Why This Halo Developer Went Indie (And Completely Solo!) — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 010

Joe how you doing man I'm doing good it's early but I'm happy flew a little space little uh Star Citizen this morning to wake myself up I'm happy doing good well you wanted to wake yourself up fres Podcast exactly oh cool um yeah where you located I'm up in uh Seattle area the suburbs okay yeah awesome yeah living it up making games in the suburbs like me yeah yeah you know but I know that Seattle is kind of a game City right like there's a lot of tech there yeah Microsoft's up here that's what brought me up and then um when there's a big Tech like that there's you know everything starts sprouting obviously valves up here and bungees up here oh wow and Sucker Punch as well yeah oh wow cool okay so this is gonna be a really fun podcast I've been looking forward to this for week uh weeks I think um the reason I'm most excited about this conversation is because you went full-time Indie yeah

and we can cut this if you want but you went fulltime Indie and then it didn't kind of work out right and so you went back and got a job and now you're sort of going for round two yeah totally so it it it worked out enough I could have gone for the stretch and made it to part two but it felt tight and it's never so easy to just keep rolling you know and uh and so I kind of I slowed down and then that kind of made it harder and Tighter so I decided to get a get a real job again and uh quote unquote a real job and and um and yeah slow down the process and and it's been tough it's been hard for me actually to like keep motivation for song two uh so I've kind of I've weaved in and out of it but um well let's talk about song two yeah first let's let's let's give you the shout out you deserve there's two links below for anyone listening uh the game is called song of iron and then you're working on song of iron 2 correct you want to give us sort of a breakdown of like who you are are and what you're

making and and just give us a rundown of all your your current career with games yeah yeah I can I can um I'm an animator by trade uh I I've been doing it for 17 plus years now at this point um I started at uh cryptic Studios I was there for like nine years well I I actually I worked at a a really small um Cabinet Studio in uh Chicago play mechanics where they made Big Buck Hunter so I worked on like Big Buck Hunter HD was my first game ever no way which was yeah it was like it was it was insane I mean it was like full cut your teeth on you know no one knows how to make anything and you just sort of scrap it their way through it uh but obviously I mean it was it was a it was a great starting experience um but I was there for like eight months or something and then I got the job at cryptic uh which brought me out to do MMOs for like eight years which was awesome because it taught me how to be super fast uh cuz

you know MMO players just eat content for breakfast and so you can never keep up with them and so we did our best to do it um from there I went to 343 um and worked on Halo 5 and Halo infinite forever it felt like and what did you do specifically for those games uh the most notable stuff for five was I did a really big portion of the warden work uh animation he was the big bad for five um no way dude that's so cool yeah I did a ton of that that was that guy was was nuts it was actually really fun to work on and then uh I did a ton of assassinations for five um a bunch of them for the MP team and then for infinite I was the lead uh character animator so I I led anything that wasn't master chief that was a a a character in the game I I I was the lead animator for that stuff uh not including cinematics that's a whole different department but um yeah then brutes were kind of like my my character of infinite um specifically

the chieftain was sort of what I was able to carve out for myself while doing all the other Microsoft um I'm a lead so now I have to go to meetings all day stuff but yeah but yeah that was really fun currently are you are you doing that currently sorry to interrupt you are you doing that currently uh I've so I I left Microsoft 4 song uh and I was gone for about two years then I then I joined some friends from that team that started their own studio uh and that didn't work out either so I've actually moved on to a second new studio called gravity well which uh they are pretty they haven't really talked about what they're doing yet but I'm having a blast so I'm super happy to be on the team sweet is it triaa uh yeah I think they I think they're considering Triple A it's a small team and try to keep it that way it's a bunch of re X respawn people um yep and yeah having a I mean so having a blast with them that's so cool what a what a wild career it's very

different than I think you know it's very different than what a lot of Indies yeah like think about you basically got one foot in the AAA world and one foot in the Indie world and I have I've never met a game developer who's doing that could you could you kind of give me like a like a pros and cons list yeah between the two of them yeah yeah yeah man it's tough you know I think um the the pros for Triple A in theory is that it's chill and you don't have to think too much and you just do your job and the bigger the studio the the more narrow your your role becomes just by the nature of um the amount of people they have and you know so like for Halo 5 for example all I was just honed in on a couple characters and I just worked on them and worked on them and they kind of became my characters because I was the personality behind them as the animator um and I didn't have to worry much about anything else

even other characters in the game and stuff I just really focus so it's nice there's like a there's a chillness to that um but at the same time I'm design headed and so I'm always asking questions and I I without even meaning to I end up just like sticking my nose in it where it doesn't belong sometimes and try to help and try to ask questions and and I can't help but try to make the whole experience better um based on you know my experiences and my opinion and stuff and uh and that can be tough at a big Studio because there's a whole department dedicated to that so they don't need an animator sticking their head in trying to help or or give opinion sometimes and so uh from the Indie side you know you have the freedom of doing whatever you want and following following your kind of your heart on stuff uh but of course that means that you have to deliver on that stuff so um there's a massive amount of learning to be done on the Indie side and you will for ever run into things that you didn't

think about and you don't know anything about but you have to do to just to just to get it out the door let alone to be successful um and I think that's fun because I love to learn and the older I get the more I get out of learning new stuff but once in a while you'll hit a wall and you just want to throw your computer out the window uh and at a studio a big Studio someone else would deal with that problem for you right so right yeah oh man I go on for it but well I I I kind of want to know because you know AAA kind of gets a bad rap in term and it sometimes it should totally just because the the grind is real I mean or is it is it real like I remember watching the old bunge documentaries from like Halo 2 and stuff and they would work till like 3:00 a.m. you know um was that did it feel that way when you were tripa had yeah I've had moments in my career where I had a crunch like that um I feel lucky based on stories

that I never had it really that bad um and it sounds like a thing that happens to us you know you do kind of volunteer for it's heavily encouraged but I've definitely never been somewhere where they're like if you're not here we're just going to let you go it's like they're crunching because they need people they're not going to going to start firing people uh that would be counterintuitive but um I've whenever I've been part of any sort of crunch the team's always been really good and it's been a big a big point to like let's do tues as our stay late day we'll do it all together we'll go out yeah for dinner before we go to the next three or four hours you know and try to like do it together um and that helps and you know we we goof around and and well if you had Pi one exactly I mean that's that's really good to hear it sounds like it's a it sounds like it's a lot of fun like just can be yeah it can hanging out with friends and making games and eating pizza and going out for dinner and then going back sometimes it does feel like that and and and I you know it helped I was younger and I you know

responsibilities are lower and you know you're happy to just be with with your friends yeah and animation teams are usually pretty fun we kind of goof off together in in my experience so it is just like it's like your friends sort of so how does the stress compare to indie game development so you've again you've released you know Song of Fire You released that and or I'm sorry um song of song of song of iron which I'm I'm pretty sure you're hearkening to Game of Thrones Vibes there correct yeah a little bit it was that was one of those like I need a name and then I just started like putting words on a sheet and it was like yeah this sounds kind of cool and then all yeah so you released that game right and you went fulltime yeah and or you you worked on the game full time and then you released it so you know you know about the stress of building this house of cards completely alone yeah yeah it a thousand times more stressful than triaa you know really yeah I mean

you I think I think a lot of a lot of people who are listening to this podcast they're thinking AAA is way more stressful I'd rather have the responsibility on my own and work from home in my pajamas and you know Vape all day while I work yeah I mean I think um maybe your dayto day if you average it out it's not so bad but with the with the solo stuff you are completely beholden to yourself and to your own success AAA you know you can have a bad day you can take a day off you definitely don't feel bad about doing that um and in the end the success of the game often doesn't financially matter to you uh in AAA sometimes there's some Bon bonus features or some incentives you know profit sharing but that stuff's so flimsy I think like and really it's your paycheck and so even if you love the game and you want it to be amazing you want everyone to love it like say you're completely drinking the Kool-Aid of the studio you're at at a AAA place even then you're not going to

if it does bad it's just a little like ah that stinks but you can probably find like oh well they like my thing you know this cool animation I did or this assassination often are liked so we kind of always have this like defense from stress I guess um in a triaa but but you read one bad review about your your own project and it it cuts straight into your heart and you know like it's insane um yeah so they just do not they do not compare yeah what what is the primary driver of stress when you when you were working on song of song of iron or song of iron too you're working on that now what's the primary driver of stress I like to ask this question a lot because sometimes it's fear like it's not going to make it's it's a monetary fear it's not the game's not going to make any money sometimes it's a fear of the public not liking your game mhm um sometimes it's a fear of your schedule

like you're just you're like miserable and you're like am I going to be miserable for two years working late nights so what is it for you what's that primary driver of stress I think dayto day it's just pressure to keep moving um and so there's always this sort of background noise weight on your shoulder to like keep working every you there's a lot of there's a lot of Indie talks about like every day you have a touch you know there's like and I I I hear a lot and I I kind of adhered to that for quite a long time it's like you don't want to lose the Habit you just keep yourself moving and everything will be okay U so that's like a that's like a low threshold stress but it's like endless and then I think that you're meaning it's constantly there even when you're like sleeping yeah yeah you just kind of you can't help but be thinking about it all the time even if you're kind of like not conscious it's just in your brain um I think like you know I don't have kids but like new parents definitely feel that with their kids it's that's why like like you know parents like post their kidss all the

time it's like you there's nothing else in your head so it's or a new dog or something and so it just like it just eats in your head um but I think the the biggest true stress is success and and not and just like financially like you know you got on this huge limb you you basically have no income for for me it was like a year is and then wow the preceding year um following and you go well I need to succeed or I'm just going straight back and then I'll feel I'll feel like failure cuz I kind of did this whole big thing and it's like you know this huge Studio 3 for3 is like bye Joe good luck on your your game uh and and then you know everybody meant well but it's this it's this like yeah good luck and then you don't want to like go back with your tail between your legs and and you build up this fan base online too and they are like excited and you don't want to let them down and well yeah before I go go ahead sorry to interrupt go yeah and I was just gonna say too and I think um you kind of like what is it you you sort of

like I I don't think you do Indie development too often without having some sense of Pride or stubbornness in yourself and so you don't want to let yourself down either right and I think it's like I don't want to quit and go back before it's all over because then it's like I'm way too stubborn for that I'll I'll sink to the dirt first but uh and so it's just like all these things and they just add up and you have to do it because you don't have a paycheck well let's let's be before we move into this question I want to say that you know this is your first your first commercial release was song of iron correct correct yeah okay so right right at the beginning of this question I'm going to say to launch your first game and have it Go Gang Busters is so rare yeah so so I would say it was a success I would say the launch is a success however based on our conversation before this podcast you feel like it wasn't so do you want to correct me if I'm wrong but like do so do you want to like give us that the the

pre-launch like when you you finished up the game you wrapped up the game you prepared it for launch you were collecting wish lists everything looked like it was correct and ready to ready to launch and then tell me a little bit about the launch and how it went and how it felt yeah so it was um I was working at well I'll kind of go back a little bit because it'll give some good context to that so I was working at 343 still when I started I think I was probably a year in but before I quit into the development and I had gone front page to Reddit twice um with song of iron um I just little GIF on you know our gaming and and like blew up 132,000 on one 140 something thousand on the other like monster and so that drove drove a ton of wish lists to me and that kind of gave me this confidence to move forward so I kept going and you know I've watched all the Indie videos all the gdc's all the stuff about numbers and all that so going into launch I had this huge sort of fan base and this sort

of internal understanding that I was I had success coming uh I had 100 10,000 wish lists going into launch and I think probably like 50,000 of that came in the last four months uh it didn't like swell right before launch there was kind of like a down month right before which maybe leads to what's coming here but um monster numbers those numb are pretty obscene I think for your average person I mean for your average person they're they're nonsense they're oh dude it's it's what we're aspiring for right now for Twisted Tower our game it's an insane number and I still have like 80,000 wish lists which leads you to understand where this is going and um it just didn't work it didn't it didn't happen I I have a I have a buddy who I uh who's also any solo developer and we were looking at the numbers we were rounding down trying to play it cool but we were like this is is the thing this could sell 100,000 copies easy in a

month you'd be set for life yeah just it could just and um those those um Reddit posts caught Xbox's attention so I I had a a little partnership with them so was Xbox and steam day one and uh it did not sell like you would hope with those numbers and um I think now two years later a little over two years I'm only I'm maybe just about to be 40,000 units sold uh which is like a ton of that's a ton right that's huge yeah um it was just you know in that moment the day of launch I had expectations of the Moon if you will and uh I I took a twoof foot jump off a wooden ramp you know instead and are you are you willing to disclose you don't have to but what does that convert to an actual USD like net profit or net revenue it's a couple uh for it's a couple

hundred thousand dollars I yeah I'd have to double check A maybe 300K total um profit from the game something that's a you know give or take 30k uh in that along the way some of those sales were um I was on a Humble Bundle um so that kind of like makes a lot of sales for not so much money but it was that was a great deal I I mean I love being part of those deals those those are great yeah a lot of people are probably thinking oh you made 200 Grand why are you complaining why are you oh yeah absolutely and uh and uh yeah and that's again it is a success to a to a point right and I had every intention to keep like all right I made enough I can make part two now I can keep going yep and that was the plan and um the money drives up fast cuz you're paying for stuff and it it sure does and also you paid probably a 30% tax rate on that yeah then you pay the T you yeah you're you're paying 30% or whatever to the to

the stores and then you pay another 30% to Y to the government and yep and then you and then you use it to actually live on and so it's uh and then it gets inflated I mean you know because of inflation so you're just it's just slowly like everyone's like oh I just want to make 500k and then I'll just put the cash in my bank account and I'll just live if it was only years it's like it's going to it's just money just it just disintegrates so quickly um and that's that's just that's the way it goes so um what happened why did it not yeah to to give to give I I really quickly I wanted to give give people listening some context here imagine you get 100,000 wish lists what what's the first thing you do well I'll just say what I would do I would pull out a calculator and I would multiply it times the average conversion rate and I would go holy crap I'm going to be a millionaire in two weeks yep yeah ex is

that what happened with you that's that's effectively what we were trying to figure out um yeah those numbers I mean it's been a couple years but I mean effectively you can the average is like you know 10% of your wish list you can sell in the first day or week or something and then as you get as you get higher and higher the chances of it snowballing get greater and greater theoretically so if if you can convert 10% of of that in a week the chances of that number actually like doubling or tripling for non- wish list purchases goes up really fast um to my understanding at the time uh and and so the expectation is you know you're selling 30,000 units in your first week as an indie Dev and then that just snowballs for the you know and then you can double that for the year I might be I might be really butchering this now because it's been a while but you you know you double that for the year and then your sales so your wish lists get emailed every time you put it on sale over a certain am were you learning this from Chris Chris zakowski yeah maybe and

I there was a bunch of different things and they' probably all just used the same information um you know they're always they're all referencing the same content um and they they're always talking about wish lists like wish lists are everything and I'm I just have this gut feeling I don't know where it's coming from probably completely wrong I have this feeling that it's all going to change I think it's already changed yeah I think it's already changed like the the the attitude that people had before about wish list is no longer true I think I mean it wasn't true two years ago for me for sure yeah um because there's a huge um you know I had seen some games you can start to see Games showing up on the upand coming lists right and mine was taking a long time to come up and uh some games that were coming out the same day and I just knew because there's some wish list sites I knew they had like a third of my wish list nothing bad to them rock on to them uh and I so I started messaging steam I was like like hey where am I like I know

I have more wish list than the people that are showing up and so there was there were like basically the short as they told me you know momentum matters also so I had gathered what does that mean I had gathered 100,000 wish lists over like two years the the these other these other teams very likely gathered their much less lower number of wish lists in the last couple weeks potentially so they had all this like like momentum like my wish value was really low even though I had a high number because it's like they put like a lifespan on a wish list kind of thing or something and so I probably really the system probably considered me to have 20,000 or something instead of aund and something thousand as far as they were well purely purely from the psych psychological perspective this is so I I I also you know do email marketing for my other sort of side hustle which is you know I make games but I also do like online courses and stuff and when it comes to online courses and just and you

know the primary driver of sales is is emails you know if you have a big email list uh you're if it's warm so the sales term is warm right a warm lead it means that somebody is and you probably already know this but it just means that somebody is is super interested in what you have to offer well the best time to sell and this is marketing Thomas talking it sounds sleazy but the best time to sell to a warm lead is immediately like within like the first week right and then they grow cold you know so purely from a psychological perspective 100,000 wish lists in 2 years it's it's going to well it's kind of like inflation it's just going to slowly lose value it's like holding cash for three years it's slowly going to lose value over time and I think the same is definitely true with a wish list um with a wishlist list yeah um and that's that dude that's like so difficult how did you take that oh man I did not take it very well well I mean it was you know you're already putting your

baby out into the wild and and all that stuff and then uh I had a really hard time launch day should be a celebration I was curled up in a ball you know in a dark room for most of it uh yep it was it was the most like it was the worst thing launching this thing it was the worst it it just like you know you're you're so excited you push the green button you know on Steam and Xbox does it auto and and all this stuff and you just sit there and you just wait and the first review is bad and Y and uh it doesn't do it doesn't suddenly sell 10,000 units you know in a 10 minutes and you kind of and in man you instantly question like what what am I doing I had so much confidence 10 minutes ago and now I just I feel like I just made a huge mistake and I feel like I let my my wife down you know you feel these things and you're like you're being a little irrational Maybe cuz your all the stress and lack of sleep but oh man the worst

absolutely the worst well have you ever seen last Kingdom uh no I haven't actually well I figured you would um unless I'm forgetting the name wrong it's one of my favorite shows but sometimes I I forget even my children's names so uh yeah last Kingdom it's one of my favorites it's about Vikings oh yeah no I've seen part of it I haven't gone all the way through but yeah I think I probably watched part of it during that during the develop there's this beat and I'm getting to a point here there's this heartbeat in that show which is it's all about Destiny MH and there's this this belief that the protagonist has his name is UTD utd's belief is so strong that he is supposed to um collect his his father's Lost Kingdom and go get it back yeah so it's like this this this Destiny in his in his blood it runs through his blood and there's this feeling it's something that happens when you're making it for me when you're making a game and it's

getting traction and people are wishlisting and it's getting views you get into this almost like 100% confidence that that Destiny is finally on your side yeah and that this is your time this is it this is it and then when it's pulled out from under you on launch day suddenly your whole identity collapses and you're like wait a second that was all fake like all that all that sense of like I'm Destin's on my side is is fake now I know that that's not true though because your game has made money so I know and you should know that you are on the right path and you need to jump in even harder for your next game yeah but I'm sure that felt weird like really difficult yeah it was um yeah it definitely took a a bit of adjusting you know it feels like uh you get like vertigo right it's like the you you jump out of a plane all of a sudden and like you don't know what to believe or what thing you know was accurate to the to

the thing I don't know it's it's tough and uh you know it took me some time my wife was awesome and like kind of threw a like a launch party for me like a few days later and you know buch all my friends and co-workers and stuff from did you want that no yeah I did like I I did it was it was just friends you know I and I had a lot of really good friends that were like reminding me of you know even if it sold zero copies it's a success because yeah you may like how many people managed to do it and it's a massive learning experience and just to to put yourself out there all that sort of stuff and it wasn't selling zero copies it was like doing fine um yeah and so was it was it um and sorry if it it sounds like I'm interrupting you there's a delay with our conversation um because i' I've gotten comments in the past like Thomas stop interrupting your guest I'm like there's a there there's a lag it's it's difficult natural yeah so here's

the question okay MH the question is how do you avoid that with song of iron 2 yeah oh it's I mean that's the the greatest thing I took from it is is the learnings to try to avoid it again I mean I think song of iron 2 I have to not care about how well it does first as best as possible you know great the impossible task right but um the song struggled from a few things and I think led to this the majority of the negative reviews uh my controls were not great pretty simply understood I definitely didn't like test that enough with my friends even and I had like I've I've talked about it before but I kind of laughed like without even realizing it I had I had like started using my fingers in the most insane way on my keyboard and I just got so used to it in development that I didn't think twice of

it I was like my middle finger was like literally crossing over my index finger to do stuff like night it's just like insane it's like okay fix the controls which I've done a huge multiple passes on now so way better um steam doesn't let you review until about the 20 minute Mark and so make the first 20 minutes the best 20 minutes of your game if not like entice people to continue playing without like stopping because there there was it not for song of iron one I would I would argue that you could get to a point of frustration uh before the 20 minute Mark um wow one so I I mean some of my best stuff of song is in the beginning um it's sort of it's the cleanest you kind of have the more most anticipate like this the best little bit of the story and and it's fresh and stuff but it's still like Well it can't be that

true because I did have you know I ran into that people coming right at 20 minutes and having know bad feelings and then um 20 minutes is the return or two hours is the return window so short game not super good for that um so people make it I mean not many people finish games I think that's pretty well known right like very few people make it to the end of a game so say people make it 23 the way through your average game that's pretty much the end of song of iron you know and so people can return uh return it and I had a pretty high return value too which is yep less fun um return value what do you mean uh yeah what is that number I it's probably made up ter but like I a large percentage of people return the game um they want to they want to play a second time no they no they they refunded it sorry they refunded the oh refund yeah oh I see I see the numbers gone down but it was

like for a while it was like 20% early on so is it the price so the price is a little high potentially uh maybe it's the price I think um I don't know I don't know um I think it's probably all the reasons that people kind of didn't love the game probably led to it and some people felt like they got a they got a good chunk of it done in that two-hour window and they thought well I'll just return it yep yep yeah so song of iron 2 the plan moving forward is fix the controls y fix the the the gameplay controls gameplay controls and making it less janky because I I see a review here that says it's janky yeah that's um I'm not sure if that's true I don't I won't argue with that it it it is it has jankiness to it for sure now let's discuss really quick though I'm looking I'm if people are watching right now and they see me looking not at you it's because I'm I'm looking at the steam page yeah um let's talk about the

marketing of this game sure so I I feel like the hook here I bar is well I don't think you did yeah I think it's strong okay so I I'm I'm sitting here going I don't think the marketing was the issue clearly like if if something goes viral on Reddit you've got something yeah I I I really believe that um I've I've hit the front page on Reddit twice as well and I bet you we both learned it from the same person did you learn it from David wayy of course I did who else come on yeah I I like to take credit for a third front page because I I got a I had a buddy who was kind of going on a Kickstarter and then he had an edit you know to his gift he was all and I was like nope we're redoing that listen this is how it's got to go I've learned I think learned the recipe um well there's the reason I bring that up Joe is

because for me I didn't go viral on Reddit because of the game I went viral on Reddit because of the method that I did it so the way that I would do it I don't do this anymore um I kind of hacked the system so which reddit's kind of easy to hack sometimes I mean depending on which which subreddits you're on you can hack it so what I did this is I shouldn't be saying this what I did what I did is I would live stream um the posting yeah good so I would literally go hey we're gonna do a live stream today and we're going to live I'm going to talk about posting to Reddit and hey I'm GNA post this to Reddit I never would say go to the link and up vot I would just say that's what we're doing and I would say I hope it goes viral and then lo and behold people would leave the stream and go upload it mhm and so if you if you catch that

momentum on Reddit promoting it y it's kind of a honestly I don't think it's a very it's a very old school algorithm yeah um whereas YouTube you could never do that you could never pull that off um because YouTube's algorithm care doesn't care about outside traffic yeah only yeah right yeah it it cares about m is it getting is it getting clicks from the browse page um yeah and so point being all that said long story short is song of iron the gifts did the work for you correct yeah totally I think on the second one I might have posted on Twitter like let's see if I can do this again but I had like 3,000 Twitter followers or something so it didn't matter yeah um yeah yeah the momentum's Everything E like it uh it it kicks in and you see it happen and you go did it and you're you're like 20 minutes in you go got it got a good one y and you know I mean you don't know what kind of like how big it'll go but it's on its way and it will

do what it can do um well um can I give you like my three sort of thoughts on what you should do with song of iron 2 let's do it yeah yeah okay uh obviously take this with a grain of salt because you know Never song Never song made about the same um I think Never song did $300,000 gross on Steam pinstripe did something like 500,000 gross so we're like hitting kind of the same sort of level of virality so like what do I know but what I would do with song of iron 2 is I would and we can cut this if you want but number one the first thing that I would do is I would consider not calling it song of iron too I would consider calling it something completely different think about Game of Thrones mhm well what did they they wanted to do a a a spin-off right and so they did did um House of the Dragon House of the Dragon yeah so totally different

name so the reason I say that is because I'm not so sure that song of iron um has the the impact of like the the reason you do a second one is because you're capitalizing on the intellectual property of the first yeah it's the name so the name is super viral it's you sometimes sometimes Studios will just buy up the name just to have it so they can create something else based on that name yeah but it's like totally different um like bat's Motel it's like it's not even psycho um it's just kind of kind of about the characters kind of but it's the name that matters so like with song of iron I'm like yes it had 100,000 wish lists but I'm not I don't think that you need to if I feel like if you if you do song of iron 2 essentially what you're doing is your cat I could be completely wrong here but you're you're taking the small audience from the first one and then excluding everybody else right yeah it's a huge risk without the massive success

right to try to follow up right and yeah I totally I totally agree that that's a you know cuz you're saying like if you played the first one come on through and get the second one y well not many people played the first one mhm yeah relative to other games in my head I I've had this like you know like The Witcher in my head about it like how many people played one or two and three blows up right um there there was also some like old school mentality of like some people who just like called their game part two and did really well cuz it just like makes it feel uh more legitimate or something like oh well they had a first one I'll play this one yeah but but there's a risk you know barring a giant marketing budget to tell everybody like don't worry you don't need to play the first one I'll tell you everything you need to know uh that well people will just go oh I don't know I've never played that one walk why don't you call it like song of Stone or something yeah right I could do you know s song of fire like you uh said ear yeah so I think I think there's some

potential there uh or like total just some totally different name and then you know subtitled like a song of iron game or something um but I wonder I wonder if that I wonder if this is terrible advice but you know this just my gut my initial gut was like yeah go with a different derivative you know I I don't think you're wrong honestly the more the more I think about it um and have thought about it and yeah there's a laziness of me just going like oh do I have to change all this stuff for steam but that's it like I I I signed with 3D Realms the creators of Wolfenstein and I just messaged them today and I said hey we need to change the name of the game so we're like they signed the game and I'm I want to change it for the fifth time awesome so maybe maybe that's not good maybe I'm actually proving that I'm my advice is terrible cuz I keep Chang changing stuff I don't know but the second thing I would do I would think

about is does the does song of iron have aliens in it it has a Sci-Fi element for sure yeah yeah I man I it's two years later and my brain I cannot like tell the secret no yes there's you're a viking and then there's people that come down with laser guns well I'm looking at song of ir too it's it's Ona it shows it yeah I do show it see that's it's everything we're talking about here is marketing and it's it probably feels really gross to a lot of people listening cuz like why is what like if the guy wants to make it Song ofon 2 Thomas let him make it it's it's his passion it's his baby and I'm just sitting here thinking man I I want you to avoid the curl up moment yeah for for launching the second one and so what I'm thinking is man don't bury the The Twist give me the twist in the marketing and and you would call it song of Neon or so song of plasma or something and it's like you you got Viking of the the I see the thumbnail it's like the Viking is

standing there just jacked and he's straight up old school Viking and then right behind him is a UFO yeah like that spaceship and some some uh yeah some like Space Marines yeah it's um honestly it's the coolest part of the of the story and uh yeah for the first one I I buried that deep I you know your your your cool creative thought is like oh will be the coolest twist no one will know it's in here I will never say a word about it and I didn't and I don't know if that would have like changed it too much maybe a little bit but I mean it really was like this final level was this thing you discover that you know that this this alien race the sort of Space Race had been basically like forcing your people the Vikings to live on this hard Planet so they would become big strong Warriors and and you were and you and like the harshness made them strong kind of thing and and then they they invite them to Valhalla which is when they let them up into space to go and fight in

the space wars and so you kind of break you see through the LIE eventually and then you finally walk up to these guys and they're like half the height of the player so the Vikings are these Monsters by comparison to the people that are controlling them oh funny and so the final level every hit on one of these soldiers just sends them flying and you're like you're just so overpowered um super awesome concept I think I really enjoy it and um but I buried that so song two it's right up front is in the trailer um you know Odin is like calling you to war and uh then a bunch of these huge like Destroyer ships come in like in space and all this stuff so it's it's definitely more front facing this time uh and it's going to be a bigger part of the game so yeah I think that um I think that what we're doing right now is we're dancing around we we're playing with fire in a way yeah because imagine surely you've

seen the six cents right yeah yeah yeah okay so it's so old it's like 25 years old so can deal with I know right um but people can deal with me spoiling this because you should have saw it 30 years ago yeah but anyway look it's like the reason I say we're playing with fire is because I can imagine a studio saying let's put the fact that they're dead in the tra because people will and see that that's let's put the that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time let's put that in the trailer because that's that's really like really captures your attention so I understand why what I'm saying could very well actually screw up the game itself but the problem is is that marketing is so freaking important right now because with AI Tech and asset packs and Tech and just uh unity and unreal and gdau and how easy it is to learn now dude

we're competing with so many games now oh yeah and so the the the question is like man you've got to number one you've got to have a ground swell of wish lists and they've got to be like you got to get those in like six months like you said right because they're going to go cold yep so you need that ground swell and you also need to capture a ton of attention outside of the wish lists how do you do it it well you've got to think really really hard about some kind of marketing gimmick or hook that captures people's attention really fast and a a sidescrolling Viking game is I would say that's a cool hook but I've I think I've seen something similar to it lately other games coming out and so now I'm like you've got to find some another hook to to to attach to it do it hard you know yeah and and I am hoping that this um you know now that the secrets out like from the first game like I have I have this ability to show a lot of

really cool imagery of you know bare chested or fur armored Warrior beating up on like literally Space Marines and I know or lasers and stuff and lasers yeah I mean the the trailer the announcement trailer for two kind of has a little bit of all that stuff like there's lasers firing off in the dark and I'm drop kicking these like you know sci-fi armored up guys and the lasers are bouncing off your sheet and uh it's like a thing that isn't you don't see that very much um it's pretty rare imagery and so I definitely need to lean into it um for sure and one of the things I mean to you know the six months point I'm some Part of Me Maybe it's laziness to post constantly is like I need to save up all of my marketing like ability and put it literally into the last six months the game should be done almost before I start which is super counterintuitive to the lessons of game of Indie devs over the last 10 years right it really is the

opposite of what's been told and I think it's uh it's a necessity now yeah I think the the new approach the new approach is something like like post immediately don't don't post because I used to say start marketing your game the day you create start making it and now I'm like no you kind of want to just Market it like 6 months before launch which is more traditional with like steam nextfest or something yeah yeah I think um I think it's there's twofold I think people want to follow people they don't want to follow games so you could probably uh start to build an audience like showing Maya work or you know stuff with wireframes on of like you working on something but don't start selling the game yet don't put out trailers don't put out cool gift I agree dude um show the process this but don't show anything else I think or or just once in a while

you can show like a little treat but like I I've Been Working On Water cuz I have this boat element now and it's like I could totally show I got I got some water simulation stuff figured out this is cool and it's like a pill running through water or just like you know a little white box or or even the character people have seen the character now so it's not a big deal but like with white background and you know don't show I don't know some there's got to be some weird balance there but yeah I don't think we sell the game we don't start wish listing yet all that stuff we save it well and and people listening are probably thinking Thomas you are a hypocrite and I'm like 100% I'm a hypocrite because this is what I've learned in the last year it's new yeah um you know and it's with conversations with 3D Realms as well they're like we need to hold tight hang tight don't don't be putting stuff out there just yet I'll do Dev logs and stuff I feel like that's very it's kind of like a little bubble of safety because they don't go super viral um and it's mainly for developers so yeah yeah and you know you build up these audiences and you you

don't want your audience to go cold right and I think like the Twitter algorithm like all the algorithms will see you not post for like six months and go well you don't care and then you post something and like no one sees it it's like because they don't they're not going to push it so you kind of like anything you kind of have to keep trickling stuff out I've done a terrible job on that recently which is why I know that it that it's a bad thing every once in a while like hey here's a cool thing and then it's like crickets it's like ah that would have that you know everything tells me from my from the past that that should have done at least somewhat decent and you know 10 10 people like it or something um well you know to to sort of wrap up this point about just the the launch of song of iron I I find it interesting I'm trying to think like the audience right now I'm trying to think like okay they're they're they both think that over $100,000 in sales is bad and that probably is offputting to people and what I want to what I want to say is

this should encourage everybody because what we're saying should encourage people because what happens is you start making games and you think that's impossible to make even 10 grand that sounds insane but as you continue to release Games you start to realize there's I could I could probably make a million bucks here with with what I'm learning and so there's this sort of Overton window that shifts slowly about what's normal and what's what's the proper amount of Revenue to expect and I think that do you do you feel like okay now that I understand my the what went wrong with song of iron do you kind of have a new more balanced expectation for song of iron 2 yeah oh absolutely I mean I I really um like I my initial plan was like I'll do song one and then song two I'll try to double whatever it does cuz it'll be a second one and I think now I'd be happy with the same numbers as one um interesting emotionally at least

I think you know I wanted to do better but um I think I'm just going to go about it differently too I probably wouldn't quit my job as early I think I'll let the development stretch way longer and sort of part-time develop um for longer so that I'm not so worried about the success like this banging success that I make the million dooll indie game and then I really kind of can just make three more games without worrying about it too much um and I'm just not I'm not gonna look for that this time I'm gonna look for learning a bunch putting a lot of what I learned in one and two and testing it and seeing if I'm right about what went wrong seeing if I'm right about how to how to correct some of that stuff and um and just try to think of it as this middle child game even though honestly it is so much better than the first one already like it it is because I I mean I just I didn't know what I was doing in a lot of cases and it's so much better and um if it does the same I will

I think I'll be happy uh because I want to make something totally different and i' got I've learned so much and I'm so excited to do that that I'm more excited to like finish and move on and then I think any success will be good so it's totally totally shifted me basically yeah I'm looking at the trailer here for song of iron 2 and then I'll shut up about what I think sure my thoughts on the marketing of it I'm looking at song of iron 2 here and I'm looking at the trailer and the beginning of the trailer I know what you were aiming for which is you're aiming for showing that alien ship coming in right mhm I think I'm yep these alien ships come in I think it was Walt Disney who said for animation you definitely know this for sure with animation you go like 10 times harder than real life to try and really capture especially for like Pixar Animation right you go 10 times harder and exaggerate an animation to make sure the

audience gets it right am I wrong there no yeah exaggeration appeal all these things so you really push yeah you push your poses yeah the same is true with a trailer in my opinion cuz like when I first saw these spaceships come in I didn't know what they were I didn't fully capture it I didn't understand it so I feel like you need to go way harder with like no this is a spaceship yeah yeah clear as day and not like weird clouds yeah that's that's super Fair yeah yeah and that's something I've been learning too with um our game Twisted Tower the so I've learned this from the previous trailer we you know we launched the trailer and it like IGN picked it up um but it only did 40,000 views MH and so I'm like okay what happened here why is this not at least 100,000 and I think it's because immediately in the first three seconds just like you were talking about with the first 20 minutes of a you know game play the first three seconds

of a trailer it needs to immediately communicate exactly what the hook is yeah um no question and so for me because the game is like Walt Disney uh meets Bioshock I'm going to start the first thing I'm going to show is big giant Cinderella's castle type thing um and it's going to be cloudy and Lightning's going to be flashing and there's going to be fireworks and then there's going to be blood everywhere that's the first 5 seconds and you go got it I know what it is yep and so that's that's so true with every game that that the audience is making right now because of the AI Revolution I don't like the AI Revolution I don't love a ton of asset packs I don't love that thousands of games are coming out right now um but because of that we've got to stand out so hardcore in the first five like the first five seconds of a trailer you just have to do it yeah we have no choice yeah it's a it's like uh it's the worst

isn't it because you like it's so Dum I hate it you so badly want to build a little suspense and give people little tease and do this and play and show this cool little like 30 second story and you get you don't get that pretty rarely like once in a while you can get away with it but it's luck right like enough people just happen to stick around or whatever um yeah we just we got to hit hard hit fast yeah and I'm I'm probably showing my true colors here because I I've just I've definitely become more immature as an artist what I mean is like yeah yeah I'm not as pure as I used to be and it makes me sad not no it's not that you're less pure you I don't I wouldn't think of it that way I purity of art is like a lie that that you tell yourself when you're getting into it or if you are like too pompous about it I think cuz like what is it you know it's it's true and you're just being more appeal like you're giving more appeal to a larger

audience but that's not you're not like selling out by doing that I don't think at all yeah yeah well you know I think I think you're right I think it's how about how about instead of if if the if if arti if Artistic integrity was a pie you don't you don't have to take three slices out and put in marketing you can just say no I just want another pie we're going to do a marketing Pie and we're going to do Artistic integrity pie and sort of try and separate them out emotionally like I'm going to make an artistically pure game but for God's sake put F the first five seconds of the trailer should be the best part of the don't feel bad about showing the good stuff you know what I mean like he shouldn't feel bad about that and I you know it's like um the the most pure art never is is like the most successful it just isn't like it because it you to be true art like you have to you're going completely Niche to a certain group who can understand a very specific message and

that's a risk that Indie developers take often which is why some you know you get really cool stuff in Indie develop but it's sort of like we're playing you know we're playing t-ball with our with against each other while these giant corpse are like yeah whatever and then they just like you know what I mean and they're just like running us over in tanks instead and it's like you don't feel like we can't we we can not feel bad about using tricks quote unquote to like get our messages across we we cannot feel bad about it um It's So Dope you're making you're doing great work don't worry you know okay well you know it's like the it's the it's the world of Tik Tok is where we're at you know and all the all the fuzzy haired gen z's are you know with with their uh I don't know what the style is but really big it's beautiful they're beautiful uh but the the ticktockers of the world have changed things potentially for the better maybe not I don't know but it's

inevitable now things are it's just Cy and fast and if it doesn't make sense in the first three seconds you're done yeah and there's part of me that's kind of like I kind of get it you know it's like we we've all got so much information being thrown at us right now on our phones then it's kind of it's kind of a generous thing to quickly give the information to somebody and not waste their time if I'm a Salesman and I go to somebody's front door it's kind of disrespectful to ask them how you doing how's the wife oh that's a cool dog just tell me what you want even you know yeah the work email or the you know you message someone hey it's like just ask them the question don't yep don't waste the time because I think you can earn that time like you can earn the time for someone to sit and watch a three minute trailer but it's like be not like you're saying it's it's a total kindness to go this is what the trailer is do you want to watch more keep watching like give it to him in the first five minutes like if you want to keep watching I'm going to I'm going to tell

you what it is I'll give you a little preview yeah and um well there's also go ahead sorry sorry just like I mean how many how many Tik toks for example you start watching and you go oh you're not going to tell me the story like you're not going to get you're never going to get there and so yeah it's a it's a total kindness to to to give them that so I think so too man well okay so sort of one sort of final discussion I wanted to have here if you have yeah yeah have yeah let's do it I think maybe 15 more minutes of chatting I I want to hear from start to finish and this would be kind of maybe a cool little clip to create from this podcast I want to hear from start to finish how you did it how did you make song of iron um sure from knowing nothing about games or you you knew stuff because you were with Bungie which is freaking incredible three for three yeah I missed work with bung I missed the Bungie train they they're up here they're up in Seattle but yeah the Halo had been passed along already right right and now Bungie is something completely different than we very

different place yeah yeah yeah so let's let's discuss this from start to finish of the game because the goal what I want from you right here so this is very sort of focused on the audience and I know I said we probably we're just gonna have a chat we're just gonna have a chat drinking beer but for this I really want to hear like I want my audience to hear how did he do this like what's what what's the process and how do I replicate that so this is more of a technical conversation and it's also a schuling conversation of how you scheduled your time so feel free to just just a rant away yeah oh please oh man um it's hard to say how I got going with it without going back a bit further too I creatively as you know animating has been my thing forever um and anytime on a project where I start to feel uh less inspired or or I'm kind of being challenged anymore I just always start doing side projects um most of my career that's just been like I'll just do an animation on the side and over time I I started to see

like design decisions being made at Studios where I go oh I don't like that I wonder if this would have been better and so I started like testing those Concepts so I would open unreal and just go see if I could like make a quick little demo to prove like yeah my idea was good or something like or or at least was valid if if not good um and so it just became this like quest to understand decisions being made and um and then I mean everybody's got opinions making a game and you have a studio of hundreds or a thousand people there's going to be a lot of disagreement and so I just kind of was like a question stuff and then on Halo um I questioned a lot about what they were doing with infinite I really extremely disagreed with a lot of decisions being made were you right I think I was right I still think I was right and I can't I wish I could say more about what I was doing to prove it um but I can't I think okay I I think

it' be safer but basically I tried to prove it I I I built something to show what I thought was the path to be on and I got I I got internally amazing response and I was running play tests and this is you know remember I'm just an animator so I'm like I'm really sticking my nose where it doesn't belong but I I you know I made something I was running play test I was getting really good response and um I was getting uh I was getting shut down basically uh that turned me off very heavily and I got some really good advice in that moment I was very upset about that situation uh I got some really good advice from an animator friend and he said no matter how well that would have done if they took it it would have been taken from you it wouldn't have been yours anymore and it would have been this great thing that 343 made do your own thing and so I like that day I stopped working on this thing on the side and I went and I and I opened unreal and I started making

something and uh I made a game that I would never be able to finish and so I stopped and I thought to myself okay I want to go through this experience uh so I can learn the whole thing start to finish of building something and that's the birth of song of iron I I put down some really heavy restrictions on myself was like no multiplayer uh sides scrolling so I only have to worry about the one dimension which is Sid scrolling it's a very common 2 you know Indie thing because it really does make things easier to some extent oh it does you're still dealing with the z-axis but not de tons of stuff and you know you all this cheeky stuff where like my arrows just like lock on to to zero and move and like you know there's all these things you can cheat a ton in so so you know that um it's was like no to limited dialogue uh really rely on animation to drive how things run because I can animate so I you know like let the animation Drive the systems a little bit I put all these really heavy restrictions on myself to try to

narrow the scope down um and you know I even then I was like two to three hour game like make it a sitting or two sittings you know for the dads out there that just want to play a game and finish it uh that was like I had this mentality like keep it simple keep it small and I just started playing around I just put a guy in the game and started a little sillier with more physics kind of wob arms and doing some cool very like unreal demo stuff and uh I started sharing it and people were responding really well to it on like um unreal subreddit basically and not like crazy well it didn't blow it didn't go to front page then but I was like oh wow that's way like a thousand up votes that's awesome like somebody you know people enjoy this cool so I started following that more and more uh and then I burnt out like instantly I think I burnt out maybe two two or three months in I was like oh God I'm like start how work is ah of you you start to go oh this might be real and just like

instantly it just like melted my brain uh and it took me a about a month to get back into it and I I had to play this trick on myself was like all right all you have to do this week is open unreal once a day no obligation past that and uh I think the first day I opened it I literally just probably closed it again and then the second day I opened it and I just flew around My Level that I had been making and I was like oh maybe I'll move that rock and you know you nudge something and it just sucked me in it just sucked me right back in because there was no pressure right the pressure was literally open it I clicked the button on my desktop pressure's gone I've succeeded in my task for the day yep uh I love that and it sucked it it worked it sucked me right back in and um and then I worked for two and a half years or something and um a good part of that I think like 18 months of it was uh while I was working at 343 subred stuff all went crazy while I was at 343 that

was a funny day and um I just kept going and and I kept building it I built the game as far as like technically how I got it done yeah like scheduling wise and and scope and stuff I actually built uh like a miniature of the game in unreal like you would walk for like 2 seconds and you'd be to the next level like it was literally like a like a goofy little shoe box version of the game and it really gave me this super fast scope concept of like where the levels are what's the flow because it's it's a it's a linear side scroller so it goes from the all the way from this side all the way to that side and you're done uh and so I just built this miniature and it let me like IDE ideate and just kind of like understand where I was going and it gave me this road map of things to make um and then I I pretty much did a really rough like crazy rough WIP box of the whole game so I could technically run from one side to the other successfully even though like it'

be like strips of just flat white ground for a long time uh and that gave me this like rough timing and then I was and then I started building in pieces and I I completely went for this layered approach where I I brought like the whole game up to this and then I brought the whole game a little bit higher and then I brought the whole game a little higher um I don't think that was the best decision but at the time it felt good um and why was not that that not the best decision I think it I think it was burning me out in a way that was making like the last couple things I did of that layer way worse cuz I was getting lazy cuz I was like I just can't wait to move on to the trees you know or whatever I was going to do next I was like biome yeah I was like getting excited about this next thing and I'm just like I'm still white boxing and I've been white boxing for like a month um oh I see I think in like way there's some mix I think going the the fall other direction isn't the best way either like you don't want to build an entire level to finish and then start the next one and go oh I built

everything wrong cuz now I can't build this other idea so there's some mix in song two I've like I've built that shoe box version again it's a little bit bigger and it's got more info in it for me but it's allowed me then to go okay I feel confident in the core like systems that this the game needs which I didn't have in the first one so I'm building them all on the first level the first level is like it's going to get to like 80% and then I'm going to move on y um yep and the Order of levels I'm building differently now it's like I'm trying to build the first level at the perfect time where I am the most excited and I have the most skills and the most systems built so the first level is the best dud that's brilliant that is so smart it's just yeah and then like I'm the the second level I'm giving like the middle and then the end I want to do cool but I like I just got to do it the least amount of people get there it's still going to be cool nothing you don't want anything to be bad but you're

you know art is hard and you will be inspired or you won't be inspired and you will see the work quality just go up or down to the ground right um so I did not do that for someone so I got lazy in certain parts um I tried to recover I kind of like I was able to like come back to them and like poish them up but still it's like you can kind of see it sometimes at least I can CU I know I guess where those moments happen maybe maybe the whole thing looks like that to people but um yeah and so how did you how did you do it alone though that's that's what I'm most curious about like did you use assets I saw you posted on Twitter and your post made me angry it was you and you said this is my first time doing blender was that was that you oh yeah um fairly recently the the Voldemort and it was sculpt gorgeous yeah it was gorgeous I was like this guy this the first time he's ever was my first sculpt too yeah no um yeah I mean I blender is a tool and I

want to learn it and so I was trying to like get myself to learning it with sculpting which I haven't done uh I I did not not I use some packs I'm not going to lie I I took models I think every asset I touched somewhat uh I don't think there's any just like straight out of a pack into here um and tons of stuff I like started as a pack asset like I need to know how to do trees and I don't I have no clue so I like got an asset that I liked and used that to initially populate and then I was like oh I want it to be better and so you start working on it and it's um what's the boat thing it's like if you take every piece of the if you slowly replace every piece of the boat is it still the same boat when every piece has been replaced I don't know maybe maybe not for like something like this but um so yeah I think it's just the way we make games now it is a little bit just the way you make games yeah I mean was laughing I was playing Boulder skate I was like oh I have that tree in my game you know it's like even they are not innocent of it and um no yeah but it's

like you know you make art out of it and you you adjust it and tons of stuff I made fresh characters all the character armor all the characters and stuff I've made yeah was that blender like that was 3D Studio Max okay so you wanted to learn blender that yeah blender was a part two was where I've started to try to get into it um okay because I want to do more sculpt stuff and I didn't not having sculpt it's really hard it was hard for me to like get good normal map stuff going so well with organic stuff as well right um like trees and and humanoids and all that um so I was using um unreal's uh like texture thing I'm forgetting the substance their version of substance painter basically okay um to try to get some of that stuff but it becomes very generic and nonspecific in a way that I wasn't good at it I guess but so yeah I mean I I the only help I had on song was music and audio I did end up hiring someone to help me with

some fle because I basically didn't I know myself and that is something I I am terrible at audio I don't understand it it's just something that like doesn't work my brain and and music tfold that uh I was never going to be able to write good stuff and it felt like it uh deserves some really good Viking stuff and uh will Goss who who did it I think he smashed it I mean he really he really nailed it and so that was my my little bit of help that I had in the project um but I just kept I just kept making stuff and animating and and just building piece at a time and uh which sounds like a nothing answer but it's just sort of what you just have to keep going and you you can't you can't rely on inspiration to drive like to be fuel inspiration is like a great one day you work three extra hours or something because you get you get hyped up but you have to be stubborn I think a little bit like you

just have to know that it's just going to take time and you have to work at it um you do doing marking at the same time and uh you get to the part where you have to Port it and that gets insane so I ported myself to Xbox um which was a nightmare uh and I had fod which really made it hard for me something about fod just I've cursed I've cursed fod so many times that was that was one of the first questions was it one of the first questions that 3D Realms asked me are you using because they they're handling yeah they're handling the port for Xbox and play I told them I said look if we work together I will not touch console yeah and they said okay well we'll do the we'll do the port are you using fod which we not it has been fully stripped from song two um I'm happy for it every day it makes me a better person I've been told so many times to use it by like um friends and and people on

YouTube and stuff and I'm like I'm sure it's amazing I don't doubt it's a powerful tool absolute nightmare for someone who doesn't understand it absolute nightmare yeah um well yeah but I you know I um yeah and then I started putting a date on it and that gave me some fun pressure to to hit a date and the date moved a little bit um but I just started wrapping it up and I had a I had a really good buddy I kind of mentioned him earlier who kind of side de he was developing his own game at the same time and so we were co-workers and we really encouraged each other and he played song a lot and we talked design and and pushed it and uh there was like three months where you kind of black out in the middle there and um oh yeah I so the something else as far as how you get it done I had to I kind of like thought of of the game being made by three versions of myself which sounds a little insane maybe but I think I was probably a little insane in

in making it and it was like the person who designed the game he worked on it for the first year then there was like the person who just built all the stuff for that person and they worked on it for like the next year and then there's the insane person who launched it uh the last three months and I really in the last three or four months I had to trust the first two people way over myself like I just had to believe that they had made a good game because I couldn't see it anymore I absolutely could not tell I was just I was over I couldn't do it I couldn't see the the screen you know and uh so I kind of like was pretending I was like I'm trusting designer Joe that he made a good call here and I just got to keep building his his stuff um yep and that mentality that's a great way to put it dude I think that saved me because I there would have been times where I would have just not launched or something like I got kind of freaked and I thought I had a terrible thing and you know arguable but no it's not arguable dude this is

your first commercial release and it's good to make over $100,000 dude that's awesome I'm very proud of it I really am you should be it looks incredible yeah thank you well you know I think that that uh I think that wraps it up Joe I think I think that was a really like I learned so much from that conversation awesome um and I I I appreciate your honesty links are below for those of you listening links are below for song of iron and then also wish list song of iron too do we want wish list for song listen yeah you know if you want to do it but uh watch the trailer and let me know what you think uh follow me on Twitter or something if you want or something I don't post a lot so I won't spam you I promise yeah stay uh for those of you who are wishlisting song of iron 2 make sure you stay excited about it and stay nice and warm so that when it launches we can convert yeah there's a there's a bell now too right so you get extra notified on stuff yeah R do that thing

no it's all good Cool Joe thanks for your time man that was awesome yeah absolutely man thanks thank you for having me I love talking about the stuff and the more inep we get the more fun I have so yeah we can do it again for sure yeah love it all right cheers man see you get over [Music] here hey thanks for watching bye by the way if you haven't downloaded that free 2D game kit below click below it's my treat to you I used this game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days and actually got to play it with him in front of his audience which is really cool this game kit is totally free it's my treat to you and you can use it however you want you can make a commercial game and make a million bucks off this game kit I don't care or you could just use it for a hobby project it's my treat to you and by the way if you haven't click like that would mean a ton to me hit subscribe and also this is important hit that notification Bell here's why if you get notified of when I'm live you can watch me make my next game and let me know in the chat what

you think about the game or any ideas you have and you might just show up your chat might just show up in the next video that I upload all right I'll talk to you later bye I love you too