Why I Spent 5 Years On My Game (And Was It Worth It?)

So, I got a couple comments on Twitter or X about uh negative negative stuff. It's surprising to get negative comments on X. I'm shocked. But, uh the negative comments were That's sarcasm, by the way. The negative comments were basically do Dude, Thomas is spending 5 years on a game. Why is he spending 5 years on a game? [music] Uh next time make a game that takes less time. Uh Thomas is making a game that's an old-school genre, uh and it's just a rehash of BioShock, and he spent 5 years making it. Um he should have spent 2 months making a game that's more commercially viable. Uh he's out of touch. Stuff like that. They All these comments might be true. They might all be true. Cuz I have spent 5 years on like a BioShock-inspired game called Twisted Tower. Here's my response to that.

I'm making a game I want to make. That's it. I'm making a game that I want to live in, that I want to breathe, I want to smell it. When I think about my game, I think about how how it smells. And you can ask Felipe, who is the three was the 3D artist for for Twisted Tower. I always talked about how the game needed to smell.
[snorts]
I want to smell burnt popcorn. I want to smell musty, damp carpet that's stained with Coca-Cola. I want to smell cigarette smoke. I want to smell I'm going to get to a point here, I promise. I want to smell boiled hot dogs that have been sitting in that boiled hot dog water for a year. That's what I want to smell. That's what I want to feel. I I to live in this world, and I I want to be there. Um I that's my heart, my my my soul

as an artist wants to live in whether it's my game Pinstripe or my game Never Song or my game Twisted Tower. I want to live in these worlds that I create. That's where I want to be. That's where my soul wants to be. My point is is that that's why I make games. I sure I want to make some money. I like money. Money's wonderful. I want to have players experience the game and feel like they got their money's worth and enjoy the game. But above all above all, I'm making games because I want to. And when I And this is encouragement for you. If you're making games right now please please please you can you can think about the commercial viability of a project. You could think about making small games. You could think about making Friend Slap. Um you could think about making an incremental game or a or a or a card game. Make a small tiny little game

because it's commercially viable. That's fine. Just promise me that you'll put in in terms of the impetus or like the motivation for the game, promise me that you'll put heart before everything. I want And I know it sounds pretentious or or like purist. I'm not I'm not. I'm actually thinking about you finishing your game. You're not going to finish a game you don't love. I want you to make a game you love first and foremost. So make that the initial goal, initial reason why you make a game. Is it a game that you want to play? Is it a game you want to live in for years cuz it truth is your game might take years to make. And I know that's true for me. I I've been in the Twisted Tower world uh for 5 years, and that world is this

spooky island off the coast of Wales. It's foggy, it's midnight, it's dark, it's stormy. It's this creepy kind of Disney castle world
[snorts]
with clowns and teddy bears and and creepy ducks and giraffes, [clears throat] all these fun mascots in this creepy world that smells like burnt popcorn. That is the world I want to live in. And every day when I sit on my computer, lately it's been 12-hour days, sometimes 15-hour days. That is the world I want to spend my time in. I don't want to spend my world, it's nothing against Friend Slap or or incremental games, but that's not where I want to spend my time. I don't want to play those games, I don't want to live in that world. So, for those of you who are asking me, "Thomas, why are you making a game that's taking you 5 years?

And it's just a kind of a 2010 shooter in a spooky spooky carnival world." My answer is because that's what I want. That's what I want to play. That's what I want to make. And I wish that especially like AAA studios, I wish they would make what they want instead of thinking about what they think other people want. I'll end with this. We'll see, fingers crossed, knock on wood. There's probably 10,000 to 100,000 people in the world who are just like you. And if you really really really want to make a game about mopping, And you go you dive deep into creating the greatest mopping game in the world because you're so passionate about mopping. You're probably going to find 10,000 people out there who really love

mopping, too. For me, there's probably 10 to 100,000 people out there who really love the idea of a game that looks like it smells like burnt popcorn and boiled hot dogs. I hope. We'll see. Regardless of how my game does, regardless of how well Twisted Tower performs, at the end of the day, I'm going to tell you I love that world. I love the Twisted Tower world. I love being in that world. I love I loved developing that world. And I'm probably going to do something like it again because that's just what I love. I didn't start making games with the sole purpose of making money. I started making games because I love making worlds. That's That's the number I love making a certain kind of world that frankly I wish I could be in. So, do that. And honestly, that'll help you finish

your games. Most of you are probably struggling to actually finish your first commercial game. The trick is making something that you really love and not worrying what people think. And by the way, if you want to make games and you're interested in learning from an actual indie game developer, that's me. I've been published on three separate occasions. Uh check out the link below for the summer sale for my massive course called Full Time Game Dev. I do these sales fairly infrequently. It's usually every season. Um big fat sale, 50% off Full Time Game Dev. You're also going to get my 2D and 3D art programs and my YouTube course completely free. So, you're going to get a huge bundle of pretty much everything you need to know to start an indie game studio and hey, fingers crossed, hopefully do it profitably and go full time.
[music]
Uh so, click the link below, check it out, see if it's something you're interested in. Look, if it's if you don't trust me or maybe you're on the fence, at least take a look at the reviews. And yes, these are actual real reviews of students who went full time with the help of the course, which is

really, really awesome. Chris Dare went full time, [music] Bart Manzer went full time, Everflocks, Andre, all these awesome screenshots below from the Discord server of students who went full time [music] with the help of the course. So, look, if you're interested in getting published uh from a publisher, getting funding from a publisher with just a game idea or just a demo, or maybe you want to do it on Kickstarter, uh maybe you want to hit the Steam front page, maybe you want to get press coverage, uh maybe you just need motivation to actually finish a 2D game or a 3D game in Unity, Godot, or Unreal. If that's you and you want to learn from somebody who's done all of that, click the link below.