BRUTAL Honesty From 7 Legendary Game Devs (About The State Of The Industry)

hey guys how are you doing um well let's talk really quickly uh and I think this video is going to be super duper valuable for you um basically the question that I want to answer is is the indie game Dream still possible um and you know we've talked about this before but I I reached out to seven Legendary game devs to get their thoughts um and it was so cool because every single one of them responded and guys I think at the end of this video it's goingon to be a long video but I I think at the end of this video you're going to be really really encouraged I I know I was cuz I mean the game industry feels I don't know it just feels kind of spooky right now like it's not as easy as it used to be to to like make tons of money selling a viral game um and it almost feels apocalyptic and there's there's one person in here who thinks it is apocalyptic whereas I think there's six other developers who actually very very encouraged and they actually think that Indies specifically

Indie developers are actually going to dodge a bullet whereas Publishers in AAA are not going to dodge the bullet um so let's let's start with um let's start with Publishers okay um well actually before we do that I actually want to give you some credibility here because a lot of you might be wondering oh my goodness is another indie game developer on YouTube giving advice just so you're aware I do have I do have some credibility because I really released a game called Never song right this is the PlayStation physical copy which is just so cool I I love this thing um and we'll talk about who did this in just SEC CU it's it's one of my Publishers and uh there's there's another one we did a multi relase of pinstripe and never sung in Korea and then we also did a Nintendo switch for my other game pinstripe but those are my games right and then I've also got a game called um let's see here Twisted Tower which is currently in development it's my first 3D game and it's being released by 3D Realms okay so let's start with my um

one of my Publishers um Serenity Forge and this is Jen wayang and he goes by Z and this is just four of his many uh games in his company's portfolio um you'll notice that these games all have a very like artsy emotional story driven feel and he actually talks about that in his quote that he gave me about the Indie apocalypse or at least the seeming Indie apocalypse so he says the indie game industry is currently facing several challenges including an oversaturated Market with too many games competing for attention a tendency for developers is to chase after hype driven and hit driven Trends a lack of strong branding focus and what's really cool what's really cool about what he's saying here is that there's other developers and we'll we'll read their quotes in a sec that mention brand now what is brand okay what is brand

well brand is building an audience that's what brand is you're building a strong image not for yourself but for an audience why is that important because you're building an audience that can sustain your studio for a decade right so he's really talking about building an audience here right so branding focus is really important so he feels like game developers are lacking a strong branding focus and a heavy Reliance on a limited number of platforms for distribution so like Steam for example just steam this is important here Z says game companies often spend way too much resources chasing virality with new products in unsustainable ways the way I read that is they're just not building a brand right they're not relying on their own I their current IPS uh they're they're not relying on redistributing their own IPS on multiple platforms and they're also not worried about building a sustainable audience rather they're trying to constantly reach new audiences with new viral products okay let's

continue here now this is going to sound a little bit of a kind of like PR here like a PR statement but I can promise you that that what he's saying here is not PR and I'll explain in just a second uh Serenity forge on the other hand is always taken a different approach by maintaining a focused brand dedicated to creating meaningful emotionally impactful games this approach makes our games narrative driven and Timeless allowing them to be more resistant to Market volatility and continue to sell well over time why because they're building a brand AKA they're building an audience and an audience guys for me an audience is as simple as we just have 880,000 people on an email list who have bought our games and they love our games and we can continue to hit that same audience 80% of your Revenue this is my opinion but I've also heard this from other digital marketers as well 80% of your revenue is going to come from repeat customers okay I don't know if that's true in the Game World specifically but

I know it's true in just digital entrepreneurship in general okay hitting the same audience over and over again with a product or a new IP is way smarter than trying to get a new audience every time you have a new game okay and I did want to mention why this is not a PR statement when he says they maintain a focused brand dedicated to creating meaningful emotionally impacting uh impactful games when Z says that he's dead serious and I know this because I pitched he he he he licensed Never song again here's Never song He licensed Never song his Studio did or his publishing uh Studio did they licensed it and they also licensed the I believe the switch version of pinstripe they licensed it but when I pitched my next game Twisted Tower to them because it didn't hit their brand it's a violent shooter because it didn't hit their brand he rejected it even though he's already signed two of my games he knows I follow through he knows

my games make money cuz we did recoup yet he rejected Twisted Tower and that's because it did not hit his brand so for Publishers out there publishing indie games and we'll talk about developers in a second for Publishers out there it's so important to stick to building your audience you're not going to build an audience if you release random games okay all right let's keep going here we're going to hear from Gavin so Gavin is on the other side of the spectrum Gavin is a developer a solo Indie developer who does not work with Publishers and in fact in his quote here talks about not really liking the idea of working with Publishers especially in this current climate but he made Chuchu Charles and Chuchu Charles just did obviously amazing it was totally a solo game and it was also self funed now if you guys are interested in learning more about you know funding opportunities outside

of being you know self-funded so working with Publishers or you know getting kickstarted there's a totally free uh webinar or like a lecture series below that I've done it's really cool cuz I'm going to teach you how to make six figures with just a demo this isn't fake this is real this is how I fund my studio um this is how I've done this like I think three different times um you take a demo and then you you you raise money and you earn six figures from Publishers Kickstarter Etc so click the link below if you want to learn how to do that um it's free it's super easy to watch um yeah okay but let's hear from Gavin so Gavin has a different opinion about the Indie apocalypse or just the state of the industry right now being kind of difficult he says it seems like the game industry is only in a a difficult place right now for triaa and Publishers and I actually kind of agree with this they've been trying to and we'll talk about that in a second why I agree with that they've been trying to

expand with larger scale games and larger scale budgets to keep up with the increasingly High demands of consumers but they haven't been able to keep up with the quality execution of these Concepts or they've been distracted making games that are simply too derivative and lack the flare needed to sustain themselves AKA they just don't really have a hook right they're derivative games um that like for example Gavin's making a prison escape game okay well sure it's a derivative but but he's created a flare for that game if you haven't seen it um you should check it out it's really really unique and has a ton of flavor visually um and it's called cuff bust by the way it's I was think what's the name it's called cuff bust he continues I don't see any significant evidence that the industry is in a tough spot for Indies this is like solo not solo Indies but like self-publishing Indies who don't you know work with a publisher they seem to be doing as well as ever and with all the negative backlash towards most aleaa releases recently it feels like the aura

around Indie Games is more positive than ever to a point where daa and even some studios that should arguably arguably be labeled as AAA are trying to Rebrand themselves as Indie underdogs to regain favor with the public man he's really good at writing isn't he that was that was a great quote good job Gavin okay he says midsize and by the way this guy is I think he's 23 um or 22 so he's he's he's very very smart um and I say that in a jealous way I'm very jealous actually because I'm like 34 and I'm learning from Gavin um but anyway he says midsize Indies that are looking for Publishers might have some trouble since a lot of Publishers are cutting back on the funding of new projects this is an area that I don't keep up much with while my opinions on Publishers are nuanced I'm generally against working with them in an indie context so I'm not incredibly informed But ultimately there aren't enough good games in development that Publishers can get their hands on he continues I think the sentiment towards Publishers in the Indie space

has changed a bit and more people are willing to self-publish there's more benchmarks and information online now regarding what wish list counts to aim for by the way like 10 to 20,000 wish lists and because of things like steam nextfest there are way more games with way more wish lists than ever were previously just a few years ago it took about 100,000 wish lists to reach the top 100 most wish wish listed games man I can't talk now you need over 300,000 to get to that same position now I know I just said 10,000 to 20,000 but Gavin said 100,000 to 300,000 Gavin is well he's at the top top of the indie game developers in terms of his goals and his Revenue benchmarks for me and for you guys we're we're aiming for can we just make 50,000 bucks please you know can we make $100,000 that would be great that's why I say 10 to 20,000 wish lists getting on the top 100 most wish listed games that to me is not the best use of your time

or your emotional energy um but for Gavin it is because that's that's the uh caliber of developer he is okay Indies are doing better on their own and it seems like more of the largest most promising titles are being self-published which has Publishers with lower tier games that aren't sustaining them anymore the modern in this is so important right here the modern Indie publishing system has been fundamentally flawed from a business perspective for the last decade is so it only makes sense that it fall apart at some point what's crazy about what Gavin is saying here and by the way I work with Publishers okay I and I I will likely continue to work with Publishers at least to a degree right I don't know if I'll go Allin with every game but I do work with Publishers I'm working one with one right now Gavin is hitting something that is true okay I've heard from one one of my previous Publishers and it's not my

current one but I've heard from a previous publisher that what he's saying is true there was a fundamental flaw in the business perspective of Publishers Publishers have been throwing around way too much money at Indies um and instead honestly games just the scope needs to shrink significantly for Indie Games to be profitable otherwise they're going to spend a million dollars on an IP for an indie game and the game is going to make 500 Grand what does that mean it means you lost five it means you lost 500 Grand right and I think that's happening to a lot of Publishers okay so he's he's dead on here all right he wraps up I don't really have hard data on which to base all of these claims other than the highest wish higher wish list counts for more games but this is the pattern I've been noticing and his gut is correct and I've I've heard this from from other Publishers as well like I was saying Gavin's gut is correct here guys this does not mean that Publishers suck and this does not mean that ERS are evil and

this does not mean that Publishers are gone um it means that things are changing that's that's that's about it you know Publishers need to change the way they're doing things um and I I'm talking to all of my Publishers right now and there is a sense that I'm getting from all of my Publishers that things need to change and that well the bloat needs to be cut it cut from the development process and from the budgets and the schedules um we just need to be more concern conservatively minded when it when it comes to the the bloat that indie game projects have small teams small budgets short development uh schedules um okay let's move on here let's move on here who else we got oh Gavin's not done here um just he just keeps talking doesn't he no I'm kidding so to stay float I think solo devs and anyone that's not trying to put a bunch of money behind their projects can basically do the same things that other dabs are doing trying to make money to support development through

external means like YouTube freelancing selling assets plugins courses or a day job and putting that into their projects it's so funny because um there's there's just like one not even 1% of the comments I get on social media are Thomas he does YouTube he's a YouTuber he's not a Game Dev and for some reason people like to like try and slam um if if if someone does one thing to make some money then the other thing is invalid right um my games my games have brought in more than a full-time income for me and me and my studio uh my current game Twisted Tower the funding that we got for that game not only funds my salary but also my team's salary okay yet I still do YouTube why because I run a business on YouTube okay so not only am I building an audience for my games on YouTube not it's kind of like the the a small reason

I do YouTube on top of just because I love it but it's also a business it's an educational platform on YouTube right so I I teach how to Market games and how to sell games so it's a business right and so you guys shouldn't be afraid of what Gavin is saying here which is look it's totally fine to learn to make money on YouTube to freelance to sell Assets Now the the goal here is not to use that only to fund your games but what it is is it's a safety net and it's a backup plan now fortunately for me I've never had to only rely on YouTube if not rely on it at all I mean honestly my games are always funded by Publishers it's just YouTube is just I guess gravy right but I love having a backup plan and so that's what I'm saying here and I think that's what Gavin is saying support your development if you can support your development and through other means a AKA he's just saying be an entrepreneur

here and make have a variety of drips of income and that's totally fine and you shouldn't feel bad about that okay let's keep going here for he's still going for people trying to find Publishers and fun midsize games I think it's best to just scale back and self-publish lower budget games I tend to agree with him although you know with Twisted Tower it's a bigger for us it's a bigger game right it's almost it feels double A sometimes um so it's a bigger quality game um that said I'm looking forward to going to sort of smaller smaller games in the future um but ultimately here he's just saying we need to scale down as Indies scale down and and focus on these smaller tiny core ideas um with a very interesting hook and just focus on that and don't don't bloat the game which Indie developers are so tempted to do because they want to make Gang Busters million2 million dollar in Revenue that's not the way we need to be thinking about that in fact um my buddy

it's Tomas but I call him Thomas I shouldn't because his name is Tomas his quote is coming up here and he talks a lot about look just focus on making smaller games and don't worry so much about a ton of Revenue just worry about making enough Revenue to get by okay let's keep going here if people don't want to scale back and still want Publishers then they'll just have to Buckle in this is so true they'll have to Buckle in for a difficult pitching process and eat the punches what's he saying there he's saying that in order to get you know a million dollars for a bigger game Indie Studios need to be okay with a lot of rejection because Publishers right now I think they're tightening the pur strings okay doesn't mean guys it doesn't mean you can't find a a publisher who wants to give you 50 Grand or 100 Grand or 200 Grand those still exist okay they're still out there they're they're still given money

okay but if you want to get a bigger project million dollars plus it's going to be tough okay and you're gonna you're going to have to be okay like Gavin's saying you're going to have to be okay with eating eating the punches all right I got this really interesting quote from an anonymous publisher now this is not my current publisher okay um I just want you to know to know that um it's just a buddy of mine who does have a publishing studio um but he did not want to be named in this video but this is kind of Bleak this is kind of Bleak but remember this is not from an indie developer this is from a publisher and do you remember what Z said or I'm sorry do you remember what Gavin said he said it's the Publishers and the triaa industry that's going to hit or get hit with the bullet the bullet being the Indie apocalypse not indie game developers okay and this kind of Rings true to that this is again a publisher

Anonymous publisher and this publisher says we used to do forecasting on wish lists but recently they've gotten three times more expensive to acquire and by the way that's publisher speak I don't think about acquiring wish lists with money the way I think about it is I'm going to acquire wish lists by just creating great social media content so that's interesting to me that the publisher mindset is how much does it cost to acquire wish lists and I get get it you know they're going to be they're going to try and use their money effectively the way you and I you watching this video the way we think about it is probably what kind of social media content can I create and how can I be clever with it to get wish lists right anyway they've said that it's three times more expensive to acquire and have a conversation rate of a have a conversion rate is what they meant of half of what they used to I think it was like 18% was supposed to be the conversion rate for wish lists and now it's down to like 10 or even lower um it makes marketing games cost

prohibitive for a lot of Indie Publishers um that means what does that mean it means that Indie Publishers are going to be a lot more afraid to throw around a million dollars on a new IP the market has changed the covid bubble has burst what's the co bubble the co bubble is a ton of money came into the economy from isn't that weird how that happened but a ton of money came into the economy whether it was like uh bailouts or like government checks it just flooded into the economy and everyone had a ton of money and they spent it believe me I received I received a good chunk of Revenue um for my digital products in during Co it was wild Co was a very profitable time of the year or time uh season uh for the digital economy um but what this publisher is saying here is right now is essentially the Black Friday of the games industry not the Black Friday after Thanksgiving

um he's talking about the Black Friday uh for the Great Depression so that's Bleak I hope things turn around soon cuz a lot of talented people are about to find a new industry to pursue yeah that's that's tough to hear but yeah uh find a new industry to pursue in the games Market may never get back to the talent it once had I'm hopeful I'm hopeful that this is only true for the big dogs so publishers and the AAA Studios I don't think this is true for Indies okay and there's a reason why I think that because all the Indies I'm talking to and there's a ton of quotes coming up here the Indies I'm talking to do not feel this way it's the Publishers who feel this way let's keep going next person on our list is Edmond McMillan and if if you saw my previous video um you you'll know what Edmund has to say here but Edmond made biting he made B ing of Isaac and he also made um

Super Meat Boy very very talented developer and Ed has a very interesting perspective here Ed's perspective comes from the early days of indie game development where when you launched a game and it was it was a good game not like Gang Busters but it was just good you made a million bucks right it was just explosive amounts of revenue for viral games or just good games okay but even Ed here he says I feel like the response is Universal at this point the response is a response to to my question is the indie game industry difficult right now is it apocalyptic he said it's Universal his response is universal too many Indie Games release daily it's still very flooded the only solution we have is to make better games design always wins you can make a very simple design that shines very bright gameplay-wise so what does he mean here like how how

can we apply this to ourselves as we make Indie Games I think ultimately what he's saying is have a very very strong hook specifically a gameplay hook something that is very very unique and take that strong hook and simply focus on it like crazy and Ed does this so well with his games with Binding of Isaac with Super Meat Boy with his new game mug genics there's a strong focus on a very unique hook and for him obviously you have the visual hook Ed's games look have a very unique visual style and he's very focused on brand building again we're going to talk about brand in a second but he's also very very focused on the gameplay hook that's super duper important to add and it seems so simple right it's like just focus on a hook no big deal right just focus on a mechanical hook what's the big deal here why can't every Indie developer do that well that's easier said than done okay focusing on a very unique gameplay hook the reason it's so

difficult is because we've got 18,000 games launching in 2024 or maybe that was 2023 tons of games and all of those games want to have that unique hook okay so you've got everyone everyone it's like where's Waldo right everyone's trying to be unique okay when everybody's unique nobody's unique okay so it's very very difficult to create a unique gameplay hook and guys I'm guilty of this gameplay hooks unique gameplay hooks that's not my thing unique visual Styles those are my hooks by the way this is from Pete Cooper he was a blizzard artist but he took my style for the screenshots of the game and he turned it into cover art and so I have a very unique art style that I believe really stands out okay but when it comes to my mechanics they're pretty straightforward and Ed's saying here Thomas dude he's talking to all of us you got to have a strong gameplay hook

okay and it needs to be very very unique to stand out okay Jason Smith creator of cultic we've heard from Jason in previous videos I want to reiterate what Jason is saying here okay and what he said in the previous video in response to the indie game industry being apocalyptic um J I love Jason because he's so pointed and so direct uh Jason says it's been pretty crowded in the indie game market for a long time but in my opinion it's getting even worse now that you've gotten CR this is so it's a very unique perspective he says uh you've got incredibly talented folks from the a a and AAA scene who are tired of the state of the industry and are splintering off to make their own game studios notice what he said here he said small studios Okay small what does he mean small Studios meaning Tiny teams low budgets and they're competing with who you and me tiny little teams of hyper talented you

know double A and AAA veterans so now you got industry professionals with more resources also competing with the dev who just quit his full-time job to chase a dream while living off of savings by the way that's me and that's also Jason okay which both Jason and I things worked out for us but there's a lot of game developers and maybe that's you right now watching and leave a comment if this is you where you're tempted or you have used your savings to make a game and maybe it's not going to work out for you right and so we're going to be competing with a a and AAA veterans so that's a really interesting perspective from Jason my favorite quote from that I received from the seven um Indie you know veterans was from Thomas or Tomas Tomas Salah I I think I'm saying it's got to be Tomas right whatever it is Thomas or Tomas Salah Salah um he created this game called uh Falconer and man it's so

freaking pretty I mean look at this thing it's gorgeous it's so gorgeous it's hyper hyper focused and we'll talk about that and it's got a hyper hyper strong feel and you'll notice that all of his games have the same visual style what is he doing he's building what a brand now what is a brand it's so important what is a brand is a brand you focusing on your studio and your style and it's really cool t-shirts and you wear cool hats no that's not why you build a brand you build a brand for this that's why we build a brand okay a brand is synonymous with a big audience you're not going to build a big audience if the game the way the games are proed presented presented the way the games

are presented um are always different right or they're always a different genre or they're never really fitting a uh a a theme that your studio represents for me uh same sort of thing all of my games have a very strong Moody like Tim burton-esque style okay very strong Tim burton-esque style okay and even my game Twisted Tower same sort of vibe right that's because I'm doing what Thomas is doing or Tomas is doing and that is building a brand so here's what Thomas says or thas says sorry dude basically I have always struggled to survive in this industry I did my decade with a studio and that was always tight right now this very moment I've never had it this good is't that crazy and I wouldn't say the falconer is insanely viral okay um it did pretty good but it's not like you know Cult of the Lamb or or Binding of Isaac um or

Minecraft you know it's a it's a a pretty successful game but he's saying I've never had it this good and he's a solo developer by the way so from the Cockroach solo Dev side of things we're good but the pathways for success in this industry are becoming more established and rigid that means some of the free willing make a great game and strike it rich those times are gone and yes the Dependable Revenue streams are becoming smaller heck my solo Dev game outsold Concord by good margin which was a Sony first party games as a service that likely cost tens of millions but the upside is that with me thousands of Indie devs yearly beat the odds this is really encouraging it really is I was when he sent me this I was just really excited the causes for the downturn seem relatively clear now basically every developer and publisher is now competing for the sparse cash and it's particularly sparse now just because of not only the the economy in the United States but the economy

globally the sparse cash in Gamers wallets with the combination of giant established Again Games as a service style platforms that's like Roblox fortnite OverWatch a growing back catalog of great games that are still as great and often still look great and are on a permanent discount tons of fresh Indie talent that includes you guys right that includes me solo devs and microscale Studios outmaneuvering outd designing and out innovating existence existing Studios so we're all competing with each other guys and we're all trying to be clever that's tough cuz when every again when everybody's clever and when everybody's unique nobody's unique right and this is by the way that's why audience building is so important we'll talk about audience building in just a second algorithmic app stores where the main mode of visibility is discounts and sales right which they call fests right a festival is just a discount in a sale it's the same as you know a 50% off sale at a couch store you know in the 1980s it's

the same freaking thing they call it a festival it's the same thing it's just a sale okay and that's how so many Steam games including mine make money it's during steam sales right all of these Trends are depressing the revenue that you can expect with a game this is 100% happening and affecting Publishers and developers who haven't been releasing games at a Brisk paace these last few years this is funny what he's about to say but all of us who have been releasing games are going no s Sherlock and this has been happening for years now and it's irreversible right but we are just adjusting and dealing with it so for for Tomas or Thomas uh this is normal right this is normal it's no big deal to him okay that's why he's he's focusing on brand that's why he's focusing on building games with a small budget right because he's known about this he's known that 100% of or uh the the trends are depressing the revenue right he knew that he knew that

this was 100% happening and affecting Publishers and developers who haven't been releasing games at a Brisk Pace these last few years he knew this okay so it's not surprising to him all right so his strategy is create a franchise an IP a brand this is where we're getting with this video okay and you guys will see the very last slide here I talk about this and why this is so important that all of you you need to focus on building a brand for him a brand is something that draws folks in across multiple games that allows me to reuse assets code and work smarter quicker and develop deliver products that connect to an existing audience my audience other devs like yourself he's talking about me Mr Thomas brush other other devs like yourself are making themselves a brand so what does that mean this is the brand Thomas brush is the brand I was actually talking to a

subscriber yesterday his name is Jason I was talking to him yesterday we were hanging out and I said listen dude I'm going to build a a game Studio not necessarily on my games and the way they look but literally on my face and I know a lot of you think that that sounds really lame it's like why would you build a brand off of your personality here's why because my personality is one of my strongest fores now if you met me in person you would disagree but I'm really good I'm really good at talking to a camera and I'm really good at doing YouTube videos okay and talking sort of off the cuff right and so for me it's my strongest Forte and so I'm going to focus on my strongest Forte to build an audience and a brand and that audience because they enjoy being with me and watching my content therefore they will also probably love my games right now how you want to build your brand and how you want to build your audience is up to you I would just say lean into your Forte so for we're going to call him Mr

Salah here Mr Salah his Forte is obviously his beautiful beard and his wonderful Grimace but also it's his art style okay that's his big focus is his art style so he says I don't believe in the viral successes we see that go stratospheric I believe in Dependable good business practices that fit our modern times AKA building a brand and social media is perfect for that it's like made for building an audience at least for now they seem to work these business practices these practices of building a strong brand and a strong IP I open Steam and I see plenty of failures but I also see plenty of successes perhaps a more modest scale but a survivable scale for US small timers what's a small timer small budget small team small game suddenly you're very profitable right

well I just burped when you have when you have a big project at a big scale and a big team then all of a sudden profitability becomes a lot less uh likely because you spent all this money trying to make this huge game so you want to keep it small so that profitability can then be high right you might make less money overall um in terms of gross revenue but when it comes to actual profit your margins are much higher but you always got to make I love I bolded this and made it red because I freaking loved this sentence but you always got to make the most technically challenging thing or visually challenging otherwise you're dealing with thousands of copycats or competing games so yes Mr Salah here is saying hey look you need to focus on brand you need to focus on building a strong series of ips that build an audience over time but but you also need to focus on making the most technically challenging thing or

visually challenging I'm going to try and parse what he's saying here for you guys cuz when I read it it immediately clicked and I'm not sure if it's clicked for you if everybody is making pretty good art and pretty good music and pretty good gameplay then you're just basically making a game that everybody else is making okay you've got to go in there and say okay like for example I can't say I I'm going to make blood splatter out of my enemies and it'll spray blood all over the floor big deal let's figure out how to make it more technically challenging let's make it so that when you shoot the head of an enemy the enemy pop the the the enemy the head pops off and blows into the into the the atmosphere and it's spinning and and blood is spraying everywhere and every single drop sprays across the walls and decals the walls maybe you can go and pick up the head and bounce it like a basketball right that's that's kind of what I think he's saying here which is is not necessarily that mechanic in general but or

specifically but I think what he's saying is you've got to take these mechanics or these visuals to the next level and focus specifically strongly tightly on those difficult challenges solve them but don't worry about you know making everything unique in your game just worry about making that one thing unique that one tiny thing and go hard with that one thing and what's interesting about his games especially the falconer it might feel a little sparse he's told me this that some reviews say it feels sparse it it feels like it's not super complex but that's because he knew that all he needed to focus on was making the most striking visuals he could and by the way if you've seen the game we saw it earlier you know that that's true the V he just said visuals are everything that's what I'm going to focus on obviously he he made a really great game with great gameplay but the visuals as he said here he tried to make the most challenging visuals and tried

to solve that so that he stood out among all the other developers okay Chris is our um last Indie developer on this list Chris is a really good friend of mine um and he he kind of got uh in a weird situation where Humble Bundle like laid off half the staff no all the staff recently and so although he did get published and he got kickstarted by the way his Kickstarter campaign did amazing I think it was over $117,000 so and we'll talk about Kickstarter in a second but he had this dream scenario of a publisher and a Kickstarter campaign just all of it going his way and then right when they launched their game their publisher fell apart right and so what he said here is yeah the industry is definitely difficult right now we felt it firsthand when our publisher laid off all this staff we've been working with for over 2 and 1/2 years it was a shock and we're

still recovering from the Whiplash despite everything our launch was relatively successful but I can't help thinking about how things might have gone if Publishers had managed themselves a bit more conservatively I think that at some point there was a real oversaturation in mismanagement of money based on projections and it's always that right we're going to make this much money based on 2018 why why would you think that the industry is completely different now but uh based on projections that stemmed from the pandemic the pandemic was like I said earlier was a huge influx of cash everyone was consuming digital Goods because they were all stuck at home and so the projections from the pandemic are no longer relevant and so that's why for him what he's saying here is it seems like Publishers just completely missed the mark when it came to their came to their projections because those projections were baked and

created during the pandemic which is the last place you want to create a projection this was our first game and it was called Bow by the way it's it's incredible it's a really cool game so I can't speak of how things have changed over time but seeing all the layoffs and the crumbling infrastructure for indie games really paints a bleak picture of the old ways of doing things and I want to encourage encourage Chris here and I want to encourage you guys I don't think it's Bleak I don't think it's ble because from the Indie Indie developers out there who are wildly successful who've been it for a long time it's it's it's really not that bad because well if you can build up your wish list numbers to 10,000 or more if you can learn to keep your scope down and make a small hyperfocused game you can make over 100 ,000 in your game right small tiny games and my games

never went stratospheric right these games never went viral so I don't even know the context I'm dropping games over here I don't even know the context I don't even know the context of a stratospheric game and then all of a sudden releasing my next game and thinking it'll go stratospheric and for example I'm thinking about Jonathan Blow here Jonathan Blow made braid and then he made the braid HD remaster and it didn't go stratospheric and he was confused the way I see it is like well my games have always made less than I think I think maybe one of them made more than a million but they've always hit you know the hundreds of thousands of dollars in Revenue Mark uh they never went super gangbusters so I'm not shocked and I'm not scared because it's like well I always make games that are they're just decent games that make decent money right and I don't think that's going to change for for game developers out there who are just going to make decent money okay okay um but for those those game developers who are expecting

stratospheric numbers it's different it is different but I I'm sure that you guys listening don't really care about that you just want to make enough money to get by right so I think more people are playing games than ever before and over time new Gamers as they are tired of AAA stuff they'll discover the awesome things happening in the indie game scene it's just going to take a while to strike the right balance again and I'll rephrase that in my own words which is it's going to take a while for Indie Studios to learn how to manage money better or another way of putting it it's going to take a while for triaa for Publishers to learn how to manage their money better to be because it's like it's too easy to make games now with AI and with the tools available us available for us with unity and unreal and I mean for God's sake gdau is competing with unreal and in unity and it's open source right it's just the the tools available are just so good now that it's it's getting easier to make

games so we need to lower our budgets because why because it's getting easier to make games and that's okay we've got to adapt so if you're an IND Dev Chris continues here if you're in IND Dev right now I think you should focus on making enough cash flow to survive and making games also crowdfunding seems a like it's still a viable option and this is coming from somebody Chris who raised over $170,000 on Kickstarter I think it was 2 years ago and I thought you know back when I did Kickstarter campaigns and both of my CA campaigns basically raised around $100,000 I thought that that was the end of Kickstarter but crowdfunding is still a thing crowdfunding is still a thing and by the way crowdfunding is based very strongly on an audience again we're going to talk we're going to end this video talking about the value of an audience so ultimately I'm just going to read the the last sentence here that's bolded basically do something weird and new that's tangentially related to something people already like and I totally agree with Chris here and I call

that the big butt principle which is taking something that's known and using the word but and adding a sh a Twist so um Metroid Vania but with bugs Hollow KN right that's that's the that's the principle there so what does Mr Thomas brush have to say about all this what's what's his quote uh about the the how to survive this apocalypse by the way after reading these quotes I don't think we're an apocalypse I think any developers are going to do just fine what's my quote well it's a couple of steps here okay I really want to make this simple for you guys and this is the framework I'm going to use okay moving forward with my games I'm going to be working on games after after Twisted Tower Twisted Tower is my third commercial release um so I'm going to keep making games obviously the this is my framework number one build an audience okay build a brand focus on a

strong unique brand presence your games are a certain theme a certain style a certain genre a certain art style and build your audience around that two come up with a strong hook something this is what uh Edmond McMillan was saying come up with a very strong precise unique gameplay mechanic or a visual style like uh Mr Salah Tomas Thomas Salah with the falconer come up with that strong visual style or that strong story and focus like crazy on that one hook and going back to Mr salah's quote okay going back to his quote take that hook as a challenge okay take it as a challenge and say okay I've got this hook it's a game where uh it's all about eating peanut butter

sandwiches I don't know let's say that's a really good hook it's not but let's pretend it is I'm just coming up with something on the Fly Focus so hard on that that peanut butter sandwich eating mechanic and treat it as a challenge a hurdle to get over how do I make this the greatest hook ever so that nobody competes with this single hook or what Mr Salah did I'm going to make a tuny game where you fly as a bird it's got like cell shading how do I make this cell shading and this this um tuny that this tun shaded game so beautiful so freaking unique that it stands out among all the other games that look like that and I really do think he did that that's what I mean by number two focus on that hook number three develop while staying insanely small don't think that because you're making a great game you have to spend a ton of money

don't do it please stay small okay number four while you're developing your game and you're building that audience collect 10,000 wish lists you can do it you can do it post on social media Tik Tok Instagram X YouTube keep posting content and get those wish lists I'll talk more about number four here and say and also and get 10 reviews for God's sake get 10 reviews on Steam because if you can't get 10 reviews according to um Chris Sakowski you're going to enter the sandbox and the sandbox is where most indie game developers are they're stuck in this sort of uh what would you call it uh limbo but once you get those 10 reviews you something happens with the algorithm where you just plop out of the ground and start to grow so 10,000 wish lists minimum uh that's just the number that I'm aim I

I always aim for we're we're over we're over 20,000 I'll say that with Twisted Tower but yeah aim for that number five make a f focused two to four hour experience that is if your game is time based like it's a linear Story game don't worry about making it 20 hours you know for God's sake you're going to sell a $10 game so just make it two to four hours maybe five you're good number six release your game right now this is assuming you don't want to work with a publisher or crowdfunding by the way I'm totally fine with either of those I've been published three times I'm totally fine with Publishers but you want to release your game and then what why did I say that well because we're in number seven here this is the most important do it again faster why am I harping on the and it sounds like I'm asking you guys to commit treason when it comes to your game's development what I mean by that is that number seven feels almost

like um heresy any game developers are supposed to be we're supposed to be uh principled right we're supposed to be innocent we're not supposed to act like corporations right um but the truth is is I want you guys to stay sane I want you to be happy I want you to make money I want you to be free so that's why I want you to do it faster because I don't want you to be in development hell I've been there I don't want you to spend 3 years on a game I want you to spend 6 months on a game and release it be done make some money do another one do another one do another one when I say do it again key word is again what does that mean continue building your audience okay as you create games you're building an audience I'm on my third commercial release all of my games have a very very similar Vibe I'm not going to stray from that my focuses visuals okay and story it's actually atmosphere that's

that's the main focus which that's why we're called at most games so that's my brand right so does that make sense guys that's a long video that's was an hour long that is my thoughts and also these beautiful wonderful seven legendary developers that's their thoughts as well and guys look if you want to dig more into this stuff there's a lecture below totally free lecture I really think it'll help you a lot because it's going to teach you if you want to get funded before you finish your demo and again I've done this three times so if you want to get funded before you finish your demo and actually make six figures now there's no promises here obviously guys I'm just telling you what I've done if you want to make six figures before you finish your game click that link below check it out and I will talk to you guys later good luck guys I know it's scary out there I know the indie game industry is kind of scary I'll be honest it spooked

me as well um but hearing from these guys it wasn't at super super uh helpful so U leave a comment below thanking all of these Developers for encouraging us this was really really cool