When to call it quits... (Indie Game Dev Q&A)

shut up how's it going guys my name is Thomas fresh from the creator of a game called pinstripe I'm also working on a game called once upon a coma I love making games but what I love even more is you I love you so much because you guys send me a ton of emails I get a gazillion emails every morning not really but a lot a lot of emails in the morning with questions about entrepreneurship about indie game industry about quitting your job about going full-time making games being creative and following your dreams the sad thing is I don't have a lot of time to answer the questions but today I'm gonna try and answer three and these are three of my favorite questions they're questions that are honestly they're really really important they're really

really important if you want to be an entrepreneur if you want to be a game developer or just a creative person with a full time how do you come up with interesting game ideas I have some good ideas for games but the storylines are way too short to be a complete game I love this question I love this question because it's kind of missing an important fact about storytelling a good story is not really a plot a good story is about characters and character arcs so let's say you have a really cool idea about let's come up with some kooky a werewolf who likes to drive Jeep Cherokees I'm looking at my Jeep Cherokee out the window he likes to drive Jeep Cherokees around and he runs over his wife werewolf that's the plot it ends with him running over his mind well this this

this is the dumb story what it can be a great story and it can be a small story seemingly a small story but what makes it a beautiful story is we could focus in on the characters the character of this werewolf and so what I like to do with my stories is I have a small little plot idea so for example a minister who goes to hell that's my that's my first game pinstripe and it did really well on Steam and it's doing good on switch and I'm happy with it I'm proud of it but what that story is about the plot is about a minister who goes to hell and we could say why does a minister go to hell well the the answer the plot answer is to find his daughter rescue her that's the plot but the real plot the thematic plot the abstract one the emotional one that's about Teddy the character is to find Redemption from something that's been bothering him that's been eating

him alive from the inside and spoilers it's about something he did that was really really bad and the reason he goes to hell is not to rescue his daughter the reason he goes to hell is to rescue himself to find redemption so there the the storyline it should be about your characters so no matter how small your story is especially if it's a narrative focused game make it about the characters so really think about some things that your characters aren't telling the player or that we're not telling the player about the characters what are some things about your character maybe you don't even know about the characters you should know your characters intimately this is gonna sound weird but two days ago I wept about a character in one of my games that I'm working on and once upon a coma I wept I really did cry you should feel the torment of your character before telling the player

about the torment of your character doesn't have to be torment but it needs to be real it needs to be honest you need to tell the truth see the thing is is that when we tell the truth in our games in our stories and in our artwork when we tell the truth suddenly it becomes meaty and there's there's there's much more there than we thought so so really start questioning whether you're telling the truth with your story because no story story line is too short if there's if there's honesty there another quick point that I wanted to give here is that if you feel like your story isn't fully fully Varia in your game one of the one of the tricks that I like to do is to instead of tell story to the player actually like the player to tell the story to themselves and I learned this from Zi who is the owner of serenity Forge his name is Z that's a Z at least that's what we call him and he said to me last week he said Thomas

don't really tell the player anymore because I've been thinking how do i how do i flesh out this story more for Once Upon a coma he said don't really tell the player things just just have them ask questions so basically what you do is you present things to the player that make them question things and wonder things and pushes them forward this is especially important in games because you want the player to continue to work because a lot of a lot of games are it's just working right it's working through puzzles it's what's working and sometimes it's farming like farming and killing enemies and collecting things to be able to advance the next level if you're gonna ask your player to work you want them to know what they're working for and that is answers to questions that you present so even though a story can be really small if you present questions and you see this an Agatha Christie stories all the time it's a really simple solution really simple plot there's a murder and this person did it but when you present 1020 questions to the player when they

work for the answers to those questions it makes the story feel so much more meaty especially when you're being honest and telling the truth about your characters I hope that makes sense sure Don I mean I could go on and on and on about how to come up with interesting game ideas but ultimately hopefully I answered part of your question which was how do you how do you flesh out a story that's maybe small all right the last question is from an anonymous in a nut that's a mouthful an anonymous email er but let's go ahead and just name this person let's name him Clarence orthodontia before I answer your question I want to thank this video's sponsor so guys one of the biggest challenges of going full-time Indy is figuring out where to focus your energy if you're somebody who doesn't want to write your own music and you don't want to look around for composers to write music for your games skaia offers an incredible portfolio of music on the unity asset store they've got kids music

they've got post-apocalyptic music they've got horror music and they've got one of my favorite fantasy packs available on their store I mean take a look at this fantasy music here it kind of reminds me of breath of the wild and also hollow Knight really pretty see the thing is is you want your music to fit your games atmosphere and I think sky really does a good job of this so get relaxing music they've got energetic music really across the board scious portfolio is amazing so take it a look at the link in the description and if scious portfolio is something for you Clarence orthodontia writes I'd like to know more of the entrepreneurs entrepreneurship side of indie game development things like how you start a business how the revenue is generated in the indie game world sale royalties do you find your business viable in a way that is financially sound how do you come up with this kind of a big email how do you come how do you do marketing and what is your business structure like for example net income how much do you allocate back to

your company and how much do you use for personal use Wow Clarence this is a very intense email but I will answer it I'll answer it as best I can let's start from the bottom here you said Thomas how much do you allocate to your company company for personal use I pay myself twice a month just like a normal business I have payroll but it it operates a little bit differently it's for tax purposes but overall yeah I've got a payroll it's not even I can't tell you how much it is I'm sorry it's it's not six figures I promise you okay so I make I make a small income that's middle-class my wife also works but I make a small income now my company has capital and and revenue and there's a whole other side of things with my company but the best thing you can do is separate yourself out from your company because when you're when your family is

in your company and it's all personal it's one dangerous for liability reasons and legal reasons so separated out as an LLC but it also helps your brain because when you're constantly thinking about how much money you're making as opposed to how much your company is making which is like this separate entity you can get really stressful it can get really messy so overall yeah clearance you need to you need to separate out your business and actually operate like a business a lot of indie game developers I know just live in this their game the company is them and they are their company and that to me that's a recipe for like mental illness honestly like depression and anxiety I just I wouldn't be able to handle that so I like to separate them out the next thing you said is how is rep this is a good question how is revenue generated in the indie game world with like game sales and royalties ten years ago I thought you sell a game you make a game and you sell it that's

how you make money in the indie game world now that is true that's where the majority of my revenue comes from to a degree I mean there's also like crowdfunding which ultimately is game sales and that's arguable I get that feel free to to debate me in the comments but Kickstarter and royalty and sales of a game let's just combine those together and call that game sales so yeah you can make game sales so every month I get a paycheck from sorry excuse me from from various publishers that I work with those publishers are paying me based on what they've received obviously from Steam or from consoles like switch or ps4 or Xbox and then you're also you know making money with Humble Bundle or you're doing big sales like daily deals with Steam those kind of things so you're making money from your games now you should know that the majority of revenue that comes in from games is sales it's obviously in sales so when you run a sale that's when you make the most money when a sale isn't running

it's like a drip it's a it's a small drip but you really look for the game's sales and the daily deals and the humble bundles those are the big revenue chunks that come in for games now believe it or not something that's really helped my mental health in running a company and running a game studio is having residual income come in that's not from game sales one of my goals in 2019 is to build a build residual income I'm trying to think about this and also my nose itches it's driving me crazy sorry one of my goals in 2019 is to sit is to not lean on game sales some of you have said Thomas why are you running a YouTube channel can't you just make enough money from game sales the answer is yes I could I could run I could run a game studio and be fine but I like the

feeling of having multiple plates spinning so that if one crashes I always have backup plans if one crashes I've still got another one so what I like to do is I like to have residual income come in from places like YouTube and patreon and by the way if you want to support on patreon that will mean a lot there's like in the description but YouTube and patreon are a great way to bring in residual income and then game sales a great way to bring in upfront big chunks of cash that can pay for you know a quarter to a year's work okay so there's residual income and then there's also big chunks of cash that can come in now these big chunks of cash sorry hey my nose itches these big chunks of cash can come in from a lot of different places they can come in from advances from publishers they can come in from advances from companies guys there's a lot of companies right now storefronts that are coming out and these are these you can land exclusive deals and so there's there's ways to make money by just saying signing with

some new storefront that's coming out Epic Games is not the only one signing with those storefronts and they actually offer big chunks of cash has it happened to me yet I can't speak to it right now but I could say that they're there and so not only can you get advances from publishers you can also get advances from these new store fronts that are coming out and they're they're just looking to pad their catalogue so I would recommend if you guys have a game reaching out to some some of these new store fronts that are coming out and seeing if they're interested in your game but yeah I hope I answered your question Clarence Clarence orthodontia in short is there ever a point where you should just stop trying to get full time indie status he goes on to say that he's been working a long time making games and every time he publishes one game it's better than the

last but it's not really paying off so he just wants to know is there ever a point where you know he can go full time and I guess maybe even self-actualized ultimately says am i spending too much time chasing a dream so honestly Gavin I have some questions for you buddy as opposed to maybe questions for me and hopefully these questions will answer your question first question for you is do you enjoy making games see for me sometimes I don't enjoy making games and I think about maybe doing something else and then I wonder you know is it worth it if I'm not even enjoying it so let's pretend you do enjoy making games and also you know you're let's say you don't have dependents meaning a family a wife and kids or something and it's just you well part of me feels like your question

is not fully relevant to what you're doing let me try and explain here if you are enjoying doing it and you don't really have any financial burdens then the question doesn't matter because you should love it and you should enjoy it now let's get more practical if you do enjoy it but you do have some financial burdens and and you can't go full-time indeed because you have to work a full-time job then the answer is yes honestly I'm gonna be really honest here because I practiced answering this question before I started recording and I need to be honest though and I think my previous work my previous answer wasn't really honest yeah if you're good enough if you're good enough it like you'll reach financial freedom are aka full-time

indie status being able to pay yourself a salary full-time if you're good enough and I know that that's a weird thing to say so let me let me talk about what good enough is well good enough is is you're a you're someone who's always thinking about how to market yourself and market your games I kind of lay awake at night thinking about how to increase revenue increase profits and pay the bills for my family now I know a lot of you don't like hearing that you don't like hearing about making games being about money but the thing is is if you're gonna make games you have to make money eventually and so I'll just say this the way to get to full time indie status is being smart with your strategies your business strategies so I'll just say this Gavin you you really if you want to get to the

full time indie status you need to be thinking about revenue opportunities often you need to be planning revenue opportunities often because you can make a great game you can make an incredible game but most of the time even though you have an incredible game if you don't execute properly with marketing and with business strategies you might miss the mark you probably will miss the mark and your game won't bring in any revenue or at least enough revenue for you to go full-time so I've actually made a video on how to make money as an indie game developer but there's there's a few opportunities available there's Kickstarter there's patreon there's YouTube which is one of the reasons why I do youtube is it helps supplement income there's plenty of income not plenty but there's income that I've saved in my company but what YouTube does is it allows me to feel the freedom of making money month to month as opposed to feeling like I'm always burning through cash so

ultimately you said are you spending too much time chasing a dream well how much is the dream worth it what am i chose a how much is the dream worth to you Gavin how much is the dream worth do you actually enjoy working on games if you don't work if you don't enjoy working on games then yeah you're wasting your time chasing a dream because ultimately it's not really a dream but if you love making games if you want to tell stories if you want to say something then no you're not wasting your time you're doing great just don't get don't bear the burden of thinking that money is a bad thing that pursuing financial opportunity whether it's in publishers whether it's in Kickstarter whether it's in patreon whether it's YouTube or social media ways to bring in revenue for your studio don't think of those as bad things because those are those are the part of the ways those are some of the ways that you bring in

revenue for your company I've pursued financial opportunity in a lot of areas that I didn't know about ten years ago and I don't feel bad about it because I know that I need to do it I've got a family I've got a studio to to pay for I've got overhead costs and in order to pursue my dream and make things full-time make beautiful pieces of art work full-time I've got to be smart I've got to be a businessman Gavin really great great great question buddy guys this was really fun I love answering your questions I feel like a therapist if you guys enjoy my therapy please hit the like button or the dislike button if you thought my therapy was inadequate and irresponsibly given comment below and I'll try and answer your questions hit the subscribe button and guys honestly patreon means a lot to me so if you guys want to support that would be awesome thanks again talk you later guys bye

that was for the person who told me to stop kissing the mic