5 Steps To Start Making Games (in 2021)

Hey guys, my name is Thomas Brush and I make indie games for a living. In this video, I'm going to give you five steps to making your first indie game. Step one is learn your art tool. This step is the first step for a reason. It's because it offers the most tangible and instant results. I'm going to be blunt here. Most of you watching this video right now are going to quit your first game. Bye baby girl. Having a firm grasp on an art tool like Photoshop or Blender ensures you can see your project coming to [music] life and that makes it easier to stick with your project. So, if you're going to make a 2D game like Hollow Knight or Celeste, I highly recommend learning Photoshop. Photoshop is the industry standard for 2D art. Now, obviously, you can use a vector art tool like Adobe Illustrator, but the learning curve for Illustrator is pretty steep. Okay, if you want to make a 3D game, learn Blender. Blender is totally free. Now, if some on YouTube told you Blender is too complicated to learn, and Blender is I hate I hate it. It's horrible. Think

again. Blender has a fresh new look and is way easier than you think. The beauty of 3D art is the simple fact that you can pick from thousands of 3D models available on the Unity asset store, Sketchfab, or TurboSquid and flip them. Just change out the texture in Photoshop and it looks [music] like it fits right into your game. Step two is learn C#. Why do coding languages have to sound so scary? Why can't C# be called, I don't know, banana? Let me know below a better name for C#. And also, if you could leave a like and maybe consider subscribing for weekly content focused specifically on you becoming an indie game developer, that would be awesome. Here's the thing. Yes, there are plenty of assets out there that try and make it easier so that you don't have to learn any code [music] to make a game. But the truth is, you really should learn how to code. Okay, so C# is massive. There are so many functions, namespaces, tricks, variable types, blah blah blah. But, let me tell you my

little secret I've been using in and throughout the creation of my three commercial releases. I Google almost everything. Thank you very much. I've brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in income [music] year after year selling my games, and I can't even remember how to write a for loop. I'm being completely honest here. Anyone who tells you to memorize a ton of code is likely the same person who hasn't released a game. These people kind of get stuck on the nitty-gritty technical side of game dev. And ultimately, they're stuck in limbo, perhaps scared to actually progress because, well, progression requires you to ultimately show the world your work. And that's scary. Instead, don't stress about learning every little thing about code. Ain't nobody got time for that. Go to Google, copy and paste the code, and [music] most importantly, finish your game. That said, I do highly

recommend getting a firm grasp on a few of the following concepts, [music] and you can find these on Unity's free tutorial series. There's a link below. You need to get a grasp on the Boolean, array, float, integer, vector, and string variable types. [music] You also need to get a grasp on the start, awake, and update functions, and also the if and for conditions, and finally, just how to reference all your scripts within Unity. Obviously, there's plenty more here, but that's where I spend most of my time when I'm writing code. Now, if you can learn that stuff, you're going to be set up for success. Step three is learn Unity. C# tells the engine what to do. That engine is Unity. If Unity isn't told what to do, it's just going to sit there and do nothing. Now, regarding Unreal, you need to get your fingers ready because the comment section is going to get spicy. Here we go. Unity is better overall for Indies. I say this primarily because Unity's

overall learning curve is a bit easier for beginners, and also it's porting support for platforms like Switch, Xbox, PS4, and mobile is pretty awesome. It also has a ton of tools available for 2D game creation. Unreal isn't really the best for 2D game creation. Again, I'm just saying on average overall, and most importantly for Indies, Unity is the best option. Unreal is more commonly used for AAA games. So, go ahead and download Unity and get started. Like C#, there's so much to learn, and you're not going to figure it all out right away. It really takes some time. I would argue understanding Unity is going to be more difficult than learning something like Blender or Photoshop. It's probably going to take you twice as long. This is because wrapping your head around how Unity talks to itself is a major paradigm shift. Compared to drawing or modeling, which makes sense intuitively. What I mean by talking is Unity is kind of like a body. My body has various organs that talk to one another, and cells that destroy and instantiate, conditions that if not met,

might destroy or kill the entire entity. Understanding how elements engage with one another means you need to kind of have a god-like perspective of Unity. It takes some time, but once you figure it out, it's super fun. Like learning stick shift, you got to stick with it, and then it becomes second nature. Step four is learn Audacity. Audacity is a free sound tool. It's incredibly easy to learn, and believe it or not, I've been using it since I was 16 years old. I'm 31 now. Again, there's plenty of tools that you can use here. I'm just giving you the tool that's easiest to learn, and honestly, it's perfectly adequate. Nothing has changed for me in the last 15 years of making video game sounds. I go to freesound.org, or maybe splice if you're interested in a paid subscription. I'll then download some sounds, slap them together in Audacity, and import them into my game. That's about it. Maybe you've seen some

cool documentaries that show fully sound artists recording every [music] little sound. Ain't nobody got time for that. That sounds fun, and that's how it was traditionally done, but that's not really how I do it now, and I don't recommend Indies do it that way, either. You have limited time, you have a limited budget, so go grab some sounds online, download them, stick them in Audacity, and put them in your game. Now, if you can't find a sound, then just make it exist. What? For example, if you want the sound of a turtle exploding, combine the sound of a crunching shell and a flesh explosion, and then boom, the turtle has officially exploded. Step five is to learn marketing. The primary reason most Indies don't make enough to live on from their games probably has nothing to do with their games. Instead, it's probably because they don't know how to sell their Indie games. And I hate to break it to you, but this ability to sell will take you a lifetime to learn.

Marketing is always changing, and it requires you to always be learning. Okay, so here's perhaps what you think marketing is. Telling the world about your game when it launches. Here's my definition of marketing. Convincing the world they need your game before, during, and after it launches. The tactics to convincing someone to give you their money in exchange for your little Indie game is a challenge, and it's always going to be changing. This is because social media, email marketing, and the algorithms associated with them are always evolving. I find that to be a little more than mildly annoying. What worked last year might not work this year. I believe if you were to go to our rules and sit down with a cup of coffee, you would not be able to understand that. So, if you're an indie and you're only following the technical side of things on YouTube or social media, you're not getting the full picture of what it means to be an entrepreneurial game dev. You should be following people who offer marketing training. Here are a

few people that have helped me grow my studio and bring in six figures year after year with marketing. Gary V, Sunny Lenares Dusi, I don't know how to say your last name, but she has a great channel. And also David Whaley at Game Dev Unlocked, and he also has a online course that I took, which was really helpful. Okay, so obviously there are plenty of other things to learn, but these five are the primary tools that pretty much everyone is going to need to learn to make an indie game.