After ONE YEAR of game dev, $140,000! (Conversation with Chris Stair)

hey guys how's it going my name is thomas brush i make indie games for a living and so does my guest chris chris how you doing buddy doing so good thanks for inviting me yeah no problem so today's episode is really exciting because first off i want everybody to know this whole podcast this whole video is in interview has nothing to do with me promoting any course or anything like that but i do have to disclose chris is one of my students and he's officially full-time because he i mean dude what's your kickstarter at right now i think i last checked right before this is like 138 okay 138 000 for this beautiful looking game here um it's called bo is that how you pronounce it bo yeah bo and the full title is beau path of the teal lotus awesome we do both for short yeah it's beautiful it looks amazing so we're going to talk about how chris did this and how he pulled it off chris are you okay sort of sharing your secrets on how you made this happen or absolutely i'm ready to give you all

the secrets yeah of the trade yeah well let's let's do it um chris i'm going to run an intro really quick and then we're going to get into your secrets to how you did this because this is amazing i'm going to run an intro here and we'll talk soon [Music] by the way guys feel free to download my free 2d game kit below it's totally free it's my treat to you i used this exact 2d game kit to make a game for pewdiepie in 14 days and then i got to play it in front of his subscribers which was really awesome um so download that use it however you want it's my treat to you yeah okay okay so i've got a ton of questions for you chris um excuse me i've got a ton of questions for you i'm really really excited for you but first i just wanted to say or ask you how are you feeling right now

oh i feel like i lived an entire lifetime since february 1st is when we lost since when we launched the kickstarter like honestly um it's been really exciting and a lot of positive emotion but also a ton of stress unlike anything i've ever felt so far in my life yeah i mean i was my my programmer and i meet up once a week and he he saw me like two weeks into the into the campaign and he's like dude your hairs are getting gray and my hairs were like i looked in the mirror and i was like oh my god i like aged like a year yeah but um what can i ask you why it was stressful like what what made it stressful i mean it seems like it's going a lot of people when they see kickstarter campaigns are like well he's he just made 100 grand why are you stressed out right um i guess with that money comes

a lot of responsibility that you didn't initially expect um you know our original goal was 35k um and we when we hit that in just over a day everything kind of changed and it's like okay i guess we're we're gonna blow past this goal but how how far do we go how big does this get it's a snowball uh people are joining the discord people are following us on twitter they're expecting um us to have more and more involvement with the community and all these little things start popping up that you kind of have to deal with and community management's kind of like one of the big ones so i was feeling stressed i felt like uh i felt like i just had a baby and i wasn't ready you know what i mean yeah i think i think that's a really for me i do have kids by the way okay no so i said oh do i have kids yeah no i don't okay sorry you cut out there uh so for me like dude it is kind of a similar feeling i wouldn't tell my wife

this but or my kids but it's kind of it definitely is a similar feeling because i did two kickstarter campaigns and you know i have to humbly sort of bow before you and say mine did not raise as much as yours but i did raise six figures for the first one and then about six figures for the second one and it felt it dude it was like all of a sudden after day one you you make you make enough money and you're like wow i'm gonna be able to quit my job and go full time here this is a dream come true and then the remaining 28 days is just terror at least for me of the imposter syndrome for sure i'm curious if you feel that that's definitely come up and i've even talked to like my team a little bit about it too um but i think the imposter syndrome's kind of i mean it's it's totally unavoidable as you as you go to the next level that's just another bit one barrier you have to break through um and every person ever who's been successful has probably

experienced that with the exception of maybe some psychopathic people but um yeah so you're saying you have to be a psychopath to not feel like an imposter exactly at some point in your in your career yeah so do you feel like you are an imposter like do you think it's true that you're an imposter we'd have to probably uh break that down but i think i think no because for the past that we didn't come out of nowhere you know we for the past year this has been my life um working on this game i was putting in 12-hour days here and there and you know in every day my entire focus was on how do i make this project better and cooler yep um and for one year and that's what a lot of people don't see you know they see all the hype i'm like where'd these guys come from out of nowhere

um but you know the hype with the kickstarter and all the media that's talking about us right now but i i don't feel like i should feel like an apost i am one because i put in the work yeah so yeah and my team put in the work so i think at that point that's kind of all it is it's just a group of people working on something so do you view yourself through the lens of fear meaning like what you're afraid the community might think of you or do you view yourself through the lens of what you believe to be true about yourself there's been a little bit of fear yeah i would be lying if i didn't say that there was a little bit of fear especially when you start showing your game for the first time and you get negative responses or just haters or whatever yeah and sometimes do you ever feel like you read those comments and you go maybe they're right

yeah but there's one part of your your personality in the back of your brain that's saying they're right they're right your game is terrible your game's a rip-off your game like just stop but um i feel like it's it's it's somehow i don't know i'm still dealing with the thomas i feel like uh it's only really started kind of fairly recently so i haven't really found a good way to deal with it can i encourage you about it can i encourage you really quick yeah sure i'd love some advice from you okay so you're never going to get past the feeling uh in my opinion i'm i'm at 10 years of doing this and i still every day when i sit in front of this camera i feel like a fraud um it's just such a normal feeling and what i've decided is i'm going to look at

the community's response to me i'm going to average it out like a scientist and whatever they say is what i feel like i'm doing correctly and it may not be a like so it's kind of like a democratic process a democratic self-reflection so you're backers are they thrilled for you the majority of them are they thrilled about this project it seems that way yeah yeah is the press thrilled about it yeah so far so good yeah so overall let's say you get like a 60 on metacritic once once you release the game maybe even a 51 well that's 51 percent of the population who believes that you're not a fraud you're doing great things and to me that that's like all i can really do is just go people seem to be in for me people seem to be enjoying my programs people seem to be enjoying my games and

overall even if i get negative comments or or um whether it's from from my youtube community or discord or whatever they're few and far between and you just gotta kinda gotta like ignore those even though it's really hard you have a hard time like ignoring any negative comments on your kickstarter page well we haven't i think we received one like almost neutral to negative comment yeah but that's that was one out of hundreds right so i think like but yeah it's kind of like a pin prick in your side yeah it stays with you yeah but i don't know i i you know i'm i'm trudging through it like it's not going to stop me at the end of the day it's really not going to stop me from completing the project and that's kind of all that really matters good yeah and it it it stops a lot of people like that fear of being found out um whatever that means but it's real

it's a real feeling okay so i have some questions here chris now that now that we've sort of dug into your world like your greatest fears um first i want to see because so we've just gone through was launch terrifying so the second question i have for you written down i have a few questions here that i'm really interested in hearing from you about i'm assuming your career as a game dev is relatively short currently is that true or are you a veteran like what's your past when it comes to game dev um excuse me that's okay well um trevor and i sorry let me start again my uh programmer and my partner trevor he's working he's been coding for quite a while and like maybe two years ago oh maybe like one and a half years ago now we were working on a mobile app which was like a uh it's essentially a catchphrase clone if you know that game and yeah

yeah so uh that was kind of our first venture into the software development space and during that time i was thinking the whole time that i wanted to create something bigger something a little bit more narrative driven i was really into 2d platformers so i was trying to really educate myself in the space but yeah it gets to answer a question i don't have a background in game design whatsoever before i started but i did have a background in art and design okay and that's clear like i'm looking at this thing and this thing is absolutely gorgeous and you wanna know what i love about this really quick side note is it is clearly inspired by hollow knight and you've you've told you tell us that in the kickstarter campaign this is inspired by hollow knight but it it's a it's such a dare uh such a derivative from it that it's it's almost a um it's flattering to team cherry i think where as there's a lot of games out there where it's like okay this is

clearly a hollow knight rip off you know but this has a very unique style very very special style and it's just enough hollow knight for i think hollow knight fans to be pleased and happy that you actually took inspiration you know yeah it was great actually a lot of the fandom came from the hollow knight fandom oh okay i would say a good chunk of them and they've been insanely supportive and happy about the project um so it's been it's been mostly a good thing but we have received those people who are just like angry that how dare you how dare you touch our hollow knight like i don't care i just don't care about that kind of stuff i'm like look if we if if people like hollow knight they're gonna like this game i don't know why anyone's complaining look holland i did so many things right they've quickly become iconic yeah and it's at at this point there's a reason why they succeeded so much and

you got to take take um you got to learn what you can from like how they did things right and i think you have here okay so the question is you know your career seems to be short and my previous podcast i had was with tom thomas sala and he's got a 20-year game dev career and he's finally you know a full-time game dev a full-time indie game dev so it took him 20 years to get where he's at now and he he admittedly said in the podcast he said yeah don't don't follow my footsteps like that took way too long it shouldn't take you that long and i remember asking him i said is it possible to go full time indy like within the first two years of your career and so i wanted to ask you how did you pull this off how did you like i mean i'm assuming what two years is that what you said two years in game dev and your final your your full time with i mean it's public knowledge 130 000 in your bank account how did you pull this off

[Music] um i'd be i'd be lying if i i'd be lying if i i hm it's hard to know where to start um okay so when i was in high school and an early university i was really into fine arts and doing like charcoal paintings i was working with acrylics and stuff like that and uh i always was the art kid in high school like i was what most artistic in high school whatever that super i was too yeah yeah you were yeah you won like the school most artistic right yeah me too you had it in yearbook i felt like a

fraud at the moment as well oh for sure and you were in florida at the time were you in florida uh though that was in california when i had that okay okay how old are you really quick so everybody has an idea here in their head i'm 31 years old okay you and i probably won that award on the same day because i'm 31 as well what was your graduation year 2009 oh 2008. okay okay so yeah well you know that's that's very interesting i it's it's really cool that that you got that because i got that too so anyway go ahead sorry it'd be kind of interesting to see where all the most artistic kids in high school who voted most artistic are right now you know they're probably successful people like you and i [Laughter] 100 success rate yeah there you go yeah it'd be interesting to see the data on that yeah um but anyway so i had that creative background but then there was like an eight year long gap in my life where i just kind of set it aside i was doing a lot of photography and stuff

which is creative in its own way but it's not quite the same as getting down in there with like your pencil and paper and like doing concept artwork and dealing with colors and it's just coming straight from your brain rather than the environment yeah um so i i don't know i had some like revelation three or two or three years ago it's like i needed to start fostering my creativity and i've had my my dream on my bucket list for like my whole life to create a video game and i never thought that i would ever do it but we all know something funny happened in 2019 where no one was allowed to leave the house for how however many years it's been was it 2019 or 2020. i'm curious because you're in where are you currently oh right yeah i'm currently in thailand was it in 2019 when the pandemic happened in thailand because the timeline's a little different in

thailand right yeah okay because it was 2020 in america where everybody got locked down oh oh right yeah yeah oh my god we've been locked down for three years have we it's honestly a blur but you're totally right actually yeah in 2012 um well actually yeah but then but then actually 2020 2021 was the year that thailand started locking down but anyway like everything was locked down so i couldn't really like go back to america so uh i was just at the computer all day thinking like okay i could just play league of legends all day and work online or i could follow one of the dreams that i've had for a long time so and that was a beautiful merging of like uh like kind of like a creative rebirth for me like just getting back in a drawing i bought a new drawing tablet um and and and coupled with the course that i

that you you're running i was able to meet the community and like get really inspired so we kind of built that uh over the past year and it's just been a really good good time okay so it's essentially like you've you've been an artist your whole life is what you're saying uh maybe through your teenage years specifically it's funny because you know i got into photography too and i'm doing short films right now um and i i can i i'll put money down that you're gonna start doing short films too or something with photography because it's it's funny how like talents or or or passions you had in high school those sort of like in my head they set the precedent for what you're probably gonna have hobbies for in your future and so for me it's filmmaking and then game dev those are my two hobbies so we have a very similar i guess high school experience and so you had that and then you decided you know i'm going to hunker down for like two or maybe i guess it's just like a year and a half

it was about a year a year a year this is just nuts because so many people who watch my channel well okay there's a few people who watch my channel and you you can read the comments and they're like thomas is lying you can't you cannot this is a this is a fool's errand it's not possible to make games you have to be like super duper talented and you have to have all this time like five years of knowing how to do all this it's too hard and then all of a sudden i see your message or on discord and um to the community and you're like yeah i just raised 130 130 000 with a project i've been working on for a year so i i to me it's kind of baffling because it's in a way it's kind of unfair because i i worked like four years before and this me being like jealous four years before i got my first kickstarter campaign funded so i guess that takes me to my next question now that we kind of have an idea of how long it took you um which your answer is a really short time

so i guess my third question here is what was the secret to your campaign success and we'll talk about all the steps you took but this question is specifically was there one thing that you're like oh this was the cheat code and maybe dude it's totally fine if other people can't do this cheat code maybe you had a connection i don't know what it is what what made it so that your campaign was wildly successful i'm gonna have to sit down at some point and really look back and try to figure out what happened and when it happened but there was an element of luck involved i need to like disclose this and everyone knows if actually if they follow the campaign they know what happened we launched the same day as uh shovel knight the shovel knight dev's new game meena the hollower and i don't know if it's okay to drop these names but yeah it's fine i don't care okay cool

we'll cut we'll cut them from the podcast if it bothers you okay oh no i'm totally fine okay just wondering uh how that works okay i i don't care okay yeah so we launched on february 1st which is the same day that yacht club games launched their new project me to the hollower and they're doing bonker numbers right now i'm not sure what they're at right now i think they probably broke a million dollars in funding right now on kickstarter yeah wait the shovel knight developers are doing a kickstarter campaign yeah for for me of the hollower it's interesting you know you wonder do they need the funding but anyway that's a whole other question um i imagine they don't but yeah kickstarter's almost like uh a pre-order these days yeah so i know so anyway die to get in on the ground floor kind of thing i don't judge them at all but anyway oh me neither i love them yeah yeah they they changed my life i think um so they we launched the same day as them and they were i suppose trying to pay it forward to

other kickstarter projects and they uh yeah i don't know i didn't i've talked to a few of them in a small capacity but i'm not sure exactly what happened or who chose our game why we were chosen but i imagine someone saw saw our game and was like this is cool let's share the love a little bit and let's post about bo my game on our updates on our first update yeah so we were on their first update on their kickstarter campaign what day was this on your campaign relative to the start of your campaign oh my god it's such a funny story like it happened overnight so it was like the second day and we woke up we weren't ex i think that was the day we got funded actually anyway we woke up and we just were caught with our pants down so to speak like we did not know what to do like trevor was my my partner trevor was trying to call me and like saying dude

actually so many things happened that day i probably need to like go one by one but that was the biggest thing that happened yacht club did their update can you credit that to any of your outreach or anything that you did or was it just your luck the i i don't know but i imagine there was probably an element of me reaching out to other people but i i do think it might have just been luck that we launched the same day if i didn't launch the same day as them i don't think we got the update you know what i mean well can you can you figure out how much of the funding was from the update it's hard to say because we didn't give them a referral link or anything like that so okay how much did you raise on day one prior to sorry to ask so many questions i'm trying to figure out like how valuable it was um how much did you how much did you raise prior to their post it's a good question you mind if i just look at the data yeah i would love to

because i know like okay for example jacksepticeye played pinstripe when i i'm sorry he played never song when i launched the campaign and this was with me reaching out putting him in the game like i really scrambled to get him to play the demo so he played the demo when we launched neversong's kickstarter campaign and it brought in funding but you know i think it only brought in about 15 percent of the funding so i'm personally i'm sitting here going do you is it full is it really like the sh is that the secret sauce that you had them post or was it only ten thousand dollars worth of funding and ten thousand dollars is a lot of money but we're at 130 000 you know it was part of it and i i could go i could break it down a little more to other stuff that happened sure i feel like uh we were we didn't have gold i think we were made at 30k before they did the update it's so hard to say because we were asleep like i told you yeah

but i think we're at 30k and then when i woke up the next morning we were at like 46 okay um and then over the and then that day was huge also yeah and then the next day was kind of huge so we had like an abnormally huge first four days yup um just because of that look at what can you see where the traffic's coming from because i guarantee you it's coming from the discover page our number one traffic uh or uh let's see here direct traffic no referrer and information was our biggest uh okay pledge and that's external yeah wow okay so did you get any coverage from kickstarter did they post it on the front page did anything like that i i don't know for sure and actually funny thing we weren't even project we love for like like the first full week wow and i was like i had to email them and say like what's what's going on here i felt it was kind of petty but i felt like

why don't you love us no that's not petty at all you're a businessman is what you are squeaky squeaky wheel gets the oil or whatever and i do the same stuff it's like if if i'm not getting traction on something i've worked on i will scramble to get the traction um i so you made thirty thousand dollars prior to getting any sort of like big huge lucky coverage or like a mess or update from um this team so where did i i i'm trying to figure out where did that 30 000 come from right so like with a little bit of luck and what i always say about luck is luck is kind of just being able to identify opportunity and capitalize on it because luck by itself is fluff but if you capitalize it and you identify it and really lean into that luck you can multiply that luck so that's kind of what i've been trying to do and and and over the year of development we've been reaching out like crazy okay so we i

told you about the luck that happened with yacht club but there was a lot of stuff also going on but i just wanted to be upfront about that because that was huge for us i appreciate you letting us know i mean i personally i don't feel like that's that lucky i think it's like probably brought in some income or funding but i you know the fact that you made 30 000 prior to that to me says no no you just had a good campaign you know right and um yeah so we we were contacting a lot of people and we were posting very consistently on twitter oh and by the way if i i think mina could have shouted out anyone but they shouted on a project that they thought looked like it was quality so who did what i mean i mean yacht club mina is their game yeah so yacht club games could have realistically shouted out anyone but they chose us because they thought it was cool so the reason was cool is because we worked hard on it um yeah yeah so

seems like luck but you know we worked hard and uh so over the the last year of development we've i've i never used twitter before and for the longest time we had like 14 followers on twitter and i was like just embarrassed to even exist on twitter um but and i'm sure a lot of people can relate oh yeah me included i started there too yeah right and then like it's just about consistency really it's just about consistency you need to be posting there's so many great hashtags right trailer tuesday wish list wednesday screenshot saturday you need to be involving yourself in these hashtags yeah that is what we did i know some people say it doesn't work but if it doesn't work it's because you need to work harder or like up the quality of your project seriously because that's what that's what we did and that's what

worked so we're getting involved with the indie dev community especially on twitter and the more you post the more people see you around the more people see that you're improving and that your work is quality um everything just starts to snowball so we never missed a screenshot saturday for for like i forget how long the run was run was but we were hitting every screenshot saturday showing off our game and that was super valuable to us because we were able to get feedback from people and and kind of gain data on what people were responding to and then once we got we saw what people were responding to i really leaned in that direction um i was a little bit lost on the art direction for beau for a while but twitter really helped me come into my own for as far as art direction goes and i guess through all that twitter stuff

because twitter was our main way we were reaching an audience some some people found out about our game that were had a little bit of a following um for example like relia randomly i don't know if you know raleigh but he's a very prominent like hollow knight content creator randomly commented that he wanted to be an alpha tester and this is actually some advice you gave me to like say i think you i think it was you from from your videos and stuff to invite people to the discord to alpha test yes that may have been you yeah yeah it's probably i don't see anything wrong with it so so like i wasn't really gonna do that before i got the advice to do it and then he saw that tweet that i made come join our discord if you want to be an alpha tester and he's like sure if i have time and i was i was blown away because i recognize this little avatar and i'm like dude i watch this guy's videos this guy's like legit and over the past

six months maybe we've been forming a little relationship here and there going back and forth and on the first day of our launch he agreed to stream it to his audience so there was that how many views and then uh maybe like it was like a live stream so like i don't know a few thousand right now maybe six thousand or something wasn't huge okay yeah i i'm trying to in my head i'm trying to figure out what made this campaign work and if he had made if he had had like a hundred thousand views then that would be that okay that's what it was but if it was just a few thousand even even ten thousand that's i don't think that's enough um right but two to make the campaign blow up right but here's catch with irelia he's really connected to the crow sworn devs who are really connected to the team cherry devs wow okay so through his involvement in our um campaign somehow mongoose rodeo who is the studio behind crow sworn

as well as uh lef who is the marketer as well as moss bag who is the you may have heard of moss bag yes yeah he's a insanely uh prominent hollow knight lore expert i guess on youtube um all three of them reached i think leth retweeted but the other two did uh what do you call them just like regular tweets i suppose yeah about about our kickstarter campaign okay so because we made that one small relationship with relia over the past few months i don't know somehow they also picked it up so to they have huge followings yeah sorry to interrupt you go ahead yeah so so i guess it's about the relationships like make a relationship with someone um whether it be another indie dev or an influencer that thinks your game is cool and really just be genuine with them and try to foster that relationship and good things happen i never expected anything

good to happen with irelia i just thought it was i just was kind of like fangirling over the fact that he knew we existed but of course i you know when i'm talking i'm a little bit more chill than but yeah he he really like elevated the visibility of our game you know i don't think we couldn't have done this without him yeah so that i guess the conclusion to your answer correct me if i'm wrong here it sounds like what you're saying is there was no one thing that made the campaign blow up and the reason i wanted to ask that question is because sometimes it that does happen and then there's sort of a buzz kill where everybody go everybody's listening and they say oh okay so like it was it was you know you had one wildly successful youtube streamer but what i'm hearing correct me if i'm wrong here it sounds like what you're saying is you sort of just had a shotgun approach it's like so just shoot to social media shoot to social media shoot

social media and it's going to build and swell and swell because of these small connections that build into bigger ones and build into bigger ones yeah exactly the shotgun approach and out of the interest of like time and stuff like i didn't mention a whole bunch of other stuff but um it was a lot of little things building up okay i'm gonna ask you all about that the steps okay okay so are you cool with the next question here uh if we move on to that because i think it's related to just some steps that you could give my audience on how they could do what you did some actionable steps all right so what was like the process i i don't i hate to distill it down to like three steps but i want to try and make it actionable for my audience if you had to break your process down to three steps assuming you have a great demo great artwork a great game idea what were the three steps that ensured you raised 130 plus thousand dollars on kickstarter so the first step is really

in in general just doing the ground work and showing off the game as early as possible and before the campaign before before the campaign okay are you saying once we start the campaign or well i mean the truth is okay my opinion is the campaign is dictated by the fuel before the campaign exactly yeah so you you go ahead and let me know what's the fuel before that campaign that i get because right now it's just kind of autopilot i assume right yeah if you put in the work that's how it should be okay way there's some maintenance you have to do along the along the way during the campaign but and that's not insignificant either let me tell you but we we um yeah like exactly like you said there's the prep work that people don't see there's that giant iceberg underneath of all the sweat blood and tears of the year prior on building up these relationships making sure you have something to show

at least once a week and getting that feedback and honing it into something that people uh are responding to more and more and more and on social yeah on social so social is just everything you know unless you want to start doing like paid advertisements and stuff which we did none of i didn't pay a single hey yeah i can't see your camera oh okay there we go i think it's loading up here okay give me a sec here okay yeah so you were saying yeah so you can pay for promo and stuff but at the end of the day i feel like that's

not a real excitement and hype for your project so um yeah do the groundwork a year before actually we were going to launch last year so we had very little done at that time and i'm so glad we waited um because that year gave us a lot to show and a lot more idea of the scope of the game and what it's going to be like so we felt very ready and confident by the time we launched was it purely what was the i'm a very um opportunistic entrepreneurial person i'm looking for i'm looking for the value behind what you're saying so what was the value was it that you had an audience that was ready to buy ready to to back on kickstarter or was it just the encouragement what was it i guess it was like the fact that we built an audience and we knew our audience and we knew like at the beginning i didn't really know what the target audience might have been so

over that year i discovered oh this is our target audience our target audience are metroidvania heads our target audience are people who are rabid about hollow knight our target audience are people who are rabbit about japanese culture japanese folklore and hand-drawn stuff too so that became crystallized and i was like okay these are the people we're hitting let's lean into their interest let's lean into the anime let's lean into uh metroidvania the top the top 10 metroidvanias of the last decade and kind of show people that we're trying to do we're trying to push the boundary a little bit but at the end of the day like this is something we know you like and um so it was about identifying that target audience and like leaning into it over time and by the time we got to the kickstarter our target audience was sold

so so a lot of your backers came from from twitter absolutely yeah okay i mean it's hard to know exactly how many but i imagine uh the majority can you give the audience an idea of the numbers that they should shoot for for a twitter following like an active twitter following by active i mean guys don't buy twitter followers and don't get fake ones so yeah that's yeah what would you like to hurt you yeah yeah it's not there's no value in it my i think we launched with like 2 400 followers that's great because that's that's definitely manageable like i think every all of you guys listening you guys can do that like that's not it's not that hard just keep being consistent and have a decent looking game yeah we were like i said we were at 14 followers for ever and you know we we went down to 13. and then it's just like yeah but then i don't know if there there comes a tipping point once you engage and um there's just a tipping point you start gaining some traction yeah and little

things happen here and there you know once we came out with the teaser trailer we got a lot more followers and now we're at 4.8 you know so we grew in immensely during the kickstarter and kickstarter has i didn't know how much it was going to help us not only financially but as far as getting eyes on the project um like the publishers that were approaching yeah like the quality of the publishers pre and post kickstarter really jumped yeah well reach out to me on discord dude if you have questions about publishers because i don't want you to get screwed over i don't have so many questions for you too yeah and i'd say you should be able to make some good money and also have a great marketing arm somebody to get just fyi just to give you make because i don't want you to forget this in terms of financial benefit that a publisher offers they should know how to get deals with epic games stadia game pass right the list goes on of all the exclusive deals that you can secure and these publishers will find those

deals and then sony for example will pay you a hundred grand and then you split it with your publisher that is the future the future of publisher relationships that's the real benefit um and this was something i learned from tamasa which is our previous podcast so just keep that in mind when you're getting publishers reaching out i would say okay first question you should ask the publisher is have you ever secured a deal with google stadia or rapid games or nintendo switch or sony or microsoft if they haven't then i wouldn't work with them does that make sense stuck in the past a little bit yeah that the future is getting these these massive deals and they don't have to be one-offs or what i mean is they don't have to be one deal only so epic games we want your game and we want it forever in perpetuity and you can't release on any other platforms instead the deals are are structured like hey we want your game for like four months before every other platform and we'll give you like 200 grand

and i'm not i'm just throwing random crap out there but that kind of stuff is one of the benefits of having publishers because they know where to sniff this out and get that that funding um or it's not funding it's just securing like pre-orders essentially for these these platforms so keep that in mind is all i'm saying when you get because i know for a fact you're going to be getting emails from all these different publishers saying hey we want to give you a hundred thousand dollars we want 50 of the revenue it's like whoa whoa whoa why like what are you gonna offer me other than a hundred thousand dollar advance like you you don't even really need in advance uh because you already have the money so and you're gonna have to pay that that's why it's called an advance you're gonna have to pay it back anyway with game sales so the real value in publishers is securing these deals with these platforms so i just i would keep that in mind if i were you yeah that's something i've been aware of but yeah it's kind of a new space like you said so yeah i don't know okay what's the second step

oh okay sorry sorry to interrupt you go ahead now we don't have enough time yeah so let me get to that we got about 15 minutes and i want my people my audience to know when it's the second and third step second step i think i touched on a little bit uh in the before but it's about you need to make as many relationships as you can and and like i said twitter is really good for that um at first you're only going to be talking to other indie devs or game devs that's true really but you know i don't say that disparagingly at all like that's those are your people that's your tribe and i've met nothing but the most amazing cool people on twitter who are making the really cool projects and like have an immense amount of passion so so that's kind of like what kept keeps you going a little bit too but also non-indie devs follow those indie devs and like every little connection you make is like exponential and it's growth that's

brilliant i never thought about that that's really good so yeah and like i can only speak to like what's been happening to us and like um i know it's it's it's a lot of work and i'm not particularly extroverted but this is an absolutely necessary thing you need to do for your game to be successful it is talk to people whether it be people who are fans or other indie devs um because i don't know there's so there's some magic that happens and i i can't really quantify it how do you talk to people what's the actionable step how do you do that um [Music] usually it'll be commenting on their tweets or in some situations dm'ing you just give them a genuine like if you see something cool and you know when you see something cool because if it sparks something in you you you pour out that the genuineness onto the

comment and like and the person who tweeted what their game or whatever can identify that as someone someone who's like uh you know they they'd love it that's what they're doing this for so they identified and then they feel engaged and i don't know just like that relationship builds and there's some like magic that happens over time but you have to foster it you have to grow it so what you're saying is it i love i love thinking about like actionable strategy here because i think a lot of my listeners are probably like okay this is very abstract in their head like what do we do so tell me if i'm wrong here tell me if i'm wrong here what you're saying is engage with the game dev community especially like games you really like leave a comment saying how much you love it and then hopefully they'll see that comment and go man this person really likes my stuff and then eventually you dm them and ask them for advice maybe ask them to to see

what they think about your game is that what you're saying absolutely exactly and i could give you a concrete example of of something we did like the game pro sworn which is like raised 1.2 million canadian on on kickstarter um i did a fan art for them or like like last last halloween i dressed beau up as their main character it's just an idea i had i'm a huge fan of their game but i did a fan art for them and they retweeted it and we saw growth because of that but it wasn't i wasn't like shooting to to have growth but they saw that as like something cool and they saw that something as something genuine so and it was because i'm a huge fan of crowsworn i can't wait for the game to come out and i love those guys in your mind when you do this stuff when you leave a really genuine comment or you do fan art are you being and by the way i'm a very opportunistic person

are you being opportunistic are you thinking if i do this then this will happen because so i've done that before where i'm like hey i put you in my game and then i'm hoping that they'll play the game but there are other times where i'm just like no i really just love your stuff and here's some fan art so i'm curious like how your brain ticks because a lot of my p a lot of my audience are probably thinking my brain doesn't tick strategically like that where i'm gonna give and give and give and then it's going to return to me almost like karma um i don't think my audience thinks that way a lot of people in my audience don't think that way and that's actually how an entrepreneur should think which is like as a business owner what i do is i go if i give give give give give it's going to come back in return and i specifically say as a business owner because that's not the way i operate all the time um that would just be horrible but there are times when i go

i'm going to be giving because i know it returns back to me and i'm curious does your brain work that way or are you just sort of laissez-faire just chill and you just leave great comments because you like the game i can't i guess that's a little bit of both but i can't give a sincere and genuine comment to something i don't sincerely and genuinely think is good or cool right so like it just works in tandem in that way like oh this is cool but also something good might come of come of it whether that be a relationship or a simple retweet i'm in the case of that fan art i did i i didn't actually expect them to retweet it but i did tag them in and i just wanted them to see it um but you know stuff like that just happens if if you reach out that's kind of the point okay so step one foster foster foster foster a community um build a social media presence build

what i call an army right an army of followers in your case it was about two thousand people on twitter step two foster relationships with the big dogs i guess is a good way to put it higher up game devs that aren't you know just a crowd of community but rather the pillars of the game dev community foster a relationship with them because they have power to promote and to to let people know who you are what's that third step and by the way let me know if i was wrong about those first two steps i think you're pretty on the money with those for two first two steps um the third step i i feel like uh maybe my third step like do the prep work you make your page look good yeah hire a graphic designer if if you're not a graphic designer hire one or if your friends will maybe they can do you a favor but you need a really

good graphic design i don't necessarily think we hit it out of the park with the graphic design i was really like kind of rushed on my end but did you hire somebody no i did it all okay it looks great it looks really i have a little background in graphic design but i i'm very unconfident in my skills and i don't like doing it but um uh and have invest in a key art a very like eye-catching key art um do not use a screenshot of your game invest in a key art that's kind of eye-catching aka cover art or thumbnail art for the trailer exactly yeah yep okay so it's that page it's just making the page look beautiful and really like polishing yes it's like i cannot uh speak on or i can't sing the praises of gra good graphic design more because like it's make or break for your kickstarter graph

the graphic design so don't overlook that okay um it the difference of how professional you look and how trustable you look all rides on how your graphic design looks right as well as like the actual game when you say graphic design do you do you mean artwork or do you mean i mean how you lay out typography typography uh just how you're arranging things um visually so that they make they're easy to read there's some very standard graphic design conventions that i don't know you could like people can look into but um it it you can look at something and immediately know these guys are professionals and these guys are not right essentially like just by how how things are designed so that was big also like give you have to like really think out your tears

and i know people want to stay away from physicals like the plague when you're making a kickstarter correct but physicals if you can do it and you know what you're doing are really going to elevate your project and i don't want to just throw that out there without all the caveats that come with it because if you've never done a physical before or sold anything and shipped it then maybe that's not for you but i do have a little bit of experience with that so um i really wanted to do a physical and that really like moved our project i'm surprised to hear you say that because the majority of your backers i'm assuming are united states correct uh actually i don't have that data exactly but i would assume yeah so you've got to ship to the u.s right um is that expensive uh we got a quote that it was like going to be 15 per unit and but that's essentially what we're charging the backers do you know you can charge

shipping i see i see so they got if they if they're doing the rewards here they have to pay for the shipping exactly i'd say i never i never did physical so i i like you said i avoided it i was terrified right so like let's say the tier is 100 they pay an additional for shipping so 115. okay okay um yeah i mean i i don't i don't want to go out and be recommending that the physicals and stuff but that's the reason why i think that's the reason why these really big kickstarter projects go over the edge like into like seven figures and stuff because physicals and all that's that's that's the reason why like game board or sorry board games are super outrageously successful on kickstarter because people want something physical you know yeah you know okay well there's a bunch of other stuff but yeah i mean you've you've just you've done a really good job here man

like you should be super proud and uh i i just want to encourage my audience to click the link below and like if this game looks like something that you guys want to support go ahead and support it i mean chris has been i great if i'm wrong here but you're in the same boat as all of my subscribers i mean you you dreamed of game dev i'm sure you followed my channel for a while um yeah that's how i found out about your course yeah you you joined my program again guys this video is not a pitch for the program um and so i just want to encourage my audience and say like guys chris he's obviously very talented um but what he did really well from what i can gather is he leaned into his forte and you know maybe maybe guys like chris is your forte music can you write music i have a background of music but i don't compose and so you're not writing music for this game no but we found a guy on

fiverr who they're getting the team yeah and that's that's what i want i want to encourage all of you is chris leaned into his forte which is artwork everything else he's he's um he's getting help with and he's made this dream happen in a year and i'm just blown away i'm i'm really proud of you chris i think you're doing an incredible job so guys be sure to check out beau below and chris we were gonna check out your project in unity but i have to go downstairs and hang out with my kids i get to go downstairs and hang out with my kids uh after this call so thanks so much for hanging out dude this was awesome guys be sure to support beau in the in the link in the description uh chris did you have anything you wanted to say before we end this uh conversation to you and thanks to your audience uh you you guys are great everyone in the discord has been super helpful in this journey and uh if you can support that'd be great um if not check out the game when it comes out give it a spin

awesome all right chris i'm gonna run an outro here and i will talk to you later all righty get over here [Music] hey thanks for watching by the way if you haven't downloaded that free 2d game kit below click below it's my treat to you i used this game kit to make a game for pewdiepie in 14 days and i actually got to play it with him in front of his audience which is really cool this game kit is totally free it's my treat to you and you can use it however you want you can make a commercial game and make a million bucks off this game kit i don't care or you could just use it for a hobby project it's my treat to you and by the way if you haven't clicked like that would mean a ton to me hit subscribe and also this is important hit that notification bell here's why if you get notified of when i'm live you can watch me make my next game and let me know in the chat what you think about the game or any ideas you have and you might just show up your chat might just show up in the next video

that i upload all right i'll talk to you later bye [Music] i love you too