What Happened To Dani (And Other Game Devs)

all right guys we're going to talk about where all the Game Dev YouTubers are going why did two star take an 8mon break where did Tim ruswick Go Game Dev unlocked and where did Danny go and also we're going to talk about where I'm going to go believe it or not I am the most burnt out I've been ever on YouTube and so we're going to talk about where I'm going to go yeah we'll talk about that by the way guys this video is sponsored by my own course fulltime Game Dev it's 50% off right now for a couple more days 200 seats Avil ailable you going learn everything I've learned in the last decade of starting a profitable game Studio from my home more on that later so really quickly let's just knock this one out of the way and incentive is it's fun and and you enjoy teaching your audience and you enjoy building a community that's the first one let's put that one away on the Shelf because that one's obvious now let's talk about the sort of the dirtier reasons number one getting wish list or getting followers on your games so for example Danny's Carlson has over 140,000 followers on

steam this is the number 177 wishlisted game on Steam now I'm not saying that YouTube is the only reason this is true I have a suspicion that it is but I'm not saying definitively that's the reason nor am I saying 140,000 followers came directly from YouTube but I do think that Danny's massive success on YouTube I'm talking millions of views per video that success directs people to wish list on Steam and then steam flags that game as a desirable game and so steam just continues to push that game even more so in a way Danny pushing people on YouTube to steam is sort of the the impetus or the spark that Lit the fire Carl M oh you don't you don't know where Carlson is that's my theory Chuchu Charles it's a similar thing right Chuchu Charles and this is a Gavin at two star games he earned over 990,000 wish lists in two weeks for Choo Choo Charles and again look at the The View count on his videos Gavin just posts a 4minute to 8 minute video it's not the most polished video footage or audio or lighting but the editing is incredible

it's funny it's exciting it's a great idea for a game and you'll notice that every once in a while he'll push people to wish list the game wish list the game on Steam so that you'll get a notification email as soon as it goes live people click the link in the description and again the aetius the spark that lights the fire on Steam is YouTube same with Bell's game I don't know if you guys follow Bell bellular bellular news it's a game development News Channel their game the pale Beyond is frequently touted in their videos I tout my own games in my videos for example Never song which was my previous game that game had 26,000 wish lists when we launched on Steam that's nothing compared to Danny Carlson or chuch Chu Charles but that 26,000 is why that game made hundreds of thousands of dollars and it those came from YouTube number two sponsorship deals okay so sponsorship deals can obviously just bring in income for someone if they want to be a full-time YouTuber or that money can be sent and directed towards their project so for example Jason Wyman or I myself we can take sponsorship money and

put that money into other projects right or Brack's entire business model was likely built on sponsorships okay I can't say definitively that was Brack's business model because there's ad revenue and there's a variety of other ways to make money on YouTube but I just know that my sponsorship rates were $500 to like $2,000 a sponsorship whether it was from Adobe or Unity or unreal and I was barely pulling 10,000 views per video so I can't imagine getting a million views on a video what that sponsorship rate was for someone like brachy and finally number three digital product offerings so guys it's no secret it's no secret that my online courses bring in a good income for me my family and my studio but not only do these digital product offerings like for you it could be you know brush a brush pack for 2D art it could be templates it could be assets for the unity asset store you name it as long as you mention those in a video or there's some kind of discount it can bring in a significant amount of income to not only pay for you but also you can hire people to work on

your game and help you work on your game so that's why a YouTuber might be incentivized to consistently upload content because that money is coming in from training material and then it's going into the bank accounts of team members and contract workers to help them make their dream game and this is true for me and I've been very honest about that since the beginning so ultimately what's the common theme Here guys yes remember we put it on the Shelf yes the innocent reason is people love games and they love teaching other people about game development but also financial reasons theme is it's financially beneficial and this is totally fine this is a good thing this is why it's so important to support YouTubers not only by leaving likes and subscribing and commenting and all that typical YouTube stuff but also just a few people actually purchasing their products goes a long way to incentivizing them to continue to upload content now that we know the incentives for a Game Dev YouTuber to post content what's the negative side of it it's not natural okay so being a YouTuber is not natural and the reason why is because because I am not singularly Thomas the

gamedev that is not who I am I am Thomas the dad Thomas the filmmaker Thomas the writer Thomas the Friend Thomas the husband Thomas the train I'm all these things right and so if I spend eight hours a day talking about one thing because I want 100,000 views on a video you can start to feel like an Android you can start to feel like a fraud or a fake but at the same time it's very addicting so this is another negative aspect of being a YouTuber it's very addicting because you're going to try and get that sort of high from uploading a video and getting 100,000 views to 850,000 views to a million views or whatever and you're not always going to get that right so sometimes you'll upload a video and you spent thousands of dollars on this video sometimes you'll upload a video and you spent a month creating this video and it just doesn't do anything it doesn't do nearly what you expected so ultimately this is just not normal behavior talking to a camera and pretending that I'm actually talking to a real person I know it it looks like I'm being really social right now I'm not being social there's nobody in here here there's nobody in this room

so it's not normal behavior so where did the YouTubers go that's the question well some of them just got exhausted right David wayy he got exhausted and I'm also ready to say goodbye to this YouTube channel game do unlocked or at least I'm ready to say goodbye to it in its current iteration Tim ruswick he got exhausted burnt out so make sure that your your stuff is kind of more granular or more feeling based or more like pillar based what your emotion or your mood or your feeling is me we'll talk about it David RB that's a that's something different never mind now some of them got burnt out others hit what I'm going to call I don't know escape velocity they're in the atmosphere now they don't really need YouTube that's kind of the just cold facts of it I'm not saying that is why they haven't posted I'm saying this is my suspicion so Danny made a small game called crab game and it was just a meme game but it became wildly popular in fact it had over 149,000 very positive reviews and reviews they matter

because they kind of indicate how financially successful a game is going to be compare that amount to my first game pinstripe which has almost 2,000 reviews and that game made over $300,000 in gross revenue now I understand crap game is free but those in-game purchases in my estimation they made Danny some serious cash I could be wrong but that's just my thoughts two star games now to Gavin's credit he did recently post on YouTube but he took an eight-month break why well Chu Charles blew up he got 11,000 Plus reviews 200,000 to 500,000 owners according to steam spy I'm just going to throw out a random prediction or estimation of what that is it's at least 2 billion bucks could be more and sometimes I worry you know like okay we've got these these YouTubers who are just killing it and and they sort of disappear Jonas Ty roller is doing incredible now Jonas Ty roller released his um Early Access Throne fall fall game 6,500 reviews for an early access game that's likely hundreds of thousands of dollars I would not be surprised if

Jonas started posting less because Jonas has reached escape velocity I think he has braies I can imagine the ad revenue and the sponsorships helped them hit escape velocity so what am I going to do I I was telling a friend yesterday and it's actually a a subscriber from this channel uh his name is Jason and uh I found out he lived next door to me uh so we were at lunch and I just told him I am the most burnt out of been in my life um I I don't like this to be completely honest and it's not because it's not real it's not a real emotion it's just I keep I keep doing it and doing it and doing it and I it's been a long time since I've had a break and so it's exhausting so I'm just I I am really burnt out and I I think I'm going to I don't know maybe just offload a lot of the work or something hire somebody to help but this is what's so funny is that

despite being burnt out and consistently being on one topic Game Dev Game Dev Game Dev Game Dev Game Dev despite being on those that topic constantly all I need is a one to two week break before I'm all a sudden ready to talk about again and so that's the that's sort of The Catch 22 is you could tell yourself all day you want to quit but then 2 weeks later you don't want to quit it's a very disorienting passion and it's a disorienting job also I know a lot of you enjoy my channel and you learn a lot and you feel like I'm I'm coaching you along finally though I do want to I do want to mention I Do Love Game Dev in fact when I say I want to quit YouTube what I mean is I want to jump solely into Unity I want to enter like flying into a black hole I want to enter unity and stay there forever I know a lot of you don't like that cuz you don't like Unity but come on Unity itself is a great tool I love it I don't like the leadership I like unity and I want to live in there for years so I love it but it's hard because I also love YouTube

ultimately guys audience building is the highest standard of wealth on top of loving YouTube and loving Game Dev I love talking about it building an audience is so valuable guys and I highly recommend all of you do it despite the fact that I'm sitting here telling you I'm I'm burnt out you should build an audience when I say that an audience is the highest form of wealth what I mean is would I rather have a million dollars or a million followers I would have a million followers any day I would pick that any day of the year because that audience can follow you from Project to project to project to project and it is such a insanely powerful point of Leverage for you and your studio so I highly recommend building an audience now in conclusion are any of these YouTubers wrong for doing what they did of course not I'm really proud of them and I'm happy that some of them were able to take the leap and just say nope YouTube's not for me that's a courageous thing to do I'm also proud of the people who hit escape velocity okay cheers and by the way guys just remember that the Black Friday full-time game de sale is still live

you're going to get 50% off full-time game devb which is my massive program with over 4,000 students worldwide it's highly rated you're going to learn everything about making games including using gdau Unity or unreal or if you want to learn all three go for it you're also going to learn how to build a profitable studio and learn to make six figures on just your demo there's so much to learn in this program click the link below there's just 200 seats available few days left I'll see you there cheers