How He Sold Over 200,000 Copies Of His Game w/ PontyPants — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 028

you were making all these YouTube videos and we were all excited about punch a bunch right and then you released punch a bunch and then it was kind of less and less and got more and more quiet yeah and so the question is and I dude I do not blame you at all and I don't blame like Jonas Ty roller he doesn't post as much anymore Danny who knows where Danny went right Danny is saw on an island celebrating the question is did you stop making YouTube videos because it wasn't necess NE and that's okay by the way I'm not judging you or I might do it too like if I reach escape velocity but I would love to know is that one of the reasons you just right found success so I just want to kind of give context to people because a lot of people I think was like oh you just came out of nowhere and it was just like an overnight success no I failed miserably so many times at a bunch of other stuff you know so it was really just like the this the YouTube channel and what I did with it in the end was like kind of like my final push it was like I was this close

to giving up and just being like you know you know it's probably better if I just stick to my job I make a lot of money and it's fine right and I was good at it I was really good at it I I mean I think people told me I was and I was climbing the ladder very quickly and um that's a different story like why I want I saw someone on Twitter was asking like why did you leave your career it seemed like you enjoyed it and that's I guess a different story but um short story I didn't enjoy it anymore and I did didn't want to get promoted because like when you're in a job when you get a promotion you double your UH responsibilities and you make 4% more money that makes no difference in your life so I just felt like why should I work double as hard to make not more like it just doesn't seem fair not that everything is about money but it just felt I felt very capped like sure you know uh but yeah so what we were kind of thinking me and my wife were like well

you know it really isn't about how much money you make it's about how much money you spend so low cost our gold so we used to live in Vancouver and I don't know if you know but Vancouver is one of the most expensive cities in the world one of my team members lived there and he had to move because right I guess I wasn't paying him enough and he had to move cuz it was so expensive yeah you got to pay him a lot if he wants to live there uh yeah so it's really expensive and we were trying to buy property there because our long-term goal was like well here's the thing rent was just going up like crazy right and so it felt super unsafe to be renting especially in a city like Vancouver um because you just you you're constantly on this treadmill of having to spend I think we were spending $2,400 a month at the time and that was pre-2020 and I'm sure it would be like $3500 now right in rent and that's like a lot of money right so sure um our goal basically was to buy a property and and

then somehow pay it off right we didn't want to have a mortgage because then your expenses go down to almost zero like you know you pay property tax here in Canada but yeah so the the plan was basically move out of the city move to here in this middle of nowhere Place uh but be able to own our house and um and we did that and so now we don't have basically any expenses um all we got to buy is food and if I ever stop making money then it will be very very easy to just cut expenditure to almost zero and so have I reached escape velocity yeah absolutely I think so and but it's not because I make a ton of money it's because I don't spend money right yeah yeah no that makes complete sense okay so the YouTube channel got you there yeah because well well that's a big question right there's

this big giant question mark over the YouTube like game developer devlog space which is is it actually worth it to do Dev Vlogs to in the end the the Dirty Little Secret is everyone's promoting their game and getting wish list that way so my question to you is is did YouTube get you where you are now or was YouTube actually kind of a waste of time we're gonna get back to the conversation really quick I did want to let you know if you want to make a 3D game and well you don't really know how to start and you want to jump into unity and make a a game in 15 minutes I'm actually going to do that I can show you how to do that it's totally free little workshop below um so click below sign up while you're listening to this podcast and you'll get instant access and learn how to make a game in 15 minutes it's actually really fun uh it's taught by me so anyway I just want to let you know thanks let's get back to the conversation with Ponte let's go no man YouTube is uh the only reason I am where I

am asteris um if you make devlogs on YouTube the ad revenue is garbage you can get sponsors but I don't like sponsors and I was like I did a couple of them and it was just like I'll do sponsors if I have to and the moment I don't have to do sponsors anymore that is it and so I don't do sponsors anymore um and I don't do videos anymore as you might have noticed so I I'll answer your questions in a moment about what I'm at with YouTube but um I think it's important for people to take a very level-headed approach to game development and understand that it is extremely hard it's not for everyone and that's okay like it it's just not for everyone and if you just want to make a bunch of money then you know become a banker or something you'll make way more money and it'll be way easier right like it's just not very good for making money at the same time you know there's a lot of game

developers out there that make a lot of money so it's a bit of a weird one but the question I guess you're asking is is Dev making devblogs worth it so in my experience what I have learned from YouTube is kind of how humans interact with media and like it really taught me how short people's attention span is um what is entertaining or not you know these type of more these things I had never really thought about and you know after kind of figuring out like okay I I kind of get it right like how do you keep people's attention for a certain amount of time I was able to then take what I learned there and put it in the climbing game it's taught me a lot about like just you know about the whole dynamic between content creators and um and Their audience and kind of

what what they think about when they're making content right and that allowed me to make the climbing game uh but I don't want it to sound like I just made it just to make money like that game has been that that's I remember when I played Bennett F's game back in 2017 uh when it just came out and I was just like holy crap I love this like I just I actually love it everybody says it's like oh they hate the game no no no I love it I it's one of my favorite games I just love it I thought it was so interesting like dude like the hammer how it's like how and I remember like when I just started learning Unity I tried so many times to recreate it and I just couldn't understand how it was done like it just felt so unique and like you mentioned uh that punch a bunch and the climbing game are sort of different mhm but they are also kind of similar in the sense that I I guess what really motivates me is trying to come up with interesting controls and games

right like it's punch a bunch has a very unconventional unconventional control scheme uh because you kind of lean the upper body with one stick and then that determines how you punch I guess not just like press X to punch right I mean I did in the end have to implement that because people didn't understand how to play it uh so I learned a lot from that like don't make weird complicated games that people don't understand uh but you know and that that kind of carried over to the climbing game where I was like I wanted to make something that felt intuitive but still felt unique like I didn't just want it to be like oh hold up to climb right like that's not interesting to me at least um so the whole climbing game has been in the back of my mind for many years and so it was a it was my dream game I guess a little bit but um it was a calculated dream game but it wasn't it wasn't so calculated of thinking well I want to make a ton of money from streamers playing this game

but cuz you did mention that that it wasn't your your end all be all goal but do you feel like I guess a big question here that a lot of people are probably wondering is should streaming be some sort of foundation for your game if you want if you want to make money and you want to do well is thinking of streamers while you're creating your game is that important I mean it can be right can be I don't think it's necessary um but you have to have some sort of marketing for a game right like and I think that's also like a big bad word marketing um but I think people don't really think about Marketing in the right way I think when when you hear the word marketing people go like that's just making trailers and getting a publisher and then paying for ads that that's not really me guess that's a form of marketing right but put

it this way anything that convinces a player to press the buy button on your game is marketing so whether that's like a screenshot on steam or a little tagline you put in your steam description or a streamer playing your game that's all marketing right like even the graphics of your game is marketing it it's conveying something to the player that makes them want to play your game and I don't think it's a word that should be uh you know it's not a bad word it's just it's a very broad term so you have to have some sort of marketing for your game like you have to have something that makes the player want to play the game right sure sure uh you know does it because I think like Jonas's game uh Throne fall fall I don't think a ton of streamers played that as far as I know and that sure made a lot of money so I mean I don't think it's necessary uh to have streamers play your

game but it is a way to get exposure for your game right sure well you know I'm looking it up here let's take a look so that we can fact check ourselves in real time sure yeah throne throne fall let's play so I'm just looking at YouTube uh we've got sure we've got a pretty good amount of streaming actually Oh Yeah from Throne fall oh yeah what there's one here that's got 296,000 views oh no they made it they made a cartoon out of it um yeah I mean it's it's pretty much all over YouTube um I don't know if it's like blowing up like a lot of other streamable games like yours for example like if I look up yours here um a difficult game about climbing that I would say that your game is much much more streamable I mean you've got Markiplier for God's sake 4.4 million views by the way how did that feel when you found out he played you know I think he cheated

wait what I think he cheated you look at the last episode and the arms go like wonkier and wonkier and wonkier the more he plays and I was like oh my God I had a bug in the game and blah blah blah blah blah I was like looking like frantically like what happened how did it break and then I noticed that when speedrunners were playing the game and they were using like these save states to like cheat so that if you fall you get to teleport back some of them weren't programmed right and so it shifted the way things look so I think he cheated all right Markiplier if you're listening right now you got some some questions to answer but I'm not sure I can't confirm but I it could just be that I programmed the game bad it's just that I have watched a lot of people stream that game and I have never seen that before so I was like what is going on here I think you cheated yeah so so yeah I mean obviously we're looking at that's so funny we're looking at your uh just crazy views crazy views for for your game and so the marketing the

marketing of this game was am I correct in saying it was 100% um driven by streaming correct yeah did you also no you took advantage of the YouTube devlogs for punch a bunch to get wish lists but it didn't seem like you used YouTube to market the difficult game about climbing so my question for you is it seems as if the dev logs on YouTube weren't really that valuable as a marketing tool is that correct uh yeah so I guess that goes back to a previous question as well just like a more broad question like is making Dev Vlogs uh you know good on YouTube and I kind of went off on a tangent saying that you know I learned a lot from making them but is it good to get wish list from devlogs uh depends if you're Danny yeah absolutely right but like I think there are two types of devlogs there is one type of devlog

which is something that for example Dev duck is doing you know Dev Duck Right hey you should get him on the podcast oh I will sorry I'm not going to tell you what to do but I would watch that podcast I like Dev duck he's one of the reasons I started doing this in the first place cuz I was like dude this is cool I like this I can do this I can do this stuff oh yeah no definitely going to get him on I'm going to do my best at least so we'll see yeah um but anyway so but here's the thing right like his videos appeal to game developers and game developers are going to wish list your game but they're not going to buy it and that's the problem so like when you make Dev logs you're appealing to developers and when you're making video games and you want to sell them you don't want to appeal to game developers you want to appeal to Gamers and Gamers don't watch Dev vogs so you have a bit of a problem there I think that there's definitely a beautiful community in the YouTube world with Dev vogs now and it's becoming more and more you know every year um and I think I think it's awesome for getting feedback and it's great to

just kind of get your stuff out there and get people to look at it I think it's great for that but it's not a good way to get wish lists yeah I agree or to get players to look at your game but it really does doesn't it it really does come down to the the the the angle like are you making are you making edutainment like really funny silly videos that kind of just peel back a layer of development but primarily it's just for gamers who who just want to be interested in your game yeah that's one kind of content Danny does it really really well and I feel like you kind of did content like that I tried I I desperately tried to make funny videos but the problem is like look man it takes a long time to make games especially if you're alone and making Dev Vlogs that are fun to watch take even more time so I was like oh I'm going to make a video a week and it just turned into like this clown show and I feel like I wasn't genuine and I feel like it was just like it I I was like what is this what what uh and but people

liked it and they were like dude py more Dev vogs and it was like I like I don't know man and so I remember at the end of punch a bunch and so punch a bunch was my first game right and uh the reason I made that project was because I wanted to learn how to make games and I was like I'll just document it on YouTube as I learn right uhhuh but many times during the developments like I think I'm going to just scrap this game and and make a real game because cuz I feel like it wasn't I felt like it wasn't good it didn't turn out the way I should have done way more prototyping but people were like kind of hyped up about it which was kind of weird I was like well people really seem to want this game so I think I'd been developing for 2 years and I just felt like I wasn't making progress because I was just making videos instead and uh I had quit my job cuz I was like I'm going to have like the YouTube income pay for my bills and it did a little bit also my wife was uh she's started a completely

different she started a home decor website which started making a ton of money and so I could kind of relax and be like well okay we have enough money right we bought this house we paid it off and we had savings from before right so it's like this was all according to the plan like we wanted to have no expenses so that I wouldn't need to make a bunch of money uh and so I was like well I think I'm going to finish this game I was at a Crossroads where it was like either I just go all in on YouTube and just make that a thing and maybe I'll just scrap the whole game development thing or I'll go all in on Game Dev and just make way fewer videos the pro okay so the problem with Dev Vlogs is that you're like you're you're looking at other YouTubers like uh I don't know PewDiePie Markiplier these people I mean I guess not PewDiePie he retired but like you know YouTubers they make like one or two videos a day or one video a week if it's like if they're on a really slacky schedule right like one video a week is like in in the YouTube space is like nothing so you as a developer feel like oh I got to make a video week right and so then it becomes like well I didn't

make any progress on my game this week because I was editing my video so I guess I'll just make like top 10 assets on the unity store instead right and so it just becomes like you're fetching for content and nobody wants to watch that right but I think that when you're in that Loop you kind of lose track of what people actually want to watch and so you just kind of do anything to just get an upload in right while you're not working on your game um but you know there are examples of people that make a video every 6 months or a year or whatever and they get lots of views but they spend a lot of time on the video so I was like well what if I could do something like that instead where were because like it's look man like nobody cares if you added a health bar to your game that's just how it is like if you're like oh look this week I added a health bar and I made it wiggle a little bit when you lose Health right like it it just it's not interesting to anyone really cuz like a real developer will be like yeah that's very trivial and someone who is aspiring to be a developer they want like big like oh dude like I made a game

in a two days right like that's what they want to see uh and real developers know they know that that's not that's right so well this is this is why I I stopped I stopped doing Dev Vlogs and and people listening right now are like then why does Thomas do YouTube content like about game devs and for me it's like well number one I love doing it and I love talking to developers like you but also I have an educational I have an educational platform and program and that's how I bring that so I run multiple businesses I've got my game studio and then I also have an educational platform where I teach about Game Dev so my my target market is not game like I'm not trying to sell my games on my channel and so I think that confuses a lot of people when they see me constantly uploading videos they're thinking well why is he not trying to get wish list and I'm like that's that's not what this channel is for and I was talking to um in a previous conversation I talked with um uh um Chris Sakowski

and he was like the best way the best way to get wish lless is streamers it's not your devlogs your devlogs will help like they might get you to like 10,000 maybe 20,000 wish lists and that's a good thing and I think it's a great start but you're not going to get those Gang Busters like 100,000 wish lists from devlogs unless unless you're Danny do you agree with that yeah but I think it's important to kind of establish and say that look Danny wasn't making Dev vogs right because nobody else is getting those results and if you look at Danny's videos they're not really devad vogs they're entertainment videos that work like they're sort of like and that's I guess like I were jumping around a little bit but that's sort of what I tried to do with the climbing game that I I thought of it like this is not a Dev log this is something that is accompanying the game it's something something that is uh

lifting the game up like it's part of the experience of the game because what and this was actually my wife's idea and it was a great idea so thanks Viv uh but in the menu of my game there's like a little button that says like Watch How I made this game and you click on it and it takes you to the to the video and most huge streamers like lwig for example saw that button and we're like hey let's check this out uh and he watched the entire video on stream and was like found it to be very funny I was like oh you know and because I made some jokes like oh you know you're probably going to fall here but whatever and then he was like like he felt like kind of mocked by the video and so I think it really felt fun to watch the video especially after you had played the game a little bit but if I had made a video I was like okay uh now I'm going to start by programming here and I'm going to add this line of code here like they would click off the video in two seconds right so that's why I

think like so I guess that's so your question is like what am I where am I at with YouTube right now so yeah so anyways to just so I started making fewer videos of punch a bunch and I I was like I'm only going to make a video when I actually have a lot of progress so that I have something to talk about and where I can like um sort of talk about it in an entertaining way without getting like like like too nerdy right uh so that anyone could watch and be like oh hey this is like so cool like you're making a game and I feel like I'm kind of with you on the journey without having to be super technical right so it feels more like an entertainment thing than anything else right and that's when my view started really going up like up until that point and you can really see it on my channel too like you can see the thumbnail it's like basically when I started with black text in the middle

that's when I totally shifted my mindset for YouTube and I was like I'm going to try to make videos that are fun to watch and that have a lot of like uh content and not just a bunch of jokes and stuff right well were you shifting your target market for your videos is that what you're doing you were deciding you know what I'm going to go after the gamers and not the developers I guessed something in the middle at the time I was like well I I you know I I clearly there's a hunger to watch interesting videos about game development because I like Sebastian Lago for example he was getting millions of views on some of his videos and I was like I'm getting 20,000 views which means that you know it's just the videos were just getting pushed to the same people and because they were so granular it was like you had to have watched everything before to kind of understand what was going on and you just end up in this like sort of Circle of yourself like only your own videos recommend your videos um and so I was like well I need to make more open open ended videos that have like a start a

middle and an end that it's like okay this video I'm going to make music for my game and then it's like uh you know start I learned to make music uh bought that keyboard and at the end of the video I actually had some music and it was like sort of self closing and so that sort of became my strategy for making videos and I think people really started enjoying them more because it felt more satisfying to watch them they felt like you know they could follow along and they understood what was happening instead of like being just like oh you know like I made a health bar like it's not interesting right um yeah yeah well that that makes me think about your your you mentioned earlier that you said that you're you're very strategic about how you develop games um and it sounds like you're very strategic about about YouTube as well and you know if it's not if it's not if it's not paying off if there's no real uh career move um I I think a lot of YouTubers will just

say look it's just not worth uploading every week it's just not worth it if if the the career results aren't there um and I don't I don't I don't see anything wrong with that I YouTube is insanely timec consuming yeah it and that's why I do these podcasts because it's like it's just easier to make content and people seem to be enjoying them so I'm happy to do them it's just a conversation I get to meet you know insanely talented developers um but yeah it's a it's a huge time suck and Game Dev as a whole is a huge time suck as well yeah especially just the the just even like talking with Jonas tyroller last week his entire strategy and I want to talk about strategy in just a second his entire strategy of building Throne fall and using sort of this prototypical approach was super duper fascinating to me but seemed like such a massive time

suck to spend on the front end of development spend all this time not only making YouTube videos but doing how many prototypes I think he did like 20 or something is that true for you in your in your Game Dev approach are do you have a a very precise approach for making your games or do you sort of Just Wing it shoot from the hip no no no I don't shoot from the hip really um but I don't do a bunch of pro typing either so I guess it kind of goes hand in hand with like what I was doing with YouTube so I finished punch a bunch eventually and I was making those videos and I finally started getting like actually a lot of views on YouTube like some of the videos had like a million or two million views on them uh which is like insane for a Dev vog if you think about it that's not what you get on dev vogs right so I was like okay well clearly I'm doing something right here right and then I finished punch a bunch and I had already like started

prototyping a little bit cuz I was like you know what maybe I can make my Bennett game after this game now that I I have some traction on YouTube I have some people following me punch a bunch sold uh I had a goal of 10,000 units for punch a bunch and I surpassed that which was great but not by a lot so you know I I had some money I think you know in the first year it made probably like you know $150 ,000 or something like that mhm and you know if you split it out over 3 years that's not a lot of money you know uh I mean it is after tax as well you get taxed a lot in Canada um which is where I live and uh you know yeah but it it was good and also I made the money all in one year so then you have to pay super tax right like you can't just that's right yeah super tax that's right yeah so you know it was good but I was like well I mean what if I make my next game and it sucks right so it's like okay next game I put a goal up I was like okay 100 ,000 units next game I make I want to sell 100,000 units

and then I was like okay and then I had to make a very difficult decision about YouTube it's like should I make Dev vogs should I not make devlogs that kind of comes back to what you were asking before like have I just abandoned my audience if you're listening yeah sorry dude no I'm just I'm just I'm just kidding look I had to make a really difficult decision and I had to decide whether like should I make dead Vlogs about this game or should I not not and I was like well what is most beneficial for the game and I was like if I make you Dev vogs I'm going to have to spoil the whole game because otherwise what do you make Dev logs about right and I really wanted it to be like and I thought about that cuz I was like I want the people who watch the video I want them to want to play the game and I don't think that's a bad thing to want like I was like you know and so what can I do to make people want to play the game H well don't like I think one of the main things that you know drive us

forward as a species is curiosity so if you make a bunch of devlogs about your game where you're showing literally every single aspect of it unless it's like some super mechanical game maybe like Factoria or something like that sure for me open world or creative they can play the game and be part of the community as it's being made totally but for my game I feel like a big um so the way I designed the game is that uh the climbing game is that there are different sections right and they're kind of different from each other like the first section is sort of like this rainy Moody sort of West coasty Vibe I guess which is where I live and so it's inspired a lot by the nature here but then you enter this jungle and then all of a sudden you're in this like sort of ancient Roman thing and so I I kind of thought like you know hey a big part of the game is like because is a difficult game right and you fall down a lot and you have to start over but but you have to always motivate the player to want want to keep going right and so I thought a big

motivation would be that the players want to explore the next like what's going to come next right like I just don't know what to expect anymore and I thought by making a bunch of devlogs I would kind of ruin that and and then I was like well nobody's going to want to play it right um so I was I made a really difficult decision to just not make any videos at all about it cuz I thought that that would be better for the game to just keep it a secret and keep people guessing and obviously as usual I had a a timeline of 6 months I wanted to finish the game it took a year so I was thinking that there would be like sort of like the six month break from YouTube which turned into a year um dude that's still really good like to to hit a year with that game is incredible and you were solo as well which is really impressive yeah I'm kind of surprised now is sometimes when I think back at it and I didn't even work that much I worked like between 6 and 8 hours a day I would say so I was like how did I do that I'm doing something new now and I'm just like man I the pace is low

compared to before and you made all of the assets well the majority of the assets you made from scratch right yeah why now first off that came off really bad first off I'm super impressed what drove you to desire to make all those assets from scratch when in reality you you could have taken a bunch of like Mega scans you know and just put them into the game game even though I will say the game looks incredible don't get me wrong but there is that Temptation right to just throw in assets and call it a day sure yeah I mean I think it depends on the game but uh a huge contributing factor to that was um remember that game only up uhhuh uh-huh remember how that's not on Steam anymore oh you want to know why lawsuits yeah cuz they grabbed or he or whatever grabbed a bunch of assets off the internet that were supposed supposedly free to use but had just been

reuploaded by someone and they didn't actually have the legal capacity to upload it so I was like I got super paranoid I was like okay so you can't trust anything so I was like you know what I'm just going to make everything myself but also it makes it so that the the game feels more cohesive because if I started using it does feel cohesive yeah like if you use Mega scans it like it looks too photo realistic I don't think it would work in the game like it's supposed to be a little cartoony right so if it if I started putting Mega scans in there I don't think it would um have the right aesthetic I guess um I agree there I think there's something like dude I think there's something subconscious where players know whether a game was an asset game or not yeah you don't want to it might not be able to pinpoint exactly why but they just they could feel it it's kind of like AI art you just know totally you can just sense it yeah you just feel it you want it to feel custom like it's like intentional right and the thing with the the climbing game is that it's very it's like a lot about the surfaces and you know like it's a game about surfaces that's what I always said

about the game it's not a game about climbing it's a game about surfaces so you have these slippery surfaces and the more grippy ones and then the moving objects and all that stuff and so I was very like um intentional with how I made them look so that it would be clear to the player you know what can you climb on what is not grabbable and all this stuff and so yeah I did try early on with just like some I found some rocks or whatever on the unity asset store and it's it's just wasn't really working right I think Bennett did that and I think it works because it's so simple the hammer touches something and that's it right it's not really that complicated but in my case it's really about like where you you have to really look at the surfaces and so it was just too hard to find stuff that felt right and was cohesive so that's why in the end I modeled it but you know I have a long uh career in VFX so I was using blender and stuff to make assets and I'm pretty good at it I'm pretty fast at making them so it's

not really a big deal for me um so I felt like an okay approach to to just make the assets um humanoid characters though you refused to make that I didn't do that one did I well what's the point right like if you can find something I agree I agree you know I I did I and I actually did it a few times I I did find some assets that I didn't make myself but what I did was that I textured it all myself so that to make sure that I had a style of the textures at least sure and that worked so I think I mean yeah um man dude that is so freaking impressive that you did all that cuz we we basically did all of the artwork from scratch in Twisted Tower which is what we're we're currently working on it's a Bioshock Bioshock but Disney World kind of game and I don't I I recall telling my team and and the 3D artist his name is Felipe he's brilliant I told him at the beginning of the project I was like please please please just use assets

like flip them let's just get this done let's not worry about creating everything from scratch and if he's listening Philippe I love you he would he would go and go ahead and make them from scratch anyway and then tell me later and so every day at the end of the day there was a bunch of new assets that were created from scratch and so I'd keep telling them use assets use assets use assets and looking back now with the Advent of AI crap and just the asset flip games flooding the Steam Market I just want to give him a big hug because his his principles his gut principles were correct and mine weren't and I think that there is a huge gap in this in the indie game Market for games that they just have that from scratch look they just feel handmade homemade human games you know

what I mean yeah I think it's probably better to make a game that looks bad than a game that looks good but looks like an unreal five engine game like I'm getting the moment I see Unreal Engine five I'm just like yeah I don't think so it all looks the same and it's like even like kind of like the Harry Potter game which was cool it was like I was like this looks like unreal Unreal Engine 5 and I looked it up and sure enough it was Unreal Engine 5 right well what what do you mean by that so I I I know what you mean but I want you to clarify it for the audience why is it a problem that Unreal Engine 5 has a look why is that a problem because it makes your game look too much like I mean okay it makes look it makes your game feel generic and there's nothing worse than if your game feels generic right and you might be like oh well your game looks like Bennett's game but my game is very similar and probably appeals to the same AUD as Bennett's game and not a lot of other

games look like that so it was a very intentional decision and I hope Bennett isn't offended he didn't seem to be on Twitter but I I couldn't be sure I was just like you know I'll just go for it like it's just a bald dude in a loin cloth like it's not really that specific but no dude no he's not offended and and I saw his tweet and it was he seems he seems um he seems cool with it he seems cool with it and I I think look dude if your game looked like um like some what's what's there's a game called roller Drome very stylized sure yeah if he had created a hyper stylized look and you like copied that look I'd be like bro but like your the style of your game is fairly realistic with a little bit of styli eyes so it's I don't think you I don't think you copied anything that was like fundamental to his aesthetic I mean if I SW swapped out the character for something totally different I don't think you would associate so much with Bennett's game anymore it's really about that bald Guy naked guy right or whatever um but you

know it's like I I I was I had a lot of like I spoke to Jonas Ty roller um like a yeah a month or so before release or something and I showed him the trailer I was like hey could you just look at this and let me know what you think and look at my steam page like and he was like yeah this is this is looking good man and and I was like yeah I'm kind of worried that people are going to think that I'm just like copying because it's not I was like it's not a copy of Bennett's game like I put a lot of effort into making he yeah it only took me a year but I put a lot of effort into making the game feel unique and to have like and so I was like I was worried that people would just oh it's just a copycat game and Jonas was like yeah well you're going to get a lot of that anyways doesn't matter what you do but I think it's probably good because you actually want people to associate your game with something otherwise they just have no idea what it's about and uh that made a lot of sense to me I was like yeah you know what that makes sense and um I guess intuitively somehow that's why I

did it but it really made sense when he said that I was like yeah that that makes perfect sense it uh it it's there's two things going on there um and by the way I know exactly how you feel uh I'm making a game that looks like Bioshock yeah and um I guess I can say this out loud but I I'm pretty sure Ken LaVine is coming on the podcast um he and I have been messaging each other um and for those who don't know he's the creator of Bioshock but point being is I was so freaking paranoid and I was calling my publisher I was talking all over the place with people my subscribers like hey do I need to make this game look tuny do I need to make it look different like what do I need to do because it looks so similar to Bioshock and my biggest fear my biggest fear was people buy it because they expect Bioshock and then they don't get BioShock that's a big problem you have to deliver on it yeah totally

that's right the problem is this and this is what I struggle with is sure it's not going to be as good as Bioshock there's no way like there is no freaking way it's it's a you know I don't know what the budget of that game was 50 yeah but like you don't know that because like what was the budget of Animal Crossing no not Animal Crossing what's the game har Harvest Moon what was the budget of that I don't know but it was probably more than stard Valley and stard Valley sure sold a lot more copies than Harvest Moon ever did so you can't really you don't really know that I think you just have to I mean look I think that um you were asking about game development and how I approach it and how I'm methodical about it so like I'm a pretty methodical person I like to have things be you know you know semi- structured um maybe you can tell I'm a very chaotic person so if I don't have like structure then I just get nothing done so you're going to have to just reel me in if things go sideways here hopefully you listening you're just going to have to sit through it and

hopefully you get something out of it dude that is what that I I was told side note I was told that's why people like listening to the podcast because it's it's very real it's honest and we're we're we're just we're just chatting so don't worry about it keep keep keep going on side tangents I love it I mean I guess a lot of people I don't really know who listens I listen to your podcast I like your podcast it's like I wasn't really watching you a lot before um because you're like you said you're kind of teaching and you're appealing to probably a bit of newer developers um but I find the podcast to be really nice and I feel like I got to know you a lot better through just watching so I'm I guess super parasocial now I don't know but um I think it's really great and uh but I'm guessing there's mostly developers so I think we can kind of nerd out a little bit I guess I'm not sure yeah it's developers it is developers we can nerd out and and that is my target market it always has been okay so out so

you know here's the thing when you make a game right like I can only speak for my own experience but what I did with my last game and which is definitely what I will keep doing moving forward is you can't like I don't approach things from I want to make money perspective right I approached it from like what do I cuz I'm I'm a very gamer I'm not the type of person who just like plays all games and just like SNS thousands of hours like I think pubg I have 250 hours on which is like my top game and everything else is like that's like my most played game and so I I don't play like crazy amounts of games and I'm a I'm a late adopter I wait for people to play the crap out of games before I play them so that I'm like okay this is probably good I'm probably going to like it I don't just I rarely buy things on launch and stuff like that um I think you you you shouldn't work on a game that like if

you played stardew Valley or dark souls and you're like damn I would love to make a game like that and then you make that it's like well guess what you just did you made like a watered down version of whatever game you were playing right it's like yep I don't think that's the right idea I'm more like if I play a game that I'm like dude I just want more of this which is what I felt with Bennett's game like I was like oh this is awesome this is great like this is this is going to revolutionize The Game Dev industry because it was at the time games were bigger it was more about AAA and it was kind of that shift the indie game shift it was still happening and like I I'm also like a late adopter I don't I I tend to buy games after they've been out for a few years and gotten some good reviews and stuff so I'm kind of also behind the curve a little bit but I it was one of the first games that I played that was made by one person right and I was kind of dreaming of making games I was like dude this is like I could do something like this maybe right like it sparked that um

spark I guess in I was like you know this is awesome like you make a little game that is hyper hyper focused on just this one mechanic that a AAA Studio couldn't dream of making because it wouldn't make enough money yeah and so I was like dude this is going to blow up there's going to be so many games like this and there just wasn't and I was kind of disappointed I was like what where are all the Bennett games like and where is Bennett why is he not making a game he still hasn't made a game since that game right like he's working on one which I'm going to play obviously but it's been a long time now so I was like where are all the games and yes there are games like jump King and and some other like alt f4 and these kind of Rage games but uh the way I looked at my game is that I didn't I never classified it as a rage game I kind of called it a rage light like I I like obviously it has the rage element of falling down and starting over but I wanted it to be that every every time you climb back up you're learning something and that the controls

are sort of strange and I want to depth in the game like I my dream was that it could take you 20 hours to beat the game or 3 minutes right right based on your level of skill and everything and I wasn't sure if that would be the case but luckily actually that that's that's exactly what happened I think the world record is sub three minutes now holy crap which is pretty crazy yeah it's pretty crazy did they are they are they glitching it out or no no no it's like because it's physics based right so they were doing all these weird Maneuvers to make these super long jumps and doing all these like skips and stuff but it's no glitching and I'm I'm so like that's probably the biggest satisfaction of all of this like just seeing the speedr runners really push the game to the Limit like I've been trying myself I think um I can do 8 minutes or something like that but I am cannot even begin to compete with these people so you had a

game idea that was it was based at a core game mechanic and you everything else everything else was secondary to that single mechanic yeah man I I started like the the first draft of the game I just made it all with like white boxes like no materials like I it starts with the game mechanics yeah if it's not fun when the game looks like crap it's not going to be fun when it looks nice right it's got to feel good when it looks bad and then you can you know kind of start dressing in things and then it feels even better but it's got to be fun at its core I think yeah was punch a bunch fun at its core um I think that there are elements in the game yeah I'm proud of that game it's not the best game I recognize that it's not for everyone for sure I have seen a few people like writing to me saying like you know I played the game and I hated it at first but i' I've

since played it and I completed it I did all the achievements and I really understand what you were trying to do with the game and I was like yeah that's really nice to see cuz I really did have a vision for the game mhm uh but I think it was it didn't really come across that clearly H so was a it was a marketing issue yeah and when I say marketing issue it's like if you look at the graphics it looks kind of like a kids game I see uh you know bright colors you know Blobby character they're simple designs but then the game is actually quite difficult and it's got some like you need to be very good at coordinating which kids aren't generally so it kind of it's like a total disconnect there the game shouldn't have looked the way it looks uh so that's probably my biggest mistake with that game well how would you have done it differently the look like what would you do um probably just a bit like uh uh I don't know probably a bit grittier

but at the same time not like it was a humorous game so yeah yeah I don't know actually I've thought about that and I don't know because the reason I did it the way it was was because like I need to make YouTube thumbnails that catch people's attention so I'm going to use like these super saturated colors like red uh yellow and blue I don't like green so there's no green in my games color green me neither it's always a neon a neon yellow I always choose that over yeah that's true yeah you have your color scheme never green yeah I don't like green so that's why I picked those colors but I primarily I picked the color and the design for YouTube thumbnails which is kind of weird but that that's how it started and I just didn't really I wasn't experienced at the time I was just like doing things to do them and I just wanted an excuse to make videos and just you know try try it out right yeah so it was definitely not a very wellth thought out look uh whereas my new game is way more thought out but to answer your a question like what

is methodical about my game development is that I don't like to take a lot of like too many chances and like I said like the goal was to really reduce our expenses and make sure that we could actually survive and and not having to go back to work or you know so because like I think that you know yeah you don't want to like making money is seen as a bad thing in in a lot of people's eyes and and people might be disappointed pointed that I'm making fewer videos and all that stuff but all the things that I've done so far has really led to where I am today and it's allowed me to continue making games and I feel like it would be a bigger disservice to everybody if I just kept pumping out half-ass videos and then eventually had to go back to work and quit this all together like I think it's better if I show up once a year than never ultimately right yeah um no that makes sense man that makes sense you know I I'm trying to figure I was watching your video about the

development and it it's almost like it's a great video by the way to everybody listening you've got to watch the production or the the behind the scenes video of of uh the climbing game because thanks dude it's amazing it's such a good video I watched I watched the whole thing and I usually don't watch every the entire YouTube videos I watch the whole thing and something that really struck out to me is it's like maybe it's just the way you edited the video I don't know cuz I I've done this where I just sort of I skip over a lot of stuff but uh it seems like you knew what the core gimmick was from the start and it's like that is such a rare thing with making games when everything is just manifest immediately in your brain and you're like holy crap I know what this game is and now I just got to put the code and the models into the into Unity and we're good is that how it came about was it just an

idea that manifest itself or was it actually a very lengthy I guess prototyping process I mean I made the game in a year so it wasn't that lengthy but I would say I probably spent 3 to four months just fidgeting around with the controls and yeah no I was definitely not like that clear cut because I did like I don't yeah like in the video I mentioned that I I thought that it could be turn-based first mhm and that was clearly a bad idea um so that's kind of how it started I was like you know it feels too slow it's kind of boring this is not speedrunnable right like it just felt boring right so I was like What if I just made it like real time like live right like you you just you grab with each button and you let's make it faster like let's make it fast right yeah and um then I started doing like uh I just

started like mashing in a bunch of assets and stuff and you could climb on them and there was no friction or anything like that it was just like climbing I was like this is just boring it's just like the only tricky thing is is um jumping so it's just a bunch of jumping and that's boring at the end of the day right like you can't like it's only fun for so long right sure and so I was like well what can I do to make it interesting right and and and I remember do you you know the game uh worms uh-huh oh yeah grew up on that you know yeah so you know how it's like all handrawn and there are all these different things like there's a pineapple here and there's a thing there but the surfaces they don't correspond to anything like when you when you place a grenade like it'll blow up an equal hole and it has nothing to do with the art and that's kind of what the game felt like like you were just climbing on random crap and it wasn't like like you just stopped looking at the environment sure it wasn't really thematic with different biomes yeah it just felt like it's just whatever you can climb on anything and so I was like I spent a lot of time then I was like I got to make it so that people look at the game like I want

people to look at the environments and really like stop and think like holy what do I have to do now like wait a minute no that I can't do that and so I really thought a lot about how can I make people pay attention to the game and not just like oh da here's a jump you know um and that's when I came up with like what if the different surfaces have different properties yep that was brilliant dude I think that was probably the the most brilliant after the core game Loop of the hands I think that that was your most important discovery of that game you know the surfaces are just incredible and that and it totally totally separates you from the other game right which is a hammer and this is actually no it's actually all about surfaces it's a totally different game it's just got the same it's a rage game about falling but other than that it's it's basically a totally different concept it is is yeah it's got the same like physics based stuff and you know there are a lot of similarities of

course but I do think it stand I think it stands on its own two legs and i' I've seen a lot of people saying that that they approached it thinking it was just going to be a clone but then they actually really ended up enjoying it so but yeah I do think like once I figured out that it's a game about surfaces that's when it kind of just clicked and it was just about finishing it up and polishing it um would you agree that games manifest themselves to the developers and the only way the only way to discover what the game is is to make the game yeah partially yeah I think so or is it you should be able to plant it out entirely or like pretty close to entirely before you even open Unity no I don't think so for me it doesn't at least I mean maybe you could do that but I think you if you do that you're going to be making a very structured predictable game like maybe factorio could be made that way partially yeah but uh I don't like you gdds like game design documents or anything like that because

I yeah it's for me like so I didn't do any play testing for the game which is kind of weird I guess uh for a game that's about a difficulty curve right I kind of chaned it and I was like I'll just uh play test it myself and that'll be good uh I think it worked largely there were a couple of areas that were a little bit too difficult it turns out but um other than that I felt like it was pretty good and I kind of made the game like as I was learning the controls myself I just kept like making each section like the better I got like the harder I could make it right yeah so it was kind of like my own pace of learning the game that I created each step so from and and then a lot of ideas just came from randomly testing things right so I definitely don't think you can plan ahead too much because then you also get like boxed into something that might not necessarily be a good idea sure sure like turn-based climbing like turn-based climbing seemed

like a great idea in my head and then I tried it and I was like this is not fun yeah at all so yeah well yeah I think that I think that's what I've been learning um I've been learning it from you I've been learning it from Jonas Ty roller which is instead of trying to pinpoint all these different Mechanics for an indie game instead what you should do is pick one really great mechanic and just almost like it's almost like dating it's like growing in a strong deep intimate relationship with a single mechanic and N nurturing that mechanic through the entire development process now I've heard some people tweeted some people have tweeted me and said man that is a really sad State for the indie game industry that you have to make tiny little games that are essentially gimmicky right it's like one little gimmick and I'm sitting here thinking I guess maybe that is a sad thing but what else are we supposed to do like there's there's limited time there's limited

team size we don't have the money or the time to create all these complicated mechanics why is that sad though because it make what what the end result is a bunch of small games that are quote unquote like gimmicky yeah but on the other end of the spectrum you'll have something like Horizon zero Dawn which I know a lot of people like I don't I can't stand those games where it's just like hey why don't we have every game in this game so we're going to have uh like I'm so done with playing these games that have like oh looting and crafting and questing and uh collecting and house building and farming and it's just like it feels like every game has all of those things now and there's no thought whether that actually makes sense in the game or not and so I just feel like I actually that's something I really like about Dark Souls and from soft r games like I didn't play them for a long time and just a few years ago I started playing them and at first I hated them but then I came around and I really started like

feeling like okay this is good stuff like some people say there's a story in Dark Souls there's no story anybody who thinks there's a story in Dark Souls is on crack there's no story The the story is you beating the game that's the beauty like that's the story you just you're you're thrown in this world where you have to like just learn to get through the game and and there's no farming and there's no gimmicks and there's no like distractions right SE even more so uh even better actually that's my favorite of their games and and there was something about that that really resonated and that's sure what I carried into this game that I made I was like okay that's what we're going to do it's going to be a game about climbing and a game about surfaces there's not even going to be a main menu there's not going to be any music there's not going to be uh anything right it's just going to be that climbing like you start the game and you start climbing there's no like like I I've started becoming very allergic to games that have a bunch of text and tutorial and it's just like just let me play the game you know yep yep um so that's just

I mean that's a very personal thing right but that's that's for me how I play games these days like I'm a huge fan of uh like one of my favorite games is the witness John blow's game sure sure I played it a lot I really like it and there's something really satisfying about how the game starts it does have a start screen big mistake no just Kidd but it could have gotone away without it you know it could have it could have you just start in this tunnel and it's like yep you know like there's no like oh oh press like up to move forward it's like duh like clearly like eventually the play cuz I I grew up on the Nintendo and Super Nintendo and there were no instructions and I was Swedish I didn't speak any English so whatever blurbs they put on the screen was like if if I needed to be able to read that to play the game I didn't play it yeah yeah so I just like started mashing all buttons just to see what would happen right and that sense of Discovery was what made me really fall in love with video games I think like I feel like we've kind of lost that a little bit mhm where there's

no sense of Discovery anymore because game developers are so concerned with like oh look a huge game and there's all this stuff back there and there's a bunch of hidden secrets over here that you can go and find out about and and and to go get them you just have to do this one thing and it's like it's no longer a secret right yeah and so for me I if I had a goal with game development and how I like to do things moving forward is to maintain the sense of mystery which is why I stopped making so many YouTube videos because I think it ruins the sense of mystery uh and I am a big fan of mystery that was a really beautiful but that was a long answer to the question and it it was necess no but it was necessary and I think I think you've Justified it because all right I think you've Justified I think you've Justified your absence because I love that it's but the the problem with the problem with everything being

mysterious is if your game is complicated it it doesn't work right like if if if the if your climbing game was super complicated there was a bunch of different buttons you had to press and upgrades and blah blah blah you can't get away with just letting the player figure it out it's like Super Nintendo games they're they they weren't super instructive uh because they were super simple right yeah but you know you I don't know maybe people disagree with this but I think there is a general sentiment that games used to be better A lot of people say that it's like oh man back in the day I mean I think there's a lot of nostalgia involved but I do think that Simplicity is the key to success like you I think so I don't like open World Games with all this stuff like I just it just feels like watered down and Bland to me like I I much prefer something where it's like

focused like this is what we're doing right now right like um yeah at least personally so I love the sense of Discovery right like that's so important to me and and when you have like all these tutorial in the Nintendo fairy here and there it just doesn't feel like I'm discovering anything yep we had a I say we me and my me and my small team we were making we making Twisted Tower and then we were also making this game called Brave boy and it's about this little dog and you have a sword and you hop around on you know the highlands in in the Scottish Highlands and there was a mechanic that I just loved and it was it was basically like the Donkey Kong cannons I don't know if you remember those um where you watch out of the canons you just they spin and then you press a and there that was sort of core to the games's demo and it was just really stupid and really fun and silly and I sent it off to a publisher and I was like do you do you want to you know invest in this

game and they were like we love we love how it looks but we want you to make it open world can you try to make it open world and we don't like the Cannons and I was like okay so we spent a month trying to make it feel open world and the whole charm was just removed like yeah but that's what Publishers do they just ruin I have found that to be true and and it's been pissing me off lately so fortunately you know 3D Realms with Twisted Tower they they've basically sort of just they're going to hope they're going to let me make it the way I want to make it um so thank you 3D realms for doing that but I have I have found that Publishers they tend to get their freaking fingers and everything and the problem is the reason they do it is because they're scared they're scared the game's not going to make their money back uh they're scared they're going to piss off their uh border like investors or the board or something like that and so there's this giant hierarchy of

fear right yeah and that really does bring us back to the to sort of wrap this podcast up it brings us a nice little book end which is you're in a position where you're alone making games you've you've made good money on your games and you don't have to live in fear you just get to make the next thing and have fun and that answers the question at the beginning which is do you feel do you feel um less creative or more creative and I think you said you feel more creative right I don't know I don't because I haven't I'm so I'm working on which I haven't released yet mystery you know what I'm saying it's important um but I guess I can give come on yeah I guess I should give something for anyone who listened all this way to the end but uh so I am working on a huge update to the climbing game it will be a massive

update that will expand it like the content I'm making for the game like what I'm making is more than was in the original game MH and it will be a free update so don't worry so if if if you're one of the people that cracked the game now it's your opportunity to buy the game I think it's on sale right now actually it's on the Autumn sale but just know that there will be a huge juicy update coming to the game uh I'm not going to say what it is but it will be I think it'll be fun it'll be good and uh so I definitely feel creative in that sense like I've been able to really sort of explore more about the game and and and now that I've seen people play it I've played it myself a lot um and so I feel like that's been very fulfilling to really sort of cuz I made the game so quickly that I felt like I couldn't I didn't really have time to really explore like what does it mean to have a game about surfaces did I really explore every nook

and cranny about that concept and uh first I thought I did I was like you know there's not really anything else I could have done but turns out there was a lot of stuff that I that I didn't think about that I've now kind of figured out which also goes back to what you were saying before like can you plan it out on pen and paper like no because I thought I had done everything that would be interesting in the game and now it turns out that I have all the stuff that I was like man why didn't I put that in the game and so it's awesome to have an opportunity to to be able to do that and to be able to release it for free as a thank you to everybody who played so but moving forward I don't have a game lined up that I'm going to make after so I guess we'll uh I guess we'll have to see well I think you're in a really good spot dude because you you you own it's something like owning a patent even though you can't really patent a mechanic like the one you've created but you have this you have this mechanic

that is like a gold mine you know what I mean it's like that that single mechanic of grabbing things and climbing things you can just dude you could you could make you could make 10 sequels to this thing or like dlc's if you wanted to and just grab all the cash so I actually really respect that you're just going to include it for free because you could do like a $5 DLC and probably make a million bucks minimum right yeah maybe um but yeah that's why I'm like and that's something I I guess I should say as well is like if you do make a lot of money like I know you you for example and uh I know David wayy as well and uh a lot of other people John Blow like as soon as you guys make money you just like pour some gasoline on it and burn it up uh no don't I I invest I invest a lot of the money I really do I put it into places where it but but you do you you do got to you got to spend some money back into your

business and and um totally and I I never thought I would hire people but I I am getting to a point where I'm like yeah you know what maybe I'll consider it but first and foremost I did exactly that I invested my money and so now it's like even if I make a game and nobody buys it I'm still going to be able to live off the Investments and I think that if you want to do games long term I think you need to kind of figure out something like that because you don't want to be constantly strapped for money and just like living paycheck to paycheck and full disclosure for anybody listening just I like to be as as honest and transparent I make I make really good money from games but I also make really good money from this Channel and the resources and the courses and all that stuff so it people should know that my YouTube channel does generate a significant amount of Revenue on top of my game Studio but that said what I did want to say is there's this very interesting conundrum um with business owners uh which is do you there's a book called

profit first and I think every game developer should should probably read profit first which is the idea is what the moment you make money from let's say your game you immediately as fast as you possibly can take a like I don't know half of that money and you slam it into something that you can't touch so like go buy some land uh go buy some real estate go put it in the stock market put it in your 401k or your solo and do not touch it but there's also another mentality and this is um similar to what I've done I've I've invested but I've also taken money and significance amount of money and just quote unquote burned it on another project and jnan blow is talking about this as well so it is kind of this it's this balance so everybody listening who you're when you're thinking about what do you do when you finally do make some money from your games my answer

is invest a lot of it and then be willing to burn a lot of it and by burn really what you're doing is you're investing it in another project and hoping that it creates more money it's it's kind of like planting seeds you know yeah of course I didn't mean it that way that you're just burning I know I know I know but you know what I'm saying though right like if if you take all the money you make and you hire people and you overhire or whatever and you make this new project that you believe in and it just tanks you just ended your game career right there right and now it's time to go back to work baby and that's not fun nobody wants to do that so I I know it's scary too yeah dude I I don't know if I would hire I don't know if I would well I'll just say this I personally I want to feel out the game industry because it's changing it feels like it's changing so personally what I'm doing is now that we' wrapped up Twisted Tower and now that the team is done with the project um and I've already told the team this um I'm just

going solo for a little bit um yeah man because that's a good idea just to hear and feel out like okay wait a second can I actually make a game for really cheap do I really need a team to do this hire when it makes sense I think right like you hire when you feel like I probably should have hired someone to help me out with what I'm doing right now but at the same time I'm kind of enjoying doing it myself and it's given me time to really think about things and so I think yeah I think that's a great idea hire when it makes sense don't just like I mean you know I I understand that you feel a certain responsibility to your team and that's it's like well I don't want to fire everybody and because they kind of depend on me and just say like hey I'm just going solo but at the same time it's like you might be able to hire them back and I mean I think long term you're you'll be doing your team of disservice to just keep people on payroll just for the sake of it and then like scram be like okay guys we got to make a game and then nobody's actually excited about it and it's just you know what I mean I I know exactly what you

mean and yeah I'm I'm anxious to to get started with 2025 um I've learned so much from this conversation I've learned I really have and I've learned a ton from Jonas Ty roller and Jonathan he man I learned everything I know about game development from Jonas he's the guy well he's he's uh I would say Jonathan Blow is kind of like an Elon Musk type character for Game Dev and I would say something similar not the political Side of Everything But like just the the Brilliance uh the Brilliance of Jonas tyroller is similar it's like he's he's his brain just is like firing on all cylinders he's just he's someone to Aspire to to be like and he's definitely someone that people should follow it's a shame that you and him don't make as many devlogs geared towards game devs because I think people could learn a ton from you I'm not trying to guilt trip you I promise

um that's okay I'm immune you don't care uh I don't care I mean look you got to do what's good for you right like I think that I know people are I know people are like oh man why aren't you making videos anymore you just took the money and ran and it's like yeah yeah and so would you right like I mean in a certain sense it's true but I'm also doing what's good for me and if I don't do what's good good for me it's not going to be good for you either in the long run so I think like am I going to stop making videos no I I have a ton of stuff that I want to do but I want to make sure that it's good and enjoyable I think that's really important yep you know 100% okay link is in the description Mr Pony pants link is in the description for climbing game I'll do punch of Butch in the description as well uh is there anything else you wanted to leave our listeners with before we wrap up here um no I don't know thanks for listening

that's been awesome to kind of I the one thing I I guess the one thing I do miss about YouTube is that I feel like I kind of lost touch and communication with my followers like I feel like I was on a good stri when I was making good amount of videos it felt like we had a bit of community going and I really do miss that and it's something that really pains me so that's the only thing really that that truly pains me but I I know that it would be detrimental in the long run so I'm sorry to everyone who's disappointed but I I'm not stopping making videos there will be more videos don't worry but well for the record I I I for the record I am not trying to guilt you and I am not saying that you should make videos in fact I'll be completely honest with everyone listening I have dreamt about just dropping YouTube it it sounds kind of nice but but it's also a lot of fun it's also profitable it's I learn so much

from game devs so it but it's tough YouTube is hard man I don't I do not blame you one bit for slowing down I think that's fine well thanks man I uh well I'm I'm glad you're um pushing on I'm really enjoying the podcast like I said I've been binging your uh episodes it's been really awesome I've learned a lot Jonas's episode was a huge highlight love that you had John on as well I'm a huge fan and I hope you get more people on I've seen you've been tweeting people so I hope they join in and that we can keep this going and uh yeah I'm excited to watch more podcast I think this is a huge uh it was very needed like I feel like there wasn't really any serious Game Dev podcast out there like on this level and so I'm glad that people are joining in and that's why I was like I'll join in too because like you know I want to if people want to listen then great that's awesome right but um yeah I think it's a great thing to have this podcast I appreciate hearing that dude I really do I I think I'm going to go all

in with the podcast I like it um it's it's got dude it's similar to what you said I'll I'll be honest with you I'm getting emotional right now going to do a cry a bit of crying now I'm about to do a bit of crying in this very raw and real podcast but I'm dead serious that the idea of simplifying my life and just doing you doing the podcast and then just making games is just so exciting to me so I think I might do it I'm excited about it Dev Vlogs are tough man and and doing all these talking head videos and top 10 ways to blah blah blah I'm just like I kind of just want to talk to game devs maybe start maybe start a patreon to keep it afloat and then oh yeah good idea it yeah I mean look I know we're dragging it out a little bit now but oh by the way I do want to say something a lot of people asking how zigg is doing

my dog she was a huge part of devlogs she's turning 17 in a few months so she's what bit blind and a bit deaf but she's going strong so she's still here with us and we love her and so for everybody everybody was wondering here she is and she's good for some reason when you said she's 17 I was like I thought maybe that's Canadian years or something cuz I was like there's no way there's no way that it my dog would live that long in America but then I realized it's all the same there's no conversion it's all the same it's all the same I think maybe the air is maybe a little bit cooler up here but that's about it that might be it no I think you're on uh on to something with your podcast I think it's a really good um good thing and yeah with devlogs I just also here's another thing that I think about devlogs since you mentioned that I think when I started making devlogs there weren't really a lot of devlogs out there there was like Jonas and Dev duck and thin Matrix and a few others mhm but

they just wasn't a lot I was like hey look maybe there's a space here and maybe there's an interest and clearly there was but I think that now there are just so many of them like there's just I I see like almost every day I go on YouTube there's always a new Channel with 60 views that gets recommended there's like so many doing it that I feel that it's like there's not really a Gap in the market anymore for it and so I'm like well I mean does there have to be a gap in the market no but like what I'm saying is that by you not making devlogs it's not like it's the end of the world because there are so many other people out there doing it so well try to figure out like what's the Gap in the market with the indie game podcast scene and it's like well there's not a gap it's just the the podcast kind of they're kind of low quality they're a bit low quality and I think that a lot of people running podcasts lately like they don't actually they aren't interested in running podcasts they just want to become Joe

Rogan or whatever like they it just feels like they just have the podcast for a way to make content and get views but I find that like the questions they ask they just it doesn't seem like they're they haven't researched their guests very much and they don't seem to actually want to you know what I'm saying like it doesn't seem genuine it just seems like so tell me about yourself and then just kind of let the guest Drive the podcast whereas what you're doing is like you have these questions you're helping me cuz I'm this ball of chaos and so it's been very helpful which is why I haven't gone on podcast before because I knew it would just turn into a big mush of whatever but no no no I had faith in you hopefully it turned out okay I don't know well one of the problems I have is that uh people always think I'm interrupting guests um they'll say stop interrupting the guest and I want I want my audience to thank me though because what I'm doing is I'm redirecting them to make sure that we stay in in a good in a good space uh that is interesting

to the audience while also being a good conversation so we'll see you know we'll see what the podcast has I uh I mean it wouldn't be it wouldn't be awful to be the Joe Rogan of Indie Game Dev if especially sell it if if I could sell it for 50 million bucks to Spotify absolutely take the money take the money and then I'll never make a podcast again um I'll go keep going I love watching it and we should do it again sometime maybe we can be I felt like this was very broad maybe we can go more into something I know you're saying that you've been on a mission about the state of the games industry so maybe we'll talk about that I that I dude if you want to come on and talk about 2025 we need to schedule it because I would love to talk about your plan and what you think we should do so maybe that's episode two of our podcast how's that sure why not I don't know if I have an hour of information on that but uh I'm sure we can make it work yeah we'll make it work dude we we'll we'll bring some beer next time and maybe

that'll turn into an hour I think yeah I like it let's do it like a beer uh beer o clock conversation I like it that's right all right Mr potty thank P not pot thanks so much for inviting me on I really appreciate it and thanks everybody for listening and watching and uh support Thomas give him some likes subscribe you know what I'm saying like keep uh follow him on Twitter because the way he gets guests is on our I guess uhhuh uh and by tweeting at people so if you go and retweet it and like his tweets when he's trying to get guests that will make the them more likely to come on so do it support thank you yeah that was spoken that was spoken like a true seasoned YouTuber who knows how to get traction um so you still you still got it in you still got it baby all right take it easy bed cheers you too man hey thanks for watching hope you enjoyed that conversation with pony pants I know I did it was really really fun he's a cool guy uh hey remember link is below

to learn how to make a game in 15 minutes it's a free Workshop no gimmicks just click the link below you'll get instant access and learn how to make a what am I saying a game a 3D game in 15 minutes and uh you'll be learning from me a which is great cuz well I actually don't know why that's great anyway you'll like it click below