Watch This Before You Make Your First Game!

I was at the gym and I got a call from my indie game publisher. They were tired of the delays, the tweaks, the constant changes. They wanted to launch my indie game Never Song in just 6 months. Honestly, I was panicked because I knew the game was nowhere near complete. And somehow, I didn't even realize I was 2 years into development with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent building this game. Where did all the time go? Why did a tiny little platformer take so long to complete? And was I about to get sued and lose my dream of making indie games as a career? In my experience, games take about twice as long as you think they're going to take to make. So, if you're thinking of making your game in, I don't know, a year, it's going to take 2 years. But why is that? Video games are the pinnacle of human expression. In fact, I like to call game development playing God. You're creating a new dimension. And my prediction is game development will soon be rebranded as, I don't know, world birthing or something like that.

Seriously, give it 20 years and the developers who create worlds will essentially be classified as gods with players living and serving their creators in their virtual realities. This little big bang is a cocktail of every art form and craft, okay? Mixed into a singular product. story, 2D art, 3D art, music, sound effects, architecture, coding, player psychology, game design, voice acting, sound design, lighting. So, that's why it takes so long. But the real question is, why is it so hard to predict how long this takes? It all comes down to the lack of understanding each ingredient and how they react with each other. So, yeah, let's talk about this massive cocktail of ingredients that make up a game. For example, here's the industry standard sequence for building a house built in about, let's say, a year for simplicity. You prepare the construction site. You pour the foundation. You do the plumbing, the

electrical, insulation, drywall, interior fixtures, exterior finishes, interior trim, driveway, flooring. You move on to countertops and exterior grading. And then you finish off with bathroom fixtures and exterior landscaping. And then don't forget, you have to sell it. Now, how long would this house take if we decided to build it in reverse? Well, I'm thinking a decade, maybe. Not only is this house going to take 10 times as long to build, but it's going to make 10 times less in profit because it sucks. And the same is true with a game. The order in which you create a game is everything. Okay, so you're probably depressed by now. Don't be. The solution to this problem is actually pretty simple. Basically, all you need to do is listen to developers who've already done it, like me and also other YouTube channels focused on game development like Jonas Tyroller, GameDev Unlocked, and David RB. So, here's the sequence to building a game properly. Get your paper and pen out and write

this down. It's going to save you thousands of dollars in hours. First, start with your budget. And I know what you're thinking, Thomas, I don't have a budget. Sure you do. Let's give you a pretend hourly rate of $50 per hour and estimate how much time you can emotionally handle dedicating to this project. Let's assume 5 hours a week part-time for 6 months. That's 100 hours at 50 bucks. That's $5,000, aka a really tiny game. It's like a little condo in Kansas if we're sticking to the building analogy. So, what does this mean? It means you need to compare your little game to little indie games that have a similar budget or schedule. We then use this comparison to map out our GDD. And that's a game design document. This is basically your blueprint or outline for your game. Here's a great example of a GDD. It's linked in the description. Then we build the game. Well, kind of. We build out a prototype, a demo, the first level, maybe with minimal graphics. Minimal being the key word

here. minimal sound, minimal everything. We want to know that this game idea even works. And a good rule of thumb is if your game isn't fun at its most abstract form, it's not going to be good at all. Just ask Bob Ross. Look, he always starts with abstract colors first and then he tightens the screws. Ah, there's another metaphor. IKEA furniture. You start loose and then you tighten the screws later when you're sure you've built something that actually works. Okay, now we have this generic prototype that kind of looks like crap, but it works. And my method is to polish this prototype visually, musically, ambiently, and toss in story elements, but only for the prototype. You don't build out the entire game. Now, rather, you create exactly what this game will be as a finished product, but only that first level or the first 15 minutes of gameplay. This is where me and some other developers might differ. Some developers may want to build out every mechanic, every level in a rudimentary

form first. The problem with this approach is it actually removes a huge possibility from the developer, finding funding for the project. The reason I recommend polishing the heck out of your demo is so you can seek funding from a publisher or crowdfunding or investors. Now, it's super hard to do this with a crappy looking demo. Once you secure funding, or maybe you decide to not receive funding, you use this demo as the standard for your game. This is the template. In a way, your new mechanics and levels are sequels to your first level. And we all know sequels are quicker to make. Just ask Satan's very own offspring, Disney, what am I supposed to say, Jesus? Now, obviously, there's a ton of granular steps nested inside this sequence, but hopefully this gives you a generic road map to success. Honestly, I don't want you to make the mistakes that I made for Never Song. Speaking of which, did I ever get sued? Nope. I took the phone call from my publisher. Well, and out of necessity, I took the current build of Neverong and

essentially used the exact method I described and scaled the game. I used the first couple levels of the game as a template and quickly fleshed out several more levels and finished it in 6 months. It's interesting how a publisher breathing down your neck actually helps you make better decisions. We eventually sold the game to Apple, released it on other platforms, and made more than $500,000 in revenue. And by the way, I can't disclose the exact numbers. Sorry. If you found this video helpful, be sure to leave a like, subscribe, hit that notification bell, and download the free resources in the description.