His Indie Game FLOPPED... Then It Made $100k!

hey guys how's it going my name is thomas brush and i make indie games and so does joseph joseph makes indie games full-time he has a really surprising story because he didn't even expect to be able to do this full-time and i love joseph because we were talking before this podcast and joseph was saying how he's nervous and he's introverted and this isn't really his style this isn't really his thing but it's so funny because the results kind of tell a different story and you guys will hear at the end of this podcast how joseph deep down it seems like is a much more motivated kind of extroverted in a lot of different ways maybe extroverted in pushing his content on youtube pushing his games on steam so i'll stop i'll kind of shut up here just leave it to you joseph joseph how you doing tell us a little bit about your studio i'm doing great yeah um i am pretty nervous a big fan of the show so this is

cool to be here um i've been making games full-time for a little over two years now and i'm the owner and sole developer of roll um and i'm excited to chat with you today cool yeah roll looks awesome and it's funny guys the the story with roll is is one of those where the game flopped right in your opinion it flopped um but all of a sudden it made 100 grand and we're going to talk about those uh that well we're going to talk about the launch day and how you felt and and the development cycle and how that felt but i also want to talk about those two surprising income sources that resulted in 100 grand and how my audience can replicate it with their games as well and then finally guys be sure to stick around because joseph is going to tell us what it felt what it feels like currently to be full time um to be working on games all alone you know being his own boss and having

money in the bank all right joseph i'm going to run an intro really quick and then we're going to talk all about your studio and your game i'll see on the other side [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 so download that use it however you want it's my treat to you yeah okay all right joseph really quick i want to talk about i'm just so curious i want to jump right into it i want to hear about launch day and how you said it flopped right so tell me a little bit about that kind of what your expectations were and what happened yeah so i guess it's more of a flop in like the conventional

sense like if anyone was launching a game that they hoped to you know have a full-time income off of it would definitely be considered a flop but to me i just i i went into it with really low expectations so on launch day i sold about 50 copies and it was three bucks per unit so i made about 150 on launch day yep and i was pretty ecstatic with that actually um like i was kind of feeling like maybe i'm not even gonna get my 100 deposit back from steam and so 150 to me was like really great and so that kind of kept my spirits up even though like in the back of my head i i kind of knew like okay this isn't gonna cut it for like full-time work but um the scope of the project was so small

initially i kind of um i just the fact that i sold anything was motivating me to you know continue supporting the game yeah is that kind of the way your brain works for a lot of things in your life you sort of just have low expectations yeah i try to stay uh realistic but i'm probably um more pessimistic in general so my what i think is realistic is usually like selling myself short well it's interesting because i'm looking at we could talk about roll a little bit because i think people are probably curious it's it's playing right now we've got a streamer playing it uh over on my other screen here and it's so simple and clean it's beaut i mean it's beautiful in a lot of ways and i'm curious if that sort of plays into your personality i mean is roll like kind of the game that you wanted to make or did you did you really distill it down and make it really small on purpose

so yeah the the minimalism is by design for sure because it's funny actually it started as a game jam game and i kind of flopped there too i i know i joined a game jam competition and the theme was less is more so the whole time i was just trying to like play everything down and then i never ended i didn't finish the game in time for the jam so i kind of had like half of a start to a game and at that point that was one of the moments where i just thought okay i'll just give up and like go back to what i was doing before i was like well like i already got this far i'll just like finish this like really small project just like put it on steam and see what happens yeah and so but that less is more theme from the game jam like just came all the way through like even today like the game has grown a lot

but i still try to keep things minimalist okay so really quick can you give us like a two second just what what the game's about so that we kind of have an understanding of what we're looking at here so it's a incremental deck builder with dice whereas instead of building like a def deck of cards you're kind of like drafting dive faces yeah and adding dice um and so you're kind of growing your ability to accumulate points okay yeah it's so cool because it looks like one of those games that streamers love to play and that's really what i want to talk about with these two surprising sources of income um specifically from steam like how the how steam all of a sudden started pushing your game um and i know you mentioned when we before we started the podcast you know you launched the game nothing happened you made 150 bucks which by the way for those of you

listening that is probably what you would call a flop i think that's fair to say um you should bring in something like 10 grand at least for your first month if it's gonna be a successful game generally speaking and and you also mentioned joseph before we started the podcast that you didn't have any real wish lists you didn't really do i guess a marketing plan to get wish lists right no yeah because i i was really just trying to finish the game in such a short deadline and again it wasn't really meant to be you know as big as it is today yeah um so i was like just gonna put it out there and just see if if people liked it so there was no marketing plan going into it i had a youtube channel i think at that time maybe like a hundred subscribers okay i made a video i was like hey i just made a game and i like told my friends and family that was pretty much it it's so funny to me um

because like so much of what i talk about on this channel it's all about all the things that you can do to create that inertia and get a game to make a hundred grand there's like so many things you can do to market your game and to essentially kind of force it to work because a lot of games are great and they just don't they don't have success like roll um they're they're great games but they just didn't have a marketing plan but i love talking to you because you're kind of like the opposite um you you prove that you don't always have to do everything well that i say and that i do for my games that it just kind of works so my question is how did that happen how did all of a sudden it just picked up a bunch of players what happened so an important thing like i'm a big

youtube viewer i love watching youtube videos especially your videos other game developers but i like watching like streamers i think you have aliens rock on the screen right now i just like watching other people play indie games it's inspiring me or inspiring for me to be able to see like all these other games without having to like buy and play everyone yeah um so i watch a lot of youtube content and so i'm kind of ingrained myself in some of these communities and i know kind of what types of games certain streamers like to play um and so i i was able to reach out to just a couple of the people that i regularly watch and as a fan just be like hey like i'm a big fan of your channel but like i and i this is my first ever game if you want to play it that'd be cool like you don't have to make a video on it or

anything just like knowing that you saw it and maybe like give me some constructive feedback so i can get better did you email them future yeah so i so i emailed a handful of streamers um people that that i knew and i was able to include certain like personal details about my relationship with their content so that it and and one thing i did which i think helped me stand out is i didn't use a template email i wrote i hand wrote an individual email to every streamer that i approached and so i think that helped me stand out i mean i'm sure they get thousands of emails over the course of a month and so you know seeing something that's not a template hi streamer this is my games yeah um i would call it let me stand out and then go ahead sorry go ahead

well i was just gonna say i would call it um it's it's essentially click bait but for email um and it's it's not you don't you never lie you never lie but when i reach out to bigger youtubers what i do is i make sure i tell i tell that personal story like if you don't have any credibility or credentials and maybe you do maybe you want some awards or something i'm not sure but for me when i was just starting out i had to just say my dream is making games and i love your channel um i can't or so even be honest and say like like the subject line is i can't get anyone to play my game but you'll love it like being super honest and kind of kind of tickling their emotions a little bit getting them to to think about maybe helping you out that stuff works and and i i encourage you guys if you want to reach out to me let me know like how you're how you're feeling and that that's probably going to be more

likely to get a response from me so i think that's that's a great tactic i mean it's not really a tactic i think you were just being honest right yeah i just felt like i i had came up with this principle that like if i'm gonna expect someone else especially these busy people to take the time out of their day to read my email like the least i could do is to write it myself and not just copy paste to as many people as possible well how many did you reach out to first off i want to ask how did you get their email address i think a lot of people are curious how that's possible and the second thing is is um how many did you reach out to um a lot of youtube channel you can go to their like home page and like there's an about where they'll usually have like a business email or um if they have a twitter just try to find them on all social media you could dm them there yep or they usually have a

business email somewhere and then you find that and you can just yep and that's that's my experience as well it's funny because i did the same thing for jacksepticeye and like you would think you would think he would have like somebody like a assistant sorting through all that stuff and maybe he does but i just he has his personal email address on the about page i was like surely this can't be his email address and then i emailed him and he responded uh i think it was like in a day crazy it's great yeah it's just really really weird um so i'm super grateful to youtubers because what they do is they eventually create traction for your game so is that what happened for you yeah so i got a little bit of traction off the start um again the game was i i developed it in three months total before i launched it on steam and that three months included like setting up the steam page and going through all this stuff which i've never done before i've never finished a game this is my

first ever game so it was a really slow process right um so it was kind of this tiny little game but luckily um it's kind of like a it's highly replayable um so even though there's not a ton of content um there's still a lot to do in the game right so are streamers still picking it up and playing it um they haven't so the last series of videos um i think was aliens rock although there is one small youtuber shout out to gothic lord uk he's made like 120 episodes yeah which is crazy that's crazy for this game on the game yeah wow so you know um they they put did you have to ask them to put the games the game in the description of the video to get them to to go to the steam page to buy the game

no i just i mean the i think all the creators pretty much at this point they have it down to its science so when they're covering a game they just you know they had all that covered right i really wasn't expecting any of them to like make a video on my game or anything i was just like looking for feedback or just like to know that they had played it would be really cool for me yeah well i'm curious how much you made if you don't mind like do you know like generally how much you made in that first month when well i guess once someone started streaming the game how much did it eventually pick like how much did it make within like a month's time so yeah when the first this first group of youtubers picked up the game i think i got up to about twelve thousand dollars like in that first month yep of streamers and i think

i mean that that's a long way off from the the hundred thousand today but because the game was so small and it was really buggy at that time and there was just a lot of mistakes that i made early on that over time as i continued to update the game and fix all those mistakes then once more streamers came in and they had a more polished product to show off that's when the sales really took off yeah you know it's so funny because it sounds like you were you had so many doubts about your own abilities and what you created and it was just a shock to you that even with bugs people still wanted to buy and play the game right and yeah it's funny because a lot of people who are just starting out in making indie games like yourself perhaps you think well eventually that insecurity will go away eventually i won't feel this way but i gotta say like this week this week

in particular for me was really special because i have a couple games um that my studio is working on and one of them i just had so many doubts about and we basically shelved it and said no we're not gonna we're not gonna pursue this anymore um and we've got like actually we've done like four different game prototypes well i sent one of the prototypes to i just i said you know what i'm gonna send it to a bunch of publishers and just see what happens and i have gotten an incredible response back from so many publishers who are like we played it and we love it and so i'm on my third commercial release this is my fifth game but like my third commercial release and i still feel that way and so i guess i just want you and the audience to know that you kind of have to power through that feeling like your game sucks because most people aren't looking at your game like you're looking at your game you see all the flaws and the crap and

the bugs you know about every single one and so you assume i mean correct me if i'm wrong here but you assume that everybody's gonna encounter all of the bugs that you know about and the truth is it's like you know they're maybe they'll encounter one bug and then someone else will encounter another bug right but ultimately the game is up to the standards of most other indie games and so people give it a pass and it's not even that expensive how much did you say it was three bucks it launched at three dollars um but i've increased the price since then just because of the amount of development i've done yeah yeah but you know what i mean like that that insecurity you kind of had to just you know power through it right yeah there was um i was trying to like keep when the streamers would play my game and i'd like see a bug or something that i they encountered or you know just

notice like i wanted to rapidly improve the game so i'm pushing all these updates all the time right when the game like was first starting to get picked up and i wasn't doing a lot of uh quality assurance um and like this one really bad bug was was in the game for maybe like one day and one of the streamers like made a video on the game that day and like he showed off this like what i thought was this horrible bug to everyone and i'm like oh no that's like the end like nobody's ever going to want to play it again yeah and they were just like kind of brushed it off like oh that's weird like um and like the everyone in the comments was just like oh it's fixed now yeah like the next day so that's something in my mind i was having like a panic i know yeah well and it was just like no big deal like nobody really reacted to it except for me right

that's so it's such a funny thing because it's i guess i've talked about it before but it's called the spotlight effect and it's just where you think everybody's looking at you or looking at what you've made the way that you are you think that everybody's staring at you and all of the flaws and they're not it's so funny because i um the game grumps you know they've got millions of subscribers they uploaded a playthrough of i think it was never song or maybe it was just the demo at the time i think it was called once upon a coma and for some reason when they played the game the game was super dark like you could barely see anything it was like or it looked foggy maybe it was like super foggy it looked like they were playing it on a broken tv or something and something was wrong something was wrong with the build i don't know what it was but they played they did like um at least an episode that got like a

million views or maybe it was like 500 000 views or something i can't remember so y'all can correct me if i'm wrong in the comments but my point is is that nobody really mentioned it nobody even cared they just assumed that's what it's supposed to look like and so all in all i think all of us need to remember that our games are much better well for most of us sometimes sometimes people make bad games but but some most of us are probably way more critical of our games than people actually are you know yeah definitely i mean i feel i feel like i'm feeling that even now as i'm stumbling over my words oh no everybody's on thomas's channel is gonna laugh at me no they're not but you know what's funny is when once we hit record i was like you just all of a sudden you were like you became very professional and you became like very fluid with how you talk so you're doing

great dude you're doing a really good job y'all let us know in the comments what you think about joseph no i'm kidding no you're doing great please no you're doing great so here's the thing once people pick up str once people pick up your game and start streaming it all of a sudden something else happened right what was that on steam yeah so as soon as i got a few sales to start rolling in then um there was like this one small little panel not on the main page of steam but like when you're just browsing games there's like a small panel and said like new and trending games under five dollars and then i had like my capsule image right there and that actually helped drive sales through uh steam's algorithm um so that was just like another way that i was able to get more income from steam yeah do you know how much you made from that

um it's hard to say um but it was all part of that that initial twelve thousand dollars that i kind of got in the first couple of months before the game really started uh to take off later on yeah um i'm curious because you know you're now you you just broke a hundred thousand dollars and i watched your video by the way guys joseph has a youtube channel click the link below follow joseph on youtube his content is stuff i aspire to do on my channel because it's very precise and the editing is really good and you talked about how you finally hit that hundred thousand number and so i guess my question is you know you've got these two things you've got streamers and then you've got steam just sort of sometimes picking up your gaming and recommending it is that all it took to just slowly bring in a hundred thousand dollars over time i think a lot of it if i had uh you know launched and then you know

reached out to some streamers and maybe they played it and i was like oh that you know whatever whatever sales i do is is fine then i don't think i would have ever crossed a hundred thousand dollars from the moment i launched i've basically been updating the game and like i said before this the project was meant to be three months and then done yeah and i've been developing it since i launched which was just over a year ago so i've been continually updating always making the game better like every day i come in i sit down at my desk and like just make the game better than it was yesterday nice and so the product that is out there now is so much different and so much better than the product when i launched yeah and i think that's really what um let the sales keep coming in and is why the game did so well yeah you

know you're in a lot of ways you're the opposite of me i would say not personality wise but like as a game developer you're like the opposite of me in so many ways and that's a good thing because i recently did a video about all of my flaws and you don't have any of my flaws like for example you you have um well like i'm looking at this game right now and it's it's breaking a lot of rules in terms of marketing um right now right now i'm looking at a screen you can't see my screen but like there's like trillions of numbers on here like they're in the trillions i think i see like 20 zeros on the number that the numbers his score or something and it's the the way this game looks is it's very i'll be honest it's very intimidating it's very intimidating and this is just one aspect that you're very different than me

uh you didn't worry about it doesn't seem like you worried about making the game pop and like really awesome graphics you just said no i care about gameplay and balance and this is my game and you were very matter of fact about your approach and that's not my approach my approach is to polish the crap out of something so so much so that it cost me way more money than it should have and people don't even really care at that point i mean is that do you am i correct in you not really worrying too much about the the making this game pop you cared more about the game design of it right yeah a lot of the a lot of my thought went into the design itself but also like choosing the minimalist approach from the start is not only easier but i think um in in that sense that can help it pop

so like when you're scrolling through steam and you see you're just looking at a hundred different thumbnails for a game and then you see mine which is like just the whole thing is white basically there's like no colors yeah and i think at least that like grabs your eye for a second like just because it's different yeah so i think you can go over the top and polish the crap out of it or if you just make like some really um i don't know direct choices about yeah about ways in which you can stand out yeah either way like as long as you're catching someone's attention there's this you know that can help you totally and that makes me that what you're saying totally makes sense and it's making me think like if i was a publisher for example i would say joseph i need it to be really pop like pop the graphics and i need you if you were like one of my students on

my course i would i would go i would tell you directly i would say make the colors this do make some backgrounds that are really pretty and beautiful like maybe do like some mountains in the background that kind of thing and i think you're correct though and one of the reasons i think you're very correct is that what you've got here is a game that it's for people who want to think right it's for for people who just want to sit there in the quiet have some tea and just think and i've i actually have this thought maybe i'm wrong but from a marketing perspective my thought is if it was really pretty and really maybe even had like cartoony graphics you're going to open the door to players that you don't want right and then all of a sudden you've got people like me i'm not very smart with these kind of games i can't do these games i'm not smart enough i would come in the door i would play the game and then i would probably think

poorly of it because i thought it was one thing and then my expectations weren't met and i couldn't it was too hard and then i i feel negatively about the game whereas i think what you've done is you've only captured players that love this kind of game right and it's because they looked at it and they said oh this game is totally for me because it's a thinking game that's the core of it that's what it's about it's nothing more and so i think you've built an audience of players um that are probably gonna buy your next game you know they're your the perfect target audience what do you think about that yeah i think um i think you're right like i didn't want to distract or like promise things in there that weren't actually there so i think in the marketing of your game like being really honest about what it is and like almost before you sell someone on the

game you can put them in the right mindset so my uh steam page is all about like you know this is a small short game it's relaxing it's just about like thinking and big numbers and so people who come in you know they're not they're not looking for anything more than that they knew that when they buy the game so in that way then you you know you're not getting a bunch of people coming in leaving negative reviews because you know it's not the ultimate strategy game or whatever are you um is this your thing are you a numbers guy are you a genius do you like math i mean in school i always did well like in math but i i don't i wouldn't consider myself i'm good at games games is what i do board games especially um i i probably own like

100 board games so taking a game and then drilling it down into like what sort of engine can i build or what strategy can i implement in order to win like that's what i do and so this is like the most simple form of that that i could think of is like you get points to get more points yeah and you try and do that like what's your uh efficiently as possible so okay so you're a board game guy what are some companies that make board games do you know any um i mean you have like the the mainstream companies you have like hasbro but okay um so just a quick question for you just throw an idea out there for you yeah just to think about how you know how many players do you have sorry to ask so many weird questions but i got i have a point how do you know how many players you have on like monthly or just total players who

know about this game i sold 22 000 copies okay so i'm just curious if you put together a pitch deck and send it to a hundred different uh companies that make board games and said i've got 22 000 players we have this level of notoriety um do you guys want to help me make this game and see if they they want to buy it uh because it's funny that you say that yeah because there's actually this the role is inspired by a board game where you you have dice and the the actual physical dice you can like pluck off the faces and put new ones on there board games called dice forge and like but the the physical components are so limit limiting so roll is kind of like the next evolution where like you can do crazy sorts of things and you can reach

those like the thing i i love the board game dice forge but like playing it by the end i'm like oh i wish there was more yeah you only have two dice the whole time like i wish i could roll like 10 dice right and so in my game you can get thousands and thousands of dice on the screen all rolling at the same time and so it's kind of like the the digital version of that board game it makes me wonder how you would even pull this off physically because i'm looking at these numbers i'm like how would how would you do this in a physical board game need a calculator for sure it would have to come with like well i was gonna say it would need to come with like an iphone but then again why don't you just make an app and i think you talked about that right you're considering doing yeah from the start like the format is basically like you're rolling and then you're just clicking buttons on upgrades

you want to buy so the the control scheme formats really well for mobile so like as soon as i got a little bit of success i was like okay like i need to go to mobile yeah but i just keep um i want that mobile launch to be what the steam launch wasn't so i'm like trying to get the game like ready for like a real like it's like a redemption launch well you know as much as i in polishing and adding features yeah that's a great idea seriously of of saying you know what i'm going to market this thing correctly and i would never say you did it incorrectly i would just say there's always more that you can do to market and i'm a marketing guy that's my thing so my thought process is as much as i want to congratulate you on seeing it blow up and you make a hundred grand i'm thinking man if this blew up without

any marketing what would happen if you did it right if you did the marketing right if you had a you know two-month three-month plan pre-launch plan and then did a did a launch day maybe even got a publisher if marketing isn't your thing a lot of people frown on publishers um but the truth is if you get a good one especially like a let's say if you do it can do mobile if you did had a mobile publisher they would know how to do this they would know how to market it and do a pre-launch campaign get press coverage how to get they have contacts at apple they got contacts at google of how to get front page coverage and i could tell you one of the things that apple would probably want you to do by the way just side note you should submit this to apple arcade um they're they're signing pro they're signing deals and this is such a good game for mobile it also has social it's not social proof well it does have social proof but it just has proof of concept

um i would consider reaching out to apple arcade which i worked with them for never song um yeah i thought about that yeah you should um i popped into one of your streams one time sometimes i just like throw it on so when i'm working alone i like to just like have something on hear someone talk um and sometimes i'll like throw a question in there if you're like open it up for questions and i was like what do you think about apple arcade but i'm like part of me is worried that i'm like would be alienating all of the the android users and i was wondering if you kind of like thought through this dilemma for your own games like i i worry that i guess there's i have all these people now that that really love roll and want to see it on a mobile version but then to be like no if you have well if you're not on apple then you can't let's throw a question at you and see what you see what your answer is if apple came to you and they said we're

going to give you 200 grand and it's yours and we just need you to do it sign an exclusive deal with us um a mobile exclusive deal so it means that you can have it on steam all day long it's just we want it on mobile on ios right would you care about the android market if they said that yeah well then you have a really good heart because i wouldn't i'd be like yeah sure i don't care you know i've got a studio to run so yeah it's just you're a better man part of me wonders if the the audience since this is like my first game i mean i'm looking ahead to a career in this field hopefully and i'm thinking if i capture more audience by going to android now those are also future sales for my future games

yeah that's a very good way to look at it um but you know there's also the opportunity this is this was my thought process with apple when i worked with apple um my thought process was man if i work with apple now what kind of stuff can i do with apple later so there's there's that same sort of question is related um to well do i want to work with companies like apple and they were great to work with um very very great to work with and they've they've been very respectful to me and they they'll you know the the income has been great so also i don't really care for android anyway so uh you know ultimately man like that's that is that's why i really respect you and i really respect what you're doing because you there's a purity to the way that you're making games and i i love being reminded of that the purity is i'm going to make a game

that i love i'm going to make a game that i enjoy i'm not going to worry about the marketing i'm not going to worry about the launch plan i'm not going to expect much out of it i just want to make a great game and that attitude is it's inspiring because i'll be honest you know now that i run a studio i have team members we have projections we have partnerships we have platforms we have to work with publishers we have to satisfy um for me at the end of my work day what's primarily on my mind is is my company gonna survive this are we gonna be okay how are how are our numbers how's our income um and there's part of me that knows deep down that i do need to get more um more focused on really more of like questions that i used to ask when i was younger you know is this the game i want to make as

opposed to is this the most profitable game you know um so i really respect that about you i think that's great thank you thank you yeah all right so we're nearing the end of the podcast and this has been a really enjoyable conversation um and the question i've been wanting to ask you this whole time is how does it feel you mentioned you are married how does it feel being married having bills to pay but knowing this is your full-time gig and you've got money in the bank how does that feel it's a little bit stressful to be honest because of the way like the game sales are so um i don't know they spike so you get this big like lump sum of money and then it's like nothing and then maybe you get another spike and it's like nothing well i have this like lump sum of money that i'm sitting with

but it's like always going down yeah so like with all my bills and things my my wife is in school so we're paying for that and so there's like this constant stress of like okay i need to like get the mobile app out to like get more income whereas you know having a steady stream of income you can kind of budget and say like okay if i spend this much per month i can like just sustain myself forever whereas i'm like okay i have this many months till i'm out of money yeah you know it i wish i could encourage you and say that it'll change it doesn't change at least it hasn't for me i what i mean is the there's always a desire in your well for me i'll speak speak about my position there's always a desire to grow and to keep making increase income increase

your team size increase the scope of the project so as the scope of the project increases and the amount of people you're paying and all that then suddenly you know that you would think oh my freedom my income and my income level it's making me feel more free but the truth is is that as the project scope increases you know that that tight feeling it's still there it's still with you but i will say your brain gets used to it and you just get a thicker skin you get calloused and that's a good thing because you know if you're going to be a business owner and that's what you are if you're going to be an entrepreneur you have to be okay with this constant feeling of transition and it's the the journey never ends it really doesn't um maybe one day it will i i don't but i think if you're gonna be an entrepreneur you need to be okay with that journey and you'll get used to it you know

yeah that's that's helpful um but yeah i think you were saying like that there is a trade-off between like you the freedom you have and the scope of the game yeah like the more people that are involved the less freedom you have but um i definitely would like to to work in a team eventually just because working by yourself it can be lonely and stressful which i know you've talked about in your in some of your videos you have why i'm never going solo again yeah it's lonely it's uh the loneliness isn't really the worst because i have kids and i have a wife and a dog and so i i'll go downstairs and hang out with them so i'm not too lonely

necessarily what i found is i can't keep coding and keep developing um i'm just i'm only 31 but i feel like i'm so i feel tired and old uh so i'm just like it's such a great feeling when i reach out to somebody and i'm like hey you want to work part-time on this project for six months or something and they're like yeah i'd love to i'm like oh yes so i can just give them a task list of things like you you've got probably a list of bugs in your head right of all these things you got to fix and all these features what if you just wrote a list and then you sent it to somebody who wanted to do it like that's how it feels it's great so you just send this list of things that you need and they're happy they're so thrilled to work on the project my team i i assume guys that you like working on the project they seem to really enjoy it so i just i'm right now i'm doing project management art direction and project management and it's such a good feeling because you

can go you can really look at your game from a bird's eye view and really see like all of the idiosyncrasies of what it should be doing how it should be playing and so you can really focus on game feel and gameplay but when you're in the thick of it and when you're like doing the code if you go man man i really wish that that enemy like not only did do i wish it would like blow up in blood sprays everywhere but i'd really love some brains to blow out of the enemy as well well when you're like in the middle of a ton of other bugs and a ton of other features and you're working on everything you're like i'm not gonna do that that's ridiculous that's gonna take forever but when you're an art director you can go okay i'm gonna give that to this person and i really i really want to see that and so you're you're not emotionally attached to the stress of your game and the stress of developing stuff um now it sounds like i'm a bad person because i'm just putting all that stress on one person that's not that's not what

i'm saying what i'm saying is you have like multiple people working on something and so you can give it to people who want to do that someone might want to do the blood and the brains you know and someone might want to handle the bugs so yeah i think i noticed that you with your your dog game you had a stream where the whole stream was focused on this little the like accent when the the area title shut up yeah you were like animating that out and i'm like man i would never have time for that yeah and that's what i was saying earlier when you and i are very different is i'm a very visual person like visuals are so important to me and i'll often get lost in those and so it's great to have people like you it's great to have people like me and i think as you as you grow in your studio and maybe one day you like you work with apple arcade they might say hey we want some more graphics and more colors and

more visuals in your games i can imagine apple would probably say that about this game um uh you'd have to convince them that black and white is great but they would probably selling point well you know that that's i know i know how people in higher ups how higher ups are and that includes me uh when i'm looking at a game i'm like i'm i'm not willing to well no pun intended roll the dice and say black and white is gonna be fine let's take the risk um so you'd have to do some convincing there but i guess my point is is your your team size will probably grow as you continue to grow um and you can lean on your fortes and then offset all the things that you don't really care about you know well joseph this was a great conversation i'm really really happy to meet you um

any other things you wanted to plug any other things you wanted to talk about before we wrap this up no it's a really really a pleasure coming on it's like uh i don't know it's like i'm on a tv show or something getting to to come on to your channel because i i watch all the videos so oh that's cool really thanks for having me yeah no problem well thanks for giving me content to upload that's that's that's really what i'm getting it from this um but great talking to you dude guys be sure to check out the link below there's two links there's a link to um joseph's game role on steam and be sure to support joseph um let's let's turn that hundred thousand number into 110 000 and then also this is important too and i would actually say this is more important just because i know the value of youtube go ahead and subscribe to his channel below as well joseph great talking to you dude i'm going to run this outro

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

might just show up in the next video that i upload all right i'll talk to you later bye [Music] i love you too