How To Make Millions From An Indie Game

in this video I chat with Danny wein bomb the creator of East Shade Danny put everything on the line to make his dream game from working in the early mornings into late at night after his day job Danny sacrificed the Comforts of a normal life to make an indie game if you stick around to the end of this video you're going to learn so much from Dany and ultimately you're going to learn if this sacrifice was even worth it for Danny and ultimately how much Danny ended up making for this passion project I think I started started with like my initial inkling on my path to games I think was a program called view which is a really uh Niche foliage visualization program for mostly for film and I got pretty sucked in right away I knew I wanted to be a 3D artist at that point the only thing I didn't know is what industry I wanted to go into I think halflife 2 was the game that made me feel like oh my God I want to make game environments like I want to make this sense of place that's when I started really honing in on video games I

eventually went to a trade school called future poly which is now closed and it was kind of different from other schools cuz they weren't accredited you weren't going to get a degree or anything I kind of picked up early on that schooling wasn't going to be important like I knew that I just needed a banger portfolio and this trade school it was like a 3-month course and it was like a Cambrian explosion of of like learning at that time and I was just right in the right time in my life I had nothing else going on it was like do or die I kind of had like I guess low self-esteem about wanting to be an artist in my life and hoping that I'd be able to get a job and I told myself well I'm going to get a job in the games industry or I'm going to die trying like this is what I'm going to do there is no backup and I just went super duper duper hard I was working like 12 hours a day on my portfolio pieces during the course of this class and ended up the teacher threw out a uh the teacher which actually was my mentor for a number of years he threw out sort of a bone to the class he said we're looking for interns and uh they put out an art test for the entire class and basically everyone did it but I ended up uh Landing The Internship fortunately that was kind of

my start and then I could I guess the next like 3 and a half years I worked in AAA I learned some stuff but mostly I just you know did environment art stuff I really liked working in AAA I was treated really well I know a lot of folks talk about you know Crunch and toxic work culture and things like that my experience was fortunately really good I just basically I started working on I knew I always wanted to make my own game I knew that the entire time I was working triple I was actually learning to code in the wi hours during that entire time period I sort of felt like okay I've got like art in the bag I I'm an industry- level artist now I'm going to learn how to code I started working on what would become e shade and I just was like so addicted like more addicted than I've ever been on on any like it imagine like your most addictive moment on like an RPG like World of Warcraft High you know High uh like in that in that moment when you're just you can't wait to play that's basically how I was about working on E shade and I realized I just couldn't I couldn't stay up till 5:00 in the morning every night and try to go back into work every day it was

just it was how old were you 24 or 23 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 dude I feel like you and I were like dude this is a crazy thought you and I were both waking up early and we were both doing this at the same time I mean I was on the east coast and you were on the west coast maybe were waking up at the same time I was I was going to bed early like I was going to bed at like 4: or 5 a.m. that feeling you're talking about dude where there's it's almost like a religious experience and it's just you and you're sitting in front of a computer and this you're like playing God and you're putting this world together and nothing else matters and

you it's almost like you have Infinite Energy but also when it's done when you close I I'm assuming you work in unity is this correct yeah well I started out in cry engine but anyhow this this is in the weeds so when you when you close unity and then I'll shut up here but when you close Unity suddenly the exhaustion catches up it's almost like you went through a time portal and all of a sudden you're like what did I just do I just work six hours then you have to you I'm talking about yeah I know exactly what you're talking about and then you have to go to bed and go to work at least in my case it it is yeah it was very very power it was a very special time in my life um especially when I made the decision to quit that first year was every single day was like Christmas like going to bed was like Christmas morning I couldn't sleep cuz I was so excited about waking up and working more on it so like I said I knew I always wanted to make my own game and I always assumed that nobody was just going to give me a bunch of money um I was making like white collar money pretty early especially for how young I was but I was

living like a college kid and I continued to live like a college kid basically until e shade shipped just because both my now wife and I jacine we were just really pinching our pennies and I was pinching my pennies throughout my career in AAA because I knew that I wanted to have this pile of money I actually thought I was going to take till I was like 50 or something like I thought I'm going to need a ton of money cuz I'm going to need to hire people but then I saw people making really impressive games on their own and I sort of got a little bit like a little bit motivated a little bit maybe jealous even a little bit competitive I've always kind of had a chip on my shoulder that is completely unjustified and I have like everyone's been really nice to me in my life and support yeah Mr White Collar money over here exactly I know like and everyone's always just like believed in me and stuff but for some reason I feel the same though I'm the same way go ahead okay that's good to know I'm not alone yeah no you're not for some reason I've got this screw loose that's like I'm going to I'm going to effing show them all like I'm going to show them it's like show who like what are you talking about Mom and Dad it's always mom and dad I

guess I don't know my mom thought I was the bee's knees since I was like for me it was always like family or like or like a a girl who turned me down in middle school it's like if she could only if she could only see me now it's like she doesn't care you made a game what's wrong with you nerd you're still a nerd you're still a freaking nerd I don't care how much money you made so anyhow I I was saving money I when I quit my job at Sucker Punch I think I had about 130,000 in the bank so that's what gave me the ability to go all those years without a job now my initial plan was to spend two years and if I couldn't come up with a game in 2 years I didn't want to spend my whole Farm on it I wanted to okay you spent your two years trying to make a game you didn't make a game go back and get a job Danny well that didn't effing happen not even close like by the time two years was up not only had I started to rope Jaclyn in and she was I think she quit her job about 3 years in if I'm not mistaken the feeling that I had working on eade was like if I die just let it be

after I ship eade like I I seriously felt it was like my final mission in life like it was so I felt like when I finished it I felt like I'm good to go so you had1 some thousand in the bank which sounds crazy to people everyone should know that once you get to $100,000 it $100,000 doesn't seem this sounds so wrong but it doesn't seem like a lot of money once you get there no not if you live in the west like yeah not if you live in States seriously and especially now I mean it's it was more back then than it is now we made it 4 years before we moved in with my Grandma at the end it wasn't like dire like we were going to be out of house and home it wasn't like that it was more like hey you know Grandma offered you know her spare bedroom like that's a great way to save money like we're looking pretty tight here we would have been fine there there would have been options so you know basically we made it 4 years on probably more than 130,000 because Jaclyn quit and she had its savings as well but it was tight you know especially living in the area we live which is extremely expensive you wanted

to make something that was safe and I want to ask you and you mentioned this in your in your video I watched it I'd always known I'd wanted to make a game that was a place a strong sense of place is my favorite thing a video game can give and it is and will always be the main design pillar of any game I have authority in designing and I knew I wanted it to be a nice place where you could feel cozy and safe why did you want to make something safe both Jack and I really really like Elder Scrolls and the thing we like about Elder Scrolls are the moments where you're not fighting and where you just feel like the word cozy is so tired now I I actually hate even to use it it's like it's been hijacked like every single game I I guess like 5 years ago I would have said you know coziness is something that it's an emotion that games are really great at evoking and we just wanted to make a game dedicated to it did you not feel safe when you were making this game I did feel scared a little bit but no I I don't think I felt particularly safe or unsafe necessarily we didn't have kids yet or anything I just knew that everything was going to be okay even if the game failed failed and we also didn't assume it was going

to fail just because like our wish list numbers and stuff were pointing to okay it's going to make some money like it's going to it's going to do you know we had a certain minimum threshold or or minimum window that we thought that the game was going to make and and that was fine for us and uh and we finished it together in 2019 and shipped and it's it's made about a little over 3 and a half million um all platforms and now we're working on a on a new title called songs of glck [Music] while that is beautiful know would you mind doing it elsewhere some of us are trying to sleep