How I Made $174,000 With My Game (In A Year)

you started learning how to make games three I think it was three years ago right yeah the timeline's fuzzy but about 3 years ago yeah so you're you're right alongside everybody listening it's just you did something right can you take me through some steps of how how you did what you did like you're sitting here as a full-time game developer and 99% of people listening right now are like I would kill for that how did you do it if you're watching this video you of course have some sort of desire to make a game or t entially maybe just interested in game design it's different for everyone let's just get that out there that cavia it's going to be different for everyone I'm just going to tell you my experience I'm the kind of person who needs a mentor someone that I can just ask a bunch of like vomit a bunch of questions about everything cuz I'm the kind of person who needs to know I love to know how things work and why they work I ask a lot of questions why to the point that my team is like super annoyed with me because they think I'm like testing them or something but I'm actually like trying to engage and like I always like to have a mentor of

someone who like has experience maybe they've already shipped a game if you don't have access to that kind of person you can find access to that kind of person fairly easily on forums Reddit Discord groups and stuff like that um like-minded individuals who could who will be more than happy to help because they've helped me obviously Thomas you're one of them right I think a lot of people know this but I actually was a student in your like one of the very early students in your full-time Game Dev course and this is not an ad or anything just speaking from like my experience Thomas the way Thomas teaches or should I speak I should speak to you okay the way you teach you do whatever you want you can speak however you want the the way you teach is somehow clicked with me so well because I think we kind of have a similar background in like graphic design you're you're a very creative guy you look at even the technical aspects of things very creatively and Visually rather well I side note here the technical side when someone tells me to do it the right way

I immediately do it the wrong way on purpose because I get frustrated when technicians say you have to do it this way often times this is just a side note often times what happens is when they go this is the right way to code this is the right way to make a game blah blah blah blah blah that often times weighs people down and they don't finish their freaking game and that's what bugs me so much about the technical side so yes I I approach the technical side chaotically and it's almost on purpose but anyway go ahead right and and I think that annoys Trevor sometimes cuz when he was learning to code and stuff like you'd go on forums and people like this is the correct way to do it there is no correct way to do it and often times even if you when you do something incorrectly it leads to these advancements and these really cool happy accidents those people on the internet who sound like they really know what they're talking about don't necessarily understand the bigger picture they're probably very talented but what are the one of the vices of humanity is focusing on money you know you shouldn't focus on money too much because it'll make your life

miserable but at the opposite end of the flip side of the coin is if you can focus on money when it comes to making your game it actually makes things so much clearer like for me I don't know if this was true for you but like it's like how do I make some money off this game and go full-time like that to me has always been the question cuz cuz like once you get the money then making the game is much easier because it's like well now I got the I got the time to do it I can do it full-time I don't have to worry about launch I don't have to get paranoid about making enough money and I can hire out people and I can get some help or even just like part-time contract workers right this is why I tell anybody who's saying hey I want to make a game what do I need to do the first thing I tell them is what's your freaking hook what is your hook because if you don't have a hook you're not going to sell anything most likely most likely and so people think well why is Thomas Thomas bringing up the hook shouldn't I learn how to code no figure out your hook because I don't want you to learn how to code if you can't sell your hook you can learn to code while you're making the game don't wor about

that that's right yeah that's right absolutely dude I got I I I remember this like it was yesterday I was out in I think it was in San Francisco or something for some reason for some game show and I reached out to the one of the creators of earthworm gym and I I messaged him and I said can I get lunch with you and he for some reason he said yes and so I drove down to some Seaside Town it was really like really bougie really nice and he took me out to lunch and I gave him this whole pitch about this game idea I had I had printed this thing out I spent two two weeks putting together this pitch for him just cuz I wanted his ideas spent all this money on these game uh mechanics and the artwork and the style and he pushed it aside and he said there's no hook and he didn't say it as brutally as that but he said you you've got to have a hook here man like there's nothing else that you need to focus on other than that one sentence hook and for you you know one of your hooks is hollow night but in Japan and I think that's great and as much as maybe I would be scared of U being associated with Hollow Knight cuz it's it's hard to compete it is a really good hook we're

also referred to as silk song at home that's another that's another one of our hooks there you go yeah so like for you like it was that helpful to you like aiming your aiming the gun before you worry about how to shoot the gun was that helpful to you aiming it towards a target of how do I how do I get funded you know if you're talking in relation to like how you preach that I think like earlier on when I was a student of yours you didn't quite preach that as hard you you definitely probably mentioned but now you're going full on and I really appreciate that cuz it is actually the main thing the first thing that you should be doing um so I don't know if anything we did in that in that way was intentional like getting a hook or anything like that I think it was really like the whole idea for Bo was just based off what I wanted to see in a video game and all the elements of really cool cool things that I've seen in other video games that I wanted to creatively explore in my own game yeah so it's kind of how that happened okay

so you you took you took Thomas's course I'll pay you $300 after this call by the way no I'm kidding um thank thank you for being so kind about that that means a lot to me so you I helped sort of show you the way like a Jedi and uh what about the technical side like okay so Thomas shows you how to get funding Thomas shows you how to Market a game but like was it difficult for you to learn how to make a game in unity you you definitely gave us some B building blocks when you were you know in your videos I I think there was a period where things start to click uh you start to really understand like prefabs or whatever and and and just in the beginning it's so overwhelming you're like a scene what is a scene like what are the implications why isn't it called a level right what are the implications of making a new scene like how do I connect them or whatever there's so many things um after a while like I felt like you know at some point I felt confident enough to like deviate right so that that probably came when uh Trevor our lead programmer came on when I realized

quoting wasn't perhaps my forte I was more of on the creative art side right when he came on and he kind of had his own idea of how to do things everything started to mesh a little bit differently I don't know I think you just practice something every day and it just becomes so comfortable and by the way if you're like me and you always dreamt of making an indie game as a full-time job I have a free webinar below that goes into exactly how to make six figures with just a demo I was just like you for years I thought I had to make a game in its entirety before getting a paycheck but there's actually three ways to make six figures before even finishing your game I've done this multiple times so check it out below if you do want to go full-time Indie and thanks for watching