How I Recovered From Quitting My Game ($50,000 Spent)

this is the story of how i spent fifty thousand dollars making an indie game how i lost faith killed it buried it with my own hands and how i recovered of course i never planned on burying this game the game was called father and honestly it was really cool i loved it it was a classic fps about an old man looking for his daughter in the ancient haunted burial grounds of the garden of eden it's got a bizarre story it's got a ton of creepy religious themes which i love in horror games a cool character dynamic between a curation father and his rebellious teen daughter it's got spooky enemies made out of fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil demonic cultists that worship eve what's not to like i was all in i live streamed this game sometimes daily you guys were all in you hung out with me during my live streams i even hired a 3d modeler got some help with the sound music level design code and even found an intern i don't care that you live in oklahoma get your in the car and bring me my coffee trust me i'm actually a really nice boss in fact i'm so nice that i wanted to offer you my free 2d game kit

i used this exact game kit to make a game for pewdiepie it's totally free and the link is below in the description it's my treat to you oh and while you're below the video subscribe for more indie game development videos devlogs and leave a comment about a game that you quit and why you did it so it was happening the game was awesome we worked on it for like six months straight and ultimately it was even showcased at gdc but three things suddenly happened that crushed my spirit in less than a week and after those three things i buried father i'm quitting father i'm getting out of here around 50 000 of me and my team's paychecks gone so what were those three reasons why did i quit father the first reason is kind of a personal one basically there was some people in my life who made me feel kind of insecure i mean have you ever felt really strange really awkward really off-putting to people i feel this way a lot especially in high school my name is

thomas brush and i thought it would change i'm 31 now and i still feel this way i'm pretty good at coming across likeable in videos i've got a 2000 camera three-point lighting the joe rogan microphone but when all of this is off things can get awkward fast hi chris it's thomas yup i was curious if you wanted to get dinner go grab go check out go get some beer bro do you believe in god i mean that's just my mo and combine this with a career of making strange horror games about i don't know the garden of eden i found myself feeling isolated from normal people in my local community and frankly kind of unwanted these feelings left me questioning everything even my game the second reason was a simple rejection from one publisher i didn't even formally pitch father i just asked the publisher their thoughts and i was given a thoughtful response and ultimately a rejection now here's a quick tip just because a publisher rejects your game doesn't mean it's a bad game it's likely your game doesn't fit well in the publisher's portfolio or maybe they don't even know how to sell a game like this now it's likely that there are other publishers

out there who would love your game and we'll talk about that towards the end of this video i have some good news for you these two reasons birthed a third reason and that is the imposter syndrome you fraud according to wikipedia the imposter syndrome is you're a fraud and a piece of just quit your game you dumb ass it doesn't matter if i'm on my third commercial release i'm gonna feel like a fake i'm gonna feel like a fraud this is how it goes the imposter syndrome is so normal it's especially normal for indie game developers oh everyone deals with that every time you make a status shift as you move upwards of course you have imposter syndrome because when you first make a transition into a new role you are an imposter my brain told me i was creating a silly game with a silly premise it told me i wasn't a good project leader it told me i was wasting time money and then i better stop now before it's too late so i hopped on discord and ripped the band-aid off i told my wonderful team that all their hard work was shelved i was devastated i was honestly really disappointed in myself and when i'm disappointed in myself i usually call my dad

[Music] and that was that father was buried so we moved on to a completely different game like a completely different game it was a game about a little dog now i was convinced that this was the path for us fun little doggies sell better violent shooters aren't really marketable people don't like guns guns are bad blood bad monsters bad and so my team reluctantly moved on to working hard on this dog game don't get me wrong the dog game is freaking awesome i love it and we're gonna keep working on it but there was this tiny little voice in the back of my head perhaps i don't know an echo of that confidence that i had at the beginning of father's creation and this voice reminded me of why i started the game to begin with this constant dialogue of confidence and insecurity it kind of created this never-ending maybe you'd call it a for loop i didn't know something was wrong but my wife did we were actually on our way back from hanging out with some friends she told me that thomas you're anxious all the time i told her i no

longer struggled with generalized anxiety that i cured that a long time ago with fitness and healthy eating we moved on of course a week later i realized she was right i was in a constant state of feeling regret about dropping my previous project wasting money letting my team down insecurity about this new game constant confusion about why i felt confused and insecure on a daily basis it was it was a mess so i looked for a solution and i found it in a gummy now don't get me wrong it's totally legal and obviously i don't advocate for this kind of thing but i'm just gonna be honest here and say that delta really worked for me [Music] [Music] obviously i'm exaggerating here but it does calm me down and my brain stopped spinning i just sat quietly watching severance in the cold dark of my bedroom my brain was quiet nothing was there i could breathe i fell asleep and woke up

my anxiety my self-doubt it was all gone i felt like i could breathe again i felt like myself again and i decided to just go play the father demo one last time i opened up the gdc demo and honestly where are you hey i loved it the combination of taking a couple months off and a subtle boost of i don't know relaxation spurred on by my tasty treat transported me back to my old self the one that actually made games i don't know for fun and didn't worry about marketability and profit margins and that's when i walked into my office and i made perhaps one of the best decisions i've ever made after playing the father demo this new version of thomas or i guess the old thomas felt the urge to just quickly email dozens of publishers so i found their email addresses and within an hour i had emailed dozens of publishers the father demo and the pitch deck for those who don't know a pitch deck is just a website of your game's

trailer a demo and some text explaining your vision for the game the email responses immediately began popping up in my inbox offers conversations meetings ecstatic publishers across the world wanting to publish father they loved the game but the game is is it's religious and dark and violent it's about the garden of eden you guys don't want this i was still underselling my game while i was pitching it i mean it's crazy the things i was super insecure about during those two months like the retelling of a story from the bible those were actually the things the publishers were thrilled about so here i am i have my confidence back we haven't signed with a publisher just yet we're still talking to a few but i am confident in saying that we're making father and it's going to be freaking awesome i want to thank my team and i also want to thank you guys for just kind of bugging me all the time about father because a lot of you have been wondering where it is it really helped me just reconsider

ditching the game so thank you so much but it's not over we're making this thing be sure to download the game kit below it's totally free and wish list father i'll talk to you later cheers you