Six Figure Game Idea Workshop - Day #1

really quickly get everybody brought in to the workshop. Um, I want this thing to be private. I don't want it public on my YouTube channel. So, I have to get the private link here. Um, and send it out to everybody's email. So, let me just do that really quick here. Um, for those of you who are watching on the replay, feel free to skip ahead to when we actually start the workshop. Okay, I'm going to send this out. Let's see. Good, good, good. We're all set, man. Awesome. I can't wait. Okay, let me send this out here. I'm officially live for the first day of the workshop. Bring your ideas. Let's do this. We're going to discuss how to turn a game idea into a sixf figureure paycheck. All

right, let's take a look and see if this works. We're all set. I'm going to go ahead and send this out to you beautiful, beautiful people. I'm gonna Let's see here. Alrighty, sending this out to the email list here and we will jump on in

here and wait for the folks to roll on in.

All right, we'll wait for folks to pour on in here. Hey 3D Plude, you're the first. Come on in. Come on in. How you doing? What you doing today? You excited about hanging out? It's going to be fun. Let me see if I can put my headphones on. I'm kind of I'm kind of trying to learn how to stream and do these workshops with headphones on, but it's so weird because I can't hear. I like to hear myself talk. So, I'm trying to learn how to maybe I could put the monitor on. We

got one person 3D balloon. Once we get um once we get people rolling on in here, we'll get started. Okay. I need my freaking headphones. But I wanted this thing to be private. I've never really done these workshops super private before, so I'm not sure how long it takes folks to roll on in. Maybe I'll create a get started slide. Getting started soon slide. Yeah, let me do that really quick. Actually, you're doing well. Just working. I've had your course from some for some time. Just trying to work my way through it day at a time. That's awesome.

All right, I'm going to get this slide set up I'm wondering if the email got sent out. 3D Plute, did you get the email? Cuz we've got one person watching and I'm like, did the email get sent, 3D? Did Did the email get sent? Is that how you got in here? You got the email. Cool. Well, let's see what's going on here. This is Well, is

it kind of awkward? We've got Ander's Edge in the chat as well. Um, sometimes it takes a while for these emails to get sent out. So, we'll see, man. We'll see. We'll see who shows up. Um, but uh I'm going to go turn my air down and then I'll jump right back in here. Okay, y'all hang out here. It was in promotions for you. All right, we'll see. We'll see who shows up. If nobody shows up, I'm going to have to make it public on YouTube so that more people can show up. But we'll see how many people show up here. I'll be right back. I'm going to turn my air on.

Yo yo yo. Hello, sensation. How are you? All right, I'm gonna Guys, what I'm going to do here, looks like that email is just not sending quickly. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to go ahead and make this public. Um, might as well because it looks like uh just people aren't showing up and I'm wondering if something happened to the to the email. Um, I'm gonna make it public here. And in order to do that, we need a nice thumbnail. Sensation, what you

working on today? What you doing today? All right, let's do this. It's, you know, what's what's interesting is the software I use um is called Kajjabi and it takes forever for emails to go out. So, it's like when you have a big event like this, the email just doesn't go out and it takes like 10 minutes. Uh Mikey, how you doing? Come on in. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Good to see you. What you working on today, Mikey? Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling really good. I had the flu. It was so bad, guys.

Um, it was so so bad. We'll get started here in a bit, guys. I just got to get this thing. I'm going to make it public. Um, come on in, Mr. James Henderson. Okay, it looks like people are getting their emails. That's good. Um, we're going to get started here, guys, in a second. And I'm I'm really excited about this one today because, uh, this workshop today because I spent a long time creating sort of this really fun framework for you. Um, so we'll see how it goes. Um, working on making helping you guys and and it's helping me too come up with great game ideas that are profitable. So, we're going to go through that in a second here, but we want to make sure that this thing's open. So, we're going to do that really quickly here.

[Music] I'm gonna have to trim out this intro for the replay. Y'all having You're just having too much fun in there in the chat, aren't you guys? All right. [Music] Workshops. Okay. Well, it's officially public, so we're going to let the uh everyone else everyone else roll into the stream here. Um I think we're good. Good grief. There we go. It's saved. Okay, I'm going to make a post so that we have more people in the chat.

Come on in, guys. We're going to make a post. The first day of the workshop is officially live. Come on in and bring your ideas, folks. While you guys wait, bring your ideas. All right. Um or come up with some great game ideas because we're going to do a really fun idea audit at the end of today's workshop. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Come on in. Come on in. Welcome. I'm going to post on Twitter as

well. Alrighty, come on in, guys. Welcome, welcome, welcome. All right, folks are starting to pour in for the workshop, guys. Today's going to be fun. Today's going to be really, really fun. I've been working on this workshop for the last, I think, three days, putting together these slides for you guys. And the idea is is to figure out a way some kind of framework um where basically it's there's no guarantees. There's never a guarantee. And I I I don't ever want to be that way. I don't want to be the person who can guarantee anything because the truth is is that as much as I want this workshop to be helpful to you in generating a game idea that brings in six figures, I know that sounds grubby. I know that sounds sleazy, but I've done it three different times. Um, as much as I want to, I guess, try and guarantee that for you, there are no guarantees, right?

There are no guarantees. Um, but I'm going to do my best here to give you a sweet framework that you can use. Um because I know a lot of you um I know a lot of you are dreaming of one day turning a game idea into a paycheck and doing it as a job. Uh Andrew's Edge in the chat. I'm going to be thinking of you specifically during this um during this workshop because I know that you're you're trying to come up with some game ideas. And so in a weird way, I kind of crafted this with you sort of as what I call my hero subscriber or it's another way of putting it as my avatar. someone I'm trying to help. Um, so we're going to do that in today's workshop. All of you in the workshop, by the end of the workshop today, hopefully you'll have some list of game ideas that will work for you and that can be converted into six figures. Okay. All right. So, let's let everybody

roll in. We've got 84 people. How many of you got the email for the workshop? Um, say, can you say me? If you got the if you got the email, let me know and say me because I really want I I want people who actually signed up for this to be here on time and ready to roll. Okay, good, good, good, good, good. Well, let's go ahead and get started. No email, Mr. Awesome. Good. Got it on Twitter. didn't get the email. Yeah, a lot of you probably, you know, you've just marked me as spam because you hate me and you're tired of getting my emails. Um, you signed up and no email. Um, cool. Okay, you got it. Well, I'm glad I posted it publicly because some of you signed up and you're not getting the email. But so far so good. This is great. All right,

guys. You ready to get started on today's workshop? Um, this will be a lot of fun. This is one of my favorite things to do. Um, so this is a two-day workshop dedicated to crafting profitable game ideas. Um, it's called the sixfigure game idea workshop. And it sure sounds grubby, doesn't it? Good grief, Thomas. Always talking about money, right? The truth is is that I've done it though. I've done this multiple times. I've done it three times actually. Six figures. Bang, bang, bang. every time whenever I had a game idea, I could turn it into six figures before I even finished the game and use that money to produce the game. It's not crazy, guys. This is how this is how movie production works. This is how game production works, right? People aren't just somehow burning through savings making movies. They sometimes do it, but most of the time they're getting funded, right? They're getting funded from a studio. They're getting funded from a publisher. And you'll have people in the comments say, "Oh, this is all BS

and this is snake oil salesman stuff." It's not. This is how you get funded. You get funded and you make a game. All right? You get funded and you make a movie. Now, obviously, there's game developers out there who burn through their savings or they make a game on the side. But there's thousands of game developers, including me and plenty of my students and my programs, who get funded, right? they or if they don't get funded, they they generate a ton of wish lists and then they sell their game, right? So, there's a lot of ways to make six figures, but we're going to talk about how to come up with that idea and then convert that idea into six figures. Does that make sense? What is six figures, Jeremy? It's $100,000 or more USD. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. Look, obviously obviously there's no freaking promises, okay? In fact, there's no promises guaranteed that this workshop

is going to generate a six-figure idea for you. That that would be silly. That would be really, really silly. So, just keep that in mind. I'm not promising anything here. I'm just telling you what I've done um and how you can do how you can possibly do it, too. Um, okay, guys. Why are we talking about ideas? Ideas are so abstract. They're like clouds in our dreams. How do they actually turn into money, right? They're just these foggy ideas. Well, there's two people that I can think of immediately that remind me how important a game idea is. Um, the idea is everything. And in fact, you do you should not ever make a game that doesn't have a solid hook or a solid game idea. just don't do it. Okay, that's what J Jay Armstrong said. Okay, Jay. Armstrong told me this. Um, and I've mentioned this before. He's the creator of Cult of the Lamb. He said, "Never make a game. He's never going to

make a game that doesn't have a solid hook and a game idea because he's done it in the past and you put in all this effort on a game idea that just wasn't good." Okay. Um, Gavin Eisenbvice, I I sure hope I'm saying his name right. He's a good friend of mine. Uh he's a creator of Chu Charles. I sent him a game idea once. I think I sent it to him last year and he was like, "Hey, I love you, man." He was basically letting me down and saying he didn't think it was a good idea. And he said, "Just Thomas, just be extra sure that your idea is actually valid before fleshing it out." He was just reminding me, make sure that idea is rock solid. And we can actually do our very very best to create some kind of test and we'll talk about this to know if your idea is any good. Okay. By the way, after all of these slides, after I talk your ear off, and hopefully you'll learn a lot, we're

going to do a big fat Q&A at the end and also what I call an idea audit where I'm going to take your ideas and we're going to study them together and hopefully um make them better or hey, maybe we need to throw them out and that's okay. Mr. Awesome says idea 1% plus work 99% equals product. And in a weird way, the product is 99% the idea and 1% the production. It in terms of like what makes it valuable, right? Neil Neil Armstrong said the same thing. That's right. Um, okay. So, for most of you know this, but why should you listen to me? I've been published three separate times. Um, I've been kickstarted twice. Um, and both Kickstarter campaigns basically did six figures. Um, I know how to convert ideas into into six figures. I've done it three times. Um, it just works like

clockwork for me. And there's part of me that's really insecure and I feel like I'm an impostor and that I'm grubby and that I'm teaching this stuff. But there's also another part of me that I'm like, well, it works every time for me. Why? Why? Um, and it's because the I think my framework works. Um, I know how to take an idea and pitch it and makes make money. Um, so Neverong, Pinstripe, and then also Twisted Tower, which I'm finishing up Twisted Tower right now. Um, they've been published by incredible publishers. Uh, I've been featured by Time Magazine and Forbes. I I put those two there just because they look cool, but I've also, you know, been featured by Kotaku and um PC Gamer and plenty of gaming outlets as well. Um the the product is 99% the idea and 1% the production. Let me let me recclarify that. You're asking me about that quote. What I mean is the value of your product the value of your product

is 99% the idea 1% production. And and really I'm just being hyperbolic. I'm just trying to explain that the the the idea is what makes something valuable. Um, so we'll talk all about that here. Um, okay. Uh, so cool, Thomas. Yay. You've been published. That's it. Um, well, I've also been funded on Kickstarter, like I said. And then also my games have done well. They have very positive scores on uh Steam. Uh, Once Upon a Com right here, which ended up becoming Neverong um was actually sold to Apple Arcade. Um, and so, um, my games do well. Here's the cool part. They don't go viral, right? And so that's why this webinar isn't called, uh, the the viral game idea, right? I don't know how to make a Choo Choo Charles viral game, but

I do know how to ensure you get a paycheck, right? I know how to turn a game idea into six figures. So, that's what we're going to talk about. Okay? All right. You guys ready? I I really want you guys to pull out a notepad either on your phone, like a digital notepad, a real notepad, um or the notepad on your PC. Okay. Jeremy Allen says, "This is a cool format, Thomas." Um much different than anything you usually do. Cool. Um let's start with idea vomiting. And in fact, this is relevant because I vomited I think maybe 60 times on Monday um when we were supposed to be doing some idea vomiting. That's why I delayed this this workshop because I got super sick. It was so much puke. All right, moving forward. Let's start with idea vomiting. How do we vomit out ideas? Sorry, Louise.

Um, there are different ways to spill out ideas. Okay. The first one is what I'm going to call evolution. Okay. Um, and I actually learned this from Jonas Tyroller this week. Um, he was like, "Dude, you don't have to come up with a unique idea all the time. You don't have to be first, but you do need to stand out." I think this might free a lot of you, Andrew's Edge, maybe you where you're always trying to come up with this unique brand spanking new idea. It's like you don't have to be first. Who said you needed to be first? But you do need to stand out. And there's a huge, huge difference. For example, look at all these minimalistic tower defense games, right? Which one's the best? Who

knows which one is the best or which one stands out the most or which one did it better? Which one of these did it better? Does anybody know? Right. It's Thronefall. Thronefall did it best. Thronefall wasn't the first. At least to my knowledge, Thronefall was not the first tower defense game ever. It also wasn't the first minimalistic tower defense game. But what Jonas Tyroller did so well here is Jonas and Paul, they said, "You know what? There's a niche we can fill and we're not going to be overwhelmed by a ton of quality games." Okay, so really the question becomes, how sure are you that your version of a game idea will be better than most? Okay. So, when what I'm

saying here is we're going to go ahead and start vomiting game ideas out and we're going to evolve those to be a little bit just a little bit better than other games. The reason I use the word evolution here is it's kind of like, hey, we're all going to sort of survive and thrive in this petri dish and we're going to be the best. So, let's say there's a hundred little microbes and they're competing to be the best. Do you want to have a hundred little microbes in a petri dish or do you want to have a million and hope that you're the best? So, I don't want you to vomit out game ideas that are I'm going to make a horror walking sim. I'm going to make a platformer. Instead, we need to be we need to be thinking what's a niche we can fill. We're not brand new, but we're in a niche that isn't fully fleshed out yet. Does that make sense?

So, guys, come up with some ideas here. Okay, for example, um we could say, let's see here, a horror rhythm platformer, right? Um, I'm just going to come up with ideas here and just thinking out loud here and you guys do the same and let's just vomit them out and I'll write I'll write down your ideas as well. Um, and think about things you're passionate about. Okay. Uh, I got it. 2D Resident Evil, right? That sounds fun. I'm sure it's been done before, but is it possible that I can be the best? Right. Horse games. That's great. I'm writing this down to I'm vomiting out evolution ideas. How many horse games are we going to be competing with? And can we make the best horse game? Now, we're not trying to create some crazy unique twist. We're not using what we're going to talk about, which is the big butt

principle. We're not going to use that. We're just doing a standard genre that isn't fully filled out yet in the petri dish world. Metroid Vadia, but dating sim. Okay, good. That's good. Okay, what else we got? Yep, we're not going to do the big butt principle yet, guys. Just think of a great game genre that you enjoy. Uh, I like puzzle horror games. Those are great. Can I Can I be the better option in that world? What about a bioshocky indie game? This is something that I really, really struggled with and had to come to terms with. And thankfully, the demo for my game Twisted Tower, which is a Bioshocky indie game, thankfully it's proven that, oh, I can be the best in that niche. I can be a really good Bioshock indie game, right? It's not new. It's

not unique, but there's not too many games that I'm competing with. Does that make sense? Now, realistic storydriven horror games. That's a That's an interesting comment. I feel like that's going to be way too competitive. So, do do you guys see how we're not coming up with something new here with realistic story horror games? Um, it's not new. It's a genre, but the problem with the genre is that it's probably highly competitive and so it's very difficult to stand out. Does that make sense? So, I I would potentially stay away from a realistic story horror game unless that's just something you're really good at. Does that make sense? What else we got here? Topown action adventure. Yep, that's oversaturated.

Pokemon collection game fighting. I think that could I think you could potentially find a good or stand out in that world. Um, yeah, cult survival colony sim. That's great. I'm sure there's plenty of games that have that sort of vibe, but I'm sure you could sta uh stand out. So guys, does this make sense? Does this make sense? So write out your ideas on a piece of paper. vomit out your evolution ideas. Okay. Um, back rooms games are way, way, in my opinion, back rooms games are way too saturated. If you think you can stand out, that's fine. Psychological puzzle horror. Yeah, I think I think that's a good one. I think you can stand out. Right. So, again, we're going to move on to the next uh vomit option. But vomit option one is not taking yourself so seriously and just being okay with standing out in

a niche that isn't oversaturated. That's it. Right? Does that make sense? All right. We're going to do some more of this and we're going to practice this in the Q&A and also the idea audit, but I just wanted to give you that option. This one was really freeing for me. This was really, really freeing for me. Um, when I realized I don't have to be first, you know what I mean? Like I would I would post I four years ago, guys, has anybody done this? Four years ago, I would post on Twitter uh and I would be like, "Okay, okay, okay. No one's ever seen something like this." And they like clockwork, someone would say, "Ah, this is like this game." Or, "Oh, that's like that game." And I would quit the game because I didn't realize that it's not that I have to be first. I just need to stand out. That's it. Does that make sense? Is this helpful to

anybody? If it's helpful, type helpful. If it's not helpful, say not helpful. All right. Vomit option two. This one is a lot of fun and it's really, really helpful. Good. Armor says it's helpful. That's great. Uh, I need a little bit of feedback here because I don't know. I'm sitting here going, I hope this helps them because like this is something that really freed me. Um, I mean, uh, one of you just said, sorry, the the chat was really fast. One of you just said, um, don't worry what people think. Well, I I I do because I want to make a commercially viable game, you know. Um, but there's something said there which is like you shouldn't worry about everybody's opinions on Twitter. If somebody thinks you copied a game, it's like, well, welcome to GameDev. You know, it's like every game is going to copy something. Um, and that's okay. But

what you want to do, and what that slide was all about, is you want to avoid jumping into the giant petri dish of millions of other games trying to do the same thing. So, for example, if Thomas made a firsterson shooter horror game, that's a dangerous petri dish to jump into. So, what Thomas jumped into was I'm going to be the indie Bioshock. I'm going to be Bioshock light. And I feel like that's that's not a huge petri dish. I don't think I'm competing with too many people. And I think I can truly stand out. We'll see. Fingers crossed. All right. Big butt exercise. It's so freaking simple. Hollywood does it, baby. Thomas Brush does it. Indie game devs do it. Triple AAA does it. It's the big secret that everybody's talking about behind your back. The big butt

exercise. Blank butt blank. Go for it. Generate some ideas, guys. This one is different. This one is trying to stand out, trying to be unique. Now, I don't know if you're ever going to generate a brand new idea. Okay? But sometimes you do. And even if you don't, it's okay because remember, we just need to stand out. Okay? Great ideas, guys. And we're Why are we calling this vomit options? Because we're vomiting ideas. We're just spitting them out. Okay? Wave survival but low poly fantasy style. Okay, very good. Keep going. Anyone else? Animal Crossing but first p person cosmic horror. Great. Titanfall but rise. Good. So you can use genres. You can use game names. Minecraft but tower defense. Metroid vania but Doom Eternal. Great. Um soccer, baseball, basketball but first-person shooter.

That's great. Sports game but first-person shooter. That's hilarious. that. See what I just did? Like that? That's what you want. That's a marketing that that's a clue that by the way you should pursue that. Uh PV PVP but real risk. Walking sim but flying. Oh my word. I love that one. That's great. Flying sim. Terraria but Fortnite. Doom but pony girl. No Mercy but familyfriendly. Awesome. Awesome. Skyrim but top down. Um very very good. Let's see here. What else we got? Basketball but Smash Bros. Sweet. That's a great idea. Boke. Is it Boke? Is that how you say your name? So, how many of you find these two options really, really helpful? Um, option one and option two. Man, these are the two that I honestly wish I knew about when I was coming up with game ideas. Now,

naturally, I kind of gravitated towards the big butt principle when I made my games. all my games, honestly. Um, Pinstripe was was a story-driven game, but it was a a game about hell, but you're a pastor, right? Um, you're a game about a coma, but you're a little boy. Um, so it's like kind of a twist there. That one's not great. And then Twisted Tower is Disney World, but demented, right? Um, so I find the big butt principle or the big butt exercise to be really, really, really helpful. All right, so here's a little quiz. Some of you have seen this quiz before, but it's actually a lot of fun. So, we're just going to do it again. Uh, can anyone guess the games? 1930s cartoon, but a video game. Does anyone know what that is? Metroid Vania, but with bugs. Management Sim, but with cults. RPG, but you fight with love. 2D platformer, but

you can rotate in 3D, right? Bioshock, but with Willy Wonka. Shout out the answers, guys. Tower defense game, but it's minimal. A platformer, but you can reverse time. Dungeon crawler, but with rhythm. See, everyone's doing it, right? Every everybody's doing it. It's the cool thing to do. Do it, kids. It's a lot of fun. Use the big big butt. What is What is it called? The big butt hack. Whatever I called it. Let's see here. Exercise. Big butt exercise. Big butt hack. One or the other. Right. There you go. Good job, guys. See how everybody does it? Now, we've vomited our ideas. Okay. Does everybody have a pretty good list in their head? I I'll let you take your time because we're gonna move on to the next exercise, but we need a bank of ideas. Okay. So, does

everyone have their bank of ideas? I I need you to have at least three. Okay. Have at least three rough just vomited ideas on paper or a notepad. Say yes if you've got them. Bellatro but a rogue light. Oh, interesting. Ubisoft but profitable. So, does everyone have like three ideas? Because we're going to move on to we're gonna plug these in to something. Now, Andrew Edge, I know you've heard a lot of these, but I'm not sure to let me know, dude. Was it helpful to know that you don't have to have a brand spanking unique idea? which that's new to me to be completely honest. So, we've got these ideas. Now, what we're gonna do Good. Everybody's got an idea. This is great. All right, let's move on. And this is going really well, actually. I'm really excited about

it. Seems like everybody's It's clicking for people. Um, let's jump into the next thing. We're going to plug it into the Trinity Hook. We've talked about the Trinity Hook. I don't think I've ever plugged in ideas to Trinity Hooks before. So, this is a new process and a new framework for me um that I'm really excited about. What we do is we take our ideas and we plug them into something called the Trinity Hook. This is freaking crucial. Okay, this is crucial. The Trinity Hook is a solution to a big problem. The problem is is that every publisher out there, they say, "Hey, you need a USP, Thomas." Every publisher says, "You need a hook." A USP is a unique selling point. What's what makes it unique? Right? Um the Trinity hook is a solution to this to this big problem, which is well, what is a hook? A hook can be visual. In my opinion, I think that one

of um Ory Ory's most prominent hooks is the visuals. Um, I think that game just looks amazing. Uh, one of the hooks of um, Pinstripe is the story. In fact, that's that's the primary hook. But, you know, Fez's hook is that you can rotate in 3D, but it's a 2D platformer that's mechanical. So, hooks are all over the place, right? It's no surprise games are all over the place. Games are tons of different elements smashed into a single kind or a single product. So, of course, every game is going to have its own unique hook. Remember, please remember, is a hook, and this is my own opinion, I've had disagreements with other game developers, is a hook something that keeps the player

playing the game or is it a marketing tool? It's not necessarily what keeps the player playing the game. Not necessarily. Does punchy, really fun, floaty, and sticky platforming. Is that the hook? No. That might hook the player when they're playing. The hook is the visuals. And I'm talking about AI. Ory might what keeps you playing might not be what the hook is. Okay, in my opinion, it's a marketing freaking tool. A hook is a marketing tool. And how you flesh that out and keep the player playing, it's a little bit different. Okay, that's why I call it a hook. It's quite literally the bait

that the fish bites on and it catches them and you pull them out. It's a marketing tool. Okay, so let's plug in all of our ideas into the Trinity hook. Okay, it is not necessary that you have a story, that you have a mechanical, and that you have a sensory hook. And I'll tell you what a sensory hook is. You don't have to do this. You don't have to invest in um O'Reilly Auto Parts, Walmart, and Amazon. Is it smart to invest in three instead of one? Yes. It's just like investing. It's just like the stock market. If you can try your best to at least invest in these three different categories for your hook, you might find, I found this to be

true for me, you might find, oh wow, I thought my story was the hook, but it turns out that it was the music. I'm glad I invested in that. Oh, it turns out that people really love that when you reload the gun, you can throw your ammunition and it explodes um the enemies. It was a silly little mechanical idea, but turns out that's the hook. I don't know. That's some idea I had. Wouldn't it be funny if when you reload the the cartridge, you can throw it and explodes, right? I'm not sure if that's been done. It's probably been done, right? Not all idea not all ideas have to be new or unique. That said, what I what I need you to do is do your very very best. Do your very best to take those ideas that you just created. We're going to do this together. Okay? Um, and we're going to try and plug those in. Plug those ideas in to

the story, the sensory, and the mechanical. Let me clarify what sensory is. Sensory is visual and audio. Okay, those are the two I mean that's really I mean you're when you play a game you're receiving visual signals and audio signals. So something has to hook you. Before we plug these in, let's break this down and let's think of a game. Okay, Portal. I always go to Portal. Portal Portal Portal is kind of the easy one. Portal has a story hook. Someone let me know the story hook. Okay. What is the strong story hook? What gets you with Portal when it comes to the story? What captures the player? I'm sorry, the audience as a marketing tool. What captures the audience with the story hook in Portal? When it comes to the mechanical hook, easy, easy answer. Freaking

portals. That was such a profound and unique mechanic. When it comes to the sensory, I remember when Portal came out, it looked so clean and it it looked so like fresh and minimalistic and unique. It felt kind of like almost liinal space. It was kind of like this first liinal space game, right? Robots testing humans. Amazing. Such a good story hook. Very good. End three RS6. Why am I solving puzzles for a robot? Exactly, guys. Do you see how that Trinity hook was just locked in with Portal? And it it's why it did so well. Now, Hollow Knight, we can jump into Hollow Knight and talk about how the Trinity hook applies to Hollow Knight. Mechanically, does it have a

hook? Nope, not really. It's just done really really well. Okay, it it has that tight Metroid vania feel. When I watch that trailer, I'm like, that is some tight platforming. And that's what you need with a Metroid Vania. But it's really the sensory and the story bugs, right? Story about a bug kingdom mythos about bugs, the visuals and the audio. I mean, it's just dripping with hooks. Right. So, the thing about Hollow Night, and I'm glad I brought it up because I was just picking a random game, but the thing about Hollow Night is, aren't you glad that the sensory and the story elements of the hook were good enough so that they didn't have to do anything new with the mechanical? Right now, for you, it's

unlikely that you're just going to be able to rely on one. So that's why I for me it's a smart move to try and do all three. Okay. So guys, let's do it. Okay, let's do it. Take your ideas and plug those in. Let's do sensory first. Okay, so I have a game idea. I can't tell you what it I'll just come up with one. I have a different one, but I'm going to come up with a different one. Um, I it's going to be a story game where you paint the world. Okay, that's my one of my ideas that I just vomited out. Okay, so take your sentence and now plug in try and do five ways that this is a sensory hook. Okay. Um, tune

shading, watercolor look. That's a visual hook. See what I just did there? It looks like it's a watercolor. So, that's a way that we're going to hook the player. It looks like watercolor. Um, cool shader that paints the world. Paint sounds. Beautiful Minecrafty piano [Music] music. So, this is all a hook, right? These are sensory hooks. Now, we don't have to do all of these. We're just coming up with ideas. Does that make sense? What are you guys? Um, tell write down what you've written.

Go the paintress. Yeah. Uh, I'm going to keep talking. I don't want to ruin your ideas, but I'm going to keep talking so you guys can see how I work through this process. Beautiful Minecrafty piano music. Subtle ambient sound with different weather patterns. You can imagine the trailer. It starts with a thunderstorm, winds blowing, and then the player paints the world and the sky turns this beautiful crimson. Right. Beautiful ambient sound that's just almost ASMR. Starts with the dripping of water. Yeah. So, these are just random ideas I'm coming up with here that I think are great hooks that not a lot of games do. Well, does that make sense? How do you know your ideas will execute well? This is from Prime Video. We're going to talk all about that. Okay, we're going to test these ideas, but keep going. Game Boy restricted pixel

art. That's great. Pixel art, Game Boy style. I love that. That's a great hook. And that goes in the green section here for your sensory hooks. Only two colors. That's great, Funky Sloth. Seriously, only two colors. Um, that's a really good sensory hook. Who does that? Um, who does that? There's a game that does that. I don't know what it is. Sensory sound of dissonance and broken instruments that is tuned with the progression of the story. So, that's a mixture of sensory and mechanical. In fact, I would say that's probably more of a mechanical hook, which would be the pink section down here. Okay. Now, I want you guys to know we're not going to necessarily use all of these. We're going to pick the ones that really work. Okay. Oberden. Yeah, Oberdin has that monochromatic sort of ugly flat colors.

Okay, very good. We do the same with story. What's What's some story we could do for this painting game that I'm creating? um an alternate universe where color does not exist. Okay, we can use the big butt principle with some of this stuff, guys. Okay, with story in particular, the big butt principle is actually really, really helpful. So, not only can you go genre but blank or this game but blank, you can go story element but blank. So for example, I'm a painter, but I'm blind. Do you see? Just create a contrast. Travel a world that needs to be painted. The only trouble is you're blind. It's like how do I how do I make

a game about that? you know um it just creates it restriction like that creating contrast creates like necessity and necessity is the mother of invention right colors are the abilities that's great very good um what else can I do here um I've I my wife died and she always said I should be a painter but I ever did it. And I'm an old man. I'm 85 years old. My wife passed and she grabs my hand. This is beginning cut scene. I always felt so sad when you drove that truck day after day delivering packages. When Harold, you should have been a painter. [Music] Go into the world. Paint the world and

find your true happiness. You don't need me. She dies. And then there's your story. There is your motive. It's a great story. I think that I'm going to do it. I think I'm going to make this idea. So, I've got all these different story ideas. Am I going to use them all? No. I'm just coming up with ideas in these three buckets. Okay. Mechanical hook. What do we got? Well, you guys come up with yours. It's okay to not watch the video. Put your head down. Work. I'm working. What are you doing? Okay. Mechanical hook here. What do we got? Well, h you can only paint. There's no moving. There's no there's no controlling anything that all you do is paint. I

don't know how it works, but that's a really interesting mechanic. I don't know. Um, you can't see anything. This is Oh my goodness. See what I'm saying? This is great. The story is a blind man. Okay. How do I mix that with the mechanical? Well, what if you throw buckets of paint and the world you can only see the shape of the paint as it splatters on things? So, you're blind and all you have is paint and it splatters the world and you can slowly make your way through it. Does this does this help you? You can only throw paint and move through the world and you're blind. Isn't that great? Work now. Stop. What are you doing? Don't look at me. Look at your paper work. All right, what else we got? Um, that was a really good idea. I'm telling you, this is a good I think that this is a good

workshop. I think I I because I was wondering I was like, is this really going to help people? And I really think it does because I I think these are great ideas. Um, what else we got? mechanical hooks, a gun that sprays uh paint, and there are maybe there are gray enemies that you have to spray paint them and bring them to life. And then um so for example, you can imagine like a these giant fat like big bears that are gray in this gray world and they're walking and they're coming to attack you. And you you have to do research in the game to find out that bears they like they they they hate all colors except for blue. They're called the blue bears. And so you grab your blue gun and you spray

them with blue. If you spray them enough, they become on your side. So you use color to make allies, right? So, there's some mechanical ideas. All right, guys. What did you come up with? What are your mechanicals? You Oh, this is great, Lucas. You can only paint with a jetpack that throws paint when you fly. I love that. Um, any any other ideas for your stuff, guys? I told you to work and I'm expecting answers. Come on, raise your hand. Anybody? Anybody? What you got? This sounds similar to unfinished swan. What's that? Only water guns. That's great. Funky sloth. That's a really good mechanical hook. Seriously. Um, Hughes

Odyssey. Oh, is that a game? There is a game called Hugh. Um, Silent Hill psychological horror but fast-paced FPS. Great. Really good mechanical hook. So, you've got that sensory hook, which is it it throws back to Silent Hill, but the mechanic says, "No, this is this is Doom. I love that paint with instruments." Okay, we had a classic Zelda. What do we got? Classic Zelda with weapons, right? With tons of different weapons. I like that. That's cool. Um, grappling your own bullets. That's awesome. I love that mechanic. Fishing. Serious. Fishing is a good one because look, if you've got a horror game uh Oh, that's a really good idea. I think that's been done. Can someone look up the horror fishing game? That's a really good idea. I'm going to steal it. It's mine. I'm just kidding. But that is a really good that

is really good mechanical hook. Okay, Anders Edge. Man, the only one I have and honestly I don't think this is any good is technology progress progression unlocked through bringing your characters to your camp instead of through crafting like Pokemon kind of. Yeah, a hook. A hook is it's and we're going to we're going to talk about this. This is the ne one of the next slides. It has to be communicated quickly. Otherwise, it's just not going to be a hook. Okay. All right. So, what have we done? We've expanded the hook. We've expanded our Trinity hook. We've just put a bunch of ideas on paper. So what you should have guys is you should have okay I have my idea. I came up with it big with the big butt exercise or I have my idea by

just finding a niche and I'm going to fill it. So I have an idea. It doesn't have to be super unique. I've plugged it into a hook by creating all of these different elements. So what you're going to have is this giant list of things. Okay, giant list of things related to that game idea fitting into the hook. Now, now before we move on to the next slide, does that make sense? We have a game idea that has been exploded out into all these elements in the Trinity Hook. Does that make sense? We have this one game idea and it's exploded out into the Trinity Hook. But now, this is where it gets tricky. We're going to use all this, but what you need to do, and this is what we I just mentioned to you, Anders

Edge, we need to contract the Trinity hook. We This is so hard. We need to take all of this and put it in a single sentence. This is the hard part. Why does this matter? Because simple things sell well. Why? Because we live in a fast-paced world where people are trying to be people are sold to every second. In this fast-paced world, you need to be able to go bang. A game with portals, bang. A game where robots test humans, bang. Right? A bug, Metroid Vania, bang. Demented Disney World, bang. You need to be able to take because obviously guys, you'll expand that Trinity hook out in the trailer and in marketing materials and devlogs and Twitter posts and exposts, email blasts, in the game

itself, you'll expand it out. But when you those first two seconds in that trailer, you need to go, this is what it is, right? So with all these ideas I came up with with this painting game, a game about a blind painter. Okay, it's all right. A game about a blind painter. A game where color kills. Okay.

A cozy game about painting a black and white world. A black and white world in desperate need of color. Okay, I'm just doing my best here. You know, you you take this is this is how I I I come up with ideas lately is you it's basically you have an idea, you blow it out into the Trinity hook and then you bring it back and you go, "Okay, I think this is what it is." Right? Does that make sense? Let's see here. The snowy forest.

You may. Okay, hold on. A cozy farming experience, but dark forces threaten to upend the tranquility. I don't know if it's a hook yet. It's kind of vague. I don't know if my own idea is a strong hook. Right now, an example of this working is something like Twisted Tower, right? which is you go, okay, it's the story is Willy Wonka but Bioshock. Uh the visuals are um hearkening to to Bioshock but with this Disney vibe, right? The mechanics, the the mechanical hook is um all of the weapons are toys and candy machines and gumball machines. So, you've got these cool different hook elements of the Trinity hook. That's what I did with Twisted Tower. And then I contract that into one sentence. Demented Disney World. Does that make

sense? All right. What do we got here? Stardew Valley, but you befriend Eldrich Eldrich gods. Collect monsters, train them, but you meet other trainers. They say their monsters are better than you. Yours, and you fight them. I'm not sure what you're what you're talking about there, but I will say we want our we want it to be a single sentence. Anime waifuss who defend the life crystals from the creatures who want to consume them in a tactical combat game. That's really funny actually. So, I would say uh anime waifu violent shooter. That that that's a funny sentence, right? That's right. Uh Jason says, "Simplifying is makes it easy to

comprehend and easy to jump right into. A training simulator where you build and master powers by completing tasks." I don't know if there's a hook there. Okay, let's keep trying. Monster collector game where you collect waifuss. Bam. That's great. Do we agree? Everybody rate Cana's idea. Not that you'd play it, but is it hookie? Right. Does it make sense? Monster collector game where you collect waifuss. I Let's do Let's rate this game. I'm I'm I'm gonna rate it. I'm I wrote it I'm going to write it down right now. Now, execution is is a totally different story, but in terms of the verbal hook, I'm going to write down my score. Um, go from A+ all the way to F minus and write down in the chat. I've already written mine down and I'll show it to you in a

sec. So, write down your score, your letter grade score. We got B+ B+ Victoria says, "Uh, it's click it's clickbaity, but excitement evaporates fast thinking how weird it would be." Yeah, I'm gonna give it an A+. Now, execution is everything. Um, but I think it's a great idea. Look, at the end of the day, the goal is to to make our ideas short, make them one single sentence, and then we expand when we develop the game, we bring in that Trinity hook, all those things from the Trinity hook. Okay, step three. Step three. Now, are we ready to move on to step three? Did that make sense, guys? How we feeling? How we feeling?

Does anyone have any questions or need clarification there? Is this helpful? Was was step two helpful at all? Helpful? Not helpful? Helpful? Not helpful? Let me know in the chat. Basically, Final Fantasy. Yeah. I think it's it would be funny though to really go like hardcore, you know, and and like really really cheesy with the waifu stuff. Okay, good. We feeling good. This is helpful. Good. The shortest Metroid Vania ever. That's awesome. The shortest and hardest, the most dense Metroid Vania platform game ever. That's great, Regav. I think that that's a really unique idea. Yeah, it reminds me of Thronfall where it's like

tower defense but it's like really condensed, right? Or distilled down. Um, all right. We're going to talk about validating ideas. I'm calling it triple confirmation. Okay. Hard says, "No, this was not helpful." We've got Looks like the majority of you are feeling like this was helpful. So, that's good. Um, deck biller but balanced. Yeah. [Music] Um, all right. Good. Hopefully this was helpful, guys. We're ready to move on here. Let's talk about triple confirmation. Triple confirmation. What you do is now that you have that sentence, how many of you have tried to tell an idea to somebody, a friend, a family member, or a successful gamedev, and you instead of saying that single sentence, what you do is you spill all

of these weird ideas and it's like a paragraph or two parag. So you you you you have you have this paintbrush and you're you're walking through this world, right? And your wife, by the way, I forgot to mention the wife. The wife, she's she's on her deathbed and she she tells her husband that she wishes that he painted because he was really talented painter, but she you take these buckets of uh paint and you can throw them. And so when you were three uh sorry 32 years old, you got in a car wreck and you be got blind. And this was when you met your wife because she was blind. But you take the paint and then you throw the paint and then it fills in this black and white world. So, and your family is like or your friends are like, "What? What?" Instead, what you want to do is we want confirmation and we want to say, "Hey, I have this game idea." And and you say, "Can I tell it to you?" You say, "It's a game about a blind painter." And hopefully, and I don't I'm

not saying that's a good idea. I came up with this on the spot during a live stream. Um hopefully when I tell a friend, a family member, and a successful gamedev, three people minimum in three different categories. What we're doing is we want to look for three things here. Number one, if you can't explain it in a single sentence, it won't work. So that's that should be obvious at this point. If they act bored and if they don't respond with more ideas, it probably won't work. This is not a hard and fast rule. This is a rule of thumb that some YouTuber created, okay? I'm just giving you some random rule of thumb, but this is based on my experience, okay? I've I've thrown out a lot of ideas at people and it's not again it's not a hard and fast rule because sometimes this works and you get great ideas and it's just

it's about execution. Okay. So if I say I'm making a game about a blind painter. If they go okay well um did you watch the game last night? Right. If they respond with more ideas and they say, "Oh, like huh?" So like how does he how does he paint if he's blind? So like the world is like black. But you got to show something. May what if like he has like you have the ability to feel things and you and you can like touch things and and the world starts to show with color. If they start responding with ideas, what that means is the idea is curious. And curious ideas create uh an itch that needs to be scratched, aka really good marketing material. That's how you

market a game. The goal is to create an itch that gets scratched. Okay. Now, my suspicion is that this painting idea, I would probably get a blank stare if I'm being honest. Okay. But here's one. Uh, I have a game idea about um breeding breeding dogs and creating clans that wage war against the evil cat king of England. Okay. Or a better way of putting it is um I have a clan building game about dogs called Brave Boy. That one tended to get like people really like connected with that game idea. I don't know why. I think people like dogs, but they just came up with weird ideas. And so I tell friends and family members and successful game devs. Now, here's why it's important to tell friends, family members, and successful game devs. Friends tend to be nice. Family members like to crush

dreams. And successful game devs know what they're talking about. And it's good to tell all three. It's good to get all these different perspectives. Does that make sense? So that's why it's so important to try and tell your single sentence pitch to a friend, a family member, and a successful gamedev. Okay. All right. Now, once you've got your single sentence pitch, okay, once you've got your single sentence pitch, you can begin production of the vertical slice. Now, obviously, you could make a small prototype. Okay, I know a lot of game developers who don't even make a tiny prototype. They just take that idea, they they get it confirmed, and then boom, they build that vertical slice. Vertical slice is

as simple as a hyperpolished demo. Okay. It's a hyperpolished demo. So really at the end of the day, you're going to take that single sentence pitch and you're going to expand that into an actual prototype and a vertical slice. Okay. Now, you might be wondering, what do I put into that demo? Well, remember that list we wrote right here? This. Bam. You've got it. Okay. Now, you don't have to put everything in there. Sometimes you want to cross out certain things and say, you know what? No, that's too much. That's too much. What can I afford? What do I have time to do? Sometimes it's going up. Boom. I got one sensory thing. I'm going to focus on really really good color. Uh that's like maybe blues and reds. The game, have you

guys seen Blueprints? There's a game called Blueprints. The whole game's blue. Um I mean most of it. It's published by Iron Fury. That's that's the sensory hook. I mean it's like boom, there it is. It's blue. And it also has really beautiful graphics. So there's another one. Um but yeah, it's blue. So you focus on just a few things. You go, okay, there's my sensory. I'm going to do those two things. I'm going to do that one hook, that one story hook really, really well and communicated in the th first 30 seconds of gameplay in the first five seconds of the trailer. Boom. That story hook really focus on that uh that uh relationship with his wife um the the the painter who his wife dies and and she wants him to paint the world after she dies. Something like that. I don't know. Then you go, "Okay, that mechanical hook, I've got I've got two months to work on this game, so I can only focus on these two mechanical elements." Boom. That's all you focus on. That's it. You're an indie, not AAA.

And so what you want to do is focus on just a few things, okay? And build out that vertical slice. And that's what I did here with Twisted Tower. It's doing really well. We've got um over a thousand very positive demo reviews. Feel great. It's doing really, really good. And we're nearing I think yeah, we're nearing 100,000 wish lists, which I'm really excited about. Um so yeah, that's the goal. Put it into a demo. Okay. And focus on the bare necessities. Now, why? like, okay, what what's going on here? Why are we working on a demo? I thought we were making a game. A demo is a magic wand. Demos are wonderful things. Why? Number one, they can be monetized. A demo can, and we're going to talk about this tomorrow. In

tomorrow's uh workshop, we're going to focus on, man, how do I how do I monetize and turn a demo into a six-figure paycheck? How do I take that tiny idea, turn it into a demo, and then turn it into a freaking paycheck? How do I do that before I even finish the game? Demos can be monetized because of number one, wishlists. And I know what you're thinking. Wishlists aren't realized income. I totally get it. For those of you who don't need a quick paycheck, wish lists are wonderful in a way. They're like stocks. They're just these sort of abstract pieces of data that you know will probably convert at a 10% rate. So in a way they're kind of pre-orders. So if I had a 100,000 wish lists and I know I'm going to get a 10% uh conversion that's 10,000 purchases. So it's almost real. So wish lists in a way are like real money. Okay. A demo

creates wish lists. I think I got 50,000 wish lists from a demo. Now, I launched it at NextFest, and NextFest is a feature of a bunch of demos. Demos are a great way to get wish lists. Demos are definitely necessary for investor pitches. Don't you ever just pitch an idea. Pitch with a demo or they're not going to buy. Okay? And I've done that. I've pitched I one time I printed out a really cool pretty like concept art book and had a lunch meeting with an investor and he looked at me like I was crazy. It's like bro I got to see a trailer and a demo. Uh so you want to take the demo and use it to invest in pitch to investors. Um you can use you definitely need a demo if you're going to do some crowdfunding. Uh and if you want to get a publisher or sell to a platform like Xbox. Okay. So demos create that money because they're this proof of

concept. Even better, a demo is going to be used for clarification. Okay, so this is huge. A demo clarifies I'm sorry, an audience's review and reaction of a demo clarifies what your actual hook is. Is it actually the visuals? Is it actually the audio? Is it actually my assumption it was the mechanical the mechan the mechanics but actually people all they really care about is the story. That's what hooks people. Your audience is going to tell you what your hook is. So we started with the Trinity hook. We blew it out into all these different ideas. And then you launch the demo and the audience goes, "Hey, I really really like that story. That's why I bought the game." And you're like, "Really?" or that's why I downloaded the demo. That's what they say. Oh, really? You read the reviews of the demo. And I have these public. So, I

all my all my reviews are for the demo are public. You read them and you go, "Oh, that's why they played the demo." Why does that matter? Because it tells you what to focus on to finish the game. So you don't squander all of your time and all of your your your resources provided to you from a Kickstarter campaign or from a publisher or an investor. You go, "No, the demo. This is what people love about the demo. This is why they showed up. That's what we're doing." Boom. Spider train. Spider train. Spider train. Spider train. Spider train. Bugs. Art. Art. Art. Art art. That's what we're going to focus on. It gives you a focus with Twisted Tower. I know now mood story mood story mood story mood story. That's why people love the demo. Okay. So yeah, examine the feedback.

Look, whether it's publisher feedback, Steam demo reviews, or alpha testing, your idea will further solidify and clarify and come into focus because of that demo. Does that make sense, guys? So, again, now that you've got a demo, you can sell it. You can sell it and pitch it on uh Kickstarter. You can pitch it on um Steam and get wish lists. You can pitch it to publishers, right? I mean, honestly, a pitch to a publisher or a Steam page or a Kickstarter campaign, they all do the same thing, and that is they showcase your Trinity hook. Okay, so here's an example of taking a demo, right? Here's a here's a link to

the demo. Turning the demo into a trailer, showcasing the hook and putting it as a single pitch website. And I sent this off to 3D Realms and they bought it, right? I've done this so many times. You take a pitch deck or a website, it's private, you send it off to publishers, you put it on a Kickstarter page, and someone buys it. They they invest in it or you crowdfund it. It's pretty straightforward. But notice how everything is focused on that hook. And you you all of this happens because of that initial spark and bringing those ideas out with your trinity hook and then refocusing into that single sentence pitch. Does that make sense, guys? All right. Okay, guys.

Guys, I'm ready to jump into the Q&A and I'm ready. I'm so ready to do some idea auditing. This is going to be a fun fun part of the live stream. I want to let you know really quickly for those of you who are who for those of you who are curious and want to take this a step further. Um, one of the ways that the podcast is supported, one of the ways that this channel is supported is I have something really cool. It's called Fulltime GameDev and it's a course. So for those of you who are curious and you want to learn more, thanks for listening. But for those of you who aren't curious, stick around for the Q&A. So look, I wish I had a plan. Like I wish I had a plan like this when I started working. When I started working on Pinstripe, that thing took five years and I was scrambling for ideas. I didn't know if the game idea was any good and that how even how to make it profitable. I didn't know how to convert it into a paycheck. And it took it took me five

years to realize this. Um, and I think it was so funny because I had friends and they were full-time. They had sold their game to a publisher. They had done a Kickstarter campaign and they knew how to take their idea and go full-time with it with just a demo. And they not only knew how to convert it to cash with just a demo, they also knew how to uh sell it on Steam and make money. And so I started asking these friends kind of how they did it. And suddenly it all clicked. I started selling my ideas. And quite literally I was selling ideas. I would I I turned a game into a demo and then I got it fully funded on Kickstarter and I got it fully funded by a publisher. And I've been doing this over and over and over again. I've done this four times. I've taken a demo, a small tiny little prototype, and turned it into cash. And that's kind of how I've done my gamedev career, just over and over. You take a

good idea and you turn it into a six-figure paycheck. Now, the first one, granted, the first one was not a six-figure paycheck. That one and that one fell apart. I was 18 years old. But I've been doing this for a decade, selling great ideas to publishers to Kickstarter or getting wish lists and converting them to revenue. Okay, all the great game developers I was meeting, that was what they were doing, right? Suddenly, I was fully funded and I was working on my game full-time. It's really cool. So, the rest is history. This feels like a braggy slide. It's not a braggy slide, I promise. I'm just trying to say and it's honestly it's not braggy because I know a lot of indie game developers who are crushing it, right? Um way better than this. But this is, you know, my career uh you know building three games, raising money on Kickstarter, finding publishers, working with publishers, and actually just selling copies of games, right? I've been publisher published by Armor Games and Serenity Forge and 3D Realms using

this process. So the answer is simple. The framework, the blueprint is simple, but it is challenging, right? It is challenging. So I decided to do something about this, right? So I have thousands of of people who follow me on YouTube and they they're kind of wondering like, okay, how how do I do this? And so this is where the pitch comes in, guys. The pitch is if you want to enroll in full-time gamedev, you can use the code workshop. And that's just for today and tomorrow. So, for those of you interested in full-time gamedev, you'll also get 2DR Pro and 3DR Pro. And it's 40% off. So, for two days, 20 seats available, just 20. You can use code workshop. So, this is basically just a massive program that teaches. You can take it whenever you want. Go at your own pace. Use it as a resource. It's going to teach you how to turn an idea into a sustainable indie game studio where you actually get paid to make a game.

So, not only are you going to learn how to make 2D and 3D games in GDAU or Unreal or Unity, whichever engine you want to learn, you can pick your poison. You don't have to learn them all. You also learn how to get published, how to get crowd crowdfunded, how to get wish list, how to hit the Steamfront page, and you'll learn my tricks to getting millions of eyes on your game. I've actually done all this, right? So, this is my thing. I know how to do this. So, you're going to learn from an actual indie developer currently in the trenches right now making indie games. So, check it out below. See if it's something you're interested in. This is a really cool review that came in today. And this is quite literally came in today. Uh, this is from Andre. For the longest time, making a game felt like nothing more than an impossible dream, but Thomas's course was the turning point. And when I read that, I was like, "Oh, it's kind of like a a fancy glowing review of, I don't know, a dreamer, but they haven't really realized how hard it is." But then I read this second part. Now, we're about to launch our own published game this

year with a collector's physical edition. That's crazy to me. I wanted to show it to you, actually. So, right, where is it? Do I have it up? Pull it pulled up here. Oh, man. Where was it? I'll show it to you guys. It It's uh not right now, though. I'll show it to you hopefully after the after the stream um or after the Q&A. Chris Stair went full-time as well. Got published by Humble Games. Bart Mamser over $100,000 for his first big game. Uh Everflux Game got funded on Kickstarter with the help of the course. So, that's my pitch. Let's jump into the Q&A. Oh, by the way, there's a bonus. There's a bonus. If you enroll today or tomorrow, you get a full free mastermind meeting with Thomas. And so we'll jump on a private Discord call just those of you who enroll the 20 and we'll do a private intimate uh Discord call and ask questions, do some more idea auditing, take a look at your projects, help you out. Okay guys, thanks for letting me read that giant ad

read. Join, no risk, 30-day guarantee, blah blah blah, 40% off. I'll see you there. Okay, ready to do the Q&A? Ready to jump into the Q&A? Um, and by the way, talk about tomorrow really quick. Tomorrow's workshop is going to be a lot of fun. We're going to dive deeper into this. We're going to dive deeper into, okay, what how do you actually pitch to a publisher? What's it like working with a publisher? How do you how do you do a crowdfunding campaign? Um, what's it like working with platforms? I've worked with Apple Arcade. What's that like? Um, how do you get wish lists? How do you get essentially pre-orders that convert at a 10% 10 to 20% um rate? So, we're going to talk all about that tomorrow. But guys, let's go ahead and jump into the Q&A and see what we've got here. Let's jump into the Q&A. Oh my goodness, we got a ton of

questions. Yeah. Uh one of you said, "Are there any big SE success stories from your course?" You know what's funny? when you sell a course, you feel a little bit guilty because you're like, man, I hope I hope that I'm not just wrong. Um, but then these success stories come in. And look, indie gamedev is hard. Indie game dev is really hard. Um, so it's it's not like you're like 10% or 30% of the students went full-time. It's like, no, it's tough. It's hard to do. Um, making games is hard in and of itself. Going full-time is even harder. But it's amazing that I think I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people on the website. If you click the link below, you can see all the different reviews of people who went full-time and they use some method of generating revenue or just selling their game with wish lists. Um, it's just really cool. It's really cool to see students actually going full-time. By the way, if you're a student, let me know in the chat what you think about the program. Let's go ahead and jump

into the Q&A. All right, you guys ready? Woohoo! Q& A idea audit. Oh, I forgot to mention guys, if you enroll right now, I will Man, I am a salesman today. If you enroll right now, I will uh give you a shout out at the end of the stream. I'll pull up the the um different people who have enrolled and I'll give you a shout out. Um go ahead. Go ahead, Thomas. How do you deliver a private demo to players? This is a great question, Caesar. How do you deliver a private demo to players? You make them download a zip file with .exe or is there a link to Steam? Uh I I like to consolidate everything into Steam because Steam is a great like if let's say you're going to be you let's say you only want to test with private players, you may eventually get really great feedback and go, "Man, I need to I need to send this to Devolver." Well, if you're going to send it to Devolver, they want to see it.

It's not it's really professional to go, "Hey, here's a private beta key for Steam, right?" So ultimately, what you want to do is you probably want to just put different private branches on Steam. So on the back end, it's called Steamworks. There's different ways to do different versions of your game that are private. There's even keys that are for private use and you have they have they use a password to get that beta branch. And so what I do is I'll send it to like 30 people. I'll put a big old splash that says private and it's faded over top of the game or I'll put it at the top or something. It's probably best to put it on the whole thing so that if for some reason you send it to a friend who's an ass and the friend streams the game when they're testing it, it'll say private on it and hopefully the video will get taken down. Right? So that's that's how you do private private uh demo tests.

Yeah. Okay. Daniel has an idea. Stylized midpoly co-op interactive drama. It's It's too much. So that's too much. Um it seems like a bunch of um general ideas. Um, I would say co-op where you play where you are or in a Broadway play. That's kind of funny. I don't know how that plays out, but you're on a stage. I It's really not that your idea is bad. It's that you need to craft it in a way where it's spicy and that it makes more sense, right? Um the big word private inside. Yeah.

No, it's like splashed on the screen. It's going to ruin the gameplay. Like it'll look ugly. It's faded over top. It's kind of like doing top secret on documents. you put it on the demo so that they can't crop it out. Especially when you do these like let's say you want to do a public or a a beta test with like a hundred samples, you would reach out to 100 people. Some of them you don't know, but you you you don't trust them fully. You don't want them to do a whole let's play of the game. So sometimes you have to make it private like that or or make it secure like that. Okay. What else we got? Oh, like a Telltale game. I think that's fine. I I think that that's I I think that comes back to our original one of the original slides, which is you don't have to be brand new, but

you do have to try and stand out, right? Tactical. This is from armored hamster. Tactical waifu shooter. And I'm not I don't want super chats. I appreciate it and I love you guys. Thank you. But I don't want this to seem like I'm people are paying me to cons counsel them. Um so I'm I'll I'll answer this one, but I love you guys. I'm not going to answer I'm not going to prioritize questions based on getting paid. Um tactical waifu shooter hack and slash borrowing the combat. But I I do appreciate it. Seriously, armored hamster. um tactical waifu shooter hacken slash borrowing the com combat system from FF7 Rebirth in a horde mode setting. I think all you need to do is waifu shooter hack and slash for just to simplify that idea. Yeah, I think that that would work. But yeah, I mean I think it's I think it's interesting. I think I don't play these waifu games so

I don't know if they're popular but it sounds funny. Um, tower defense game where you are a fast food franchise and the towers are a menu item and enemies are hungry humans. Tower defense game. There's it's so try and shorten this. Try and shorten this if you can. Notice how a lot of you are giving me ideas. They're long. It's hard. It's hard to make an idea short. If you can do it in two words, you win. Spider Train Tower Defense game where you are a fast food franchise and the towers are menu items and enemies are hungry humans. That's funny. Fast food tower defense game. That's hilarious. So, you're probably wondering, you're like, "Okay, does Thomas want to hear my

single sentence pitches?" And I guess I guess I didn't clarify. So, let's do this. Okay, let's do a little practicing here. I need a single sentence pitch. Okay. So, even do do the single sentence and try and make it short, guys, because this is this is how a a good pitch works. Idea Zelda Zelda like but you can delete anything only to find those things trying to kill you in the end. I don't understand it. Um, try again. It might be a good idea, but I don't understand it. Crazy grandpa. Um, am I Okay, hold on. Yeah, I'm just stealing ideas. That's right, Kaden. That would be crazy. I mean, I can't think of a more sinister thing to do. Um, gladiator style card game, but

the fights are real time. 2D. I don't fully understand that. Gladiator style card game, but the fights Oh, that's that's cool. Oh, I love that. Starbucks. It's kind of like Pokemon. I mean, right? It's like here here's kind of how I see it. Uh your kids playing card like a Pokemon game and then the camera goes into the cards and then they and they come out and they fight, right? Or it's like wizards chess in Harry Potter. I think it's a great idea. I really like that. Waifu tactical combat. There you go. That works. I'm interested. This is from Real. Do I have a link for detailed course outline for Unity? Uh, could you email thomasulttimegamedev.com? Um, but I could tell you right now, Real, uh, it's

for the Unity. It there's a 3D one where you we, uh, David Why helps you build a walking sim, um, and do different puzzle elements and graphics in 3D. And then there's a 2D one which teaches you platforming um and how to how to do the artwork and the sprites um and how to code all everything about C is is is outlined in it as well. Um yeah or is taught is in it as well. Um my idea is genuinely scary non-predictable short SP horror game. Not sure if there's much of a hook there. war veteran returns to finish business. I think that that's a story hook and it's not there's not much of a hook there. It's pretty classic. Um I would say the way to the way to make that a hook is to

make it different and spicy. So you could say a um here's a good hook. Uh what [Music] a defamed what do you call it when when a when a soldier uh abandons they they get they get kicked out or fired. What what do they what do they call that? When a soldier gets kicked out of the army a something veteran returns to the war to restore his honor. Like that to me is is a better hook. I think that would make a great movie. Like he's he's a coward. He gets kicked out of the army in World War II. He goes home. His girlfriend is uh ashamed of him. And so he has an opportunity to go back to the war and not be a coward. I love that. I would watch that all

day. Dishonorably discharged. Yeah. So, a discharged soldier returns to war to reclaim his honor. Boom. That was so good. I love how I love I'm so excited by short, simple, clean. That's a good plot. A what was it? A discharged soldier returns to the battlefield, returns to war to reclaim his honor. I love that. Oh, I love when it just it flows so clean and it makes so much sense and it hooks you. Um, that that's a good story, right? Is that Rambo? Let's see here. Is that Is that Rambo? Um, I love that. That's Rambo First Blood. Well, I didn't know that. And that proves it's a good idea.

Is that Edge of Tomorrow, but he fights for the other side? Oh, cool. Yeah, I like that. Um, not an idea, but a question. How do you make a simple horror game unique? Uh, throw in one singular mechanic that really, really works and have them do that thing over and over again and scale it and then do jump scares. That's my theory. You know, it's kind of like a haunted house. Uh, you just build out this fun haunted house. It's a walking sim, but there's little puzzles they have to do throughout the way. Last Samurai. Yeah. Titanic gains sensience, comes back to life, and gets revenge on icebergs. Third person shooter. I love that. Loyal musty. That's really good. Honestly, it sounds like a really good uh if it was funny or if it took it really itself really really seriously, I think you'd

have to go pretty strong in one direction. Really really really funny or really serious. Titanic returns. Comes through the fog out of the water. Oh, show all these icebergs. Dramatic piano music starts to play. The Titanic is back for revenge and a cannon comes out of it on the front and then the camera zooms out and and shoot the cannonballs at the icebergs and they're breaking and exploding. I think that's a great idea. Y'all are giving all your good ideas on a live stream. You better be careful. Titanic, the final reckoning.

How do you make games scary and uniquely terrifying? Well, that's the thing, right? Is uniquely terrifying is a tough thing to do because scary there's there's age-old tropes that just always work, you know. Uh how do you make it scary? I would say that it's primarily the music and the lighting. Um I think I think there's three pillars of a scary game. I don't know if I've even applied these to Twisted Tower because I don't really consider Twisted Tower to be a horror game, but I would say lighting is crucial. So, dim lighting, but you can't have it too dim because then it's not really marketable. So, you it's a real fine balance. Um, but but you you basically essentially you're trying to hide the horror. You're you're trying to hide what's scary behind shadows. Number two, and that's so that's lighting. Number two is just really scary music. I mean, you get so much accomplished, which is real scary music. And then three, an actual

threat. So, like if the player's actually truly going to lose progress or really really uh like suffer when they die, um then I think it's going to be actually scary, right? Okay. Temple Run with no food. So, like Rogue Light, I mean, isn't Temple Run a Rogue Light? Is it Is it peradeth is what I mean? I don't know. I don't know. Temple Run, but with with but with food. Oh, I I'm not That's interesting. I'm not sure if it's hooky enough for me personally. Um, prison escape, but you're Matilda. Dragon Postal Service. I really really like that. Celtic dungeon. That's or Celtic Celtic Dragon. That's really

good. That's really good. I like that a lot. Um, a lot of times a really good idea is short and sweet, but it makes you think. You go, "What is what would that mean?" You know, what would that mean? Um, a broken middle school dev who tries to make a great game against all odds. Basically myself pitch horror survival where a doll maker tries to negotiate with haunted dolls by surviving their tantrums. I don't know if that's much of a hook for me personally. It's it's a little too hard to understand. like I don't quite fully understand what you mean by that. Uh how could we make that better? Let's think here. I could see it as kind of a Pikmin style game where you have the story is a doll

maker a doll maker's dolls become possessed and you have to convert and collect each one and bring them back on your side and sort of wage war against the other dolls. So, imagine you're in a giant huge mansion and it's isometric and you have all these creepy dolls hiding in the hallways and you have to start with one doll that's your little friend and then you collect and and make your way through with a flashlight and keep collecting all the dolls and bringing them to your side. Um, maybe in order to get them, you have to um you have to have a certain amount of dolls to like uh like beat him in the head or something. I don't know. Maybe maybe the dolls you collect shine light and then they they they come in there and you have to have a certain amount of light for a certain evil doll

and then they come to your side. you know, doll maker meets Toy Story. Yeah, something like that. Hey, this is from I can't read Mr. Prague. You said, "What's the song that plays on the train in Pinstripe?" It's just a song I wrote. Um, it's on it's on Spotify. You can listen to it. But I'm glad you like it. It seems like you like it. Uh Zelda. Okay, you did a you good. I like that you're redoing things. Um this is from the earlier one about Zelda like where you can delete anything. This is Zeldaike, but you can make anything disappear with seemingly no consequences, but in the end everything tries to kill you. Okay, I think there's something

here. A game where Okay, this you you kind of have to craft these a little differently. Get to the end of the maze. Let me let me try and craft this. There's There's something here. get to the end of end. So, the puzzle is you want to get from point A to point B. The only way to get from point A to point B is to blow up things. The problem is is the stuff you've blown up comes back to kill you. So, it's kind of like I can go the easy way and blow up a bunch of stuff or I can go the hard way and blow up a few things. Let's ask Chat GBT. Seriously, this is this is a great opportunity to show you kind of how we're going to do this. So, I like to use

Grock. Um, so what we can do here is I could say I have a game idea where you are in an open world or you are in a I would just say in a in a giant field. Uh, there are a ton of real world objects in the way. Rocks, logs, trees, all static world objects. The player must find a way through them and can break them into pieces. The problem is On your return journey, the ones you destroyed are sentient and attack you. It's some kind of puzzle. I'm not

sure how to say it in a simple way. Can you reframe all this so that it works in a single sentence? I'm putting together a pitch. Shorten it. Break through static obstacles like rocks and trees to reach their goal. But on the return journey, the destroys object becomes it. Simplify. make it more abstract, more like a puzzle and a shorter, a simpler sentence. So, this is a great I I love doing this trying to That's how you spell sentence. Uh, solve puzzles by breaking static objects on the return. The shattered pieces come alive and

attack. Simplify it more. Make it super short. It's not good enough. Break obstacles in a field. It's something like um break your way to the finish line. Combat combat them on your return. I I see it more as a puzzle mechanic than some kind of story. It's It's like there's something there and I find it interesting. What do you guys think? Tell write a log line. That's a good idea.

Is it bad to use AI? Well, I don't know the answer to that, but everybody's doing [Laughter] it. Navigate a vast field, shattering objects to solve puzzles. But beware. This is great. That that but beware really helps. Navigate a f a vast field shattering obstacles to solve puzzles. But beware. On your return, the broken pieces awake and attack in this thrilling puzzle survival adventure. There's something there, actually. Give it a story related to the mechanics. Make the story unique in a cursed field where chattered objects awaken as vengeful spirits. Solve puzzles by breaking barriers to uncover. Nope. Not going to do it. That doesn't work. It tried. I do like this. Vengeful spirits. Okay.

everything. Uh, okay. Ah, you're a bulldozer. Plow through anything to build your kingdom. Beware. Once the timer, Once the sun sets, your kingdom will be haunted by the spirits of the world you destroyed. There it is. Something like, "Okay, you're a bulldozer. Plow through anything to build your kingdom. Beware, once the sun sets, your kingdom will be haunted by the spirits of the world you destroyed. Fully destructible, but

consequences. I love that. Fully destructible, but consequences. Do you guys see how this works? Um, plow or be plowed. Whose idea was this message? I don't know whose it was. Um, but I think honestly I think that this it's Do you guys see it started as like a really like what and now it's sort of it's simplifying and and and and contracting into this really clean simple idea. Um, I like the idea of being a bulldozer and you have like investment money and you you clear out a certain world, a section of the world as you have the as the daylights is there and you build it's kind of like tower defense. You're building out this neighborhood. Um, and as the sun sets the trees like ants come

out. So all of the trees that you destroyed come back. You know, you already made a bulldozer destruction game. That's awesome. Oh man, cool. Cool. Well, guys, listen. you know, tomorrow if just remember that tomorrow um let's see here. What am I saying? I'm kind of running out of juice to be honest with you. Tomorrow, guys. Hey, tomorrow we're gonna um What are we doing tomorrow? tomorrow is talking about how to turn these ideas into six figures, right? I

mean, that's that's going to be the end goal for tomorrow. Um, so we will do uh what am I I sorry guys, I'm running out of steam. Um, uh, we will sell it to we're talk about selling it to a publisher, launching a Kickstarter campaign, or securing thousands of wish lists on Steam. So, be sure to check your email. Also, just hang out on YouTube and wait for the notification for when we're live. Um, and I will see you guys tomorrow. Thank you so much for hanging out. I hope this was helpful. I hope you guys had a lot of fun.