play the game and in the subject line you say you're in my game and I've done this several times we got Matt Pat to play we got Jack sepy to play game grumps played my games and this was just by incentivizing them and putting them in the game you'll notice I mentioned 200 of them that's a lot how many of those are going to actually play well if we do 200 and let's say we have a week 5% conversion what is that 10 people wow can you imagine 10 streamers playing your game when you launch it and the goal is to have either a wish list link or a purchase the game below Link in the YouTube description now it's not just 10 streamers that's 10 initial streamers

and then other streamers see if the video did well and then they play if the video did well bonus tip here if you want the video to do well make sure the streamer has assets that they can create a really sweet thumbnail and so all you do is you say here's your steam key here's what it looks like when you're in the game here's how you get the cheat code to work for you in game here's the game trailer and here's all of the assets and it's a link to like a press kit so you notice that when you send an email to these streamers it's got everything they need right away there's no time time for back and forth with these YouTubers there's only time to just give them everything they need give them every incentive to play your game and hopefully when you click launch they show up and they play your game and I've seen it happen just like that okay so those are those are the honestly the most critical lessons I've learned in in the last 10 years of making games these are crucial to me like these are the ones that I would I would really focus on if I were you don't forget about that webinar below if you want to take those first 15 minutes of your game and turn them into a six-figure salary I've done this three separate times okay whether

it's Kickstarter or funding or Publishers or whatever I teach you how to do it so check that out below I'll talk to you later cheers