Why Everybody Wants To Make A Game (But Nobody Does)

why is it that everybody wants to make a game but nobody really does nobody actually follows through and finishes a game well Ken LaVine he's the creator of Bioshock if you didn't know uh and he's also making a game called Judas which he's worked 10 years on uh Ken LaVine and I talked about this and I'll give you a little hint it's because well making games is probably the hardest art form out there this isn't meant to discourage you this is actually meant to encourage you at the end of this video I think you're going to be very encouraged encouraged to follow through and finish your game before we dive into the conversation with Ken I want to say a huge thank you to ovani sound they are the sponsor of this video they are what makes this podcast possible making music and sound effects for your games can be very tough and timec consuming and confusing but ovani sound they make it easy with their premium Music and Sound Library designed specifically for game development that's pretty cool everything is royalty-free including commercial use and also there's no crappy AI used in their produ uction as

a special deal they're reopening their huge black Friday bundle for just one final week and it's just for you guys this bundle includes 17 brand new sound effect packs like guns explosions and environmental ambients and many other Essentials for games and plus 20 music packs each with three intensity levels for seamless Dynamic control in your games you also get a voice pack from professional voice actor Rory Childs to fully voice characters without AI mhm gotcha plus their plugins for gdau unreal and unity to simplify sound integration and dynamic music the offer ends in one week so for those of you who missed the Black Friday bundle and you want everything you need to start making your game sound amazing this year definitely click the link in the description to check it out thanks syan sound for making this conversation possible let's Jump Right In you just have to take risks at the level you can take them and cross your fingers and and be honest with yourself and put it in front of people and make sure you can course correct

to the best of your ability and open prey sure do you think that the game industry is particularly more like gambling than most Industries well what do you mean because like in terms of economic model I mean it it it seems to me that the game industry is so much so expensive because it's like every art form combined into one you know it's like this giant culmination of art forms and you've got you're taking a a game gble on every single art form and that you're that your team is like the perfect team for this one thing so it just seems like a scarier business model and and people listening right now they're thinking I don't want to get into making games if this is a huge gamble I I would say that I'll say a couple things yes it is it I think it's I've worked in a bunch of art forms it is the most difficult art form I've ever worked in times a thousand um like

you when you're a screenwriter you want to add a character you know enter JY right when I try to if I write enter JY in my game it's it's concept art it's character modeling it's rigging it's animation sets it's oh my God turns out Jim's a terrible character well too bad right you better fix it because we can't remodel him um and that scales across the budgets right you know and and but eventually you have to live with things like there's a bunch of stuff that we did like we I wrote the would you kindly scene in BioShock very early in the project and I'm like I wrote the scene I thought it was really good like okay now the rest of the game has to sort of lead into this scene and I knew a bunch of things about the game not like I knew nothing about the game but I had to live with that because that was one of the most expensive animation things we had ever taken on at the time so we animated it we had an actor come in to do a performance we vide taped it we animated to that performance had a little Golf Club um and we couldn't go back and redo

that the time we didn't have the budget so I had to make the game work around that um in terms of if you don't want to be in the industry look I think people don't like are not going to like this answer but anything in the Arts if you feel you can do anything else and I've worked in the Arts and I've worked out in the Arts I worked I was a screen run when I was very young and then I was out of screen running because I failed out of it and I was back in other jobs for years and when I got back into art got back into games I knew that I had to do it and I didn't have a choice and I was going to live with whatever the consequences were and I gave up a job that was paying me twice as much on Wall Street um as a IT guy wow and and they offered me a partnership to stay and I knew it was a huge risk but I knew if I didn't do it I would hate myself forever and I didn't have any I didn't have any money for my parents I had about you know $4,000 in the bank or something you know I've been able to scr together I was almost 30 years old um you I was 29

but if you if if you're not sure this is not just games I don't think any art is a good field to be in because it's so competitive and so brutal um because everybody wants to be in it and it's so hard to make and you could work on something and it can get shut down you know when you go and you're working at another job generally you do something and it gets resolved and you move on to the next thing and that work is done art is much more is much trickier than that what if you make a game and you're all love it and you put in front of testers and they absolutely abhor it well guess what your job's not done yeah um you got to keep working and sometimes you got to keep working when like you said you have that problem with your narrative and we had almost exactly the same problem on Bioshock everybody hated it when you show it to them and then you're like what's wrong and you guess something that happens in the first five minutes and you and you do it and you take those two weeks and you hope and you pray that it's the right answer but you we both have the same experience we were honest enough with ourselves and the audience that we found the right answer and and we made it work yep yep it's it reminds

me of uh we'll wrap up here but it reminds me of um making a game or making a graphic novel or writing a screenplay it's like it's like buying Bitcoin it's like just be okay with losing it all like you need to be okay with burning the cash or the time or whatever it it took to to create that project and I think I think honestly I think most people can't handle that it's it's too painful you know um has to be not a choice for you like if you could do anything else do it I'd say right but some people have to make art and it was so painful in my life when I wasn't making art I was so depressed Art's my salvation and I'm so lucky to get to do it and also never forget that every day when you're feeling it's hard when you're feeling it's terrible wake up and say hey I've I got paid to be in a meeting about how high the jump height should be for this

robot you know and who else gets to do that and look I've been through it you know one day I'll do an interview about all the shitty horrible things that happened you know in my career but I kind of wasn't surprised because I was in the film industry I was very young and I saw the shitty horrible things that can happen in that career um but at the end of the day making art is a very it's a blessing and I feel incredibly fortunate uh is there anything else you wanted to leave the people who who who dream of making indie games and and get in the game industry is there anything you else you want to leave them with look I think one of the way to marginalize risk is if you can make games at night with your friends and stuff and keep a day job so you Mar you minimize your risk right do something as a product I used to I used to when I used to work I used to go home from my day job and I write screenplays at night right Y and it was hard right because I or I put on plays like I remember I was in New York and I was working a full-time day job I go home go to the gym go to rehearsal

go home do rewrites from rehearsal wake up early in the morning and it was hard but I did it because I loved I loved making art and um but you know you if you can marginalize your risk in any way you know right now there's so many tools there's so many ways to meet people to do stuff it's just coming in for a job interview if you've done something you've done a mod you've done a project you're going to be way ahead because you know what it's like to ship something without having to like risk your whole life on it oh yeah that's great advice especially people in their 20s like get you the Energy starts to go away slowly the older you get and kids come oh yeah kids come marriage life happens when you're in your 20s you've got so much uh time to burn and don't burn in watching Netflix or at the bar with your friends you know spend some time building a project I think that's really really good advice and just remember don't forget to check out ovani sound below they are the sponsor of the this podcast

and they make it possible thank you Aon sound it's also a really good value for the price it includes a ton of Essentials and everything you need to start making your games sound professional the offer really does end in just one week so go check it out by simply clicking the link in the description