Here's how I stayed motivated for 5 YEARS while making a stupid game...

do not become the person and I was always at risk of this do not become the person who gets so distracted and and looks for opportunities every second and doesn't actually see all of the opportunities that are already in front of them that they've already invested time hello everybody my name is Thomas brush and the creator of a game called pinstripe I'm also working on a game called once upon a coma and I've been making games for about ten years and in May I'll have released two commercial projects pretty much every platform and that includes Nintendo switch Xbox ps4 you name it sometimes I get emails from questions or from subscribers subs APLA so subscribers such as yourself and it's really hard for me to answer these

emails so I figured I'd just answer a couple that really stood out and there was one in my inbox that really it made me think and it made me question a lot of how I approach things in the game industry so this is from ice arrow and I know I said your name wrong so I apologize but I think ice arrow sounds cool so I Ciro thank you for your email you said hello Thomas hope you're having a great day and I need advice about the following I'm currently working with multiple friends in order to make a game it's been in the works for a year already that's a long time when it first started we were all working a lot to make this game awesome some people dropped out of the project during that year some people stayed in didn't do anything currently there's four people working on the project me the programmer the artist the story guy and the musician we're all having fun and we're memeing our game and doing funny stuff but some of them have been working less and less we get to the

point where we didn't have any new content for four months how should I keep them active anyway I can guarantee you their activity what should I do if the artist or the musician drops out I'm not good when it comes to those kinds of things I'm posting updates on discord related to progress I'm also is also interested in marketing the game blah blah blah let's see here okay and thank you thank you for everything inspiration okay so to answer your question about motivating your team this is a very this has got to be probably one of the hardest things to do in business in general motivating your employees now what doesn't what does a team member usually get that keeps them motivated money and that's just the unfortunate truth about game development is when people are working for free and I'm assuming they're working for free I CRO and you correct me if I'm wrong in the comments yeah but when people work for free there's no

incentive to keep going and most any developers unless you're like a superhero get burnt out by the project they're working on especially after a year so if there's no financial incentive it's hard for even me and I'm super passionate about making games it's hard for even me to stick with it and make games so what I would do is let's say you don't have the ability to pay anybody first you need to establish who is in charge of the project if there's no leader if there's no creator if there's no CEO or project leader or director you're gonna have a really hard time incentivizing one another you really need one person to say hey I'm the captive the ship captain of the ship and here is what is on the horizon here's what we're trying to achieve and so what I would do if I were you as I would say what we're trying to achieve is half a million dollars in sales and here are the revenue shares for each member of the team and sign this

contract based on what you would like okay so I would have people sign away what they want for the game otherwise it's really hard to incentivize anything so what this means is there's no real out-of-pocket cost other than time but you're saying to the musician you're saying if you give me six songs I'll give you 30% which that's really high maybe six songs you get 10% of the revenue net net revenue not gross net and you say to your programmer you get 40% look I assume he's spending a long time a lot of time in the game so you're splitting up the revenue and incentivizing the finit the completion of this project somebody needs to be in charge of this project you cannot make a game if you don't have a head someone to say this is what we can achieve so there's financial gain but there's also somebody somebody needs to be in charge and again probably the the project leader or the the art director

somebody needs to be coming up with things that get the team excited and that person needs to visualize what the future means for this game so not only is it financial it's also hey guys what do you think about going to GDC what do you think about showcasing our game at South by Southwest or PACs somebody needs to sort of light a fire under everybody's ass and get them excited about the project so that's really my advice here financial incentive but also I mean honestly glory what are some things that can make your team excited and enjoy being in the spotlight so I Sara it sounds like you're the guy you you should be taking that leadership and taking charge and incentivizing people most human beings don't know how to dream and so that is ultimately one of the primary jobs of a CEO or a company a company's owner it's it's

simply to dream up and visualize what the whole company is even about all right I have another amazing question and it's so simple and I highlighted it in my inbox because I was like I need to answer this because I love answering questions like this this is from Luke Brad Derek mr. Bret Derek I love your name I know I butchered it but you said how do you stay motivated to work on a single project I find myself wanting to start something new whenever my current project feels boring there are two huge things that keep me motivated in making projects the first is honestly boundaries so let me explain when you limit yourself and you sort of box yourself in creatively it sort of forces you to finish something try let

me try these like I'm trying to follow what I'm saying what am I saying hold on so I have bills to pay I have a mortgage I have a family I have a life I have a daughter to take care of I have a wife there is plenty of responsibility on my shoulders what that responsibility does is it boxes me in as a as a leader it says hey Thomas these are your parameters you're not free to just do whatever you want you need to do something to get the bills paid and what that means is I have to finish my next project and when I invest three or four months of my time in a project I can't quit now because that's three or four months of salary that I've spent that I've paid myself and paid the bills for my studio and my my home and my family I have to finish the project now so I would say that you should start self-imposing parameters on yourself self-imposed deadlines and one of the

ways the best ways to do that if you don't have a family that you're taking care of is tell family members and friends that you're gonna finish your game by X say like by q3 of 2020 I will finish my game and tell everybody you know everybody you hang out with post it as loud as you possibly can on social media so that you have the risk of being embarrassed of not actually finishing that now some people will say I've read articles line we're shouting your goals as loud as you can as a bad idea for blah XYZ reasons I don't know what the reasons are but I know that it's worked for me self-imposed deadlines putting pressure on ourselves to actually finish a project so that's the first reason our first way that you could say motivated is just telling as many people as you can or just start a family if you love somebody and you're afraid to get married right now because of finances go

for it get married you'll be fine because it's it's great to have those limitations it's because it forces you to actually get stuff done and I think most Americans and Westerners specifically have a have trouble getting things done having that discipline now the second way that I stay motivated is mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger he is very good at just I maybe I'll post some links or some to YouTube videos or whatever but he he loves talking about visualization and you guys have heard me talk about this a thousand times but a lot of times we when we're making a game we don't actually know why we're making a game we just had an exciting idea but we didn't think hey why am i doing this what's what's the point what does it look like a year down the road for me I was always sort of borderline obsessive about visualization so I tend to think about like to the nitty-gritty detail what a video games whole purpose in my life is why am I making this game how

much money do I want it to make whether it's half a million dollars or a million dollars what kind of notoriety do I want it to bring what kind of conversations do I want to have with my friends when I release the game what do I want it to feel like when I play that game on my own like say Nintendo switch how do I want to feel don't want to feel excited do I want to have a party with all my friends when I release that Nintendo switch game and then I also think about what it means maybe when getting press coverage what is Time magazine gonna cover my games which that's happened before a Rolling Stone Glick soul which that's those are the same variety or PC gamer what are what are some press outlets and and is it possible for me to wholesomely obsess about that press coverage it's dangerous to obsess as much about like its what am I trying to say it can be dangerous to obsess too much about press coverage and getting notoriety but I

think overall there is a way to to think about the future and obsess about what kind of achievement you want to get from your game without it taking over your life there's a nice balance so I just say sit down and close your eyes and spend two hours just thinking about what you want your game to be and what you want to get out of your game because I promise you if you visualize visualize right you're almost gonna physically manifest in its own little world in your head physically manifest all of the things you can gain from your game in the thought of quitting your game suddenly becomes so much more heavy because you're gonna lose all of that stuff that you manifested now obviously you can't get everything you want so visualization is a dangerous game honestly it sounds kind of weird and hyper spiritual but it's not it's just it's learning to obsess healthfully instead a word healthfully about what

you want to achieve and at most again most Westerners who I think Westerners specifically because that's my culture but most west Westerners have a hard time visualizing what they want to achieve so I would say practice both of those things creating dependence and limitations for yourself so that you actually have to finish the thing and then learning how to visualize alright Luke that was a great question I've got time today for one more question here and this is from oh this one's a good one I really enjoy this one it's actually very heartfelt this is from Johannes is that how you say your name Johannes Nielson I think that's a really beautiful name and again I know I butchered it but I think the way I said it was beautiful Johannes Nilson says my name is Johannes and I'm 21 years old I currently live with my parents and I don't have a job but I am searching for one I trained two

times a day cool five days a week awesome that's a lot that's more than I do and I'm having I'm trying to have a breakthrough in my sports in my sport which is hammer throwing okay we officially know we officially know do not mess with Johannes hammer throwing that's awesome in school I did alright until the last three years where it became so in uninterested that I barely could concentrate I started procrastinating to the point of not doing assignments so my grades became quite bad I prefer learning stuff from YouTube videos other Internet sources and also books same here I think I like being in control over what I'm learning because I know why I'm learning it and where it's applicable I agree that's sometimes a good trait sometimes that's not a good trick I feel lost in life if I should bring up my grades or go to a university or what should I study there I'm interested in a lot of stuff and what if I become uninterested and fail right now I think I'm going to work until I really know what I want to do I

might start some sort of business someday do have any good ideas on choosing path choosing my path he seems to have a lot of company ideas every week writing a book training developing a game starting clothing brands etc etc okay Johannes there are two ways to answer your question and they are dependent on what kind of person you are you Hannes if you finish things if you have a track record of finishing things and I think what that means is three or more projects that you have finished to completion and you did a good job if that is your personality then I say don't go to school then I say you know you should probably worry about your grades but don't get too stressed it sounds like you are a motivated person on your own and I would just say it's okay to have a ton of ideas three i3 company ideas a week so do I be it's

okay to feel that way because you know at least you're following through on something and it doesn't distract you now if you're the second type of person and I'm going to make the assumption that there's a chance that you you you're 21 years old so you're still pretty young and I mean I'm 28 so I'm not that much older but I will say that when I was 21 I did have a habit of throwing things at walls to see if they stick and they don't and then I just wasted my time or throwing hammers right throwing hammers at walls and seeing if they stick it sounds like you're somebody who might need to learn to focus a little bit more and if that is the case then I would say hell yeah you need to focus on your grades because if you don't know if you can't figure that out then I doubt that you'll be able to figure out entrepreneurship because when you're an entrepreneur you really have to learn to focus on things you don't want to focus on do you know that 60

percent of my day is spent doing things that I don't want to do what as whether it's checking emails or going through spreadsheets or schedules or reaching out to sponsors or setting up a marketing plan or setting up a press list or doing some code cleaning glitches in my games like those are things I don't really want to do but I I had the discipline when I was in high school in college to finish what I started to study to know that even though I hated hated taking tests and exams I knew that if I didn't take those exams and keep a certain GPA I wouldn't be able to pay for my school because I'd lose certain scholarships so there is a discipline that I've established at when I was 21 22 23 that has served me now as an entrepreneur so if my assumption is wrong yo.hannes that you do struggle with spending too much time throwing stuff instead of sticking with something and I could be wrong I know I could be

wrong but if that is the case dude I would recommend learning just spend time finishing stuff even if it sucks and that means finishing school getting good grades getting great at hammer throwing and focusing do not become the person do not become the person and I was always at risk of this do not become the person who gets so distracted and looks for opportunities every second and doesn't actually see all of the opportunities that are already in front of him that they've already invested time in so for me I spent five years on pinstripe the reason I spent five years on pinstripe which was my first game was because I had established discipline and that was thankfully because of my parents they really instilled in me a lot of discipline that discipline was established through high school whether it was making getting good grades or you

know working part-time jobs and learning how to do a good job at those jobs saving up my money to be able to pay for my my rent or pay for a new car these are all things that my parents sort of forced me to do but I'm so glad they did because it forced me to learn how to make a game over the course of five years or in the case of my next game it's been two and a half years of just focusing on one game and I'm done with that game I don't want to work on that game anymore but I know that I need to stick with it so congratulations on being someone who's an entrepreneur and has a ton of ideas that is super profitable but it's only profitable if you know how to take those ideas from a seed to a huge oak tree and that takes time and that takes diligence discipline is your number one asset and if you don't have it good luck all right guys this was really fun if you enjoyed this

video if you thought it was helpful for me to just run through my emails and answer questions please let me know in the comments and if you guys really want to support me it would really mean a lot if you headed on over headed on over heated down over what who says that there's this he did I think that's the office or something head on over to patreon and support that would really mean a lot to me thanks guys I'll talk to you later bye