How This Game Dev Got 100,000 Wishlists In A Week — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 014

Gavin thanks for taking the time dude um hope you're doing well how are you doing by the way I am doing well I am doing well thanks for having me on uh it's always a blast getting to to chat with you guys you and you and your subscribers that is so um that's right yeah happy to be here well the you know I was just talking to one of my team members um the producer for the channel and I said I'm talking to Gavin today I'm really excited about talking to Gavin and uh he said that he said that man is a genius and uh we talked about you a little bit and how you you've sort of just mastered virality you just have the it Factor when it comes to your YouTube channel but also your games and you've kind of proven this sort of a getting into you introducing yourself because I want to hear about your your your history as a game developer and what you're working on now but just leading up to that I

just want my subscribers to know that you're not just some oneoff guy that that made one cool game you've you you've figured out how to make games that just get traction and I think you hit 100,000 wish lists with your next game right with cuff bust I did I did yeah yeah so you figured it out you figured out a formula or something I don't know what you figured out but it's brilliant we we'll definitely get into it we'll definitely get into I want to talk all about that so any anyway what what games have you made in the past and what are you working on right now sure also first off I'm very flattered by the intro but thank you thank you you bet you bet um so yeah so past games um the most notable one that people would know would be Choo Cho Charles uh which I released about a year and a half ago now or two years ago um which did very very well ported it to consoles recently um I also did a bunch of other smaller free games and uh one called my beautiful paper smile but Chuchu Charles is kind

of the first one that really blew up and was actually like legitimately profitable um and now I'm working on cuff bust which is a multiplayer prison escape game where you and your friends try and work together to break out a prison it's very colorful it's bombastic it's very over-the-top and just weird and lots of um goofy humor and stuff sort of in the same vein as um stuff like you know Minecraft prison break or Gmod Prison Break um you know Counter-Strike prison Roblox prison escape games it's kind of trying to you know take that same sort of um Essence that same Vibe and put it into like a standalone steam game um right so yeah that's that's kind of what I'm doing and have done and you've been working on that for a year sort of in secret yes yeah it's the longest that I've worked

on a game without talking about a game it's been just about a year now that I've been working on cuff bust and just announcing a couple weeks ago hey friend I want to see you succeed as a game developer I want to see you make a full-time salary as a game developer see the thing is most game developers don't know how to actually make money with their game and believe it or not you can actually make a full-time salary with just a demo I've done this three freaking times and I'm going to teach you exactly how to do that make a full-time salary with just a demo click the link below it's a webinar totally free no gimmicks here check it out watch the whole thing you're going to learn a ton and you're going to learn how to make six figures with just a demo so yeah so people who are listening they can please guys support Gavin for taking the time to give his advice and just talk to us and wish list the game below I think that would mean a lot to him um it would it would and you know add on to that 100,000 not that you need it um I'm I'm very jealous by the way

very jealous so but I do I I'm so I'm so happy for you and so excited for you so okay so first off um why did you why did you wait a year um what was that like making a game privately like that did you have moment there's a lot of questions here did you have moments where you felt like maybe I do need to post about this and and start getting wish list now yes and no to everything so okay so we we'll try and see if we can take this one one at a time okay so first thing was remind me I have a very short yeah why why why did you do it why did you do it yeah I there's the reason I'm kind of manic over here is because I'm I I the moment your trailer launched I was I had so many questions because it was so strategic the way you did it and it was clearly well thought out maybe it wasn't I don't know maybe you just have instes first question though first question that's my secret I don't think it out I don't think it out but in any case

why did you do it privately know why did you wait why did you wait a year to to to release this uh that the announcement trailer and all that yeah all right so there were a lot of different things going on so first thing um when I started working on cuff bust I was right in the middle of working on the console release for Choo Charles um you know I had told people like hey I'm working on consoles it's underway this is something that I'm doing currently and I felt like you know if I just start working on this new game cuff bust and I make a trailer for it within the first couple months and I release a trailer for it before I've done the console release then people might be like what happened to the console launch what happened and then you know it could hurt the algorithm when it's you know like if I do a bunch of marketing for cuff bust and then like six months later I revert back and I'm like oh by the way uh Chucho Chu Charles out on consoles like I just felt like that would be a weird um a weird sequence of events so I decided to hold

the announcement of the new game until at the very least I had released the the console version of Chu Charles that was the first thing yeah um by the time that the console release was done and out there um cuff bust was still it was still not really ready to show off um I'd kind of just been working on a lot of the basic features laying a lot of Foundations getting you know my server browsing system set up getting my player movement set up you know basic animations inventories things like that um doing a lot of like design stuff on paper you know trying to figure out like what kind of rooms should there be in the prison what kind of puzzles and you know different game mechanics should there be so I didn't really have much to show at that point you know originally I wanted to you know do the console La launch for Chu Charles and then like immediately like a week later um announce cuff bust but I ended up

having to hold it a few more months and at a certain point I think it was early this year it would have been around February I kind of just sat there and I was like you know I really just need to take some time just take a month here and just plan out my announcement get this game out there because it was getting to that point like you mentioned where it's was like you know I really need to start being able to Market this and get wish lists you know it was starting to get a little bit annoying that like I would like add a cool feature and I was like I can't share this with anybody so that's great and so you know I was like you know I just got to get this out there get it announced get out a trailer um so I can start putting out Dev vogs and stuff like that um yeah I mean the whole process of making a game making game alone for a year in the background it's it's a bit it is a bit stressful I got to say cuz you have you don't know if it's good or not you're you're just kind of hoping based on whatever you know preconceived

notions you have and whatever past experience you have so it's like I was like you know this is probably a decent concept I think it's a decent concept otherwise I wouldn't be making it but like you know you can never know for sure and there were various times like early on when I started working on it where I almost I almost cancelled it I was like ah this just seems like too much I don't know if I can handle this I don't know if this is actually going to be good um and yeah I almost pulled the plug on it and started looking for other Concepts at one point even but um yeah I I did end up sticking with it and I'm I'm happy that I did it seems like people are people are really interested so okay so how often I I know for me when I'm making my game and I'm currently working on a game called Twisted Tower right now I know for me it's constant insecurity um you never you just never know you never know how

it's going to perform you know there's always the financial side of things which is like I hope I make some money you know it would be great to make actual money to like continue making games and to live on and you know build wealth and all that right but there's also the side of like well sure it might do well but uh what about the reviews you know what if we get bad reviews what if the what if my my reputation is I I personally worry about my reputation because I always release games that get very positive they always do very positive and so this is my third game and I'm like man what if it gets mixed reviews because it's my first you know first person shooter there's a ton of fears and so I find myself reaching out to you reaching out to David wayy he's a Creator the first tree um reaching out to my publisher you know asking my team hey what do you think about this what do you think about that what do you think about this so I'm always getting feedback and I was thinking this week how I wish that I had the confidence I had when I was younger when I was just

making games not thinking about the money not thinking about the reception just making whatever I wanted and so my question for you is you know you making a game a year in private did you feel in insecure and did you did you get feedback from from people you trusted or did you just go with your gut yeah I mean I definitely I do have you know some developer friends that are you know good at what they do they have good ideas and they can give me honest feedback they could tell me like if I I could show them something they're like oh th this is like go back to the drawing board please you know and so you know I do have people that I can share stuff with but it is very different you know showing stuff to like a group of like three or four people and showing it to millions of people online you know it is a completely different um completely different level of um of I don't know of just you know you put

stuff online and people just start picking it apart and it's like you have no idea what the general consensus is going to be when when you do something like that but how have you how have you felt the consensus has been for cuff bust it's been very good honestly um better than I was expecting you know some of the big fears that I had um going into the announcement for it I mean what the biggest one was simply that you know I had chuchy Charles which did really well and it was a horror game sing single player horror game about a spider train um you know at the end of that game there was a cut scene that like kind of kind it didn't exactly say like oh yeah there's going to be a sequel but it hinted that like oh there could be a sequel right so I was really worried that like you know if I announced anything that wasn't a a sequel that people would just be pissed um especially something that isn't horror so you know that was my biggest fear and thankfully people seem really on board with it even you know like the

big choo choo Charles fans are like oh okay like the cuff bus is actually kind of cool like I'm I'm down for this I would have liked to sequel but you know this is good so um yeah overall the consensus has been very positive people seem really on board with it and I yeah I couldn't be more pleased with that that was my biggest fear with it what um let's talk about idea generation sure um coming up with this idea um you mentioned earlier well okay little bit of context here for my audience whenever I have actually did this to you three days ago I just reached out to you and said I told you some ideas I had for different games and my goal with coming up with games is always to have you know you could explain it in a sentence um maybe five words you can explain what the hook of the game is and so I gave you my ideas and you were honest enough to say Hey you know I just want you give you some advice here please be patient when you're coming up with your ideas don't rush to create the

idea be patient with it and make sure it's truly a good idea right that was such good advice and it was painful for me a little bit because you know you can and you mentioned this to me you can get it Thomas you can get attached to ideas don't get attached to them just choose the one that can please you didn't say this but I took it as whichever one pleases as many people as possible and you can passionately create choose that one um and so my question for you is um like how did you know how did you know that this idea was going to work or did you know this idea was going to work yeah well I'll I'll say right up front I don't think you can really know an idea is going to work cuz there were times where I really didn't where I genuinely thought that it wasn't going to work um so I I guess I I'll kind of just quickly go

through the timeline of like what kind of how I came up with the concept and how I decided like uh you know I I guess I'll start working on this um I think we should side note really quick because a lot of people probably thinking the game's not out how does how does Thomas or Gavin know it's good true what we're talking about is marketability right now we're talking about holy crap Gava got 100,000 wish lists how did he know how to do that because you only do that with a good idea and you only do that with a really good trailer and so that's what we're talking about we're talking about the the process of creating a prototype and something that can go viral and you did that and you've done that multiple times so go ahead sort of sort of I will say when it comes to like the trailer and the virality of this one um and I guess that that'll probably be something that we touch on more a a little bit later but um just real quick like summer gamefest was probably the the biggest reason for that it this game didn't hasn't really gone viral yet

hasn't really gone viral but relative to the people listen relative to the people listening though it has because I look at your devlogs people would K I think it's mostly within just my existing audience but sure an I mean but how you know how do you feel like you were able to to to get a a significant amount of wish lists from your own audience um I mean yeah probably 10 or 20,000 it would be kind of my estimate I don't have specific stats um but that would be kind of my guess cuz it hasn't gotten yeah the devlogs haven't done nearly as well as like you know my my Chu Charles devlogs sure well then let's let's definitely get into that when we can how you got into the festival in any case so yeah so with the concept stuff um so initially you know I I had finished

up the or no no I had finished up the console launch I had finished up the original version of Chu Charles it was out on PC and I started kind of thinking about um new game ideas and so there was this one day where I was I was going on Steam DB to check stats on some game or another and um I saw that Prison Architect was trending and I was like Prison Architect man that that's a that's a pretty cool concept you know that you can like make a prison and then I was just sitting there and I was thinking man it really would be cool if like you could actually just escape from the prison like I was like why why hasn't somebody just made like a really good prison escape game and I was like oh wait a minute I could do that um so that was the initial kind of spark um but from there it was kind of a matter of I guess looking for reasons that it could succeed um you know my first thinking was okay well prison escapes are you know a fairly

popular concept you know it's it's popular in like movies and TV shows and stuff and you know it's popular on like Roblox like there's so many massive roblo or maybe not so many but I know there's at least a couple really really really big um Roblox games about Prison Breaks you know and um you know because of that it's got a little bit of um you know kind of nostalgia in the same way that Thomas the Tank Engine and uh Chucho Charles form that sort of nostalgia well did you watch the prison break show um or sha Shank Redemption or I did watch uh sha shank um I have not watched the the prison break show a bunch of friends were telling me like bro you got to watch that one that's a great one but I I the first the first season after that that's what I was hearing once they break out of prison then it's not fun which should have been obvious they should have never let them break out of prison until the final

episode but but in any case yeah so was kind of just looking for reasons that it would succeed so things like that seem like okay it's it's popular over here um looking at things like um you know there aren't this is another concept that I think was pretty smart and I think it would make sense to to do it on a wider scale um so there's this other game called a way out and it's sort of a a doublea maybe kind of AAA I haven't looked too much into the developers but it's a multiplayer prison escape game I think it's split screen where you have two players and you work together and you try and break out of a prison oh it's EA EA yeah and you know it did like from our perspective as Indie developers solo developers or or just you know General Gamers um you know it's probably made tens of millions of dollars and so we look at that on Steam yeah so we look at that it's like wow

that's that's insane that did so well for EA $120 million that's probably not that much you know that might that might be like just barely breaking even you know yeah so there are certain Concepts that I think um they're not quite big enough they're not quite profitable enough that like a AAA company could go and put like 100 million dollar behind it and then be super profitable with it like it's Concepts that they're not going to hit quite that that high of a ceiling um but for Indie developers people like ourselves we might be able to take those sort of failed AAA Concepts do it on an indie scale and be able to kind of pick up you know some of these like larger crumbs that you know um AAA Studios don't really see enough value in but would be super valuable for people like us so um you know so I was looking at games like that and um scene that it was you know it was moderately

successful but there still wasn't anything that kind of um fit sort of that more like light-hearted bumbass like it's a a way out it's a very serious kind of a gritty you know it's it's a AAA campaign game so um when you say when you say create it but in an indie scale yeah that's that I really I would really love for you to break down what you mean by that um obviously there's it's a budgetary thing it's just that would be kind of main thing yeah and and what what does that mean in terms of production right um in terms of Assets in terms of mechanics what do you mean by that it really just means simplifying that's the biggest thing you know obviously as Solo or small Indie Studios we don't have the people or the time to make you know 100 individual photo realistic characters with map animations we can't

do that that's so that's that's a nice start um you know so instead we make a single jallen model that's kind of stylized with Goofy animations and everybody plays as the same jallen character and then like that that simplifies it a lot that cuts the the time and budget down by like oh that's probably like an easy half a million dollars off the budget probably an easy six months of development time cut down um you know keeping the the in smaller you know simpler environments you know making use of assets being okay with things looking not perfect you know that's one of the things when you're making commercial games you you can't do everything to the highest you know like possible quality because pretty much any like competent solo developer is probably capable like like I could probably if I spent enough time on it I could make a AAA quality character model

I could do that but it would take me eight months you know so it's like every developer is capable of making really really high quality stuff but you kind of just have to decide how much time you actually want to put into your project and just be okay with certain things being just not that great like getting it to a level that's competent and you know maybe I don't want to say like above average because cuz then people start you know comparing too much and it's like you know at a level that you're comfortable with I guess would be the main thing well how do you triage that you know it's like um I I I've I've compared in my own mind I compare indie game development to being like the emergency room in a hospital where it's like you really do have to triage what's important and what's not um what comes through the door and what you work on is emergent or it's very important or it's high value

right now the question is a lot of game developers people listening right now they focus on what they like and what they enjoy making and what they want to spend their evening working on if especially for hobbyist game devs they're going to be triaging what they like not what's important MH and so my question for you is when it comes to scaling down and and you know not making a prison break game like a way out how do you scale down and decide the spoon is very important the soap is very important the sewer is very important how did you decide that um you know I mean I will first make a quick distinction um you know like we've got the features that you as a developer want to add and the features that are important to players or that'll make a you know a difference in the the game itself um you know I do do think it's very important to have some time like like take a set

amount of time maybe it's like 10% of your time or 20% of your time and put that towards features that like you really like you know be careful not to like uh you know overdo your your budget right but like I think it is important um at least for me I like doing this you know if you're trying to be like really really businessyoutube like uh yesterday I spent the entire day uh working on a vending machine just just putting a vending machine in the game it's not necessarily A A Monumental feature but um I just I I like vending machines bro I mean is it part of the is it part of the economy or is it just for fun kind of yeah I mean like you can you can go up to the vending machine and like put coins in it to like get different items out so like it is it's a thing that has a gameplay application but um you know it's not like the craziest thing in the world so yeah I I think it is good to

take some time to to do some interesting stuff just to make sure you are still enjoying working on your project but right beyond that majority of the time should be spent on the most important things um you know kind of the way that I generally try and think about it is if I if I don't include this feature will people write a negative review saying that I should have included it um and if I or like if I don't include this feature will anybody notice that it's not there you know yeah yeah I don't I don't know quite how to explain it in a well that sounds like it could make a lot of people paranoid you know like I I think that way too and it's like I'm always like well you know I got to include this and I got to do that to this level and add this kind of uh this kind of asset because people will get frustrated that it's not there um now I

think it comes down to go ahead yeah I think it mostly comes down to like I mean just reading a lot of Steam Reviews just read Steam Reviews just see what people get mad about you know I mean usually it's going to be stuff like um you know like oh like there's no key bindings there's no key rebinding you know so like stuff like that like obviously that's a very very important feature every game should have that um you know when it comes to like more gamep playay related stuff it's like I guess in those scenarios right cuz it it really does depend like cuz I think often times there are features that are good MH that um you know it's not necessarily that somebody is going to write a negative review if it wasn't there like I'm trying to think about like like Cho Chu Charles like the pickle Mission it's just a goofy mission that I added where you try and uh go find a jar of pickles and you know a lot of people liked it and it was good you know there there

were some some funny clips that came out of it some some viral moments but I don't necessarily think that people would write a negative review if there wasn't a pickle Mission like if that just never existed and people didn't even know about it um people probably wouldn't be angry about it so it's it's kind of a nuanced sort of thing um I don't know I don't know it is kind of hard to know it's really just about boiling it down and and trying to simp ify things where you can you know not trying to over complicate things I think a lot of developers they'll they'll add big complicated features like a you know a massive skill tree system that isn't really necessary like yeah you could have a skill tree with 100 different skills or you could have like you know a basic upgrade system with like three different stats that you just upgrade over time um yeah so I think there there are ways to simplify complicated features can I give you my opinion uh

just observing you um and studying how you do things here's my framework of how I think you think and tell me if I'm wrong okay um number one is you want to make sure that your game truly does satisfy the basic um necessary elements of your genre um so in the case of Cho Choo Charles which would be what what would what would the genre be I mean it's Horror in its tone but what what would the mechanical genre be yeah I think it' just be like sort of an action adventure kind of Adventure puzzle something like that so number one you you've and this is true with with um with cuff bus as well you've you've distilled down and found the necessary components of your genre so that you hit those and you don't get bad reviews right number two though maybe you do the subconscious l or maybe you don't do it at all I don't know but number two is you have a way

of focusing very strong on mem worthy moments it when I watch your trailers for your games it's pretty much every five seconds there's something that makes you smile something that makes you laugh or something that you could clip and make an animated gift from and post on Reddit is that intentional and is that true I think it's it's like it's semi intentional I don't know I mean like you know obviously there's certain things where it's like I'll I'll go and you know when I'm planning on making a trailer like with cuff bust I'll list out like you know all the different shots that I want to try and hit all the different like features that I want to show off in a trailer um I guess like I'm not really being super specific with like how I'm like pacing things out necessarily yeah um I guess it's kind of just like when I'm working on a shot for the trailer you

know I'll be like okay um I want to do a scene showing off you know cuz it's like if you're making a trailer you want to show off a handful of different environments so it's like okay I want to do a shot in the showers what can we do that's kind of interesting in the showers uh you pick up a soap bar and and there's a a naked Jalen all right cool that that's kind of funny um it's it's like I guess it's just kind of natural like when you're putting a little bit more time into like planning out each shot um you know if you're taking a little bit of time to kind of think things through then you can kind of just come up with like like okay what what would be kind of interesting slightly um I don't know just not necessarily more appealing but just more eye-catching than like you would normally just see like oh a player running through a bathroom I don't know it's it's a little bit hard to to explain I I don't really know where that stuff comes from honestly

like and I guess this might just be because I've watched through the trailer like a million times at this point but like with the cuff bus trailer I honestly I don't like there's a couple moments that I think are entertaining like the Jalen smoking weed at the end I think that's funny um I think the shower scene is funny but like the rest of it I didn't necessarily yeah there's like six things man like the the moment I saw it I was like bang bang bang bang like beating the cops yeah see like that's one that like I didn't even intend to going into a sewer blowing up a toilet dude my my three-year-old son watched that trailer 3 times bro I've heard that I've heard that from a handful of people with with young kids the young kids seem to really like not sure that's a good thing there's a lot of if I were if I were if you were purely if you were purely capitalistic I would say make sure kids can play it oh yeah swearing and no least have a have a version which is like right at the beginning of the game

it says do you want your kid to play this game yes or no yes and then it removes that stuff because dude in terms of money my kids would play this game they would freaking love it um but I is it's tempting Thomas tempting I'm making notes but but I want to I want to clarify something that I I found very interesting which is to you you know the idea of cutting together a trailer and being precise about what you like writing out what you want in that trailer to you that's obvious but so the way you spoke about it's like well yeah you do that most game developers don't do that what they do is they record their they record the gameplay and then they just cut it together and try and make something of it and they pick Random clips and what it sounds like you've done here and it seems like you did it with Chuchu Charles as well is you acted as a director would and you're like okay I I want to show this I want to show this I

want to show this now I'm going to go record myself doing it and get the perfect clip is that correct yeah yeah it's that's kind of the the approach that's the approach and I think that that's a the maor minority of game developers do that honestly um so I think that's really really important for for listeners right now to realize that if you want to make a a great uh trailer don't make a five minute story trailer or like something some Random clips instead write out exactly what you want to show and uh um make it short right your trip what was it a minute and a half uh almost 2 minutes I want to say like 158 maybe 148 yeah pretty short and I would say 20 seconds of it is just sort of a VR type it looks like it's VR smoking weed right um which is great it's great okay so how did you get into summer game Fest that's a big question big question mark for me yeah so that

you don't a publish her right no I don't I'm I'm still self-publishing so yeah summer game Fest that was a pretty big deal that was a really big deal yeah dude yeah I got a text from my neighbor my neighbor said cuz he he he follows my channel and your channel and he texted me and he said hey your buddy Gavin just did the unthinkable and I was likeable how did you do that I didn't know how you did it I was so mad I was so jealous and so mad and so happy for you that's that's a lot of emotions but um there's a lot of emotions yeah so oh man so it was earlier this year I I it was right after I kind of decided okay I need to start working on a trailer I planned out the trailer started working on getting shots for it and editing it together and all that and I was getting to the point where it was close to being done I had probably like another weeks worth of work on the trailer and um I was planning on

announcing the game just on my own channel and my socials I think like at the end of the month so it's was like a couple weeks out I was planning on announcing this thing and I got a message from Jeff key the guy who runs uh the game awards and summer game Fest and he's just like hey I saw that you're working on a new game I don't I still don't exactly know how we found out I haven't asked him but um you know I'd been posting teasers on like Twitter and YouTube saying that like I'd been working on a new game and posting like really really cryp cryptic like screenshots and stuff so people kind of knew that I was working on something yeah so somehow word got around to to Jeff and he reached out he was like Hey like what are you working on can I see it and um so I was like yeah I've actually got a trailer that I've been working on so I showed him that and he was like yo this actually looks really cool do you want to be part of Summer game Fest I was like are you sure about that I mean I sure yeah I'd love to um so we we talked

through it um got the contract set up Jeff is awesome he's an absolute Saint I I can't I can't say enough uh kind things about him because I mean yeah everybody's probably seen the the numbers I don't know for sure if they're real cuz I didn't hear the actual numbers but normally it was a lot You' be charged hundreds of thousands of dollars to show a trailer at summer game Fest he did not charge me he he you know he gives out a handful of free spots to Indie developers and solo developers each year that's crazy and one of those spots that he decided to give out he gave to me and I cannot thank him enough it's I that is nice massive appreciation I was in um so I think I was in the game awards uh really that one that one was exciting because that was hosted by Mark Hamill and so I got to see Mark Hamill like say hey turn to the screens and then they played my game but what they did was uh it's the reason I bring this up is is not to flex but to say you got

a full feature whereas mine was more of like a documentary about Unity games and it featured my game um and that was really really cool but for you to just get nope we're just going to show the trailer and for Jeff to do it for free that's that's absolutely nuts it was pretty crazy wow dude like so so you feel like that was really really um impactful for wish lists and and that was undou UND doubtedly the biggest driver of wish list you know and it's like the only reason that that happened at all is cuz you know CH Charles came out it did well and you know some of these folks in the industry had taken notice and they're like oh hey this guy makes some you know moderately interesting stuff at Le you know he's maybe it's not amazing but like he's thinking outside of the box maybe maybe uh you know his next game will get get some views or something um so you know if if so here here's my word

of advice anybody that wants to get into summer gamefest uh just be I man yeah just just be successful already all right I might need to cut that part cuz that sounds cocky as hell but like I it's not I don't know what to say it's it was ask right place right time it right yeah it all just happened to work out and uh I'm still a bit in in disbelief at it but yeah so that event was really big for wish lists um so I I'll give a little bit of context on on like the wish list numbers and stuff regarding that so when I announced Chuchu Charles in the first two weeks after it went viral I gained about uh like 85,000 wish lists in the first two weeks um cuff bust did 100,000 wish lists in one week um you know the peak most wishlisted day for Chuchu

Charles it gained like 14,000 wish lists um cuff bust had two days where it went 28,000 and then 30,000 um during those first like that first day and the day after the event itself so it's you know and after that after because it's like the live event you know that's shown to millions of people live so all those people go and they they check it out and then after that you see it drop off exponentially um you know it seems like my own Dev vogs have not been you know pulling quite as much attention and traffic to it which I kind of expected um I was kind of anticipating that cuff bus would be a little bit more difficult to um to Market than Chuchu Charles cuz Charles it's it's very it's very eye-catching it's like oh spider train and you're shooting it on a like it's very instantaneous like and really really

really crazy um cuff bust it's a little bit more muted across the board but I think it it's you know there's more there's better gameplay around it so I think once people actually play it it has the potential to do you know as well or better than juu Charles I would hope um yep so I'm I'm kind of substituting the quick attention and virality for hopefully more longevity um after lunch LA but yeah so so so ahead I was going to ask you so Choo Cho Charles had vir has more virality than cuff bust yeah but cuff bust because of your success with chuch Chu Charles you feel like cuff bust got the the correct audience um as summer game Fest so even though it's not necessarily as viral that on your channel you you got that and it wasn't a lucky break it was more like you just had a successful game

prior right right yeah I mean there were a lot of factors there were a lot of factors that all kind of lined up pretty well like obviously yeah if if I hadn't done Chuchu Charles I wouldn't have gotten the summer game Fest placement but yeah it was still you know there's aund other developers that probably would have you know been perfectly qualified to you know to get that spot so um yeah I don't know if I would necessarily say that summer game Fest was the Right audience I mean basically I mean because it's like with these like bigger shows and events you're getting a a pretty mixed crowd you know there's people that are just there because they want to see Hollow night and that's it or there's people there that just want to see GTA 6 and that's it so you know you don't really know who's watching and what kind of game they're into but getting a a push like that was a good substitute to going viral um because it's a lot of eyeballs

guaranteed eyeballs all at once um so okay yeah yeah definitely useful okay very good okay so that let's move on to production here um e there's a lot of questions um multiplayer let's talk multiplayer multiplayer is terrifying it is because multiple reasons firstly production is you either got to figure it out on your own or some kind of built-in system with unreal or Unity um I think unreal has better multiplayer options I'm not sure we'll talk about it but what what is it about multiplayer that makes it challenging you're dealing with a whole new dimension it's like a that's that's the best way to describe it you're going from 3D to 4D you're dealing with with time latency between players you're dealing with players interacting with other players it it's like it gets

very it it almost feels very meta and like paradoxical right in a way um the way that the the logic works and not to say that it's impossible or anything if you want to make a multiplayer game go for it plenty of people have have done it you know I'm doing it right it's not impossible but it just it is a very time consuming process and it it's a whole kind of a different way to think on on programming and stuff that I wasn't exactly expecting you know the the ways in which you you know program certain events are is you know you got to take different you know completely different systems into account there are certain systems that just don't work in multiplayer that would work in in single player yeah you know so there's more specific segmented ways that you have to do things um right yeah it gets complicated yep um well that that makes

me lead onto my next question here which is are you committing to solo development for this game or are you eventually going to build out a team I think you know I I wouldn't say I'm committing to it I'm planning on doing solo for at least until it releases I think not saying I wouldn't hire on people at some point you know I've I've certainly considered it um you know I think it could make sense to hire on people towards the end of development or after probably it would make the most sense towards the end of development so that I can kind of get people integrated before launch um y so that you know we could try to put out more updates more content more I don't know cosmetics and items and stuff like that and um try and keep it alive for a little bit longer but

um yeah I don't have I haven't thought about it too much I'm generally planning on staying solo at least for a while yeah but there are scenarios where I I I hire some people there's there's probably 30 well for me towards the end of development of a game so we're on we're at the end of our development for Twisted Tower we're wrapping it up 80% of what I'm spending my time on is stuff that's it's mainly bugs and stuff that um you could sort of get you know a decent any decent game developer you can get them to go in and fix it I don't have to do it myself because it's not it's not integral to like what to how Thomas brush's where Thomas brush's talents lie right and so I don't need to be there to fix stuff um so that's why for me I've been hiring out because there's just so many little ankle I call them ankle biters we have a whole list of ankle biters just things that I don't

need to be involved in um so all that said just for me I found it so valuable to get help because it means that I can just get started on the next game you know what I mean um and and really but I I agree with what you said which is at the beginning of a game's development it's really important I mean for me I'll speak for me it's really important that I have my hands in everything right even if I do have a team I'm super picky about everything um because that's where my fores are like the story The Atmosphere um core like key mechanical elements of the game but as the game gets older and it gets closer to launch that's when you can start to step back and move away from it and get people to fix bugs especially with console right I don't did you port console for for Chu Charles I contracted a studio to do the the actual porting right yeah cool cool and I'm sure that that was a big relief yeah it was it was it was it

would have been you know e even though I didn't do any of the actual like porting itself even just the self-publishing was was quite a pain so I I can imagine figuring out the actual porting would have been would have made it a lot worse but um yeah I mean I think especially early on in the game's development that's when it makes the most sense to be solo cuz that's when you're kind of you're figuring out what the game is what it should feel like what's the tone um you know I think it would be you're kind of just prototyping at that point you know so it makes a lot of sense to as a solo developer to kind of just try and figure some stuff out on your own um and I will definitely say like from a business perspective there's no reason that I should be working solo it the best business decision would be for me to hire people but okay yeah I agree but I just I wasn't sure if you felt that way

yeah it's it's for me you know I enjoy the process of making games and I don't enjoy the process of sending emails and if I hired on you know three four people to to help me work on this game I wouldn't be a a developer anymore I'd be a a manager I'd be a producer and that's not necessarily what I enjoy doing you know I enjoy building out the systems and programming stuff and um you know I like that process that's why I do game development I do it because I enjoy it if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't be doing it and I think if I was to hire on a bunch of people I I have the feeling that I wouldn't enjoy it as much and it would turn into even more of a job you know the more um it does it does yeah yeah it's like the more you try and be like a commercial developer the more it turns into a job you know when you're trying to take into consider uh consideration all these different things and trying to land different and do these different negotiations and all this stuff um well you know I'll give my

perspective here cuz so that so that people listening can get two both sides of the equation cuz uh you know I did solo for my my first two games my second game I had someone helping with the development but I did the majority of the work with the second the third one I'm in exactly what you just described which is that manager role or at least that's the risk now the real word is director assuming that's actually what you do um a lot of Studios end up not really having any direction at all and it's all just management of resources and it's not very uh there aren't a lot of good ideas floating around because there's no director behind the game um the devil's advocate here is is it's not that you it's not that you are only sending emails it's instead you're going hey can you here's here's what I want

the spoon to look like based on my other models I've done can you just get my the spoon done and I'm going to work on you know the prison cell um hey I I really need like a Shader that can block out you nudity because I think it'll be really funny can you create that Shader for me you know so it's it's you having an idea and then you're like well I don't need to spend two hours on this I just needed to generate the idea that way I can focus on what what I'm really gifted at which is like I'm going to do a really awesome helicopter model or flip it fliping asset and I'm going to have my team members focus on things that aren't necessarily integral to the game's look and feel um so I found that really helpful and and one of one of the things that I was worried about with Twisted Tower is that the game wouldn't look like me if I got a team um but as we're wrapping up development I can look back and go this looks very Thomas brush and it looks like all my previous games it's

got that Moody Tim Burton creepy feeling um and It ultimately comes down to just being able to direct a team and say Here's the vision um and here's here's what things need to look like but you're right it's a lot of management it is a lot of management um and and my goal is to never never fully get into the manager role but instead primar stay in the director seat and the director chair right um and it's difficult to do that because you know for me I'm constantly thinking about you know the budget you know because everybody's getting paid um I'm commu managing communication with my publisher we're managing marketing um and there's a lot of meetings and you find yourself yeah like spending 60% of the time just doing business admin work as opposed to the creative side so there's a risk there for sure it's

it's it is a risky thing I can tell you this though this game wouldn't have gotten done if I didn't have a team for so for me you know it's it's just a necessary I wouldn't call it a necessary evil but it's a necessary difficult um sort of pill to swallow which is I can't spend seven years making this game alone I just can't do it I'll go crazy um so I'm going to need to for me personally I'm going to need to accept that sometimes there's there's just management work that needs to be done sometimes it's just communication communicating with a team and I need to be willing to accept that for the greater good which is the game gets done in two years uh it's a six hour or five hour experience it's strong narrative strong story and it's because I was willing to bite the bullet and manage you know right but it's not for everybody it's not but it can be hard you know so yeah it it seems like a it's you know someday I feel like I'll probably have to you know dive into that

and you know figure out how to manage people and you know work with employees and stuff and again that would be the smartest thing for me to do right now but it's just I just don't feel personally ready for that at this point so someday maybe for sure well that's that's super inspiring dude that you're you're willing to keep doing solo development and I'm I'm really impressed with cuff bus the like I said at the beginning of this call right when I saw that trailer I thought this guy's a genius I think it's great than I apprciate it so to to the people listening right now wish list cuff bus below to support Gavin Gavin is there anything else you wanted to say as we wrap up not particularly uh subscribe to Thomas yeah there you go that's it all right thanks for listening guys thanks for chatting Gavin that was fun man absolutely thanks for having me hey friend friend I want to see you succeed as a game developer I want to see you make a full-time salary

as a game developer see the thing is most game developers don't know how to actually make money with their game and believe it or not you can actually make a full-time salary with just a demo I've done this three freaking times and I'm going to teach you exactly how to do that make a full-time salary with just a demo click the link below it's a webinar totally free no gimmicks here check it out watch the whole thing you're going to learn a ton and you're going to learn how to make six figures with just a demo cheers