Indie After College: Surviving the Transition

[Music] okay my name is Asher Vollmer I made this game called threes up there you might have heard of it and most importantly for this talk I went to USC one of my favorite University yeah good I loved it I learned a lot for context I started in 2008 and I graduated in 2012 and I've been coming to GDC all of those years which means that this is my tenth GDC and that makes me your resident dinosaur thanks and I'm full of wisdom okay so I've got a lot to say I'm gonna stop talking slowly I've got a lot to say I'm just gonna jump straight to the point here's my number one tip for going indie after college don't do it what are you doing there's a crazy idea later up Jennie and Ted are gonna talk as well and they're lovely people and

they're gonna pump you up but I'm come on stage right now and I'm gonna be a big old bummer about the kind of realities of being indie game developer first off first lesson I wish anyone told me when I was in school is that game development is super slow it's a very very slow process and this was a revelation to me because I had done a million game jams and I loved game jams I was like oh I can make games at like a million miles program per minute but that's not really what was happening a game jam game is usually about like 10 minutes of gameplay generously a pretty title screen and some music unis and sound effects and that's like oh my god I made a cool game but that is not releasing a video game that is making a game jam game releasing a video game looks more like this there's playtesting QAR platform integration meat reaching out to press and platforms deciding when's the right time to release deciding who to give free peas to getting a lawyer making sure all the contracts are signed all the stuff and making time to make

marketing materials good marketing materials take forever don't forget and so that takes forever to do and then you'll look back in like wait a minute I only have 10 minutes of gameplay maybe I should think this through before I start committing to all the maybe I should spend more time making the game better which makes the game development take longer because the real main marketing material you need is a reason that anyone should care about your game at all and it's really hard to do that when your game is like tiny Tom Francis earlier this week one of the very smart guy I made heat signature and gunpoint proposed this timeline to me earlier this week and I really liked it the first step to making a video game is to fully understand your game and this will take roughly five minutes to infinity years somewhere in there and then step two is to release your game which will take about a year after that so your game will take anywhere from a year to infinity plus 1 years so good luck with that also it's game development is incredibly expensive cool thing about college is

that it's free totally free no strings attached this yeah not true but when you're in college like you have a lot of permission to be in college and to learn things into experiment and like you have this like blanket like understanding that you should be enjoying your life and trying new things and learning and growing and as soon as you get out to the real world all that turns into guilt and all that time turns into like oh god money rent is obvious food is obvious a lot of you might be thinking I don't need health insurance and that is the worst thing you could possibly think get health insurance oh my god and it cost money I'm sorry but you're young is cheaper than from within me and also random annoy and knowing junk also costs money so life costs money but also the game itself costs money if you're you know lacking at some talents maybe you're not good at so good at art maybe you're not so good at music whatever you want to make sure that you're collaborating with people

who can do that and they're gonna need to get paid somehow so that cost money and also we live in a cool era where software is subscription now a lot and if your game is taking infinity years to make that's infinity dollars to have any software so games are super expensive and also my next slide is very scary and I'm sorry about it in advance here it comes you're not going to make your money back after you release your games this is a really sad scary slide but it's just sort of something you have to accept when you're going into this businesses move in cycles earlier this week Jeff Vogel of spider web software who's been an indie game developer for 24 years longer than probably a lot of you have been alive like has actually seen this happen to the game industry there was a huge peak very recently with the steam making games make tons and tons and tons of money but now we've experienced the glut of indie games and now we are in the contraction so games

are making less money than then then recently so just be aware that games are expensive and you're not gonna make your money back also game development is emotionally draining I'm sorry there's so many of these I'm emotionally drained giving this talk so in college you have all these amazing support structures teachers are your mentors classes give you deadlines extracurricular classes give you like tons of inspiration and then your friends are like within a mile radius to give you critique and cool thing is that when college is over all those things go away sorry and and those things are important when you're in college because they help you grow as a person but surprise here's a cool fact is that you're never actually done growing as a person so what your job is gonna have to be in addition to making a game is also getting all those support structures back into your life somehow which is hard but possible but hard a

quick example is in the four years since 3s I've made probably 30 different prototypes all some of which are up here trying to figure out who I am and what kind of games I want to like make and most of these are in some form of abandons because I decided that they were not worth my time which was a you know a decision that was made anyway yeah so to recap game development is incredibly slow incredibly expensive and emotionally draining are you scared yet because you should be anyway this is me being a jerk sorry about that but I'm here to be real and I kind of wish people would've been real when I was you know in college and I've been like upfront with this stuff about me so if you're looking at these and you and you're still thinking to yourself well I can't really imagine anything else I'd rather be doing with my life good okay cool then you might you might have a chance

you might be able to might even be up for this crazy challenge and here are some coping mechanisms for dealing with all these things because life is one big coping mechanism here's some quick some quick tips quick life hacks how to cope financially eat out less you're all students we all eat out at the time stop it stop what you're doing learn your learn what you food you love to eat out the most and learn how to make it and then you can buy all the products in bulk and you'll save like a ton of money and you can be indie for longer also use your freezer this is like a huge look up Google how to use your freezer effectively this is like a huge thing it's gonna save you a million dollars and bike instead of using a car so oh and also rev-share if you can't pay people upfront but make sure that you're doing it ethically always people pay people for their work make sure that they can support that that's coping financially here's how to cope emotionally I'm running out of time sorry make time for people like cool you're making a game it's your whole

life blood if it fails you fail I'm sorry but make sure you have time for the people in your life because you will feel so isolated otherwise make time for exercise another cool life hack instant like you feel better when you exercise who knew take take classes like I said you're never done growing improv pottery doesn't matter and finally reevaluate regularly how you're doing how is the process what's it like has it been good don't really a daily hourly that's a mistake I've made that mistake though I look back on the week or the month and be like was this a good plan and then make a new plan and then stick with it and here's how you cope with the passage of time you don't sorry being I guess you did it anyway I just want to apologize one last time for this talk I've been a terrible person but Michael like my goal is to you know to help you find some way to cope and you know look look out at the

indie life and see that it is a very rough road ahead and if you are still somehow convinced that that is the right thing to do there are ways to do it anyway thank you and good luck can everyone hear me yeah all right uh oh man I'm so tall okay uh hi everyone thank you for coming to my talk about going indie after college my name is Jenny and I go by cue dork on Twitter and Instagram and I graduated from the NYU game center's BFA program

for game design last year during my time as an undergrad I collaborated with AP Thompson another graduate from the MFA program and we worked together on a couple of games together we submitted our games to festivals like the IGF fantastic arcade and IndieCade and impeded design and programming while I mostly contributed art to these projects together we meet this game called stellar smooch it's about kissing and loneliness in space sellers smooch got an IG F nomination for best student game in 2015 the following year we teamed up again to make B glitched a pastel match three roguelike about insecurity in computers and ourselves B glitched won best student game at the IGF in 2016 so those are a couple of games AP and I worked on together I also like to code and design games on my own so here are some projects I made solo this is a game I made for a class where you have to put on your make up in ten seconds or less it's called warning makeup madness and here's

another game where you have to put this new de Leyland avatar through a series of challenging workout poses for my capstone project I started working on a personal game about dieting it's called consuming and it's still a work in progress while I was in school I posted my work-in-progress in game development to social media and that helped me get my name out there it all led to awards and getting opportunities to give talks about my work by a lot of people's definition of success they might think I'm successful but you're also thinking hey maybe she just works really hard and put in a lot of effort to get to where she is well I think we know that's not the entire story has anyone heard of survivorship bias here's a comic which pretty much sums it up so survivorship bias is a cognitive bias that occurs when someone tries to make a decision based on past successes while ignoring past failures popular media

often tells us the story of this determined individual who pursues their dreams and beats the odds there's much less of a focus on the many people that may be similarly skilled and determined but fail to ever find success because of factors beyond their own control or other seemingly random events and this creates a false perception that anyone can achieve great things if they just have the ability and make the effort hard work and effort do matter but there's more to success than just that a lot of people are going to talk about their success but not mention the advantages and privileges they have so here are some that you may have never realized I even had first of all I don't require any fooders like sleep I can pull all-nighters and I just happen to be born with an unlimited resource of energy talent and creativity I have never ever felt depressed or sad or hopeless in my entire life not even in a single day and I'm the life of the party both online and offline

I've never felt lonely and I definitely don't have social anxiety or anything finally I'm also undying and perfect the Alpha and the Omega the beginning and the end so if you haven't realized it at this point basically success is something you're born with and if you are born successful I'm sorry I can't help you you better just leave this talk okay that was a joke I hope you got that it was a joke but here are some real disclaimers I'm going to mention yes I worked really hard and put in a lot of effort to get to where I am but I would be nowhere without these privileges and advantages I graduated from a great university without student loans I didn't have to worry about my living situation after I graduated my parents lived in the city and I lived with them during part of my time at NYU I got to collaborate with some pretty fantastic people my school gave me access to a lot of good resources like professors and friends and I couldn't have made any of these award-winning games without a P B

glitch gave me a safety net it made me enough money which meant I had some time to experiment and continue making my own stuff and to reiterate and put everything into context I got to do what I do because I graduated school without without this pressure of finding a job in supporting myself financially immediately so just remember to put success into context when you hear other people talk about their success stories stuff that worked for me might not work for you and your path to success might not look like mine however it doesn't mean that you can't succeed this advice is probably going to be more useful if you have certain similar circumstances to mine however you still might be able to take away some of these points even if we don't have a lot in common because at the end of the day six does still ultimately boils down to Locke like winning the lottery and though I can't tell you how to win the lottery I can give you advice on how to buy some more lottery tickets so a lot of you who want to go indie might have this mindset I want to pour in the next five years of

my life in all of my savings into making this one game and you better believe it's gonna be all worth it in the end my first piece of advice is don't try to make that ultimate game your thesis project won't be the end-all be-all it's a common mistake making the ultimate game was the reason why I wanted to go consuming was my capstone project and I was doing everything on my own I was coding designing and doing art I wanted to take consuming and finish it by myself but I had a lot of trouble being my own boss I didn't know how to work on a big project by myself I struggled with planning out a large ambitious game so time management was studying deadlines I could follow through on I constantly felt like a huge disappointment to myself at the same time I also had to deal with burning out the transition to life after graduation was hard for me because I felt alone and hopeless a lot of the time which made it extremely difficult to solve big design problems and to really make any progress at all on my game so this is how I felt a few months after going India after college

so to reiterate don't try to make that ultimate game especially if you plan to work on it by yourself and don't have a lot of experience doing it instead assume that you're probably going to continue making games after you release the current one you're working on so it's time to scope down smaller projects let you explore your ideas in a less risky way think about spending one month on exploring one design idea versus five years one months is way less risky duh and each project you work on and release is like buying another lottery ticket however the more tickets you buy the better of a chance you have to end up successful because unlike gambling or winning the lottery you aren't starting back from zero you're gaining skills and learning from mistakes with each game you shape ship all of this will make you a better developer and you can apply every single one of these valuable lessons you've learned to the next project you choose to work on so here are some examples of small projects let let me experiment with different stuff I got commissioned to make each of these

games after I was finished a school here's Brett nough help Brenda clean her room it took around one month to make it and I collaborated with AP again and he programmed it it was for play NYC and I even made a plush controller for it hungry buddy is a game where you have to feed your friend the food they're hungry for I'm in this game for the loser vivo arcade in France and finally here's pipsqueak pipsqueaks a goofy dog who likes walking around and eating eggs there are 20 levels it's the biggest project I made mostly by myself it was part of fantastic arcades bundle last year anyway these smaller projects not only let me explore new ideas they also taught me how to scope better because I am definitely a person who needs external deadlines to get things done they also gave me space from consume me which I needed so I could approach my design problems with a fresh and new perspective just remember making smaller projects doesn't mean you can't make a big one someday smaller projects can let you test out design or concept without investing too much and the reefs or too much time and resources if it turns out

to be a crummy idea in the end maybe someday you can turn that idea into your big ultimate dream game also you can't remember you can't continue buying lottery tickets if you're burned out or dead so I've definitely been close to that there and it was really not a good place to be in dealing with burning out in isolation were really hard challenges for me and I honestly still struggle with that stuff today but I do think I've come a long way from where I used to be so please be sure to take care of yourself those are some of my tips for buying more lottery tickets remember to look at others successes in context and even though success relies a lot on luck you do have the ability to increase the odds the most valuable thing about going indie for me was definitely getting the chance to make my own games and also my own mistakes and learning from them of course anyway whatever you decide to do I wish you the best of luck thank you for your time [Applause]

okay we got 10 more minutes let's try to make this work hi my name is Ted de NOLA here are some of the things I've worked on in some of the places I've worked but I'm not really here to talk about that I'm here to talk about you guys so let's get on with it many of you are still in school and that is awesome because school gives you a lot of unique opportunities Astra alluded to some of these earlier but there are some things that you can be doing to give you a better chance of success both now and going forward in your career first off the game industry is an industry it comes down to shipping games and making money but in college you have the

freedom to not make things that need to be commercially viable or widely distributed well you can make things that can only be played with one weird controller like Fred setting emotionally challenging games I could only be played with one person or in one place like deadbolt or reveal bits about your life and are hard to swallow like into suddenly bad news which is that game in the bottom corner there literally it requires someone to be manning at full time as well as a full-time actor and it's one player at a time so I've never gotten to play it but I watched for hours as they coordinated this amazing simulation Jen Sandra Cox edible games in the top corner stereos a game you literally eat and then down there in the bottom corners coffee I'm misunderstanding a live-action play so these are some really weird stuff and you have the freedom to do it don't just you know use your projects as a way to like make things that you think are kind of cool and simulate games you love making make weird stuff as much as possible one way you can do that is participating in game jams oh wait sorry game jams there are literally hundreds of these all the time they are online

they are local I strongly recommend if you have one nearby go physically and work with people but definitely participate in any way you can it's a great opportunity to experiment try out different mechanics in a really safe space and some of those ideas can turn into bigger things all of you here are really ahead of the game because you've come out to an event and you've been meeting people and talking to folks and building those connections but find local game meetups in your areas if you if you don't live near a major city there's still independent game development organization is a great one and you can find folks to talk to you if they don't exist in your area think about making them but definitely meet up other developers and talk to them and find out what they're doing that kind of brings me to networking you know we've all heard about networking very important to making connections but this is a really it's not it's not a bunch of cogs and gears it's not a transactional thing it is about making friends and appreciating what they do this is a title by porpentine by the way and if

you're not familiar with their work you should it's all of our job though to connect with each other and build each other up specifically all the people in this room right now you're all in similar positions make friends keep in touch find out what you're doing because in five or six or ten years you will be able to help each other you'll find needs for folks and it's our jobs to boost each other up together similar to that is these is mentorship mentorship is like networking but cross generational there are several people without whom I would not have been able to you know have such a successful career doesn't have to be a formal process it's not like Johnny Tremain working at the silversmiths it can be something as simple as just keeping in touch over emails showing your builds out messaging someone at 3:00 a.m. because you have a job offering you're not sure if you're gonna take it but it's incredibly valuable feel free to like shoot us all emails and Twitter's and stuff we will we will try to help you out because it's really scary but that said let's say let's talk about you

know going indie after college you may remember Asher's slide this is no surprise don't do this to yourself at least not full-time and I'll get to more of that later but here are some reasons why you really shouldn't kind of expanding on what these two talked about you guys don't know how to work and I don't mean that in like the old man way of like young kids are shiftless and they can't work and they're lazy I mean you will work yourselves to death and that is not something you want to do this is a slide from a an amazing twine game and I do not know the maker of it but it is called retro by the aptly named starving indie there are a lot of things to consider and you haven't really had experience with them yet you have a whole lot to learn and there are things you can do to enable that working by yourself in a vacuum with singular vision that can that can work sometimes and there are several folks who have had really great success but working with a team allows you to learn a lot more and much more quickly and most importantly it allows

you to avoid really bad habits just as one small example here this is a material graph from an unreal game on an amazing tumblr there are a lot of easier ways to do this but if that's how you've been doing it for years you're you know good for you you're spending a lot of time of course something that we all know about is this industry is incredibly volatile this is a chart I'm sure most of you have seen this is steam games released by a year look at that so in 2012 there were 403 games released total on Steam there were over 7500 released last year many of you may not be familiar with this corollary chart this is median copies owned per game so if you were releasing a game in 2012 and had some modicum of success you could totally run a business off of that 230 is not a small number but 5000 in last year is it's not something that's sustainable also note that steam spa includes keys handed out so this number is inflated I'm going to talk a little fast about

two games that I released at different times in my career what and why are they were kind of successes or failures this first one was a game with balls you probably haven't heard about it and that's totally fine it was a kind of cash grab iOS thing that did okay but we set this game up for success we developed it on a really short cycle budget was super low we made deals with Amazon to you know have them featured on the Android store but things didn't go so great see 2010 Amazon store was new on Android didn't have filtering so whole bunch of folks with like og moto droids downloaded the game and I don't know if you try to run a Unity game on an arm v5 but it doesn't really work at all so that was one start to death on iOS things were a little bit different we had pretty solid snow for the first three to four days and then suddenly I noticed sales drop off a unique user count like skyrocket because we had been picked up by this amazing store called appleís which gave games away for free and so we you know

we pinned a lot of our success as a company on that and it just did not pan out because you can't predict these things let me fast forward though to a couple years later I had been working actually for a bunch of like really really large mobile social studios like Zynga making exciting stuff and I'd gotten sick of that so I decided to take the the money and the skills they had given me and go make an independent game with some friends really memories we originally planned to take like eight months to make it we realized super early on that content is very very very time consuming to make and so we scoped about two years out and during this time none of us were really crunched except like near conferences most of us like had savings to live off of because we weren't getting paid actively and we made something that I really value now at the end of the day this to me is a successful game that said I I'm not gotten much money from it sold pretty well two hundred seventy three thousand copies I think on Steam alone but that

money all goes somewhere we had a huge number of folks to support we had a lot of development time and I got to make this and be very happy with it and now I work at oculus because that's how it works you make a thing out of love and then you release it shameless plug by the way this is coming out on switch soon so feel free to check that out anyways some caveats here because I don't want to end on a down note and hopefully like you guys if you've been reading into these things it's not really a down note there are things you can do still definitely make games in your spare time you should be doing that all the time you should definitely be participating in jams to do that as well make games in between jobs it gives you a sense of regularity and purpose and lets you polish your skills but also more importantly it gives you something to show to future employers it was actually a very early version of a game with balls that landed me my first gig and I think that you should definitely be doing that for folks this is my contact information up

here feel free to take a picture of that or anything and if you any questions reach out to me I will help you or if like if you're like I have a really art specific question I will get you in touch with someone that has gone through that same path also there are lots of programs that can help you out if you've made a vr game before we have a program called oculus start and then if you just google that you'll have all the confirmation we can get you hardware we can get you support tickets it's really great and I'm doing this because I believe in all of you and just like you I want to power us all up together and I ran a little bit fast but thank you so much [Applause]