How To Start Making Games With NO EXPERIENCE

I got you. You clicked on this video and I knew you would. Videos with these titles, they always get clicks. They always get a ton of clicks because I think well deep down game developers feel like they're unique in knowing nothing. They feel alone. And these kind of videos make them feel, I don't know, understood. And I get it. But the truth is is that every game developer, including Frederick Printa, the creator of the viral game Coreke Keeper, knew nothing when he started. But what separates him from the rest of us is not that he was unique in knowing nothing. It was that he was unique in that he powered through the self-doubt in high school and college while knowing nothing. He powered through self-doubt. That is what makes him unique. And ultimately, he went allin on one idea and the results are breathtaking. What you're about to watch is a clip from the full length podcast with Frederick. And it's insanely motivating if you want to make indie games. you're incredibly successful now [music] and a lot of people look up to you and I think that that coreke keeper and and I I just know

cure is going to do amazing. Um it just looks incredible. You have these these [gasps] I don't know what to call them. They're they're they're like scaffolding for well I'll speak how about I speak for me because I don't want to judge you but like for me like if I make a great game or if I succeed in something it's this nice uh ego scaffolding where I can be like okay okay Thomas Thomas is living a good life and Thomas is doing everything right and he's happy with who he is. When I was growing up, I didn't have that. And I'm not I'm not saying this is good or bad to like I don't think my ego should be supported by products that I build, but it it does feel nice to have things that like being creative and and doing well at it. It feels good, right? [snorts] When I was growing up, I didn't have that. So, I didn't really know who I was, you know, growing up through school and through college. And once I finally had games that were supporting me and I started making money, it was this huge relief of like, okay, I was

misunderstood growing up, but now I know why because I'm really good at this one thing. Yeah. What about you? Do you feel something like that growing up? Did you feel different or did you feel like I don't know? Yeah. Yeah, very much so. I grew up in a very small town in northern Sweden and there were very few people who were interested in games when I was a kid. Right. I I was one out of very few other people who were very much interested in sports and and and actually today I enjoy sports way more than I did back then. Really? Yeah. But uh but back then, you know, I was like a bit bit of a weird kid because I just wanted to be by the computer, play games, make stuff like I remember using the like scenario editor in Heroes 3 for like hundreds of hours, right? Stuff like that. What editor was that? Say that again. Heroes 3. Might Magic. Yeah. Um and Heroes 3. Yeah, Heroes 3. It's it's a it's a one of the best the game I I thought you were talking about the engine. No, so you would just play this game. Gotcha. I played No, it's had a great scenario

editor. So you could sit down and make levels for it. Yeah. And and and you can make them so beautiful as well because you know there was these props and trees and stuff that you can Dude, I've never You know what's so funny is How old are you, by the way? Um how old am I? 34. [laughter] 30. Okay. So we're the same age. Yeah, we're both I'm 34 as well. And you know I played Age of Empires 2 growing up. Age of Empires 1, uh, Warcraft, Starcraft. I never have I have never seen this game and which probably is very embarrassing to say. I've never seen this game. It's beautiful. Wow. It It's so Oh, man. This these retro graphics look so good. Yeah. Um, I just had Jeff Fogle. I don't know if you know who Jeff Fogle is, but he makes he still makes games that look like this. And he does it it with the same way he did it in the 90s, he does it right now. Yeah. Um, which there's just such a purity there. He's been doing game development for 30 years. But anyway, it looks like this and this is just gorgeous. So, anyway, back to what you were saying.

Oh, yeah. So, what were we talking about? Yeah. About the the childhood, right? And when you were playing Heroes 3. Yeah. Yeah. And so, it was very hard for me to find other people who were also interested in games until I was maybe like 12 and 13. So I remember being like picked on for you know liking games and stuff like that for many many years. Uh but then Counter Strike kind of became started becoming popular and I was very good at Counter Strike when I was young. I was I started playing what when like 1.0 released very very early. So So that's when I I kind of realized okay I'm I'm pretty good at this with with games, right? I played a lot of games. it's quite easy for me to get good at them quite quick and I can kind of build a little bit of a social circle around around that, right? So that kind of became my safe haven. Um I skipped school a lot like I had maybe 50% attendance through high school and um and before that as well. Uh I didn't enjoy school at all. So I did not have

very good self-confidence and I did not understand where I was going. I was even going to be able to make games for a living, right? It's I didn't even understand if that was a possibility, especially coming from like a small little town in northern Sweden. You know, you had no other people who were making games there. But then when I got to university, I started meeting a lot of like-minded people, like people who wanted to make games and and were good at making cool stuff that were related to games. Mhm. Um and and I think over the years there that kind of changed my perspective a lot and gave me a lot of confidence. But of course, especially with with Coreke Keeper releasing it, it shifted even more towards, okay, you know, we we can do this. Um, I find it fascinating to think that, you know, can you imagine going back to your old self and saying, "Hey, you're going to lead a team of 50 people and you're going to be making these games that have what you're how many reviews do you have? Can I ask how many how many copies

of Coreke Keepo you've you've you've sold?" It's above 4 million now. So, I think we're closing in like 4.5 or something. It's That's crazy, dude. That is so cool. [laughter] Yeah, dude. Imagine talking to yourself in high school and saying, "Hey, you're going to sell millions of copies of this thing and you're going to have a team of 50 people." Yeah. Yeah. I would never believe it. It's It's just absurd. Like the number is absurd. It's It's very hard to It's crazy. What's what's the biggest challenge you think what what kind of personal challenges did you have like with your personality going from basically this this high schooler that had no confidence that got made fun of making games to getting way up here? Like how did you get there emotionally to be able to lead this team? Did it just happen and it just was natural or was it were there painful rungs that you had to climb that you were like man I I'm not I'm not able to get to 10 people or I'm I really struggle talking to

people or leading a team. There's so many small steps towards it. Like I remember constellations in which I was making games and it just completely failed for one reason or another. You know it's like you have different expectations on each other or somebody loses interest and you kind of blame yourself like ah I didn't manage to get that person to think it was cool. So you know kind of the team uh ended up you know dissolving like there's so many situations like that that I can think of. So like after doing that for a very long time and you kind of successfully build parktorm I think that's kind of when you realize that you have gained some skills and knowledge from all of those failures you know and it's it's very cliche in in one way but I think it's it's really true. you kind of need to to fail to succeed in a sense, right? Did you did you build those teams and were you always the leader or did you just fit into the into a group of of and there was other a different leader? There have been different leaders in different constellations. I

when you say constellation, what do you mean? I'm so sorry. What do you mean by constellation? So basically a few people making a project for some reason, right? So it could be like for example in high school you know one person has an idea talks it with someone else they start working on it in their spare time that's kind of like a constellation of two I see right but you could have like five people coming from different universities or different countries or or you know for example Julian I I found him on deviant art so so you know I many constellations like that of different peoples with different backgrounds. Oh beautiful art. Okay so he did the cover art. Gotcha. And yeah, he did cover. He did the pixel art as well. He did a lot of the pixel art in especially in the beginning. Like for example for Rad Radical Rabbit, he he made basically all of the pixel art. Um I made some there was some other people also did some but but he did like 95% of the pixel art on radical rabbit. And then on Corker we had a few more artists but he did u basically all art direction, right? So he directed all

artists that worked on the