"Solo Game Dev Sucks" (Chat With Indie Game Developer Jonas Tyroller)

hey guys how's it going my name is thomas brush i make indie games for a living and so does my guest jonas um jonas how you doing buddy doing really well thanks for having me yeah no problem man so it's going to be a really really casual conversation guys and we're going to talk about why solo game dev sucks it absolutely sucks and i think jonas you can agree a little bit there yeah we're we're both doing solo game dev and we're both done with that and in this video you will learn why yeah i'm and i've i've actually been uh kind of not doing solo game dev for a while and we're going to talk about why you should do game solo game dev why maybe you don't want to do it and if that if you're in the right season of your life so we'll we'll talk about that and and hopefully maybe we'll get some good spicy comments in the in the comment section we'll see because i know a lot of you are solo devs and a lot of you aren't so we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about the launch of your game how to make indie games how to do it full time how to make it a living and your marketing strategy and i know

you're probably in a little bit of a stressful situation right now because you're about to launch your game right yeah my first solo project is about to release and i'm gonna get some advice from from thomas hopefully oh yeah we're gonna talk about how to how to hit the steam front page which you know can't make any promises i've i've done it a couple times and i believe it was a couple times maybe it was only once but anyway we'll talk about all of that so i'm gonna run an intro jonas and then we'll get started [Music] by the way guys feel free to download my free 2d game kit below it's totally free it's my treat to you i used this exact 2d game kit to make a game for pewdiepie in 14 days and then i got to play it in front of his subscribers which was really awesome um so download that use it however you want it's my treat to you

yeah okay okay so why does solo game dev suck let's let's let's sort of air that out the dirty laundry why does solo game dev suck at least in your opinion i'll try to make it short it takes extremely long like i made a game called islanders in a team before we finished that game in three months was a great game very high quality stuff and now it took me four years to make a game alone and it's not really any better than what we made in a team of three before so making games on a team way more efficient better results better chance of success and it's also not as lonely i know right so this is an interesting you made an interesting comment which is isla islanders your previous game that you did with a team you said it was better do you think it's better than your current game or you said it yeah i'm i'm saying they are both very

competent games but the development of islanders was way more time efficient way way way more time efficient because everybody in the team could kind of specialize on one thing right i really like doing game design and balancing and gameplay coding so for islanders i pretty much just did that and then we had a really talented artist who could just do that and you when i do art it takes so much longer because i have to take multiple attempts then the first one turns out to be crap after after half a year i look back at it and like damn i have to redo that art that's just not the case when you have like a really dedicated artist on your team i know so if you have a couple of really specialized people that can do certain things really well that helps so much it's so much more time efficient and it makes for a better product probably yeah i've had that experience as well because i'm working on my third game and my second one i had one other team member and he did the code and i did like everything else and then this one

i've got a 3d modeler i got i had a guy who did all the code base he's not really working on the project anymore because he sort of set up he basically made source engine for the game which is really cool um inside of unity and then i do like the art direction and then i've actually got a guy doing music as well and i just noticed that the game is so much better than anything i could have done on my own and i guess i guess my concern is though i like to have a team that i understand who's getting what right so paying people or royalties and so i am curious with islanders you had a team that you kind of had to maybe you don't have to answer this if you don't want it but split up revenue and stuff and i'm sure that the problem is is that you said both games are basically equal in quality but you're probably maybe gonna make more money from will you snail because it's just you right whereas you don't necessarily have to split revenue

it's obviously more money per game but if it's going to be more money in total i yeah that's going to be a hard one to crack i can tell you that i see i see low bragging well that's interesting so you're saying that maybe with a team even though you're splitting up revenue it might be worth it because that game is going to be like four times better and sell four times as many copies yes i'm saying exactly that and i'm also it's you know every game is a little different island this was a very casual game with a very big target audience now we'll use nail as a more niche game so it just has a naturally smaller target audience so there are different factors playing into that okay so it's hard to make a direct comparison right so how what's your personality like are you somebody who likes to spend time with people while you work or do you like to sort of hunker down be a hermit and work alone because you mentioned you mentioned you get kind of lonely as a solo dev and i do too but i actually kind of enjoy the

loneliness i like to be alone and just talk to a camera and pretend i'm social when in reality i'm just talking to a camera on my youtube channel but i'm curious how you work do you like working with people i think there's this definition right that introverts recover energy from being alone and extroverts recover energy from being with people i'm definitely an introvert i need my alone time otherwise i completely break apart but that doesn't mean i don't enjoy being with people or working with people i very much do enjoy working with people but i do need my alone time i yeah that's that's my start yeah does your hey does your youtube audience drain you because they're people yeah i mean you know but i don't have to engage with them like if i don't feel like engaging with them i just turn off the computer or turn off discord and you know okay so yeah you know and also i would say my tier list for for working

solo working on a team i would say bottom tier is working with the wrong people that's like the worst thing you can do yeah then middle tier is working alone fairly decent can work and then top tier is obviously working with the right team okay is that what i would say yeah so so what's the hardest thing well i mean there's a lot of questions related to solo dev what are all the things you've done just you and i'm assuming it's everything but i was just curious if you could just list them out and how you did it because that's a huge feat dude i mean yeah i'm wearing a lot of different hats like i do the programming i do the art i make all of the sound effects i com post the entire soundtrack actually the soundtrack is something i'm kind of proud of it's 25 tracks almost an hour of music and whoa i like it wait you did the music that's crazy yeah what are you using to do the music uh cubase you make music as well uh sometimes

right i've heard something i do and stuff yeah and thank you i do my own music too i do it in logic pro on apple um i'm not using apple products right now because i'm not really writing music but i used to write a lot of music and i didn't usually meet a lot of developers who would use their create their own music uh and you're doing the art as well right um okay and the marketing and like the youtube videos at the same time what's the what's the thing that you that is the hardest thing for you to figure out like of all the hats which one's the hardest thing for you to figure out i feel like the one where i'm handicapped the most is the art the the visuals of the game really they look so pretty but they're also so freaking important for marketing you're so incredibly handicapped if your graphics don't look right and i feel like for will you snail yeah i got to a decent level but it's still very much

programmar and still i think worse what than what i could have done with a dedicated artist okay but yeah i tried to make the best of it but it took me way longer than it should have and it could it could look even better i think what are you using for the art what's your process uh for art i very much have a trial and error like approach because my approach to art is kind of if you find it difficult to create something beautiful then just create a bunch of different things and decide which one is you like the best because like deciding which one is the most beautiful is way easier than creating something beautiful so i just throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and then see what i like best wait what do you mean are you saying you sort of guess and check style very slow process so are you saying you like guess and check different styles and and pick the one that works best for you is that what you're saying yeah i remember in the beginning i even went as far as to run completely

like write a script that randomizes the colors of the game and then i would just step through random color schemes and i wrote down what i like yeah so there wasn't really a rhyme or reason with your art style i don't know just kind of evolved like don't question me about art stuff yeah i think that's where i have to question you you need to do this the other way around how do you approach making art for your game uh there's a science at least for me when it comes to color color is one of those things where if you actually follow the science behind it you actually look like a genius and i'm not saying i look like a genius but i'm saying that you can you can get closer and i'm getting closer and closer to that point where i can pick a color scheme and immediately it looks good um it didn't used to be that way because i've been doing this for like 15 years just animation and game dev and and and illustration and what i've learned is the the best way the best way to have

a beautiful color scheme that works with your marketing that's the important part because you need a trailer and you need people to buy your game and when you have a good color scheme you can make anything look pretty so what i do is i actually use there's there's color wheels that show different um color schemes so one of them is called the triad i think triadic color scheme and so an example of it would be like orange in its complementary color which would be purple and then you would throw in um let's see here like a like a yellowish green and i'm not sure if that's a people are gonna rip me apart in the comments but it makes a triad it's if there's a big color wheel you're picking the three right or you can just do complementary colors and just i always choose opposites i always do that so if your snail was yellow you would choose like a blue right or like a tealish blue for like all the background elements so and also something to keep in mind with

color and then i'll shut up is and your colors look great and will you snail by the way um but one of the things that i keep in mind with color is instead of a 50 50 split of two different colors let's say you choose two colors what you do is you wash you know sort of a monochromatic color like a ton of tealish blue and then your character the snail is a vibrant pop of like red or orange and then you even add a little bit of a glow to it with a post-processing effect and you could do this with just squares so i'm a huge fan of making very simplistic shapes and then making sure the color has a science to it and you can just type in color wheels um on google and you can just look at all the different color schemes and just pick one and and there's science to that it just it just works with the human brain but your dude your game looks great i agree that color wheels and uh predefined color schemes make things a lot easier but i'm i'm afraid that you still need a little bit of experience to

execute even with those colors correctly because you kind of need a feel for how much of each color and it's not as easy as just slapping those yeah or three colors on there and it automatically looks good it looks better than when you just pick colors completely at random but uh there's there's more a little more to it yeah so what about marketing dude so so artwork is it it's your it's your thorn in your side right and i don't see if that's if that's the struggle for you then dude you're you're all set because your art looks great um but you're what about marketing like that's i know i know you mentioned you got a publisher for console but you're doing mark marketing all yourself right me not in not entirely anymore okay like uh i i've as as i was approaching launch i i felt that i got very overwhelmed by all of the things that are still to do like there's so so many

tiny bug fixes and improvements i still want to make to the game yeah and then there's some marketing on top of that so actually hired a community management slash marketing company to help me out a little bit and so far they've been great but i can't really say too much about that because we've only been working together for like one week oh wow brought them on a little too late so dude that's a little a little tight before launch but um so what about what about solo developers out there who can't afford to do that are they screwed no of course not like there's for islanders we didn't have that for islanders we went such a minimalist approach with marketing and the reason why it worked for islanders is that it was such an appealing game like we posted one trailer on twitter and it just kind of went auto viral yeah he didn't have to do anything then press started reaching out and the game sold itself because it just looked nice okay for will you snail i'm having a harder time because

you know if you compare graphics from islanders to will you snail not quite the same level like the appeal is not quite on the same level and um that makes such a huge difference it's really for graphics and for visual appeal it's exponential return um like it multiplies all of your marketing efforts like if you have a more appealing game a more nice looking game that people want to play you need to put half the time into marketing and still get the same results yeah yeah i definitely found that to be true i think that's astute of you to say because and i know you didn't mention this but maybe we're agreeing it 2d games are harder to sell than 3d games and was islanders was a 3d isometric top-down game right it wasn't really isometric was it was it was a perspective but it kind of had that feel yep yeah it's it's a 3d game yeah so when when you make a trailer with a 3d

game and i've been finding this with my first person game it's like you don't just have to show you know the character running with the gun or with islanders you don't just have to show the gameplay if you want you can create sequences where the camera circles around all the beautiful art and so you can just make a more cinematic trailer and so i guess my question is you know your work have you had the viral moment yet with with will you snail like where the trailer it gets you know 250 000 views or something like that or is it more of a grind with will you snail just maybe because it's a 2d game it's it's a way bigger grind for will you snail okay i can definitely say that as as mentioned basically islander sold itself because then then again it also got very great conversions on steam steam as well is very algorithm driven so if steam sees oh people uh very often buy this game and they really like clicking this thumbnail then

obviously steam shows it to more and more users so basically we didn't have to do anything that's really great right and for williams um so far it's way more of an uphill battle but i have a different advantage this time that i didn't have foreign i know and i'm hoping that that will balance it out a little bit so we'll see how that goes are you willing to disclose your wishlist numbers i think it's something like 25 000. great that's great that's that's what i had when i launched never song which was my a 2d platforming game and the benefit the benefit of the wish list numbers is it really helps you with launch so you just you can hopefully get that splash um and like you said the steam algorithm will will notice that you've got that big splash um and i think i'm not sure the i honestly don't know the numbers but i think neversong is something around

i think maybe it's 150 000 just on steam which isn't a ton of money but i think most people in the audience are like that would be awesome if i could do that that's pretty decent uh yeah and but we the the money the real money from never song came from other places uh like deals like deals and stuff like that with platforms but you know it's that's pretty good and so my thought process is i started out with i had 25 000 wishlists as well and we didn't have a real we didn't really have we actually yeah we didn't have a pr team or anything um it was just me and my publisher and we we treated it as a i mean they weren't very big at the time and so we treated launch pretty pretty chill um and it was cool because you know we sort of had this relief because apple bought never song from us for their platform apple arcade and they paid us and that payment was actually such a relief and so the stress of launch was gone because i was like well we got apple so

we can launch on steam and we're not going to worry too much but it still went well and we had that advantage i had that advantage of my youtube channel to really help with that so have you i guess a good question is if we've got solo devs in the audience do you recommend that they go the youtube devlog route and make videos about their game to ultimately i mean danny does this really well danny danny makes sure in every one of his videos to say hey wish list my game and by the way guys wishlist jonas's game in the description it's an awesome looking game it's called will you snail um but my question is should solo developers out there start a youtube channel or just build a big social media presence to build up those wish lists i think you should pick one social media platform and try to hone in on that it doesn't necessarily have to be youtube because everybody has slightly different skill sets if you don't like being in front of a camera or something then just uh write a blog or pick twitter or you

know there are different platforms for for everybody right some people are really great at making like nice looking gifs of their gifts of their game and they are they'll feel right at home on twitter okay main thing i would say is don't try to spread yourself too thin pick one main platform and then maybe one backup platform and try to master those okay okay so what's your primary platform my primary platform is uh youtube my backup platform is twitter okay okay that's a that's a great way to think about it it definitely is it relieves a lot of the stress and that's that's true for me as well actually i've kind of i'm not a twitter guy twitter annoys me i i have a good following on twitter i think i've got like um uh 13 000 followers on twitter but twitter annoys me and so instagram is a much more pleasant place to be everyone's a lot more encouraging on instagram so i'm building

that up as well um what's the benefit of youtube devlogs how many subscribers do you have and what kind of engagement do you see and i hate to use the word conversion but like a conversion into a wish list do you see a pretty good conversion rate yeah but one thing you have to keep in mind mind is that everything comes with advantages and disadvantages right so the advantage of youtube is that engagement is really good wish list conversions are really good so my steam wish lists 100 correlate with the with the views i get on youtube so whenever my views on youtube go up my steam wishlist go up and you know you know like the ratio of conversions yeah yes that's great the range of conversions i'm not sure like how many convert but yeah this is pretty decent like so if you don't mind can i ask you an honest question would you do youtube if it didn't create wish lists and didn't build up your your potential for revenue

uh probably not no i started youtube i know same here i mean people people don't understand it is a business you know you're running a business yeah sure but there's not no problem with that right no because everybody's in for their own benefit and that's the same is true for the viewers like the viewers are not here uh because they want to support you out of the uh like because they just love you all right because of the belief in god and they think they need to support the small indie devs the viewers are here for inter entertainment they're here for information and it's a trade you know we provide that and we get the wish list in return so yeah everybody gets what they want yeah it is a trade in in how you handle like for those of you who want to start a youtube channel providing value while also sneaking in the ad read of like hey you know you can check out my game or hey here's a free

game like i offer a free free game kit i offered it during this podcast i think what people don't realize is even danny when danny goes you should wishlist my game on steam he's not he's not just doing a one-off thing that is the target like with with a video i mean i can't speak for him and i'm i've actually started a conversation with him i'd love to have him on the show but um and i'll ask him this is is the target wish lists is that actually what your youtube videos are all about because i if he said yes i would not blame him at all because he's got one of the top voted wishlist games on steam right and and i got 25 000 wish lists for never song and so it's something to consider um if you're a youtube developer or if you're a indie or a solo developer or even if you have a small team creating infotainment on youtube is massive because it is dude it's really hard can you imagine if you didn't have your youtube channel

would you be able to secure enough wish list to actually have a pretty decent launch you know could do you think you'd be able to figure it out somewhere else um i would have figured it out somewhere else yeah like another social media platform i would have gone for twitter or yeah would have gone for another social media platform okay um it would have been equally successful i don't know probably not because video i'm i'm good at making video stuff you really are dude you're you're hilarious and you know it's it's funny i have a lot of game dev friends on discord and they always bring up your name because your content is hilarious um so really quick question i think a lot of solo developers right now listening to this are thinking there's just too much to do yeah you know do you have to be kind of a genius to be assault to be a solo dev no i don't think so um you just have to play it smart i

think um be very aware of where your strengths are and try to play into those strengths right this basically what i talked about with the social media platforms earlier if making videos or talking on camera is not your strength then don't make a youtube channel then do something that fits your skill set a little better and yeah i think the same is true for your game if you're if you're like a really good artist then make a more art focused game and there are a lot of ways to find find your way through that if you're if you're smart about it obviously make small games small games can be just as profitable as big games you should always make small games it's a small indie developer one of the things everybody says but nobody does included yeah yeah so you know did the solo developers need to understand marketing do they need to understand how to run a business oh they either need to understand how to

do marketing or they need to understand how to find somebody who can help them with marketing okay so or or they need to understand how to make a game that is so incredibly appealing that it sells itself good luck all the options yeah yeah that's that's what i used to tell myself um and i had a really high view of myself growing up as a teenager i was like i'm the greatest artist i'm gonna make great games and change the world and i remember sitting at dinner or something with my father-in-law and uh or my future father-in-law i i said no he was like do you have a marketing plan and i said no it'll sell itself and he was like you absolutely need a marketing plan it's not going to sell itself and you know what's crazy is even with this massive marketing plan and i think we for for pinstripe my very first game we had a publisher armor games we had a ten thousand dollar marketing budget for a press uh a pr company

and even with that the launch was it wasn't it wasn't bad but it wasn't great i think we had grossed maybe 40 000 in a month but the problem was is that when you work with a publisher and we could talk about your publisher in a sec if you don't mind when you work with a publisher they take a cut and they also you know recoup the advance um so the advance that they had paid me i had to recoup that and so we didn't i personally didn't make any money within like the first three months which was tough because i just found out we were gonna have a kid uh so it's like it's a ton of uh well it's it's stressful it's really really stressful ultimately and that was that was with a publisher so i can't imagine going full solo with with no publisher um and so i guess i wanted to transition the conversation to how is preparing for this launch going for you

are you are you freaking out yes make it short yes yes yes i'm too far gone yeah um yeah but you probably know the feeling it's uh horrifying absolutely horrifying because uh your game's never gonna be perfect like you're in your mind you're aware of all of these little issues you most game developers are incredibly self-aware about like all of the things that are wrong with their game and then you just have to release it anyway because it's never gonna be perfect and it's very scary it's very very scary especially if you put four years into it if you put a lot of laugh and effort into it and yeah you you just kind of feel that urge of just pushing it back and back and back but you you can't keep doing that forever and you just have to get out there at some point what are you going to do if it flops

luckily i think i have enough financial backup to give it another go after that even if we sniff flops okay i don't think it will by the way i just i make sure that for me personally that i'm not suddenly in shock and i don't know what to do with my life yeah if something flops right exactly yeah that's definitely very important that you kind of play being a game developer like a strategy game you're you're like very strategic about how many resources do you have what do you invest them in and yeah resources are both your time as well as your money yes i i maybe you can say something about that because i know you are very strict about this like you you don't spend any time on on something you don't see any return on investment on lately yeah well you know um i so i have two kids now and i have a one-year-old and a four-year-old and i have a home um i just recently bought

some land that we want to build a house on and i'm really really really lucky and blessed because things have been going really really well with with the studio but my point in that and i'm married and i've got a dog he's laying behind me you can see his butt right there just in that little corner right there there it is hey buddy um but anyway i have a i have a family like a and i have people relying on me um and suddenly you go i don't give a crap about being an artist now obviously i'm being a little bit sarcastic here but like that's that's the last thing on my list right now right now it's like no no i want to build a profitable studio and so and that's that's what i teach my students that's what i teach my subscribers this my channel is all about entrepreneurship in the game dev sphere if you want to be an artist and a purist have at it but once once you get a little bit older i sound like an old man right now but

once you get older and you have kids or people depending on you it becomes a little bit more of a priority to make money um and so what i do is this is maybe you can speak to this if i if a if an image isn't get or a video or some post about my game's development doesn't do well on social media it doesn't get traction i actually conclude that the game won't get traction either so a good test case is if your if your images and your your videos that you're posting on social media aren't getting good traction it means that you need to refocus on on getting getting that hook for the game whether it's the graphics or the mechanics and just twist twist twist and keep making tweaks as you're posting on social media if profitability is the goal right if profitability is not the goal then make your game and have fun but if profitability is one of your primary

goals then you should use social media as almost like the alpha test right uh to see is this game marketable right and by the way just because something's marketable doesn't make it a good game but marketability is kind of the first barrier you have to cross over before actually releasing your game because you need to figure out is this going to be marketable and if if it's not if for some reason it's not getting traction i need to figure out why and then refocus have you ever had that experience i mean i one i think what you've just said is very very clever and i 100 agree it's such a big pitfall if you just make a game that is not very marketable right and then you at the end you figure out okay either i cannot market this or i have to spend like 100 x the amount of time on marketing compared to other developers to make up for it doesn't yeah yeah so i think what you what you said that

you like try out the market marketability of your game early on is very very smart i wish i would have done this a little more as well i mean if you kind of have a have an audience it's a it's a little harder because they just like everything you do [Laughter] well that's that's i've totally found that to be true and when my thinking is look for growth here's here's a good metric if you're getting growth on specifically like twitter or instagram and it's it's people who like your game that's a good indicator as opposed to no growth but just a lot of a lot of um comments and likes comments and likes are like well those are just from your current fans but what about are you getting growth like are you at getting new followers right because that means the algorithm is pushing your content because it's getting good engagement right which by the way i'm not i'm not saying this happens with me i'm trying to figure it out and what i've found is

when this is so funny with with my with father my my current first person shooter game um the one the one i had a pixelated retro style and i actually really preferred this style i liked this style it looks like a playstation game it didn't get a lot of traction i hired a 3d modeler and he repurposed all the graphics to look more kind of like it almost looks like if wind waker legend of zelda wind waker and uh half-life had a baby that's what the style looks like it's kind of toony but like serious then all of a sudden the traction went up and i was like so if the traction on social media is going up that means that this thing is way more marketable than it was even though the comments are saying thomas a lot of comments are like thomas i miss the playstation style in my head as a businessman i ignore those because i'm like well the traction's up so sorry yeah you know i think father looks great those creepy corridors they look

incredibly marketable i think this will work extremely well especially with the steam audience because as far as i know steam audience is kind of known to like these dark first persons yeah i think very you're on the right track with that so so what about will you snail is marketable to you and what for those for people who are like what do they mean by that uh what i mean what makes it sellable what makes it something that can be profitable so what about will you snail do you feel is marketable and what about it do you feel is not yeah so marketability is basically that feeling you get when you see a screenshot or a gif or a short description and you're like i want to play that yeah um will you snail has a very good hook like will you snails a rage platformer where an ai predicts your movement so you as a player go up against them basically it's a very simple ai algorithm behind the scenes but it's it feels more intelligent than it is you

know um so you have to you're kind of fighting this mental battle with the ai and i feel like that is a very interesting hook i've not seen this in any other game before and i feel like that is something a lot of people find interesting uh what i struggle with is a little bit yeah the the art as mentioned um what i did well with the art is it pops like if you see a screenshot or something you notice it because it's very vibrant colors it's very neon-ish and glowy so it's not like you're gonna miss that gif or something because it looks so just realize it's there which happens with some games so you notice it but you're not like uh this is something i instantly want to play how do you know that though because one here's the one thing that makes a huge it's like the ultimate hack for marketability if your art style or if your art

communicates the hook of your game if for example you look at a screenshot or a gif and you instantly understand the hook of the game that is where the magic is really at i think because then you don't even need to explain the hook anymore the problem is if people see your game and they don't understand the hook and the you know then the hook is not in yet so portal is a great example of that put the hook in yeah like portal portal from you know it's it's you they they don't even need the title they don't need the description on steam they don't need anything they could literally show a screenshot and you go i gotta play that right which explains i think valve bought that from an indie team that that mechanic they bought it i could be wrong there but if they did let's assume they did i i understand why they would pay 10 million dollars for that idea because that's that one idea is is worth way more than that

clearly um so i mean it's it's a it's a it's a shame because i'm not the guy i'm not the idea guy like i don't come up with really cool hooks and mechanics my thing is storytelling and ambience and mood and it is in 2d games you would think that that's great but there's so many 2d games out there that are moody atmospheric games and so be like if you're if your skill set and i'm talking to the audience here if your skill set is coming up with really good hooks like jonas mentioned then you're all set you just and obviously you gotta you gotta figure out how to get great art but i think the hook if you can get that hook you're golden and i think your hook is really cool you have to be a good communicator as well because just having a hook is not enough you need to find a way to communicate your hook with with text and with visuals right right

having a hook is not enough you need to get the hook in that's that's yeah well you know but what's interesting though and i've talked about this a lot on my channel games like hollow knight don't have a hook right celeste not really there's no the the hook is this game is like a metroid game yeah that's the hook exactly i am uh and the hook i feel like the hook can also be the mood for example when i when i see father i instantly you know the the the art and the the sound and everything you set up instantly tells me okay this is a creepy first person shoot i instantly understand what the game is about and the hook is in and for the people who like those kind of games it's a very strong hook um so it doesn't really matter if somebody who doesn't like those kind of game okay hook is not in but for those people who do like those kind of games the hook is in instantly because they instantly understand what the game is so i feel like that

works in your favor for father yeah thanks i i never really assumed i guess i never thought about story or or really mood and the look as a hook you know and maybe it is maybe it is i always thought what's the mechanic that's a hook and the problem is dude it's so like and i'm not saying you're wrong i'm saying i'm probably wrong uh in assuming that the problem with a mechanic being a hook is that it's so hard to come up with a mechanic that's new you know and you have i think and also dude your video on how you made a billion different games that's a hook that's a hook yeah you know and i've found that making youtube videos has really helped in figuring out what makes something clickable you know and i think the principles for a youtube video and also a game are kind of the same you know that's interesting that you say that

because i yeah i had the thought as well that really there's a lot of overlap between making youtube videos and games because you kind of put for in both cases you kind of have to put yourself into the shoes of the people who consume that content you need to understand why they click it why they play it why they consume it and you need to understand why they come back how do you need to understand how you keep them engaged like that's the same for videos as well as for for games right in youtube videos to try to keep people engaged for as long as possible make them watch the entire video and for games you're mostly trying to do the same thing you're trying to make sure people stay entertained and play through the entire game because if they don't that probably means they didn't enjoy it all that much yeah yeah okay so yeah very overlapping skill set it really is so has has le i want to move on to um sort of transition to back to that you're saying you're freaking out right with your launch yeah

when you say freaking out what does it feel like it's this typical impostor syndrome of when this game's gonna come out everybody's gonna think i'm a fraud i don't know it's just there are so many things that could go wrong um it's it's hard to describe like how did you feel when your games were about to come out for me it was about money uh because i needed money because i just found out we were gonna have a kid it's awesome okay i mean it wasn't that she was an accident it's just we were trying but we were trying for like two years and finally we got pregnant and i was like well not now like maybe maybe another maybe let's do another year right no we were thrilled but it was scary and so for me it was about money it was like am i is this game gonna bring in enough money to pay my mortgage to pay for a thousand diapers a day

for this kid and i'm not saying that's a more pure or like a a better way to be freaked out but there was the there was the imposter syndrome which is for me it was like five years of working on this game what if people find out that it's crap and i had a kickstarter audience that supported it for a hundred thousand dollars and so i was like man i hope they like the game so do you worry what people think about you as a game developer like do you worry about what your audience thinks of you like let's pretend that your audience did find out that you were a fraud and i don't you're not by the way but let's i love doing like what ifs how would you handle it what let's say you release your game it's crap and your audience says you know what i don't trust this guy anymore what would that do to your ego yeah i mean um that would probably be healthy for my ego it wouldn't or would oftentimes oftentimes i'm realizing i'm really a spoiled little brat

problems you just talked about like worrying about money or something yeah i don't really have have that for this launch at least because i still live at home with my dad yeah i don't pay any rent actually so there's just really no risk involved here on my side from a financial perspective so yeah obviously obviously i do worry about my future you know i want to start a family sometime and i want to keep making games hopefully for a very long time so i do worry about that side of things that if i don't figure out how to successfully make games now then the chance of it working long term also go down quite significantly how old are you so that's what worries me about that entire thing that yeah maybe the industry's changing fast and i can't keep up and competition is growing too strong i fall behind and i can't make games anymore that would really be the worst case so

for me but but it's a very you know it's very first world problem kind of thing because oh yeah dude and you know it never ends it never ends because once once one of your hierarchy of needs is met you just move on to the next one and this is why you see like i'm sure jeff bezos worries all day long you know and it's like about what um his next rocket or something i don't know uh for me like things are going really well financially you know i say like finally they're going well financially for me i mean it's been about two years of really good income and it was like six years of like difficulty you know um but i'm i i me and my wife were talking about this last night she was like thomas you're more in your own head than you used to be and i'm like really and she's like yeah you seem more stressed now than you used to be and i'm like but i'm not more stressed

but people around me are saying they see it and i'm like wow like why is that why is it that when things like you said like you said you're a spoiled uh kid and i dude i feel that way too my wife my wife used to say you're a spoiled white kid is what she used to say yeah um and i am i'm super lucky so would your okay so if you launched your game and it failed and it flopped and the reason i'm asking this is because a lot of a lot of people listening right now are thinking thomas and jonas are stronger than i am uh i i'm too scared to make a game or put myself out there on social media i guess my question is are you are you brave i don't know it's hard for me to tell um all i can say is if you feel like you're you couldn't do this or you're not mentally strong enough or whatever just

maybe have a look at my the first videos i uploaded to my channel they were complete crap like i'm i'm a very i'm just a normal person really and when i started getting into this entire youtube game dev stuff when i decided to go full time india actually uh had a couple of like i sometimes i was just shivering i didn't know why and my heart was pounding so so basically like many little stress attacks that i didn't even know where they were coming from but but clearly i was very stressed and anxious at that time and then when islanders came out and islanders worked a lot of that stress settled and disappeared luckily uh but i was incredibly scared when i when i got into this and the thing with with with stress and being scared is oftentimes you don't even realize it while it's happening yeah it's kind of the thing you're talking about as well like if you're stressed you don't have

time to worry you don't have time to kind of feel stressed almost you don't really feel it like um it's weird yeah yeah well has it gotten easier i describe the the leap the leap to becoming a game developer or to pursuing this career which by the way it's a gamble it's scary it's it's yeah there's no guarantees that it'll pay off but i describe it as jumping off of a cliff and hoping the parachute opens especially if you have a family and you quit your job and by the way for those of you who have a family don't quit your job to do this start slow right yeah the trick is to jump off the cliff with a parachute not without correct correct that's that's the great point and you know i was talking to a friend of mine and he was like he said thomas you're just more of a risk taker than i am i can't do stuff like that and i said i quit my job with a hundred thousand dollars in the bank

because of kickstarter and it actually was more than that and i'm i'm going no no no i'm not a risk taker i just know how to build up enough confidence and and and safety to be able to do to to take the next big leap yeah and a lot of people are probably listening going well well crap i don't have a hundred thousand dollars well here's the thing if you're gonna start making games you've got to figure out how to network and find people including funding or like you did find a team and start slow that can bring you income later right so being able to sniff out where the money is is like half of the skill i think of running a studio and making sure it's profitable so that you can be an artist and not worry as an artist you know and kind of what ties that all together are really communication skills i feel like you need to be good at making friends talking to people communicating to people what your game is about what

makes your game unique um those communication skills are very very important to for for sniffing out the money i feel like because even if you like if you sell a course or something you can't do that without good communication skills you you need to convince people to buy the course ultimately in the end do you ever feel like you're becoming a sleazy businessman it's okay if you don't but do you ever do you ever sit there and go why do i care about these things that i didn't think i was going to care about like i watched your video and you were doing a privacy policy and it's like all this stuff you didn't think you'd have to do ah yeah i mean i'm basically already laid out my point on that earlier i'm i'm very much of the opinion that it's not a zero-sum game right it's not like i'm taking money from people or not giving anything in return it's an exchange i i take wish lists i take your money i give you free youtube content i think you have fully fun games yeah so i don't

feel as long as that is kind of in balance and i feel like i'm not taking more than i give i kind of feel pretty okay about myself to be honest good good all right well uh as we wrap up this conversation dude first off first off if you could just uh let everybody know a little bit about will you snail um and how they can wishlist it there's a link below by the way will you snail is a rage platformer where an ai tries to predict your movement but there are also difficulty settings if you're not a super skilled platformer expert that's fine as well and there are a lot of a lot of my play testers say they usually don't play platformer games but they really enjoyed williamson so i think it could be worth checking it out it's coming out very soon it's also coming to steam playstation nintendo switch and xbox and yeah check definitely wish listed on steam what is soon very much appreciated

march march okay um mark do you have an exact day do you know yes i have a date but it's not announced yet okay okay um really quick regarding the porting of the console version i'm assuming you're not doing that no good for you good for you exactly i found a publisher for console versions it's no gravity games i think if i remember i reached out to a couple of console publishers and porting studios but i think in the case of no gravity games they actually reached out to me they found my trailer on steam and they liked so they asked me if they can part the game to consoles i was like yes sounds cool awesome yeah i'm looking at their website right now they look legit sweet well they're pretty nice pretty nice team from from the interactions i've had so far where are they located yeah let's see here they're in warsaw poland

that's funny i'm talking to a publisher in poland as well for a father so so father coming to consoles confirmed it's not it's well i like to work with publishers for different reasons um obviously they help you know they help with console but i'm i'm not a risk taker like i was talking about earlier and so if a publisher says hey here's six figures i can't say the number but if they say here's six six figures a high six figure number i'm like it's really hard for me to reject that you know so and it also motivates me to finish my game it's like okay i got the money now we can go ahead and finish it and then let's do another one you know the risk is gone the worry about how much money it's gonna make is gone uh so that's me being completely honest as to why i like working with publishers ah that's actually not not that's that's not too bad yeah then you have the risk of your shoulders and then suddenly um the publishers also have a very good incentive to really market your game properly because they want to

make their money back yep so you i feel like setting the correct incentives is always something that helps a ton so if you have a publisher that actually wants wants to sell a lot of games that really helps yeah yeah so in conclusion here jonas should people make indie games solo despite it sucking if you can find a great team to work with don't make games solo if you have no other choice make games solo do you need money do you need money to to hire a team or can you do partnerships actually uh doing revenue share partnerships is the preferable way if you have people that really good at what they do and you trust them i would actually recommend doing revenue share because um first of all it's cheaper you don't have to pay them anything cheaper in the short term cheaper in the short term for

clarity okay but no no not really if you're considering are you sure i'm about to say okay if you do it on a revenue share basis with actually really skilled people who know what they're doing they have a way bigger incentive to put in their best they feel like it's their own project and they will give it their best and that is a problem you'll always struggle with when you just give people a paycheck is they'll just try to make you happy and make you shut up but not like they'll it's never the same amount of passions somebody puts in if they feel like it's their project and they're gonna benefit from from the results so revenue share is if you can share split your revenue 50 50 with a skilled person you really trust go for that it'll make both of you more money in the long run interesting yet you decided not to do that for your second game i'm curious as to why that is well you know i'm new to the industry i

made one commercial game in a team now i made one commercial game solo it kind of you know i'm just trying different things out seeing what works and now i did both i made a game in a team i made a game solo i kind of kind of know what the advantages and disadvantages of both are for example one really strong advantage of making games solo is that you can make very personal games like will you snail is not a game i could have made in a team because it's so weird it's so messed up it is very you i love it if i had made this with anybody else it they probably would have vetoed a lot of the ideas i wanted to have in the game so it's you can make more unique and more personal games alone but you can make more profitable games and games more people are likely to enjoy in in a team yeah in a weird way having a having somebody having a check on your leadership and somebody going

no that's actually that might be a bad idea thomas that actually is great because i'm like i'm looking at all the things that i was gonna do for father and i'm like thank god i had felipe my 3d modeler and hector and gordon and adam all these people saying whoa whoa whoa i don't really know if i like that thomas and it's a nice balance yeah that's really good if you don't just surround yourself with yes man i know great great for you if you manage to do that should there be a team lead though uh just depends on the size of the team up to three people you don't need a team lead if you have more than three people in your team you need probably need something like that you need because if you have three people there you can always find a majority right you almost always happens that two people uh vote out the one opinion who says something else so three people teams work really well not too sure

about two people teams i feel like probably clashing heads a little more often with two people teams yeah and then if you have more than three uh people in your team then you kind of need some it needs to be clear who's in charge of what so the argument arguments don't spiral out of control okay you feel like that makes sense yeah dude uh i think that uh i i did a fit i did a 50 50 a two two person team game for never song and i was declared the team lead by the publisher uh because i was working with the publishers developer and so i would that worked out really well because in the end even we did fight and no it wasn't it wasn't his fault it was probably my fault we did we did have arguments and fortunately at one point i mean i'm i can be a humble guy i can a lot of people probably don't think i can be but i i can be a humble guy and say you're right like that's

that's a great idea i was wrong there so i would either submit and say you're right especially when it came to the code because that was his thing but when it came to the story um i've it felt nice to be able to go no no this is the vision like we're gonna stick with this and so that was that was that was something that i appreciated so for your next game what's the plan are you going to do um a team next you want to lead us very yeah next game is very likely going to be a two-person team with one of the people i made islanders with so uh yeah two people team for the next one probably with 50 50 revenue share and you want to lead it or do you want to do sort of a partnership yeah partnership cool cool all right jonas guys wishlist will you snail below this is a huge huge help to jonas you guys heard his story he's he's being honest with you it's a tough and stressful time for him so let's

let's all support jonas and at the very least just wishlist the game uh and he'll give stroke his ego a little bit and get those numbers up to 27 000. um i don't feel like we've exhausted what we can talk about here we should definitely repeat this another time i would love to don't forget you have a channel to host me on uh when is father coming out father is coming out in when i'm dead i don't know uh it's it's we're we're in the early early stages we're trying to get a demo ready for gdc we're going to be we're going to be at gdc with somebody i'll i'll announce who i'm i'm with but it's dude it looks but it's like only one level you know okay and it's such a stressful time once one final thing it's so stressful when you're like this looks so good and you've been like fine-tuning stuff for six months and then you go wait a second it's like 15 minutes of gameplay

there's nothing else and so i'm like we got to get on to other levels and start bringing in the story because all we've been focusing on is like this one level and the mood and the look and and then what happens with what happened to this outside area in front of the house we're working on that right now yeah we're working on that right now and my 3d model is doing it right now it's called sodom's hollow and it's sort of the foothills of basically dracula's castle and then you enter the castle and start going up um it's going great you know going from that going from that playstation vibe that pixelated vibe to you don't my opinion is as an indie developer you don't want to go for the hyper realistic look or even slightly realistic because then suddenly you're presenting your game as i'm gonna i'm gonna act like i'm triple a and then when they play your game they're like this is not triple a but it looks aaa so it's literally a marketing

presentation thing um so what we're doing is we're going okay we have this psx our playstation style and then we're going to uh just sort of this middle ground and um islanders was that it was like this stylized look right and it was clear from the presentation yes this is a 3d game and it's gorgeous but it's clearly an indie game and it's worth 20 bucks or whatever you guys sold it for you know so it's really a marketing question probably what's that five bucks island five bucks really we sold it very cheap yeah well good for you you know that i've seen that as a successful strategy for a lot of people actually because i'm looking at it right now and it looks like it's wildly successful wildly successful and so that's that's just pretty a pretty good indicator you know i'm assuming you guys have sold two uh 100

000 copies minimum um you can't disclose it can you yeah it's more it's more than that so yeah so it's doing really well yeah but i'm i don't know the exact numbers and i probably also shouldn't disclose them but yeah yeah well i'm sure you're saving all that money up um good for you that's awesome i love this it looks so great safety buffer now which is kind of nice yeah but it's not like it's gonna last me a lifetime or anything so still need to make more games yeah no just put it into dogecoin uh no i'm kidding [Laughter] you know the the we i think we just need to make a hard cut here because we could uh keep talking forever and you said last thing about five times let's just do another video soon and yeah we'll talk more then i'd love to jonas all right guys thank you for watching jonas thanks for joining us cheers