Why You Might NOT Want To Make A Game Alone...

In this video, me and my buddy Jay, one of the creators of Cult the Lamb, discuss why game developers might want to consider not making a game solo. And if you stick around through the entire video, whether you want to make a game solo or you want to work with a team, you're going to walk away with top tier advice from, in my opinion, a developer responsible for one of the greatest indie game success stories, the benefits of working with a team versus working solo. I think the majority of the listeners right now are aspiring solo developers. Would you mind giving me some like some positives if you were to convince somebody if they had some money to spend why they should work with the team? So I started as a solo developer making like small little mini flash games and I would sort of collab with other people. So I kind of did both and I found that working with someone else and this is not like hiring a team necessarily. I'm talking about like finding partners [music] which is very different. So you've got like people that share the vision with you versus like you know hiring hiring a starting a company and having you know people and they have a revenue stake.

Yeah. Exactly. So people who you know it's like starting a band really you know you you find people who do different things to you but also you know areanely talented. So what I did when I was making flash games with almost every game for the first sort of year or so I would partner with someone different. And then out of all the people that I partnered with, Julian and Jim were the ones that stood out as like amazing. And so that's why when we started Massive Monster, those were the two guys that I thought like I wanted to work with. And you know that we were already, you know, we'd already started like the Adventure Pals and [music] Jim and I were kind of already, you know, talking about already like collaborating a lot like quite frequently by that point. But finding people who I kind of always thought like you you wake up and they've done this incredible artwork that just inspires you to to be better at what you do is just amazing. [music] And it's like it's not like you know one plus one. It's like you know 1* 1 is still one but like it's like a multi it's a multiplier

right having people who are like better than you at stuff and coming up with you what you you never want to be the smartest person in the room. You because why are you in that room? You want to be surrounded by people who are better than you and you think, "Wow, why am I in this room? How did I get how did I manage to like wangle my way into this room?" Yeah, that's kind of And are you considered the team lead, Jay? I think all three of us would answer yes to [music] like ourselves being the team lead. We found um an amazing kind of like balance with the three of us where we all kind of have our [music] own strengths and our own responsibilities and we're kind of remarkably always on the same page with stuff. So the three of us are thankfully in a very good position in terms of the partnership, but yeah, I think all three of us would would say that we are the leader. So well, what what about So you've got you've got, you know, skill skill, you've got that in the bag and and you're said, like you said, it sort of exponentially increases the the the quality of the game cuz everybody's working off each other's energy. Did you ever have situations where in the past

where you've worked with a team where where members weren't committed to the mission and you didn't really know how to handle it? Yeah. Um we so at one point in Massive Monster we had a lot more people as part of it and we were much more of a sort of collective [music] where there were much more games going on and different teams working on different games at different stages and the idea of the company was very different to what it is now. And that was [music] really hard because you know when you are working with people and things aren't going the right way and you've all got different visions you know no matter how much you like everyone that's really [music] not a good situation to be in. So, I I would say maybe go go slow when you're finding your team. If you rush into things and you're committed to to situations and people, you know, no matter how amazing they are and talented they are, and they've all like doing amazing things and gone on to make amazing games. It took like a year for me to like just work with people, see what worked, see what didn't, and then, you know, landing on these these two guys. It's not easy to find amazing people or no, let me say that again. Even when you find amazing

people, you might not have the right project or you might not be quite aligned. So I think been very lucky with J and Julian in that we the three of us wanted to make this thing and we had a very clear vision once we finally settled on it. You talk about vision a lot. Um Oh, do I? So in in Orbert. Yeah. Yeah. So in order to in order to make sure the team is is is happy and everyone's working and and sort of multiplying each other's skills, it's good to have that vision. So I know you mentioned the three pillars. Yeah. So you can again clarify those three pillars and those are correlated to your vision, right? Yeah, I guess they are. How would you sum up your vision in three bullet points? Like what are the what's your vision for the game in three bullet points? I mean we could do it live now like with um Twisted Tower. What's what's the three pillars? Yeah. So for me that my pillars are I sort of think of them as the hooks. So I I have three hooks for the game. Okay. Visually, it has to feel like Bioshock without a doubt, but with a twist. So,

with like a Willy Wonka twist. Bioshock, but Willy Wonka. There. There you go. There you go. That's number one. Yep. Number two. Mechanically. Mechanically, it just needs to be solid Half-Life firsterson shooter mechanics. I don't really think there needs to be any other twist there. The only twist is like sometimes you can move the tower and change the tower and change the halls. So it would be something like Half-Life gunplay, but you can change your environment, that kind of thing. Okay. And then the third one would be the story. And so the story needs to be it would be Willy Wonka meets Bioshock. So similar to the first one, but it has to be a tearjerker story at the end. So highly focused on story, which is not necessarily the smartest, wisest decision for today's market, but that's what I wanted to do. That's my forte. So I said, I'm going to focus on the story. So really, it's going to be it has to be a tearjerker story. Despite it being crazy and violent and gross and weird and strange, there needs to be an emotional throughine.

Emotional. So that's like the three vision points. Yeah. Emotional because then you've got every decision you make, every conversation you have with an NPC can feed back into that, you know, can set up this tearjacking moment. And um yeah, every every weapon you put into the game has to reinforce a Half-Life combat uh weapon play. And then every yeah, every visual design you you know, you're not going to put pirates in it because it doesn't fit your Willy Wonka um aesthetic, right? So every single decision you make um has to has to trickle back down to one of those, right? You know, and if you come up with like, oh, but what if you go into space for a bit like, no, no, cut that out. Make that another game. you've got to just stay focused on those three things. So, and so the team will as long as the team sees this sort of simplified three bulleted sentence, you feel like that's a great way to unify the team to add clarity to these three points. Do they this is just helpful for for for people listening cuz they might they might have trouble coming up with their three

pillars. Are they do they have a a category each one like mechanics, story, and visuals or is it just anything? It's the way we did is just anything. I think like for us it was like one of them was like player fantasy. We had to, you know, look feel like you had a cult kind of thing. God, I can't remember off the top of my head at this point what our three are, but there was a point where I could recite them. Um, but it Yeah, it was like, yeah, cult, combat, and player fantasy or something like that. Gotcha. Yeah. So, it's it could be theme, it could be I think maybe it's different for each game, but it's um yeah, it's just having those three points that you can go back