Do THIS When Making Your First Game

so moving on to sort of wrapping up getting to Kickstarter you wanted to make this your moment where you you followed through with something creative and you made something happen for yourself so that was sort of the driving force right for getting to Kickstarter right you got funded on Kickstarter yep and then after that you got funded by Humble humble games right y so let's talk really quickly just in general okay general advice for people listening Kickstarter and and getting a a publisher are they similar is the process similar to getting funding from both well I think we had a probably unique situation we we actually didn't reach out to any Publishers in our development and we were approached before Kickstarter so what yeah and and I'll tell you how we did that I saw some GDC talk I I couldn't tell you which one it was it was some guy and he said show early and off show your game early and often and that the way he emphasized that and when I when I took that in and truly understood what that meant like it really resonated with me so I did that I

showed like even the crappiest like very prototypical stuff early and often and I paid attention to what people were saying like oh wow this this element's cool and I I would look into like why they thought this certain element was cool and kind of like getting a bigger picture of what was special about the game and then doubling down on it so it's a little bit of AB testing this something you're really good at too Thomas by the way you do that kind of stuff all the time on Twitter even when you're doing your Game Dev Vlogs right yep yep it's it's also it could be a problem as well cuz sometimes you just have to go with your gut and you can't rely fully on the audience absolutely yeah but in the beginning was super helpful because as artists sometimes you're like don't know what's what you produce a lot of cool things but you don't necessarily know what other people will find cool you're happy with any of the choices but maybe one is AKA people will buy right if if someone finds it cool that means they're more likely to buy so that it's important to sample your audience cuz it tells you is this game going to sell yeah you know a

positive response from someone who saw it is is a them saying wow this has value or this art style has value because um they're responding positively to it and value equals money so money yeah um but yeah at the end of the day yeah money is just a a form of someone showing that your art is valuable to them to them it personally that's right right A lot of people think of money as like you're taking it from somebody it's like if I'm passionate about making money from my games it's cuz Thomas is like Ste stealing people's money and it's like I'm not stealing $15 from somebody when they buy a game they in their minds they said this game is worth more than my $15 so let's do a trade yeah and that's great you know that's what you want you want to be able to make a game that like you said is perceived as valuable to somebody else and your own ideas and what you find exciting and what you think looks cool isn't necessarily what's valuable to someone else right and your job as a

Game Dev and you're really good at this your job as a Game Dev is to half of yourself is somebody who cares about what your audience's perception of your game is and then the other half of yourself is what your perception of the game is and you're kind of like split you got this split personality between wanting what your audience wants and wanting what you want and to balance that and to figure out which Instinct and impulse to use your audiences or yours is what I think what's what differentiates a a wealthy game developer and a not wealthy game developer that's purely a monetary discussion it doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad person if you can't provide value to the audience if you can't that's you're not going to make money that's for sure but it doesn't mean you're a bad person or a bad artist F Scott Fitzgerald one of my favorite writers wasn't very profitable in his lifetime so he was very bad at identifying value he wasn't bad but he wasn't the best at identifying value or what his audience finds valuable in his writing at that era but I mean

look at his look at his legacy now it's very valuable in in especially in The Great Gatsby so it's a it's a difficult conversation to have because you need to worry about your current game sales but potentially you could leave a legacy with something that you just put your heart into that wasn't valuable at the time right right if you're lucky what you think is cool is going to be in parody with what the audience thinks is cool and and it's not necessarily luck like right you you as a game developer you need to be a a heavy consumer of media movies books games obviously anime cartoons different different things that are pushing the boundaries of like what is visually striking what is resonating with people narratively and the more you build up that roll de the better your taste will become and the better your taste is the more easily you're able to create something that is going to appeal to people that's really good dude that just made me think about how my daughter she she said uh I think she said she

doesn't like Coke or something and I was like I you know I don't want her to love Coca-Cola cuz it's terrible for you but I was like try it out you know see what you think so she's like no I really don't want it and so I said no just take a sip and she took a sip and loved it obviously it's delicious and so point being though is that as an artist you may say but I'm only going to make a game or an art style or whatever that is what I love I'm not going to step into all these other crazy ideas that young players are playing I say that all the time like I'm always like I don't want to play gen Z games because they confuse me but sometimes you just have to play them to figure out why they're appealing and then maybe that'll change your taste buds to then be excited to make that kind of game you know what I mean sure and nothing against people who want to make a game that only they will like but if their goal is to be financially successful that is not going to happen because probably not just

that's not going to happen I mean it could happen just by some chance but um you have all these tools to like see what people like you know we can display our game on Twitter or YouTube whatever right like a lot of these very successful games recently have had these crazy social media campaigns or even like uh Chuchu Charles um his meteoric rise on YouTube created an immensely successful game because he was making the content for it and um y I forget where I was going with that but you know and that's that is ultimately that is ultimately what I think you've been able to do you stayed Chris the artist that your grandmother instilled in you but you also cared about how do we how do I build a team and how do we make some money off this thing before we even release it and by make money I don't mean you're like give me some money and let's pocket it no it's like you you got the funding to actually do this thing full-time and you did that before you even launched your game I think that's really really impressive and you did it in 3 years and by the way if you're like me and you always dreamt of making an

indie game as a full-time job I have a free webinar below that goes into exactly how to make six figures with just a demo I was just like you for years I thought I had to make a game in its entirety before getting a paycheck but there's actually three ways to make six figures before even finishing your game I've done this multiple times so check it out below if you do want to go full-time Indie and thanks for watching