If You Want To Make Games, Listen To THIS First (Xalavier Nelson Jr.) — Full Time Game Dev Podcast

Okay, what is the number one industry that game development is the most similar to? Well, it's actually gambling. Most indies have no idea how to build a game in a predictable [music] way. And also, they have no idea if it's actually going to make any money. So, yeah, it's kind of like gambling. It's kind of the opposite of, let's say, building a house. A builder knows the exact process to building a house. You don't lay the carpet before you paint the walls. You don't put up the framing before you do the foundation. There's a process. And pretty much a builder knows they're going to make their money back when they sell the house. With games, it's completely different. When it's done, the game developer really has no clue if it's going to succeed or not. Now, obviously, it's not possible to 100% know whether your game is worth your time. What if you could build it and launch it and know [music] a step-by-step process, know the right order of things, and what if you could know that it's very likely going to earn

you your money back? Today, I'm talking to Zolivir Nelson Jr. and he's one of my favorite game devs. Zivir is responsible for the games I am your beast, Clickolding, [music] El Paso Elsewhere, and his latest project, Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator. He obsesses about process, schedules, and honestly building a predictable income stream from his titles. See, Zavier, he hates guessing. He hates delaying his games. He hates bloated projects. And I think most of all, he kind of hates the idea of making one massive game and just crossing his fingers and hoping that it brings in some money. Instead, again, Zivir, he kind of builds games like a builder builds a house. See, there's a proper order to building a house. There's a process for estimating the budget for the house. The same is true with games. And most importantly, it's possible to know that the game is going to be profitable. And honestly, what me

saying this right now, it kind of feels like a pie in the sky. And obviously, there's some caveats here. Let's actually save that for Zolivir and this awesome conversation. And by the way, did you know you don't have to wait until you're done with your game three years later after developing it to know if it's going to make some money? You can actually take a demo or a prototype of your game and you can sell it right now to publishers, investors, or on something like Kickstarter. It's possible to go full-time indie with just an idea, with a demo. And I want to show you how to do it. I've actually done this three separate times. So, I made a free workshop for you below. You're going to learn how to take an idea and pitch it and get some funding for it and actually go full-time before you even finish your game. It's a really awesome workshop. Click the link below. It's my treat to you. All right, let's jump into the conversation with Zavir. We start off the conversation by talking about why making small fast games in 2026 it might be the best approach [music] to developing your game. Let's go. Do you still stand by how what you said

last time we talked? Last time we talked, you said I think you said um a game [clears throat] is going to take you a day to make if it's if if that's the kind of game you plan on making.
Yeah. The idea of like you can make a game in a day if you make a if if you make a game that can be made in a day. Yeah,
that's right. So, do you still stand by that philosophy? And do you still stand by the philosophy that smaller finished games are just the the wisest route for I guess for you in particular? I don't think they're a universal path by any means. And that's part of what enables us to do some larger things right now. It's just again looking at what is the shape of this thing? What is the shape that it needs to be? What is the shape we feel comfortable and safe in? And then creating space to also solve problems inside of it. I I do believe in the fact that as an industry we used to make games in 2 to 3 years

top. So if you were like four years on development cycle people were like man that's a behemoth and now the definition of a behemoth is 5 6 7 8 years and that's all seen as because we don't have the the monolithic console generation anymore. That's all seen as valid and worthy as long uh because you aren't missing the boat on the PS2 and on the PS3. It's now just
the eternal game generation.
Yep.
And as long as it makes uh all of the money, you're fine. And I think that
some of the things that we're making now, both big and small, just really benefit from and you can see the difference in uh we ship a lot. We ship a lot. We refine a lot. We try collaborators new and old and we and we rejig rejiggered those pieces. So
yeah,
Space World or Baby Trading Simulator. Uh I love Spacew World at Oregon organ, but it really shows that in between those two games, we made another 15

games. So a couple questions here. Um do you ever worry about getting bad reception for one of your games and then that hurts your credibility and that hurts your studio and your brand? Like let's say you're just like let's let's get a game done and let's let's just let's just get it out there, right?
And test the market. Do you ever worry that that's going to hurt your brand? Especially now that you're I guess you're contracted to make other games for for like Microsoft and stuff, right?
So
yes. Uh well, not so much contracted to make other games and Microsoft has signed on to be like a first sort of release partner for our next seven titles.
Okay. So, I guess my question is, do you ever worry that if you just release games really quickly, partners won't want to partner with you because they see it as I don't know the right word, like [ __ ] or or impulsive. Um, and by the way, I'm not saying you do that. I'm thinking more about me and my future of like, okay, if I approach games more

like Zolive, am I going to hurt my brand
if I'm just releasing games quickly? I I think the a real key to making it work is the game has to be good and it has to express something distinct. Uh people will understand if you are copying your own homework and aren't necessarily bringing anything new to the table. Again, we could have done something that was much closer to organ trading sim for baby trading simulator, but we didn't. We really looked into what this offers that the previous game did not. Uh, El Paso 2 is even asking for a game that was wellreceived and people like the formula and everything, why does it need to exist? Because it needs to have a reason to exist outside of uh it could make money. Uh, so I [laughter] think that really has helped in general the Strange Scaffold brand resist some of that danger is because we aren't just pumping out games arbitrarily. Each one does have uh a vision and is good and

even if it's not something you like as a person, it's interesting. So we some of my favorite Steam reviews that we'll get on our projects these days, especially when they go somewhere experimental like creepy writing dinos is like this isn't typically my genre. Uh I don't know if I love this game, but I do really love what it's doing. I I do I can see that it's doing something. Thumbs up. And that is the way I feel about film and about books and about g about music. And I think more games deserve to be examined through the lens of uh not will it kill GTA 6 or will it stand next to Hollow Night Silk Song, but is this a distinct point in my life? And I think that that's a really worthy thing to discuss and think about as we enter this period where be because among other things we have so much publisher and investor pressure people are getting forced into tighter and tighter genre definitions. Make something like uh the Fractis XCOM, make something like

Monster Trainer, Slay the Spire. The idea of as player, our players are are have a limited amount of time. Their world is on fire and we are competing over the same pieces of their time, the same spaces in the things that they love. It seems like a a road to extinction for me and I think you can see it in sort of the fatigue that our audience can bring to uh I call it um I call it genre jade uh where it's like oh the Steam reviews used to be is this a cool game. Now new games that step into that same territory are having players post Steam reviews about their action economy. As soon as you have your audience debating the merits of but the Overwatch mechanic,
yeah,
ah did it didn't quite [laughter] hold to the same standard as blah blah blah blah blah. It's like oh this is a genre

that is citybuilders had that too. Uh this is a genre that is been so minded and so tapped and so refined via steam tags that now the audience is not evaluating as a distinct thing in the world. is evaluating it as a product to meet and exceed highly specific margins. You are not engaging with them artistically even at that point. You are engaging with them as a series of back of the box USP points and uh it really shows. It shows in the review score and the reception of those games and how that audience uh continues to just go back to the thing they had before because among other things not don't even just think about mods and all this other stuff that is uh the game that originally sort of claimed that spot in their heart. You're trying to dislodge that. That's that that's a that's a pretty tall order.
Okay. So, it it sounds like what you're

saying is that having a unique, very human game, even if it's junk, not junk, but like I don't know, I don't want to use the word slop either, but like a highly human, highly creative game that is rough around the edges,
is is a is a smart business move for for a lowbudget game. By low budget, I mean like less than 500,000. Is that kind of what you're saying? As opposed to in 2008 or 20, let's say 2014.
Yeah.
When when indies were were really started the indie the indie scene started to really blow up,
the more modern
back then.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like back then it was about polish and it was about hitting your genre tropes.
Um but now it's different. Is that kind of what you're saying?
I don't think it's different. I think that you because the market is so wide,

you can choose your class and your build and you need to hone in on that like you would in a game like Diablo. You are it's a difference between dealing millions of damage per second or thousands is how much you've drilled down into your build and your spec. So some studios uh did and still do really drill down into polish and they make that their hallmark and that works for them because they have built everything including sort of their audience expectations around that. Strange scaffold what we've built our audience expectations around is will it be interesting? Will it come from this unified creative voice? Uh is it worth playing? because among other things, you don't know quite what you'll experience. That's what we've spec our build to accomplish. So, we end up getting evaluated through that lens. And I think this is another part of where uh the

very expansionist mindset that had set in during the 2020s ended up throwing a lot of studios off is because they had a build and a spec towards accomplishing certain things and towards priming their audience and the press for certain things. and then they swerve into a different spec entirely with the same studio without basically a comprehensive rework of how they did things. And it led to a lot of live service games dying among other things cuz the team wasn't built for that and the way the audience was primed was not built for that. It was just sort of dropped in the middle of an environment that would not grow it. So yeah, I think I think it can be a smart business strategy and I think that small interesting distinct novel that is valid if you put in all the pieces to make that work and if you don't uh that is I think one of the greatest dangers for a game. That's why we're being very

careful again around El Paso 2, cuz
the two moniker and the fact that we're now starting to make sequels to our work and follow-ups and spiritual successors to things that we've done before, that's a very that has very specific connotations and what games people associate with it. So, we're being really careful and saying El Paso 2 is happening because we found a version that fits our scale. We are taking something at the same budget, if not a little smaller, and because we have an entire first game already built, we are able to use that budget to go interesting wild places we couldn't before inside of the same package, inside of the same aesthetic. So, uh, El Paso 2 is not bigger, better, double A, AAA. It is uh I mean it's a PS2 style sequel where okay now they had the tech base and the the rest of their stuff locked down. They get to do some pretty wild stuff inside of that same uh inside

of that same skin.
Yeah. Uh when you say spec, what do you mean?
Uh remind me of I'm babyrained. We're we're five months in. So, please remind me of uh in what context I said spec.
You said it's important to to stick to the same spec or like it was it was in context to the audience and and expectations. I think
yeah, I've been reading a I've been reading a lot about ARPGs and that player base recently. Um and they talk about the their specialization or their spec, the way in which they create their build. Okay. So, you're Can we change this last let's say 10? Because I'm trying to fully understand. Sometimes when I'm talking to you, I feel like I'm talking to like kind of like an Elon Musk kind of thing or John Blow.
No, but hold on. [laughter] But
John Blow is the same way. When I'm

talking to John Blow, I'm like trying and I'm I'm just gonna I'm just going to confidently say I think the audience with John Blow might feel that way too where it's like it's it feels really good what they're hearing, but they don't fully grasp it. And so I want to take what I want to take what you just said in the last 10 minutes. Can we try and repackage that as advice that you would give to let's say do you have a son or a daughter? I you just had a kid, right? Uh, we're not talking too much about the personally identifying details of of kiddo, but
Okay, gotcha. So, let's say you had a son. If you were going to get your son to become a game developer and you wanted to take the last 10 minutes and turn it into advice for him starting his studio, what would the advice be? Because I'm trying to figure out like how does this like the application?
I do this type of thing a lot. So, uh it's it's not the most difficult thing. The way I would turn this into application is I would say uh son,

you're making a hell of a choice deciding to go into game development. Uh especially now that uh robots built by Boston Dynamics walk the earth with machine guns uh and they're hunting us in our little hovels. But there is still a market and an audience uh for your work.
Yeah. If you're going to go into game development, you need to calibrate everything from how you position your studio to how you talk to your players to how you talk to the press to the process used for your game to emerge from a place that is consistent and that makes the most sense for what uh you want to be building. So if you want to build small distinct games, you do not talk about them as if they're going to be genred defining epics. And if you're trying to be genre defining epics, you do not take a deal to get out your game in a year and a half because that

uh at minimum, let's say the project isn't compromised. Let's say you get out a version of it, you're going to be unhappy because you shoved a genre defining epic into a year and a half and it just does that just doesn't work,
right?
Not in most cases. So really focusing on your strengths, the life you want to lead, and how you want to keep making projects in the future is a good way of keeping your sanity and having a sustainable business uh despite the Boston Dynamics machines walking the earth. [laughter] Is specialization a universal um is specialization something that game developers should universally pursue? And I guess when you say special, let's define specialization.
It's it's essentially a brand, right? It's a brand that makes you happy in your life that you identify with and

it's also you it's also a brand for your games. meaning are like Strange Scaffold, your games are pretty much always strange or really unique like that's the big
brand for for your studio. Is is is that number one is that what specialization is when you say spec uh I think specialization can be reduced down to brand. I think you can say like here's the brand which extends not just to how it's projected because brand to me is a publicity thing but it's also how it's made. uh if you're going to build really polishheavy uh indie games, even sort of how you talk about that polish uh when you show the game uh your brand uh says, "Hey, this person comes out with a game every six years that will blow your mind." you should probably not uh subvert that midway through or reveal

your tiny experiment game and not think it will be evaluated by the same standards, right?
Yep.
So, uh can you not pursue specialization? Absolutely. Does the momentum of your studio and of the wider market and player base end up bringing you that way? That's also absolutely that's the case. It's uh this is actually something that some really wise game devs gave me advice on as far as team size which were which was like especially when I was earlier in my career they were talking about okay if you're going to be running a game studio we need to realize that there are uh basically points of scale where things uh first of all the company always wants to grow there is even just under a capitalist system a momentum to business uh that is very like give a mouse a

cookie I'm also baby bookrained. So you install a uh you install your first pieces of infrastructure and you can see this other opportunity if you just install a little more. So you install a little more infrastructure, you spin up your team a little bit more that has a a hunger and you hit an equalization point. And then if you want to go a little further, that has an inherent weight and an inherent uh set of needs that pushes you to the next equalization point. And so uh this is part of why you don't typically see like a let me think of a really good number, but it's like it's really hard to maintain a studio of like like 13 people, 11 people. You're probably moving up towards like 15. uh there's a there's a point at which you have like roughly eight people and then beyond that it's hard to keep that nucleus together unless you build in all these pieces

that end up bringing you closer to 15 people. um there is a momentum to projects and to sort of the thing the the processes that developers initiate. If you're going to have a publisher, the things that come with working with a publisher as as you've experienced as well, uh will lead you down a series of optimal paths. uh those optimal paths tend to look pretty similar cuz they're optimizing for the same results and for the same people who are approaching things in similar ways. And coming into that eyes wide open is at least a good call for keeping your own sanity in the midst of uh the nonsense and uh whiplash that can occur there.
Right? Okay. So, what I don't want is I don't want people listening right now to think that they need to choose a brand and choose a specialty
for their games
and stick with that for a decade. I my

my opinion is that would be a bad idea because you don't know what your specialty or your brand is until you make a ton of mistakes, right?
So, I guess I want to caveat that and my question is do you agree with that?
Uh, yes. I would caveat that. I would say it's very much worth exploring and figure and figuring out how you create spaces to explore. This is why game development is also business is also your positioning with press and social media and players and community management. It's because all of these play a piece in a holistic game creating lifestyle. So, uh, you don't need to just look at a, I don't know, Hideo Kajjima or a, uh, Jonathan Blow or Oliver Nelson Jr. and then say, "That's the path. I'm just going to do that arbitrarily. Ideally, as much as possible, you're creating spaces for you

to learn what you want to be building and how you want to be building it. Uh, cuz that's the the opposite is equally as dangerous where you just choose a route and you go down it. And even if you're successful, you're maybe not creating the thing that you were built to do and that you feel optimally uh that you feel is like very much within possibility for you. That is the way you'd like to create. You're just stuck in that specialization still.
You can even shift specialization over time if you are established as a creator. Like I think there is there is and have been paths for Strange Scaffold to do that. Um there was times we pursued it and just like the right pieces didn't all come together and thank God because I think I'm in a happier place now. Yeah.
So, but if we had set the tentpoles to start working towards that in every piece of our brand and our game creating process,
yeah, it would it would have been possible. It's just do we want it? Uh

and have we given ourselves enough space to safely learn whether or not we want it?
Okay. So that's that's that's great advice. Um I want to shift gears here and talk about um something that has been on my mind for the last week of what I wanted to talk to you about. Um I kind of want to give you like a shotgun a series of shotgun questions so you don't have to expound on each one.
Sure.
Last time we talked I could not I still couldn't figure out what your business model was. M
but like here a couple shotgun questions for you to try and grasp and understand your business model. Um do you work remote with your team? Is your team remote?
Team is completely remote.
Okay. So there's no studio like in Vancouver or whatever. It's [laughter] it's all remote across. Is it across the world?
Uh it is across the world at this point.
Okay. Are they full-time employees or are they contractors?
Everyone is a contractor. Everyone is part-time, including me.

Okay. Okay. Um, however, you're the owner of Strange Scaffold, so you're the you're the contractor and then you sub out kind of like a builder would building a house.
Yes.
Okay. So, what is the difference between uh Well, let let me think here. Um, and they're are any of the are any of the subs or the contractors you're hiring, are they part-time or they full-time? every again everyone is part-time. So uh we very rarely uh are working with I'll say this consistently the goal is that everyone is at 20 hours or less and when we go over that that is to fulfill a very specific need and it is for it is our definition of what crunch is. It's like, okay, we went from 15 hours or 20 hours a week. We're now looking at something closer to 30 to hit a goal or because something fell behind. We're going to keep that limited. We're going to keep that focused and look for the path that among other things involves

even changing the game to end that sooner than later.
Okay. And are you acting as the project lead um for all of these projects or are you the art director? Are you like what are you? Uh, I'm project lead. Uh, I'm art director. I'm creative director and design director. I'm I'm wearing a bunch of hats and still participating a lot in the day-to-day.
Okay, cool. Uh, the reason I ask all these questions is I I think of you very similar to like I'm working with a builder right now to build a house. Okay. and [clears throat] he is so it's just him and he just subs out to incredible contractors and he gets good prices and it the reason he's able to do it is because he's been in the industry for so long and he just knows these sort of mom and pop subs that are just like rock solid honest people
and they probably do very specific things, right?
Very specialized. It's like there there is the tile guy that does the best tile

and he does it at a great price and you can trust him. He's slow, but he gets it done right and you can trust him.
And so, I've been just I've asked this question over and over and over for like two years on the podcast. I'm trying to figure out like what is the difference between making an whether it's an independent game or a double A game. In this day and age, you can build a game kind of like a a contractor would build a house where you just have your subs and they build the game in the right order. like you you don't you don't build um certain aspects of a game until you
uh have built another aspect of the game, right? You don't set dress until you've gray boxed generally. Um and a builder understands this. A builder of a house knows you don't lay the carpet
uh um before you paint the walls, right?
And a lot of people listening right now, they don't know the right order to do things. And so to ask them to sub out the job is going to be three, four times as expensive as it would be for you

because you know the process and how to do it.
I guess my question is do you do you agree with that comparison to something like building a house and doing things in the right order and and knowing the right subs?
Yes, I work with people more consistently than your builder does. Uh so I'll t typically have the same lead programmer on a project from beginning to end. uh unless things go disastrously. But the I I do think I I've talked to people who were like, I tried doing what you did and one it drove me crazy or two, I nearly everything went really really bad. And I think part of that is I mean I had worked on over 40 games before I started my my studio. I'm now at over 110. I've gotten to see so many things I get to as a creative director steer our ship around. so many invisible pitfalls and additional uh rabbit holes because I've seen them. And I I guess one of my

specialties is being able to project out, okay, if we do this, here's the three things that um that go into it.
Uh I I have an acronym even at this point called did it, which is the uh first one is uh direction. Mhm. impact, dependencies, iteration, time. So any uh and this is part of like a a book I'm noodling on these days where I'm like, okay, if we're going to talk about game production, it's not the same as film where you can just sort of lay out a blueprint and it can get arbitrarily built and you can absolutely determine to the point of uh decim to the point of a single scent.
That's right. What a film is going to cost because all these things are known and the processes are known. Um but you can look at all the things attached to

something and evaluate whether or not it fits the wider uh direction of the project, whether it will make a sufficient impact, whether it has dependencies and what those dependencies involve including time for iteration and then just sort of the pure time to make the first version of a thing. And uh
that again
gives us a significant advantage in doing what we do.
And this acronym is
Go ahead. I'm so sorry.
Uh the acronym is did it d it?
And can we So is this you use this acronym throughout the production process or is this like pre-production when you have a game idea and you're you're trying to weigh whether it's going to be worth your time and money? Oh, it's it's throughout the entire thing because problems come up and uh opportunities come up or someone just has a cool idea and my head just kind of runs through that algorithm of like, okay, procedural generation for our levels. Here's all the things that are

attached to that. Does it fit? And this is why we don't have procedural generation a lot of our games [laughter] is because I know from experience that when you build a procedural generated level system, it is not a one-time cost. You are maintaining those procedural level systems for the rest of development, refining them, going back to them, fixing them. And so what looks like, oh, we get infinite levels if we just put in procedural generation is actually this, especially depending on your scope and your genre and whether you're 2D or 3D, this bear of a thing that requires incre uh increasing refinement over time. Or you could just make a level and figure out how to make a good level and make more of those. And for
I know
our processes uh bespoke levels went out and sometimes the team members are a little frustrated by like well why can't we at least explore it and I'm like we have a game to ship in 12 months. It will take us 2

months. This is actually what happened on co-op kaiju horror cooking. Um I'm really proud of that project. It did have some real trouble through the development process and it I think it has come out a flawed gem. Uh, I think it's versus mode that was produced in its post-launch content cycle is among the coolest and best things we produced. But it kind of did so quietly because it didn't really the game didn't really catch on. And uh, the first two months of development were consumed with people saying, "Let's do procedural, let's do procedural, let's do procedural." I knew all of these factors, but went like, "Okay, get it out of your system." At the end of two months, we had a system that didn't work great that would need to be maintained and refined for the rest of the development cycle. And that was two critical months, a sixth of our 12 month development time.
Yep.
It's like, okay, we're now behind two months on something that doesn't fit. uh

we were able to make that up in other ways later. But yeah, like to to go all the way back to what you said about builders, the it is not impossible for people to replicate what I do, but it is more difficult the less they have shipped before.
Correct. Correct.
And the less they have had firsthand experience or at least significant research into all the things involved with what they want to bring into being.
Yep. And I I I ask this all for my own personal benefit. I I I kind of treat this call like a a free consulting call for me. Um in exchange, I'll give you some some YouTube exposure.
Heck yeah. I love that exposure.
And links are in the description, by the way, for for Zivir's. Uh what are we what are we going to do here? Um
what's the game that we want people Oh, Baby Trading Sim.
Is that it?
That's the one.
All right. Links in the description, guys. Check it out. Um, but yeah, like I I ask all these questions for my benefit because I envy I don't I shouldn't because grass is

always greener, but like some of my friends are like builders or like contractors and I've been fascinated by the builder who's building my house cuz I'm like this process is so precise
like you know exactly he like he he knows exactly the price of my house which is not true for most builders. Most builders will give you a quote and then you'll blow the budget, right?
Yeah. That's that's wild.
And it's just him. And so I I've looked at him and I'm like, what if and I've looked at you and I'm like, what if with the right level of experience of shipping games, cuz I'm about to ship my third commercial release. M
what if with this decade of experience of shipping games all of a sudden it clicks and the process of making a game can become systematic and and properly scheduled and I'm not I'm not laying the carpet before I paint the walls. Now obviously you've got to iterate, right? You've got to test the game and you realize, okay, this isn't working.
But surely eventually you get to a point

where
and this is my next question for you. Can game developers get to a point where making a game is not really a gamble anymore?
I think you can. Uh, I'd say that we're really substantially there. We would have to dramatically we have to be working in a dramatically different way on something in order and at a dramatically different scale for these to be new questions and unexplored territory. uh because among other things the projects that I choose and the way that I think about even ideating a project is all coming from this shared foundation of things I want to make consistent. It's why the studio is called Strange Scaffold is I want to make weird things reasonably. I think that's a great uh call out for what Space World baby training simulator represents is there is a version of that game especially with some of the challenges we experienced during development. We had to do two major

design pivots in the middle of I think it was 7 months of total development time.
Uh which is not a lot of time to make a game or to pivot it frankly but the core process and philosophy and a lot of uh team members who I've worked with before uh so they also are already keyed in on how we make games and on what they bring to that process. it really uh was able to still be brought into being and a game which my mom tried to convince me for quite a long time we should not make
that game becomes a reasonable bet when placed in the right context. I was uh talking to some uh I was in a BAFTA breakthrough program. One of the nice things about the BAFTA breakthrough is that they give you essentially a uh a golden phone where it's like, "Hey, put in this spreadsheet the list of people you want to talk to and uh we will with

all of the legitimacy of the BAFTA organization try to track them down and make it to where you can talk to them." And so I've been speaking to a lot of more business-minded executives, a lot of people who have been in the industry for a really long time to confirm suspicions I had and to ga gather context on how decisions get made. And this is one of the things where what I was learning and what I was excited to learn is there's a world where you're making a $150 million game and it makes total sense. All those numbers line up. You have the machine built for it. If you those pieces are in place, that's actually a reasonable bet. The problem is uh when that is not approached intentionally and when, among other things, your $150 game uh thou $150 million game becomes a $300 or $400 million game. Y
when the uh the the reasonable gamble starts happening in an imprecise

environment and that's where at this point if offered the opportunity to massively expand I wouldn't take it with strange scaffold because the machine had lets us create weird things in very reasonable contexts which fits the life I want to lead and the amount of time I want to spend with my kid as a stay-at-home dad being able to in the middle of the day mid meeting change a diaper Uh so grabbing at a clear obscure sized game, you know, we're looking talking about like, you know, 20 30 million uh does not hold the appeal because I know the consequences were suddenly driving a very different machine and we can get crushed by it in the process.
That makes complete sense. So to wrap up that that segment, the advice would be okay, I'll say what I think, what my advice would be. It would be something like release a lot of games as a developer

and figure out the and take note of the structure and the production cycle like what steps occurred when and and and what was most effective. um what steps were most effective for you personally because I think I think every studio or every indie game developer whether they're solo or they're a big studio
their process is going to be very very different from one another. So for example for my studio everybody could tell me all day long that I need gray box first
but it doesn't work for me. I have to set dress while I'm making the game
because the game is all about the vibes and the mood and the story. Like that's my specialty, right?
My specialty is vibes, mood, story all day long.
And so sometimes for me in my studio most of the time what I have to do is and even if I'm working with a sub, I have to set dress. Generally, I have to

set dress while I'm making the game to feel it out because oftentimes the gray box isn't what's going to make the g the level fun. It's the vibes and the mood. So, I'm not necessarily arguing or making a statement as to whether gray boxing is important. What I'm saying is
it doesn't work for you.
It doesn't work for me. And I've learned that through 10 years of of releasing games. So, I guess my question to you is is that really the only way or one of the primary ways for a game developer to to get to a point where they're no longer gambling away their time and their life savings. It's just releasing games and figuring out their process.
I think working on I I think it doesn't even necessarily have to be releasing games, although releasing games is really critical. I would say working on games. So the game jam project or the halffinish unity repository probably not going to teach you all that much actually uh about how because the difference between uh pract doing rehearsals and like opening night you treat it in a totally different way so

your brain uh operates in a totally different way. So releasing games is and working on games is a big part of it. I do think pre-production and a lot of self-examination is a huge part of it. A lot of really reckoning that the thing about did it is I can do it in a very brutally short set point of time like a few seconds at this point cuz it's how I've lived my life. Uh it's very slow at first for other people but it gets quicker the more you exercise that muscle. I do think that if you were to use that lens to talk through aesthetic choices, features, uh even sort of narrative delivery methods in your game, you can still reach similar points with just a lot of proactive consider uh consideration and reckoning. Yeah,
it's uh but it's a matter of do you want

to build in that way uh or would you like to accept you know flying by the seat of your pants with everything that comes with it. There's a lot of people who would rather just start some flying and I respect that [laughter] too and and I hope that you survive to keep flying.
Uh because you can also, you know, plan yourself all day and have the perfect little GDD all set up,
but uh that doesn't guarantee uh a game or a great game out of that either.
Yeah. Okay. So, the next sort of the next big question I have for you
is um
how many projects do you have currently going right now?
It's in a way it's kind of like asking a builder and honestly this is this is this might sound like a dumb question or a dumb statement but when I talk to game developers they're usually just working on one project.
Yeah.
And it sounds like and I keep coming back to the builder metaphor. I see you as a builder where it's like a builder will have six houses they're building throughout the year. Is that true for

you?
And each of those houses informs how you build other houses. We've adjusted some projects mid-flight because we learn something critical on another project and we go, "Okay, we cannot replicate this again or this is what happens when you use this Unity package in your project." A lot of people discover those hurdles at the end and then they just have to hope they're making both a game that they can benefit from that information uh and that they can start it quickly enough to benefit from that knowledge. We get to mid-flight simultaneously uh learn at high speed and distribute that knowledge across not just projects and teams but all those individuals get to also scuttle off and take that uh knowledge to their stuff across the wider industry and that's one of my favorite parts about sharing scaffold is we get to have a distributed impact.
So how many projects are you currently working on?
Three and a half. A and there's other stuff in the pipeline, meaning you've signed contracts for future projects.

Yes, cuz we know exactly how we're going to proceed on those and we're going to solve problems along the way to make it shippable in time.
Okay. So, let's talk about the business strategy here and the wisdom behind working on three and a half projects. Um, there's a book called I don't know if I mentioned in our previous podcast, but I've mentioned it several times. There's a there's a book called 10X is better than 2X. Have you heard of this book?
I have not.
Okay. It's about focusing on one big thing and shooting for the moon and going all in on one thing because there's a higher probability of that one thing working if you go allin. So,
the more you go all in, the higher the probability of it working is, especially when you detach from all of the other things that you're that you're trying to use to secure yourself. So, for example, for me, I could, if I wanted to, I could stop I could stop doing YouTube alto together, and I could use my life savings that me and my wife are building through 10 years of making games. I could use all that, burn through all that and make one big game, right?

And because I don't have the dependency of YouTube anymore, and because I'm no longer doing this podcast or taking sponsorships, I have all the time I need to focus on this one thing. and that one thing, I'm going to have a higher probability of being successful with it because I am focused on it. That's the philosophy of the book is that going allin is actually not an unwise thing to do. It's a wise thing to do.
That's that's the the philosophy of a lot of the the game development industry as well.
Right. And so what's your thoughts on that? And why do you feel like that's problematic if you do? Well, I I think that the I think that the book and the strategy it describes, having not read it, one of the reasons that that's problematic is just quite simply, okay, and what if not and what if it doesn't?
What if it doesn't 10x? [laughter] Uh there's some industries where you can have more reasonably expect a 10x
uh more consistent manufacturing fields for example,

but entertainment has always been a gamble. Uh it's always been a degree of uncertainty. uh even in the film world where they have a lot of people doing focus groups and uh analytics and they still get surprised by opening weekend pretty regularly. So the uh the problematic bit is not that hey you can with focus build an incredibly special thing. Uh one not everyone works that way. If I had to just work on one game at a time I would go crazy. I knew that before I started training scaffolds. So, I didn't try to do that from the beginning.
And you would be less creative potentially.
Potentially less creative because I'm just thinking in a single box. Uh this is a very stupid example, but
my Spotify playlist whenever I'm going to start working, I hit shuffle on my just liked songs list and it's thousands of songs from every different genre. So I'll be in the middle of writing and it goes right from Mitsky singing about I

bet on losing dogs to Smashmouth's Allstar to like a shopon piano piece.
That's great.
And that keeps me from sometimes I do need to lock in on a vibe, but other times it keeps me operating in a wider conceptual space that I I believe helps me be more creative.
So yeah, point number one, not everyone's brain works that way. and two, okay, if it doesn't 10x, do you have a safety net? And most people don't or at leaf net is fraught and keeps them from trying again to achieve their dreams. So, I think that like
an overall lesson from it is uh very much in the vein of uh intentional pursuit of a focused goal. But what that looks like doesn't have to be literally one project. In our case, we have done a 10x strategy on multiple games. my focus is the portfolio and that's part of why

uh now as far as our business strategy and sales, we have games that we released years ago that didn't do super well and they're outperforming their launch days on regular basis
because the strategy I had coming into Strange Scaffold um that I really didn't find uh a lot of support in outside of folks like Xbox and uh Fisel Seth over at Frosty Pop. uh who's our collaborator and funding partner on a lot of these upcoming games that we're doing is uh I don't want to sell people one game. I want to sell them five. I want them to be able to follow Strange Scaffold the way they would their favorite director or musician. And people looked at me just with like a blank face, not really understanding what that means in a industry built on 10x results. And uh yeah, what what that means is as time goes on, people do have bought into uh my creative voice and into the work of

my collaborators and what we're bringing to the table. And we are selling five games, 10 games uh regularly and getting people to have cross-pollination in uh genres that don't fit within their interests.
Yeah. which is I'm told is unheard of and not safe to bet on, but like I mean if I like a musician, I'll try their Prague Jazz album for like at least a couple songs. And we've gotten to see that pay off and that means that our back catalog sells and sells better over time. Uh and uh every game we release ends up being marketing costs for the rest of our projects. Space Warlord Organ Training Simulator is doing better. Weirdly enough, games like uh Life Eater do better because with off of a release like I am your beast because people are

looking at everything else we've done. They're looking at the perspective, looking at the philosophy, and that was the 10x focus strategy for our studio. Uh it didn't look like one, it looked like, you know, a bunch to create that garden of interesting games. So you've created a brand um and that brand is it is is one of the mechanisms of the brand an audience on social media and like an email list or does the brand work outside of that ecosystem and it's people just know Strange Scaffold on Steam?
Both. All of the above. Uh, and or this is the funniest one. We have people on TikTok and other things being surprised that Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is made by the same people as Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. They go like, "Oh, y'all made that, too?"
Really?
They don't know. It's pretty It's It's

pretty It's a pretty frequent reaction.
Wow.
Uh, but what that does is give us more opportunities to sell both games and to say, "Did you know we also made unrelated game and unrelated genre?" and they're like, "Oh, I I'll check that out." And that uh we talk a lot about the difficulty of curation in an algorithmic uh world with so much content and being a built-in curator of your own work. Here's all the things filtered through me, filtered through uh this collaboration or this set of people. That's a force multiplier uh in this time especially.
So, I'll end I'll end with this question. um for for my own benefit. Again, my plan for my career has always been to be the not for my YouTube brand like my YouTube brand is totally different than my game studio in in the sense well it's not totally different. It just
one of them is about podcasts and and training material and the other one is

about artful games artful games. Um, my plan for my game studio is to be the Tim Burton/Del Toro. I don't know if you've seen Frankenstein. It's incredible.
Sure have.
Uh, it's amazing. That is my goal for for my games is to be the atmospheric atmospheric horror art arty moody emo uh games and and that's it, you know, story driven and and and I don't branch outside of that. If you look at my previous games, they've got that flare. My third game, same sort of flare. Um, it's just 3D. What do you think about that strategy? And is that in line with what you're talking about?
I think it's uh valid and worthwhile. I think the primary uh obstacle is just having enough games to sort of create that uh tonal territory. So, uh, to use the Tim Burton example, we

know him as Tim Burton because in a pretty short stretch of time, he would did uh, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissor, and Hands, Batman Returns, Ed Wood.
Yep. Good job, by the way. Way to go.
I mean, I'm a Wikipedia uh, ninja [laughter] at this point.
That's great. Looking at Tim Burton's filmography, that's an incredibly uh that's an incredibly precise zone for funders knowing what they're getting into and wanting to get more of that audience to know what even a produced by Tim Burton label means. Uh Jordan Peele has done the same in the modern day with uh people going to watch films that he's produced. Although there's been some really interesting chatter about uh his success in producing films or being an executive producer on films that carry forward uh

creative instincts that he has had uh versus other people like Steven Seilberg the difference when he executive produces and
yes
uh people having a debate about
Jordan Peele's company not doing it as effectively as others. There's some interesting chatter happening there. But the long and short of it is at least in the modern day off of more than one movie, Jordan Peele establishes a voice and people follow it. Uh I think the primary obstacle to uh you being the Tim Burton of games uh is very simply like have people been able to have enough of your voice in as short of amount of time to say if I want to play a game that has a Tim Burton vibe uh it's got to be Thomas Brush. Uh and there's going to be another one on the way this year. I think I think that is
so it's frequency. The issue is frequency.
I think frequency consistency of quality

and uh and yeah I think I think frequenc I think frequency and consistency of quality is going to be really
and it's hard to have consistency of quality if you're too frequent.
That too. Yeah.
Yeah.
That's good man. And and that's that when I ask that question it's not I'm not I'm not asking that for outside of what I want my audience to know. I want everyone listening right now to go, okay, what who do I want to be personally? Like, do I do I want my games to have a a like almost like a directed by flare or is it just brand? Is it just And they're they're very similar, right? You can have like a directed by game that is
this is a Thomas Brush game. And that's kind of where I'm aiming.
And I've I don't know if you know Justin Burnham. I'm pretty sure you know Justin Burnham
um at 3D Realms. I've been talking to him
and he's been encouraging me like lean into the Thomas Brush thing
um because all of my stories have that

same vibe and flare.
Bennett Fi uh did a lot I think to encourage people to put their names on their games with talk by the uh with that GDC talk by that name. I've seen that chatter
going way more.
Wouldn't you say it's Wouldn't you? And he absolutely and wouldn't you say that that is it's a I guess just a more surgical or hyperfocused version of a brand like it's the same thing. It's just it's a per it's a name. I think I think it's useful. Uh, one of the things that we've been intentionally pursuing in our strategy is to have a name as well, but try to consciously put more names in people's ambient headspace. So, we talk about folks like Dan Pierce, secret uh uh sorry, frequent collaborator, Tom Venita, uh Candace Udert, uh who's our studio producer now, and just really start to get people

familiar with this wider constellation of people because uh among other things, I'll tell you, part of my uh business strategy is if the studio goes down, I want people to look at the work of my collaborators where and support them so that I could still have a job maybe on their stuff. So, uh,
yeah, I I I'm really excited about the idea of people knowing more game developer names in general and, uh, in a way that we in the medium have not had a lot of opportunity, getting to fall in love with and identify their fingerprints because I think that will make the experience of playing more games richer in the same way that if you know Roger Deakons has been the cinematographer on a thing, you get to see his fingerprint and it gives

something more life than it would be otherwise. It gives a flawed thing a reason to still go to it because it's like ah but Roger Deakons was there. That's means something. I I think in development we have not had and this is an intentional move by a lot of different companies over over the years, right? But we have not had the opportunity for a development team to mean something. We think of Boware. We don't think uh of more than a few names from Boware despite how much this creator or that creator made sure Mass Effect and and Dragon Age is what it is. So,
uh, Strange Scaffold is trying to do this authurship thing in a way that also spreads that spotlight and creates this web of people that you like Julia Minamada who did uh, The Crimson Diamond and brought her pixel work uh, not just

to Space War Baby Training Simulator, but also to Witch Strandings and Recommend and Recommendation Dog and now Baby Trading Sim. This this is a path to people loving games more. And I think if you this is where when we talk about time, the reason why pure frequency cuz people in a generative AI world are like, "Okay, I can make games super fast." Pure frequency does not give people the tools to fall more in love with their games. And so whatever path you follow, if you want to be successful in it, you need to create a path for people to fall more in love with your games and ideally with the games of the wider medium so that they keep coming back and that their lives are benefited because pure output or even pure cash flow is an incredibly brittle thing. We have learned uh but people giving a about what you do is not
man [clears throat] that is a good

sentence to end on end on man that was really good. Okay I've learned a ton link in the description for uh baby training sim. Yeah
link in the description and thank you so much for having me. This is always some of my most fun conversations in games so I appreciate coming on back.
Yeah man, no problem. Same. Same to you. It's always fun talking to you. All right, I'll let you go, buddy. Get get you back to work.
All right, thank you. Take care and uh talk soon.
Yep. Cheers. And by the way, did you know you don't have to wait until you're done with your game 3 years later after developing it to know if it's going to make some money. You can actually take a demo or a prototype of your game and you can sell it right now to publishers, investors, or on something like Kickstarter. It's possible to go full-time indie with just an idea, with a demo. And I want to show you how to do it. I've actually done this three separate times. So, I made a free workshop for you below. You're going to learn how to take an idea and pitch it and get some funding for it and actually

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