Watch THIS If You're Making Your First Game

If you want to make independent games as a job, I can't think of a better developer to offer his advice than William Debet. He knows what spending years on a single game feels like. That game was called Sundered, only to watch it fail immediately on launch with negative reviews on Steam. Yet somehow will power through self-doubt, patched the game, and also eventually released a viral sensation called Spirit Farer. Perhaps you've heard of it. This is a clip from the full length podcast and you're going to learn a ton from someone who knows what the indie doldrums feels like, but more importantly, how to climb out of it into the light of viral indie success. You may also be wondering how to turn that $100,000 or million-doll game idea into actual money. And some of you might want to do it before you even finish your game. For that, I have a gift below for you. It's totally free. It's a workshop that shows you how to turn small game ideas into actual money. you know, you're running a business and you're you're you're both a creative person and you're both a business owner.

You're an entrepreneur,
right?
Let's talk really quick about the history of Thunder Lotus and just your game dev career. I like to ask this question. I'm going to start asking it more on the podcast. What was the hardest day for you as a game developer running Thunder Lotus? Can you remember it?
Yeah, I think the hardest day was the day we launched Sundered. Uh,
I figured you'd say that.
Yeah. in the summer of 2017. But u when we launched Sundered uh basically we launched the game and there you know can go as deep as you wanted to this but basically the game was way too hard at launch and the loading times were suboptimal or were pretty long pretty chunky loading times. So
do you know how long that was specifically?
Sometimes it was like 2 minutes to
for Steam.
Yeah, for Steam you had to generate the levels and everything. It was very long
Unity.
Unity. Yeah. But it was it had it had to do with how we you know we were able to optimize though later. It was
it was probably the compression of the

images, right? The 2D art.
No, I think a lot of it was how we were randomly generating the levels. So
So really way too hard and long loading times. And the game is a uh kind of like a a mix between a Hollow Night and Dead Cells. So it's a rogike Metroid vania. So obviously the goal of the game is to die and restart and you know and go through that loop.
But when your loop is happening every what like 2 minutes or 3 minutes because the game is too hard and then your loading is 2 minutes because you know the loadings aren't optimized then you're going to have a bad time.
Yeah. Basically. And so that first we launched on a Friday. Right away the Metacritic scores were lower than we were hoping. We had some decent scores.
I think you ended at a seven, right?
Yeah,
we had some We were mostly at seven.
I remember, dude. I remember that actually because I was following you and I was like really excited for you.
Yeah.

And I feel like it's okay to talk this way about this game now now that you had Spirit Farer just completely vindicate you. But I feel like Sundered was tough for you guys because it was like it was trying to follow up this small art artsy game which was um
Joten.
Joten.
Yep.
And it had a small community that loved it on Kickstarter, you know, and then Stunderard comes out and it's it seems like it was um it was it was a complex game, more complex than Joden, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And so it felt like it felt like you guys had Man, I hope I'm not saying mean things. It felt it. Go ahead. Honestly, it feel like you had bitten off more than you could chew. Um, and I'm not sure if that's true. It looks like you you repaired the the game's reputation because you're sitting at very positive now, which is awesome. Way to go.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, no, I'm I'm h no uh no offense taken and I'm happy to to jump into it. So, that that first weekend we ended up uh negative uh in negative reviews on Steam.

Wow.
And so, we were Yeah, we were in the red on Steam.
I'm so sorry. That must have sucked.
Yeah, it it was rough. It was rough. It was a rough uh rough couple days. And then Monday, we patched it, but at that point, it was too late, right? It was too late for for the algorithm. It was too late for the mind share around the game. We'd had, you know, a good amount of influencers and streamers play the game and stuff, but with the loading times and everything, it was just like, it's kind of broken or whatever. One thing that definitely helped save the game at that point was that we had a deal with Sony, so we were console exclusive. Wow.
So, we launched Steam and PS4. Um, so we'd had like two weeks of pre-orders before then and and we had a good amount of of marketing support from Sony. Um, so we were able to clear, you know, like a 10,000 units in the first week or something like that.
Wow. For PlayStation,
for I think all all platforms combined. Okay.
Um, which was which was, you know, it's not, you know, it's not peak, but it's

it was it was very decent. uh still still so that helped us kind of pad um that launch and then the Vindication didn't have to wait until Spirit Farah. I mean we launched uh Eldridge Edition which was the Switch and the Xbox version of the game about 6 months later
and when we launched Eldidge Edition we were at 90% positive on Steam. So it was like it was kind of it was hard because we were like well you know this is I wish we could go back and release that version of the game at launch but obviously you can't but fundamentally as well I mean what hurt Sundered were it was a bunch of of mistakes obviously that led to that in terms of performance in terms of uh game balancing and all that but also just the market too like yeah
um when we we started conception for Sunder right after we launched Joten. Um, so that would be like in October 2014. And at that point, we're like Metroid vanias are the next big thing,

you know, and like obviously we weren't the only small studio to kind of figure that out.
Uh, and to see that in their crystal ball. So,
when did Team Cherry release Hollow Night relative to
Exactly. So, with with in set 2017 before us, Hollow Knight launched and Dead Cells launched.
I see. So Holiday Night was February and Sundered was July.
Yeah.
So you guys were right next to each other basically.
And Dead Cells released before us, too. And and you know, full full kudos to them. Dead Cells and Hollow Knight were better games than Sunder, you know, like there's there's no doubt there. So we came in after both of those massive successes with a game that wasn't as good as either of them. Uh with uh you know, a messed up launch too there. So, so you know, a lot of a lot of lessons there and and but when when the game launched and we saw the reviews starting in, it was a it was a big kick to the stomach and you know,
but the the problem with initial reviews, especially critic reviews, is

that I'm pulling up a a review here from Roger Eert about Home Alone. And I'm not sure if Home Alone was big in Canada when you were growing up, but I'm sure it was. So, here's a review from Roger Eert about Home Alone in 1990. Okay, here's what he says. And by the way, this movie did not do well when it first came out, but he said,
"Really? I didn't know that."
It didn't? No. Um, Roger Eert said, "I didn't enjoy the subplot involving the burglars." I highlighted that and posted on Twitter because I was like, that is literally the plot. And he said, he goes, "Home Home Alone should" He basically says, "Home Home Alone should have limited itself to things that might possibly happen to an 8-year-old. I think I would have liked it more." So, effectively, he's saying like, "I wish that Home Alone just showed more things that 8-year-olds do." Like, I guess like playing Game Boy. Like, so the point the reason I'm bringing this up is when when it comes to critical reviews, it's really hard. You need time. You need

time to really tell you whether a product is good or not. Same is true with Great Gatsby. When Great Gatsby was released uh as a novel, nobody cared. I think it was only when Fcott's Fitzgerald died that that book became popular.
Yeah. But you see, I would much rather put my studio in a position where our games come out and are universally acclaimed. I know.
And then there's no We don't have to wait till I die for them to to to to have success, you know.
I know. But your beautiful children could maybe, you know, reap the rewards while you're in the grave, you know.
Yeah. No, exactly. But I think I think part of that comes down to like business strategy as well. Uh, and one a sentence that I've used a lot or that we've used internally a lot over the years is going viral is not a strategy, you know.
No. Like
Peak I think is a great example, you know, like um obviously Peak is a good game. Obviously, Peak was put out by people who know what they're doing, um, you know, with Agro Crab and Landfall and all that, but I think if a lot of

people look at Peak and are like, "Oh, this is what I should be doing." I think there's a lot of risk in that. Um,
because how many g how many game jam games come out and don't have the success of Peak?
Yeah. It's like buying lottery tickets, you know, and hoping that your game markets itself. And what I'm seeing now from various publishers and investors and stuff is that they're willing to to make that to take that bet uh submillion dollar uh you know development budgets and all that or or they look at the the success of Bellatro or Peak or whatever but they'll fund you know if you're going that model it's like a VC model you have to fund 25 of those games and 24 of them are going to fail and then the 25th hopefully you knock it out of the park and it pays for all of your failures and then Yeah, but that sucks for the developers because they don't
that's not a good that's not a good model for developers. There was a I saw a a new a newer studio who were making

very small games and were having a lot of success on Twitch. Uh there was a game with a guy looking at you in a hotel room and like that was a whole game.
You talking about clickolding?
I think so. Yes.
And he's got a clicker.
Yes, I think so. But that's their strategy.
That's Strange Scaffold. That's Solivier Nelson Jr. He was on the podcast last year and that's their strategy. And what's that's his strategy. And what's funny though is that some of his games they they're like they don't do great. I think one of them has like mixed reviews on Steam Steam. And it's like I kind of I kind of want to have that mentality of like or at least there's a part of me that wants to have that mentality where it's just like just get the games done cuz that's what he was saying on the podcast. He was like a released game is better than a great game. He said something like that. He'd rather release games and just get them done. Now, as I've aged out of that, you know, I've learned a lot in the last six months since I've had that podcast. And I'm curious what your thoughts are. I actually disagree. I would much rather

just make a really good game. Even if that means I spend three, four years on it. It's not because it's a good business decision, but just because I I don't think I can release a game that I don't think is perfect. Do you have any thoughts there? then that strategy isn't the right one for you,
right?
Or you know, who knows? Maybe maybe that like one thing that we often talk about in the studio is imagine we were starting the our studio today, you know, how much harder it would be for us versus starting our studio in 2014, you know, and I think part of that is true, like we definitely were able to ride the wave of the digital distribution wave, Steam opening up, um, indie games. We're we're we're not within the first indie games to come out, right? We were not within that first like braid fee
hype. Um so we didn't ride that first wave, but we were still able to catch the kind of the tailwind or the the the the end of that wave. And I think
2016,

yeah, something like that. I think that definitely helped us to get to the success where we are today. But I think um Strange Scaffolding versus the name of the studio.
Yeah, Strange Scaffold. St strange SC scaffold are a great example of a studio who have figured out how to have success in today's market you know which is the Tik Tok market or whatever you want to call it or you know the the world the the the gamers are are are very different uh today than they were 10 years ago and 20-year-olds today are different than 20 year olds 10 years ago. So I think you need to kind of adapt your strategy. You can adapt your strategy to who you are and like you said I'm I'm an artist. I want to spend three or four years on this game. make it the best that it can be and and uh and deliver it or you could have that, you know, that kind of spray and prey approach which is more akin to mobile games which which is really interesting because, you know, we've I started my career in mobile games as a mobile game designer. I worked for two and a half years and a we actually started making Facebook games. So, we were starting making Farmville type games, then moved

to like premium Angry Birds, um, Fruit Ninja type games, and then moved to freeto play because freeto play kind of happened after that and was a big thing. But like there's a lot of similarities between or you can take a lot of the the learnings from the mobile mobile market and you know what a mess that is and became and and you know bring those towards Steam which is honestly a big mess or or the whole not just Steam but just the general games market today and how uh competitive is is and how it's how hard it is to to get visibility and all that. So,
you may also be wondering how to turn that $100,000 or million dollar game idea into actual money. And some of you might want to do it before you even finish your game. For that, I have a gift below for you. It's totally free. It's a workshop that shows you how to turn small game ideas into actual