How He Sold 500,000+ Copies Of His Games (Xalavier Nelson Jr.) — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 033

you're probably making Indie Games wrong at least this is what I thought after my conversation with ziver Nelson Jr he made I am your Beast El Paso elsewhere life feater click holding and airport for aliens currently run by dogs space warlord Oregon trading simulator and after this conversation I was sure of it you me we need to make games like zir zir has made a ton of games the really good but the best part is is he makes them fast he actually finishes his games and he does this with something called artificial constraints this conversation is going to change the whole way you think about your indie game career much like I talk to developers they're like I don't know how my game took four years I look at their game design document or I chat to them I'm like it's very clear actually why your game took four years not to say I'm Nostradamus or anything but in a lot of cases it is just logic and math you have four worlds described for a 3D platformer which is a heavily iteration and polish heavy game you're going to make that in six months buddy four world

six months what unless you're building a fundamentally different type of game yeah point that becomes possible then there's no way that the math maths so in a similar way Publishers say we're going to do a different style and you hear this from almost every publisher announcement especially now or every investment house that comes in but if they have the same value set at the end of the day their processes will affect their values no matter what their stated goals are and so what I look for when I look at Partnerships now whether it's fellow developers even people I hire or my publishing Partners I say what can I see from how you run your projects in your teams and the processes you build are your actual value sets what do you actually care about and if it's say a publisher who always wins Awards and the games that get announced under their

label it's always like three four five years post their announcement that they finally come out they win a lot of awards sometimes they make a lot of money but it's always take three four five years I know that either the publisher picks those types of games or it will make any game that goes into its structure one of those things and if I'm coming in as a developer who loves to make things in a year or less 18 months or less I'm either fundamentally incompatible with that structure or we're going to have a really bad time being in that room together because they're going to be like well if we got a Hollywood voice cast we could really make this win an award and I'm like I don't care about winning award also that Hollywood voice cast will cost so much money that's both of our money that's going on the table Yeah if anything it's more your money uh and so yeah I look at the the value sets I can see in people's actions and processes and you will see when you start coming at the world through that perspective

you realize how often not just development not just publishing but like increasingly it seems every entertainment ecosystem is built on hyperradius that often defeat even their biggest successes can you explain that really quick what do you mean by their [Music] hyperradius use games because it's the easiest and we're still we're already there if you have a uh if your entire perspective is that live service games are the best type of game to make and then you recruit a bunch of Studios to make life service games and actually this is a perfect example so we live in a life service age right uh what I mean by hyperradius

have a life service game and that life service game requires new things for users ideally every day but like weekly monthly every three months for a season pass or whatever you have a very defined Cadence of things you need to produce to Be an Effective live service game uh and if you release a live service game as has happened several times in recent years I think one of the most prominent examples is Marvel's Avengers which is a game I loved it had so much cool stuff in it and there was such a talented team who made Marvel's Avengers but Marvel's Avengers was a like AAA photo realistic multiplatform live service RPG title that also any new piece of content took months if not years to produce that's a hyperradius people's interest and to

keep player numbers high and your structure says to add a new character to this game or to add a new voice line it needs to be localized into 16 languages and it will take three months you can't match the gence of fortnite and that is what every industry is doing and only the people who have like a high enough scale like a Call of Duty actually get to succeed in that environment and even they struggle is it that Indies get bloated I think Indies get bloated I think again as an industry we just don't have a way for talking about scope and talking about and evaluating a project that helps us to really know its full uh scope and calculate out what's cost and what's impact on team is going to be um I think for one of the most contradictory things for Indies uh if we're going to talk about how does the hyper contradictory stuff hit Indie developers is honestly the risk attached um even compared to what ablea companies

would put into a PS2 game the risk on an indie is so exponential which means that especially if you have a publisher which is one of the few ways you can manage to get a game off the ground then your publisher is encouraged to invest as much as possible into the game to make it a to quote unquote make it a success so instead of shipping just on PC you ship on PC switch Xbox and PS4 that means your Dev timeline has increased exponentially and to justify that you add another two hours of content because man it needs to be big enough to justify all this cost and then you uh enter a waiting period maybe your publisher is talking to Game Pass and so you're like okay I'll spend more time making more game because I need this work and the publisher needs it to work

so they're like hey I just heard this this cool thing getting made called the Ouya we're going to bring this Ouya and be first through the door yeah because it has to be big enough to not fail and so everyone in the room for an indie game is despite the fact that indie games are are really sincere exciting and uh exponential investment opportunities when it goes well and poten po small losers quote unquote when it doesn't go well MH everyone in the room especially across the last three to four years uh is attempting to make the games big enough to not fail which contradicts their you know efficient and reasonable M risk mitigated nature suddenly uh yeah you do have people

pulling out of the Indie space or cutting projects or cutting budgets for projects because they have created a cyclical environment an ecosystem a machine that says well every game needs to be big enough to not fail but what that just means is you've created a bunch of larger bombs that can explode in your face and also because it keeps getting bigger and bigger sorry but like the maddening part about it for me is it feel when I talk to people about this either one they acknowledge it which is the most disturbing of all or two they don't see it at all but it's like okay you put more money and more time into the game it's riskier and they're like yes and so if you put less time and money into a game it's it's less risky yes so we can you make a game for a for a smaller budget no no that won viable

it's like vampire survivors and batos right there like be that those are huge outliers but still the degree to which it has been terrifying yeah yeah it's this addiction to okay if my last game did well or a publisher they go wow we really did good with this first person shooter or this Rog light let's go ahead and go all in with the next one and the idea is well let's not it let's not just do a lowbudget game because we're missing so much money on the table so let's just keep pumping up the budget and the time put into this game because maybe it'll blow up like the other one did it is a highly cyclical thing and it ends up being almost a game of chicken between a developer and a publisher that they're not just doing against each other but also they're doing towards a cliff at the same time together and it's like okay well if we get another three months we can really polish this up and it's like oh well we've already put 300

Grand in I heard about a game uh its budget went from 1 million to six million and that was just like I hear this so many times dude after another extension after another extension and then you know Publishers being like well we got to cut this off but rather than changing their cycle of how they fund and run and produce the games that they work with they just like cut off a bunch of their arms and then those remaining arms are still part of a system they've created that will make it heavily uh that will make it just a risk machine a risk and gambling machine and that's why I talk to a lot of people these days and I say if you're getting a publisher what you're opting into and what you're looking at as far as like the horrible failures in the biggest successes of where game is at right now the best of times and worst of times is it's gambling what you're seeing is people are gambling everywhere developers are gambling Publishers are gambling gambling is an addiction and that gambling addiction means that uh I

was talking to a platform holder at one point this was in the middle of 20123 it was one of the most necessary and beneficial conversations I've ever had but it was also one that like was literally stamping a nail through my heart at the same time and they were like here's the thing Oliver you always make good games we really love and see what you're doing but when you come in through the door and say you'll make a game in 2 years and someone else tells us that they'll make a game in five years it looks like the five-year game is more ambitious it looks like the five-year game is going to be of a higher quality and is aiming higher and like five years though good grief you'd think that an investor would be like that's that's the we have no idea where the industry is going to be in five years so we'd rather go with the two-year project that's what I would do especially in Indie where we also know that five-year project is going to become a seven-year project it almost certainly will well yeah but yeah like if what you've got is

an industry that looks at the numbers on the table and says these are numbers that make sense but that number may be the thing that changes Indie Games what you get is a lot of people who among other things are scared when I talk to a lot of Publishers a lot of publishing Executives happen to be my friends the number one thing I hear is fear because they don't know how much something will cost how much something will take to build how much it will sell and rather than change their machine or try to encourage developers to enter a more sustainable path the only Sol solution is to go Allin baby you have to go in all in every time I don't think Publishers just go away after 2024 no it's not like they're just dead right and it's not like the it's like it's not like funding just stops being a thing right I think Publishers are still around I think if a publisher even has one hit they can live a disturbing

halflife they can just be a radioactive ghost roaming the Wasteland still um processing royalty checks for like the one game that did well um and not really signing anything else uh ever again so it's not like Publishers go away or the idea of funding goes away but I do think what we seeing right now because it is not stepping back from the cliff because it is not choosing not to gamble is you'll see the best of times and the worst of times you'll see publish triggers who one day they ask for this literally actually happened to me at one point when I was really looking for funding one day I talked to a publisher they said we only want games between one and three oh between uh two million and up the next day they texted me personally and said hey if you've got a game that's $500,000 or less or and la and we launch in 6 months uh that's actually what we want we are signing nothing that is in the millions and I was like

okay wow big change so what you're going to find as a developer is if you're pitching you are not pitching to any approaching Solid Ground you are not uh a publisher what a publisher says they want today may not be the thing that they want to tomorrow uh it will be gambling mindset or gambling adjacent even if it doesn't start that way because Publishers so many Publishers are structured in the same way they eventually get there uhhuh uh yeah I think that like that's why when people say to survive to 25 it's deeply erroneous uh the 2025 we're still here we're still seeing really contradictory practices patterns and self-destructive behaviors so the one thing I think a developer can do to create safety for themselves right now is like literally calibrate around their own Survival uh that or enter the

lottery with enough money to still survive um can you explain that practically uh I mean I talk to a lot of students uh I I I'll do guest lectures and interviews and so on and one of the things I say is well if you have a game Jam that does well like don't spend the next six years on it your next game is going to be the best game you make and the next game the next game the next game so you finish it you finish it and you move on uh when you're pitching a game yes you'll run into trouble if you aren't at whatever is the arbitrary scale a publisher decides is the only thing that will make money right now but when you run into that situation uh like you go in with the game that you can survive either making or pitching and put no more into it people are like okay but what if I put like just like week into my pitch deck and I make it

like really interactive and has cool transitions it's like no you you you're a father of two make the pitch deck in a week put together if you can't afford to put together a demo don't put together a demo and make the situation you survive if you've got a friend who never picks up their phone if they can if they have never ENT uh like responded to a text in less than 72 hours don't start an indie studio with them like I'm I'm recommending High practicality to approach a world of nonsense I see I wonder what it is about game developers indie game developers and also Publishers where they feel like they don't have to do standard business practices like every other industry well restaurants in particular restaurants are really difficult to start and and be profit so what instead what you should do is I

don't know find a make a chain that you know is proven right so or at least start small start catering to your friends because they really love your food and I think I've talked about this in a previous podcast where it's like if you've got that small prototype that works you're like you make really really good beef stew and you can cater it to your friends and then just scale and scale and scale you can do it slowly over time until you actually have enough money to start paying rent for a place in an actual restaurant an actual building but with Indie Games it's like that that that mentality isn't there the mentality is I'm just going to go all in for three years and hopefully it makes its money back um I think I learn I learned that I was doing this all wrong I think I learned it from Jonas tyroller I don't know if you know who he is um but he made a game called fall he's he works with the a lot of the grizzly game guys and they have a very practical way

of making indie games um it's like they they do like 5 to 10 prototypes and then whichever one performed the best just on a g purely on the loop or like a simple mechanic then they pick that one and then they move forward it's like this sort of Sci approach that's also what free lives does over in South Africa um people are like man free lives doesn't miss and it's like they do dozens and dozens of game jams a year and only when a project gets massively validated and they know exactly how they ship that game like they also even if a game Jam does great they don't start production on the full game until they know the road like what the scope will be and how to finish it and then they release that game and surprise it does well for them basically every single time yeah but it's it is as you said it's very it's very reasonable and weirdly enough when you s when you try to do reasonable things in games it's you sound like the

crazy crazy one yeah yeah you know it's something like um like my my dad was a and I I have a question to you about your your business model but really quick my my dad was um was a CPA when I was growing up and he started his own CPA practice and uh the way he did it was he started in the smallest basement the the rent was like nothing and he slowly made enough money and built and built and built and then he built a building and then he was running he had a a team in the building and notice how he was making money while building the thing right I mean Super Giants is a great example where like they always did they make big leaps yes but they didn't make Hades as their first game and when I talk to an indie or to a student uh especially someone who's starting like oh yeah I'm going to make something like Hades I'm like Hades is

the product of 10 years of making games that's why they that's how they have money to make Hades they have expertise to make Hades that's how they understand right that what they have with Hades is even special and what's special about it which is why they're able to make Hades 2 in Early Access such a success where you see sometimes that sequel especially in Indie statistically we see that it does not do as well as the original yep yep and I just looked it up it looked like their team is like 20 people so it's uh I don't know if that was the case during production initially with it certainly wasn't the production uh on Bastion right right and how how big was that team let me see here I think it was something like five like it was a it was it was a much smaller team yeah but regardless it's a seven people but that's Google's AI but you never know uh if it's if it's correct but seven people so that's still still that's a big team you know for an

indie uh bigger than my teams have ever been I just want to encourage everyone listening to to treat your game like a normal business it's like make that small minimum just minimum viable product and see if you can make money see if you can make money off of a $2 game on hiio see if a prototype actually works if people respond to it or it's as simple as posting a screenshot on Twitter and it's like do people seem to like it you know if they don't then maybe you shouldn't go all in for three years so my question to you is do you approach Game Dev that way I mean for me one of the big things what and I'm very thankful for this in hindsight was I always had every step of my Game Dev career ask myself what I needed out of this so started as a games journalist that I went into game writing because I was like this fulfills more of my soul and then I went into narrative design because this fulfills more of me

I don't want to just be a writer then I was like I don't care how good the story is that involves a the expertise of a lot of people actually what I care about is the game coming out so I multiclassed into production and BISD ended up running a studio and that's all and this weird mix of skills I have and all the things I do now are a product of at every in Step intentionally saying does this give me what I need and is this sustainable can I keep doing this and uh what I'd say at this stage for me how I make games is uh I never want to start a game that I can't survive finishing uh a big part of this is because when I started my studio I had worked on something like 40 games and I would talk to friends who had made games that literally changed the industry and they didn't look kindly upon those games because they're like ah yeah that game was great but you know it didn't make enough money to recoup so

the team had to fall come apart and I was like man if a game makes pizza money I want to build the type of Studio where that's still a victory so we have games that have not performed as well as others but I built a structure where no matter how well a project performed commercially for the most part we could still be happy we made that game so the way I make so you know an airport for aliens can run my dogs was made from the resources I had at that time space World organ training simulator was in that same space and as we've continued to make games we made 15 games in five years the phase I'm really excited about that we're starting this year is not just making the games that our resources allow for but like just going full in on artificial constraints that's where click holding came from I was like what is an amount of money that as I'm making this joke with the Among Us developers at 3: a.m. is so laughable and small it

makes this joke worth making H and I was like yeah 20 20,000 25,000 and so we made a game for 25,000 and if you make the at every that was click holding that was click holding and if you at every step you're like well you have three weeks left to make this game we will not choose a solution any problem that makes it more than three weeks turns out you can ship that game in 3 weeks two months we we ended up having a two-month Dev cycle but it ended up becoming more like a month and a half one month because of some um uh because of some time we lost in the process of building the thing yeah but like this is the again the the brilliant potential of video games and the maddening part is you can make a game in three days if you build the type of game you can make in three days I love that write everyone to have the freedom as well as the

personal precision as a Craftsman to make that game in 3 days three years three months oh man dude one of the most rewarding experiences of my life was when I stupidly I st I stupidly told PewDiePie I could make a game for him in 14 days and I remember it was the uh I live streamed the whole thing and and I it was cool cuz I got like 100,000 subscribers from his audience cuz they came over to my channel but yeah I emailed him and told him I could do it in 14 days and then once he said yes I was like oh cool PewDiePie said yes to me and then I realized oh wait I don't know if I think I don't think I can do that what am I thinking so I'm gon to follow my face publicly in front of his audience and I remember my I was working in my dad's basement at the time and he came home um from work and I think I was 12 days in and he was like are are you going to be okay like he was like I think you may have bit off

more than you could chew but what was crazy was I got it done and it was great and it was it was just this arbitrary hey let's do it in 14 days and that's that you know whereas with my current game Twisted Tower there is no deadline or at least there wasn't uh now there is um but yeah that's what creates this threeyear long bloated mess if I'm being completely honest whereas I wish I would have just said no this is going to be like a 2 and 1 half hour long game it's going to have pixel graphics and we're going to make it for 100 grand and do it in a year you know so for you guys like H like how do you know what uh parameters to give yourself with production is it just based on your experience of okay I know these kind of games make this kind of money therefore I need to spend this much time on the next one I think a lot of it is at this Point personal knowledge and this is another

thing I I really advocate for for anyone really because we don't live in a culture that uh incentivizes or encourages it um I'd love to ask this question to you is like do you know at this point what you need from a game for that game to make you happy that you made it is it the amount of money makes is it the number of people like what do you need from a game I think because I have three kids it's money I think that's that's probably the primary and I don't know if I'm I I don't know if I'm ashamed to say it but there is a little shame in saying that but got three kids you know want them to get a good solid education and so in my head I'm like please God I hope this game makes enough money so that we can live comfortably for the next three years while I make the next one so one of the big reasons I think it's also important to encourage people to make their first game small is do you actually like making games is

what you like getting making gifts that get a bunch of likes on Twitter you can just you can just make those gifts you don't have to I've spoken to Art to musicians and they're like yeah I really wanted to make a like a Donkey Kong Country Style soundtrack so I spent four years making a 3D platform and I was like you could have just paid for a cool piece of art that looked like a fictional game and then World via soundt and so I look for at strange scaffold is what's the constraint that excites me I was really excited at a game for me I know that being trapped in a room for some people this is heaven being trapped in a room with one game for five years that is my magnum opus would kill me it would drive me crazy what I love is an artificial interesting constraint that means I can build a really quality game for an audience out the other side matching it I love hitting a deadline

and hitting it well and then moving on to the next thing so I don't start threeyear projects anymore I got you so to to answer your question now that I I fully understand what your question is that my answer isn't sufficient because the truth is well Thomas go be a lawyer or Thomas go go be a Salesman or go get into real estate you can make money there that's not the best step one is you know you need to make games and that's a really important thing that a lot of people don't know about themselves well right and so what I found was for me it's like I I have this CR this temptation to to try and make the games that are popular right now yeah I can't stand these games though the procedural generated or the Rog likee or um the crafting games these aren't they're not for me they're just not for me I can't play them um I don't even know how to play them I suck at playing them I'd rather just play a really good atmospheric Story game that it has a really strong voice so to answer your question if I can make a

great um if I could build wealth for my family and tell stories in my games that's it that's the metric that also defines a lot of things if like a publisher goes like well I'll take this game on but you have to take out the story you would never do that I know this is why you're here I know I know and I've had situations like that in the past with Publishers really they're like um we we had these people test it and they really want to include like more abilities and more skill trees and I'm just like I can't I don't even know if I can physic I don't even know if I can do that as a developer like that's just not my skill set my skill set is telling an emotional story and everything else is just a flourish the the the story is the goal and it's sad because you can sign a deal with a publisher and they know that that's your skill set and they sign you for that they're like great we need a story game for our portfolio but then as

it takes a long time and two years later with new leadership or whatever or let's say they they they get a new team then suddenly they're like actually we want Doom 2016 instead of a story game you know and so they try and pigeon hole or like retrofit you um retroactively put you into that category when you signed for the initial thing that's the big Pro problem I found with publishers is that it's not the same person you had a relationship with you signed the deal it changes because the leadership structure changes over time especially lately but for you go ahead go ahead I was say to be honest like that's also something that this is a little spicy but this is also I think the root of so many indie horror stories about Publishers that they came into a room and they said this is the type of game we want to make and the publisher said well we would like this version of the game you want to make and person hears that and

goes well you got money let's sign and then tries to make the first thing Y and it's kind of like when if you've ever speed dated uh I haven't well if you've ever speed dated uh one of the like a pretty cool question to ask is do you want kids because that's just like a yes no and that defines so much of your life uh and like if someone across the table from you says no and you want kids or conversely if they say yes and you don't want kids that's the one of the biggest red flags in the world is don't date that person for three years and I and one of the big things I hear Indies do and I see Indies do all the time is they tell me this awful story about their publisher how they distorted their Vision how they didn't support him properly and I was like so like what did the publisher tell you that they wanted and they're like they wanted a story light Rog likee procedual generation game and I tried to to make my really cool atmospheric Story game and I was

like stop right there what are you talking about of course you had a problem with that relationship because you didn't want the same thing yeah a lot of times it's just the publisher changed um the cool thing about Serenity Forge is they his vision for that comp the Z the the CEO from what I can see that his vision for that studio has always remained the same in fact I I pitched to him Twisted Tower and he was like yeah this is just not our style they like they like artsy story games and that is the vision and they don't they don't mess around with other Visions that's the one thing they do really really well they pass on games that have made millions of dollars because it doesn't fit and I respect the hell out of that I know me too and and the reason I bring that up is because they're the kind of publisher that you're like if you sign a deal with and and at least as long as you told them

the correct vision when you pitched it they'll let you pursue that Vision because they're not going to change what they desire out of it um I worked on Never song with them for I think it was close to three years and they just let me stick to that Vision you you've are you a publisher as well uh we tried publishing once uh we're really glad uh about the game that came came out the other end uh but like I I found in the process I actually similarly for game development I do this all the time for everything uh I was like I'm going to try publishing because I want to see how it feels for me to be in that seat in the smallest position of risk possible so I think it was a total investment of like $10,000 uhhuh to be a publisher plus like the time of me and other people who contributed to uh the game Purgatory dunge engineer and what I

found was we really appreciate the process and uh it was cool working with Damen Crawford the developer that gain cannibal interactive uh the thing that came out the other end would not have existed without strange scaffold's participation and I'm so cool at like that de that pairing of developer and publisher collaboration but I hate being a publisher a publisher is your job is to hold is total accountability with ideally maximal freedom for the other person so you're are accountable for everything that someone else does and it seems like completely uh opposite things like how do you hold someone's hand and give them Freedom at the same or make them feel free to be creative it it it's it's a not just a rough balance but like I am an aour game developer and that was that was a real ey opening moment of like I I'm glad I did it because I

learned a lot but so much it was like me being like I'm an aour game developer why would I ever want to like it would never make sense for me to come in on say someone who was making a three-year game and kind of sit there gritting my teeth the entire time because that's not the way I want to make games and yet I'm accountable for it like I believe in uh having positions of transparency uh accountability and like Reckoning like really dealing with it like if I'm going to have final say this like servant leadership right that was something that my dad uh really impressed upon me when I was growing up was a leader for the privilege of being a leader you are also a servant your job is to serve I Believe In Like H for the privilege of the amount of power I have over the vision of the game my job is to enable the people around me and to take it on the chin if it doesn't go well right taking it on the chin and not having power sucks don't want it so I

don't publish anymore and that and there's a real freedom in knowing what you don't want if I was a publisher I'd be a control freak um because the horror stories of all the all the Indie Studios who just they just keep making the game and it never ends and suddenly your your budget's tripled right I've heard this so many times but then I'm I'm sitting here going wait a second why is it that I mean I'm curious if you've seen this do Publishers is it your perception that Publishers just throw money at stuff and then just almost plug their ears and close their eyes and shout and let the developers just do their thing have you perceived that uh I think it's more rare I think a lot of times uh I think a lot of times there are ways of communication in particular falls through the gaps so a publisher

gets like radically surprised by ways that the game has changed that was actually one of the most I signed a deal with a publisher two months after their contract changed and I was friends with a CEO and he told me why that changed and he said here's he said every game contract every publisher contract is a list of scars all the times a publisher has been burned every single Clause is a record of that yes so their publishing contract beforehand guaranteed this you know uh amount of personal freedom for the developer to Define division of game the the vision of the game they had a game that with that freedom like two weeks before launch or something radically changed the game that was testing well hot huge amount of wish list that game comes out very divisive very buggy and it wasn't two weeks beforehand they changed that gosh

dang contract so fast wow and I managed to get in before then and like yeah I think that's an illustration of a lot of ways that Publishers change over time is uh they're it's not that they're it's not that they're plugging their ears and it's not that they're hyper aware if you think that if you see a publisher and you're like man they sure got their ear to the ground that's a lot of that is coincidence uh uh there's a very rare set of cases where that's just like prognosticators a group of oracles guiding them to inevitable Victory y um the fascinating thing about Publishers is like they're hyper aware of pain kind of like a kid you you often will let them teach a touch a burning uh iron because they'll never do it again because pain is the only way they can fully process things M so this is part of why uh I also think like

Publishers can be to a degree dangerous for experimental work is like or just in general it I'm thinking as I'm talking and I'm realizing like Publishers being beings that are hyper aware of pain suddenly helps you understand a lot about them you suddenly like when uh Star Wars Outlaws didn't perform as well you saw like a lot of people in discussions around do we have women on box covers and that's because like it's a very binary thing where a the exe publishing Executives look and say well why' this game do poorly it's because there was a woman on the cover there was a woman on the cover and like those types of conversations are heavily prevalent I've seen Publishers where like they had a Rog light do wrong do badly and they had like one or two and they said never a Rog light again and that type of uh hard swerving I

think is y i I think that's that's that's that is an important tool for understanding Publishers often you can see it through their failures the things that they will uh be hyper aware of to unfair degrees I've seen Publishers pass on games that made Millions because a game like it either failed in The Wider Market or for them personally which is usually as big or bigger they're like ah we just had a game with a comic book art style and it bombed so bad our investors aren't going to let us give 500k to this new game it makes millions of dollars but at that time they aren't even in a position to fund it because like that's the fear that is most recent your games are so H it's it sounds cliche but they're like Brave they're like courageous um thank you like the way you name your characters I think one of your dogs names in that Meme dog game was something Shakespeare like Carl shakes Shakespeare what that

Tes there's there's a creative courage there to go that's the name of the dog and someone goes well why like you could imagine a publisher might reach out and say well we don't like the name of the dog we don't it doesn't make sense and you're like but that's what I want it to be right there's courage with your games um the courage in in naming your games like a publisher might say an airport for aliens current I have to look at this look it down in my paper to say this name by the way an airport for aliens currently run by dogs they might say that name's too long and it's not good for you know SEO some of the funniest emails I've ever received were pitching that game around and having people like especially like they've just this is uh what that was five years ago so this is and they're just like trying to wrap their heads around like me being like no I'm I'm making this stock photo dog game and it's going to make you cry this is an important piece of art yes uh cuz there was one publisher that

wanted to treat it as a meme game uh and they were like it's so funny it's so effing funny and I was like oh I I can't work with you because I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna take these dogs really seriously actually that's going to be the bit I I kid you not I thought the same thing when I was I was looking through your games and I was like at first glance there's something of a meme quality to some of them where it's like this is is a joke but then you actually play it and they're so they're so rich and there's such a strong voice like you just know it's a strange scaffold game um how how do you how do you have the courage to just put these bizarre ideas into your games like do do you not worry like a publisher might do not worry ah this this might not

sell I mean that's a big part of the thing of the thing as well I know that I have very specific things I want to make with highly specific tastes and choices if I make games efficiently this has been my guiding start if I make games efficiently our studio mot is BET studio studio motto is better faster cheaper and healthier if I make this game efficiently enough I can name it as I can make the name as long as I want I can make that name as long as I want if I make it for 50k if I make it in six months if I make it in less than two years and uh that has been in so many ways not just a Guiding Light but something that makes the game exist at all I think there's a world where I'm still working on dog airport game because dog airport game got attention it got nice articles beforehand I saw the arc the Indie darling Arc P like curve ahead of me I was like like you can make this game for the next five

years and be releasing gifts the entire time and building your magnum opus and build a box for yourself just a total cage of nightmares where you get increasing obsessed with whether or not this thing will sell and why did I spend six years on a game called an airport for aliens canly run by dogs and so uh I just didn't I just didn't do that so even for El Paso elsewhere which a lot of which is like probably still the largest in terms of scope game we've ever made the idea of giving that game an endpoint saying no game deserves 10 years of my time uh because I'll never get that time back i' I'd rather hang out with my wife i' I'd rather read a book I'd rather play a video game rather than make one yeah or make another one right this is so funny because your podcast is coming right after Ken lavine's uh and he and I talked for half of the podcast so literally this podcast it is right after that one the title of

that podcast at least currently is how he spent 10 years on one game cuz he's he has spent 10 years on Judas which is his next game yeah and I I was like how how are you not going crazy and he's just like meditation he he he had to find something to stay sane and it's quite literally shutting off your brain like that's how he's he's able to achieve it and I I know know exactly well not exactly I know similarly how he feels cuz I've been working on my games always take at least 3 years y um and I I am so fascinated I'm so fascinated by your approach because to be completely honest with you dude it puts a lump in my throat like it makes me want to cry when you say that like efficiency is like so important to you and the reason I want to cry is because I'm thinking about the future I'm like I there's this dream in my head of what would it look like if I get this game Twisted Tower freaking done it's done okay see you later yeah

and I have smaller games that are like five six months long and you just release them they're like uh EPS for like a a band or something it is that difficult though when you have to think about when you when you think about the potential Revenue like let's say let's say El Paso and by the way El Paso is amazing it like it clearly works what would have happened had you made this thing your magnum opus would it be a $10 million game you know to I can actually tell you that was a potential path I feel I feel so blessed by the things that haven't happened and that's kind of a weird statement but like the number of things that haven't happened in my life the number of things that didn't pay off and at the time I was even angry about it and then later it's like oh dear lord I dodged a bullet

uh the the year that we nearly closed as a studio the only publishing offer of of substance that I received was one that would have had El Paso like double or triple in scope like redo the art style make it high res pump up the production value to make this a real like tent pole and I think there's all sorts of reasons and ways and if I was a different person including ego frankly of just like yeah you know what this is a game that deserves another $5 million this is a game that can take that uh that that can take that it will make the best game out of it and that

represents me y uh and the great machine I've built where I WRA in the game and I star in it it's all about me put more spotlights on me I want this bald head to be shiny as hell and uh I said no and a year later that publisher shuttered so if I had made that deal to be the tent pole El Paso elsewhere five million version We W wouldn't be making games anymore let's talk about this whole um is your is your game your baby mentality have you heard about this I have not okay so most game developers they say my game is my baby it's my baby and I'm obsessed with it and I I nurture it and I care for it and it's like it's literally an extension of me it's a duplicate of me it sounds like that's not true for you oh no uh I mean it would I guess it

would be if like the purpose of you making babies was to make money like if you if you had a for a game idea if if you said you have three kids right yeah if if you had a fourth kid um specifically for the revenue it would generate running on a little crawling on a little hamster wheel then it makes sense but like we're making games we're making commercial products you're um if you went to a Master Carpenter and they told you and they told you the price for making you a chair and you're like the price is fine you're a master Carpenter uh I trust you with whatever you choose to do they're like okay so uh and you ask them when will I have this miraculous chair and the master Carpenter said between 3 weeks and 10 years uh also the price of this chair

May double uh I don't know you you wouldn't you would think that person is a hack because I think something we associate with craft is also Precision except in video games and this isn't a call out post for anyone but I think the fact that Precision has been so undervalued in our medium even culturally the fact that we've taken the Shir mamoto quote or the thing that's attributed to shamoto said you a bad game is bad forever a delayed game can be it will be great like the fact that we've hung that up and created a medium of craftsmen who have been trained to not have Precision is Criminal uh a game makes sense to be your baby if it'll have the lifetime of a baby but it won't my baby doesn't get if I have a baby it's not g to be steam reviewed that baby is not supposed to provide me revenue for the past five years the baby is a human life so if we're making products we should be able to do it on a time on a budget and that should be at a

consistent quality for the sake of the people who are trusting us with their money that they get from their jobs yeah to just go into something that will make them feel at the end of the day you're one of the dude I will tell you I don't think I've talked to a single developer who said that um a lot of the developers I've talked to I think I think almost all of them have said yeah it's my it's my baby and some of these some of these developers I'm not saying they're wrong and they have kids even so they but for me that's that's my perspective as well I'm also somebody who doesn't um I don't like the word legacy yeah not I'm not sure if you've ever thought about this like um people try and uh artists they're always like I want to leave a legacy and in my head I'm like yeah that's not really what's going to make me well okay so as a Christian I'm like yeah that's not

what I think God cares about is is Thomas an artist and does his Artistry shine forth after his death I don't think that's what matters like I think what matters is just like uh you know loving people and showing God's love to other people so when I think about my games I'm like that thing is going to be worth nothing in like 5 years maybe 10 it's like who cares you know I I don't even think about previous games I talk about them on YouTube because of the podcast but like I don't think about those games because I see them as ex-girlfriends honestly I I don't know if that's the right way to think about it um I've definitely minimized the purity of games in my head like I've talked to some developers who they see it's like it's so pure and it has to be perfect and there can't be any any motivation of monetary gain or Commercial Success the marketing has to be pure and I get that right like it when the the art

represents you and has to be it it isn't just a product it isn't just a thing that people buy but it has to be a personal extension I get that the the uh and startor to interrupt just like one up what you're saying like it is marvelous to hear that about again things that if we say go back 20 years your PS I don't even remember which PlayStation was at the time but if like you're on the cusp of PS2 and PS3 and you've put all that time into a PS2 game PS3 is coming in a year No One's Gonna play your game after PS3 comes out because it's not backwards compatible yeah so like yeah I think I think we can't afford to have games be our babies or if we do do that everyone needs to come in Eyes Wide Open about that because what I'm thinking about as a player honestly and I think from my perspective at least I don't want to wait for a once in a generation moment in which I'm impacted to hit me every 5

years and then for another 5 years I have I feel nothing I see I I I play no game at all no game is worth it no game brings light and Spark I want more things expressed I want more interesting little things that make my brain work in different ways I uh yeah I respect the approach of the person who makes the game their baby who is the total Craftsman it must be pure but at least for my studio um I'd rather say more things I click holding wouldn't exist if I was still making dog airport game click uh El Paso elsewhere I am your Beast which is our best performing game to date I think wouldn't exist if we went right into ELP Pas ww 2 because I need to continue The Saga of James Savage because he's me it's me me me I see it as an ego thing and I want to set aside my ego to make more cooler things consistently with great people for the

players who trust me with their attention what is your primary and by the way I know your time is valuable so when you need to go let me know um we we'll wrap up here soon but yeah I've got a heart out in like a couple minutes okay one final question for you then okay okay what's your primary driver your your motivator for um being an artist being a being a director of games speak for me really quick mine please um there's two so there's the the bad one and the good one let's say it like like that the bad one is fear of be um being controlled by a boss yeah so huge driver uh the positive one is self-expression like being able to for the world to understand me right what about you what drives you what's what's the bad thing that drives you and what's the good thing that drives you if I can make ask one more question of you because I've truthfully just been watching your work ever since pinstripe like pinstripe came out when I was still a journalist I've been fascinated by

your journey as a developer I'm excited for Twisted Tower thank you like when you talk about self-expression as a driver is what you're expressing with each game different like what does self-expression mean for you oh man um well it's so lame it sometimes I I feel like I'm just I'm an Emo teenager and a third 34y old's body I don't ever feel understood in real life in real life I don't feel understood um when I'm in front of a camera I could be expressive and I can edit the video and I can put cool logos and cool music perform I perform I could I could perform digitally and people understand when I create Twisted Tower and it's about basically a uh you know kind of like a beta male who gets friendzoned and then he proves his worth to this hot girl that is this self-expression maybe this this feeling deep down when I was 16 years old that's

coming out now and being presented into a story of a game that's why I love making story games because I can say something and it can be clean it can be understood whereas a lot of times in real life I keep looking out my window because I'm just looking at the real world in my neighborhood I don't feel understood um and so that for me is it's just this feeling of it's this desire to be like to prove like I do have something to say and maybe it's selfish of like I do have something to say and I should have been listened to and you should have listened to me you know and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but hopefully that answers your question it does I think that's like I I really appreciate the like you viewing it in those two lights as like self- expression is to a degree selfish but also in the process of doing it other people get seen uh so it's it's really important for someone else play this thing and maybe they are 16 years old at this moment being like God he

sees me that's right really cool yeah it's always different for everyone but I I I think yours is one of the most honest answers I've heard uh because if what you want is to be understood games is a you have so many different things you can noodle with I know tell people a thing how you feel so cool uh so yeah I I understand your games more now which I like that's me geeking out about that sorry um what about you you I'd say for me my primary driver I think it's changed some and I've been more and less honest with myself over the years but if you ask me like for our next crop of games uh we have three games coming out this year I think I know what our next projects will be already once those start to spin down we spin up our next ones cuz we develop things s the reason I'm making those

games is because I love the work of having a vision sharing it with the team translating it into more some of his parts and releasing it like that entire cycle that life cycle of a game from beginning to end and getting that loving releasing a game as opposed to working on a game working on a game that's fine releasing a game best feeling in the world most people don't know the feeling you know because they're always working on it yeah so like I'd say at this point like what I really want and if I really was honest with myself about why I'm making these next games um I'm making them because I want to practice craft I want to make this thing that says a thing and I have this joyful Glee CU I know then I get to move on to say the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing there's one concept I had

which is so Galaxy brained in its stupidity that like the idea that that's not a 15 year away game but maybe two or three with my development philosophy just actively excites me so like I I am at the point where I just love living creating and giving people around me permission to do the same so if I again for contrast if I got an offer to be like AAA creative director on like that Naughty Dog game that got just got announced a heretic tomorrow I don't need to be at the game awards stage I don't uh need to make a game that makes $5 million I need to release a game and thank the people who spend their time and their money with it and then with like a Wink in my eye be like hey 6 months from now I've got another

thing so you're addicted to releasing games that's your you're you're like a drug addict for releasing games you know oh that's that's a blunt way of putting it but I do think that's true I when people bring me in I get brought in to also help launch games these days or like someone will bring me in to like consult on their project or figure out what's the version of it that needs to release and like I do genuinely feel a rush when I'm like okay cut these three things uh really have the honest conversations between yourselves as a team about this thing because none of you actually agree even if you think you do and here's the route forward and like we have that conversation as I work with that team and then I then suddenly there's a concrete release date I literally get a full body feeling like oh that's good stuff um I'm really really inspired by you dude dude and yeah I appreciate your time honestly is there anything else you

wanted to leave the audience or links in the description or anything like that no look out for uh I I'd say thanks to everyone for listening thank you so much for having me and uh the games that are coming out this year is uh we're making a beat them up tactics game with uh teams Mutant Ninja Turtles called team Mutant Ninja Turtles tactical takedown we're making a co-op Kaiju horror cooking game that we've not revealed the name of nice and we're making uh A Match 3 Metroid Vania also known as a Metroid Vania whoa creepy redneck dinosaur Mansion 3 which is which is a match 3 survival horror comedy RPG Metroid and I'm going to I'm going to guess it's not actually the third uh no not at all you just but the game the game is about that though I'm sure there's some lore about what happened there it's kind of like Troll 2 I don't know if you've ever seen Troll 2 but um no oh you got to watch troll two Troll 2 is it's a horribly made it's a horribly

made movie and it's not really a sequel to troll one um it's hilarious um unless people can debate with me in the comments if that's actually true or not but dude thank you so much for your time this was one of my one of my favorite conversations honestly you're you're a really smart guy so thank you so much for your time uh thank you for your time let's stay in touch yeah cheers