How This 20 Yr-Old Went Full Time Game Dev!

if your wish lists right now currently are double what they were when you launched so yes they are actually okay that's that's the that is the data point i haven't seen anything but same thing for me they're all basically double 12 612 and now they're kind of double forty one thousand so forty two thousand oh wow yeah and so it's a lot of wish list there's a lot of wish lists and so i wonder if those will over time you know bit by bit turn into actual sales i don't know man i don't know if they're gonna convert i really don't hey hey this video is brought to you by squarespace thanks squarespace yay hey wow hi my name is thomas brush i'm the creator of a game called pinstripe also a game called neversong if you guys want to learn how i made those games and how those games created a sustainable studio to support my family my mortgage my bills click the link below it's called fulltimegamedev.com it's a comprehensive online platform where you guys could learn all of the things that i learned in the

past decade of being a full-time game developer so click below get notified when it launches and hey when it's on sale i think that's really important right that's what you care about okay so i had the coolest conversation with someone i've wanted to talk to for the last two years i think his name is noah some of you know him and he runs a youtube channel called blackthorne prod it's a game channel that's similar to mine it's all about game development but it's like this much better actually it's probably like this much better than my channel it's amazing he's a really smart guy so be sure you subscribe to his channel but the cool thing about noah is he's 20 years old and he's a full-time game developer which absolutely blows my mind so i wanted to show you guys a clip of a conversation i had with noah and specifically the clip is all about how he became a full-time game developer at 20 years old so let's take a look and get inspired thank you noah subscribe to noah let's go okay guys before we get started this video is brought to you by squarespace

believe it or not i've been wanting squarespace as a sponsor for so long mainly because squarespace is awesome i've been using squarespace for i think six years um both my websites thomasbrush.com and atmosgames.com where i host my games and my portfolio my resume all that cool stuff is hosted on squarespace it was created with squarespace squarespace is cool because you can look amazing you can have custom designs and pretty much do anything you need to do for your business or your own personal brand all with squarespace and you don't have to know how to code so if you guys are interested in creating a website um with squarespace click the link below squarespace.com thomasbrush and use the promo code thomasbrush for 10 off yay yay i love squarespace i really do thanks squarespace there's so much to learn from you

um and i think we talked a couple weeks ago and i was just sort of baffled by how young you were yeah because i'm like 29 years old uh going on 30 in a couple months and i can't remember what you two how old are you 20 a recently actually yeah you're 20 years old and you are a full-time game dev and youtuber and you're living the dream that so many members in our audience so many subscribers want to live and i think that is so cool so i was wondering if you wanted to just sort of tell i guess your audience and my audience what you do for a living and how you got there what's your story so uh as you said you know i'm a full-time game developer and youtuber at the moment um i also make udemy courses with my brother which is uh yeah just basically basically like my youtube tutorials except in a much longer format where i shot a whole game um but yeah

i'm really just breathing and living and eating game creation and it's excellent i started about three years ago now youtube and game development um and i believe wait a second was it two years yeah it was two years ago youtube so three years ago game day two years ago youtube and it's just been a a real blast honestly actually yeah i really gotta tell something like it's actually three years ago that i started youtube let me make sure um oh my goodness let's see the first video yes it was three years ago three years ago okay and dude so when did you like this is crazy so you i don't know what you're in france by the way right that's right yeah south of france okay so i don't know do you call it high school in france were you in high school yes a couple years ago okay so i started my youtube channel during the

last year of high school okay um so i mean it to me it's just it's an interesting i was thinking about this call and i was thinking something that i wanted to touch on briefly was you seem to understand how to be an entrepreneur you know how to i guess do things that are profitable so that you can remain a full-time game developer and i had no idea how to do any of that when i was 20. when i was 20 i was in college and i think yeah i was in college and i i was sort of going the traditional route to start a career and i didn't even think i was going to be a full-time game developer i wanted to be but i didn't i guess i didn't believe it was possible so i'm curious if like if you can give give our listeners an understanding of how you knew how to do that how do you know how to be an

entrepreneur um is there research you've done did you take a class on it was it your like how you were raised like how do you know all this stuff that's an interesting question uh but honestly i i kind of you know happened very slowly but surely i would say uh when i just started i really wasn't at all thinking of well i kind of you wanted to turn game dev into my my full-time thing after high school and i'd already you know looked at a lot of other game dev youtubers um and i knew it was possible you didn't need a necessarily a formal education to learn how to create games and live doing it um yeah i just started really just kind of slowly uh slowly but surely making videos and building out that passion i really say just the the love of doing it that that gave me that that made me grow this audience and then i started to see all these opportunities coming my way which i i made the most of um luckily yeah but i didn't actually just

take a course on entrepreneurship or anything it's just i enjoyed creating games i wanted to find out really how to continue doing this um and you know bit by bit i found out with youtube ad revenue then patreon uh udemy courses and these are all things i took ideas from all kinds of people um you know brachy's for example the the gamedev youtube channel and so he sets up a patreon account and i said ah that's a really fun cool way to earn some money so that was the really first way i earned uh some cash really my my first dollars were made with patreon and and then i realized oh why not put some adverts doesn't really bother me so shouldn't bother the audience too much either so i put those and yeah all these little sources of income uh began you know accumulating and before i knew it i had a really nice salary i said oh excellent i can continue doing this full-time do you think you know when i was uh when

i just started making indie games when i was i guess i was 20 so it's been about a decade of me making indie games when i first started uh i was watching the indie game documentary which i'm sure you've seen definitely yeah and in my head all i thought was well if i want to make games for a living that's what i need to do just make games but i'm learning that and what i'm advising my audience whether it's my youtube channel or the online course i'm working on what i what i advise my audience to do is not just make indie games but do a lot of different things at once and not put all of your eggs in one basket but instead you know focus on a lot of different revenue opportunities that's really good even if it's small i'm curious if what your advice is yeah it's a it's a much more reliable way of earning you know steady flow of income when you're relying on on different

sources uh which has really worked well for me anyway and so i can only speak from my experience um the only game i actually sold i've made dozens of small games during your game jams and just to learn new tools or coding and stuff but um i actually released my very first steam game uh called the dreadful whispers it was uh september of 2019 and that made me about uh 15 000 uh so that's not a huge amount of money for it right i mean it's still okay for a first game uh i guess right but thankfully while making the devlog videos and having the udemy courses and all that really gave me enough money to make the game to learn so many things and so now i've got yes skills that will hopefully you know help me to make even better games and yeah perhaps one day really make a lot more with just games right but yeah in the meantime if you're a beginner um you can just start making games as

your your full-time job by just making videos about your progress from like zero to hero just show how you're learning stuff uh yeah through youtube for example like like you and i thomas like we're we've done many many youtube videos and yeah just show that be honest that you're not really good yet but you're learning and post every week you know just a little video even if it's just stick men and it's not not really interesting or fun but if there's like passion behind it and you're really like willing to learn and you're asking your community for advice i really think it's possible to to build up an audience even if you're not that great at game dev just yet yeah do you think you would have finished dreadful whispers if you had you know like a full-time job at like a desk job in a cubicle somewhere do you feel like you would have finished that game at the quality that you would that you had released it um or do you feel like you wouldn't have had the time to do it oh hard to tell really yeah i hope uh i like to believe that i would finish

it i really think you're finishing something you start is really important yes but it's hard to tell yeah it's really quite tough it would have been harder for sure yeah do you recommend to your audience and my audience to um to start right now securing various revenue streams as opposed to just focusing on making learning game development do you recommend they they launch a patreon get their social media going um maybe start a youtube channel or or do some online courses what do you recommend to say yeah i think if you've got an actual day job that you you're actually enjoying and game dev is just more of a hobby then that's probably fine but if you want to turn game down as you're your full-time thing right now then yeah you definitely should start um finding a way to to make some money on the side so you can continue working on your game yeah so i think there's so many ways like kickstarter like you did thomas for pinstripe or yeah finding a publisher but youtube's a

really easy nice way to to start if you've got zero skills and you do have your match the actual skills to make a really awesome looking game to sell people kickstarter yeah that's what's brilliant about yeah the social media like twitter youtube you can be pretty uh lame at game dave but if you're showing the willingness to improve then you could start doing really well [Music] you