My #1 Secret To Building An Indie Game Studio

you do this really well and it's youtube devlogs and stuff like that oh great so i do a lot of tick tock as well my tech talk is by far my most popular uh social media and it's great to have so much input from people uh when you manage to get reached so wide so what i generally do on my tick tock is more like oh well here are some of enemies i have in my game for example and um then people will give input of i think this enemy would work well or this attack would you know fit well with the theme of the game i would like it if this area had you know maybe a little ghost here or this little uh jump scare that's kind of funny yeah and so you know most of them uh you won't add because they don't have the the project view if that makes sense like they don't have the view of the whole project they don't know what would fit in every situation but a lot of them will really actually i feel help you in adding these little um sparks to your game that make it stand out from other ones it's not just like so sanitized it has more personality yeah because other people give input without you know

having to hire 100 people for a company so you get like you get that bumpiness in the game without having to have a huge studio i feel i like that that's that's so great i feel the same way about when i'm live streaming for sure so many great ideas will pop up and they're from my audience and uh you know sometimes i'm hesitant to take all the ideas because they're so good and i'm like yeah it might take like is this legal for me to like take a great idea from social media and just put it in the game so that i you know today we're probably gonna do a little bit of brainstorming with enemy design and you know that's that's something you're totally right like if you have a weakness you know but you have an audience use that audience to fill in those gaps it's totally free you know yeah and people will really enjoy it because they get to see somebody else learn and make their own creation out of it so it's really enjoyable as an audience member as well now how does this help you start a studio though uh

is it financial or is it just the encouragement is it great ideas and that helps you make a better game that's more profitable so i think this ties a lot to uh the crowdfunding and just general other stuff as well so um i did i made a conscious decision to make one devlog every single week for about two months before my kickstarter and that really helped in terms of how many people had eyes on it and so uh on top of that also it had the benefit of having people suggest things but i feel like build an audience is is almost a no-brainer in terms of being able to what's the word it's like when your game comes out you'll have you i forgot what you call it it's like a legion of uh people i call it an army but legion's good yeah a legion i didn't quite hear you but army army there you go so you know it's like a enormous friend group that wants to see you succeed and i think that's fantastic yep um and that friend group helps you um it supports you and you can give them value with um showing your progress and maybe

some extra tips you learn around along the way i think it's just a fantastic way of having a mutually beneficial relationship with people you don't necessarily know firsthand yeah i'd argue it's the primary way to build a long-term sustainable indie studio not necessarily triple a uh or like because there's a lot of ways to make money um the ways that i've found the the more my studio grows the the funding sources become more and smaller and smaller in terms of the amount of people but bigger and bigger in terms of the number so for example working with big platforms like apple arcade or let's say epic games you're working with like two three people at the top you know communicating with them but they're providing a ton of funding what that means is your your freedom is limited to what it's not necessarily like they are going to tell you everything you're supposed to do but you want to make them happy whereas with an audience like a social media audience like you

have well that i have uh the funding might be smaller you know like 30 000 on kickstarter uh funded by like 500 people um but having it more less centralized sort of a decentralized funding source people are much more willing to say you know it's your game i just wanted to support you so you do whatever you want generally speaking as long as you give them a product i think they're going to be okay so it's really up to you guys those of you listening how you want to get funding do you want do you like having a boss if that's the case you might love working with publishers and platforms if you don't like having a boss uh having a community that supports you and funds you with patreon kickstarter gofundme um or just steam sales that's an option as well just keep in mind that when you have a big audience uh it can be stressful despite the fact you know they're they're not going to tell you what to do but it's always in

the back of your mind am i making my audience happy yeah what's that i said you're beholden to the algorithm of the masses almost you are you are and there are days i don't know if you feel this way but there are days when i'm like i'm so done with doing youtube content i'm so done with instagram tick tock i'm sick of it i'm sick because you'll read like for me i'll read like one nasty comment and i'm like i can't do this um but other days i'm like man everyone's so encouraging but you'll read that one nasty comment that one mean comment and it might ruin your whole day you know yeah tick tock is specifically difficult in this regard because your followers almost don't matter so you have to make a good video every single time and have the best one so it's really tough in that regard so you're always looking at the metrics like oh man why didn't this video do as well as the last one like did people click off at this specific moment is it something that i said in this moment that didn't make it work as opposed to the other times but yeah it's still fine it's still a fun experience when it

works social media is so bizarre i i don't i'm not a huge fan despite the fact that i tell everybody to do it because it's good it's good for your studio but it's exhausting and it's sad i mean it's i mean it's a sad place to spend all your time uh because i mean for me it's it's less about okay you should be building a very strong community that's relationship oriented where you're communicating with your audience but what the algorithms do is they kind of ensure that you spend most of your time trying to impress people so it's like a relationship if you were dating or something where every conversation and everything you did was about flexing and impressing your girlfriend whereas a good relationship a healthy one is communicative uh it's it's mutually beneficial you're having conversations and so you have to always bring yourself back when you're doing social media when you're doing devlogs when you're doing tick-tock you always need to make sure you bring yourself back to a place of community

otherwise it's it suddenly turns into this i'm gonna impress you with content and that means it's not as pure there's not a you know you're not being yourself do you ever feel that way i completely agree yeah and i i very consciously um i mean the meta on youtube is almost to be the funny guy uh for your devlogs yeah and i am not the funny guy me neither i cannot be funny scripted it just doesn't work and so i made a conscious decision to not even try in that regard i'm more of the you know informative uh devlog and people who enjoy that sort of stuff enjoy it and they get to see my game and how it evolves and so i feel like you know if you're not the funny guy don't try to be the funny guy but if you are you know you're gonna be very successful so yeah oh yeah you'll be very successful being the funny game developer aka danny yeah means you will be the most successful and that's great you know that's awesome it's it's uh it's something i've tried and it's like no i don't think that's me um growing up i used to be the guy that i would make a joke and people would go what and then i wouldn't make a joke and then

people would laugh and i'm like clearly i don't know what's going on here so i'm gonna stop making jokes by the way guys feel free to download my free 2d game kit below it's totally free it's my treat to you i used this exact 2d game kit to make a game for pewdiepie in 14 days and then i got to play it in front of his subscribers which was really awesome um so download that use it however you want it's my treat to you yeah okay