He Started A Game Studio In HIS DORM (Conversation with Conrad Grindheim)

hey guys my name is thomas brush i make indie games for a living and so does my guest conrad conrad you're a 22 year old indie game developer uh give us a little just quick quick intro about who you are what you do hi everybody i'm conrad and i'm the lead developer of conradicalgames i'm currently making an rpg called the outbound ghost and i made a kickstarter for that and that helped me go full time and i hope that you guys will find my story interesting sweet all right dude um guys conrad's story is pretty incredible um the the thing that makes me the most interested in what conrad is doing is he's super young much younger than i was i i think maybe i was 24 or 25 when i started when i when i really went full time indy so conrad's story hopefully encourage all of you guys on how he started a game studio in his college dorm and now uh working full-time paying yourself a salary saving some money hanging out at your parents house right um so i'm gonna we're gonna talk all about that

specifically conrad's gonna talk about three secrets to starting your own game studio just like he did um and then be sure to stick around to the end guys because conrad is gonna tell us how he you sold a a game to a publisher and this game took you a month is that correct exactly yeah so that was my previous game before this one so that's so awesome that's so awesome so we're gonna talk about this hopefully he'll inspire you guys give you some tips here all right conrad i'm conrad i'm gonna run an intro here and then we'll get started perfect [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 playing on screen here your game the outbound ghost and right away what i see is a game that does not look like it was made by a 22 year old uh the user interface here is gorgeous the coloring the style the mood i mean it looks like you're doing 3d work and 2d work so there's just a ton of skills here and it's kind of uh i'm a little bit jealous because when i was 22 even now i i feel like my skills are not at this level so the first question this is actually on our little notes that we shared before we started this call i did want to ask you where did you get all these skills from and how are you how are you pulling this off at 22 years old so the art straight up is not mine i i have a really talented freelance artist uh that's working on the game and uh thanks to a combination of freelancing before uh doing the outbound ghost and my kickstarter i was able to afford you know external help like that so the artist straight up not me and

then the background is actually a combination of you know very scuffed 3d stuff like basic blocks stuff like that and a lot of from the unity asset store so that really carries my game in a way and then i mix that with my own flair with the lighting the post processing and then comes out pretty um original looking and most people wouldn't even notice that it wasn't all custom made for the game well what's funny is i think that that's more that that that's sort of more impressive than if you had done it all yourself because i've tried this and it's really tough to be able to to grab a bunch of assets and also direct a team i mean you're playing art director here right um yeah in a way yeah yeah so it's kind of like you you've got to figure out a way to communicate and when i first called you and that was like five minutes ago before like we we just decided to do this podcast when i first started talking to you i was like this guy knows how to communicate you're a very good communicator you're very articulate and that i think is like a huge asset to

have as an indie game developer i mean are you constantly communicating with your team yeah all the time obviously like multiple times a day i additionally i have a publisher which i talk to all the time it's a very communicative publisher so it's it really placed my strengths i feel yeah i have a musician on top of that we talk a lot not even just for work but just like about general game stuff so we're talking all the time and i think that really elevates the game because you know talking more gets you to uh work through the kinks of the game you can really figure out what makes it so there's a lot of there's a lot of communication i guess i'm assuming it's discord yeah mostly discord and then slack for other stuff okay so you uh do you do a lot of planning scheduling that kind of thing uh honestly not as much as you would think but um it's mostly off the cuff for the other people but i have like an internal um schedule that i could follow obviously i have milestones for my game that have to be completed by a certain date yeah and

um i i kind of i'm in charge of that and make sure that everybody finishes everything on time but if somebody can't do something by the time period then i make sure that i can fill in those gaps and make sure that everything works well okay cool man so this is your current game outbound ghost exactly um you have a publisher for it did you write it really really happy to be working with them it's been a fantastic experience as i said before they're very communicative yeah uh we're just we're talking all the time i worked with publishers before where that's not necessarily the case um but on a daily basis back and forth a lot of input a lot of health food so yeah very awesome experience sweet um okay so let's get right to the juicy good stuff here i think that most people want to hear about um what are just let's jump into it what are three secrets to starting your own game studio from anywhere um really quick just for clarity here you started a game studio at your college dorm by the way i did the same thing

and then also from your parents house same thing same story on my end so what are your three secrets to doing that and maybe you can tell us your story or something and it's really up to you how you want it how you want to share this yeah so i i guess just to start off i feel like crowdfunding is so powerful i did a crowdfunding kickstarter campaign for the alpine ghost i raised about 30 000 us dollars and it was it was just such a launch not only just for the money but just for like the outreach that you get for something like this um it's just a huge head start that i feel like i wouldn't say it's stupid to pass out but it's like it's almost something that if you feel you can do it i feel like you should do it because it gives insane boost to the money you can spend on your game so you can get other people to help you in my case it would be the artist and the musician and i actually basically got my publisher because of the kickstarter campaign i don't know if i would have gotten one without that you know so uh for your first game you don't even have to finish a game you have like a 15 30 minute demo and you can start a kickstarter with that and if people like it you know it'll go well and then you

can get not only money to finish off your game what about individuals who um like you don't really want to do the art but they don't have any money like how did you get the artwork done before you had the money to pay for it so in my case i started freelancing for game design uh about two years ago or so and i still i did it for one year and that really helped me in uh getting a foundation um i guess of finances to be able to spend on my game yeah and um you know you can always get your friend to help you out with uh temporary art uh when i first started the album ghost it was actually all pixel art made by myself so maybe if you want to you know change it up afterwards i don't think it's that big of a deal people will be happy to see a quality increase yeah um and so maybe finding yeah getting a friend maybe my brother's an artist so maybe you can get you know your brother or your sister uh to be helping you with that in the beginning stages and you know anyway maybe even selling games for very cheap on itch you can get some extra money and my first game actually i also did a

kickstarter for it's called loot box life it's like a platformer metroidvania sort of thing and i i did a kickstarter for that and i made 200 euros and that's not that's like 200 yeah and 200 is like you know you don't go full time with that but it was enough to hire some baseline art for that game yeah i could have done the same thing with the alpine ghost if i chose to do that so i feel like even if it's a really small kickstarter to get your you know your game up and running you could potentially do that and i think that's a good way of doing it i did that when i was 18 so as an 18 year old i didn't really have any money uh but 200 euros was all i needed to get started in that regard yeah wow that's crazy it's it's so funny because uh i feel the same way when i first started making indie games 200 bucks was in my head it was like yeah like we could we could do some serious damage with 200 bucks but now you know uh i mean i've been doing this for half of my life now it's like it it making games does get really really expensive really can be one

character for 200 bucks but you know when you're starting off you can do something simple and 200 bucks is all you need yeah yeah absolutely absolutely so kickstarter that's like your number one one of your tips is like do a kickstarter campaign even if it's your first game is that what you're saying yeah i mean if you look up blue box live kickstarter you will look at the game and it'll be like it's a miracle this game even made 200 bucks yeah um so i think you'd be surprised with how um generous a lot of people are and how they can believe in your vision even though when you're not there yet would you recommend making your story really honest and and presenting yourself more than your game yeah in in those beginning situations i think yourself almost matters more than a game it's like when you go to an investor if you're making like a social media company or whatever it's almost like they invest in the person more than the idea so in that case i think it's very similar okay cool all right so we've got kickstarter is is huge um and i would i would agree with you uh that crowdfunding um is a great way

to go full time that's how i went full time and like you said a publisher is going to see that campaign and they're going to see it as a vertical slice and a vertical slice meaning a some sort of pitch a prototype and when they see confirmation from an audience that's enough for them to think you know even even if we don't connect with this project emotionally as a studio we can see that the audience does so we're willing to invest so you're right a kickstarter campaign is a great way to get a publisher for sure yeah it's like you don't even need to um it's like oh you made 30 000 bucks and you didn't even finish the game imagine how much more it's going to make yeah you actually finished it i totally actually have proper support with a publisher yeah um so i think that's a great way cool get that trust yeah all right uh what about that second second tip to start and go ahead and go full time for for indie game developers yeah so this is kind of tangential to

the kickstarter and it would be just to not really be afraid to look at other avenues to potentially make art sorry to make money so maybe you want to do a kickstarter like i said before or you want to do freelancing which is what i did so i was a freelance game designer for about a year and i managed to get into that through making my first game and having a publishing deal with my second one and that experience allowed me to be a freelancer in that regard but i know a lot of people that for example maybe they just make art and they um put on itch right yeah so they make money extra money like that uh you can always get a part-time job but if you really want to do stuff related to game development you can sell extra stuff like that maybe make youtube tutorials and try to make extra money like that you need to meet courses um you know that always helps supplement uh your main goal of making games that you really care about so looking outside of that really helps i totally agree with that um and for those of you who are curious um about selling resources tools courses

that kind of thing um and and even for you conrad i'll let my audience know half of my income now currently comes from resources it used to be just game sales and it was good money too uh just game sales i was i was you know bringing in like six figures a year more than six figures a year doing just game sales and working with publishers kickstarter that kind of thing uh and now once i i have a online school um and resources to sell uh that's that's over half of my income now admittedly is resources so don't discredit this is to my audience guys don't discredit the value here if if you're interested in just being profitable now it might not be fun but if you're interested in being profitable resources tools the unity asset store selling online training those are all things that you can do to not only

supplement your your studio's income but turn it into a cash cow so that you can take those funds and invest them in a game like we've got here a beautiful looking game that conrad's made so yeah just just a quick note there yeah i mean i'm sure that now with your the extra revenue that you get from your courses you can make father even better right yeah i mean when i hired a 3d a 3d modeler to do the 3d models that i can't um for for our games yeah i harder orders to make my 2d character that i can't either so that's right all right and and that again guys that is not to discredit me or conrad uh because i've done the whole making everything from scratch and now i've done what conrad's doing which is hiring people and i got to say there's different challenges to both approach when it comes to hiring people the challenge now becomes you've got to communicate what's going on in here in your head

to your to your team and in a way it's much harder there's relationship challenges you got to be able to communicate in a way that's not obnoxious always changing your mind always changing your vision you got to stick with your vision you got to do that much more so than if it was just you alone so you've got to communicate and that's really tough um so that's got its own separate challenges so that's why i'm really impressed conrad with what you've done here because i'm looking at something that was in your head and you had to communicate it with words and those words became something visual here so that's really cool i can definitely relate a lot with what you said in that if you're doing it alone you can really change your vision a lot and that's almost to a detriment because then you never get anywhere uh you can like think oh i'm gonna make my game of metroidvania but then what if i added this uh extra mechanic or whatever but if you have a artist that you're kind of beholden to uh that wouldn't entail you know having to pay extra uh money for an artist that maybe is not

only working on your game or maybe you don't have that extra money to spend on so you really have to plan advance to make sure okay everything is planned i know exactly what i'm able to do and i can't really go beyond that maybe i can change some little things here and there but the general scope of the game should stay the same because otherwise it kind of falls apart with the team yep and that's that's the big challenge that's the big challenge with teams and that's why i don't know about you but i avoided working with teams for the longest time and i was the you know the solo dev that most people you know when they joined my or they when they subscribed to my channel that's what i was doing is solo dev uh but now it's it's a team it's a team effort and suddenly the idea of a game design document uh the idea of a schedule and a budget makes way more sense at the time i was like why do you need that stuff it's all in my head but now it's like everybody's got to have clarity and i'm still learning how to do that so i'm just really impressed that you're doing that now i mean

it's crazy it's crazy to me most 22 year olds myself included did not know how to do any of that stuff um do you use game design documents or yeah anything like that i basically had to make one for uh pitching to a publisher so everybody they wanted you to do it they forced you to base yeah exactly i had to send it to them to be like so something that's i mean i'm gonna go out not a bit of a tangent but like the game originally had no rpg combat and um they thought that it would uh be better with rpg combat and i completely agree but i didn't have the money to do that originally and so the publisher really helped me in that regard with uh providing additional funding to do that and um i had to write a game design document basically proving that i understood you know how to make a good comment system how to make a good rpg that had these new elements and so ever since then i'm like this is the best thing ever you really need something like this to not go all over the place and make sure that you stay on track wow uh that's that's funny my the publishers i've worked i've worked with three um one of them didn't actually

turn into a project i had to buy the project back from them but that's another story but the three publishers i worked with didn't require any of that they were just like i think i negotiated my way into being in complete control actually creative control was part of a contract i had and maybe that's the way it is for you as well but they didn't they didn't ask me anything like that and i kind of wish they did conrad because it makes things so much easier you know to know in your head okay this is what the game design is this is the loop these are the mechanics and for me you know pinstripe my first game pinstripe took five years and then never song took like two and a half it just took way too long um yeah and so i think it's great that you're learning now how to how to do that and you'll probably have a super successful career because you're gonna know how to communicate with a team uh and and stay within the confines of your budget you know

yeah and i think uh what you said with pinstripe how it took you five years i was in the same boat with my first game took before wow and that's because i didn't have you know a game design document and it didn't make nearly as much money as pinstripe did so uh you can even just like check the reviews and the difference is astounding yeah you can usually look at reviews and know how much the game made financially but it was a great learning experience and that game took me four years and from kickstarter release to when my current gain is going to release is going to be maybe just a bit over one so um very major improvement with planning yeah that's crazy so you're thinking you can get this done in a more than a year is that what you said yes it's going to come out this year and i did the kickstarter last summer that's crazy man what what a huge uh that's an aspiration for me man like i wanna i want my next games to take that long because it's that's what's so daunting about game development is it usually ends up turning into two years plus if you're not careful you know yeah

cool well i think the planning really helps with that yeah what's that i think the planning helps extremely with that on top of everything else what about the planning specifically do you feel i think this is important to just stick on for a little bit because so many of you guys listening to this podcast right now planning is the last thing you're thinking about you're thinking about motivation staying motivated you're thinking about money you're thinking about social media marketing what do people think about the game when really guys you should be thinking about the plan the game design document so conrad what specifically about the game design document i think what what are some things about the game design document that really help you stay within that that yearly budget yes i think the game design document is actually equally important to the milestones in my opinion so how most publishers work in my experience when i was freelancing and with my current game yeah is that they set milestones you have to finish certain things by certain milestones so maybe you have like ten

and then maybe every milestone is every month or whatever and then you say you have ten chapters you have to finish chapter one on this month chapter two etc um and so that really helps uh in my opinion because then you're like okay well chapter one has to be finished in this time period for example yeah um and then if you don't finish it maybe you can get an extension here and there but you can't do that forever um and so you either have to cut the content of the game or make sure that you plan the game in such a way that you know that you're going to be able to finish it in those uh 10 milestone periods yeah and so in my opinion knowing the milestones before you um so in my opinion what you should do is have the game design document and then you look at the milestone and see okay can i fit everything in these milestones and if you can't maybe you should remove some things that are not super important to gain so maybe like a minigame or something and then not only uh do you get a really tight schedule that way that is basically you know made itself because you have the milestones you have the game design document and they complement each other yeah but on top of that maybe you get a better game because it's less bloated and so the game

becomes more focused so in my opinion those two things together work really well so if you're if you don't even if you don't have a publisher you can set your own milestones and be like okay well i want to finish this part of the game like maybe percentage-wise i want to finish 25 of the story by this point then i want to finish 25 of the mechanics by this point etc and then you go back and look at your game design document think about well is it feasible to finish all this in this time period maybe my game is too big or maybe you finish everything too fast and you're like maybe my game's not big enough which is maybe not normally the case um but uh i think that's a that's a good way of approaching and that's how i've been approaching it yeah for mine i think it's crucial honestly i've been learning this more and more and more i've made a lot of mistakes even even last year i've made a lot of mistakes um as a manager of my studio and those mistakes are ones that are repeated these mistakes you know they started with my very first game coma

they moved on to pinstripe that the mistakes keep repeating themselves and i feel like such an idiot um because some of the mistakes include things like oh i don't need a i don't need a schedule i'm just going to feel it out like this is a very emotional game i don't want to be limited by a schedule the story will be hurt if i if i put together a schedule milestones or anything like that so i'm just gonna feel it out that's one major mistake i make over and over and over again now granted it may help the game because my games are very emotional there's there's heavy stories in them so it does it does need some sort of flexibility with the schedule but ultimately what that leads to is a very expensive game guys a long a long game two years that's expensive that's ultimately what that means is it cost a lot of money two times everyone right

right so that's a huge mistake i've made other mistakes are when working with a team member i assume that they know what i'm talking about uh rather than just doing concept art for them or writing out in the game design document the mechanics or how it should feel or games that it's similar to um so these mistakes if you keep repeating them over and over and over again my what i'm doing right now is i'm just seriously conrad i'm thinking i'm listening to you thinking i'm gonna do what conrad's doing because at 22 years old you've you're clearly focused and that focus um obviously staying inspired and maintaining that motivation to finish your game is huge but i think ultimately staying focused and having a a direction you're moving and a goal on your map to get to is ultimately what makes you successful as opposed to so many other game

developers out there who are kind of i don't know the right word maybe floundering um trying a lot of different things but not really having a focus and a direction i'm curious where you got that from where did you get that that ability to focus i mean i think i'm i'm very young obviously in the grand scheme of things and i think what makes um the difference is like like the age maybe doesn't necessarily matter what matters is like your experience so i started properly making games with the intention of making this my job when i was 18. okay um i thought okay well i don't want to get a job when i finish university which i finished last year um and i thought i really need to um you know um sorry i'm blanking out here i really need to uh do whatever i can to make this my job yeah and so um i used my first game as a learning experience and it went like i could have never made it my job by then yeah and but then from there i made my second game and then it got a bit better i learned about how you should interact with publishers how you can make money

yeah uh not only from game sales but before beforehand so you can actually make your game better while you're making it yeah not just bank off of your previous successes um how to properly do social media how to do properly press outreach how to you know do all these sort of things and i think experience is really where it comes down to you're gonna make mistakes no matter what but if you really um take the time to do everything you possibly can you will learn along the way and um are you yeah i think you learned are you as okay a couple questions here um are you more focused in your career than your friends i i would definitely say so yes uh do you feel like you're very different than a lot of your friends especially like growing up and stuff i am introverted almost to a fault okay okay so that introversion led to a hyper focus yeah i wouldn't say it was hyper focused specifically in this but um it makes it really easy when there's not other things like it's like you

either play video games or you make them so you know or you go to parties at college or you hang out with i never went to a single one by the way in my in my college experience i never went to a single party i didn't either i am so you know when most people are spending time doing something like that um i was making loot box life and yeah no same here man same here yeah turned out pretty well in my opinion so and you know it's one of those things where it's like i don't i'm not sitting here recommending to my audience that they they don't have a social life i just know that i didn't crave that i just didn't crave it i mean i had a girlfriend fiance then now my wife so i have family and i have i have brothers like i have three older brothers we're really close friendships have never been something that i prioritized i'm working on that now i'm trying to make sure that i'm focused on friendships because i think it's important but especially when you're in your 20s when you're starting a game studio if you're introverted use that as a tool use that as one of your tools and get hyper focused um

so i i find that interesting also that the next thing i want to ask is i'm i'm pretty kind of 80 add about things uh i'm i'm sort of all over the place i'm very scatterbrained i've got like a thousand windows open all the time if anyone watches my live streams you guys know i'm kind of all over the place are you organized it sounds like you're an organized person is that not particularly organized but i'm you know i'm okay i would say i'm average okay yeah okay i mean i have a whole papers here uh because my country loves to give things physically instead of individually um but uh when it's normally digital i'm okay about doing it but when it's physical it's all over the place okay so that's interesting so you're digitally organized but your life is messy yeah i mean i have a bunch of controllers here because i've been testing it it's always on my desk and it's just kind of there without any organization in that regard yeah okay yeah i don't know why i'm so interested in that right now i think it's because i'm realizing one of my major weaknesses is essentially adhd something like that

i've been doing some research because i i cannot focus uh on one thing at a time and that's really caused a big problem with my studio because despite the fact that my studio is very profitable things are going great for me i'm living my dream and it when we release products and those products are great the the the process of creating those has been very difficult and painful because i'm so scatterbrained um so i'd love to stay in touch with you on discord and learn your your tactics for game design documents and and all of that i think that'd be really good for me to learn sure yeah um i mean go ahead sorry i'm really not i would say i'm not organized and i can definitely relate with you in some regards in that i feel like i'm almost more productive when i do more things than just one so i'm the kind of person that i'm the designer and the programmer for my game so uh i cannot program for too many days at

a time or otherwise my programming skills will suffer for that really i can not do too much level design uh in uh you know a short period of time or otherwise i feel like i just can't get the bush to look right or you know the placing of certain things is weird this enemy kind of jumps you randomly and it just doesn't work so but i feel like what i've done to help that is that you know i try to have blocks of this isn't all mental i don't write the sound or anything but i try to have blocks where like okay i'm gonna do like level design for three days programming for three days ui programming for three days um so i don't get like mentally bogged down by the same thing again and again yeah um but you know when you have um what's the word when you have things coming up that you really have to finish so if you don't have enough levels for your milestone coming up then the levels can be hurt by that so i still haven't found the perfect balance yeah i'm the same way i i like we were we were working on father we worked on it for six months which is my first person shooter horror game very dark very somber very

serious and i told my team member felipe i was like dude we gotta do something else really just for a little bit because i just need a change so now we're working on a hyper happy dog game um it's about a little puppy so it's like completely different such a contrast from what we're working on yeah dude i mean you've got to get some relief um and i'd recommend this to everybody don't quit your projects um but you know if you need a break it's okay otherwise you'll just go crazy especially if your game is like gonna take you a year or longer which most games do like most commercial releases are gonna do that to you it's probably gonna be a year or more um but in your case congratulations i mean this is awesome that you get to make your game this this fast i mean i also i i haven't announced this or anything but i have a side game as well yeah in that

um so i originally made jira box uh which was my second game about two years ago maybe a year and a half ago and that you know it did okay on steam and mobile and switch and stuff but then uh somebody purchased the mobile rights to it and i got a good two figures sorry two fingers sorry five figures out of it nice uh nice and so i'm using that um i hired uh the best speedrunner in my game to be the programmer for the sequel basically nice um that's great so now we're making the the sequel to that it's not gonna be exactly the sequel but it's like the same kind of philosophy of the game yeah and so i'm kind of the designer i'm not doing any programming on that on or anything but you know whenever i want i feel like i'm doing too much outbound go stuff uh i do some levels for that yeah i do some menu mock-ups stuff like that so i'm somewhere in that regard as well what would you rather spend your time or your money on your games i know that's a random question i had the money i would definitely rather spend the money okay but you know i don't have i'm still starting off uh i had the

successful kickstarter and like everything's calculated such that you know i spend exactly that yeah but i don't have anything else more to spend yeah you know for my next game i might you know maybe focus more on other things as opposed to um just doing programming design and all this maybe i just do design and the business business aspect of it so you think of yourself as a game designer first that's yes when i did freelancing i was the designer not the program when you say game design meaning the idea is the core of the game what makes it work what makes it fun systems level layouts um yeah what makes it fun is a good way of putting it yeah that's not my thing that's not my thing at all i wish it was i really do my thing is story and mood and atmosphere and art um that's that's my thing and it's so cool because you're doing exactly what i tell my audience to do which is lean into your forte give everything else to somebody else

so i got a computer science degree i don't know if i mentioned it before but i went to university for computer science uh and so my programming you know i'm a computer scientist by training so i have the programming but that is not really what i want to do with my time but i can do it and i can do game design because that's what i feel like i'm probably good at so that's how i lean into my own forte gotcha gotcha cool that third you have that third tip third secret to starting your game studio you do this really well and it's youtube devlogs and stuff like that oh great uh so i do a lot of tick tock as well uh my tic tac is by far my most popular uh social media and it's great to have so much input from people uh when you manage to get reached so wide so what i generally do on my tick tock is more like oh well here are some enemies i have in my game for example and um then people will give input of i think this enemy would work well or this attack would you know fit well with the theme of the game i would like it if this area had uh you know maybe a little ghost here or this little uh jump scare

that's kind of funny yeah and so you know most of them uh you won't add because they don't have the the project view if that makes sense like they don't have the view of the whole project they don't know what would fit in every situation but a lot of them will really actually i feel help you in adding these little sparks to your game that makes it stand out from other ones it's not just like so sanitized it has more personality yeah because other people give input without you know having to hire 100 people uh for a company so you get like you get that bumpiness in the game without having to have a huge studio i feel i like that that's that's so great i feel the same way about when i'm live streaming for sure so many great ideas will pop up and they're from my audience and uh you know sometimes i'm hesitant to take all the ideas because they're so good and i'm like yeah am i like is this legal for me to like take a great idea from social media and just put it in the game so that i you know today we're probably going to do a little bit of brainstorming with

enemy design and you know that's that's something you're totally right like if you have a weakness you know but you have an audience use that audience to fill in those gaps it's totally free you know yeah and people will really enjoy it because they get to see somebody else learn and make their own creation out of it so it's really enjoyable as an audience member as well now how does this help you start a studio though uh yeah is it financial or is it just the encouragement is it great ideas and that helps you make a better game that's more profitable i think this ties a lot to uh the crowdfunding and just general other stuff as well so um i did i made a conscious decision to make one devlog every single week for about two months before my kickstarter and that really helped in terms of how many people had eyes on it and so on top of that also it had the benefit of having people suggest things but i feel like build an audience is is almost a no-brainer in terms of being able to what's the word

it's like when your game comes out you'll have i you i forgot what you call it it's like a legion of uh i call it an army but legion's good yeah a legion i didn't quite hear you but army army there you go so you know it's like a enormous friend group that wants to see you succeed and i think that's fantastic and that friend group helps you um it supports you and you can give them value with um showing your progress and maybe some extra tips you learn around along the way i think it's just a fantastic way of um having a mutually beneficial relationship uh with people you don't necessarily know uh firsthand yeah i'd argue it's the primary way to build a long-term sustainable indie studio not necessarily aaa or like because there's a lot of ways to make money um the ways that i've found the the more my studio grows the the funding sources become more and smaller and smaller in terms of the amount of people but bigger and bigger in terms of the number so for example

working with big platforms like apple arcade or let's say epic games you're working with like two three people at the top you know communicating with them but they're providing a ton of funding what that means is your your freedom is limited to what that it's not necessarily like they are going to tell you everything you're supposed to do but you want to make them happy whereas with an audience like a social media audience like you have or that i have uh the funding might be smaller you know like 30 000 on kickstarter funded by like 500 people um but having it more less um centralized sort of a decentralized funding source um people are much more willing to say you know it's your game i just wanted to support you so you do whatever you want um generally speaking as long as you give them a product i think they're going to be okay so it's really up to you guys those of you listening how you want to get

funding do you want do you like having a boss if that's the case you might love working with publishers and platforms if you don't like having a boss having a community that supports you and funds you with patreon kickstarter gofundme or just steam sales uh that's an option as well just keep in mind that when you have a big audience uh it can be stressful despite the fact you know that they're not going to tell you what to do but it's always in the back of your mind yeah what's that i said you're beholden to the algorithm of the masses almost you are you are and there are days i don't know if you feel this way but there are days when i'm like i'm so done with doing youtube content i'm so done with instagram tick tock i'm sick of it i'm sick because you'll read like for me i'll read like one nasty comment and i'm like i can't do this um but other days i'm like man everyone's so encouraging but you'll read that one nasty comment that one mean comment

and it might ruin your whole day you know yeah take talk is specifically difficult in this regard because your followers almost don't matter so you have to make a good video every single time and have the best one so it's really tough in that regard so you're always looking at the metrics like oh man why didn't this video do as well as the last one like did people click off at this specific moment is it something that i said in this moment that didn't make it work as opposed to the other times but yeah it's still fine it's still a fun experience when it works social media is so bizarre i i don't i'm not a huge fan despite the fact that i tell everybody to do it because it's good it's good for your studio but it's exhausting and it's sad i mean it's i mean it's a sad place to spend all your time uh because base i mean for me it's it's less about okay you should be building a very strong community that's relationship oriented where you're communicating with your audience but what the algorithms do is they kind of ensure that you spend most of your time trying to impress people so it's like a relationship if you were

dating or something where every conversation and everything you did was about flexing and impressing your girlfriend whereas a good relationship a healthy one is communicative uh it's it's uh mutually beneficial you're having conversations and so you have to always bring yourself back when you're doing social media when you're doing devlogs when you're doing tic tock you always need to make sure you bring yourself back to a place of community otherwise it's it suddenly turns into this i'm gonna impress you with content and that means it's not as pure there's not a you know you're not being yourself do you ever feel that way i completely agree yeah and i i very consciously um i mean the meta on youtube is almost to be the funny guy uh for your devlogs yeah and i am not the funny guy me neither i cannot be funny scripted it just doesn't work and so i made a conscious decision to not even try in that regard and i'm more of the you know informative uh devlog and people who enjoy that sort of stuff enjoy it and they get to see my game and how it

evolves and so i feel like you know if you're not the funny guy don't try to be the funny guy but if you are you know you're going to be very successful so yeah oh yeah you'll be very successful being the funny game developer aka danny yeah means you will be the most successful and that's great you know that's awesome it's it's uh it's something i've tried and it's like no i don't think that's me um growing up i used to be the guy that i would make a joke and people would go what and then i wouldn't make a joke and then people would laugh and i'm like clearly i don't know what's going on here so i'm gonna stop making jokes so those are great tips dude those three tips by the way uh you know let's get let's let's do a recap here for the for the audience first one is if you can do a kickstarter campaign don't be scared to do it even if it's just 200 bucks or 30 000 bucks right yeah exactly the second one is um what was the second one it was don't be afraid to look for other revenue sources to supplement your main ambitions cool what are those revenue

courses so you can do freelancing uh you can do maybe youtube you know you build a youtube around gamedev and you can make ad revenue from that uh you can sell stuff on h.i.o unity asset store on real marketplace stuff like that anything you can really find relate to that cool third one is social media devlogs uh mutually beneficial um i guess social media exchanges if that's what you call it yeah yep building wish list building wish email lists building an army so getting support financially but also getting support from like ideas and just encouraging your game and i encouraging encouraging great game ideas and i can attest all of these things that without these things i wouldn't be doing this full time and everybody has their own engine that they're running that supports their full-time studio for me my engine is always changing the the fuel behind the studio which

provides it income has always changed sometimes it's crowdfunding sometimes it's game sales sometimes it's publishers sometimes it's platforms uh sometimes it's tools sometimes it's ad revenue uh sometimes it's sponsorships like there's so many ways to make money as a as a potential yeah it doesn't even matter if you're a game developer there's there's so many ways to make money as a digital entrepreneur that if you're is slightly focused if you're generally talented or like have one maybe what small talent and you understand like how to do digital content you can become a full-time entrepreneur um as long as you're humble i'm going to like what's that i said you don't yeah you can be a generally digital entrepreneur and then you can you know use all that for your game ambitions and that's going to be really fun because you do more than one things and they can um influence each other in very positive ways yeah that's totally right and it sounds like you're

the kind of guy who likes to um keep your keep your plates spinning i've got like six or seven my what do i irons in the fire is another metaphor i've always got something cooking because i like to have backup plans yeah so for me like or in what you're doing here as well it's like you're making a great game here you've got a publisher you're hoping it's going to sell well but in the back of your mind you're like i've got another game that's going to if if that one fails then this one won't you know very different games so they both cover each other's weaknesses yeah i think that's a great a great uh approach and i was actually talking to a buddy of mine who who runs a publishing studio and he was like most video game studios have multiple games in their pockets and if one doesn't work or one's not you know marketable then they have something that's completely different that they can use to market the game so that's sort of a maybe a a fourth tip to going full time which is have a bunch of different irons in the fire

and and see which one really sells the best yeah all right so really quick guys um be sure to check out the link below uh to check out conrad's studio conrad socials and his games um conrad i want to before i want to thank you and conclude this podcast i wanted to get your number one secret to landing a deal with a publisher what is that one thing that you feel you have to do right if you're gonna land a deal with a publisher by the way guys landing a deal with a publisher means making money getting in advance uh getting a marketing budget and then you give them a rep share so that's what i mean by landing a deal so what's that number one tip number one secret that you could think of so i feel like i didn't know this when i first started and it made such a big difference it almost went from me not being able to get close to getting a publisher to and it's not even just for the fact that you get a publisher but just the game

itself marketability wise this is a huge thing for me and it's that you really need to make sure that your game makes a good was the word your game has a good response to a specific niche so in my case that would be paper mario fans and jrpg fans yup and so there are really not that many people mario games out there and so whenever people look up uh you know what's a good paper mario alternative because nintendo doesn't really make them as they used to yeah mine comes up first one and then the publisher sees that they see wow you know there's not really anything out there that can take market share from this and so this would uh make it more attractive in that sense yup and so for my other game jirabox that one did uh very well in terms of how it was acquired by a mobile publisher and it was because so when i say was acquired by a mobile publisher they acquired the rights to the mobile game after i got into a publisher so it was a really interesting situation nice and uh basically a lawyer for that yeah um and so what happened basically is

that i think they saw how the speedrunning community for that game was really interesting and they wanted to you know get in on that and so that's what i'm going to be focusing on with the next iteration of this game and it's making it super speed running focus and it's going to be the ultimate speed earning game with all these sort of features that these kind of people would want right on top of myself if you don't know these niches you probably shouldn't be getting into them because you're not going to make the best kind of game oh man dude that is so true i've been finding that out myself if you're if you're gonna just because you like a genre doesn't mean you should work within it within its confines because you need to understand it like you really need to understand it so ultimately i think it comes down to um like for me what i'm learning is if you're gonna pitch a game to a publisher make sure you know that genre that niche and work within the confines of it uh so a question to you is should should my audience

really know their genre before they pitch it to a publisher should they know exactly what their genre is and limit themselves to that genre i think you almost should in a way like in my case i really love deep jrpg combat bravely default octopath traveler i absolutely love that and i feel like the paper mario audience would really enjoy that if they got exposed to it so i kind of mix those two the aesthetic of mario with general uh you know turn-based combat and i combine these two in such a way that um you know they complement each other and i really understand these two aspects well and i feel like um that's going to really show the publisher that you understand what you're talking about and that you understand what makes the game tick not mixing up with niche yeah i think it shows them that you understand what the niche wants and you know how to make something that is not like oh well paper mario fans expect there to be combat and there's no combat uh you know so i think that could maybe shoot yourself in the fit in a way that's so interesting so this is a question that

i've been thinking about a lot why make a game that's similar to another game if you're not going to do it as well you know like yeah i this is no offense to you but i can imagine you're not going to make as good a game as paper mario right i mean you're you're one guy with some contract workers part-time contract workers versus nintendo right and paper mario automatically has that massive built-in audio you've got the nostalgia factor as well you can't compete with it so what is it what's the strategy here and i'm thinking about this for myself what's the strategy here i say i'm gonna mirror a game or do you say i'm going to get inspiration but i'm going to make sure in my marketing material that i'm not saying i'm making paper mario it's rather it's like a twist of paper mario so my game's combat is very obviously not paper mario and so if if you play paper more you know it's not paper mario and

it's almost more pokemon or traditional final fantasy i'm seeing some undertale stuff undertale yeah so i wonder's tail stuff as well so it's it's not paper mario but it's very clearly inspired by it and it's almost like giving paper mario fans a different perspective on this genre that they've been interacting with for their whole lives but they haven't seen that other facet of it so they haven't seen the final fantasy aspect of the paper mario rpg or the general generic rpg combat so it's getting it's the world traversal and the art of paper mario and then it has that paper mario combat but it's twisted in a way that makes it different enough for the paper mario fans to not compare it directly to paper mario it's not paper mario it's something different but it's very fresh for the people that haven't experienced it before that's a great that's a great piece of advice dude like i think that that is so helpful that's helpful to me as well it's it's it's good in this particular season of my career because we are in the process of working through various projects and trying to figure out which ones are marketable

which ones are ones that we should pitch to a studio and one of the problems i've come into and maybe guys if you if you feel this way leave a comment below about your experience but it's really hard to find to get so inspired by a project or game that you loved that you had in your childhood and you say i'm going to make a game like that and then you find yourself remaking the game and but it's not going to be as good so you've got to you've got to be very strategic this comes back to our first point about the game design document it's really important in the document to say this is inspired by paper mario and then maybe have a chart of here's what it isn't about paper mario here's what it is and be very specific about it because you need to make sure your audience knows this as they're wishlisting your game because you don't want to pitch it as a paper mario game to your audience and then you give them something different

because you couldn't afford it i mean i could never afford to make people mario but that's why i'm not making it yeah yeah yeah and you're really intentional with that correct like you know in in the game design document it's very clear that this is not paper mario for sure yeah cool exactly dude that's great guys again be sure to check out the links below conrad this was really really fun i had a great conversation with you anything else you wanted to leave the audience with i think that's yeah that's about it um subscribe to thomas that's about it yeah all right buddy this was really really fun um i'll talk to you after i hit the done recording because i want to chat a little bit more yeah no worries all right all right guys i'll talk to you later cheers hey by the way i'm going to run an outro here uh so it's going to be awkward and quiet but guys here's an outro for you get over here [Music] hey thanks for watching by the way if

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