PlayJob Podcast #3: Tim Ruswick

[Music] don't watch it don't watch it I don't have anything good to say like do you ever feel that way Tim like that's the best the nature of the indie game industry you know it's like you always feel like you don't know what the hell you're doing oh my god you do I get so pissed off when I get emails like well Tim yeah you would know this cuz cuz you're a successful indie game developer and you do you I'm like what I have no clue I don't even know a video I'm gonna post tomorrow or like what well you also you also but your videos this is what makes you special is your videos you you project such confidence and I think that potentially keep your potential indie game developers have to learn this and I'm actually reading a book it's called the next generation leader I just finished it up and it's a it's basically about how even though a leader might feel like they don't know what the hell they're doing

they have to project that they do yeah if they want people to follow them and so I have to especially true in like teams and stuff like I noticed if I had working with contractors or something if I give any hint that I don't know what I'm doing oh yes or to question you they start a search change stuff like yeah so like there's there's this mentality that knotch kind of at least made it mainstream he was the imposter syndrome you know and and basically I don't I don't actually like talking about it and I think that it's kind of BS but I mean everyone at some point is gonna feel like a fraud right and and so my thought process is I'm not gonna let myself feel that way I'm going to I'm gonna be the others to do that you got it you got to give you the secret on that well I was I had unity unity flew out and did a documentary of my studio I live in South Carolina which is you know forced whatever three or four states and I can remember health for how far I love we're somewhat close to States but as I should notice you're an ocean yeah we share an

ocean but they throughout in South Carolina from San Francisco and one of the videographers who flew in he's this really successful videographer guy who has been Proudfoot and we had a really strong heart-to-heart he filmed me and he just said you know how do you feel are you insecure and this was before like I even finished pinstripe and so much insecurities came out of my mouth in the interview like an hour after the unit he just kept filming filming filming filming and it got to the point where I it was like us it was almost like a self-indulgent sob fest about indie game development and after he shut off his camera he'd like he basically talked to me and said you've got to learn to be confident who you are if you want to be successful and my message to indie game developers is to stop posting and no offense to anyone who's listening this because I do it I've done it too but stop posting memes about how

unsuccessful you are and how little money you make like it's time it's time for indie game developers to be not confident that they're gonna make a lot of money but confident that they're doing what they love and happy about it because you and I are so lucky that we get to do what we we do you know well what you say lucky but there's a lot of hard work behind the scenes too there is but here's the one piece of luck though is that you and I were born in America right I mean that yes sir yes that yes and that we're in this time period right cuz no like the indie game developer is such a new thing and we're so lucky that we we're born in this generation I guess but I know what you're saying it's like a combo it's it's rough too because like I totally get that like I'm a straight white male I'm white I'm 62 I my biggest problem is not where what I'm gonna eat or where I'm gonna sleep it's like I don't feel like working on a video game so yeah like in that regard yes totally like I am so blessed in like so extremely fortunate to be in the position I'm in yeah but at the same

time like I feel like we are I mean I can't say globally because I knows a lot of areas in places that that need a lot of help but I think as some of the developing nations or the developed nations kind of we move toward this place where robots are taking over these these jobs that don't require real skills and and and everything is really becoming about thought in art and you know like I think that stuff becomes more prevalent and I think like what you were saying about my youtube channel like I found a little niche I think because I talked about like so many issues that I struggled that I literally thought I was the only one yeah and yes I did feel stupid and I did feel like those weren't valid problems because of you know like Who I am and like the things that I've done and like if I know like I've read something the other day where if you got like a roof over your head and you have food to eat you're you're richer than like 50% of the world or something that yeah it's crazy well you know and that's uh I'm

just learning that it's not really about the and this is this is a result of my last podcast I had I had a podcast with Zheng gua I think it's how you say his name he's my publisher and I should I should know how to say his name but it's Zhang Guo yang but we call him Z we call him Z and he's the owner of serenity Forge and he had three hours to live he was on his deathbed and so he knows I guess what it means to be lucky and so I was complaining about the industry and how there needs to be like huge barrier barriers of entry like you need to pay a thousand bucks to get your game on Steam and he said basically you know hold on Thomas like there are people in the world who are really good at making games but they cannot afford that and I was thinking like any American 1/4 can afford that because just going you know use your credit card but you forget that people like especially on these indie game groups like on Facebook and stuff like a lot of them are people from you know the Middle East you know places

that maybe you can't you can't fully afford that kind of stuff but I hear what you're saying like it's such a great time to be alive and and the fact that you and I worry about you know how what what we're gonna make for our project or the stresses the stresses of indie game development is like that's like so cool that that's the only thing we're worried about you know and I like I see that from from two different perspectives like one I totally agree with you there are some people that are extremely less fortunate does and they can't afford any of the stuff that we do like they're worried about where they're gonna sleep tonight by the same time like I have this belief in me because like I grew up super poor like my parents would fight about money all the time right we were living in Hut apartments like we're living in ghetto ass areas Wow we I what I did when I like built a company is like I it took so much like willpower and force yeah that I didn't

even feel like I had to just like and I wouldn't even see make it but just like survive especially in like Los Angeles where like rent it was like super high and like it took just so much like work and effort that I feel like a lot of people when they complain about stuff really what they're saying is they they wish it was easier they wish that you have to put in the work yeah I hear you man I hear ya I 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 mentally 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 animation 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 it 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 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 Amol 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 that'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 a 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 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 no way dude 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 videos 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 - 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 me oh 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 twenty five thousand bucks as an eighteen year old and I remember like going to the pool of 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 but 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 Wow 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 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 evening so like I try and get in three to four hours a day Oh 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 where they're they do start to believe in themselves it doesn't mean they're not insecure it's from 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 be able 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 I mean 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 yeah 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 7,000 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 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've spent 18 months adding value to 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 know 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 they're 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 back door 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 and so I think with you you're really you're in a really good spot to him because you've got twenty six thousand followers right twenty-six thousand subscribers on YouTube yeah it's closer and what you have is an army that's willing to say willing to support you and in like same to my subscribers it's it's a new way to to make and market and sell indie games you're not trying to hide you you you can hire a PR agency if you want when you're selling a game but I think the best way to sell an indie game is to already have that base

there and ready to go and so what I tell any any indie game developers and what I say on my channel is start building your base right now so in a combination of at least I won't speak for your channel but my channel is one I want to educate people and get people passionate about any game development but I also want to find a community that is like-minded in and hopes to support games that are similar to mine so that's that's the benefit of building a social media following and I'm starting to see that like the economy tends to favor people that have a social media presence and if you decide that you're not gonna do it and you want to make indie games good luck making a splash but you see mediocre games just mediocre games do well because those people put in the effort to build a social media following and a presence you know what I mean yeah now dude I totally it's weird because like we did a Ludum dare game jam like a

couple of months ago and I made this game called all followers lost where I was like a stupid game where he just it was the stupidest game I ever made but I had my girlfriend voice like this valley girl voice like oh my god like doing like stupid like voice yes and I wasn't thinking I was streaming the whole thing and like then I just put it up there and I completely forgot about it and I realize like I came in like 13th place or something yeah total Ludum dare yes and like it kind of made me realize like holy [ __ ] like that that wasn't a result of the game that I made yeah that was a result of like all like the exposure that I could that I had the ability to put on my project at any one time Yeah right like and I like I realize that was the first time that I kind of realized like what had happened yeah cuz I didn't really like every other Ludum dare it was like 5,000 place or something like that you know like it's some and then just just go 13th it was

just like whoa yeah that's you know and that's a result if you're following is that what you're saying yeah yeah and to be on it and since then Ludum dare is I kind of I'm extra careful about that because I don't want to throw stuff like I feel like yeah it's it's you know I don't want to just send a bunch of people there and have them right exactly you know it's a balance and but yeah also it's also kind of a brutal truth that I think my subs and anyone who wants making the games they need to understand the value and the importance of of indie game marketing and building an army absolutely that supports your games because I spend oh man it's so sad but lately dude it's been like 70% of my time is spent just marketing and and building a following and building a press list and building an email list and like you know a little bit of time has spent actually working on games and that's that's a sad thing and like I that's why I hired an intern recently because he's do an amazing job his name

is Tripp and he's just super talented SCAD grad Symantec college of art design and he's helping out with the marketing side of indie game development because if you if you don't have that side of the equation sorted out right you're likely to fail pretty bad too so so just to repeat that so there are 3 people total working on your project no just uh yes actually yes you're right I was about to say no you're the Serenity forge guy and then your intern you were spending 70% of your time on marketing and your intern is full on market yeah well here's the thing so he just stopped working with me so like we're slowly I'm just lowly trying to transfer the sort of a glossy smooth system over to him so that he can okay knock that out so technically more than half of your team is focused on marketing yeah you can say that I mean think about think Tim think about who we were competing with you know yeah exact - you can't get hundred million dollar budgets yeah

exactly and even even these quote-unquote indie game studios they're not really getting indie game studios they're they well I mean they've got like twenty people on there and they've got you know these million-dollar budgets so it's and I'm not resentful of that but I'm just saying you've got to fight it you know you've got to fight and try and get that exposure because if you just try and drop your game into steam even if it's like I imagine how would braid perform you mean you know braid totally okay how would brain braid perform if they dropped it in the steam store now yeah and it's just a question you know and obviously maybe they had a great marketing team and they did a great job with marketing I don't quite remember but if they just drive in a movie that probably helped yeah so are you a child is are you uh are you influenced by that that documentary did you start your career your indie game career because of that documentary I didn't start it but when I saw it it definitely brought back the because I was in the midst of all

the marketing stuff and yes like why yeah is that not what I'm doing yeah so what about it go ahead I was just gonna say that documentary as much as I love it as much as its feel-good it does not paint an accurate picture what's going on because Edmund specifically he's a marketing machine if you've seen his Kickstarter for the binding of issac card game oh my god I have never seen so much stuff he's he is a genius he is an absolute genius and I've been fortunate enough to like get some advice from him through email so I I'm a big fan of IDI but yeah you're right like when you look at all these like for example undertale if you look at undertale you go it's made by toby fox it's this one guy but if you actually look at the credits you realize you know this is this is a big project with lots of people involved and so Indy Gate you know potential indie game developers who are listening they

shouldn't feel bad if they're not making a huge impact and they're not making a lot of progress and it's just them or it's just two of them because frankly if you're making any progress and you've even made that leap you should feel really good about yourself because it is a huge burden to bear and I used to be the guy who said I'm gonna do everything on my own and that's my stick and now I'm like to hell with that like that's that's that's a recipe for for major depression and anxiety which I would love to talk to you about that because I know that you I saw some of your videos you struggled with that so what about indie game development or maybe it wasn't just marketing put you or was it even your career that puts you in that position okay this is gonna sound like such first world but yeah honestly what contributed to all was just being in a comfort zone I think yeah to be honest

just like like I said having a roof over my head having food to eat not needing to put out the game yeah wanting to yeah and then like if that that was toxic for me Wow cuz like I don't know there's something about like human psychology where when you're in a comfort zone like it's it's rough to break out of it like right now if anybody if somebody were to take everything that I owned strip my bank account like take my car just boom I guarantee you I could have it all back in six months to a year yeah me too like it would motivate the [ __ ] out of me right like cuz I've been I've been past due on rent I've had my phone shut off I've had my car repossessed I know what that's like and that stuff activates me it like draws this like core primal force I mean I think it will make [ __ ] happen I love what you see it's so funny it's so funny when I talk to other indie game developers they totally it's like the same mindset this sort of go-get-'em attitude and also embracing suffering and embracing sort of pressure I find

that I had actually posted a vlog last week about how for me like weight lifting and just putting my body under pressure makes me happier and the same is true with just responsibility in general and putting a lot of pressure on yourself for some reason there's this like primal like caveman instinct where you everything everything is fine and you're like I can do this like I'm good to go and when I find that exactly what you're saying is true which is when you're comfortable you for some reason you worry so much more about stuff uh yeah it's it's ridiculous I'll never forget the day my car got repossessed I mean it's like I I wasn't living anywhere I was practically homeless I was living with my girlfriend my car was parked outside we wake up and it's not there and I just I was getting phone calls and I was ignoring them and I just had ignored all of my bills to

the point like I it was just insane and I remember this like calmness that came over me then yeah like it wasn't panic it was just like holy [ __ ] nobody can take anything from me anymore yeah well it was just like I'm good well like there's no more yeah when everything is taken from you you realize that it wasn't you Yeah right and it's not pretty it's nice ended part of it that dude oh my god so so then that was a big part of it because like I had the Dodge Challenger right mm-hmm had this brand new beautiful Dodge Challenger and I bought it it was way too expensive for me at the time but I bought it anyway and like when that got repossessed yeah it was like that was part of my identity like I had created this like successful startup II marketing guy that drove a Dodge Challenger and that was like a core part of who I was yeah and that shattered when that car got taken away I loved because it was like there is no more of that there I

couldn't pull up somewhere people could see it I couldn't pretend that I was that it was just like gone well can you imagine go ahead it was just it was I'm telling you like most people like when I tell the story it seems like it was one of the worst days of my life but it was like it was like the sense of like calm strength like no it's it's all good now it's it's just peace yeah like it's just I'm gonna make [ __ ] happen now yeah I think I think the avoidance of failure is results in like a spiritual or it / depending on where you are in the spectrum or an emotional failure like your body and your mind is not meant to be comfortable and so when you put it on sting constant comfortable state it doesn't know what the hell to do with itself so I think our minds yeah I like for me like my mind is much better it's healthier when it's it's solving physical problems so that's why I love weightlifting and exercise and stuff

it's so much happier when it's solving a problem now if I'm not solving a physical problem it'll jump to some emotional problem you know it'll it'll find something to be worried about yeah so I'm just like okay well I'll connect my worry to something physical and tangible that I can solve in an hour as opposed to worrying about finances or my marriage or my daughter or my game studio now I do wonder though Tim you you say I'm glad I got rid of the I'm glad that challenger was removed from me how do you feel you'd respond if your channel was removed from you or your your your games no it would highly depend on the context like if if there was an injustice there or there was like someone that like something I don't believe should have happened yeah it would like it would fire me up and I would go twice as hard I don't know if there's any other scenarios what if it was your fault you know feels my ferocious

see that's the I would remember in those big philosophical questions so I actually don't think if it's my fault I I don't think it's a big deal so I I don't know if you notice but like two months ago I did a I stopped a year of daily videos every single day for an entire year I posted a video how do you know yeah and it it blew up the channel right like it I say 18 months but really it was all that year because the first six months didn't do anything yeah it was that year of like daily hardcore hitting it every day and yeah I stopped and over the last 60 days I've watched everything just kind of go downhill like the the stats and everything in the channel got cut in half and I realized that like it was moving forward just from like raw sheer effort yeah right it's not necessary I have the fancy stuff you know I just raw effort every single day yeah and I kind of like it I

guess it kind of affected me a little bit cuz I was just like [ __ ] like I didn't I never really thought of it as like people say Oh YouTube is passive or its passive income or no like for me it was full-scale active yeah like working on it every day yeah and I tried to turn it into passive and it just was not responding so yeah the way I responded like after a couple days of feeling bad about myself and pity like after I got that over with and I just like no well I'll just do what I did that's not a big deal yeah you know it didn't work tried an experiment tried a bunch of stuff and literally in 60 days I tried probably 50 different experiments on videos like everything from like changing titles around to doing fully edited videos to seeing if I could get more shares but less YouTube stuff to like seeing if I could get more views per video if I post it less like there's so many like marketing experiments there and like I learned a lot but in reality back to what I was doing initially like daily

unedited pieces of my mind posted every day seem to work the best and yeah that's what I went back to and then now it's on its way back up to where it was and I I learned from I wouldn't even really call that a failure like yeah it's cuz I never really thought of it as a failure like I realized that my identity was starting to get tied to those numbers yeah when I went and went down because out then I was like the worst [ __ ] the numbers are yeah it's it's that but luckily like I said I've been through that with the car I've been through that with a couple things before so I recognized it yeah I was just like now this isn't you know I have a beautiful community we have an amazing discord we have awesome email lists yeah we hang out like I can hop on Twitch or YouTube and anytime and hang out with like a hundred plus beautiful people from all over the world like it's not no there's no nothing's bad here nothing's wrong when it's just I need to if I want to grow the thing I got to keep doing what I was doing and just stick to the

grind well it's a I live by the motto that if you're not failing you're not trying and totally I I say I would go so far as to say especially indie game developers they've got a pursue failure like try and fail and get used to feeling it because absolutely the moment where like for me I just don't care anymore about I don't I honestly do not care about failure like I launched I launched Pinstripe in 2006 17 and it did fine it just it didn't explode like I wanted it to and I was like close to bedridden upset about it because I had you know invested five years of my life into it you know and I was so upset and so just pissed off and somehow you know I got through that emotionally and I guess I guess it was kind of like a first world problem that you can just get over but like yeah

I got over it and like I look back on it and I'm like the reason it brought me down was because I made it me like I made my game yeah it was like my mirror and I realized how stupid that is because I play the game now and I'm like this is a good game but my goodness it's not you it's it's just a game it's a it's a silly game the not realization come at once or was it like over a lot dude it was over it was over I found I found out that my game wasn't performing the way I wanted the same time I found out I was gonna have a daughter and I was blow on cabbage I was like I was low on cash because I was surviving off of Kickstarter money so it was just like it was just slowly dwindling and I thought okay you know I'm done being a game developer I'm a dad now you know I'm that I'm gonna be like making dad jokes have dad bod and I'm gonna like tuck my

shirt in and go get a marketing job like I was I was dead serious like that is who I'm gonna be and I kind of let that I kind of basically lived in that quote-unquote reality for three months and my wife really helped me get through it of just like thinking you know if this is what happens so be it it doesn't mean am I gonna try but it's it's basically the ability what I learned was when you come face-to-face with your your greatest fear which my greatest fear Tim is is to be mediocre businessman you know that's my greatest fear because for some reason I I cannot work for a boss I hate working for a boss and I hate when I can't put my ideas onto a screen like my ideas not someone else's ideas with you which is why I hate marketing or at least taking on client work so that's my greatest fear like that's my bogger right and if

I was if I was is that what it is in Harry Potter it's a boggart it's your greatest fear so if I came face-to-face with it I thought oh like I can do this like I can live with that for a little bit probably not forever but I can live with it for a little bit and that's when I I just said okay I'm fine and then I launched my next Kickstarter and it blew up and then I'm good to go and I noticed you put that story and your Kickstarter video okay that was the story man cuz like basically the point of once upon a coma my next game which was kick-started this year for 96 thousand well eighty six thousand dollars but we had a post campaign for another ten so the reason why that game why I'm excited about that game is because basically the whole point of the game is you are not your career you are the closest you can you can be to at least a lot of us the closest we can look into who we really are is to look at how we thought and who we are when we were kids and so the game

is all about childhood and and basically reconnecting with your maybe not who you were as a kid like because a lot of people had terrible childhoods like you said yours wasn't wonderful at least you said it was you know tough you know so a lot of childhoods aren't great but at the very least there is an essence and a beauty in a child's heart which is a confidence a belief in who you are not what you do so if you believe that you're who you are and who you were born as is beautiful I think you're much likely to be a happier person then if your output like it's such a consumer mentality is what I make and what I do and how much money I can bring into my family is who I am you're destined for emotional failure like you're gonna crash and burn but if you realize like a child that I'm just me like I was born with these talents and I'm gonna have fun with them then you're

just gonna be happier yeah yeah it's it's so interesting you say that cuz like that's actually something I've been legit struggling with really the past two years I've been 17 games and my whole philosophy was like quantity over quality and finally after doing all that I was like okay I'm gonna go back to this project that I started a couple years ago when I was still working in my marketing company that I just I went through this really rough breakup and like yeah it started this project where I called it father phobia the fear of love and it was basically you're you you're in literal hell where love is literal hell and all of the enemies are hearts right the truth it's it was such a personal project and there's so much of me into it and when I started working this was the launch last Valentine's Day and I just I had to delay it for an entire year just because the first thing I did naturally as a game developer is just redo everything and completely do it oh yeah because that's what we do like we can't we can't just finish a

game we have somebody knows but I'm in that right now actually so so yeah so but I'm all of those 17 games I didn't have an issue with right I we I would do them on live streams we'd have fun with our audience a build we push them out see how they do we get everybody feedback it'd be a giant cool collaborative process never once did it cross my mind that the games might fail because I never intended the games to do anything right I was just like you know I want to make video games and I'm gonna do it with a bunch of people on the internet that also want to make video games and then we can all play each other's games and we did that it was great yeah it's like this project because it came out of like my soul because it came out of like such a personal thing because I feel like so much of me is it mm-hmm I I think in a way my identity is being tied to it and for me like I'm not afraid of the financial failure of the launch I don't give a [ __ ] if I if I sell games like I you know I I feel like

my calling in life really is more akin to my YouTube channel than actually be like a game developer like yes I love making games but I was teaching in and helping people I think I loved it was that I think I lost you there and that say that last sentence I was saying like I feel like my calling in life is more akin to my youtube channel than actually the full game developer out like I love teaching I love sharing I love improving myself and other people around me so I'm all about that but like it scares me that the game might not be good yeah because this is the first game that I feel like I poured myself into and then on top of that I have this whole youtube channel where i teach stuff about game development all the time how can a dude that teaches game development make a game that's not good i don't think i don't think anyone any i don't think anyone would look at that as like i think you're the only person and and i would understand that where you're coming from but i don't think your subs would ever think that because no no but

that's what makes it worse for me is when i asked them what do they think they say oh it's great to him and i'm like no [ __ ] you you watch you watch my videos let's say let's say let's say your subs were like okay this game is bad I don't think they care it's the same reason why a coach can't play as quarterback it's because he's much better at leading a team or in your case I don't know whether your games are good or not I have not played your games but let's say your fear is realized it doesn't matter because they because there are people who can coach and lead even if they can't do it themselves and the team doesn't care whether the coach can throw a Hail Mary pass because I assure you most coaches probably cannot so it's I think that it doesn't really matter whether or not in in my case as well I've thought about that too because I've made some some serious mistakes with my games but I just don't care like

I I know what I'm passionate and I know that I have really good things to say and like I've learned from your channel you know I've learned a lot from your channel and applied it to my games so I don't care whether you are pumping out quality games I bet you can I'm sure you are but I'm just learning dude yeah like about back to what you were saying about how you're like this how this game is received is might affect how you perceive yourself what I'm learning is looking I love history so if you look at history artists are never perceived as quality until they die lesson learned lesson learned I gotta go die yeah and what alternatively what you do see is artists that are really popular and then die it be there's their work becomes irrelevant so my point is I agree with that good work it's almost so abstract the

term good work is so abstract that you almost you almost have to just throw it out all together because we don't really even know what's good and what's not yeah and that's true like it was just interesting to hear you say that from a past tense of me saying it from a current day yeah exactly I was just thinking about Majora's Mask actually have you played Majora's Mask I have not okay that game was received terribly it was it was the sequel to Ocarina most I guess it's kind of a sequel to Ocarina of Time and it was received terribly it was horrible and people thought it was just a garbage game and at least that was what I remember and now looking back it's like aged like a fine wine it's got this huge cult following and so the point there is I have to i believe in pinstripe I believe it's a great game and it's it's still bringing in residual income and it's it was successful in that you know

Time magazine loved it Washington Post loved it and it has a really good user score right now on Steam i think it's 9 out of 10 but you're such a marketer but but it also it didn't perform like I wanted it to and I can't sit here and say it didn't perform how I wanted it to therefore that is what it is like yeah its performance does not equate to its quality its quality and the same is true like if you watched movies like it's a wonderful life or something you know the whole point of that movie is you don't know your value the last person to know their value is the person themselves the people who know their value totally are the people who listen to their friends and their family and say okay this is who you are so if we're like listening to what our game is telling us and how good our game is and even what people are saying about

our game and then having that reflect on us that's just not an appropriate way to to look at yourself no I agree yeah every time I've done something in life that I feel is worth like notable it's always been from that place of like let's just do it and if it doesn't go well oh well let's just like make it happen and some of the craziest experiences my life like I never once thought I would build a marketing company that's the result of me seizing opportunities you know left and right yeah same thing with like some of the games that I've made like seriously there's been times where I've gotten on stream had no idea what we're gonna create two days later and like I've made a game with the entire stream just using a bunch of ideas like we made a game that I took like I started it started out as this Prison Break game and then someone suggested we put gnomes in it so we put gnomes in it and then someone else was like hey I have this heavy metal track we can use so then it ended up with a gnomes at heavy metal and then I was like okay well let's just shoot plants yeah and then so it's know I'm shooting plants the heavy metal and then

just old guy that flicks you off and it's like yeah it that you have to have that like courage in that confidence to do stuff like that because if you're constantly wondering like oh well people like this what will people say like will this work will this be like it just destroys your brain well it's working it's it's what you just described was that you're being playful with your development of your games and playfulness playfulness inherently includes courage like that's what it comes back to the our discussion about kids you hit kids that have such an easy time being playful because they're courageous that they're not gonna get hurt and that they're not gonna Barriss themselves in front of their friends so they're just not afraid and I think that that's so if you're gonna make a damn game you better be playful otherwise it's gonna be a boring game you got to know how to play while you're making your game and so I think that's especially important to just be playful and and what I want my subs to know is that if you're making a game that you're

not passionate about good luck being playful and good luck making a good game because if you're gonna be an indie game developer you have to learn that it's gonna take you years before this game is done and if you're gonna be committed it's like a marriage right if you're gonna be committed to this for me if I'm gonna be committed to my wife I better like her you know I hope I hope that I like her otherwise it's not gonna be successful and so the same is true with your game I see so many people there like I I want to make a game about this and I'm like all right I mean are you passionate about that and they're like no but it's what I'm good at like it I think they can start upstairs yeah it's like I got this idea for this app about this uber for lawnmower people and I'm like yeah but do you like lawn care yeah or do you know stuff about technology yeah like you know you do something that you love I agree it gives you that energy that you don't get otherwise like my game phyla phobias it's three and a half years going on now Wow I'm sorry a

struggle I know I feel as much of a struggle it is like it it is so like core to like my human my being that like it has kept me going in all this time like it's it's you need that passion I don't think passion is unlimited motivation don't make that mistake don't think that just because you're passionate like you're never gonna stop wanting to work on it you are you're gonna hate yourself in your project at some point yeah well I mean like you got a you got to do that you got to move past the fear too like I so many people tell me now it's bizarre they'll say things like Tim like I don't know if you'll know what this is like but I'm really scared to do my stuff or I'm really and I'm like no dude like of course I know what that's like I had the same oh yeah fear but like I've just been able to push past it yeah it's the same reason why I was on anxiety meds for so long during the development of Pinstripe and then if I wasn't on anxiety meds I would drink

a heaping glass of wine immediately before bed because I couldn't settle down I had a huge problem and so I totally understand where anyone is coming from when they say I've got anxiety about game developer I'm afraid it's a scary thing and I think people who aren't game developers look at us in like why are you so afraid what is the problem here yeah it's like I would rather drop my pants in front of the world then then show on my game you know what I mean because it's so much more of a revelation of who you are it's not fully your identity but it's much more of your identity than your your crotch you know well I think it has to do with like so if you're if you're a painter right you paint stuff and and that's what you do and you stick to that you're great at that and so good if you're a musician you make music and on stuff but like game development specially solo game development it takes it takes art it takes a programming it takes music it takes sound it takes interactive

experience design yeah it takes a knowledge of like how movies work in how people perceive things like it takes all of the art forms and rolls them into one like significantly complicated piece of technology yeah and so you're talking about art like this is the ultimate form of art right and that can make it so much more personal because it's not just someone says oh I don't like the game and you're the artist well you say but it was beautiful right you know so but where's like if you made the whole thing and someone says the game sucks they're saying every piece of your art every individual piece like is is bad and that can hurt crazy yeah I've never thought about it like that like if I get I I do try and read my bad reviews as much as I can on Steam but I just don't like to but I try and that is the logic behind that well I think it's important to grow from the negative comment it's

trying to like each other like builds your well to two things two things first it does grow it's kind of like the body response again I'm into like weightlifting and stuff so the body the body responds to physical pressure like when you tear a muscle it comes back stronger it's like piccolo and Dragonball Z but at the same time the mind is the same exact way so if you read a bad review or you check your bank balance or you have a have a conflict with a family member or your wife or your husband or whatever girlfriend whatever if you approach painful I guess reflections of yourself you're much more likely to one learn to disregard them or to embrace them and say you know what you're right I need to change and so either either path that you take when you receive a negative comment is a good one

the only other path that's baddest is getting angry and saying you're not gonna listen so that's that's why I like to read my negative reviews as much as I can and frankly like most of them are great like stuff that I would write you know I I'm not sitting here thinking my game is great like I know where the glaring problems are and so I'm happy to read you of all people non-developers don't seem to get that that like you have a giant list longer than they could ever write yeah of stuff that's wrong with you right exactly yeah if you made the game you probably know what's wrong with it and it's the same reason why when you're in an argument with someone and you know you're wrong but if you if you've got such a hot head that you can't take it then the same things that they're telling you you're wrong about are the same things that make you the most angry and I think that game developers need to learn to just take it in you're a human being you're not the perfect you're not a perfect developer your game I mean if you compared your game to let's say if if a god or like this higher intelligent

being like an alien made a game if you compared your game with that entity that made of this epic like infinitely better game your game sucks in comparison so I think the game developers need to learn to look at their games as a tiny small little creation and it's not a big deal if it sucks because you're just a huge yeah it's you know I've actually recommended on my channel because I get questions a lot now and I get people in live streams so pop in and ask questions and like they asked me about like Tim like I have this idea for this epic project like should I do it or what should i do first or all this stuff and like for me the biggest thing that helped was like this I embraced everything initially with this quantity over quality idea yeah and that helped me like kind of get rid of the fear yeah make you something bad make sense going for equality going for quantity yeah but it also kind of like it when you make a few games or even

paintings or whatever you cut you learn the the stuff that most people get wrong you learn all the commonalities you learn that okay this usually takes longer than it then I thought it would and you learn all this little stuff and like it's tends to build confidence over time and like that's why I made over the two years I made the 17 games that I made most of them are small mobile games well some are one mechanic games they're smaller but like that was more valuable than the three and a half years I spent in college trying to learn game design yeah right like that was like a crash course in how to make games and like when it came turned time to our longer-term project it helped tremendously there's also very different challenges with the longer term project but it's I think a lot of people they dive right into they're like super epic fantasy game and that may work for some people yeah but most of the time like that can be dangerous like you said you

made games you made coma when you're a kid right 18 17 18 18 so I guess you're making other games besides though I made before that I made a game called flash geometry wars which was a complete ripoff of geometry wars but just a flash version and that was the first time like I was able to Google my name and find it so that was cool well that was a fun feeling and then after that I made a game called skinny and skinny was kind of a flop I mean it did okay on I was like this game about a robot but after that I went full force in the Pinstripe five years six years later and so you made a few games before that what's what's interesting is like when I cuz I mentioned your name to my girlfriend had funny story that I'll tell you a bit later about how she introduced me to you like a year ago it was funny but it was interesting that like when you talk about Emma McMullen people say oh he

made super meatboy right and then he made binding of issac and those oh like sir games he's made or like I know you as the Pinstripe guy right like that's that's what I knew that's the only game I knew of use that you made yeah and people like they don't realize that there are so much work behind the scenes there's so many things that got done just because they didn't get the same level of marketing or acclaim or whatever as that project they tend to think that those things don't exist yeah like Edmund made 37 some games before Super Meat Boy yeah like people it just blows my mind that people still have this fantasy that like they can just quit their job start on this dream MMORPG that they've been thinking of sniper kid and then work for a three and a half years somehow managing to survive and then release it and make a million dollars and sell to Microsoft like knotch right well that's a thing it's not just not not just the exception all right he's not the rule and so I somebody somebody was trying to

encourage me during pinstripes launch and I won't say who it was and they were like they were like Thomas don't worry don't worry about your sales numbers I know they're not great right now but Edmund McMillen said the same thing and now he's a millionaire what the hell are you talking about like that's like saying you'll win the lottery it's okay you just you got to learn to accept the fact that it's a really long journey um and and like I kind of wanted to talk about your journey we're almost at an hour though it's been an hour this podcast so I think are you cool with the remaining I guess 20 to 30 minutes being paid content on patreon sure let's do it okay so the rest of the content for the podcast that but with me and Tim will be available on both of our patreon pages so you can either check out mine or Tim's in the link in the description so thanks for listening guys Tim tech please by the way everybody

coming out yeah yeah it's fun take a look at Tim's channel and subscribe he's content you look at Thomas channel and make sure you wish list once upon a coma on Steam yeah so this is a little bit of that cross-promotion me and me and Tim are both marketing guys so we're being manipulative right now aren't we Tim we're gonna market this we're gonna make you buy our stuff yeah you should be doing by the way it's all people it's exactly support indie games and support any game developers so anyway thanks everybody for listening peace [Music]