Why You Won't Finish Your Game (And How To QUIT Quitting!)

why is it that the majority of indie game devs never really finished their games well Dave Gilbert and I talked all about this by the way he's the creator of unavowed the black well series and his latest game which has taken 5 years old Skies the main reason might surprise you it has nothing to do with the technical hurdles or coming up with a viral game idea it's actually something much much deeper it's actually related to fear of public humiliation and if you watch the end of this video My Hope Is that you have the tools necessary to finish a game just like Dave has oh and really quickly by the way this video is sponsored by myself I sponsor my own videos sometimes uh it's sponsored by fulltime Game Dev if making Indie Games fulltime is a dream of yours in 20125 I can teach you what I've done I've signed three publishing deals for my commercial Indie Games along with getting funded multiple times on Kickstarter I've also hit the steam front page multiple times so I want to show you how I've done this and ultimately make games in unity gdau

unreal 2D or 3D you can honestly take your pick in the course you also learn how to Market your game so it brings in actual money and so much more for the next 7 Days full-time Game Dev is 40% off for the massive spring sale and this only happens once a year this is a big one join 4,500 students worldwide and I'll also throw in my 2D and 3D art programs completely free but only for this sale event and also there's only 100 seats available these will sell out so be sure to check it out below if you're interested portal and you to do it all over again I people are going to like play it and regardless of all the time and effort and emotional angst I put into it people are still going to tell me it sucks people there are people who are still going to hate it you know I released a demo last week and I've gotten some comments you know they're like I don't like the interface I don't like this like the character walks too slow blah blah I'm like you know and that like I I was unprepared I'm like I forgot what it was like you could get like

comments that praise your stuff to the ey heels but it's that one that one negative comment stick in your brain all day and make you hate yourself and um yeah and I guess like oh wow like I forgot what that was like all right welcome back so you released the demo last week what day did you release um was it Wednesday or Wednesday yeah the yeah that's when I that's when I launched my game or My Demo yes and so um Twisted tower has been in development for 3 years mhm and I'm I just want to reflect how you're feeling because you know I'm 3 years in the hole like it's it's a hole right now in the sense that it's like I haven't made any money off this thing uh I've only spent hundreds of thousands of dollars my publisher you know they've they've spent money on it um we've had five or six different people working on this thing and all it is as a whole right now there's there's no there's no profit

that's what it feels like there's no profit there's nothing and so when you launch the demo it's like this moment of this actually really matters because if they don't like the demo why would they want to play the rest of the game and it's terrifying and so when I launched it last week um we had a lot of people like it and this was like the first two hours but then we had a ton of people pissed off because the controls were messed up and I we had we we did like two months of QA and well you know it's about it's about a month to two months I can't really remember it might have been like six weeks anyway we did all this QA this problem about the controls never came up once mhm and then we launch it and it's all I see and it's like how how did I miss this you know there was something

we did in the old Sky demo the very first puzzle which I is barely even a puzzle like you well yeah because it's like there's this lock you're you land in the 1870s and you're in this like Alleyway with the like the um with a locked fence and you're with this woman who's like this like you know bronny boxer type the door is locked and it's locked from the outside you're inside the alley and so you you talk to her you know you said could you boost me over she like I got a better idea she just kicks the door open and it's it's a parallel to an earlier puzzle in the game where you need to like get boosted over and unlock it from the outside and so like you there's a a character there's like your your Handler you know in the future who you can talk to and he's basically a hint system and if you ask him like ah you know I'm like I'm stuck in this alley and he says oh did didn't you have this like uh weren't you in the situation before what did you do then and but the demo starts you know in at this point and I it didn't even

occur to me to like test the hint system yeah because it would always worked before so like people like they're trying to figure out how to get out get out of the alley they activate they ask him for a hint and he says what did you do before and and the I the testers are like I don't know just oh my God you could just go through you know it's this one stupid thing you just don't think about and it kicking myself but you know uh I had somebody um speaking of comments that just or that stick out the negative ones are always the ones that are in my head none of the positive ones someone commented on my YouTube I did a YouTube video about how the demo launch went and I said it started it started rough but it it ended up amazing and it's actually doing incredible right now um and one of the comments somebody said um I don't want to put them on blast but what they said was something like Thomas is so full of it or he's so wrong he doesn't even know how to release a game with proper controls shouldn't you have figured this out during the Q a phase

and I I I'm sitting there going if you've released a game you know exactly what it's like to release it in one bug everybody finds and it's the one that you couldn't find yeah I always say if the if if none of the testers find it it'll be like like a prominent something like prominent it' be the F the first journalist to play it will find it the first like reviewer will find that bug and if not it's always like going to be a really like prominent voice I think Rihanna pret of all people who I adore and admire you know she's great she found like a a like the game bugged out on her unavowed bugged out on her and the opening menu and I'm like of all people I'm so sorry like and um I know exactly why it happened but it's just yeah it just happens and it's like you at that point but people like I often hear like like I can I'm free to express

my opinion on stuff I'm like yeah you're free to express your opinion but I'm also free not to engage and it's like I think this happened with with Ron Gilbert when he um announced the return of Monkey Island uh no relation by the I was gonna ask nope uh and a lot of people were really like just just laying into the art style and he disabled comments on his own website and I do not blame him one bit yep cuz it's like he doesn't have to engage with that I don't think people realize it's like even if it's a well-meaning bit of feedback it could be innocuous like there there was um like when you're deep in the trenches when you're stressed out G right making a game is hard it's so stressful dude it it's like um like anything like people could comment on a misplaced apostrophe and it sounds like a personal attack like there was someone I think who was like uh uh you criticized the font you

know something so stupid and I had like this angry response ready to go and I'm like no like whatever he can criticize the font whatever like it's no big deal I'm just gonna let this go yeah yeah like it's easy to say get a thick skin but that doesn't mean it's impervious you need to take like measures to protect your own mental health and often that just means do not engage you know I totally agree man it's uh I have a public facing thick skin MH where I can just say well thank you for w thank you for playing thanks for the review I love you and I'll do like a little heart emoji but when I go to bed and I'm I'm staring at the fan at the ceiling I'm like these mother I'm just pissed off How Could You critique my baby you know I've been working on this thing for three years and you're mad about the textur about the characters and the writing at the and the puzzles fing

talking about like this come on like what'll Ste you like yeah yeah know exactly what you mean like you want to know like if the writing is reaching people if it's like resonating with people and they're focused on like you know the character walking a little slow or something like that and it's like oh come on what about the rest of it I know but you know thank God for can't blame them I know and thank God for the steam review system because I think it's pretty solid like even though you get some real nasty comment ments um you can just all I look at is that is it very positive is it overwhelmingly positive and that's all I care about you know for me some people read every single review no no I don't touch it dude I like seeing the number go up and that's it I'll the I'll look at the original reviews like for the demo um and I noticed there's two ways to launch a demo on Steam um that people should be aware of there's the way you did it and

also the way that David wayy did it I don't know if you know David wayy he made a game called uh we Harvest Shadows the way that you guys have launched your demos is it's attached to the main application and there's no sub page oh I see so it's that you can people can leave reviews yes okay so and I say it like that I say it in that voice because it's terrifying because I I released My Demo last week with a a secondary child page and there's reviews on the demo public facing reviews and I didn't know this oh and so I launched the demo last week and I can show you how to do it if you want to do it I don't know if you want to do it I probably don't I probably don't to be honest but anyway then you have to get them to you have to encourage them to write make a write a review a second time when the game launches yeah yeah so anyway uh for me I launched my demo and I started getting reviews and I didn't

expect to get reviews and it was at it was at 90% And then it went down to 83% in an hour and I was like oh no please God and so I went to bed that night stressed cuz the the velocity of the review or the ratings of the reviews were going like this and so I took a couple shots of vodka went to S went to sleep and I woke up and I prayed to the Lord I said please God and I opened up steam and I looked at the reviews and it was 94% positive nice and it was and and people were playing it so now it's like almost at 500 reviews yeah wow it's almost at 500 I'm just good yeah it's doing awesome and today we had two Mega streamers play it um I can't remember their names they're big though they got like 4 million subscribers so it's it's going really well but I bring all that up because I didn't know that launching

a demo was supposed to be as anxiety inducing as a standard launch well you said you've been working on it for three years right I know when I when I released the old Sky demo I released a um another demo in 2022 so I've been working on it for about two years at that point um but it was a different section of the game um and I it's the first time you know like for a long time the demos were like out you know and like I so I never bothered doing demos but then suddenly steam next to us is the thing and everyone's doing demos and it's like all right I guess I'll I'll I'll join nextfest and and do this demo and um yeah because it's suddenly it's it's like launching it because suddenly your work is out there and that's like there's something very vulnerable about you know this is why a lot of Art and creative projects never get finished is because people are scared they will it's not perfect yet it's got to be perfect

and they they'll let perfect be the enemy of done exactly and they need they that that stress of actually being vulnerable there's is something very scary about that it's terrifying and uh I'm I'm still not used to it especially now that like um this game is taking so long it just feels like there's just more of my soul ready to be critiqued and it's uh it's not the best feeling but at the same time I wouldn't trade it for anything like when it works out it's thus far I've been my instincts have been more good than bad and I'm forever grateful you know like I I'm just happy that people resonate with my work that they it means something to them and you know they continue to come back it means it means the world oh and really quickly by the way this video is sponsored by myself I sponsor my own videos sometimes uh it's sponsored by full-time Game Dev if making indie games fulltime as a dream of yours in 2025 I can teach you

what I've done I've signed three publishing deals for my commercial Indie Games along with getting funded multiple times on Kickstarter I've also hit the steam front page multiple times so I want to show you how I've done this and ultimately make games in unity gdau unreal 2D or 3D you can honestly take your pick in the course you also learn how to Market your game so it brings in actual money and so much more for the next 7 Days full-time Game Dev is 40% off for the massive spring sale and this only happens once a year this is a big one join 4500 students worldwide and I'll also throw in my 2D and 3D art programs completely free but only for this sale event and also there's only 100 seats available these will sell out so be sure to check it out below if you're interested