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Create free account[Music] via the representative from Unity evangelist and he's coming in joining us from Copenhagen so I told you this is a global conference we got everybody from Eastern Europe to hook Copenhagen coming by so I'm gonna Mike him in real quick let's see if we have them and I should be able to hear you from this point how are you doing great so Andre Kardos so did I get it right yeah it's only been like eight hours but I forget real quickly so I'm gonna go over whenever you're ready I'm gonna switch over to you and you are ready to start go for it man I think I'm good actually hello everyone I'm so happy to be here thank you so much for the opportunity and you know to be speaking here and
sharing a little bit more about my story and hopefully it's like inspiring for people so you know I'm glad to be here alright so you're actually at a conference right now right no I'm not no no I'm hosta at home and mice you know here in Copenhagen it's a lovely night and a bit late so it's fine we're just home great so what what is your topic today that you're gonna share with the viewers out here yeah so I guess what what I want to talk about today is sort of what my journey on game development and how I became from this background which I thought I was never going to be able to grow in the community in some sort of way because I thought I was because you know coding all these barriers are too high and just sort of like share my story and how I
sort of break those barriers but not really know what I mean like it just this journey of discovering myself in game development and how it's not that hard or how is I accessible and stuff and how the software unity in in that case and my personal journey helped me to achieve that specific goal definitely so let's kind of talk about at the beginning so you're obviously working at unity right now and I want to speak on that like how did you get to that point where you're more stable than a lot of the industry folks out there it's a great great place to stay at for sure yeah yeah I mean it was it's kind of crazy like the whole the horde the whole journey was crazy amazing just a mix of emotions but basically the story is I I I was I was graduating in design and I'm
from Brazil by the way I'm a Brazilian game developer and the thing was like I I never was really good with like code or anything like I thought I was I thought it wasn't good right like I never had access to it like the my gaming education in my specific city from where I come from is not super great so I started studying design because I thought that design was the most approachable thing that I could do and I thought that maybe by studying design I was going to be able to do game design know level design or balancing or anything else that's how I started my journey and then I got a few great opportunities in my life to study abroad and then I like I started giving all my blood to start like learning code and that's what that one that was when I was introduced to the to unity and I Sur learn learning code at the same time as I was learning unity and like my mind
just like exploded because I never thought it was going to be able to prototype stuff on my own and I started doing that right and so I guess I guess the biggest problem with like game dev is feeling that barrier that you see games that you play in consoles or PC and you you you feel like it's sometimes it feels too hard too complex and it feels like you're never gonna reach that dream it's a dream for for a lot of people myself included right it's a dream to work with games is anything is possible and if you can prototype your own stuff I could be able to do your own stuff I think that's super empowering in some sense and when I started learning that I started like it just it just created this chain reaction which I just wanted to learn more and more and I remember that when this exchange program opportunity that I have had was over I felt I felt kind of sad because I wanted
more opportunities to keep learning I wanted more I want it more because I knew I was going to get back to the same in my same city which you know it's not super amazing with like game dev education anyways and so I started doing things on my own to practice right so the first thing I try it like everyone does is try to do a game um and it's funny because I have some pictures I can share them later on but I started making games if like friends online we would do them on the weekends but you know how that goes if you don't have that much like of a schedule with your friends or your colleagues that you're working with it's hard to make the game but still I still learned a lot like I own so much - you know - all the games I've done and this there was this one so this whole journey started with like me having the idea of like you know a good way to learn is to is to learn from people that do it in the industry and do it the best so I was
just playing like on my switch Mario Odyssey and I noticed this really cool thing on the level select I wanted to recreate it and I'm gonna recreate it because I thought like oh I would do it this way like with them with my code knowledge I would do it this way and so I did it and I shared on reddit and people really liked it and people asked for like for explanations like oh how you do like I either like how I how I did it or maybe like if I could share the project and I'm very perfectionist in that sense I didn't want to share the project the way it was the thing it's another thing I did was I just created an open-source version of that with like a soup well explained like read me I was fascinated by like repositories that had like super well explained introduction text so I did that I can I can actually share a picture of that let me see if I have something right here I'm gonna share my screen um hopefully
that's gonna work yeah and so how to represent again hmm via top right all right let's see that yeah yeah all right I'm sorry yeah yeah got it so yeah so on the Left can you see my screen yes I do perfect on my left was the original thing I recreated and posted on Reddit and people really liked it and what I did was on the right that was like the github repository what I did like a readme with like you know gifs and a well explained text and people really enjoyed that like that feeling of like not grasping like not holding into my own code and being like more friendly friendly towards sharing it and so with this whole thing I started a YouTube channel because I really wanted to at one point in my life I wanted to make a
video a sort of channel where I could share gamedev stuff and I so what I what I did was I I consumed a lot of video essay content on YouTube like mmm nerdwriter sketch lessons from a screenplay all these movie essays and even like game makers toolkit which is this you know YouTube channel by Marc Brown which is amazing and it's one of my biggest references and I kind of wanted to do that but for game dev in the sense that I would I like I would like to show the the the journey behind all these prototypes recreations that I was starting to do so the first one was exactly that one that you're seeing on the screen which is the Mario Odyssey like level select and so that's basically how the channel started and let me just go back to my camera really quick yeah that's how it started and so I created this channel where I recreate mechanics from other games using unity
and I explain them in a short fast but also informative way I share the open-source code and that's how the channel goes and it's called a mixin jam and it had a great reception I never expected this and like you said it basically it's like a life-changing thing because it took me like mmm six months with the channel and things started to change in my life so I started getting noticed by you know great developers amazing people and of course unity because I was using unity for my stuff and long story long story short that's how I'm unity now and I I get to keep doing the things I do with the channel which is great and I also get to be at unity you know sharing this you know amazing feeling of being with amazing people and learning everyday about the engine about
the software and just about to gain that in general yeah I mean this is something that I feel that has been exploding in the last few years game developers who are very self driven have like a knack for business and marketing I mean in this case you were able to instinctively find like a niche that you yourself was looking after you know looking for a channel that actually deconstruct a fee like a favorite mechanic from a game that everyone knows sounds like a very obvious thing that anybody would be attracted to but there was content that wasn't being made for it so you've saw an opportunity at least wanting to build your own skill set to go out there and do it the last speaker that we had Igor from was from Poland and he was kind of mentioning how Eastern Europe is not really a hotbed for game development
communities and he kind of had to build this path for himself to be relevant and succeed right you were mentioning that you were from originally Brazil a house it's a gaming scene over there just to paint a picture of what that landscape looks like I it's growing it's actually growing pretty great you know like but at the same time since it's so new I guess there isn't much from people to grasp to there isn't much education and that's the thing I think sometimes there's two big foundations to like a game dev scene you have education of course then where you gonna learn all your stuff you're gonna learn but you also have community and to think about you know being being very new to the game then game dev scene we're trying to get more used to game jams to game events to game Expos you know and Brazil specifically is super huge right and you know there is super
talented studios in Brazil doing great stuff you know like for a for instance like in Celeste right but like basically Celeste has a bunch of Brazilians involved you know super talented people it's just that depends from where you're coming from because really Brazil is just huge and some places the scene is more like involved and people are more you know they're willing to do more to participate more and I guess that I guess that really helps like when you see people engaging you guess I guess you feel that the industry is kind of real and that the community is real and if it doesn't it and if you don't feel it it just keeps you know you won't you won't feel much like you won't take it as serious as it should be and so it really depends like specifically my city it's like I would say you know it's it's also hard because there's not a lot of investment right like from from from
people because a lot of like investors from where I come from they want to see fast results and it really depends with games some games give you fast results financially speaking summed up some don't but but you know it's it's it's something it's a it's an industry in Brazil that's growing a lot and the the good the good part about being in a place where it grows a lot I guess is you can always be the first you know it's much easier to be the person that causes an impact in your industry which you know I thought about a lot about and one of the reasons why I was going to stay like normally because I really believed that like like I said sometimes you can be the person that can like help I mean be the person together with some other people of course so you know move the whole thing and just keep pushing the community like I've you know I've been in to so many game jams and I've tried to organize my own game gems and I
feel like that's see that's the biggest way easy not easiest way but that's the most effective way to grow just have community like having game jams trying failing you know it's like but maybe I stretch it a little bit I'm sorry no no no no I think that's a very interesting topic for a lot of people when we hear game jams and stuff I think we have like a foggy idea of what that means it's like a group of people who kind of come together for a certain amount of time and kind of clear goal but I think the details of it if you don't mind kind of going to it the hardship the dependency the baby long or short term friendships I feel like it's uh it's exciting to think that you can go into a game jam with the friend and be able to come out of it the other side super happy but it also I think from the previous guests that we've had on the podcast and part of G ducts it can be very dangerous too because there's a fast-track of learning
if I can go into business with this guy or not like to have how has your experience been I mean that that's exactly the summary of it the great thing about game jams is that people so like I mentioned before a game enter into game seems like a huge barrier right and sometimes it's not that much of a barrier but at the same time you will still have the hard track and the hard track means scope it means dealing with people that don't necessarily think like you because you know everyone likes to have the idea or whatever and game jams are sort of like this short portion of reality it's kind of weird but you know it's like imagine like an intern right like technically in an inter or like an internship is where you can mess up is where you know you're not supposed you're not pressured to make the right decisions and be correct all the time
and that's sort of what game jams are I guess it's just that you are going to have the working experience but on the good side is that you won't have the consequences and a great another great thing about game jams too is that I feel at least that very receptive in the sense of like like you said like you could go with a friend but it's much more enjoyable if you go to a game jam and just meet random people and then they'll teach you something or you'll you'll teach something to them and sometimes you don't have a game at the end which you know if you say that to someone someone will be very frustrated like Oh like I participate in 48 hours in this game jam and I don't have anything but what counts is the road the experience right because then if you go to a game jam you have a little bit of experience of how a scope feels like and you'll you'll notice very early that like game and just art in general sometimes is about
taking decisions and finishing stuff there is a beauty in finishing stuff we all know that art is never finished but you know you have to finish stuff you have to decide stuff and the more you're participating game jams the more of like the more games you have like the more portfolio you have you'll see yourself increasing as a as a game left the more pizza you have the less sleep you have I mean there's only positives here come on so like how long what's the longest game Jim that you've been through that you think would be surprising to anybody who has a participant in one before the longest I mean I've only participated in game jams there are no weekends there are so many game jams online now that they take a week I was never able to participate in those mostly because like I guess you know I like to hang out a lot like during the week and do other
stuff like but the longest game jam participate it's like 48 hours right and so there was this one particular game jam that I organized and when you organize it's like even more time because you have to get there earlier you have to do all the stuff and it's you know it's it's quite insane but I always try to sleep you're you're much much productive when you sleep but seriously though like anyone starting in the game like it doesn't even need to be started that's what I'm saying like for anyone in the game that industry having that game jam is the most like rewarding experience you can have because you get so much done in such such little time and that forces creativity that forces because limitation for me I think it always creates sort of like creative solutions like back in the day you had like 8-bit games that have like limitations and that created a lot of the most iconic
games we have nowadays so I guess it just goes to that feeling and you know but it's it's wild I won't lie like 48 hours of pure game development I don't know it's it's it's it's it's great it's a great experience and especially if you like it if you really are passionate about games there's nothing you know there's nothing stopping you from going to game gems I guess it's definitely one of those things that I wish we could do more often at a beginning of more game projects it's just like let's especially when game development a large part of it goes into the the game but another large portion goes into the people that you work with alright and so a lot of my experience is you go in the six five seven months into something and you learn like hey you you're not you're not exactly the fun guy that I thought you would be
how many more much do I have left with you but within the game Jim you kind of go through all these emotional roller coasters and that and in the favorite thing I like about it it kind of gives me like a very fast word perspective of this person in his worst or her worst stress and how she or he deals with that stress and if they are native or motivational or are completely disabil but I think that is something great that every team needs at the beginning so they don't commit in this long marriage of creating a game what are your thoughts I mean yeah I mean if you think about it even though everyone I think most people that join the game in the shoe they're making this because it's a passion a real passion I guess that it's still a job you know what I mean if you want to live with
this then you have the sort of saying challenges you have in a normal job like dealing with people that are hard but that's the thing I think like I think there's a lot of learning involved in being with people that you know um I think differently than you because you know they all have different creative processes and I guess with like for me in my opinion it's important like to have people that you sort of feel like keen I don't necessarily agree because I think it's important to have people that you don't necessarily agree so that you can have like a a creative discussion because either way you'll only be in your own box and I guess when you're a creator you you hold on to your ideas and your thoughts so much and I I know how that feels like being very proud of your idea and being proud of like what
you've done but like you'll learn I mean I know I've learned and I'm still learning like I'm learning every day that the game industry specifically is made of community so you have but it doesn't really matter like what thing you're working on I guess you have to learn that like then in this industry people share people are very people are very like open people you know listen to each other's opinion and at the end of at the end of the day of course if you're not you know if you if you don't work great with people or you just group work great with only one person there's like ways around it like you can build a studio with that person and stuff but what I've seen in the industry is that people are very receptive and that's in that case of like and especially in game jams in game jams is just like the brainstorming part is just the most fun because you'll see people just going mad and then mmm since you don't draw stuff you just say
stuff people start like imagine your own idea in different ways and that's one of the fun things about game channel is that everyone's technically aligned in the same idea but you'll see people clash in ideas and one is that that's one of the greatest things you can learn it's just like how to deal with that how to turn everyone's vision into the same thing is it by concept art is it by talking more is it by not stressing too much by coding 10 hours it's more about sitting down and writing on post post-its so you know in the long term dealing with people is what makes this community absolutely incredible you know and the key word there is community and something that I've noticed from the difference between the Unity developer and any other type of developers unity kind of puts community first and I'm saying this because this is like a
survivor type of instinct that other developers are starting to try to wrap their hands around like so I come from the Triple A background and we're used to just showing it to work doing the work we need to do and then leaving but when it comes to self marketing when it comes to continuously working on our craft outside of our nine-to-five we are completely completely new to that concept where I feel unity developers the ones that have found success like yourself was really good where RIT was really good at building a community for him or herself and be able to sustain that and have a better grip on how they want to go forward so can you kind of speak on that on your your your rise to success like how what what are the main
rules on finding a niche and being able to foster that to something where you can take it to where you want to take it because yeah it's it's a skill that feels very natural to you but I assure you it's very foreign to the rest of us like how do I get the skill no I do I do understand I do understand I would say that that's a hard question actually but think about this the way I found my niche was by targeting people that felt the same way I mean that feel the same way I felt before I even know a single line of code like I didn't feel like I could do stuff right and like I told you I was presented by unity and I remember being fascinated at the time at
the power like the power of the user-friendly interface and just the reached rich community that's always sharing their solutions to do stuff and I remember that the way I felt as in like I'll never be able to code or I'll never be able to do something to do something prototype B or something other than level design or maybe an idea sketch when I when I felt empowered you know that when I felt like I could do it even though I'm not a programmer bye bye I didn't go to programming classes I mean not not to a program in school or whatever when I felt that power what I wanted to do was to reach the people that felt the same way I did because at some point it was very frustrating because I knew I knew I wanted to work with games and I knew that it's a great
skill to have to program to I knew it was good to do something but I never thought I was gonna get I I basically I basically didn't believe myself to be completely honest here it's just like yeah I mean I was never good at math or I never got to code so why would I you know and then when I I guess I guess it's just that like I I I was I wanted to reach people that felt the same way and as I as I did and I can empathize with that feeling because you know I'm from Brazil and for you have you have some countries that have like left less of an industry presence and I guess you just wanna you just want to be able to show your own story when you show your own story when I say to people that I didn't know nothing right about code about unity people are usually impressed because they think like you know like oh wow but you're doing stuff now and that
people can empathize with that they can be like oh I you know I never tried stuff maybe I can try now and think people can keep trying and when I did the channel of course like I guess there's there's a lot that I've been learning about communication about how to deliver messages and how to speak I guess how to I don't know edit videos you know I own a lot to the things I know also because of my design graduation I know a lot of things about you know graphic design video designer and just projects in general that like it helps me build content that it's organized enough but in all in all it's just I just do things for people that for them to feel empowered as one day I felt and it me feel so much better as a game developer and you know it's it's part of like a reaction from people that my success happened because they felt
that it was a genuine way of helping the community because whenever I do projects they're all open source and I do videos to explain those how I did those and I guess that really inspires people I get beautiful beautiful messages from people every day just saying that I inspire them and you know it's I get very emotional because that's exactly what I you know that that's exactly what what one what one needs to just getting the game in the shoe you just need to be inspired and start trying of course there's different there's different situations for everyone but I guess you know being able to inspire people is what what made me rise up and what the way I like to see it I like to see it as I also is not that it's on my own success I also enables people success as well and in the sense of unity I would say that you know unity is the software that
technically enabled me to do that because the community is so great the you know they're so active with like the the learning session the the new tutorials and onboarding new users that it's totally helped and that's partly one of the reasons why I am working on unity is because I really believe in that like you said like being like the community and how they share and how they care about any developers midsize developer strip away like they they're they're they're they really care about the community and that's why I'm so like happy lucky and I'm just proud to being you know where I am right now and but I what's most important to me is that I share the success with other people that you know to against get inspired and stuff this is actually something that I was talking to a previous speaker date
to about there is like a huge amount of projects and ability now especially with unity and other software kind of made available to anybody that has an idea and to put their projects out because there's a least compared to five to ten years ago this was a was used to be a heavy investment not just in time but in in money to actually get into right so now that everybody has the tools and ability to kind of get a hold of this and be able to kind of tell their story in whatever way they want to kind of separate from the rest and I wonder since I'm guessing right now that you are in Copenhagen you used to be Raziel do you travel a lot to different teams or like what's your situation I mean I will most likely be travelling a lot but right now I just
joined two months and a half ago like I moved to Denmark two and a half months ago so what we do as evangelists we do we do talk to our customers we do talk to our community online and we are always making sure that we're like getting in touch with people that are using and helping them achieve what they want and just for them to be able to to to make their games or make their products mm-hmm and well I want to come back to you like changing the scenery from Brazil to Denmark in a bit but before I get to that like what what are the major tips as you're rubbing shoulders with other unity developers and everybody to like if you have an idea if you want to stand above the rest and you have this background of building a community from scratch and if I were to have a game and I want to start
marketing it from day one which I'm hearing a lot with the indie developer community is like if you have something to talk about start talking about it what what what suggestions are you would you give to someone to have like good starts of success for a project that eventually they would put it out to the public in terms of like showing your your game in a very marketing perspective I would say just be whatever people are and I would say for game development at least in my point of view that's mostly Twitter and reddit and what people do is people share their their ideas and the community is super like receptive in that sense and sometimes you get really like a big engagement on what you're creating and if it looks cool if people and like even if it's just you know not just for like even if it's
some people showing up like that's already a good sign your game is already being it's out there people will talk about it and you if you keep improving it polishing polishing it but I guess yeah to to stand out it's like complicated like there's millions of games make be made but if you start talking as soon as you can about what you're doing people so one thing that people really like to do nowadays is to follow the journey as well like if you start shaved from game like from day one what you're working on even if it's just like weird gray box levels and this mechanic that's not super polished people will be able to see your evolution and you'll also have a great archive to show how much you've grown and my personal experience right to the things I started to working on well I started sharing them on Twitter and reddit and I sort of saw that working
out and that's that's how I I wouldn't see myself without use without Twitter not only because for your own personal stuff because but Twitter I don't know I don't know if you feel the same way but I feel like Twitter has it's great like if you're a net and you follow people from the industry like you feel like you're in the same ground I don't know if it's the same for you but I remember being in the level where I felt like everyone was you know top level like everyone's the best I'm not you know I'm not great at all but nowadays I feel like those people are just like in the same line we're all a horizontal community and you can even reach out to people I've I've I've contacted a bunch of people now into it on Twitter and people are so nice and you can talk to them and you can ask feedback for about your game you know yeah definitely um no IIIi that's what I
keep hearing a lot uh haha Facebook is dead unless we're not even in mentioning them but when it comes to any development or building a community around your project it is Twitter it is reddit I wonder - and this is my question to you it's like the right and wrong way of the nuances of using these two communities because I I feel like there's a there's a there's a way to go about it to use it in the right way where you're just not just getting a bunch of stuff or garbage yeah and so I'm wondering you can speak to that and give some some sage advice yes yeah in my opinion right this is just my opinion I guess you really have to be genuine right if you're just spamming content people won't feel like you're doing it naturally you're just trying to like promote your game and so what I see a lot of people do is that you have to be a person that not only not only posts
but also contributes it's the same thing with reddit I would say people are often driven to the content that's feels more genuine like oh like this dude like sometimes the titles are like I've been making this game for two years with my best friend you know that kind of thing really touches people because it's really like people can really empathize but that feeling but if it's just like you know like footage of my game like ah it's hard I wouldn't even say that I have that that much of a super understanding because the the industry in that sense of like promotion is always changing but I guess that in order for you to show you also have to contribute which means commenting any others people's stuff sharing their stuff as well creating a nice environment where you can just like for instance you see like this great developer is making a great game and you
could just you know DMU VM the person and go like hey this is really cool what you're making can I you know I have a question in unity you the Evangelist writes like that's a really cool thing about also the unity evangelist group is that we are there in Twitter we are we are you know we have sort of a presence online and we are always happy to to talk to people like if it's not doesn't even need to be a question can be just like oh how do I start like I want to make an FPS and how do I start you know and then we're just happy to share and to talk and I guess that being there when you are in those places you start noticing the small details of what makes a footage successful you know and we can also trace it back to YouTube for instance right if you if you do something like find a specific topic that no one's talking about and then you sort of work on it and you make like a game dev
channel you start you start seeing like engagement on your YouTube channel for instance you could make your your game dev vlogs and gain progress on that YouTube channel where you sort of attracted people because of your you know your contact your abilities your art style and there's like plenty of people doing that on YouTube right now which is pretty cool like we have for instance like Danny which is you know this person that is making always making like game dev vlogs on his games and he releases those games those games and mmm of course the games are super great but he also has a lot of exposure because of his YouTube channel and that really makes him stand out from the rest you also have like black storm prod you have all these peoples that are they have gained depth channels and they they take the opportunity to make games and they their exposure helps them you know stand
out from the rest and so if I can get a given advice is you know find a way to stand out and to have like a good you know like a good following base like it doesn't need to be like big in numbers it just needs to mean that people really care about what you do next when people really care what you do not still follow they'll download they'll support you or they'll share your game right even if they don't necessarily support you because sometimes it can they'll just pass your game on they'll be like oh this guy is making a cool thing people will retweet people will Facebook you know this is actually a mentality that I'm continuously trying to echo to developers out there because I come from the basement of the developers who are used to working within a studio and when they are finally ready to kind of branch off of their own cold-turkey they find themselves having a product and then
having kind of like this ego saying well I've been making games forever therefore sell and then when it doesn't it's like well it's such a mystery to them but what you're saying right now is makes a lot of sense especially in this time and I don't know if you share this opinion where there's so much content that people can buy into now and it's not about there's only like a small percentage of that is it's so evoking just by a screenshot where you have to have it there's only such a small percentage the rest of it is mostly because people want to buy into a community where they want to talk about the game they want to be a part of the development team somehow someway or something like a fanbase that is already built or is interesting enough that they can take a break from the game from time to time and be still entrenched within the game this is where I feel like a lot
of the streaming communities even though they these streaming celebrities play games that people like the product are the streaming celebrities I'm not necessarily the game that they play it's kind of like the byproduct I wonder what your opinions are on that you know it's complicated like like I said like I mentioned before we were tied just want to get back to this point really quick because we were talking about being genuine and I just want to build upon that when you're a game developer and you want your you want most more most of your extra explicit exposition to be with other game development get developers sorry if you share what you're doing people will feel like people feel like oh this guy is sharing like you can even show how you were doing something oh so I I had this
collision problem in am I'm on my game on my you know people really care about the game so it's basically like a baby right so but like they they go and they share their creation they go like I had this issue and I fixed it with this solution which I'm sharing to you like to everyone else so first thing that happens is people feel like they're part of the thing they they're not excluded from the working progress which is great second they feel like they were support it in the sense of an issue that they were having with this with the software with that thing and I for the streaming community for people that stream like game development it could also work that way right like it could also work in the sense that like if you're sharing what you're doing people empathize people will people will feel like they're being helped or people feel like they're learning and mmm
you know game development is really about learning everyday and as long as you are a game developer that never gives up the idea that everyone's learning doesn't matter if you have like 30 years of experience in the industry you're always learning would you would you agree with this sort of mentality oh yeah I'm learning every day it's like so this is what I've found out it has for years so I've been kind of tunnel vision working in one track of my career you know working on the games that you know I grew up on and wanted to be a part of and when I'm working on these blockbuster games and stop paying attention to that and I started going to the indie development or these other communities it was like a whole foreign country like the this is like a distinct division line between those two developers like there was a they don't
interact as much as I thought there's a whole different language that the end of the community uses to talk to each other the different tools that they use to kind of get to the end of their projects their mentality is different genuinely a lot more positive a lot more optimistic and it's actually pretty reinvigorating because to kind of share my experience you know I was kind of coming out of it pretty burnt we were kind of used to like this long development cycle we're talking about three years and then it was a encroaching on four years and now a regular triple-a game takes like five years and so I was coming from that side of the coin where individuality wasn't as a champion it was actually a the last talk that we had the last two speakers that we had or three speakers that kicked off today with John he came from
that background as well where where we were you know big big studios now kind of discouraging artists kind of working on their own projects and not only projects but just art working on 3d artists and I want to do a 3d render of a scene not just a game right just a small scene just to practice my craft I can't publish that I can't really share that because under contract I'm obligated to which is that so that's the world I came from right so and it's it's gotten a little worse so so so seen this side where the community is kind of more loving and just like making games and I think having a better business sense a natural business sense because you're selling yourself essentially of how to get to the next tier how to better my chances and being successful you have to have those skills it's something that I feel like that other side needs to pay attention to because that is the feature
proof of being a game developer you have to have that under your tool belt to succeed in this industry and not enough attention is giving credit to that so that's my little rant it's great to hear from you yeah I mean I've been talking so much about my life stories it's good that's a good to be to hear a little bit about yours but you know yeah I mean like this industry is fun man I and I've been you know just joined unity but I already had the chance to be surrounded by so many cool people like so many smart people and I guess what really makes these people stand out is that they really like mmm they're really helpful they really are willing to share they really are wearing the you know they just you know whenever
I ask questions they gladly answer or sometimes I don't even ask questions and they you'll explain something they go out of the way to explain and like just in my first month of work I had the chance to for instance go to go to unite the event that we organized to show the new features and stuff and was just mind-blowing because it was like my first month and I was feeling like you know I'm the new guy so not technically you're going to be like in the lake in you're not going to have as much as a presence as other people that have been working there for a long time but you get the same treatment like people go and then talk about you and of course me having my channel people like a lot to talk about how they how they enjoy the content and how they just ideas they give ideas or maybe they ask me things you know and for me these are people that I thought that you know that dude they knew everything and like I told you
we learn every day so when I hear those people I feel inspired I really feel inspired because I think it's not about being super experienced it's not about like being being known being high up it's more about like just sharing if people and like another thing to say if I have on that topic is that if you have the chance if you know if you if you can just try and go to events and I really appreciate what you're doing here also because I think this is a very great way to make inspiring talks or talks that people can learn more accessible and you know first I just want to say that I really appreciate being here and I think that's really cool just a concept of it all and just do things like this you know also try to do things where you you talk to people where you interact to people because that's that's always a great great skill and something that's
really important this in this industry for sure yeah it's something that is essential now to anybody who's looking for career in game development like how do you put yourself out there finding that niche that and you have to be genuine like you said right is there something out there that hasn't been answered in providing that but most importantly following up with that I think a lot of people kind of jump from one ship to another they find something and they tried to hook you with another thing it's like no man you should really take care of the people that you brought in and because that's gonna be creating that cycle of a community that it's gonna stay which is the main thing here and it's the same thing with making a game not about just making a product that people like it's how do you get them to stay to talk about it so that it extends over a period of time so that it overlaps with new people coming in and it creates this
long conversation and that's the thing that I feel a lot of developers kind of miss they're just like hey I got this idea that I'm just put out do you like it or not in most cases like I never heard of it right so that's the yeah but games are games are very complex piece of art right they they involve so many creative aspects of everything technology sound music all right right and so dealing with people it's basically learning how to deal with game development even though you're a sole developer like it that like doesn't really matter like you could be a sole developer but just having the ability to talk to people right to talk about something cool about a game you played a book you've read and a music you've listened to in a specific movie it's something that that it really makes you a very rich person in the game industry
because you're able to talk to all these people that do very different things right you could either be like a super programmer or you can be in a part where you just in the managing side of stuff of the thing and you just have to learn with to like share ideas of people like my suggestion would also be like not don't try to hold into your ideas so much you know talk to people um share your ideas share your feelings and you'll find people in this industry that think the same way you do have the same image and sometimes you just find people when you work with them online you know I've I had the incredible chance to collaborate with some great creators inside unity and also outside with my own channel just because people I've met physically like in an event and but also online and it's all you know it's super super super great and the one
think great thing about working at unity is that sometimes I talk to people that have success stories that make games with unity so I've you know I I have access to so many people and then when you talk to those people you realize that they're just like they they are just the same version as you as a person was just like trying to figure it out and then they figure it out because they went out there they you know it's it's calm I will say that it's complicated because to work in this industry it's passion is a lot of passion of course it's a industry you know of course it's like there's like a lot of things involved but you really need to be passionate about what you do and I believe and my father always used to tell me this like if you're really good at something just you know keep being good at something and you will
eventually you know people eventually notice and sometimes we have to measure how do we measure success is like what is success like for me like I remember at the very start like 20 people downloading my github repository about me a random person in this universe sharing how to do this specific thing it's already a success so I guess you have to like the you know it takes some time it really takes time to for you to technically achieve what people consider success but at the same time you could consider success so many little things like shipping a game for me it's a super success you know like it's so hard there's so many parts involved in making a game that shipping a game is already a huge accomplishment by itself so you
know I you know it's not that I've reached like total like what I want like like I told you I learn everyday so I tried to work everyday you know what I mean like keep going keep keep doing what I love but I also keep sharing because if I keep sharing and other people keep sharing then we'll incentive other people to start working with games and we'll have like a fantastic environment where everyone you know learns from each other like there's a lot of talks that I've seen in this unite about people with like experience of like building the game and how they started and how they failed and you know it's just amazing this is pretty cool I'm right there with you I've just been the game game scene for a while now my measure of success is exactly the same as European game therefore other barriers you know that clouds it a bit which is a marketing the game telling
people the game selling the game it's more like I could figure that out another waste that's why I like making the game is a luxury to me where it should be just about the craft and how I make money and how do I survive and how I do this I got to figure that out on another way once I figured that part out on the side making the game should be purely about my expression yeah of art which is the main thing with artists I think that in deadlines I think with artists they want to making it for everybody it's good to have deadlines because like you said during those games it's uh it's good to be creative within a box because we can take forever too long I think yeah man I mean I agree because I think that we often get lost to where like games as products and game is art and in my personal opinion they're they're a great way to teaching you that how to
balance the thing that has to be a product but you know it's also super great for it to be art so you know it can take its time but it can never like not finish you know what I mean so it's a good way of thinking about a market an actual market but you know people are waiting for you to do stuff and you if you'd never finish stuff you know but at the same time I rather you take a little bit longer you know sometimes if you if you think that that time is going to really enhance your your your game you know you know it's it's it's interesting it's quite fun yes and I do have a question here and it's kind of harken back to you when you're building a community this is from our one chorus working on a game how early in development should you start sharing it with the public what's too early what's too late
hmm it's say that sometimes we we have our own good like sense of like when things are good to show but I would say as soon as possible you know I'm saying because mmm the most important part about part about games and games have a variable there are super that is super hard to understand is whether your game is fun intriguing or not and how are you going to test that if you're the you know if you're the creator of your idea you usually know your idea so well of course because it's your own idea but when you put it on paper it's totally different when people actually try it so not only start sharing your stuff early on I would say start bringing your friends close ones family to play test
because it is so important because I've been sitting into this situation so much which you like you test your own mechanic and you know the mechanic basically feels super easy to manipulate because it's the thing you've built and you know how to use it and the level you did seems quite easy but then when people test it you know it's like they're like ah this doesn't really make this any sense why do I have two analog sticks it feels too complicated and sometimes we're so you know we're so we hold on to the idea of like oh my god like no this is super easy is the it's the fault of this person that doesn't know how to play and stuff but it's no it's actually it's most likely never their fault is most about like you sharing the thing early on and understanding what your game is about that's the interesting part about games is that people help you understand what your game is about because the final
output so your game only exists if people play it in the in that sense of like if people do input on it right and so listening to your users artistically speaking gameplay speaking as soon as you can how that's how I would describe it for sure thanks for the question by the way of course that was a question that I had two so we are reaching at the end of the hour and on Jay thank you very much for being inspirational everyone's loving your your your your your positivity like it's just it's it's reach across the camera and it's very it's very uh well I'm attached to it so uh so this is my plans gonna throw it back to you so go ahead and share if people want to follow up find you how did I do that yes thank
you by the way I just want to say thank you when I was invited for this I felt so happy and when I you know learn about what this was about I was also excited like I told you before it's like this is a great thing exposure it's like more accessible and people get to be inspired which you know my personal experience I only started doing stuff because I was inspired to but so hopefully hopefully I helped in that sense a night and I hope you know and I hope you guys start building enough awesome games and awesome projects or whatever if you want to follow me on Twitter oh I'll just put it on the screen right now I'm gonna share my screen sorry present this is my Twitter and so this is where I mainly share my small clips of what I'm working on inside unity outside unity feel free to send me a message ask me anything that you think that you know if you need any help if
you if you want to know more about how I started to feel more comfortable with game development I'm always happy to to talk about it and there's also my youtube channel which is called mixing Jam which I can show you guys right now sorry about this um no worries I'll switch to my face as soon as you know it's fine okay it's up it's not but basically this is my channel and it's great to keep working on it the channel like I we mentioned in this whole thing it's just me we created mechanics and hopefully it helps one thing I really like making in this channel is just every repository is open which means just that people can try it like if they feel like something's not explained enough which you know which is important to let people know that I'm not like the best reference for programming that's why I often don't
super explain things because my way is just a way you know what I'm saying like it's just a way and but at the same time I just want to keep things open and people can download stuff and and yeah for sure try stuff and please if you if you enjoy the content I would really appreciate like if you could subscribe and stuff and of course on Twitter but then again feel free to to reach me out yes and I'm very happy to it was it was fun to talk to you man is great well it was great to meet you and we've got I think Elena for introducing us I'll definitely keep in contact so many questions left that I want to ask but I believe it's night time over you so good thank you for joining us so I am having so much fun I want to thank you so much for being a part of this conference and we are gonna keep this going because inspirational speakers like yourself being able to have accessibility to you
guys are has been very helpful for everybody that's watching and a truly inspirational talk so I want to thank you so much and wish you continued a success Thank You Man thank you for having me and keep doing keep doing this like like yourself are also a person that's trying to do something to inspire people so you know we're all doing our part but thank you thank you so much of course man well thank you and that is it I'm gonna say goodbye to Andre yeah go hear his voice and he's gonna give us a nod and bye guys thank you so much bye-bye all right see you man you
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The global game development landscape is increasingly defined by self-directed education and the democratization of technical knowledge. By leveraging platforms like YouTube to share open-source code and recreate complex mechanics, developers can bridge the gap between industry-standard practices and accessible learning. This bottom-up approach to skill acquisition, exemplified by creators who overcome regional educational limitations through prototyping, proves that community engagement is a primary driver for professional growth and industry entry.
Game jams function as critical infrastructure for this development model, providing low-stakes environments to refine creative problem-solving and test collaborative compatibility. These events serve as more than technical training grounds; they are essential for building the communication skills necessary for long-term success. By focusing on transparency and documenting the development process from the earliest stages, creators can cultivate a loyal audience that feels personally invested in their projects. This strategy shifts the focus from traditional, often ineffective promotional tactics toward building a genuine, community-supported brand.
Ultimately, the path to a successful indie project requires a balance between artistic expression and the practical realities of product development. Early and frequent playtesting is vital, as it allows developers to reconcile their initial design intentions with the objective reality of how players interact with their mechanics. By prioritizing user feedback and maintaining an open, iterative development cycle, creators can validate their concepts early and ensure their work resonates within a crowded marketplace. This commitment to continuous learning and public accountability remains the most effective strategy for sustaining a career in the modern gaming industry.
PocketGamer.biz · 2020
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