Interview with Blackthornprod (20 Year Old Full Time Game Dev!)

hey hey this video is brought to you by squarespace thanks squarespace yay so noah how are you doing man i am actually doing i'm doing really well yeah good good so i'm really really good man and i appreciate you you being willing to take the time to chat um there's so much to learn from you um and i think we talked a couple weeks ago and i was just sort of baffled by how young you were yeah because i'm like 29 years old uh going on 30 in a couple months and i can't remember what you two how old are you 20. oh recently actually yeah you're 20 years old and you are a full-time game dev and youtuber and you're living the dream that so many members in our audience so many subscribers want to live and i think that is so cool so i was wondering if you wanted to just sort of tell i guess your audience and my audience what you do for a living and how you got there what's your story

so uh as you said you know i am a full-time game developer and youtuber at the moment um i also make udemy courses with my brother which is a yeah just basically basically like my youtube tutorials except in a much longer format where i try to create a whole game um but yeah i'm really just breathing and living and eating game creation uh and it's excellent i started about uh three years ago now youtube i'm game development um and i believe a second was it two years yeah it was two years ago youtube so three years ago game day of two years ago youtube and it's just been a a real blast honestly actually yeah wait i really gotta tell something like it's actually three years ago that i started youtube let me make sure um oh my goodness yes it was three years ago three years ago okay and dude so when did you like this is crazy so you i don't know

what you're in france by the way right that's right yeah south of france okay so i don't know do you call it high school in france were you in high school yes a couple years ago okay so i started my youtube channel during the last year of high school okay um so i mean it to me it's just it's an interesting i was thinking about this call and i was thinking something that i wanted to touch on briefly was you seem to understand how to be an entrepreneur you know how to i guess do things that are profitable so that you can remain a full-time game developer and i had no idea how to do any of that when i was 20. um when i was 20 i was in college and uh i think yeah i was in college and i i was sort of going the traditional route to start a career and i didn't even think i was going to be a full-time game developer i wanted to be but i didn't i guess i didn't believe it

was possible so i'm curious if like if you can give give our listeners an understanding of how you knew how to do that how do you know how to be an entrepreneur um is there research you've done did you take a class on it was it your like how you were raised like how do you know all this stuff that's an interesting question uh but honestly i i kind of you know happened very slowly but surely i would say uh when i just started i really wasn't at all thinking of well i kind of you wanted to turn gamedev into my full-time thing after high school and i'd already you know looked at a lot of other game dev youtubers um and i knew it was possible you didn't need a necessarily a formal education to learn how to create games and live doing it um yeah i just started really just kind of slowly uh slowly but surely making videos and building out that passion i really say just the the love of doing it that that gave me that

that made me grow this audience and then i started to see all these opportunities coming my way which i i made the most of um luckily yeah but i didn't actually just take a course on entrepreneurship or anything it's just i enjoyed creating games i wanted to find out really how to continue doing this um and you know bit by bit i found out with youtube ad revenue then patreon uh udemy courses and these are all things i took ideas from all kinds of people um you know brachy's for example the the gamedev youtube channel and so he sets up a patreon account and i said ah that's a really fun cool way to earn some money so that was the really first way i earned uh some cash really my my first dollars were made with patreon and and then i realized why not put some adverts doesn't really bother me so it shouldn't bother the audience too much either so i put those and all these little sources of income

uh began you know accumulating and before i knew it i had a really nice salary i said oh excellent i can continue doing this full-time do you think you know when i was uh when i just started making indie games when i was i guess i was 20. so it's been about a decade of me making indie games when i first started uh i was watching the indie game documentary which i'm sure you've seen definitely yeah and in my head all i thought was well if i want to make games for a living that's what i need to do just make games but i'm learning that and what i'm advising my audience whether it's my youtube channel or the online course i'm working on what i what i advise my audience to do is not just make indie games but do a lot of different things at once and not put all of your eggs in one basket but instead you know focus on a lot of different revenue opportunities that's really good

even if it's small i'm curious if what your advice is agree with my audience yeah it's a it's a much more reliable way of earning you know steady flow of income when you're relying on on different sources uh which is really worked well for me anyway and so i can only speak from my experience um the only game i actually sold i've made dozens of small games during your game jams and just to learn new tools or coding and stuff but um i actually released my very first steam game uh called the dreadful whispers it was uh september of 2019 and that made me about uh 15 000 uh so that's not a huge amount of money for it right i mean it's still okay for a first game uh i guess right but thankfully while making the devlog videos and having the udemy courses and all that really gave me enough money to make the game to learn so many things and so now i've got yes skills that will hopefully you know help me to

make even better games and yeah perhaps one day really make a lot more with just games right but yeah in the meantime if you're a beginner um you can just start making games as your your full-time job by just making videos about your progress from like zero to hero just show how you're learning stuff uh yeah through youtube for example like like you and i thomas like we're we've done many many youtube videos and yeah just show that be honest that you're not really good yet but you're learning and i post every week you know just a little video even if it's just stick men and it's not not really interesting or fun but if there's like passion behind it and you're really like willing to learn and you're asking your community for advice i really think it's possible to to build up an audience even if you're not that great a game dev just yet yeah do you think you would have finished dreadful whispers if you had you know like a full-time job at like a desk job in a cubicle somewhere do you feel like you would have finished

that game at the quality that you would that you had released it um or do you feel like you wouldn't have had the time to do it oh hard to tell really yeah i hope uh i like to believe that i would finish it i really think you're finishing something you start is really important yes but it's hard to tell yeah it's really quite tough it would have been harder for sure yeah do you recommend to your audience and my audience to um to start right now securing various revenue streams as opposed to just focusing on making learning game development do you recommend they they launch a patreon get their social media going um maybe start a youtube channel or or do some online courses what do you recommend to say yeah i think if you've got an actual day job that you you're actually enjoying and game dev is just more of a hobby then that's probably fine but if you want to turn game devs you're your full-time thing right now then yeah you definitely should start um finding a way to to make some money on

the side so you can continue working on your game yeah so i think there's so many ways like kickstarter like you did thomas for pinstripe or yeah finding a publisher but youtube's a really easy nice way to start if you've got zero skills and you have your match the actual skills to make a really awesome looking game to sell people on kickstarter yeah that's what's brilliant about yeah the social media like twitter youtube you can be pretty uh lame at game dave but if you're showing the willingness to improve then you could start doing really well right do you think that you would be doing youtube and udemy like let's pretend your next game makes three million dollars would you would you drop youtube and udemy right away and just focus on making games or would you continue making udemy courses in youtube and youtube videos oh all these good questions man i really i really think um i probably would make less udemy courses

um because for now making lots of like single udemy courses on making a platformer game or making an action uh top-down shooter a team no way dude yeah yeah how many courses do you have uh currently three and me and my brother were working on the fourth one right now um that's awesome yeah i need to credit my brother for for helping me out with the courses great great help there yeah but yeah i think i would continue youtube and oh man if i made three million i would love to tell the story and be able to help others and do the same it would definitely yeah it would be nice exactly and you know for me like go ahead i definitely will one day like the day i make a massive success could be in 10 years and stuff i'll i'd be so eager to share that story and like you know encourage encourage others to go for it okay guys before we get started this video is brought to you by squarespace believe it or not i've been wanting squarespace as a sponsor for so long mainly because squarespace is awesome

i've been using squarespace for i think six years um both my websites thomasbrush.com and atmosgames.com where i host my games and my portfolio my resume all that cool stuff is hosted on squarespace it was created with squarespace squarespace is cool because you can look amazing you can have custom designs and pretty much do anything you need to do for your business or your own personal brand all with squarespace and you don't have to know how to code so if you guys are interested in creating a website with squarespace click the link below squarespace.com thomasbrush and use the promo code thomasbrush for 10 off yay yay i love squarespace i really do thanks squarespace so tell me about dreadful whispers um how there's a lot of questions i have about it and by the way it's beautiful you did a really great job and congrats on the success i mean this is the first real indie title correct like your first commercial release

yeah yeah i'm just so happy that i have completed it uh oh it's it's huge dude because there's so many youtubers out there indie game developers who who haven't done that um and it's i think it's really important if you're gonna be telling people how to make games that you've done it and that you've not only like really small game jam games but but full-on games on steam i think is really important so i'm curious there's a lot of questions i have about dreadful whispers but one of the main ones is how much time did you dedicate did you have a schedule for making this game because i know you are doing a lot of other things to secure income streams yes i'm curious how much time you felt justified or how how justified you were in in putting in like say 15 hours a week in this game so i started the game in december of 2018 and i launched it in september so that's about that's awesome ten months roughly but it will yeah that's great yeah but it was far from full time like i really probably if i was like a robot and uh

just works all the time i could have finished maybe in four months i would say four or five months yeah half the time i spent uh but yeah as you said a lot of time was spent on youtube videos or udemy courses and there are also a few weeks where i just really didn't feel motivated and it didn't work on the game at all which i think is quite hard i mean obviously you could probably relate to this where you've got some times where you just don't work on your project you burn out a little bit on it oh yeah but yeah and that's that's why i'm focusing on doing um my course right now which is called full-time game dev um it's it's nice to it's nice to take a break from making games i don't know if you felt that way after dreadful whispers like i need to just stop a little bit and maybe do something that's kind of boring and then maybe jump into game dev in a couple months you know sure sure sure uh actually there's a great piece of advice you you gave in one of your videos which i i really loved and it was about it was drink a period where a game that was because it's hard to even if you know

you love game dev deep down there are always going to be peers where you're you're kind of tempted to try something else like in my case i've been really interested in the idea of just trying acting or writing a book or something things are still creative but you know very different from game development and then you made that little movie that small film uh yeah that little horror movie that was that was really well done and thank you yeah man you took a month off i think or you said yeah it was i think it was two months um yeah it was like it was like investing five or six thousand dollars for equipment and then two months off which you know that's another you know couple grand or more for my salary so it's it was a weird investment because it was like do i want to take you know close to 10 000 or whatever i don't remember the exact budget do i want to spend that on something that i know is not going to make money and for me the answer was yes it's kind of like i don't know if you you feel this way maybe with your friends or your family or your

brother but for me like being married you know sometimes you need to maybe go on a trip alone or spend some time away from something you really truly love because i guess distance is going to make the heart grow fonder yes and for me you realize how much you love it after a break you'll say man this is this is really great in fact when sometimes you just yeah exactly yeah exactly and for me like last year i grew honestly really resentful towards making games like i felt i i i made a video about it like i wanted to quit yeah like and i it almost felt like i was working a desk job for a boss and it was it was it i didn't i don't have a boss but i felt like i did it was like an another version of me that's how you relate to that it can sometimes yeah worse than having a boss you could be such a terrible boss to yourself yeah yeah exactly man and you never you never feel like you can fully get off the clock uh or clock out

and so for me i just needed to force myself to do something else so i made a short horror film um called the man in the cradle and i was really pleased with with the response and and we actually licensed it to um pretty popular youtube channel i think i remember yeah yeah it was yeah what's it called crypt tv um and that was like really fun but what was so cool is after i finished it i was like oh man i'm ready to make another game and so i jumped right back into like another four or five month stretch of just game development and now i'm taking another break you know and especially i'm learning that you can sort of have multiple projects sort of all sort of hanging out unfinished just as long as you know you need to finish them it's okay to have like two or three just hanging out there i don't know if you do that uh i'm thinking of doing that more actually than i do um just the benefit of having multiple projects is that yeah if you lose motivation on one hopefully you might be more inspired to tackle the other

and yeah vice versa so that could be that can actually be really great i don't do that that much in terms of games i usually have just one game projects going at a time and maybe i take part in small game jams during the development of a bigger project um but then i guess i have youtube and udemy which kind of acts as other projects that i can switch to if i don't feel too eager to jump into full unity game dev right right so what are you currently working on right now so it's a dashing fire it's uh yeah my second game that i'm going to it's released in steam been working on it since december uh and i have been very very slow in progress these past two months um kind of just like a lack of motivation i would say all in all but i'm recovering it thankfully and i've really been working on these last few weeks i've been working on this again um but yeah it kind of it's it's super hard to avoid just losing motivation it's even if you know all the good tips and

stuff it's going to hit you at some point and it right it's it's just normal you know it's like absolutely normal to lose motivation and to i guess to feel like it's suddenly become a normal desk job yeah um i mean honestly game devs talk about all the time like quitting quitting their desk job but the thing is is every job is basically a desk job nowadays like you're gonna be sitting and you're gonna be grinding um and i guess what makes it not a traditional quote-unquote desk job is the idea that you're free like you are free to be able to do what you want you know that is a beautiful thing and what attracted me so much to indie game developments in the first place to be able to to have all this freedom create my own world whatever i want uh so right it's pretty magical um well i remember we had a phone call uh i think it was two weeks ago you and i just chatted and what you i think you mentioned this to me correct me if i'm wrong but

you've you've kind of learned to take it easy on yourself a little bit yeah um and i i can't remember are you taking a break from like social media is that what you mentioned taking a much bigger break than i than i was it's not like a full-on break by just not not going on it so as impulsively as i used to uh you know i limit myself to like in the morning checking usually emails and twitter and youtube and then i just you know really force myself to not go on it for the whole day and it's excellent really it's great it's you know no point really going on it's throughout the entire day for me anyway i don't feel there's any point it just makes things more stressful and so distracting last year yeah i was just so distracted it was unbelievable every hour i would go at least three times on twitter just like i have it i was completely addicted oh man dude me too me too man it's uh so yeah like that that sense of freedom isn't really there like the moment you yeah like the moment you quit your job or the moment you're done being a

student and you go into full-time game dev suddenly especially if you're building a community like you and i are um suddenly your community becomes your boss and yes they start to drive your feelings and your anxiety and your attitude is that part of the reason why you took a break like you just didn't want to feel that pressure i i think partly yes partly because i just wanted to be able to to find that magic of being able to work on my game for several hours straight without looking at whatever everybody else was making or saying uh yeah but the distraction aspects and also just that feeling that there's this huge invisible audience looking at whatever i do um now i don't feel that at all anymore like i'm i'm good and that's just partly i mean it's completely because i'm so much less on social media but um if you push it too much it can become like this invisible audience constantly checking you out and i think it hinders creativity uh yeah i think it does yeah i think it

depends on your and your personality and stuff maybe someone would thrive and having just an audience all like come study on you but i do like just my space a couple likes right nobody watching and then only when it's done i can like show it um yeah which is not too easy though because that's one way i'm marketing my game is by making devlogs uh usually quite consistently so even if the work is not fully ready i kind of have to show it you know to keep up those devlogs keep the audience interested um and that's a bit annoying sometimes i don't want to show a work in progress because i know it's flawed and i don't like seeing like the comments pointing out obvious things that are wrong with the game um yeah but that's something you you get used to and it's okay it's actually quite good for your i mean feedback i think so devlogs right like the benefits of devlogs are excellent i think they're much they they beat all the inconveniences or just having there's so much motivation that comes with having people you know push you on

and their feedback can actually be really useful it can be not useful but it can also be um it can help you improve your work i i've i've found yeah and i found that even i think i we talked i talked about this with david whaley i don't know if you saw that i i did i didn't see all of you i heard some boots and it was yeah it was excellent yeah he's brilliant man he's brilliant but we talked about just sort of growing a thicker skin and you know as especially in game development i'm learning that it's especially important to to learn to take criticism even if it's really uh obnoxious almost bullying criticism um even even silly stuff about like maybe how you look on camera like those kinds of things are super important to learn to be okay with because i've learned that releasing indie games is is one of the most intimate things to reveal about you it's incredible yeah so i'm curious what the

other than wish lists is there any data points that you can look at from your game your recent release and can you look at any of that data and maybe share it with the audience like you don't have to open it up if you don't want but i'm just curious oh man i'm always so fascinated in other people uh you're releasing their data and showing what they uh you know how sales did and stuff because it's so useful for other people as well yeah so yeah totally i'm i'm all for sharing sharing some stats um so i better go on steamworks yeah that's fine so i i uh i'm curious if if if you sold as many copies as you expected less than you expected uh so less than i expected um so i don't know where i got this stat i think i think for some reason i thought that maybe 50 of my wish lists would uh turn into actual sales yeah i read that one today yeah so now

it's like six thousand wish list at launch i was quite sure i was gonna get uh 3 000 sales at least they're like 3 000 copies sold um when in fact i think during the first week i got about a thousand copies sold if i remember well yeah um and ashley made a whole video about that which is if i think my second most popular video which goes to show how people are craving dude that learning about stats and money they they want to hear how much money they're going to make that's and that's that's a good thing to want to know because a lot of a lot of our audiences and i'm opening up my steam works as well to hopefully yeah that was really great i saw your yeah i saw your video about i think a week or maybe two weeks after never song release you shared some some stats which was fascinating but then i had to delete the effing video because pc gamer did a whole article about how i released i accidentally sent 4 000 keys to my backers and that that was just a small portion of the video but pc gamer did a whole

article about how i i had released 4 000 keys and so oh no that and that was one reason why i was like i'm not going to have this video posted but i also there was some data in that video that i wasn't allowed to share for some ndas and so i had to remove that video but you're the same thing happened for you like that video went gangbusters because so many people want to know yeah like 750 000 views which is which is massive dude that's crazy really yeah it's my second most popular video the first is pixel arts and then this one's the the second yeah and so yeah it just is massive and the responses are so positive people love the transparency and the honesty um honestly obviously my game was small and i didn't uh make a fortune with it and that so i didn't have any problems revealing my stats with other people but uh yeah it was really interesting and so yeah it would be great it was actually tim russwick that inspired me to

just to share my stats as well yeah it showed his uh on philophobia which was his game they released some hio but yeah really so did you i'm looking at my data right now i'm curious um if your wish lists right now currently are double what they were when you launched um so yes they are actually okay that's that's the that is the data point i haven't seen anything but same thing for me they're all basically double yeah i've got 12 000 now yep 12 612 yep and so for me i pushed really hard for wish list so i had about 27 000 uh on launch and now they're kind of double 41 000 so 42 000 wow yeah and so it's a lot of wish list there's a lot of wish lists and so i wonder if those will over time you know bit by bit turn into actual sales i don't know man i don't know if they're going to convert i really don't because i'm i'm looking at i'm looking at pinstripe right now let me open that up

and pin stripes dude this the wish list for pinstripe are 75 000. wow now am i going to am i going to sell even like what's what's the conversion rate supposed to be like i heard 50 but i think that's completely wrong i mean wait 50 percent so that's only for your launch day maybe i've i've heard that 50 of your wish list on launch day will convert something like that but i think that's really uh maybe a really good scenario yeah whereas i think it's like supposed to be like 10 to 15 total yeah over time so if i get my calculator out oh okay if i get my calculator out and i calculate uh 75 000 wish lists you know selling the game on average right now i'm selling it for like two three bucks because it's always on sale really cheap so if i sell 15 of those that's 11 000 copies times what did i

just say five dollars three dollars yeah three dollars that's thirty three thousand dollars and i don't know i just don't know if that's going to happen so yeah and that's three three thousand dollars without like steam taking a share yeah and publisher my because i have publishers so they take oh also yeah so yeah it's tough money on steam it can be pretty tough yeah yeah i found out and i thought it just goes to show like it's really important to not hang your like like hold on hold on too tightly to what you expect your wish list to do because sometimes it just doesn't happen sure you know i know it's um yeah it's tricky it's it's like it's good to be motivated by uh your money and stuff uh that's that's that's something quite interesting you said uh with david in your in your previous podcast and you said you know it's kind of like okay to be motivated by money or views respect i think it helps i think actually you

know it's so fascinating because for quite a long time uh for some reason i had this very purest attitude and i felt really quite guilty if i was feeling only like if i was feeling motivated by money even if it was only partly i felt like no that i shouldn't be motivated at all by that for some reason i just thought that and same thing man same thing went out when i was 25 i thought that way and now i'm like no bring on the cash because it's so much easier to be objective about your game and just finish it and get things done and honestly i'm a bit of a capitalist myself but it's so much easier to it's so much easier to release content that your audience likes because i guess it's a double-edged sword like most things but when you're motivated by by money you tend to be like okay well how do i get my audience to buy this game what do they want and then you put stuff in that game that you think your audience is going to like

because you want to make some money and so it it kind of works out that way but that also means that you're going to sell out maybe if you care too much about money you might sell out and make junk with games yeah it's like a fine balance you need to strike between you're having obviously that passion and wanting to create a game that you like and you enjoy doing it but it was really soothing to hear it was just nice and refreshing to hear that actually it really was just it's okay you know to be motivated by it isn't that a weird thing it's soothing and refreshing to he it's weird yeah it was it was for such a long time yeah it was a little long time i was yeah feeling guilty about that uh about like youtube stats and saying oh i shouldn't be looking at the numbers it shouldn't matter if i get 100 000 anyway it's just like a number what's important is the journey and all that well i uh i always say i always say that human beings should live their life like they're in an rpg um they should they should always be

looking to advance and upgrade and i love like i'm looking at my steam stats right now and there's just nothing more exciting than looking through stats and seeing growth or maybe maybe seeing decline and thinking okay what can i do to do better it actually gives me joy yeah it really does bring on a certain excitement you know when you see these stats and you you wonder how you can increase them you compare them um if you do too much it could be unhealthy but i think you know if you find that good balance it's perfectly good to be interested in these things and and be partly you know motivated about it i think one of the biggest problems that human beings have in general and i don't want to get too philosophical here but one of our biggest problems as human beings is we don't we don't believe in nuance anymore everything is so polarized in black and white in in this world and for me i'm learning i'm learning i'm the same way with with game development it's like you're either a purist and you make games solely to tell a story and to change the world

or you're you're a you know a jackass capitalist just trying to make money make a bunch of flappy bird clones and i'm like no can we like have some nuance here is it possible and this is what david is really good at david whaley um and i guess we'll just link his podcast in the description because he was really helpful um he's he's both an entrepreneur somebody who's an artist yeah yeah and an artist yeah he's an entrepreneur and an artist he does both and i think that that is look if if if the majority of our audience is just trying to be a purist they're not going to release games so then because they just they're never it's never going to be what they thought it was going to be and it's never going to quote unquote change the world and so i think it's important to just to separate yourself from your game not make it all about you and also spend some time being an entrepreneur and maybe dream a little bit about making some money because it might drive you to finish your game and and do it right so that you don't have to be miserable the next game you make

exactly i think it's just there's no reason to to not be excited about these things uh if that's that's good for you of course that's true some people do find it hard and and i found it hard for a time yet to melt have business and arts and you're not wanting to sell my soul to my audience just wanting to make whatever i wanted and don't care about views or whatever else but um but there is also pleasure in trying to to please others and get that you know get people to really enjoy what you make yeah it's about balance it's just about finding that that balance between what like what you need as a person as you said it's all about nuance and not just black and white all the time right exactly so i am curious i'm looking here sorry to change the subject i'm looking at sure what's your country breakdown like if you don't mind me asking um um so let me check off is is it primarily united states and united kingdom it is actually quite a lot of germany okay yep same here five percent for me and um

australia new zealand interestingly yep new zealand i don't have new zealand on here at all that's crazy oh really yeah yeah yeah so it looks like united states unsurprisingly is is the target market for for game development it is uh is the biggest part of my youtube audience as well it's from the united states yeah so you're in france um you're you're you're native you're you natively speak french correct i do so i i i've lived in france my whole life uh but my mom is scottish so i was you're speaking mostly english uh growing up french was just at school okay so is your accent french and scottish mixed probably something like that okay i've been curious about what it is because it to i mean i don't know a lot about the french accent but it doesn't sound completely french to me no no i i don't think i've i don't think i speak english with a french accent at all it's probably just a weird mix

between yet my difference yeah scottish a bit and uh and french that's so cool i think it's beautiful i think it's like super unique i would say it's probably one of the one of many reasons why your youtube channel is successful like when i first watched your very one of your the first video i saw of yours i was like i was like this guy has such an interesting voice oh man but my very first videos actually i was really almost wasn't conscious of it i had a very uh exaggerated voice i maybe exaggerated it even more like i was articulating every word so much and trying to sound really trying to sound passionate you know and excited maybe i pushed it a bit uh so i kept talking literally i heard you talking that way and i hit subscribe because i was like the world the world needs more articulation and i think you're you're a really articulate guy it kind of became part of my brand i would say yeah and maybe a lot of people actually really like that i obviously got a few people

saying why the hell are you speaking like that this is so weird stuff is but a lot of people i think really do like the articulate completely i think have of unique tutorials or their vlogs so yeah so hearing my videos again is kind of funny so i am curious noah if so your target markets the united states for both your youtube channel yeah and your games i'm curious if because i the only places i've been to europe is italy and iceland and i know that those two places are not they're probably not anything like france so my perspective of of let's say france it's it's probably only formed from like movies and television and i'm curious if your view of the united states and who your target market is do you think it's accurate have you had experiences in the united states to i guess understand your target market ah so the thing i've never actually been uh to the us and that's something i

wanted to do in the following years for sure i'm so interested in just exploring this country um but uh i guess a lot of my idea of who my audience is is you know through through just videos movies uh the youtubers i follow like yourself like last week and all kinds of other guys um but yeah i just got like a really positive view of the americans i think they're all i think like a really great cool country really um i'm so surprised to hear that because you know okay so the way americans view europe's perception of america is we think europe hates america and maybe i'm completely wrong but maybe a few people i i doubts the majority yeah no i don't i don't think so so does does america lead the charge when it comes to game development and social media do peop does europe follow follow america uh so the french people i know

it's true they mostly follow other french youtubers for example right um i think america does like you know place a lot of trends and has a big i think carries a lot of the of the thing forward uh but i can't really be sure i'm not entirely sure yeah i think that's yeah it just depends on the person really and what he follows and stuff but me even though i live in france i'm mostly just really i think quite deep into the american culture or at least i feel like i am yeah since i follow a lot of you know american youtubers and watch a lot of american films play games made in america okay so yeah so that yeah that's something i've always been curious about um because i used to i don't really do this anymore and maybe we can talk about this i don't really go to any of the conferences anymore like gdc or pax any of those things indicate igf i don't go to those anymore i just sort of stay in my hometown i live kind of near

atlanta i don't know if you know where atlanta is uh let me check right now atlanta is like the southern hollywood so there's hollywood on the west coast and then there's atlanta and so i live i live kind of near atlanta and okay you know other than sometimes going to atlanta or something i kind of just stick around here in my hometown i don't really go to any conferences or anything like that but when i used to go to conferences because i thought they were valuable and i don't think they are anymore maybe we can talk about that but when i used to go to conferences people from all over the world game devs from i met a lot of uh i think people guys from finland i gotta hang out with some guys from finland um and uh i think sweden as well some french guys as well they would spend like ten thousand dollars to fly over to the united states and create a trip out of it yes to go to these conferences and i'm curious if they just they just saw so much value in

putting their games and their mark in america and a lot of them were trying to move here and i'm just curious if you have that feeling if you feel like it's valuable or maybe you don't also that so i have a i've only really been for now to one game dev sort of conference and that was unity unite in copenhagen right um right so that obviously much closer to home than than the united states uh and then that's actually unity who paid me there's the they paid the hotel they paid everything yeah it's incredible yeah they did that for me to go to gdc in los angeles yeah uh since it was my first time i felt it was valuable mostly just to be able to hang out with other game developers that was the main takeaway for me was to be able to laugh and talk and share stories with other creators that was fantastic um after whether i would purely go just to america to like spend thousands of thousands just to go to gdc for pure business point of view i

probably wouldn't i would just go just to have a good time and make a holiday out of it and visit america it does sound tempting to me now uh having not gone too many it does sound quite exciting i feel like it would be great to be just surrounded by game developers and maybe meet some of my game dev heroes sounds really exciting yeah um but i i can't understand that yeah it's not maybe the most like the best thing so so why are you not like too keen on these conferences i just i just get exhausted it's uh i you know i'm i'm it's it get at this point saying that i'm an introvert is kind of cringy because everybody says they're an introvert but for me especially game developers like all of them are introverts it's probably why they want to be game developers so that the rest of the world will shut up and they can just make their game but it's a good theory but for me you know going to these conferences like the one pax in boston was probably the most exhausted i've ever been because i had to i stood at my booth for

what was it like four or three days and you're just standing for eight hours just hanging out your booth smiling and trying to talk to hundreds of people it's just exhausting and you know maybe i should take back the idea that it wasn't valuable because quite honestly i met serenity forge at pax so oh nice oh that and that relationship was formed at pax but i'm i'm uh i'm at this point now where a lot of the perceptions of what i thought was valuable as a game developer all of those things have been replaced by other things so an example is well conferences those kind of have been replaced by well i'd rather just do a podcast and meet people that way instead of flying out to these conferences so i've met so many people by just doing podcasts and having or even just meeting them privately on skype and just talking like that for me is way more valuable and it's free um another thing that's been replaced is

i used to think that indie game competitions were so important like to get that logo on your game and i just i don't know man i don't know if it's as valuable as i thought it was what do you think it does seem very prestigious anyway from when you said the igf winners and yeah i mean it's kind of like the oscars of of game dev for now yeah probably will get even more like you know prestigious and stuff as the years go on as games take up even more space in the world um so yeah it sounds like it sounds cool it feels cool uh winning those awards probably does feel nice but it's not necessary so i think you know make a living out of games and it's much less important than it might seem to be so yeah yeah i guess uh i guess hindsight is 20 20 because i wish that instead of focusing so much on competitions and festivals i wish i had just said you know what screw that i'm just going to make a youtube channel

and build an audience and then i can sell my game it's another exactly it's an alternate road to go and it's and it's a great one so are there any aspects of like the the glamour of being a game developer that you just disagree with like is your career currently as an indie game developer as a youtuber is that career as glamorous and as cool and as exciting as you thought it was does it meet the expectations or is it completely different i think it feels like it constantly shifts like sometimes i feel like it is and sometimes maybe less um again yeah it's true that i i definitely when starting out i envisioned working from home on my own quite differently than i do now uh now i do realize that i even though i like my piece and i like you know a lot of freedom i do realize like i need more people to work with and it would do me a lot of good creatively just for everything oh so you're lonely uh perhaps a little yeah for sure yeah yeah yeah uh it's something i think

i can't like underestimate this uh i didn't think that would happen to me for some reason i thought no is impossible this is this is too good but um i think like all humans we need a certain amount of socializing and being with others uh which i completely messed up balance wise i messed up a little but it's okay you know i'm realizing that you work with your brother though right yeah sure um which is good it's good but it's still family and it's still yeah it's your brother yeah i feel the same way about working with my brother so yeah yeah i kind of need other people than just family which would be nice yeah for sure and i'm definitely in that situation now where like i live in like i said you know pretty close to atlanta so i'm in like the south and it's very it's got this small hometown feel and i just hang out with my brothers all the time i have three older brothers and i have other friends as well but i i do spend so much time with my brothers and and they've sort of they've helped craft

what my games are all about um because growing up with them playing video games it really shaped what sort of lit a fire in me about games it was just that camaraderie that brotherhood that i had with with my family that's great i'm curious if you share that to your brothers what's that are you really like close to your brothers then oh yeah we all i mean we live within 10 minutes of each other so nice that's so cool yeah and we're we're like uh we all have kids and we're all married and so we're it's almost like we didn't yeah it's like it's like we just sort of stuck stuck together um and had kids and and got married and but nothing a lot has changed but at the same time not a lot has changed and we still when we hang out we talk about video games um video games politics that kind of stuff pretty much stuff we always talked about growing up actually um yeah so i'm curious uh

what that's like um if you don't mind sharing if you do then we can cut it out of the podcast i'm just curious what it's like working with family oh it's it's usually it's excellent i mean i'm so grateful to have like this yeah this brother who's only two years younger than me and so we're just like you know working together it's i think like brother like having a brother is so so nice just to share different ideas and and work together it's great um after working with it some people didn't recommend you know especially when i started to get a little more successful and stuff and just keep family and business separate i was like well i was hearing a bit and so far not any problems at all i'm just so glad to be able to you know to pay my brother nice large sums of money because he's earned it he's earned it helping with udemy courses so i just write him a check every every month and so yeah so he he primarily helps you with the udemy courses correct that's what he does mostly at the moment yeah okay so can do you

mind if we talk a little bit about udemy oh definitely definitely um because you know it's just so weird how the all of the game developers i know are successful game developers but they're also making courses um and it to me i'm like what is this all about like i didn't fully understand it and for david he's he's making a course i'm now making a course and it's not that i can't make games for a living like it's not that i couldn't just say you know i'm just gonna make games sure because those are doing fine um they're supporting my family but there's like this need and desire to like pass on to some knowledge yeah yeah because i've learned so much and there's so many things that i wish i could tell people like don't do what i did like i did so many things wrong um especially especially where you're at in your career there is so much you've accumulated so much experience and

knowledge and tricks that yeah people can only benefit from that it's it's incredible and as you said yeah you're very different from the guy who's teaching how to make games but hasn't actually made anything concrete yet you have a solid really really impressive portfolio so i mean yeah it's great same for you man same for you like you've done this 30 game jams and then your first commercial release have you thought about porting it to console uh i kind of did but i still feel like a bit like a bit sick of the dreadful whispered at the moment so i've not really i don't really thought too much maybe you could hire somebody have you thought about doing that i'm not doing that actually i've not thought about it for quite some time but you're bringing that back to mind and i i don't think it would sell hugely but maybe just for the experience it could be worth it just like just to learn how to support on the nintendo switch and constantly yeah which i imagine is i mean tricky right you've done it it's quite a few times it it's the worst it's the absolute it's

the absolute worst um and uh i haven't like that's one area of my life that i'm like i've never done that solo and i will never do that solo i hired uh matt thai at do games to do the port for pinstripe to nintendo switch xbox playstation okay and never songs port was done by serenity forge and also some studio that they worked with so but that doesn't mean that i didn't do anything like for pinstripe me and matt sort of tag teamed even though i hired him to do it we tag teamed a lot of the stuff and dude porting to console it's basically like the best way i could describe it is every company has a bible that they they give you and it's the bible of all of the things that you have to adhere to so essentially you have to you have to join like three new religions and understand how to communicate in that

cult and that group of people and how they like things done that's why well yeah that's why i feared uh which is why i didn't even i didn't even seriously consider it because the dreadful whisperer still is a smallish project and i just happened to put it on steam but yeah if i if i do it it will be with somebody else who's going to help me yeah it's tough man yeah it's tough i feel like the project is so messy too you know it's uh the code is probably quite messy it works my projects have terrible code yeah yeah it works fine in steam but like i don't know it's gonna crash i don't know man i i wonder if you should give it a shot because yeah 2d games 2d games aren't that hard like compared to 3d games i can imagine yeah so i don't know okay for the dashing fire i already feel like dashing fire it's a lot cleaner and it's yeah i'll see but i'm gonna do it at some point obviously i need to gain this experience and just the the idea of having one of my games on the intent on the nintendo switch for example

would be so nice having like an actual copy a retail copy like a little box yeah oh well apparently pinstripe is uh there's a retail copy for sale in europe um i might need to visit a store yeah serenityforge my publisher serenity forge they kind of got the rights to to release a physical copy in europe and i forgot about it and that's that's something i'm trying to communicate with my audience is this is one of the benefits of having a publisher which is you don't have to you don't have to have the conversations that you don't want to have and so you're going to have all these things working for you um they're obviously going to get some revenue from it but they're going to handle a lot of this stuff it seems so worth it yeah it it for me it was now for people like david whaley it's not because he's he he's able to manage all of it on his own and it's just your personality really and what you yeah you enjoy doing i guess some people even enjoy maybe porting to different consoles and i

don't know if they do but maybe they do i feel like thai at do games the the porting company that does a lot of my games yeah he or one of my games i should say which is half of my portfolio uh what he he he really enjoys it and he he started a whole company doing this and he really likes he really loves the idea of taking on projects he he enjoys playing and it's it's part of what he loves to do now for me when i'm when like oh dude some companies i can't say which one because there's like ndas you sign yeah but some of these some of these platforms these console platforms like imagine imagine okay if you're gonna join a new religion and they're like here's your bible well you want it to be in your language all in one book and you're like okay i could i can learn what this religion is but just extending the religion metaphor but there's some consoles that they go here's your bible and it's it's it's a compilation of excel spreadsheets microsoft word some powerpoints and then

some pdfs and then some of it is you have to log in and like download xml files to figure stuff out so it's this giant giant mess all of these rules you have to adhere to to be able to get your to be able to get your game on console so it's not even that it's hard to like maybe learn their sdk and the problem is it's yeah it's how to learn it and how to like find where the resources are it's a mess it's an absolute mess and i think it's part of their strategy which is weed out all the people who don't aren't dedicated yeah so the games that do end up on those platforms are by sears developers who really want to spend that time because they believe their game is good enough and it's going to do well on right yeah sure make sense right right or they have the money to pay someone to do it which maybe that increases their credibility i don't know maybe yeah but yeah it's it's tough man it's tough but yeah i'm most certain that i will definitely

pay somebody to do it for me it would be just take a real weight off my head yeah well can i can i ask you about these courses so um do you if you like if you don't mind talking about all this stuff or if you do mind just tell me and then i'll cut it out but i'm curious if if courses are a profitable route for you as a game developer it will actually it is my main source of income okay okay i figured i figured yeah and it will probably be mine the moment i release my course it's entirely possible and i think it's going to do really well especially with your audience it's going to be it's going to be doing great but um it was fascinating the very first course i launched uh which was how to make an action game the top-down structure game in unity that was in november of 2018 so more than two years ago now i believe no a year and a half ago um and on the very first week it made about five thousand dollars and wow and for me that was like

amazing of course that's crazy man just kind of especially when you're 20 yeah i was 18 at the time i just come out yeah yeah i was like yes this is excellent and so ever since it's just been doing so great this is like my main source of income and it's just i'm doing nothing on the courses except maybe you'll some just a little bit of maintenance but hardly uh and it's just making me money like just passive income while i sleep it's amazing so yeah it's really fun it's that's the kind of money you want to make man that's exactly like you definitely like i'm definitely getting in that mentality as well which is how do i how do i create content whether it's video games or courses or youtube videos how do i make that content quick and also systematic so that all of the stuff that the player needs or the viewer needs or the student needs all of it is ready to go so that i don't have to touch it or even do any customer service yes i just sit back and let it work for me guys that's my goal and it's like such a joy to see if you

like learn from your courses and even like make account all these clones of the game you show how to make in your course it's it's so great right but it's only been great udemy courses if you have something to like to teach and you feel you're good enough because i had already made tons of tutorials before releasing my first uh course i had lots of experience on video editing and hopefully like the right words to use when teaching about codes which is like a tricky subject and art okay so i'm curious if you get have some advice for me because you know i'm working on a course um i don't plan on releasing it on udemy i plan on doing it uh skillshare or on your website standalone website and just run youtube ads um and i'm curious if you have so my my goal with the course is to do it like a one one-stop shop um and a lot of game developers out there one i think there's three problems

first their problem is is that they don't know how to finish something so they need a coach to sort of cheer them over the line yeah and that's what they're looking for you know um and so that's one of the primary goals of my course is to just be a coach and cheer people on and and motivate them great so after these videos uh about like your tips and tricks and finishing the games yeah and like and putting together a road map so instead of a game design document it's a game design bible of like all of these mantras and philosophies and and homework assignments for people to write out your vision like what's your vision for your future um and how do you get there and how do you motivate yourself to finish i think those are really important aspects um they are to courses yeah yeah and so there's so many courses out there that teach technical skill but they don't teach entrepreneurial skill and so what i want to do is make a big chunk of the course about getting to the point where you're confident that you're going to finish it so putting together that

game design bible and the second thing i want to uh a lot of game developers really struggle with is how to market themselves prior to launch and also during launch what are the most underestimated uh topics and game developments and one like such a crucial one if you want to be more than just a hobbyist is marketing right that'll be so valuable i'm going to probably get your course actually you could never i mean you can always learn stuff and i'm sure yeah you have so much interesting things so i'm just curious if you think that that's a a profitable route to take um not everything's about profit but i'm curious if you think that that's a good route to take i think as opposed to just make technical courses i definitely think that's going like away from the technical because there's so many already out there as you know so going down more that way uh talk about entrepreneurship and finishing and marketing is it'll have a really nice audience what i'm maybe a little concerned about uh but after i have no no i clicks i've only got experience launching on udemy and i do know that you to me have pushed

my courses a lot like a lot of my income has come purely from you to me promoting it on the front page yeah and stuff yeah so hopefully um your your course will still get you know a nice audience even if it's not on skillshare i think it comes down to like if you're willing to invest ten twenty thousand dollars in ads i think that's the real question yeah if you're planning on doing that then then it'll probably get yeah but i don't know anything i don't know anything about any of that um but the goal is to take it's so it's so cool you probably experience this as well which is like it's it's like a a circular cycle of you make money from your games you invest that into your courses you make money from your courses you invest that into your games yeah and so the more that i do that the more i'm i'm willing to take on risks so for example take on ten twenty thousand dollars of ad ad ad funding to fund the course that money comes from never song you know because i made never song and money comes in from never song and i'm able to invest that in the courses and then that that

revenue from the course game helped me make another game yeah it's great yep it's so cool yeah like all these different projects um i totally agree with that you know working on a course a game and just ah it's great well i'll tell you what man um i think we've gone we've had this has been a great conversation i think it's been an hour and 20 minutes maybe yeah i think an hour and 40 minutes i believe maybe or oh my goodness i'm talking your ear off oh man you're so great at making fascinating conversations again thanks oh yeah yeah i've listened to quite a few of yours and yeah it's fantastic chocolate soup time flies really it doesn't feel oh it does man you're and you're smart as a whip dude like you you're you're 20 years old and you're killing it like when you're my age i feel i'm not that much older well i guess i'm nine years older than you yeah when you're older than when you're my age you're gonna be killing it like absolutely killing it because like i said at the beginning of this podcast

there's so many developers out there who don't know how to be entrepreneurs yeah and you figured that out and people can learn so much from you so i want to encourage my audience to click the links in the description um follow noah at blackthorne prod youtube channel but also we'll i'll include some links to your courses as well because i'm sure they can learn a lot from you sure if people want to learn the more technical side of game creation like arts and coding and stuff and learn how to finish a project because we always finish one uh then yeah definitely check out the courses awesome noah was there anything else you wanted to mention um before we close up here well just uh yeah it was a pleasure talking and that's definitely we'll want to to talk more in the future we've got a long gain of careers ahead of us i'm sure we're gonna to join forces again oh yeah we'll probably be doing podcasts when i'm like 80 and you're 70. exactly reminiscing about our long careers yeah yeah hey man we'll probably both be billionaires by then yo if i'm taking advice from you i'll

probably end up being a billionaire because you're you have some really good points oh man well i think yeah i think money will not be will not be a trouble you know i'm aiming for a million dollars by next year so i'll make a video about that share the success story yeah all right man well it's great talking to you thanks for taking the [Music] time you