5 Reasons Why Game Development is the Best Job!

Hey Wow hi my name is Thomas brush I'm the creator of a game called pinstripe also releasing a game called never song those games are gonna be available on pretty much every platform if you want to take a look at those games click the link in the description I always remember you can get a free copy of pinstripe by supporting on patreon today I want to encourage all of you while you're at home many of us are quarantined just take some time and learn game development I know it can be a discouraging time in your country or your economy but just know that game development is definitely worth your time and so I want to talk to you specifically about why I love game development why even in the midst of this weirdness with this virus I'm spending every day focusing on game development and just having fun and enjoying making games so here are 5 reasons why game development is the best job in the whole world but before we get

started guys I want to thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video Skillshare is an online learning community for creatives where millions come together to take the next step in the creative journey for 2020 now specifically if you're curious about deepening your existing passion for game design it's an incredible place whether it's audio design for your games or to deol astray ssin or animation or unity or unreal coding storytelling marketing management whatever it is you need to learn about game development it's on Skillshare now one of my favorite classes is by Rusty Smith and it just covers unity basics now the coolest part about this ad read is hey what do you have to lose just get to three months of Skillshare premium by clicking the link in the description it's really that easy you really can't beat that guy's give it a shot see what happens let's make 2020 the year where you become a game dev and release your very first game or if you've already done that congratulations but let's make it the year where you take game dev to the next level all on Skillshare oh and

by the way the first 1,000 people to click the link in the description will get two free months of Skillshare premium so the first reason and I've talked about this maybe a little bit in my previous video videos is income potential so with indie game development because there's a good chance that you're gonna make a decent game or a good game there's potential to make millions of dollars I can't talk about specific numbers for myself but I can tell you that before I started making games I was not making six figures once I started making games I eventually started making six figures and that's not even with like Kickstarter campaigns Kickstarter campaigns aside it's become the norm for me to make a six-figure salary making games and that's in I live in South Carolina so six-figure salary is a decent salary and when I was first

working for a boss in a marketing agency the income potential I think at the time it was like $70,000 was where I would be if I had stayed working there for about ten years and I was a graphic designer and did some marketing work now obviously it depends on which country or state you live in but in my state we have a pretty low cost of living so $70,000 was probably the the cap or the ceiling at that current job now obviously you can change jobs and you can go work for a different company and get raises and use leverage but I found that game development got me where I wanted to go financially much faster that's again because you could make a hit and make some good money now obviously you're gonna have some not-so-great hits in your career but overall the income potential is is pretty high and I can tell you that last

year was definitely our this year I'm sorry last year and this year it's kind of a mix has been really the best time for me financially with game development alright the second reason why game development is the absolute best job in the whole world and this is specific to indie game development the second reason is it's the cheapest overhead ever for running a business because everything is digital so I don't have to have a studio right I'm just paying a mortgage for my family that I'm working in my house I have a PC it's a decent PC it's nothing amazing the software I use most of it is free some of it is subscriptions like Adobe or unity but even still the cost to make games is very small now obviously in previous videos I've told you that my games can cost more than a hundred thousand dollars the reason why is because you actually have to just pay yourself a salary right or two people a salary so all you're really paying for

for a game is your salary now obviously that can change depending on the size of your studio whether you want to actually rent out a space whether you need to hire different artists contract out porting services etc etc but all I can say is for me I was actually just looking at my budget and talking it over with financial advisor this week my budget is tiny to operate my company but the sky's the limit in terms of your return on your investment so operation costs for running a studio are tiny now there might be some people out there who would argue with me until tell me that it's ridiculously expensive to make games and all I can say is I just know my personal experience it's been very small and I'm a one-man studio so that I know that that's a little different but as a one person or two person team man

you can you can really make games for a very cheap operational cost that's very different than most industries out there the third one is more of an emotional reason and that is basically game development for me especially indie game development makes me a much more resilient person before I started making games I was a very fearful and anxious person I was very anxious about taking risks and doing scary things once I started making games somehow I became more resilient my skin got a little bit thicker and that's because you have to do with you know critique online you have to deal with reaching out to you know famous youtubers and talking to them on skype reaching out to famous game developers or just really successful people all across the world that used to be you know very nerve-wracking for me the idea of talking to someone on the phone and getting advice about game development but once I started making connections in the industry suddenly you

know calling someone over the phone or even talking to PewDiePie I for some reason I just wasn't nervous also when it comes to financial fears always being scared of maybe not having a good season not being able to pay the bills for some reason because that fear was so constant once I quit my job that constant fear became less and less and less important to me I used to wake up at 3 in the morning and sort of panic about finances and bills and how I was gonna make sure my game got launched at a certain date so that I could actually make enough money to you know pay for my family or the mortgage bla bla bla now I mean obviously things had a good year but I can say that that fear has slowly gone down even when I wasn't sure about finances that fear would just go away so it really plays into the idea of being an entrepreneur in general entrepreneurs

after three years of being an entrepreneur they have probably the thickest skin out of this sounds weird they're they have a very thick skin compared to most people so yeah being an entrepreneur being a game developer makes you stronger the fourth reason why game development is the best job in the world is it's a creative explosion lately I've really been interested in code and software engineering it's weird the older I get the more interesting code is and puzzle solving I'm not great at it but it's it's fun my point saying that is not only I'm gonna buy an artist and a 3d modeler and an illustrator and a musician now I can also be a software engineer if I want to so instead of hiring out a software engineer acting I'll work for the software engineering in my game I can actually just do it myself if I choose to it's really fun to be able to pick and choose what you want to do with game development whether it's illustration art direction you know being a composer

writing a story being an engineer there's a ton of different skill sets that you can use in game development whereas in a lot of other industries you're you're gonna be pigeonholed into a very specific skill set with game development you're gonna wear a lot of hats and it's always really really fun so an example of this is last week I really wanted to do YouTube so I just live streamed a lot and did some YouTube content and that was really fun and I like to package that with game development because I'm making games live so I really enjoyed doing YouTube last week but you know two weeks ago I was really interested in doing 3d modeling so I sort of just took a break from everything else and just did 3d modeling last year I really loved writing music it was a really good year for writing music and I had a really good time doing it so as you can see I just sort of picked and choose if that's the right phrase I picked and chose I

picked what I wanted to do basically you're eventually gonna need to do pretty much everything for your game especially if you're a solo game developer but you can choose when you want to do it if you get bored just jump to the next thing and then jump back when you're not bored it's really fun doing all these different tasks with game development and I can't think of another industry that really allows for that the fifth the fifth and final reason why game development is the best job on earth is what I calling double dipping basically I actually talked to my financial guy this week and I talked to him on the phone and I was telling him you know various revenue streams so that he could better help me understand how to operate my studio and he basically said Thomas what you're doing is double dipping and I said what do you mean he said it might not be the right term but in doing YouTube content while making your game you're actually creating two revenue streams while only

doing one task so this is the same thing as like being a painter on the side of a street and getting tips right with YouTube content live-streaming game development you know I'm getting ad revenue while I'm making a game and that game is eventually going to be sold and make some more revenue so you've got multiple income streams while you make your game so honestly guys I recommend if you're gonna make games see see what live streaming does for you it's encouraging to do it just because you have people hanging out with you while you work but you know if you have enough people watching if you get enough views in your video you can get a little bit of ad revenue as well so indie game development allows for you to get revenue all over the place you have to be smart and you have to be entrepreneurial but if you guys do it long enough I think I've been doing this for almost a decade full time for about four years by making games for about a decade I've slowly learned through the years how to sniff out financial

opportunities and to turn my time into dollars now that doesn't mean I'm greedy or anything like that all it means is that if I'm going to make games I know that it's gonna be challenging some seasons to make some income so it's important for me to capitalize on any opportunity to make income especially when there's an opportunity to what I'm calling double dip make income while also live-streaming your game or you know doing YouTube content to help provide for your studio while you're not actually selling your game so that's all I really have to say about why game development is the best job on earth I know a lot of you are nervous right now things are weird in the world especially with this virus I encourage you to continue learning game development don't be nervous about the future right now just take the time that you have at

home to study game development give it a shot see what happens thanks guys I'll talk to you later please leave a comment leave a like so it's I do all those cool things doc you later [Music]