So I got this email...

hey guys my name is Thomas brush I'm the creator of a game called pinstripe I'm also working on a game called once upon a coma and I've been making games full-time for about 10 years and I got this email from a guy named Nate and it was I got sick and I woke up and I had a fever and I was reading my email on my phone in bed and this email just caught my attention and I felt like I needed to share it with everybody so I asked me if I could share it with everybody to give you guys some insight into maybe what it's like to be an indie developer when things aren't going the way that you want them to so I'm gonna read you his email which is kind of a sounds like a really boring video but I feel like a lot of you might be really interested in what he has to say so I'm gonna read you some of it and I've taken out some parts that I feel aren't the best things to share and it's a very open and honest

email which I very much appreciate from me so it starts out hello and nice to II meet you my name is Nate and I won't say his last name I own and operate a small indie game studio in Pennsylvania I wanted to say that I recently stumbled into your channel and I really appreciate what you're doing blahblah blah stumbled into an interview you had with Tim Russ wick and I was like oh so I'm not truly alone here so that intrigued me I was like what what do you mean so he said I hope this doesn't come across as a sob story I'm just pretty much at the end of my rope lately I'm not really sure who else I can talk to since my situation is so very different from my friends and my family and I got to say like I absolutely sympathize with that it's a very strange career path making games basically I've always known that I wanted to be self-employed and I have made that a reality since 2015

which not a lot of people who can say but it was not easy getting to that point since then ruining or running everything entirely alone has definitely taken its toll on me again I understand that sentiment stuff so he graduated with a BS in computer science in 2013 knowing that he wanted he didn't really want to work for anybody else again I sympathize with that it's just not how his brain was programmed so ba ba ba he was home on Christmas break his senior year and it hit him that graduating would with no marketable skills he was gonna be doing he was going to be graduating with no marketable skills and quote I did not want to work for anybody else so while school did help me get the foundation for software development under my belt that is pretty much all it did going to college ended up being my largest regret thus far but more on that later I hopped onto Amazon had picked up the newest highest-rated game development book I could find and I read it cover-to-cover over the weekend he made

a flash game released it he also made a game for game maker and so he learned a lot of things but never really made a commercially successful game which that's kind of how it starts out with a lot of team developers so this is what a story gets a little bit interesting so he continues to experiment and quote before I knew at graduation day came and went and I did not have any job prospects so I did what any super naive indie developer wannabe does and I started to concept a game that would turn into a huge learning experience it also was a total failure and never got past prototyping which that's normal for most of us do to my limited skills total failure and never getting weight due to my total limited skills knowledge in just the way that I approached it so instead of job hunting during the glorious six months grace period before my student loan payments would activate I got slightly better with learning to make games but I have shipped nothing and ended up bailing on the project panicking before the student debts

panicking because of the student debts I took the first job offer I got which was far from ideal for a manufacturing facility that I had worked part-time all throughout high school it was miserable 12-hour shifts at night man that's tough man good pay of what and somewhat okay benefits but the 12-hour nights made me a zombie of a human not to mention I work specifically as a blow mold operator which basically means I spent entire shifts inhaling molten plastic in a literal kill zone it makes me think of a Eraserhead like that environment that just I'm sure that's how it felt just very dark and lonely but you know we all got to work something after college so I'm sure you learned a lot I worked in a very in the very rear of the facility next to the refrigeration silos and was told basically if a specific light came on it meant there was a coolant leak and I had literally 15 seconds to get out of the area or basically melt your nose throats

and long coma well lungs I did actually try to give an entry-level programming job since I had no professional experience outside of college other than a few flash games I've made I made it to a few actual interviews which aside from being terrifying to me my heart was just not in it and I did not it did not have a poker face spoiler alert as you may know jobs near me at least don't give an F if you can make games they more so want to see if you can make a good drone which i think is the main reason I never could see myself working in the field on a professional level I catch a lot of flack for people around me and especially friends who graduated alongside of me who make about seventy and ninety thousand dollars a year and they will openly brag about how easily and cushy they have it which you know most a lot of my friends you know who make good money and and or at least when I was struggling who made good money it wouldn't be that they bragged but I understood that feeling of knowing how much people made and it was it was kind of difficult and call me

crazy for not cashing in on my degree I wholeheartedly disagree after working for myself for so long okay here it started to get more and more interesting and this is where it gets challenging so he the the factory job was a double-edged sword and it ended up being somewhat a good experience because he meets this like-minded individual and they start making games together so they released this game called flower tower and it quickly snowballs on YouTube I mean this has got to feel really good sales at this point were quote amazing for us but still not exactly what I was looking for since I was doing it full-time now steam has their 30% and then their taxes and of course when you own 50% a company you only get 50% so as partner gets 50% and there's just a little bit left over to keep this guy running so Nate continues here and this is where I should know this is my favorite part of the email and this is really important for you guys to

understand I'm kind of getting chills because it's so scary and it's something we should really really think about before you go to college so he says quote this is where I should touch on college being the worst regret of my life well from a financial aspect it was and still is I have never been able to afford to pay a cent higher than my minimum payment not being coached or anything of the nature of the subject of loans or interest I only made minimum payments I graduated with about $125,000 of that never missing a payment I still owe ninety two thousand dollars in the past five years I have paid almost eighty thousand dollars towards this one hundred twenty-five thousand way to go now it is almost yeah never mind yeah I'm just looking at these numbers is 99% interest my lower APR loan bla is

9% I will not be debt-free until my early 40s dude I'm sorry I was 23 when I graduated and I am 28 now and I won't even be debt-free what happens is after X years of making payments the loan kills itself so I'll actually have a balance but time will erase it at least that is my understanding you know but that's the thing right do we ever fully understand student loans my goodness the student debt has been controlling my life in the worst way imaginable and his only rese really has snowballed over the years in terms of stress it brings to my life lately I've been able to shut it out and try not to let it control me but it usually ends up finding away I just really wish I could go back and tell myself what I know now but that is how hindsight always works I suppose man this is really turning into a snow a novel and if you made it this far I really appreciate it hey I appreciate the email mate this is really cool I mean it's it's interesting and really

insightful so I appreciate that I just feel like I didn't want to bring up finances at all and now that I have you might be thinking okay this guy just wants a handout lol that is far from the truth and I don't think you do dude you just need some encouragement I just wanted to paint an accurate pic a curative picture as I can for when I asked you what the f should I be doing next since I genuinely do not know and as I started this email with I really don't know who else I could talk to about this runs out of money invests in a 400 this is me summarizing like a good chunk of the email which I don't really want to get into because it's just a big personal story and I don't know if Nate would appreciate me sharing it but basically and I've done this to where he invested in some things to hopefully get out of the situation he was in basically kind of getting rich quick kind of thing and and I've been

there so investing in things that didn't pay off and actually made things worse some of that included paying youtubers to actually play his games which can be not a good idea sometimes it's a great idea sometimes it's not okay so quote so I still have a fight left in me I somehow wake up to be super motivated in 2018 I have direction I'm working on some things I'm trying to learn more about marketing so I decided I'm going to make a hundred one two three slaughter me Street remastered which this guy made slaughter me Street which is a pretty cool game you can take a look at this team so he makes a remastered edition and since the three-year anniversary is coming up he decided to do that so quote I have a solid team now with me mostly focused on 3d and not to brag but I got good at unity inefficient with it good good job and I mean rightfully so I'm inside of it all day every single day that's awesome so I start putting teasers out on Twitter I wake up shortly after the

after to a a cease and desist from somebody who is related business-wise to this guy so the project was put on hold because of this cease and desist which I can't honestly tell you whether it was 100% his fault or 100% year fault I don't know the story but regardless that sucks it ended up being extremely expensive to work with lawyers dude I've been there I know how it is usually the bill is like double what you thought it would be but anyway he says quote this was a super hard blow for me I didn't understand since my former partner had basically become a youtuber creating I'm not gonna read this here anyway his yeah his partner is doing something completely different and so it doesn't even matter at least in this in this position he feels like it was kind of a pointless seized in this season desist because it wasn't gonna really hurt his partner but I don't know the truth they're fully you never really know the

whole story um so he says quote after all these things that are challenging where you can't really work on this game he says I'm almost finished I promise okay so this is where it keeps getting better and better in terms of it's a good story it's just it's really challenging to hear and I do feel a lot for Nate which is why I wanted to share with you guys but he says for the record this was going to be brief but the more I thought about it I decided the more I included the better I started writing this email at 11 a.m. EST and it's currently 2 p.m. it's a I mean it's a good letter dude I'm glad you did I'm glad you did and I've spent a long - one time I spent two hours writing an email to a very prominent youtuber I can't write I could say Felix so it it was like a paragraph so I understand how I feel he says I should publish this email

to some capacity okay anyway so during the legal struggle he was losing money and he had zero projects that he could launch legally without you know people he'd worked on in the past working on these with him wanting to get involved as well so he quite literally said to himself amidst quote a daily existential crisis a rabbit hole fever dream downward spiral thought process it doesn't in here I got goose bumps you just have to make something better than anything you have ever made I might have heard it in Gandalf's voice as well I ended up concept in creating and shipping a brand new IP still have no idea how I ended up summoning the courage and dedication to do this which I would consider my most comprehensive game to date called midnight evil cool it was actually extremely well received basically it went above and beyond what he wanted

but what ended up happening is what ended up happening was not to get too detailed here but he got number two trending on YouTube paid for some youtubers to help him out and didn't get a spike in sales who's been there I've been there so sales are just lukewarm and he's looking around for help and he doesn't know where to go what the next step is so here's the conclusion of the email guys and then I'll give my advice which is what Nate was asking for to begin with he says at the end of the day all I want to do is make games I don't want to carry this debt and I just want to work for myself I don't want to be rich I just want to be at peace mental mentally physically the thought of returning to a factory job after doing what I love for so long it haunts me the thought of starting an

entry-level job for someone else so they can make money off of my work is even worse I lay awake at night and I think about all the stuff that I can do and then I have overcome over the years that I've been in this rat race and it doesn't make sense to me how is it that a 17 year old twist streamer high school dropout they can make a lot of money I'm not gonna go into detail what he says here but I'm I am stretching myself so thin and could barely keep my loans paid I haven't actually saved money since I was working in a factory it always goes back to the company or bills meaning his company and it blows my mind that [Music] that if any of the top dog youtubers just took 15 minutes and played any of the games any there's a high likelihood that money won't be a problem for me actually dude Nate by the way I don't think that's true I've had really big youtubers play my games including jacksepticeye and I didn't see a huge

spike in sales that said you know I am paying the bills so that's good it really messes with your psyche that's what he said so I wanted to reiterate I'm not looking for a handout or you to employ me or anything I just want wondering since you have been in my shoes before what should I be doing I started to strap down on my companies only other assets other than games which is YouTube I do want to help other would-be developers in the technical aspects and also in an effort to grow the size of my channel blah blah blah but I'm really not sure what else to do thank you for making it this far Thomas I look forward to and thank you everybody for making it this far and I look forward to hopefully hearing from you if not I totally get it I realized this kind of thing is good it's a good way to get blacklisted no not this case dude at least that is what I used to tell myself that I would reveal too much to people in the past in this cutthroat industry we all reside

that's a tough email from from mr. Nate Thank You Nate for your email here's my advice there's a lot of things here that there that that you can't really do anything about and by the way guys I said I sent this message to Nate and so he knows my response here there's a lot of things here that you can't really do anything about like student debt unless you know you want Bernie Sanders elected and somehow I'm laughing because I just don't see it happening but in terms of being possible but like getting student student debt erased that's a huge thing and a huge problem and we need to figure it out I just don't know it's possible to actually erase it but we'll see so there's not anything you can do about your student debt and alternatively the pattern that I see

here is that a lot of us as any developers we look at a problem we have in life and we think oh I can just make a game and it will solve the problem I'll make X amount of dollars and it will solve the problem but I think the truth is is that the indie game industry is really getting more and more challenging really way more challenging than I thought it would be for sure it's part of the reason why I do YouTube because it brings in some supplemental income some predictable income if I didn't do YouTube same same story with Nate here if I didn't do YouTube I would be fine but the future would look bleak because I would be I would be burning through cash way faster but now I have this supplemental income from YouTube and it it helps my mental state so what I told Nate is I said I think you should go get a job and and so that you can recover

mentally and so that you can not have to worry about the bills and not have to worry about maybe not one day being able to be responsible for yourself the best thing the best thing anybody can do is to bear responsibility to bear responsibility and and know deep down that they can handle it that they can handle their own bills that they can handle life and they got to control they have control over their life to be able to pay your rent to be able to buy your own food and not worry about it it's a huge huge for mental health so my recommendation to anybody who's watching my channel who's saying I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna I'm gonna dive deep into this indie game that I'm making and I'm gonna make a lot of money and I'm gonna love it you should know that it's very difficult to pay the bills with one indie game let

alone multiple indie games like Nate here so if you're at a situation like that go get a job just go get a job go get a job a full-time job for a couple years and work your butt off continuing to make games and then you'll get that portfolio going and you'll figure out how you failed in the past and you can finally start releasing games that I hate to say it but you you focus on being commercial commercially viable that's what I would do focus on making a profitable game that's not wrong especially when you have a family and bills to pay figure out how to make a game that's profitable and what that means is focusing on what's working right now in the markets specifically you guys have heard me talk about this a thousand times stream ability is your game streamable make your game something that streamers really love and that's okay as long as you can merge that with what you're passionate about then you're making a

game that's profitable but it's also from your heart so Nate dude I would say go get a full-time job and it sounds like you don't have any other social commitments so go ahead and and work a full-time job Wednesdays and Sundays or something go to I don't know go to a church or something if you go to church or go hang out at some some bars and get some get a good community of people or build a community at a gym or CrossFit start building friendships outside of game development and at work and also say okay Mondays Tuesdays Thursdays and Fridays I'm making the best game I've ever made and it's gonna be from 5:00 p.m. to midnight on those days so keep your social group while also saying I'm gonna commit to not being social at all on specific days and I'm gonna make a kick-ass game and and and you could do it Nate because you've done it before you've made games but but now you can

actually make games and not worry about how it performs the worst thing for your game the absolute worst thing for your game and I'm talking to all of you watching this the worst thing for your game is caring about how it performs financially it doesn't mean you can't focus on being smart and strategic about how it performs commercially but if that's the only focus you're gonna make a crappy game there's not gonna be any heart in it you're gonna make a game that's a repeat of another game and I've been there so the worst thing you can do is struggle financially while making a game so go get a full-time job it doesn't mean you have to work in a factory dude I'm sure you can you can look around find another job even if it's you know waiting tables or something just just enough money to bring in to not worry about money and then make that game on the side I think that'll really help you out and one final thing and I'll pump my arm

muscle right now while I say it no I'm kidding one final thing I told Nate and you'll get my joke in just a second one final thing I told Nate is to join a gym and workout every night because the human mind I'm getting chills why am I getting chills I think it's because I recognize how important it was for me and my anxiety when I was making games join a gym or join a join a fitness community hey it's great place to meet meet potential partners for games and for marriage right and that's always good but join a gym the the human mind is not meant to sit in front of a computer all effing day the human mind is meant to experience the chemical rush we get when we work out when we coz and I'm not saying like cavemen had to work out I'm saying cavemen they had to physically exhaust themselves on a daily basis just to survive so our DNA is meant for that

so when we physically exhaust ourselves it's good for our mental health that way we can make games Nate this was a really good email can we all do something in the comments can we encourage Nate can we tell Nate that he's a he's a valuable human being that we love Nate and that we wish him all the success in the world and that we're there and we understand how he's how he's feeling and what he's going through thanks guys so much for watching if you like this video please subscribe please hit comment or please comment hit the notification bell and consider supporting me on patreon and supporting Nate by clicking the links in the description in fact don't support me on patreon just just go to Nate's stuff just go to Nate's stuff