5 TIPS I've learned after a DECADE of making indie games!

my name is Thomas brush and creator of a game called pinstripe released on Xbox ps4 Nintendo switch and steam and we're about to do the same for my next game which is called once upon a coma and I say we that's me and my publisher are about to launch in October and we're really really excited so to celebrate I want to tell you what I've learned in 10 years of making games well it's really been about twelve years of making games there's a lot of things that you can learn on Google and on YouTube but there are some very crucial things that you just learn through experience so I've tried to distill down this list of five things that I've learned just through through experience and long year after year of grunt work legwork and trying to figure things out in the game industry [Music] before we get started guys I want to thank Skillshare Skillshare thank you so

much for supporting this video in supporting this channel guys Skillshare is an incredible sponsor not only because they support this channel and allow me to make videos for you but they also have some incredible content that is really closely aligned with what your goal probably is and that is making games so if you guys want to learn about game development there is a link in the description and you can get two free months of Skillshare it's a great deal for a great great company and you can take a ton of courses whether it's 2d animation 2d design 3d animation 3d design unity c-sharp sound design marketing business development whatever it is you need to learn for game development it's probably on Skillshare and hey guys it's two free months so give it a shot see what happens we're gonna talk about launch day confusion the first one isn't really a thing it's more of a topic and that's just launch day confusion there's so many things about launch day that are confusing and we're gonna cover two sides of the same coin right the first side is you over

value launch day launch day is so important and I get that it's like the most important day of your life but don't worry if it doesn't go according to plan okay if launch day flops and I would never say that pinstripe flopped on launch day I would rather maybe a better way of putting it is it was hard to get the thing moving because I was competing with little nightmares and so all the coverage was with these games and so pinstripe we we had a pretty good budget for pinstripe and I won't say what the budget was but it was it was a decent amount of money put towards marketing pinstripe we put every bit of effort we could including a PR agency a publisher and just a ton of connections on my part to get the game moving and the thing is is it didn't go exactly as I would have hoped but it did okay I was really kind of worried and a little bit frustrated and depressed and kind of hard to get out of bed when Pinstripe didn't perform as well as I had hoped on launch day but

what I learned after two years of seeing it perform is its kind of about the long haul guys if your game continues to have sales and continues to pick up income throughout the years you'll notice that you'll make 200-300 thousand dollars in two years when your first week wasn't really that great and the way this is done is just through sales and participating in humble bundles or steam daily deals so don't stress don't freak out if launch day doesn't go according to plan now the other side of the coin is launch day is very important the the biggest spike in sales that you get is probably on launch day but it may be some daily deal that you have so launch day is really really important it's okay if it fails but if it succeeds your game goes through the atmosphere past the moon all the way to Pluto right in terms of game sales and the your game sales could provide for your studio for the next decade if you have a good launch

day focus on launch day think about launch day prepare maybe two months worth of your time prepare for launch day but it's okay if it doesn't go according to plan number two don't overestimate the value of influencers people like me right don't over value how important they are in terms of your game sales so right behind me mister jacksepticeye was kind enough to play my game pinched and this was at my request I just emailed him and he said yes that's amazing right I was so excited and he actually did voice acting lines for the game and it was the best day ever and thank you so much mr. Jack for playing pinstripe it really means a lot to me you're a good friend but let me just say this in terms of game sales I was expecting it to go like that with that sound boom straight into the atmosphere right in terms of game sales and I remember telling my publisher I said this is it we've done it we finally

arrived and this was I think maybe a week after we had launched so I was really nervous seven days like we're not really getting a lot of traction and then jacksepticeye plays the game I'm expecting okay we've got five million views on this thing sure they were gonna get a jump in sales nope we didn't get that much of a jump in sales it kind of did this like that barely barely and then right back down don't overestimate the value of influencers I've said this a lot on this channel don't pay influencers to play your game unless you're like Ubisoft you know or EA and you have $100,000 to pay somebody to play your game I don't really see the value I haven't really seen huge spikes like it's never one to one right I I don't know whether jacksepticeye's video here maybe cause some other things to happen cuz the game sales long-term were pretty good for pinstripe but it wasn't one-to-one it wasn't immediate and I don't really know the exact correlation between him playing the game and sales

and this is true across the board for pinstripe PewDiePie was really gracious thank you so much Felix for promoting pinstripe as well he actually did a story about it on Instagram overall I think I had overvalued in my head what would happen weather keeps changing the weather keeps changing number three don't try and be someone you're not guys how many of you in your head have this idea of what an indie game developer should be or an entrepreneur there's this idea of this trendy like cardigan wearing smoking pot on the weekends crazy haired rape and wearing Tom's wear the trendy kids wearing out Tom's was that my era I don't know but there's this idea of what what you think you should be as a game developer an entrepreneur just do what you want see I tried so hard for like five to six years to be a certain type of person and it

just didn't really help at all and what this does is the most important problem here is that it translates from who you're gonna be into what your game is gonna be because hopefully your game is part of you well if you're trying to be someone you're not your game is gonna be something it's not supposed to be don't try and make the next fortnight or the next minecraft just make what you're excited about and I know it sounds very cliche and overused but I mean honestly what's the goal here think about the end like the end end of your life you're you're lying in your coffin and you're let's pretend you can think while you're lying in your coffin what what are some things that you're happy you did I can guarantee you you're not gonna be happy about making a game that sold a lot of copies but it really wasn't what you wanted to make so do what you love seriously what are you excited about and a good way to do this is right now let's

do a little exercise right down close your eyes wait no keep watching this video and think about what is something that really makes you excited for me I can't get away from it and it might pigeonhole me as a type of person I love conspiracy theories I love politics I love violent video games I really do believe it or not even though I make trendy weird games like this I really love violent games I love horror movies I love dark content that's just who I am and believe it or not guys I kind of been lying my games are super indie super trendy super artsy fartsy I kind of like horror so why am I not making horror games that's really what I'm passionate about right now so I really have to double-check my motivations here Who am I what do I want to be what's my identity well at the very least just makes something you are excited about so

don't try and be someone you're not it is so bright right now that door looks like a gateway to the train station of Harry Potter's heaven that's a bright door and this is a bright shirt I feel bright today number four simplification saves you money here's the thing about simplification what I mean is try your very best to get everything in your game that you want done without adding anything is it possible see the thing is is that with Pinstripe believe it or not the game seems simple but there's a lot of customization and content that wasn't necessarily needed in the game so the thing is most indie game developers are probably gonna eventually need to make a game for Steam ps4 Xbox and Nintendo switch all at once so at the very beginning of your game be thinking what are some ways that I can simplify so that this is universally applicable to all platforms without worrying about all

the idiosyncrasies of each platform this is why it's so important to simplify at the beginning of your games development so I'm working on my third commercial game right now and I'm actually making a 3d game which I'm really excited about cuz I've never done before I'm learning a lot what I'm so tempted to do is make a 3d game that looks like all the Triple A games and a lot of indie game developers feel this way well if I'm gonna be successful I need to make a game that looks hyper realistic or you know looks really cool and unique and has a lot of details when in reality if you're going to be an indie game developer you need to be thinking about the lowest budget you can possibly use for your game so my game right now my 3d game is hyper simplistic the thing is is I want to start my games with a foundation of minimalism and simplicity now if I want to get complicated later that's great in the future a year down the road from now I have no idea what the budge is gonna be for my game that I'm working on I don't know if I'm gonna be working with a publisher or getting an advance

from you know an angel investor I have no idea but right now I know what my budget is I know how much time I have to make this game and so I'm going to make it with that budget in mind most indie developers don't have a big budget in mind so be sure that you simplify there are a couple things about simplifying your game that I've learned over the past ten years and I'm actually going to implement this for my next game because I just don't want to live through this mistake ever again and that is making your menus super complicated I'm having a ton of animations so I did this in once upon a coma and I think it paid off in the end because it's a really beautiful menu system but it was a real pain to put together and it took a lot of time and a lot of the budget to put together this menu system don't try and make something way too complicated because you're afraid that you need something like that for your game to be successful rather especially starting out live on this foundation of simplicity so with your menu just have

everything really simple and really clean you can get away with a very simple menu system by having really good sound effects and good music a great example of this is the half-life 2 menu don't get too complicated don't worry about animations with your menu systems in your UI another thing that you can do to simplify the process is just ensure that you're not putting a ton of texture in detail into your game maybe game developers are notorious for putting way too much detail into their games at the beginning of the development cycle and then towards the end they can't finish the game because they've set a standard for themselves that isn't sustainable long term ensure that your graphics are simple and clean get that core game loop perfect basically you're building a prototype that's super fun looks decent but it's not this hyper realistic game to begin with I need to stop biting my nails the fifth and final thing that I've learned in the past decade of making games is cleanliness will save you some sanity you used to be pretty

messy my office was pretty dirty I used to have like 20 coffee mugs and they would just get mold in them and I just leave him on the desk and then I got married and that wasn't allowed anymore and I'm and I'm glad because my wife is kind of a clean freak and she knows that and I'm grateful for it because it's made me so much more mentally clear see when your office looks a certain way your brain has a habit of reflecting that right and the opposite is true as well whatever's going on in your head will reflect into your environment so if your head is full of chaos your office will become chaos if your office is chaos your head will become chaos why is this relevant to game development because when you're making a game have any of you made a game in unity it's no matter how hard you try to be clean it's always going to feel messy and always gonna feel complicated and like a house of cards ready to collapse it's really difficult to keep unity clean so at the very least keep your office clean so that you can

look away from your monitor and go have a moment of Zen and then get back into unity this sounds silly but this has really helped me in the long run so I would challenge you to go ahead pause this video right now clean up your office or your room or your dorm wherever you are and ensure that everything has a Zen feeling so that you can get back in your game my dad used to tell me Thomas instead of buying a new car just clean your old one I don't know anything about cars but he used to say take care of your old car because it'll reduce the temptation to get a new car the same is true for your game obviously keep your game as clean as possible keep your office clean and that will reduce the temptation to just jump on a new project quit your project and jump into in the next one ultimately guys cleanliness not only saves your sanity but it helps you finish your game would you guys think of this video did you enjoy it did you like it if you liked it hit the subscribe

button get yourself a life and subscribe my name is Thomas brush also there's a way to support on patreon there's a lot of things that you can do on patreon but the main one is give me your money [Music] thanks guys I'll talk to you later bye [Music]