Should Game Devs Focus on Making Money?

there's this really weird kind of sticky conversation that happens between a lot of indie game developers the question is should you focus on being an artist a purist should you help change the world with your indie game or should you focus on money and just make a commercially viable game my name is thomas brush i'm the creator of some artsy fartsy games one of them is called pinstripe another one's called neversong and i also have a platform called fulltimegamedev.com if you guys want to get those games or even check out the online course click the link in the description these artsy fartsy games that i created over the past decade of being an indie game developer were primarily motivated by being a purist wanting to make a great story and change the world but there was also part of me that honestly wanted to make some money and wanted to make it big i had a really cool conversation with an indie game developer and his name is noah some of you might know him he has a youtube channel called

blackthorneprod click the link in the description if you want to subscribe he's a really smart dude and noah and i had a conversation about this you know the importance of maybe dreaming a little bit about building wealth as an indie game developer versus purely focusing on the artistic integrity of your work this is a clip from a full interview that i did with noah and i'm gonna post that interview in a couple weeks but for now let's take a look at this clip really insightful for me and i think it will be for you guys as well so i'm curious what the other than wish lists is there any data points that you can look at from your game your recent release and can you look at any of that data and maybe share it with the audience like you don't have to open it up if you don't want but i'm just curious oh man i'm always so fascinated in other people uh you know releasing their data and showing what they uh you know how sales did and stuff

because it's so useful for other people as well yeah so yeah totally i'm all for sharing sharing some stats um so i better go in steamworks yeah that's fine so i i uh i'm curious if if if you sold as many copies as you expected less than you expected i saw less than i expected um so i don't know where i got this stat i think i think for some reason i thought that maybe fifty percent of my wish lists would uh turn into actual sales yeah i read that yeah so that's like six thousand wish list at launch i was quite sure i was gonna get uh three thousand sales at least they're like three thousand copies sold um when in fact i think during the first week i got about a thousand copies sold if i remember well yeah um and actually made a whole video about that which is if i think my second most popular video which goes to show how people are craving dude that learning about stats and money they they want to hear

how much money they're going to make that's and that's that's a good thing to want to know because a lot of a lot of our audiences and i'm opening up my steam works as well to hopefully yeah that was really great i saw your yeah i saw your video about i think a week or maybe two weeks after never song release you shared some some stats which was fascinating and but then i had to delete the effing video because pc gamer did a whole article about how i released i accidentally sent 4 000 keys to my backers and that that was just a small portion of the video but pc gamer did a whole article about how i i had released 4 000 keys and so oh no that and that was one reason why i was like i'm not going to have this video posted but i also there was some data in that video that i wasn't allowed to share for some ndas and so i had to remove that video but you the same thing happened for you like that video went gangbusters because so many people want to know

yeah and 50 000 views which is which is massive dude that's crazy really yeah it's my second most popular video the first is pixel arts and then this one's the second yeah and so yeah it just is massive and the responses are so positive people love the transparency and the honesty um honestly obviously my game was you know small and i didn't uh make a fortune with it and so i didn't have any problems revealing my stats with other people but uh yeah it was really interesting and so yeah it would be great it was actually tim russwick that inspired me to just to share my stats as well he showed yet showed his uh on philophobia which was his game they released some itch io but yeah really so did you i'm looking at my data right now i'm curious um if your wish lists right now currently are double what they were when you launched um so yes they are actually okay that's that's the that is the data point i haven't seen anything

but same thing for me they're all basically double yeah i've got twelve thousand now yep twelve thousand six hundred and twelve yep and so for me i pushed really hard for wish list so i had about 27 000 uh on launch and now they're kind of double 41 000 so 42 000 wow yeah and so it's a lot of wish list there's a lot of wish lists and so i wonder if those will over time you know bit by bit turn into actual sales i don't know man i don't know if they're going to convert i really don't because i'm i'm looking at i'm looking at pinstripe right now let me open that up and pinch stripes dude this the wish list for pinstripe are 75 000. wow now am i going to am i going to sell even like what's what's the conversion rate supposed to be like i heard 50 but i think that's completely wrong i mean wait fifty percent so many fighters oh oh i think that's only for your launch day maybe i've i've heard that fifty percent

of your wish list on launch day will convert something like that but i think that's really uh maybe a really good scenario yeah whereas i think it's like supposed to be like 10 to 15 total yeah over time so if i get my calculator out oh okay if i get my calculator out and i calculate uh 75 000 wish lists you know selling the game on average right now i'm selling it for like two three bucks because it's always on sale really cheap so if i sell 15 of those that's 11 000 copies times what did i just say five dollars three dollars yeah three dollars that's thirty three thousand dollars and i don't know i just don't know if that's gonna happen so yeah and that's 33 000 without like steam taking share and yeah and publisher my because i have publishers so they take oh also yeah so yeah it's tough money on steam it can be pretty tough yeah yeah i found out and i thought it just goes to show like it's really important to not

hang your like like hold on hold on too tightly to what you expect your wish list to do because sometimes it just doesn't happen sure you know i know it's um yeah it's tricky it's it's like it's good to be motivated by uh your money and stuff uh that's that's that's something quite interesting you said uh with david in your in your previous podcast and you said you know it's kind of like okay to be motivated by money or views respect i think it helps i think actually you know it's so fascinating because for quite a long time uh for some reason i had this very purist attitude and i felt really quite guilty if i was feeling only mo like if i was feeling motivated by money even if it was only partly i felt like no that i shouldn't be motivated at all by that for some reason i just thought that and the same thing man same thing went out when i was 25 i thought that way and now i'm like no bring on the cash

because it's so much easier to be objective about your game and finish it and get things done and honestly i'm a bit of a capitalist myself but it's so much easier to it's so much easier to release content that your audience likes because i guess it's a double-edged sword like most things but when you're motivated by by money you tend to be like okay well how do i get my audience to buy this game what do they want and then you put stuff in that game that you think your audience is going to like because you want to make some money and so it it kind of works out that way but that also means that you're going to sell out maybe if you care too much about money you might sell out and make junk with games yeah it's like a fine balance you need to strike between you're having obviously that passion and wanting to create a game that you like and you enjoy doing it but it was really soothing to hear it was just nice and refreshing to hear that actually it really was just it's

okay you know to be motivated by it isn't that a weird thing it's soothing and refreshing to he it's weird yeah it was it was for such a long time yeah it was a little long time i was yeah feeling guilty about that uh about like youtube stats and saying oh i shouldn't be looking at the numbers it shouldn't matter i get 100 000 anyway it's just like a number what's important is the journey and all that well i uh i always say i always say that human beings should live their life like they're in an rpg um they should they should always be looking to advance and upgrade and i love like i'm looking at my steam stats right now and there's just nothing more exciting than looking through stats and seeing growth or maybe maybe seeing decline and thinking okay what can i do to do better it actually gives me joy yeah it really does bring on a certain excitement you know when you see these stats and you you wonder how you can increase them you compare them um if you do too much it could be unhealthy but i think you

know if you find that good balance it's perfectly good to be interested in these things and and be partly you know motivated about it i think one of the biggest problems that human beings have in general and i don't want to get too philosophical here but one of our biggest problems as human beings is we don't we don't believe in nuance anymore everything is so polarized in black and white in in this world and for me i'm learning i'm learning i'm the same way with with game development it's like you're either a purist and you make games solely to tell a story and to change the world or you're you're a you know a jackass capitalist just trying to make money make a bunch of flappy bird clones and i'm like no can we like have some nuance here is it possible tonight and this is what david is really good at david whaley um and i guess we'll just link his podcast in the description because he was really helpful um he's he's both an entrepreneur somebody who's an artist yeah and an artist yeah he's an entrepreneur and an

artist he does both and i think that that is look if if if the majority of our audience is just trying to be a purist they're not going to release games so then because they just they're nev it's never going to be what they thought it was going to be and and it's never going to quote unquote change the world and so i think it's important to just to separate yourself from your game not make it all about you and also spend some time being an entrepreneur and maybe dream a little bit about making some money because it might drive you to finish your game and and do it right so that you don't have to be miserable the next game you make exactly i think it's just there's no reason to to not be excited about these things uh if that's that's good for you uh of course that's true that some people do find it hard and and i found it hard for for a time yet to meld business and arts and you're not wanting to sell my soul to my audience just wanting to make whatever i wanted and don't care about views or whatever else but um but there is also pleasure in trying to to please

others and get that you know get people to really enjoy what you make yeah it's about balance it's just about finding that that balance between what like what you need as a person and as you said it's all about nuance and not just black and white all the time okay guys this video is brought to you by squarespace believe it or not i've been wanting squarespace as a sponsor for so long mainly because squarespace is awesome i've been using squarespace for i think six years both my websites thomasbrush.com and atmosgames.com where i host my games and my portfolio my resume all that cool stuff is hosted on squarespace it was created with squarespace squarespace is cool because you can look amazing you can have custom designs and pretty much do anything you need to do for your business or your own personal brand all with squarespace and you don't have to know how to code so if you guys are interested in

creating a website with squarespace click the link below squarespace.com thomasbrush and use the promo code thomasbrush for 10 off yay yay i love squarespace i really do thanks squarespace [Music] you