How To Make Money As A Game Dev — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 019

Mr. Eli, thanks for coming on the podcast. Hey Mr. Brush, how are you doing today? I'm very, very good. Um, we were talking before We were we were talking before um we hit record here. Tell tell me a little bit about where you're from um and you're sort of I guess the gist of what you're doing as a game developer. Sweet. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to probably just run it back just so everyone can know. Yeah, yeah. So, I've been in game development for about uh 10 years. I've been doing it full-time since like 2020-ish. Um I've been on and off cuz, you know, I I went to college uh and I was just doing I went to community college to save money. Uh my name's Eli Brewer. I don't know if I mentioned that. And uh I run an indie studio called Treefall Studios. Uh I mostly make console video games, but I also release games on Steam. And um I was just going to college and just going to save money at community college. I was going to transfer to university. I took one game

development class just cuz I saw that they had it at my community college and was like, oh, let's see if I enjoy this cuz, you know, I grew up playing video games. I never thought that I could actually make them. Yeah. And uh so, I took the class and I was like, dude, I'm sold. This is super fun. And I did a 2-year degree in simulation and game development. And then after that, I did a 4-year degree in business. So, like while I went to college Yeah, so I um was kind of like working on the indie thing. I kind of noticed in my class, you know, like everyone wanted to get a job at like, you know, Epic Games or something like that, you know, somewhere or some far-off, you know, AAA studio. And, you know, my skill set is kind of average and most of the people in there were just kind of average. So, I was thinking like, ah you know, I don't know if you know, this is really going to work out. So, I'm like, I kind of want to do the indie thing, make my own games, you know, try to do some of my dreams, that kind of thing. So, I kind of did some small-time stuff. It was pretty, you know, pretty bad back in the day. And then um I went to college.

I released a a game called The Letter. I don't know if you've heard about it. No, I heard you talking about it earlier today, like when we were talking on Discord. I I want to hear that story cuz it seems like you got wrecked. Oh, we'll go Oh, we'll go into it. 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. It's kind of like um It was kind of like, you know, it wasn't shovelware to me. It's basically like imagine a 19-year-old or even 18-year-old, I think is when I first started. Imagine your student project but somehow you got to publish on Wii U. And I didn't know it was bad. You know, I was kind of a sheltered kid. I wasn't really on the internet, you know, growing up. I didn't know how mean people could be. And I just got it on

the Wii U and basically the press got a hold of it and kind of was like, this is the first shovelware on Nintendo. Oh, jeez. You were the first, huh? Y- According to them, you know, they thought I was ruining the quality of the eShop, that kind of thing. Um Uh it was all over the place. It actually was featured in Is this is 2014? Uh it was featured in a WatchMojo video for the top 10 worst games of 2014. They only have a clip. They didn't actually um So, if you I don't know. I wish I would have found it beforehand so I could send it to you uh cuz it's just a clip of footage. They didn't actually give it in the top 10. I don't even know if it makes the honorable mentions, but it was featured. Um Kyle Bosman, do you know who he is? No. Uh Uh he runs a channel now on YouTube. He used to be a guy at GameTrailers. And he made a video about how I was like destroying the eShop and it it got like 80,000 views in like the first like day and I was like, what is happening? It was uh Destructoid and Joystiq. A lot of

those websites kind of like shut down This was 2014? Yeah. Okay. Um I'm looking at an This is kind of relevant, just a side tangent. Uh-huh. I'm looking at Alien: Isolation which Uh-huh. is kind of People love it now. They love that game. Yeah. IGN gave it a five. And that was in 2018, I believe. No, no, no, no, no. 2014. That's why I looked it up. Yeah. Same freaking year. The press Screw the press. I'm sorry. They They write so many bad articles just because just to get a freaking headline. Yeah. And what they do is they destroy these studios' reputation. I'm pretty sure Alien: Isolation got wrecked because of that review. Yeah. And then they set the standard. And so all the other outlets write the same sort of thing. When in reality, Alien: Isolation was a great game. At least in my opinion. Yeah. And so my point is is that the the press the press has this thing

where they write bad they give bad reviews sort of just subvert expectations, you know? Yeah. And it sounds like they they wrecked you when maybe they could have given you a slap on the wrist. I don't know. But Yeah. W- Well, see, in my opinion, it to be fair, it's the game's not really good or anything. It gained a cult following. It's like basically a first-person like, you know, like an hour-long experience horror narrative walking sim, basically. But I'm like, bro, I'm like 19 years old and this is like a student project. And they're treating it like And I charged $1.99 for it. And they're treating it like it's a you know, some AAA company or something like that. Yep. Um so, I did that and then I went to business school. And

kind of stopped working on games. like one Wii U game like in 2017, something like that. Just some side project stuff. Yeah. You know, while I was going to college, met my wife. You know, then we got married and all that

kind of stuff. And then uh and then I I worked some business jobs like right after, but I was still doing the game stuff, you know, kind of on the side. Yep. And then about night 2019, 2020, I was like, all right. You know, I'm feeling like I still want to give this business a shot. I want to grow it to full-time, you know, kind of numbers. So, I'm going to, you know, go a little bit harder because my PlayStation stuff had started you know, picking up. I was on Wii U originally, you know, that kind of died, switched out for the Switch. And then um I started doing PlayStation. And then yeah, so I've been full-time for the last couple of years. Uh basically just doing full-time uh video game releases. I do YouTube, but it's just kind of, you know, me chatting. Well, can we Let Can we talk about YouTube cuz you and I were going to talk about YouTube. We were talking about it before the call. And I remember telling you I said let's hang hang on. Let's not let's not spoil our conversation. Let's talk about this during the podcast. So, and again, you get the final cut here. So, if there's something you say

in this conversation, we can cut it. But I just want to say it all, bro. I just want to say that the YouTube game dev world and this might be my fault because I I I teach about it. But the YouTube game dev world is getting a little spooky because random non Well, game devs who are not profitable, which it's okay. It's okay that game devs aren't profitable. That's totally fine. It's a difficult industry, right? Mhm. There are game dev YouTubers who are giving advice about how to sell games and they're not they're not really making money from their games. And I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on that. Um Dude. Do I? Is it Does it bother you? Cuz every time I'm on YouTube, I see all these videos about how to make games or how to sell games and I'm like Mhm. is scary because I'm worried that people are going to

watch my videos and think Thomas is giving advice too and he doesn't make money from games. He makes money from YouTube. And I'm like No, no, no, no, no. Hang on. I make money from my games. It's a separate business. And then I have my educational YouTube channel where I teach about that. And it's Mhm. It's getting the the waters are getting muddy on YouTube. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that. I mean, we could spend probably the whole podcast talking about just this. You know, it's crazy because All right. Just a little background. Like I hate social media. Like I do. And you know, in some sense, I like it. Like the old days of social media. Like you know, my YouTube channel's kind of raw. I've been doing it for 10 years. And I never tried to do the game dev space. I would just like film myself with junkie cameras, screen record, and be like here's what I'm working on. Here's my dev log, you know, for years and years. And it was just about like trying to build an audience

for my games. And I talked about this with a lot of my friends, you know, cuz I run a Discord. It's a Tree Fall Studios Discord, but now it's full of, you know, game developers who've like found my channel and stuff and they're trying to get like beginner advice, that kind of thing. So I get a lot of like I talk to a lot of people and see what their experience is starting YouTube. And basically most of people who are starting YouTube, um, like people just click on the videos like when you're talking about advice or you're talking about money or like if you pull up my channel for instance, you know, I've got like almost 2,000 subscribers, which is, you know, relatively small. But all my videos talking about how to start a studio, how to how much money I made, you know, this is what you need to do for your your indie game, those have 20,000 views, 15,000 views, or whatever. And I put out a devlog about my game, I'm like I've got my core followers of like 100 to 150 people who are like

dude, the game is awesome. So it's like if you think about it that way and you got a bunch of small time people who are starting out who want to be like you, you know, they want to have a big channel, they want to have, you know, full-time income. It's like almost I mean it it might be hard for you to think about it this way because like you've been in the space so long, you've had an audience for so long. You know, a lot of the other big guys, you know, like you've talked about it on your channel a bunch. Some of the other game developers who are big, you know, like they have an audience. It's like if you were starting out from scratch. Like let's say if you were starting out today in 2024 and you had zero followers, you know, if you just post a video about your game, the only way you go viral is if you're like super lucky or if your game is just unbelievably out there. Chubby Charles. Yeah, but not everyone wants to make a game like that. You know, you know, in my instance, like I'm making games that

I just one that I can make skills-wise because like I'm the solo developer. And then like two stuff that I find fun, you know. So it's like if you just want to make fun games, you know, you might have an audience out there and there might be a big enough audience for you to go full-time with it. But is that audience just going to find you if you're just talking about your game on YouTube? Probably not. Hmm. So I feel like most people are trying to do kind of like, you know, like oh, I need to put on this persona of like I'm super successful, here's my studio, this is what I do, all this kind of stuff cuz those videos get clicks and it's all about the algorithm, it's all about like how to drive traffic to your channel. But then it's like they've never shipped a game. If they do ship a game, they might not talk about how much money it actually makes because, you know, in my experience, you know, especially even for me, like my Steam games, you know, they're they don't make any money. Yeah.

Um, I mean a little bit, but not a whole lot. And it's like when you look at most game developers, everyone says, you know, ship your games on Steam, they make a ton of money. But, you know, to to do the Steam thing, you've got to have an audience, you got to have enough wishlists, you know, you got to have a a very marketable product. Um, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with I think his name is Chris Zukowski. Oh, yeah. For sure. And Chris has done Side note, Chris has done the right He's he's created the right target market because he's doing exactly what I'm doing in the sense of he teaches marketing of games, right? And how how to sell games and how to make money. The difference is is that he's not also a game developer and so he's he's a marketing guru, right? And what happens with me is that people are like, Thomas, it's so it makes I shouldn't care. It makes me sad though because people are like Thomas isn't a game developer, he's a YouTuber. So he's he's manipulating. And I'm like I'm not

manipulating. I've got a business on one side over here and I got a business over here. I've got an educational platform on YouTube and then I also run a game studio called Atmos Games and we're currently signed with 3D Realms. We're making a huge almost double A triple shooter double A shooter. And what's happening in the game dev sphere, sorry to derail here, but what's happening is that people see that and they go, well, I'm going to do the same thing that like Thomas and other YouTubers are doing and I'm going to talk about money and pretend that that's coming from my games. And it's like it's not. And or No, yeah. So it it feels disingenuous and so it waters down the whole industry or the whole YouTube game dev sphere. Um, so anyway, is that kind of what you're talking about? Yes, it is. I I forgot what I was going to say about Chris. It's kind of like I was going to say something about Steam marketing. But he's got a thing Yeah, he's got a I'm going to go back to it, but he's got a point about like what

games do well and what games don't do well. And it's like all of my games are just not suited for Steam, they just don't do very well. Interesting. So Yeah, I mean I guess I guess you have a higher ceiling. Like you could do really well if you had a large audience or, you know, you had a very special type of game, but um, you know, for the most part mine don't do too well on Steam, but I feel like um, people try to I don't know, they try to like copy that, you know, it's like they copy that vibe, they I don't know how to explain it. I don't want to like call out YouTubers, you know, because I've seen a bunch. and I don't want to call them out either, but there's a few and there's one that they're they're starting to freak me out because they're they're talking about this. Like how to make money and how to do this and how to sell your game. And I'm like, I know y'all's numbers.

Like they've told me their numbers. And I'm like Mhm. You shouldn't be giving this advice. You shouldn't be talking about this. I can because I run a full I run a full-on studio and we've been published. I've actually signed four publishing agreements. So I have four games that have been published. So I know how to bring in revenue. I have two Kickstarter campaigns that raised over $100,000. I've hit the Steam front page. I've made plenty of money on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation consoles, Apple Arcade. So I know what I'm talking about. And then they come in and they're trying to like I sound bitter. I guess I am. I don't know. But it's like they come in and they they come in and they they say I'm going to do what Thomas is doing, but it's it's not it's disingenuous and it makes me look disingenuous, you know? So You know, here's a thought. So, you know, I mentioned um, you know, I've got some game developer friends that we chat a bunch and I was talking to my friend Thomas Stewart about this and um, the theme that we noticed, you know, we

were chatting about this the other day and I noticed this a bunch. A lot of the people that want to do the YouTube thing and do the game dev YouTube thing, it's like they don't actually want to be game developers. They want an escape from like their job. Or they they want the lifestyle. They they want like what you have where you can choose like how you work. For me for instance, you know, like this is my office, this is, you know, the bedroom in our house, right? And, you know, this is where I do my my studio work and I do all my porting and all this stuff here. I got all my dev kits here. But I choose my schedule and, you know, I make YouTube videos when I want to and I just got to for me, you know, I'm fully funded on game sales. So it's like I just got to know like, all right, I have projections because I got years now of games on PlayStation. So I can kind of look at a game and go, okay, it's going to make around this range to this range

and I need it to come out by this time in order to bring in enough revenue to keep going for the next game, right? Um, so it's kind of like I have freedom to decide, all right, am I working on this today? You know, am am I going to take these three days off cuz my wife has these days off. You know, it's kind of like a free lifestyle, but it's very stressful cuz you have to be disciplined, you have to, you know, bring in the money. And I feel like there's a lot of people that just want that YouTube lifestyle and I've seen a bunch. Like there's one guy and I think he's even talked about it cuz I was watching a bunch of game dev YouTube videos and I've seen so many. Some of the channels are kind of small, a few thousand subscribers like mine and they're they're kind of putting out the game dev videos every advice videos every week, but some of them are kind of big, you know, 50, 60,000 subscribers, maybe over 100,000 subscribers. And like one of the guys I'm not going to call anyone's names, but it's like he had been doing YouTube they quit their jobs for like over two

years and they still hadn't shipped the game. Um, and I was thinking like, dude, like how do you like if you look at that honestly, like you haven't shipped the game. And if you do ship, there's no guarantee that you'll make any money back. And even, you know, like in my head, I kind of look at some of these games and think based on my numbers like, okay, with no publisher with that audience, that game might make $25,000, you know, or or $50,000 or something like that. And and you can just know cuz you've done it, right? Yeah, and or or less, you know, you might you might have a hard time hitting 10 or 15. You might get lucky and do 75, something like that. You know, if it's your first game, you have a YouTube audience, that doesn't guarantee that they buy your game. It just gives you eyes on it. But then I'm like, okay, you know, you've been with no other income for 2 years and then it's taking you 2 years to make this game. It'll be 2 years before you

do another game. Like where it's like the math doesn't add up but everyone kind of post videos like they're an assertive, you know, topic like they know what they're talking about kind of thing. I just think it's I just feel like everyone is just I don't want to like harp on anyone cuz like I don't want to come on the podcast to like roast other YouTubers cuz my channel's not the best but it's like I just feel like I don't know what I'm talking about kind of thing. I just think it's I just feel like everyone is just I don't want to like harp on anyone cuz like I don't want to come on the podcast to like roast other YouTubers cuz my channel's not the best but it's like I just feel like I don't know what I'm talking about kind of thing. I just think it's I just feel like everyone is just I don't want to like harp on anyone cuz like I don't want to come on the podcast to like roast other YouTubers cuz my channel's not the best but it's like I just feel like I don't know what I'm talking about kind of thing. I just think it's I just feel like Well, we're not calling out anybody's names. I think what we're doing is a it's a it's a PSA. I mean, I just want everybody listening to know you need to be careful who you're listening to on YouTube and I'm not saying listen to me and buy my stuff. But don't do that. Don't do that. I'm

not going to do that but I'm just going to say if they've shipped multiple games and they make a full-time living and I told you this before you got on the podcast. I said, look man, you have to be making money off your games full-time if you're going to be on this podcast. It's a it's a very very important metric before I get a guest on because the YouTube game dev space is littered with people who should not be giving advice on the business side. It's one thing to say, here's how to make a game technically. It's another thing to say, here's how to make a ton of money and it's like, that's that's guru crap. And Yeah, if you're going to be a guru, if you're going to be a guru, you have to have done it. That's the rule in my mind cuz I wouldn't got to live with myself, dude, if I was giving all this advice and I and it was fake. Yeah, I've kind of just stopped watching

game dev YouTubers to be honest. Like I used to watch a bunch and the ones that I watched are highly successful, you know, I'm sure you're friends with a lot of them. Like I I saw, you know, the Choo Choo Charles guy and you know, you know, Jonas Tyroller. Those those two guys are valid as heck, dude. They've got it in the bag. Yes. Like those are the people that like I would watch or, you know, like I really like Jonas. I like a lot of his games but it's like those guys like make games, you know, and they make a lot of money too. Jonas Jonas his game is killing it right now. Oh, yeah. I really like Yeah, as a side tangent, I like his the one of his older games. I followed him for a while. I haven't played the new one yet. But you know, like I used to watch videos like that all the time and I wanted to be like and I watched you all the time, you know, 10 years ago when I was making really junky videos, you know, I'm still not I'm still not making the best videos. It's like I try to do a little bit more editing but like I want

to be a game developer, not a YouTuber, you know, and it's kind of like yeah, so but I still do YouTube cuz it's like you you need to connect to your audience and I really enjoy connecting with other developers, not just fans but, you know, fans and stuff, you know, it's it's fun when the community is fun. But now it's just kind of switched and it's like it's not about the games, it's about the algorithm, it's about clicks, it's about money. Like talking about money, talking about success, that kind of thing. And like my videos I'm like, oh, you know, here's how much I made on Steam. Some of my popular videos and I'm like, I made 50 bucks, you know, and it's and you know, it's like no one talks like that. I mean, it's becoming more popular on Twitter now to talk about like if you have bombs and I don't know if you want to go into a little bit later in the podcast but it's like I've tried so many things over the years where it's like I've tried weird pricing experiments, weird genres. I just I have

an idea, I want to make something, I just do it and I'm like, I don't know if it's going to be successful but I'm going to see. I've had absolute bombs that have made nothing. I've had games that are that you wouldn't just looking at it you're like, I I don't think that that made any money but you'd be surprised it did, you know, so it's, you know, I don't know. It's just it's fun to do the YouTube thing but I'm like, you know, for me I just kind of like doing the games and stuff and everyone kind of changed, you know, recently. It's all about the money and all that kind of stuff. So I kind of stopped watching a lot of people. There's a lot of good people out there still. I don't know if you watch for tutorials and stuff like I don't know if you've seen Code Monkey. There's there's two completely different there's there's two completely they're they're This is the way YouTube works. YouTube YouTube is you pick a niche and you focus on the niche and you build a business. Well, if you want to build a business, you build a business around that niche, okay? And so yeah, there's a

reason why this podcast is called the Full Time Game Dev podcast, right? It's because my niche is people who want to do this full-time. So it would be it would be not helpful if my if if all I talked about was the technical side and I didn't actually show people the ropes or the road map of like, here's how you do make money and every guest we have on is about how they make money and how they did this, right? Because that's so many people listening right now, that's their dream. The problem is is that a lot of game dev YouTubers are confused. They're confused about who their target market is, right? Is it gamers or game developers, right? And so that's right. This is sort of a big PSA for everybody listening. Thomas's brand is not the brand on YouTube. Thomas's brand is not what people should be doing for the most part because they're not educators, right? They don't want to be educators. They want to make games, right? They want to sell games. And so don't try and replicate my model because I don't care about views. I

don't care about subscribers. I care about educational content that really helps people and maybe one day maybe one day they'll want to learn more from me with a product, okay? That's that's my business on YouTube. That I I don't I I rarely if ever promote my games or do some kind of wish list below for my games. That's not what YouTube is for me, right? Whereas for let's say Thomas Stewart, it's and for you it's probably like, how can I get some wish lists out of this, right? And so it's two totally different models, two totally different algorithms and people need to pick. Do they want to focus on gamers or do they want to focus on developers? And so I'm I'm moving in the sort of the Chris Zukowski world for one of my businesses, which is my YouTube channel. That's my business, right? If that's my target market. But over here to ensure that I'm not what's what's the word? A grifter or a snake oil salesman. Over here with Atmos Games, my other business,

I make sure that that thing is very profitable and that thing is is a well-oiled machine that makes great games and I work with publishers and platforms so that we have a significant amount of income from those games so that this is not a lie, right? So that's my that's my big problem with with game dev YouTube right now is that most people don't have this. They don't have a business like successful game dev studio, right? That can give them credibility over here and that bugs me. Now, regarding your credibility, I I wanted to talk about this during the podcast. It's it's I want to get advice from you, honestly, because I get am I right that Thomas Stewart learned from you about how like the value of console and the value of small games? Okay, cuz he was he was telling me about it on the previous podcast about how he's focused on small console games and in my head I was like, that's a terrible idea.

I remember you saying that. I was like, bro, no. I was like, just tell him tell him it's great, dude. Tell him it's great. To up though, to set this up, I I I have two I have a video dropping on Friday. So in four days and I also dropped a video last week and it's it's this like my brain's popping where I'm like, oh, the economy sucks and publishers don't have nearly as much money and platforms aren't paying out like they used to. And believe me, they paid out crazy numbers to for for Never Song. But now what I'm learning is game devs because of the economy, because of the game dev industry or the gaming industry being kind of something's off right now. Like the money's not there. Now I'm going small games, low budgets, low risk. You don't go all in with a game. You just you just have a decent hand and you do a small game. So that's your strategy, right?

Yes. Yeah, I can talk all about that. And it's like not that it was my forced strategy but like in the beginning, so like, you know, it's crazy cuz I'm like to me I'm like, oh, I've had so much growth because like back when I released like the letter and stuff, I had like 100 subscribers on YouTube and now I'm at like 2,000. So I'm like, let's go, you know, yeah, I'm like, it's it's getting there. And cuz like you know, my marketing strategy is basically Twitter and YouTube and then Discord. I have a Discord, that's it. And those are like the places I go and I don't really do anything else. But I basically learned early on that, okay, you know, I'm not making money from videos and basically they're not blowing up, right? My videos I talk about my games like, yo, this is super cool. Like here's my new idea that go on to that after the base part of the console sales. But I basically learned early on that like I wasn't going to get a bunch of views and I wasn't going to convert those views into wish lists. So then I

wasn't just going to sell a huge amount. So it didn't really make sense. Like I have these dream games in my head, right? That I'm like, okay, realistically this game would take 2 years to 3 years of dev time. You know, I've done a couple of games with small teams like contract workers in the past, but like right now I'm doing everything solo and like I mean everything game design, programming, 3D modeling, the texture, I write the music, I do all the business side, I do all the porting to all the consoles, everything myself. So I only have to pay myself, you know? And I So So that's the benefit of doing like real small solo dev. So I'm like, I can't I spent a few years like when I was doing the part-time college, part-time work stuff where I'm like, all right, I'm going to spend a year on this game. One of my games, you know, I spent like a year on it's called the Perplexing Orb 2. My Orb series is kind of like a Super

Monkey Ball. They're like Super Monkey Ball inspired games, but instead of the level rolling, you just It's like a physics base platform where you roll the ball. And instead of going through like a goal, you know, at the end there's like a physics post and you have to like hit it just right to knock it down to beat the level. And that's one of my more popular franchises. It's just like a you know, it's like a fun arcade game. That's all it is really. And like I spent a year on the second game for that and like it did perform pretty well, but I'm like, is that a year's income? No, not really. And then I kind of realized like, okay, you know, all my games are making a range of like this much to this much and basically for me to stay full-time, at minimum I just have to release like two games a year. And because I make so much money, not like not like so much, but like I make a an amount of money like every month like almost guaranteed because of my back catalog of games that will sell.

And so like I can kind of say, all right, this is the baseline and this these two releases, like one every 6 months, will be this month where there's a bunch of money and then this month where there's a bunch of money. And then with this baseline, that's a year's salary. And for the most part in case a game might, you know, plummet or fail a little bit, I shoot for like two to four games a year. So it's almost once a quarter. It sounds crazy It might sound crazy to you cuz I I know you've been working on your game for like 3 years. the games that Okay, side side note a lot of game developers listening right now, including me we treat treat our games like they're our babies and we treat them with this high high amount of integrity. And by the way, I'm not saying you don't have integrity. Don't don't don't misconstrued that. Even though that's basically what I just said. What I mean What I mean is there's this high level of like artistry that's like this thing has to be perfect and it has to change the world and it has to

make a million bucks, right? And I'm guessing in your mind you're like, no, it just needs to be one and done, see you later. Bring in bring me some revenue, let's move on, right? Sort of. And I guess I can go a little bit farther. I do want to talk about the difference between console and Steam cuz I think it will be really beneficial for you know, most of the people who are watching because no one really talks about it. And I got a bunch of reasons why Steam might be the best platform for, you know, like established game developers, but for someone starting out, it's not going to find you as much success statistically speaking compared to console. But so I don't do one and dones. So basically like if you look at my game catalog I actually I don't know what kind of games you like to play. This could go on another side tangent because I feel like a lot of game developers don't even play games. Especially the Yeah, especially the YouTuber ones.

It's like Oh, yeah, I I mean like before that. Um But before that, no, I I I didn't And that's a big problem because you can it reflects in my gameplay. My gameplay is very rudimentary. So I know that. I know it's a problem. Um Sorry, you Sorry, you kind of fuzz out there for a second. I think your internet dropped out. Um Yeah, I got you now. Okay. I was just going to say that I growing up I didn't really play games. I just watched my brothers play them and and even even now I don't really play them and I got you. it's it's not a good thing. Like it's not a good thing cuz my gameplay really suffers in my games. Admittedly. So, yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say that because it just feels like a lot of people um it feels like they want to make games, but they don't actually have games that they're inspired by or like they they like games or they don't like video games. So basically, you know, I was going to say I just have video games that I like you know, growing up playing

and like I I kind of want to make games that are you know, in similar genres, that type of thing. Um and so by saying all that, I just kind of looked at Nintendo. Like Nintendo was like who I wanted to be like and I'm like in my bedroom by myself and I'm like, I'm just going to treat Tree Fall Studios like it's Nintendo. And like I would just I would just go out and I would make videos. I mean, if you look at my channel, I mean, it's a lot of it's cringe now, but it's like it's so bad cuz like in 2014 like I would post E3 conference videos and I would be like, here's the four games I'm working on and treat it like I was Nintendo directing it, you know? And I I still do that. I have a lot of fun doing it. And like so I would watch them. I'd be like, I don't want to do what other indies are doing. You know, I watch your channel like Jonas' channel, all these other people and I'm like, I'm just going to pretend I'm going to be like Nintendo. So I would release like a franchise and then, you know, I would go to a different franchise and then go to a

different one and then like I have a release calendar basically like in my head planned out for like the next 2 years. Like I know like what games I'm going to be doing for like the next like eight games. And I'm like, okay. Previous games? Yeah, so it's like after I'm like, okay, so this game is now old enough to where like it's time to make the sequel for this game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So So like my three pillars of my three most profitable or, you know, fan enjoyed franchises, I've got a puzzle game series called Tilting Tiles and it's like a minimalist puzzle game where you're basically a literally a tile and you're on these towers. It's like minimalist clean art. There's just like these towers in the sky and there's just items all over this There's gems all over the stage and each level you have a move limit and it's basically like a train um like movement based game. You have to like analyze It's like planning routes.

You have to like just plan your route through the level and try to get every item before your move limit runs out. And then it it gets kind of deep. It's pretty hard for a lot some people because it's like you have special moves that like you can cross multiple spaces. Like you can diagonal or double jump and stuff like that. Um in order and use one move and there's like teleports and ice and, you know, bridges that flying platforms and skinny hallways and all this different stuff that changes up the gameplay and stuff. So there's like one series, a puzzle series. And then I've got another puzzle series called Maze and it's literally like imagine you're a first-person shooter game with no gun and you're dropped in giant 3D mazes and you just have to solve your way out. That's it. Yeah, it's it's kind of like you know, you're looking at the back of the cereal box and all those mazes you saw as a kid I used to draw that um

it's I mean, it's like a childhood thing, but like, you know, when I grew up in church and I was like five, it was kind of hard for me to like sit still in that kind of thing. And like my mom would give me like a mint and a little pad and like me and my friends would draw mazes in church. Exactly. So then that's it. But yeah. Exactly. So I just took like that childhood thing and turned it into a game franchise. So I've got two games in that franchise and a third one about to come out. And then my other popular ones my Super Monkey Ball like game that the Orb games I was talking about. And basically what I do is in order to stay profitable for instance, like I will build upon like a code base that I already have. So it's like but I won't beat you over the head with it. So like I'll release a Tilting Tiles game. So you get a new game in the franchise, but I'm not just one and done. I'm not starting from

scratch. I'll make a new one. I'll make a new one in the future, but I don't make four Tilting Tiles games in a row. Now, you know, for instance, like I don't know when this podcast is going to go live, but from the time of recording last week I just released a new game called the Perplexing Orb Bounce Challenge and this is my This is my fourth Perplexing Orb game. Okay, so it just came out on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5. That's where it launched day one. And now after I'm done with that, I've already just switched into working on another Tilting Tiles game, right? And the game before that game was actually a word search game and I'm going to be doing another one of those. So, it's like I have a a bunch of franchises and like I start building the IP, I start building characters, you know, it builds the world. Uh when I release Tree Fall Studios games, a lot of them have Easter eggs to other games, that kind of thing. So, they all kind of cohese together.

I'm thinking like back towards Nintendo, it's kind of like Smash Brothers. Like I treat my own games like they're all going to get together in Smash Brothers, like the Tree Fall Studios universe. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so, because starting a brand new game would take a lot longer, I don't just make a sequel. I I actually, you know, implement a new gameplay mechanic or a new hook or something like that every time I do a Tilting Tiles game. Like there's a new puzzle mechanic. Is it called Tilting Tiles 2 or is it a new game? No, see, okay, my my naming conventions are kind of bad. So, I don't like to jump all the way to two. Yeah. I do like what I call spin-offs. So, like I came out with I came out with Tilting Tiles in 2021. And then in 2022, at the end of the year, I came out with Tilting Tiles Ultimate Tilt Remix, which is like a remixed version, um all based around tilting, um for the second one. And then in 2023, I came out with a third game, which is

called Micro Challenge, which is based on shrinking and growing. Um so, it's like it changes the puzzle mechanic. The same base gameplay is there, but it changes it up. Um but they're not called two, so they're all like subtitled. And then it's what I consider to be series one um for the puzzle series. And then eventually, when there's a giant change in like how the game is played, then I will go to what is called Tilting Tiles 2. You know what I mean? Got you. I I do the same thing for my Orbs in a Maze. Like the first maze game is called Maze, just Maze. It's available on PlayStation, Steam, everywhere basically. The second one is called Maze Pestle of Trials. So, like if you don't follow Tree Fall Studios, like you wouldn't know that that is Maze 2. It just It just has a subtitle. So, like my marketing is kind of bad sometimes cuz like people just don't know. They might just find it for the first time, you know what I mean? Um but

basically, I just do spin-offs of you know, the original game. And then I just keep building in and out of the franchises. That way I can continually release games, at least two, three a year, you know. But I don't do them in a row, you know what I mean? I love this. Okay, so I'm going to pull up a chat I have right now on Discord Okay. with um I'm talking to Edmund McMillen right now. He's the creator of I'm name I'm name dropping right now. I'm talking to Edmund McMillen right now, and I've mentioned this quote several times in my videos. But what he said was he said in response to the indie game industry being really difficult right now and completely flooded, he said he said the only solution we have is to make better games, design always wins. You can make a very Listen to this. You can make a very simple design that by design he means a simple gimmick or mechanic

that shines very bright gameplay wise. Um and I think that that in combination with Hang tight, I'm going to I've got a conversation right now with Tomas Sala or Tomas Sala, and he made a game called Oh, that guy's cool. Yeah, he's awesome. He made a game Chronicles, Bulwark. That's right. And he gave me this long message about how to survive in the game industry in 2025. And he said exactly what you just said. And I won't read the whole thing, but all he really said was he's building a brand or a franchise that is niche. It's a small audience, but he reuses his code base and he reuses his projects to create derivatives. Um and by the way, to their credit, but also I hate what they're doing, Disney is doing this. They take their IPs and they just I'm about to swear.

Well, I won't swear in the pod They they S M out, right? Now, I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but I'm saying that there is a strategy there and that is How do we get these games out quicker? So, and not constantly go all in with every game, right? And start with a completely fresh new hand, but rather build your hand and change your hand so that all of a sudden you go from a I don't know, two aces to a royal flush over time. Exactly. Exactly. And see, I am my my mind is just so it's just spinning right now because I'm like it makes so much Oh, yeah. It makes so much sense. And I have a coach right I have a coach right now that that I I I hired to help me sort of reframe the way I'm thinking about business. And he's helping me learn that most businesses, including game devs, they have a ton of bloat because of the way they think. They're thinking, "Oh, I got to scale up and I got to go huge and I got to make these huge games, right?"

And they always quit. They always quit because it's just too big, right? And what you're doing is what you're doing is saying, "No, I'm going to stay small and I don't need to blow my budget and I don't need to spend 2 years on a game. I need to make a small game, release it, and then build on that IP or build on that framework that's built from scratch, but and then, you know, a year down the road it's not from scratch, right? Yep. Exactly. See, cuz I mean like what When I say from scratch, like I'm not one that like I don't use any assets, you know, everything is like handmade. And I'm kind of like I'm just like I would say you know, to encourage people. It's like I'm very Not that I'm average, but it's like I don't I'm not a super talented artist, right? So, it's like I'm I'm working and like each project that I do, I try to polish it I look at other people's projects, I look at my past work, try to polish it up a little bit better, you know, do make the whole

experience just a little bit better each time. But I'm not like like you're saying, obsessing, you know, constantly over all of the little details. I'm like I'm just like adding to my skills each time I release. And the beating over your head thing is really, really important. Like if I just released like you know, Orb 1, Orb 2, Orb 3, Orb 4 in 2 years, like you could become known for that just one thing, but I just don't want to do that. I don't think that they would keep selling, you know what I mean? It It's like important to switch the games in and out, and that gives you like sanity because you know, like if you're just like creating the same thing over and over and over, it's kind of like not mind numbing, but like eventually you'd be like tired of it. You're living in the same exact little world, you know? And like I like to change it up and like I feel like you learn more that way. Like for instance, you know, like in 2022 maybe, like in the middle of all these games, I just released this game called Mighty Math, which is literally just an arcade game

where you're like a square. And all you have to do is keep your like you have a number value inside the square. You have nine squares. It's So, it's like a grid of like 3 3 3. And like every time there's just numbers that fly across the screen at you. And every time you grab one, it changes the value of your player. And you can't go below zero and you can't go above nine. Yep. So, basically, what happens is there's just a bunch of numbers that you just keep getting thrown at you, thrown at you, thrown at you. And it's an endless game. It has It's programmed to be endless. And you It's just a high score driven game. And basically, they get faster and the numbers spin and bounce and all this kind of stuff um to where like you're trying to do math in your head. You're trying to figure out what numbers you need to pick up and what numbers you need to dodge in order to live cuz you have to get a certain number of numbers to survive each round basically. Okay, so Um so, basically Go ahead. Go ahead.

So, basically like I just will be like doing these franchises that I'm building and like building sequels, but then randomly I'll be like, "Okay, let's do something completely different. I don't know if it's going to have an audience. This is kind of fun to me." And I do a project that there's something about it that I didn't know in my head like how to program. Yes. Um and I will like use that project to figure it out and then take that knowledge from that project into like the next sequel of something else to make something a little bit better in that game. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Like just Like just shoving stuff in like just going out there. So, not everything is a franchise. I just do drop like random projects, you know, like I have a game like a word search game, right? That is like literally just a casual word search game. You just complete One Two Word Search. Um and I just released it on PlayStation a couple of months ago. How do you So, is

it Do you spell out one and then you spell out I'm looking at it up right now. It's just like It's like the number one {dash} number two {dash} word search. And it's literally just a grid. It's like a word search game, right? And you just have all sorts of categories and it just has a timer and it's got different background themes. And so, what I did was, you know, to tie it into Tree Fall games, I put a Tree Fall radio in the bottom, and all the background music is from all of our other games. And you unlock new background music every single time you beat a word search, and you can switch it. So, it's like it it's like almost like you can feel the cohesiveness like of all of the games even if it doesn't have anything to do with our other games, even if it's just a word search. But, the whole reason I made that game was just like I learned how to do like some a better way to do grids and like basically like coordinate placing and stuff, which I might take to use in like a you know a city builder game type of

thing. It's like I was you know it's just it was just another programming challenge that changed the way I was thinking like I was programming physics in Orb beforehand and I'm like well, here's a casual game, you know, that it's just a game. It's just a fun game. It's just you just do word searches, but like I used it to learn something new and it like made it fun for me. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. You know, I'm I'm thinking in my head is just thinking about the strategy here and and why it's brilliant. Um Okay. So, it's almost like Okay, let me try and phrase this correctly. You know itch.io is filled with just a bunch of concept games. Yep. And None of them are fully complete and they're just based on like a small little gimmick or there's just a tiny little and they're super niche, right? It sounds like what you figured out how to do is number one you create that small gimmick

uh and then you just make sure it's tight and that it's it's it's Mhm. it's packaged cleanly and so it's not like a lot of these concept games they end after 20 minutes or the loop doesn't continue to get more and more challenging. So, it's just boring after like 5 minutes. Mhm. And I've been there like I made a game called well, I stole a game. Uh I made a game called Flash Geometry Wars. It was Geometry Wars, but I made it in Flash, right? And that was like one of my first games when I was like 17, right? I didn't know that it was illegal to do that. So, cuz Geometry Wars was a very strong IP at that in 2000 when 2008 or nine. Yeah, yeah. Um but anyway, I did that and the problem was I got it working for like the first 3 minutes, but after the first 3 minutes of gameplay the loop just completely collapsed, right? But, you've created a loop that doesn't collapse and it's it's just fun to keep playing and playing and playing, right? Mhm. Okay. So, you've got this this business model where it's like it's like a flash game or it's like an itch.io

game, but it's it's finely tuned and it's actually you can actually play it for a longer period of time. Is that correct? Well, most of my games they're small. So, I would say you can beat like my story-driven games like Orb or Maze. Like those games you can beat them in like an hour to 3 hours sitting usually. The the Tilting Tiles games maybe 2 hours average to 5 plus hours depending on which game it is. You know, a puzzle time. I have a couple endless games like the Mighty Math one is endless. So, it's it's like run-based and it's like there's randomization to it and stuff. So, you could play it for theoretically as long as you wanted to chase high scores and stuff. Um I've got a couple of games like that. Uh so, they there are some endless games, but most of my games are like an hour to 3 hours experience to be honest. Some of them are like 5 bucks, right? Yeah, all my games are priced between

$1.99 and $9.99. Okay. done a I've done a bunch of pricing um stuff just to try different things. I even so much like I lost money in order just to see if it would work. Like um my micro challenge my Tilting Tiles micro challenge I charged $0.49 for it even though it's worth way more than that and it was like a pun because I was like the game is micro because it's a smaller game and you shrink the character in that game and I'm going to charge nothing for it because I was thinking like okay, let's I was like okay, let's try and see if we can sell you know, just hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies at like nothing and introduce all those people to the other games Yep. because they're they they play the same way. It didn't work out by the way. Don't do that. Don't uh Don't charge $0.99. between you know, high price low price. You got to find that exact optimum

number for high the highest But, basically Yeah, but basically I've tried that on my own without looking at other people's data and you know, out of my top three selling games it's very interesting. My top my highest revenue grossers it's like one of the games is $5.99. One of them is $9.99 and one of them is $2.99. Mhm. So, it's like the $2.99 is like right at the top. It grosses more than some of the $9.99 ones. So, there is a balance to where it's like sometimes even though it's a lot cheaper you might just sell and like what enough more to where like the actual revenue is more than you know, the bigger games. I would say that there's some kind of balance around the $4.99 Mhm. you know, $5.99 range. It's kind of like what I shoot at and I've done a lot of $1.99 stuff where it's like the game is really little and I'm just like all right, you know, this is about as cheap as you could get um and some of those actually sell like a ton to where like it does make a good

amount of money, but you know, I kind of think that for me and in most people like if you're starting off an indie game maybe somewhere between $2.99 and $9.99 would be like your target in target goal or whatever. So, I I like to try and turn things into frameworks that people can understand. Yeah. So, tell me if this framework is correct um for your strategy. Hit me up. Find a gimmick. So, in your case let's think I'm By the way, I'm looking at your games and they all look really fun and they're very very very niche. They're very niche. Yeah. Um Yeah, thanks. They all have a very simple gimmick. Like Maze for example. And and then after I give you the framework I want to talk about why most game developers can't do this because they get they have psychological roadblocks including me. Yeah. So, number one, you find a gimmick. Number two, Mhm. um you program and build a game around that simple gimmick.

Number three, instead of scaling the gimmick to a unmanageable degree, instead of scaling it you just tighten the screws, wrap it up and call it a product. It's just tight and simple. Cuz I think a lot of game developers and here's the roadblock. And then well, the next step is find a platform where it'll actually sell cuz I'm looking at Steam. It seems like your games don't do very well on Steam. Like Yeah. if I was only looking at Steam I'd say there's no way this guy's making money, right? Oh, no, no. Yeah, see we'll go into that after this. So, you found platforms where they sell well. So, that's the that's the the final step. So, is that first off is that framework correct? Yeah, it's I would say that's pretty close. I don't you know, in my head I'm like I don't even call it a gimmick or a hook. It's like I'm not even thinking through that much. I'm just like what would be fun or I mean I guess it is the hook or whatever. I'm just like

yeah, I'm just like you know, oh and like you have you ever seen that that Venn diagram that indie game developers share where it's like games I can make, games I want to make, games that have a market and then you have to find the one in the middle, you know? Um where it's like okay, a lot of my game design is influenced by what I can make. Like growing up my favorite game, the reason I wanted to become a game developer is Spyro the Dragon. Right? On PlayStation 1. PlayStation. So, um So, like I always just wanted to make a Spyro the Dragon like game. You know, a big 3D platforming game, all that kind of stuff. But, right now it's like I don't have the budget to do that. That'd take too long. And it's like if you think about it it's like oh well, you know, these guys you know, it's like 100 people working on that you know, for 2 years in 1998 or whatever. Like it's unrealistic to think that oh, I can do that in 6 months, you know, by myself. It is unrealistic. You're right. Yeah. So, it's like I got to make

a smaller game and then I'll get there eventually. So, it's like okay, I got to make smaller games. What can I make and what do I find interesting and or fun and what will other people maybe find interesting and fun and that's how I go about it. Now, if you do look at the Steam page, it's kind of interesting like I do have a Steam franchise page and you can scroll through. I have like eight of my games on Steam and I've released probably like 15 games on PlayStation something like that. So, only like half of them go to Steam cuz I just don't even drop some of them on there anymore because it's just not really worth it. Uh and you can see some of them like the Maze games like they have positive review ratings, you know, maybe 14 reviews. The letter has like 20 reviews. So, a couple of them have hit rating thresholds where it's like oh, you know, made $1,000, you know, something like that. And then some of the games that don't sell it's like oh, well you know I made $100 off that game on Steam, right? And then you got to look at the other side of

things. It's like I kind of mentioned this like earlier when we talked about the podcast like do game developers play video games? They do because like I only did what I know because like when I was growing up, I didn't play PC games, you know, I'd never really been on Steam. I'd always played console games. So, I was always like oh, video games is making games for consoles. And like that concept seems like foreign to a lot of game developers online in the game dev space. Um so, I'm like okay, well, I'll shoot for consoles. Um, and I think there's like a few reasons why like in general, if you have a small audience and you don't have like a huge base of wish list or you can't like reach out to a lot of people that consoles are just better in general than Steam. Um, and it's just because number one is like exposure. Like if you look, like I think actually wrote this down before we we started this. I'm going to see if I can find it. Um,

like okay, so I I do a lot of Steam research, right? Like in 2023 there was 14,436 games on Steam released. That was last year. Right? And you got all these people watching this, you know, we're talking to all I talked to people on my channel, you talked to people on your channel. All these people want to be full-time game developers. And those people haven't released games yet. So, you already have a pool of like 15,000 games you're about to jump into and you probably have 100 to 1,000 people that you know that want to jump into that pool. You know what I mean? Yep. How are you going to stand out if you like if you don't have the money, like if you don't have the budget to do I mean some people it just works. I don't know how people are self-funding for years, you know, like for instance some people work 7 8 years like Stardew Valley, you know, you might be able to work on your game for 10 years and then release a game and sell a million to millions. But in my case it's like,

well, I wanted to work on video games, but I don't have 10 years to work on just one single game. Like I don't have like one idea that I just want to do for that long, you know what I mean? Yeah. And most people that are trying nowadays like schedules are so tight, everything is so busy like doing game dev part-time isn't really enough. Like it takes forever to do something. Takes forever to do it full-time. You know how long it takes. It does. Um, like You could spend years you got multiple people on your team you're spending years on a game. Yeah. And it's like, well, how do you expect someone who doesn't have skills, who's like starting from scratch Yeah. you know, to do one or two hours a day just you know, and they also got to learn and watch YouTube videos, tutorials and things like that to learn Unity. Like how are they supposed to make a game and put it on Steam in that big ocean of games and make enough money to cover the bills. Like almost no one does it. I think it's I don't know what the

statistic is, but like it's like 90% or something. Like they don't even make their $100 back. Yeah. And or they only release one game. An additional piece of data there is that and this is from Chris Zukowski. He calls it um, he calls it the sandbox. And it's basically the majority of indie game developers stay in the sandbox meaning and the sandbox is you have less than 10 reviews. And so the metric is get past 10 reviews. Do whatever you can to get past 10 reviews. A buddy of mine actually just uh, he launched one of his books. He wrote a book on Amazon. And Amazon's the same thing. It looks for it looks for reviews. So, he goes to all of his friends and he's like, hey look, can you read my book and then leave a review, please? Like let's do it day one, you know? Um, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the same is true with with with with Steam. So, to encourage people listening about Steam cuz Steam is Steam is where I've made uh, the most in game sales. Um,

is Steam and then also Apple actually with Apple Arcade. But it was a totally different business model. Um, cuz it's subscription based. So, you get like payouts from Apple. Um, Mhm. point being though for for people who do want to launch on Steam and I I do like Steam. So, I'm a Steam guy. Um, Yeah. and I think you can be profitable on Steam. You you have to go with more high polished higher higher higher value on Steam. in my opinion and build up wish list all that. But all that said for people who want to launch on Steam the way to avoid being part of that 90% is build up your wish list numbers and get some reviews. Um, that's really important. So, it's not as scary, I think, as people think because if you know how to get reviews and you know how to get wish lists and then you release a decent game, you're good. And you're automatically in that 10%. Um, Yeah. The problem is most people don't know how to do that. They don't know how to

get wish lists. They don't know how to make a higher value game. By higher value I mean like 15 bucks. Um, Mhm. you know, it's it's it's pretty expensive actually to make a game that has that kind of value to get good good reviews, very positive or mostly positive and to sell it for 15 bucks. It's it's a lot of work. Um, Mhm. whereas I think what you're saying is don't don't try and hit that market. Go elsewhere where you can sell a $5 game and be and it's it's it's um, it would you say it's a would you say it's a mix between mobile and Steam? It's like somewhere in the middle in terms of the value or the the quality? not really. And um, I'm not a Steam hater. You know, it's like I kind of it's like it's hard, but I just don't think it's just to like put the honesty out there. I don't think it's really realistic that people are just going to drop their first game on Steam and then, you know, make a lot of Oh, sure. The first game, no way.

It takes a lot of time. Like you know, like basically like you said, to to be profitable on Steam, you can make the most money on there, but it's like you have to have reviews, you have to have wish lists. And a lot of times like even Chris's teaching, you know, materials and stuff is like, oh, you you launch like maybe two years early and you like build up wish lists and you do you do the Steam Next Fests and you do your dev logs and you go to events and you do all this stuff to build wish list. And I'm kind of talking to like you know, if you don't have the time to do that. Like you know, it's going to that like if you don't have funding to do that for two years, right? And you you want to spend six months making a game. Like most likely if you spend six months and you put a game on Steam, like you're not going to make $1,000. You know what I mean? Unless the game unless it's like really good. And unless it's like something just special. Or you're just you're a very you're a very talented developer who's who's who knows the ropes. And this this might sound this is going to sound egotistical, but

I could do that. If I wanted to, I could release a a $10 game on Steam in six months and probably have it make 30 grand minimum. Just because I just know the ropes. And I also I I can do the artwork and I can do the music and I I can create a pretty cool atmosphere and atmosphere for my games is what sells them. Um, Yep. so I I could do it, but I don't pretend to think that everybody listening right now has been there and done it and they have the experience to do it quickly, right? Yeah. So, you're right. So, the reason why I think the reason why consoles it's a little bit easier because you know, there's a lot of active users. Because I'm like a big proponent of like, oh, ship on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. A lot of indies like I don't understand they're just shipping on PlayStation 5 now. And you know, like the the new the new gens cuz you know, PlayStation 4 is kind of old, but like just recently Sony put out their numbers and Yeah. half of their user base, like 55

million people are still actively using PS4. So, they have like about 100 and last month I think it was 116 million active users. Right? So, you've got the difference between consoles and Steam is like Steam has a low barrier to entry. You know, it's $100 to get on there and they'll basically let any developer, you don't have to have a company, you don't have to have any of that kind of stuff. You can just launch right on Steam. It's easy. You can just figure it out. But that's why there's a ton of people. If you don't have a lot of eyes on your games on YouTube and stuff like that, you're going to get more natural eyes viewing your game on these other storefronts because there's less there's a ton of games launching on PlayStation now. There's a ton of games launching on Switch, but like there might be 20 to 30 games launching a week on those systems. Yep. like 40 games launching a day on Steam, right? Like on Steam, you might only have a few hours on that new release and

if you don't hit the front page, you're toast unless you can bring in external traffic to your games. Okay. On console, you might have two weeks and still be very visible on the front page. There's a higher barrier to entry to consoles because it costs more because, you know, I can't really talk about it um, specifically, but everyone knows like there's dev kit costs. It's under NDA on what they all cost. Um, you know, you can pretty much Google those and someone's leaked it somewhere or gotten close. But, you know, it's the ballpark of, you know, usually four-ish figures for dev kits, right? Let's just say that. Yeah. So, you got to pay out of pocket for dev kits. It takes there's like a longer certification process. There's more you got to do. Um, so you got to learn how to ship on that specific console. So, there's a little bit of time involved in there. So, there's a little bit of higher barrier barrier to entry, but you can get more natural eyes

on your game. Yeah. I also think it's easier to develop for, to be honest, because you're not like it's just like it's simple. Like you only have like one SKU or two SKUs. You just make the game and then you just you just do it. Like on on the PC, you might have to think, okay, like what if someone has low specs or, you know, you change the resolution, all the stuff. So, you're worried worried about building all these options into your game so people can play, you know, all this kind of stuff. Well, on PlayStation in in the way that I'm shipping games quickly, you know, I've learned the process. Like, I've got it down. Like, I could do it in my sleep. I could do their certification in my sleep. I know exactly how long to do all the back-end stuff, when to do it. Cuz, you know, they have a bunch of things that like when a new developer gets onto their site, they have five or six different back-end sites, and they've got a bunch of different setup, and it's very confusing, and you got to read a lot of documentation. But, once you learn it, you can streamline it very easily. And

then it's like, I'm only basically developing for this one SKU. It's like this exact hardware set. I don't have to worry about options. I just make the game run 60 FPS. You know, as long as it's 1080 60 FPS, the game's good to ship. And then from there, I would just take that PlayStation port, and then just port it to Steam. Like, I don't build PC first. I build I build the PlayStation one, and then I just add like mouse controls, keyboard controls. Cuz I find it annoying to have to do Steam cuz like, oh, you're programming for a keyboard and a mouse. You got to do programming inputs to switch to a controller. You got to switch the UI, you know, all this kind of stuff. I'm like, something on PlayStation is so simple because your UI is just a a couple button symbols. You know, it's the same. If you're only doing like a single platform, Mhm. you can speed your process up so fast. Recently, I just ported Tilting Tiles to the Xbox One and Xbox Series X. It's playable on It's an

Xbox One version, but it's playable on both of them. It came out last month. And um like that process took so so long, right? Because I had I had to learn all that stuff again. I I Not again. I've never done it before. Like, you know, I have the PlayStation stuff streamlined. So, it's like I was learning it all again for the Xbox. Gotcha. And having to switch out the UI, learning how to do their achievements, how to do their cloud saves, how to do like the things that are required for Xbox, all that kind of thing, how to build their store pages. You know how like people optimize your Steam store page? Well, you have to learn how to do that for Xbox and PlayStation or Switch or whatever. And like, I felt like for me, a lot of people want to go like all platforms, like Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Switch, you know, mobile even. Like, one of the strategies a lot of publishers are doing is get it everywhere and get as much revenue as

possible. Yeah. But, for me, speed is my strategy. So, even though I I I by the way, that that publishers are some publishers I know are abandoning that strategy. So, that the same the same ship standard, they're getting rid of it. And actually, they're they're they're focusing on Steam. It's It depends on the IP, right? If the IP is a high-quality, high-value $15, up to 50 or 60, and it's a high-quality game, like high polished, right? They'll go Steam first cuz they know they can probably hit, you know, that top 10%, right? Of games being launched. But, then they determine from Steam if it's going to be valuable on console. The reason why they're doing it backwards is because for high-fidelity games, it's actually it's easier to build for for for PC. Lower fidelity, like super simple graphics, it's so much easier to build on console. So, it costs upwards of Make it cost 60 grand, it could cost 100 grand just to port to console with a

game like Twisted Tower, right? Because it's going to cause the the the Nintendo Switch to explode if we port it to Switch right now, you know? Yeah, well, Switch that that's a that's a whole different thing you got porting. But, you know, like for instance, game developers back in the day, like, let's talk Xbox 360 um PS3 era, like back then, like, you developed for consoles first, and then it started shifting in the PS4 Xbox One, where it's like the PC was getting developed first. And back in the day, like, you used to have like console versions as your standard. And now people it's easier, like you said, it's cheaper on Steam cuz you can just throw whatever out there. You know what I mean? Yep. And like, you're not like you're not benchmarking for that one SKU anymore, you know? Right. Well, I've written down two two diagrams here based on what you've said cuz I'm trying to I I again, I like to try and bring this stuff down to a simple framework.

Uh let's see here. You maybe you can't read this, but I'm going to put it up there for my audience to read. And if you're listening to this on the podcast, the first diagram is number one. It says, "100% of your effort goes into the game." And that's Steam. Whereas number two, which is console, 60% of your effort goes into the game, 40% goes into understanding porting and the certification process. The reason I wrote that down is because most game developers will avoid number two because they don't want to deal with understanding the port. And so, that's the barrier of entry that you're talking about, which is a certain amount of your effort, a good especially new console developers, they're going to have to figure all that out, and they don't want to do that. And so, they'd rather put all of their effort into the game itself, and then just launch it on Steam. Well, the problem with that is that like you said, they're jumping into this huge pool of all these, including me,

like a lazier mindset or like a mindset that's like, "Well, I want to avoid the pain of understanding certification and and porting." And so, they they all jump into the same pool, right? And so, what I think what what you figured out how to do is that 100% of your effort can now go to the game because only well, 99% of your effort can go toward the game, and 1% can go toward porting because you understand it so well. Right? That's what I was going to say. Like, for going back to the Xbox thing, you know, you're saying publishers are dropping that all platform method. Mhm. And I'm kind of doing that, too, because like, in my opinion, like, from what I've seen so far from the Xbox sales, like, it's not the worst, right? Mhm. But, in my opinion, it would be faster and more profitable for me to stay on just the PlayStation because it's quicker and easier, and I'm more efficient at it instead of wasting time doing, you know, other ports Okay. just

to get a little bit of extra revenue, it'd be quicker just to go ahead and do the next game and make more money. So, I'm trying to figure out how to streamline, you know, I also release on the Atari VCS, which is like highly niche. And I Basically, at this point, I'm going to just do Steam and like VCS ports, like you know, like on the side. Like, Yeah. I basically develop a game for PlayStation, and then I just port for PC, and then like the Atari thing, that's super easy. Like, that porting process can be done in like a day or two if you already have like a a working game. And it's it's kind of for the for the amount of effort that it takes, it's it's worth the the the income for me. But, yeah, so it's mostly just, you know, just streamlining the PlayStation releases. You know what I mean? I got you. You know, to to sort of wrap up this conversation, so much has been learned. I have this diagram here, and it's a maze. And so, this is a nice

little bookend to end on because Let's go. you love mazes. I've drawn this diagram here, which it's that's on Steam, that's that's the hedge maze, and all the developers are in it. Okay? And there's you, that little dot. And that's you've exited the hedge maze, and you found the shortcut to to full-time income, which is, "Why am I going to play in this hedge maze and try and find my way to the money?" Let's say there's a treasure chest in the middle of it that people are looking for. When in reality, you can just say, "I'm getting out of this hedge maze. This is ridiculous." Now, Yeah. to be able to get out of the hedge maze and enter the console world, you've got to build a ladder and get out of that hedge maze, and it it requires work to craft the ladder. And that is I'm I'm going with the metaphor here. The the ladder is learning console. It's tough, and believe me, I've I've I've done two console ports. The Well, I've participated in two.

And the reason I say that is because as the reason I say I participated is cuz I didn't do the full thing because it's brutal. Now, it's not brutal. It sounds like it's not brutal for you because it's you're you're building for console to begin with. And so, you you you focus on a lower fidelity. By fidelity, I mean you're just not using, you know, megascans and real-time, you know, RTX lighting or whatever. I don't know. Yeah, you just got to keep in mind like actual old optimization tips. Like, you can't just throw it all into Unity and be like, "It's going to run." You know. Well, dude, this was so good. is pretty good, but still. Yeah, yeah. This was so helpful. It's wild to me because I'm thinking about like my my training material that I offer, and also the stuff I teach on YouTube, and I'm like so excited because this is a whole new paradigm for me. And um I I I For real, like, I I want to dip my toes in it and start seeing how it works.

Um and so much so much has been learned here today. This has been awesome. Everybody check out Tree Falls Studios below. Um there's a link We'll we'll include some kind of link, maybe a link to your your game's page or something. Um and for your YouTube channel. Yeah. For sure. Do a little plug on the way out, I guess? Yes. Yes, please. Sweet. All right. Well, if you guys enjoyed our chat, you can find me on YouTube at Tree Fall Studios. I I also have a Discord you guys can join, or you can find our games from all of those places. PlayStation mostly, but there's some on Steam, so. Yeah. I really appreciate you having me on, man. This was a great chat. I really appreciate it. It was a whole lot of fun. Well, it's it's crazy because it's finally like sometimes I feel like I would just repeat the same thing over and over on YouTube. And this is such a different perspective. It's so good. And when I had Thomas on, which again Thomas is your buddy,

and he was telling me about this I didn't Oh, he's great. It didn't quite make sense to me. And I'll admit that. But now it's just clicking, dude. And it's it's almost like God like put put you guys in my life because there's been a I've been exhausted by the going all in for games. Like it's it's brutal. The the mental stress of making a game over 3 years and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and just praying and crossing your fingers that it's going to do well. That is so mentally exhausting. And and it's exhausting for my whole family because like I'll go downstairs at 5:30 after work and it's just it's just it's like the stress and the anxiety of is this going to work? It's it's there. And this is my third game, you know? So. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally understand. It's it's kind of hard to break that mental shift cuz you're kind of always in the work mode.

Yeah. Um Yeah. But with with what you're doing it sounds like it's a simpler life. So, and there's predictability there, right? a little bit, but it's still stressful because it's like oh, you know, if this game flops, right? Then it's like I got 3 months to get the next one out or else we're in trouble. Yeah. I think the goal is but like the goal is to build up that machine so that it's every game is dripping income. And so even if your next three flop, those previous 12 are they're still dripping income. you know, got a little bit, yeah. Exactly. No, it's pretty good. I'm excited to see your Twisting Tower console release, man. Uh well, you know, that is When you drop it on PlayStation, bro? I can't say anything about it. Um but we did I I can say we got it running um at a decent frame rate, which was surprising. Um Sweet. But uh cuz consoles it they they they make them look really pretty. Like the hardware looks amazing, but Uh-huh. performance isn't great um

of those things. So. All right, dude. I hear you. I hear you. All right. Well, let's do this again. This was great. Super informative. Dude, yeah. Dude, had a blast. Guys, links in the description. Check out Eli's stuff. And I'm going to keep tabs on you, dude. Learning a lot from you. Thanks. Nice, man. Yep. Cheers. 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.