Marketing Games Is Essential

[Music] when I first started talking I didn't know you lived in LA did did you live there your whole life so I'm I moved there with a suitcase when I was 18 oh no wait Anna and I lived there for five or six years and I built a marketing company there and I sold it and then I got the hell out of there cuz that almost destroyed me Maithili well well tell me why if you don't mind okay so I kind of have to tell you that I'll try and give you the quick version if I can so I built this piece of software that was for game developers basically there was this engine called FPS creator which was drag-and-drop make a FPS game but it was really hard to get your own assets into that engine and it was a great engine it's just every game that came out of it looked the same because they were using all the cookie cutter assets gotcha so I made this piece of software that would allow you to import your ass your own assets into there you would like loaded in set the animations set like the health of the

enemy or whatever click export and boom it's in the engine and I put it online for sale for 5 bucks and nobody bought it and I was destroyed because I spent so much time in life trying to build this thing that I thought for sure was needed because I used it every day yeah and nobody bought it and so I started researching marketing I got a bunch of books I read a bunch of stuff I redid the landing page I messed with a bunch of stuff I raised the price from $5 to $29 and it started selling like crazy no way dude and I made like six figures as a high school student trying to like with some random thing on the internet and I was like what what is going on like what like I used to joke because I had this PayPal card and people would pay via PayPal and the PayPal card never ran out of money and I was like what what is going on this and of course that ended you know the engine went out there and that that's not working but my dad had a friend in LA that owned a real estate development firm and he had 19 different properties and he was talking to him one day and said oh my son knows

marketing blah blah and I managed to get a meeting with the guy and he was like you know mark and I was like yeah totally I I'm I did this thing and I marketed this thing and it's great and he ended up giving me a job where basically they gave me a place to live in exchange for doing all the marketing and I did marketing for like the 19 different properties that built in my websites I did SEO I did a bunch of stuff for them just learning as I was going yeah and then using that sounds like you got a phone call it's okay we'll keep it going it's life yeah so learning all that I had those 19 properties as like a portfolio so that I started my marketing company blah blah it turns out a couple years later I kind of realized like what the hell am i doing I was supposed to make video games yeah do you doing marketing yeah and then on top of that I was starting to get the point where you know it's a company you have to make money and so I was taking on clients that like I didn't believe in their product and I was in

like the more obligation of like having to sell something that I don't think people should buy yeah and that like ripped my soul out of me and I was saying this is not like it was it was such a stressful thing yeah and I was having issues with my partner and I was just like whatever I'm done and so we just we ended up selling it and I took off on a road trip across the United States in my Challenger and I just as long as it took I stopped everywhere I wanted to go I stopped Roswell to see aliens wait just to hang out like I just did whatever the hell I wanted to do and like at the end of like a year or two of like not knowing what I wanted to do I just kept remembering video games video games video that's what I wanted it down and that's what I got back into and that's when I started the the whole YouTube channel and at the beginning of the YouTube channel to I didn't have any game development stuff to share because I hadn't made in video games so I started sharing marketing stuff Wow and that seemed to be beneficial to a few yeah man dude that's such a beautiful

story but it's so strange because it parallel tracks my story like almost to a tee I mean I didn't I didn't sell anything for a hundred thousand dollars but like when I was in high school I just I made my first game coma this flash game and it just it went gangbusters like instantly and I think I made like 25 thousand bucks as an 18 year old and I remember like going to the pool with my friends and saying like like dude I just made like at the time I had like I made like a thousand bucks starting out and I was like I just made a thousand bucks off of this stupid game and they were like are you serious off of a game and so at that point I I kind of understood like it's almost intoxicating to make games and not only have people appreciate them but be willing to give you money for them so like at that moment I knew I wanted to

do it but listen so I go I talk to my dad he's like you should do this you should do this and I was I kind of got hesitant and I said you know I'm gonna go to college and get a degree and it basically marketing I got a degree in graphic communications which is like printing and design and stuff and some like general communication stuff so I worked after I graduated from Clemson I got married and I got a job at a marketing agency and dude I know exactly what you're talking about where you're just doing work just to like it's not only it's not that I didn't believe in the work it's that I had no feelings about it at all I was doing I was doing um client work for tire companies and faucet companies and and it was like training modules and stuff so I was during that time dude I I said I know I'm I know I'm gonna like end up just blowing my brains out if I stay here so

I said I'm going to work my ass off every morning and during lunch and in the evenings and my wife was really like she totally believed in me and she was like you know go upstairs go in your office and just work in the evenings so like I try and get in three to four hours a day two to four hours a day to finish pinstripe and so that was like a from 18 to 25 18 years old 25 years old I was just working my butt off dude and it's the reason I think the reason I think I'm so against complaining in the industry is because I think it slowed me down now obviously obviously it's really hard to get to that mindset where you believe in yourself and you're fully confident without doing but if you look at anybody who's successful they get to a point whether they do start to believe in themselves it doesn't mean they're not insecure time time to time but back to our original talking point is you've got

to learn indie game developers have got to learn to talk not only like convince other people that they know what they're doing but convince themselves to look in the mirror and say I've done this like like you Tim have not only did you start this marketing agency and sell hundred thousand hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of this plugin that you made but you also started this YouTube channel and you you're creating games right now and so you've got to learn to like just like I need to teach myself that I've done this I can keep doing and I can do it better you know and I want I want indie game developers to learn how to do that you know to battle that insecurity totally and I think like for me like I always had that insecurity I was always scared of like well what if I do this and it doesn't do anything or what if I do this and I get a hundred thousand people to sign up and then I can't do anything and I can't have a life and my brain would just like make whatever excuse to not get started right yeah and like the thing that usually always made me more confident is is or

the the thing that helped me build the confidence was just having the courage to start because I think courage and confidence are two different things courage yes from no experience just doing the thing that you're terrified of right confidence comes from actually having done the thing and like you know yeah getting places and I've and I what I tell people on my channel all the time is like I have spent the last 18 months building up a youtube channel right like I have 26 some thousand people I have thousands on an email list I have thousands on Twitter I could come out with a rap album right now and I would get sales right like it doesn't matter what I do at this point because I have people paying attention yeah I've spent the last 18 months making people care about what I say right right and like adding value to people's lives yeah and I get emails all the time saying Tim thank you so much you've added so much value in my life like because I spent 18 months adding value people's lives and when I come out with something when I release a game like by default I get

more players than everyone else that's not doing anything like you get zero you get zero by default yeah right you see how people play your game zero people download your song or whatever zero yeah and if you don't put in the work to actually build up something and make people care about it like their what that's you shouldn't complain about that that's just how the world works I think I think you're taking uh I always say I was talking to my intern about this there's a if you think about the the indie game industry is like a maze like a hedge maze there's and there's like a pot of gold at one corner or something and that's what everybody's looking for everybody's in the hedge maze but there is a way to get out of the hedge maze bypass the whole damn thing and there's a backdoor entrance and my point in saying this is that if you're clever enough with your marketing and if you're clever enough with how you approach the sale of your game it is possible for you to fund your studio and and have revenue coming in

from your games in a way that you didn't expect