5 MISTAKES I Made When I Started Making Games

Hey guys, how's it going? It's Thomas Brush. I make indie games for a living. This is my job. I make indie games for my studio here, and I want to give you five mistakes that I've made honestly yesterday all the way back to when I started, which was probably 15 years ago. Five mistakes that I've made and continue to make as an indie game developer. Hopefully you guys can learn from these mistakes and avoid them at all costs. Honestly, you should really try to avoid these mistakes because I just don't want you to suffer like I have. Despite the fact that things are working out really well for me and my studio, I still make these mistakes and yeah, I've got a list right here. So, the first one is avoid planning. [music] That's what I used to do. I would avoid planning because for me, I felt the need to get stuff done. Especially when you're working a full-time job or you're a student, once you get home from your desk job, you're tired, and you know you have a limited amount of energy and time to work on your game, so you're just going to panic and sort of power through and get stuff

done for your game as opposed to patiently sit down, start a new document, maybe a Word document or a or a Google Doc, and make a game design document. So, specifically, what you guys should be doing is before you even start your game, before you do the first prototype [music] or what you would call the vertical slice, get the game design document done. Believe it or not, guys, I make this mistake all the time. With all of my projects, every single project that I've started, I never finished a full complete game design document. In fact, some games I didn't even do a single one. Now, these games ended up making six figures and helped [music] my studio grow to what it is now. But, if I had just made a game design document, things would would have gone so much smoother. That's why Pin Stripe took five freaking years to make. That's why Never Song took two and a half years to make. That's why honestly with my current game Father, why it's taking a little bit

longer than I expected because I just didn't do a full and complete game design document. So, just Google search game design document and use that. Also, use the link below for some game design documents I recommend and use that to plan your next game. But, the truth is if I had just worked with a team for Pinstripe or Never Song, I think those games would have been a lot funner to make, less lonely, obvious, obviously, less lonely, obviously. And by the way, if you're if you're lonely currently making your indie game, let us know in the comments below so that we can all maybe, you know, pat each other on the back. But, now I work with teams. See, teams, what they do is you just basically work on Discord together and send each other files and push content to GitHub, [music] and that allows you to get content done a lot faster. Now, the irony of this or I guess the funny thing about this is without the first tip, which I mentioned, which is use a game design document, without that, you're not going to be able to work with a team, right? It's going to be very, very difficult

for you to work with a team if you don't have a document dictating what you should do and helping dictate the milestones for your schedule. So, I highly recommend creating a team, if not a small one. This doesn't mean you have to give away rev share for your game. This doesn't mean that you need to pay people necessarily. It just means that you can find a few people to work with to help move the project along. This means lean into your forte, okay? So, whatever your forte is, whatever your skill is, what you've honed in on your craft or maybe your talent that you were born with, focus on [music] that, and then offload all the other things as much as you can or as much as you can afford, [music] okay? So, for me, what I do is I spend a lot of time doing art direction, story, music, and atmosphere, okay? Those Those things I focus on for my games. I offload the majority of the rest to my team. [music] I can afford to do that now. It's been a long process of being able to get enough funding to afford

that. But, in the past, what I wish I would have done is just get to know people on social media and see if they're interested in maybe a $200 paycheck to help do some artwork or maybe a 1 2% rev share for the game, just do some small minor details to help move the game along. So, here's how you do it, guys. Below there's a few links. These are great communities. The best part is they're totally free. You can join them on Discord. And once you get to know just a few people in the community, you'll be surprised how quickly your community grows because one friend leads to another. All right, the third mistake I made when I started making indie games is I followed my heart. And I know that that sounds really lame that I think you shouldn't follow your heart, but that was a big mistake I made. Constantly I was making decisions based on what I felt rather than what the game design document told me to do. See, you're going to feel different about your game every [music] single day. And the longer your game development lasts, the more and more you

start changing how you feel because, honestly, you're getting burned out, you're getting sick of your game, you're starting to hate it. So, you're changing stuff constantly. Stop following how you feel about your game. Now, there are moments when you should really get excited about your game and follow your heart. And that's when you have a really brilliant idea that you just can't pass up. A game mechanic that's totally unique. Think something like Portal, okay? If the developers for Portal weren't excited about that mechanic and didn't want to pursue it, they would have lost out on a really great idea. So, if you have a great idea for a mechanic, follow through with that, pursue it. But, for the most part, once you've got your game design document laid out, once that inspiration has fizzled, you need to sort of lay lay a little bit or at least tell your heart to lay low a little bit, and stop following every instinct you have. You need to be less I tell myself this, less less ADD about your project. You can be that way at the beginning and get excited about your project, but ultimately, you you need to

hunker down and get it done. Now, the fourth mistake I made is I assumed the income came from only game sales. When I thought about selling my games, I thought, "Well, the money comes from game sales, therefore that is the only way that I'm going to make money, so I'm going to focus on that, game sales. I'll make a game, I'll finish it, and then I'll make money." Whereas, the truth is, you can make a lot of money before you even launch your game. Now, I talk about this a lot, but I'm going to go through this quickly. The marketing of the game should happen prior to the game's sale, because you can make money prior to the game's sale. So, for example, you can work with publishers. You can work with platforms. You can do a Kickstarter campaign. You can have a Patreon account. You can do devlogs and make YouTube ad revenue. You can get sponsorships from those devlogs when you post them to YouTube. So, there's a ton of revenue sources, and in fact, you could probably make the majority of your game's income prior to launch. Once you launch, then it's sort of, you know, dusting your hands off and maybe making

some income after the publisher gets their advance back, or after the publisher makes some rev share from your game. So, ultimately, income can come prior to the game's launch and after the game's launch. Now, the fifth mistake I made was avoiding social media, because, well, I thought, "I just need to make my game. The game is everything. That's what we're going to focus on, and that's what we're going to finish." The problem is is that once you have a game ready to launch, and let's say you're not working with a publisher, now you got to figure out who's going to buy it. Now, hopefully, Steam will promote your game. Hopefully, Nintendo will promote your game if you launch on Nintendo Switch, but most of us aren't going to get the benefit, or at least the maximum benefit that a lot of lucky games or maybe some high quality games get on Steam. Let's say you're making a mediocre game. I've made some mediocre games on Steam. You launch those and you just sort of wait. You don't really have an audience that's built-in, ready to go. So, the social media marketing prior to the launch of your game is super duper important.

First, it's important to secure wish lists on Steam. Second, it's important to secure email addresses on your own private wish list that's a email list like a Mailchimp, for example. You can market to that private email list just like Steam's going to market to your wish lists. And then thirdly, just building a community that's not necessarily focused on your game, but focused on your studio as a whole. That's Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube dev logs. You can post content and it is going to act as a billboard for not only your game, but for you as a studio. And I say you as a studio because you can create a personal brand if you want, like I have, [music] for my studio. This is what I call an army. This army is going to support you year after year after year. And for me, my army has supported me for almost a decade. [music] So, as you build up that army, it gets easier and easier and easier to market your projects and ultimately it makes it less scary to make new projects because

you know, I've got a built-in audience that's going to love this game. They always do. And so you're always encouraged when you're making your game. And also, little bonus tip here is that audience is going to give you a ton of tips about your game that maybe you're going to make it a lot better. So guys, these are five mistakes I've made when making indie games. I try not to make these mistakes anymore, but the truth is I usually do. It's okay to make mistakes, guys, but be sure to learn from them. If you guys like this content, be sure to leave a comment, subscribe, hit the notification bell, and leave a like. That would mean a ton to me. And don't forget you can download my free 2D game kit below. It's totally free. It's my treat to you. I used this game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in just 14 days. So, just click the link below, download that game kit. You can save it on your computer, store it for later. I really don't care. It's up to you. I'll talk to you later. Cheers.