Will Dubé: How He Sold A Million Copies Of His Games, Indie Survival & Indie Secrets | Ep. #055

Okay, I get it. You dream of making indie games full-time, or perhaps you're already making your game, but you find yourself constantly changing your game idea, quitting your project, or worse, maybe you feel like gamedev is just not for you. Trust me, I've actually been there myself. In fact, I was at a very low point when I was working on my second game, Once Upon a Com. This was back in 2018. But the guest of this podcast, William Dubet, he came in at just the right time. Will is the creator of Jotin, Sundered, Spirit Farer, 33 Immortal, and At Fate's End. We're going to discuss why gamedev is such an intense gamble, and how to handle the stress of it all. We're going to discuss how to stay motivated, planning and scheduling so you don't quit your game. Why gamedev is likely going to be a struggle, how to recover from a bad game launch, why handcrafted games are so important in this AI age, marketing your game, and what he's learned from releasing viral games and not so viral

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It's kind of like hitting, I don't know, fast forward on all of your creative processes so you can stay focused on building your game instead of juggling dozens of other tools and tasks. Try it yourself today with the link in the description or the pinned comment and you get access to the exclusive offer for this channel. You launch a game and maybe it doesn't do well and you panic or you you're tempted to panic and then two months later you realize you're fine and that everything's okay. Is that true in gamedev? I mean, if if if it happened to you, then it's true. Yeah. And it's happened to us as well. Like, we've interviewed people before who who used to be like police officers or like ambulance drivers. And like that kind of perspective just helps remind us, you know, what we're actually doing here. Like, yes, it's it's important. We're making, you know, we're making really great games that a lot of people love and it's important for the people in the studio and, you know, keeping, you know, everyone fed and and and housed, you

know, like
Exactly.
Yeah. having a job is important and and obviously, but, you know, we have to remember that, you know, we're not mission critical. We're making video games for a living. If our games don't work or whatever, people aren't going to die. Yeah, it's like it's not the same level of, you know, uh of responsibility in that sense. Like the worst that can happen is that we'll have like an internet mob come after us or something, you know, like or people will be disappointed or or that kind of stuff. Obviously, we're we're you know, we're we're ambitious people. We want to make great games and we want to have a great studio and all that and that really drives us. you know, we don't want to. We're here to make the best games we can possibly make and have the best studio um that we can possibly have. But yeah, it's kind of sometimes you have to take a step back and and have that, you know, remind yourself we're making a luxury like entertainment product, you know, that's that's supposed to be fun, that's

supposed to be play. And of course, different studios have different objectives. Uh different companies have different objectives as well. Obviously, if you're in a a small business, you know, a small studio, your your your your stresses will be different than if you're working for a publicly traded AAA studio. And, you know, that's going to change a lot of stuff there. But, yeah, I mean, that's it's it's really that's how I see it. Yeah. It seems like you you you view making games obviously I I'm sure you view it as an artistic endeavor because you are create it's a craft but do you view game development with a sort of try to view it with like an objective businessoriented lens? I mean isn't that kind of what your job is as a CEO?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, my job as a CEO is is is absolutely that is to the the way it works for us anyways is is is to match the creative with the the commercial. Like we are a a we are a business, you know, and even even though

I was just saying that like, you know, making games is not as, you know, is not as important as saving lives for us at the studio, it's still like super important for us and it's our it's our craft. It's our it's our our professional life. It's, you know, a big part of uh of the hours we live, you know.
Exactly.
It's super important for us and we want to do things well and you know, the games that we make are are very important to us and very important to um to the the players who play them like and we and we have we have that proof obviously,
right?
Um but um yeah. Yeah, that's definitely Yeah. Coming back to the question, yeah, the creative and the commercial, both of those are super important. Um, as our marketing and publishing director likes to say, uh, money can be exchanged for goods and services. So, you know, it's it's it's the lifeblood of our company. If our games aren't doing well, if they aren't selling
Yeah.
then we're not paying for our salads, you know, that's the bottom line. So, you have to you have to do that. And

we've been fortunate enough to be able to make very creative games, games that have been important to us, uh, you know, us internally on the team first and foremost. Uh, and then try and put that through the filter of the market and be like, okay, well, these this is our vision. This is what we want to do. This is how we want to make something that's different, that's important to us. Is there an audience for that? Is there something, you know, do we think we can actually sell this game? Um, because we're not a purely artistic studio either, right? And and that's fine. A lot of people make games for different reasons.
Well, you know, when I look at your website, it's like and I look at your portfolio, it looks like you guys are so artistic, you know, and you're so focused on,
I would say, 2D narrative action games. Um, would you say that's what your focus is?
Yeah, except our last game is a 33 player co-op micro MMO beast.
But yeah, no, absolutely. We're definitely most known for uh Spirit Farer. Yeah. um which is yeah, you know, it's I mean there's local co-op in the

game, but it's primarily a single player narrative experience. And yeah, the the art the art side of things is super important for us. It's a it's a core, you know, if I put it into corporate speak, it's a core part of our brand identity, you know, as a studio. But if I put it in more like human terms, it's it's like we're excited about about art and about beauty and about, you know, games that that do stand out and and, you know, the the art that that our artists and animators and everyone on our team make and the music and everything has always been, you know, really key to our success and it's one of the strong points of our studio. And I'd say that that's, you know, if there's like one through line throughout our studio, it's the 2D art. Obviously, it kind of goes beyond that as well. But, um, that's definitely the easiest from afar to kind of pick up on and say like, "Oh, this is what is Thunder Lotus? Oh, they make, you know, 2D, uh, 2D games, you know." Well, you seem so

like there's I think there's so many people listening right now and I used to be this way where you know making games was this sort of panicked artistic pure passionate hobby. It's not a business. It's not something that you should approach with a business mindset. Um and I found that that caused a ton of anxiety when I used to have that mindset. My mindset now is like, well, I got kids. I got a mortgage. I got a I got team members. I got contractors.
I got to pay people, right? I got a publisher who's got to be satisfied.
And so that actually, weirdly enough, calms me
and makes me more relaxed because it's it's a much more practical sort of equation as opposed to like a religious thing. I I don't know the right word, but like making games used to be kind of a religious experience for me. And that caused a ton of pressure and anxiety. Do you kind of know what I'm saying there or?
Absolutely. Uh I think it also touches

on something that that that that's part of my journey or that I think is is pretty it's important as a as an entrepreneur or when you start a business. Um and I think that's it's the same for if you're starting you know an artistic endeavor as well. But when you start something that thing is part of you, right? And your identity exists very strongly related to that thing. So in my case, if I can give the the example myself, when I started Thunder lotus, you know, uh Thunder Lotus was a huge part of who I considered myself as a person.
Mhm.
Um and then 10 years later, several, you know, visits to the psychologist and different transitions and you know, different life things. Well, now Thunder Lotus is no longer me, is no longer who I am. Uh, Thunder Lotus is a part of who I am, but I'm also, you know, I I also, you know, part of part of me is is my family and my

friends and, you know, other stuff and other other important things in my life as well. But when I was 25, which is when I was when I started the studio, you I was with my uh uh with my girlfriend uh still today. Uh we were we were together at the time too, but it was like well my life was her, my friends, my family and the business, but obviously the business was a disproportionate a disproportionate part of of who I was and who I how I viewed myself as an individual, too. So I think that has something to do with it as well when you get to like you know I'm 36 so we're about the same age and you know obviously you've gone through a lot of different things in your life and you've you've had these different experiences and you kind of understand that
you know you're you as a person are not only defined by this studio that you created or this this business that you created or this art that you created. Um, and so I think that's part of that that change there. But I think also

bringing it back to um to gamedev, I think what people, and I've been saying this for years and years and years and years, but I think people who start uh game studios or game want to make their first game or whatever don't understand the difference between making a video game and making a studio.
And those are two very different things. And it kind of comes back to that to the art versus commercial balance. Obviously, all this is is my opinion, you know, but um um I think that a lot of people start making a game without understanding what they're actually making or why they're making something. So, if you have that kind of artistic feverish drive to make something, that that can be a huge driver. I know tons of devs who've, you know, put out their games that way and who've uh sacrificed a lot of things, including their own health, to uh to get those games out of the door. But for us, it's always been about balancing the two. It's about saying, "Okay, what can we make that's that's important to us? We've always wanted to make games that

that we thought were were were were great for ourselves, for the players, and all that, but how do we balance that against against our business needs and our business imperatives and our our survival as a business?" So, that's where I'd say like I think it's really important to know why you're making a game. So, if you're a hobbyist and this is like, oh, I've always wanted to make a game and, you know, I have this idea for this awesome thing and it's not, you know, I don't need this game to work for me to survive in our society.
Yeah.
Then that's a very different thing rather than, you know, oh, I have a mortgage. I have to pay for daycare and school, etc., and I actually I I need this to work commercially or or even just you have no responsibilities, but you want to make something that works commercially. It comes down to what your objectives are and what what you want.
Do you do you have a um an opinion on what the best motive is to make a game? I was listening to something from Jubilee. They always post these spicy YouTube videos and I won't get into the

politics of it, but it was like uh capitalist versus socialist kind of thing and they were talking about motivation and how survival is a really good motivation for capitalism because you want to survive. You want to eat. you want to pay your your mortgage and that creates innovation. And I'm curious if you have any thoughts on does do do business limitations and business parameters like you barely have any money, right? Or you're you're living paycheck to paycheck. Does this help creativity or does this stifle creativity? Now, obviously, that's a very binary question. I also asked Ponyie Pants this when he came on the podcast and we had a really interesting discussion about how I personally feel like if I had $20 million in the bank and I lived on the beach, I don't think I would have as much motivation to create great games. I'm curious if you have any thoughts there.
Yeah, I think it comes down to motivation. What's What are your motivations? Right. I think obviously survival is a very strong motivator you

know like it's a it's a it's a very very powerful thing and and you know that's a
it's a it's a very you know and you can look at you know startup
survival percentages and stuff like that and it's something like 90% of startups fail within the first two years or something I don't know if they don't quote me on those numbers but it's it's in that sort of ballpark right and for games, it's probably even worse, you know, like how many survivor how many studios make it to their second game, it's probably worse than that. So, I think that's a that's a super strong motivator. Um, if you were motivated by commercial success and then you achieve commercial success, then yeah, you won't be motivated to make another game, right? And I think if you are comfortable, if you have 20 million in the bank and you're, you know, living on a beach somewhere, it's going to be a bit harder to get that motivation going. If the motivation was
a financial one,
but if that motivation is something

else, making a great game, you know, winning that game award, you know, making the best of the time you have on this planet type thing, you know, that's what I often say too to to when we have discussions in the studio. It's like you you're you have a limited number of years in your professional life.
Yeah.
What do you want to do with those years? You know, do you want to go make five AAA games or do you want to make like I don't know, probably more. Hopefully more sometimes. Not necessarily now, but it used to be more indie games in your life and trying to, you know, kind of pump those out. And it really comes out to that that creative urge and your ambitions and all that. So we're in a fortunate spot now as a studio where we we have had success and but the still the motivating factor for us is to make not great games to make really really really great games and to to do that to the best of our ability as a team and we're we have constraints you know we have uh we're we're we're pretty definitely on the bigger side for for an

indie studio but you know we still have constraints we have team sizes that we want to you know stay within we have budgets we need to respect. We have timelines that we uh miserably fail to uh to hit and stuff, but um but yeah, I mean that's that's if if the driver I mean it depends on the motivation of of each person and and all that. And I think you can be motivated by several different things.
I think that's what makes a good entrepreneur. And by the way, I think obviously you and I would agree that making games is an entrepreneurial thing, right? It's artistic of course, but it should be entrepreneurial. At least I think it should be in the sense that it's like build a profitable product. You know, if if it's profitable, it means that people enjoy it. I think that that's a pretty standard rule of thumb, right? This whole concept of of people not approaching it as an entrepreneurial venture is I think a little bit

confusing to me because yes, yes, you can you could it's okay to be a hobbyist for sure, but if you want to make a game and you want to make some money from it, you should approach it like any other business. And I'm curious, this leads me to a question for you. Have you figured out how to build a game that just like a let's say a builder builds a house, have have you figured out how to schedule it out properly and estimate things properly and write a GDD or a plan where it's like yes, these are the mechanics, these are the upgrades, these are the levels, these are the characters, this is how it's going to be built, or is it more explorative?
I'd say one of the strengths of our studio has been to set a creative vision very early on and respect that creative vision. And one of the reasons why is that there's this old Gamma Sutra article that came out a long time ago that was like a it wasn't scientific but it was a study of a whole bunch it was called the games outcome project and

they basically did a whole survey on a whole bunch of different games and they tried to figure out what were the factors that led to a successful outcome.
Right? the successful outcome could be defined in different ways. A lot of the times commercial, sometimes Metacritic, whatever. And that study I thought was like one of the best articles to this day that I've ever read on game development. Uh it was super interesting and like their main uh conclusions were the most important thing is that the creative vision doesn't massively change during production. That you have a very clear idea of what you want to do. uh and you execute on that vision.
And the other thing was uh team seniority. Not necessarily uh the the individual seniority of the team members, but the total seniority of that team working together.
What does that mean?
So like a team that's shipped multiple games together.
Oh wow. So just been working Yeah. The

experience working together, not just the individual experience, not like we're a bunch of seniors who are now going to work together. It's we're a bunch of people who work together over 5 to 10 years.
I see. So maintaining a company culture that encourages longevity staying with the studio benefits the product.
Yeah. And that's something that's that's always been I'd say those two things have been like super important to to our success. I think there was another thing in the games outcomes project, but I I can't recall what it was exactly.
C4 here. Um, well, the first one's not really one of them, but it says effective teams crunch makes games worse. I don't know if you remember that part of it,
but yeah. So, those two things is okay. Well, what do most big studios do? Well, they hire a bunch of people, they crunch them into the ground, and then when the game ships, they fire everyone.
Yep. Well, look at this, dude. Let me

share my screen here so we can take a look at this together. Yeah, it's you know it's it's an old article like dude I'm sure that this is true with with anything uh in tech like here's one average team size correlated against game project outcome
but I remember that it was a series of articles and there was one of the articles which was the kind of summary of everything so so there you can see team experience
yep yep I mean
see a much stronger correlation right
exactly I mean it's it seems obvious you know what I mean um that you would want an experience ed team. Um
yeah, a lot of right underneath uh incentives.
Mhm.
The first page of our survey also revealed two major surprises. The first surprise was financial incentives. The survey included a question. Was it a team offered any financial incentives tied to the performance of the game, the team or your performance? Um we offered multiple check boxes to say yes or no. The correlation is as follows. So what's

the conclusion here? Let's see. Whatever the reason, our results seem to indicate that individually tailored incentives such as pay for performance plans seem to achieve meaningful well duh. Meaningful results where royalties Oh, so where royalties, team incentives, and other forms of financial incentives do not. So pay for for performance for some reason was advantageous.
Well, anyways, it's definitely an article that's worth, you know, reading. I should probably reread it
because let's see where's it from a year. I wonder if it's even relevant. That 2014, dude, decade old, you know? I wonder if it's still relevant. Um
I I mean, I'm sure it is. Like the actual practices of gamedev, at least for
Yeah.
premium games or or the type of games that we make. Obviously, I'm sure if you know, if you're looking at freeto play and stuff like that, it's different. It's a different type of production. It's a different type of thing. But
right
um for the types of games that that we're making, I think it's probably not that different,
right? And here's their conclusion. They

say, "Our study found several surprises, including a complete lack of correlation between factors that one would assume should have a large impact, such as team size, game genre, target platforms, uh production methodology, or any additional financial incentives. So, the things that most people think are like what drive a business, be bigger, you know, pick the right genre, pick the right target platform. Although, I think I just feel like if if if you were to not pick Steam, that's a hu a huge mistake. Although I do Well, are you guys are you guys not launching 33 Immortals on Steam?
So, 33 Immortals is in early access and we're exclusive to Epic right now. Ah,
without without going into that, but we'll see what the future holds. But for now, we're Epic exclusive on PC.
Well, thank you, Epic. That's awesome for supporting your studio, you know. That's great.
Absolutely.
So, yeah, all these things that you would expect are like common

um advantages aren't really, at least according to this to this. Okay. And here's Gro's answer. My editor is probably going to kill me. He's like, "Why are you going all over the place, Thomas?" Um, but I wanted to get an answer for our question, which is how many indie studios make a second game? It seems like success success on platforms like Steam is rare. Estimates suggest only 4% of indie games turn a meaningful profit. I feel like that's true. Um, even fewer.5 to 7% generate enough revenue to be financially viable. Indie games dominate releases. 98 to 909% of new titles are um indie with their re with average first year earnings per game around $16,000 or less. Um I forgot to read this. Approximately 25% of indie studios go on to release a second game while 75% release only one. Does that surprise? I don't even know if this is true by the way. Like
yeah, I don't know. I don't trust numbers coming from uh from Chad GPT or

I don't know what Grock does, but um the numbers are are I don't trust him. But um it definitely feels something like that. Yeah.
Yeah, it does. It feels like it. So that's just sort of a rough feel. I I I think of Chad GBT and any LLM as sort of just like a vibe. They're like I general idea of Yeah, that's
No, for them they're fine. No, I mean like in the mathematical sense, they're not mathematically they're not mathematical models. So I don't I literally don't don't trust any number that they put on screen. Anything else like summaries or whatever, it can be great. Uh it's a great tool. But uh for mathematical numbers, it's complete fabrication.
Complete fabrication. It's a complete You might be right,
but it seems it seems very possible. It actually seems uh pretty high to me. I was expecting uh a lower number.
Yeah.
But yeah, so maybe it's not as bad as we think. Maybe maybe indiv independent developers just really like
releasing one game and then being done.

Yeah. No. Or just we we like to say the sky is falling.
It isn't. Yeah. Okay. So, I want to shift gears here and you know, you're running a business and you're you're you're both a creative person and you're both a business owner. You're an entrepreneur,
right?
Let's talk really quick about the history of Thunder Lotus and just your game dev career. I like to ask this question. I'm going to start asking it more on the podcast. What was the hardest day for you as a game developer running Thunder Lotus? Can you remember it? Yeah, I think the hardest day was the day we launched Sundered. Uh, I figured you'd say that.
Yeah, in the summer of 2017, but u when we launched Sundered, uh, basically we launched the game and there, you know, can go as deep as you wanted to this, but basically the game was way too hard at launch and the loading times were suboptimal or were pretty long, pretty chunky loading times. So,
do you know how long that was

specifically? Sometimes it was like two minutes to
for Steam.
Yeah. For Steam, you had to generate the levels and everything. It was very long.
Unity.
Unity. Yeah. But it was it had it had to do with how we you know, we were able to optimize though later. It was
It was probably the compression of the images, right? The 2D art.
No, I think a lot of it was how we were randomly generating the levels. So,
so really way too hard and long loading times. And the game is a uh kind of like a a mix between a Hollow Night and Dead Cells. So it's a rogike Metroid vania. So obviously the goal of the game is to die and restart and you know and go through that loop.
But when your loop is happening every what like two minutes or three minutes because the game is too hard and then your loading is two minutes because you know the loadings aren't optimized then you're going to have a bad time.
Yeah. basically. And so that first we launched on a Friday. Right away the Metacritic scores were lower than we

were hoping. We had some decent scores. Um
I think you ended at a seven, right?
Yeah, we had some We were mostly at seven.
I remember, dude. I remember that actually cuz I was following you and I was like really excited for you.
Yeah. And I feel like it's okay to talk this way about this game now now that you had Spirit Farer just completely vindicate you, but I feel like Sundered was tough for you guys because it was like it was trying to follow up this small art artsy game which was um
Joten Joten.
Yep. And it had a small community that loved it on Kickstarter, you know, and then Sunundred comes out and it's it seems like it was um it was it was a complex game, more complex than Joden, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And so it felt like it felt like you guys had Man, I hope I'm not saying mean things. It felt It go bitten off more than you could chew. Um and I'm not sure if that's true. It looks like you you repaired the the game's reputation cuz

you're sitting at very positive now, which is awesome. Way to go.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, no, I'm I'm h No, no offense taken and I'm happy to to jump into it. So that that first weekend we ended up uh negative uh in negative reviews on Steam.
Wow.
And so we were Yeah, we were in the red on Steam.
I'm so sorry. That must have sucked.
Yeah, it was rough. It was rough. It was a rough uh rough couple days. And then Monday we patched it, but at that point it was too late, right? It was too late for for the algorithm. it was too late for the mind share around the game. We'd had, you know, a good amount of influencers and streamers play the game and stuff, but with the loading times and everything, it was just like, nah, it's kind of broken or whatever. One thing that definitely helped save the game at that point was that we had a deal with Sony, so we were console exclusive.
Wow.
So, we launched Steam and PS4. Um, so we'd had like two weeks of pre-orders before then and and we had a good amount

of marketing support from Sony. Um, so we were able to clear, you know, like a 10,000 units in the first week or something like that.
Wow. For PlayStation
for I think all all platforms combined. Okay.
Um, which was which was, you know, it's not, you know, it's not peak, but it's it was it was very decent. uh still still so that helped us kind of pad um that launch and then the Vindication didn't have to wait until Spirit Far. I mean we launched uh Eldridge Edition which was the Switch and the Xbox version of the game about 6 months later
and when we launched Eldidge Edition we were at 90% positive on Steam. So it was like it was kind of it was hard because we were like well you know this is I wish we could go back and release that version of the game at launch but obviously you can't but fundamentally as well I mean what hurt Sundered were was a bunch of of mistakes obviously that led to that in terms of performance in terms of uh game balancing and all that but also just the market too like yeah

um when we we started conception for Sunder right after we launched Joten. Um, so that would be like in October 2014. And at that point, we're like Metroid vanias are the next big thing, you know, and like obviously we weren't the only small studio to kind of figure that out. Yeah.
Uh, and to see that in their crystal ball. So,
when did Team Cherry release Hollow Knight relative to
Exactly. So, with with in set 2017 before us, Hollow Knight launched and Dead Cells launched.
I see. So Hollow Night was February and Sundered was July.
Yeah.
So you guys were right next to each other basically.
And Dead Cells released before us, too. And and you know, full full kudos to them. Dead Cells and Hollow Knight were better games than Sunder, you know, like there's there's no doubt there. So we came in after both of those massive successes with a game that wasn't as good as either of them. Uh with uh you

know, a messed up launch too there. So, so you know, a lot of a lot of lessons there and and but when when the game launched and we saw the reviews starting in, it was a it was a big kick to the stomach and, you know,
but the the problem with initial reviews, especially critic reviews, is that I'm pulling up a a review here from Roger Eert about Home Alone. And I'm not sure if Home Alone was big in Canada when you were growing up, but I'm sure it was. So, here's a review from Roger Eert about Home Alone in 1990. Okay, here's what he says. And by the way, this movie did not do well when it first came out, but he said,
"Really? I didn't know that."
It didn't? No. Um, Roger Eert said, "I didn't enjoy the subplot involving the burglars." I highlighted that and posted on Twitter because I was like, that is literally the plot. And he said, he goes, "Home Home Alone should" He basically says, "Home Home Alone should have limited itself to things that might possibly happen to an 8-year-old. I think I would have liked it more." So,

effectively, he's saying like, "I wish that Home Alone just showed more things that 8-year-olds do." Like, I guess like playing Game Boy. Like, so the point the the reason I'm bringing this up is when when it comes to critical reviews, it's really hard. You need time. You need time to really tell you whether a product is good or not. Same is true with Great Gatsby. When Great Gatsby was released uh as a novel, nobody cared. I think it was only when Fcott's Fitzgerald died that that book became popular.
Yeah. But you see, I would much rather put my studio in a position where our games come out and are universally acclaimed. I know.
And then there's no We don't have to wait till I die for them to to to to have success, you know.
I know. But your beautiful children could maybe, you know, reap the rewards while you're in the grave, you know.
Yeah. No, exactly. But I think I think part of that comes down to like business strategy as well. Uh, and one a sentence that I've used a lot or that we've used

internally a lot over the years is going viral is not a strategy, you know.
No. Like
Peak I think is a great example, you know, like um obviously Peak is a good game. Obviously, Peak was put out by people who know what they're doing. Um, you know, with Agro Crab and Landfall and all that, but I think if a lot of people look at Peak and are like, "Oh, this is what I should be doing." I think there's a lot of risk in that. Um,
because how many g how many game jam games come out and don't have the success of Peak?
Yeah. It's like buying lottery tickets, you know, and hoping that your game markets itself. And what I'm seeing now from various publishers and investors and stuff is that they're willing to to make that to take that bet uh submillion dollar uh you know development budgets and all that or or they look at the the success of Bellatro or Peak or whatever but they'll fund you know if you're going that model it's like a VC model you have to fund 25 of those games and 24 of them are going to fail and then

the 25th hopefully you knock it out of the park and it pays for all of your failures and then Yeah, but that sucks for the developers because they don't
that's not a good that's not a good model for developers. There was a I saw a a new a newer studio who were making very small games and were having a lot of success on Twitch. Uh there was a game with a guy looking at you in a hotel room and like that was a whole game.
You talking about clickolding?
I think so. Yes.
And he's got a clicker.
Yes, I think so. But that's their strategy.
That's Strange Scaffold. That's Solivier Nelson Jr. He was on the podcast last year and that's their strategy. And what's that's his strategy. And what's funny though is that some of his games they they're like they don't do great. I think one of them has like mixed reviews on Steam Steam. And it's like I kind of I kind of want to have that mentality of like or at least there's a part of me that wants to have that mentality where it's just like just get the games done cuz that's what he was saying on the podcast. He was like a released game is

better than a great game. He said something like that. He'd rather release games and just get them done. Now, as I've aged out of that, you know, I've learned a lot in the last six months since I've had that podcast. And I'm curious what your thoughts are. I actually disagree. I would much rather just make a really good game, even if that means I spend three, four years on it. It's not because it's a good business decision, but just because I I don't think I can release a game that I don't think is perfect. Do you have any thoughts there? then that strategy isn't the right one for you,
right?
Or you know, who knows? Maybe maybe that like one thing that we often talk about in the studio is imagine we were starting the our studio today, you know, how much harder it would be for us versus starting our studio in 2014, you know, and I think part of that is true, like we definitely were able to ride the wave of the digital distribution wave, Steam opening up, um, indie games. We're we're we're not within the first indie

games to come out, right? We were not within that first like braid fee
hype. Um so we didn't ride that first wave, but we were still able to catch the kind of the tailwind or the the the the end of that wave. And I think
2016,
yeah, something like that. I think that definitely helped us to get to the success where we are today. But I think um Strange Scaffolding versus the name of the studio.
Yeah, strange scaffold. St strange SC scaffold are a great example of a studio who have figured out how to have success in today's market you know which is the Tik Tok market or whatever you want to call it or you know the the world the the the gamers are are are very different uh today than they were 10 years ago and 20-year-olds today are different than 20 year olds 10 years ago. So I think you need to kind of adapt your strategy. You can adapt your strategy to who you are and like you said I'm I'm an artist. I want to spend three or four years on this game. make it the best that it can be and and uh and deliver it or you could have that,

you know, that kind of spray and prey approach which is more akin to mobile games which which is really interesting because, you know, we've I started my career in mobile games as a mobile game designer. I worked for two and a half years and a we actually started making Facebook games. So, we were starting making Farmville type games, then moved to like premium Angry Birds, um, Fruit Ninja type games, and then moved to freeto play because freeto play kind of happened after that and was a big thing. But like there's a lot of similarities between or you can take a lot of the the learnings from the mobile mobile market and you know what a mess that is and the game and and you know bring those towards Steam which is honestly a big mess or or the whole not just Steam but just the general games market today and how uh competitive is and how it's how hard it is to to get visibility and all that. So,
well, well, I'm curious what your thoughts are with this. I feel like with

the with the advent of AI and like the Tik Tok mentality, the friend slop mentality. Have you heard of friend slop?
Uh uh peak basically.
Is that is peak another way of saying it?
Or no? Well, the peak is like friend. It's like just a a crazy game that you can play with your friends type thing.
Oh, right, right, right, right. Yes. Yes. Yes. I I don't want to call peak friend slot because I haven't played it and I don't know. But I do know what friendlop is. And friend slop is, according to Google's AI, slang term, just this for the audience listening, lowbudget indie cooperative games that are primarily designed for players to have fun with friends rather than deep gameplay. Now, my my theory is is that because this stuff is coming out so much that to make something that's narrative and deep and handcrafted is well, it's scarce. Therefore, the demand is high. I would say you guys make those kind of games. They're ve they they feel

handcrafted. They're deep. There's a there's narrative behind them and there's a ton of intention behind them. And I feel like that that is a a much better approach. It's like shooting for the moon, right? You're you're you're going as hard as you can to make the the most polished possible game. That's my goal because I don't even want to play in this. Like I I I think about I think about the the the indie game industry as like a a hedge maze and everybody's in the hedge maze and I'm like I'm not getting in that hedge maze. I do not want to be in there making Friends slop and trying to make the next Vampire Survivor or whatever's popular right now. I'm just not even going to try. I'm going to stay outside the hedge maze and create something that's polished and beautiful that has my thumb print that no one else can replicate. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Yeah. Uh I'm I've I'm trying to read uh Rick Rubin's book uh right now which is uh called uh something uh anyways it's

basically his musings.
Is it called something?
No no it's I don't remember the title.
Is it the the way of code is his website the creative act. A way of being
creative act. So it's basically a it and I'm saying trying to read because honestly it's not my favorite book. Um, I really enjoy watching Rick Rubin or listen to his podcasting or his interviews and all that. He's a super interesting guy. Um, obviously been around for a whole bunch of different things and and um his his approach is is is super interesting which is which is why I want to finish his book. But basically, um, his view is that it's it's great to compare games to other medium. And um if you look at music, music is is far more saturated as a medium than games are. Uh if you talk about AI, you look at the fake Deep Purple Band that came out and it's generating millions of views, whatever. I I think it's it's interesting. But what Rick Rubin says is basically that

the music that comes from an artist is important because it comes from an artist. And it's important because it comes from that artist in particular. And we're just kind of conduits for the universe, you know, making magic happen within us as musicians. And uh what's interesting is to hear that musician's interpretation of whatever that creative force is. So that's that's kind of like the whole premise of of his creativity basically. Yeah, I think it's super interesting because and this is actually a discussion that I had with Niku who's the creative director on uh on Spirit Fair and the creative director on At Fates now um was when we were after Spirit Fair thinking about what the next game was, it was like okay well there different different ways that we can go about this. We can go about this trying to figure out what what the future is, what genres are going to become popular in the future. uh what you know what kind of opportunities there are from a marketing standpoint from a market

standpoint like or an audience standpoint or or what do we think Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony are going to want in a couple years or what are what are our opportunities you know from a distribution standpoint you know Game Pass or Epic or whatever going forward but one of the things we were saying too was like well or we could just make a game and we could make a we're going to make it ourselves So, Thunder Lotus is going to make that game and therefore it's going to be a Thunder Lotus game. And what does that mean? And that's actually another like Sorry, I'm just opening up like
I know I think I know what you're about to say and I love it.
But the side tangent is 33 Immortals because 33 Immortals is a second production team. And when we started 33 Immortals, it was a team of zero in the studio. We we rebuilt an entire production team from scratch in parallel to the U Spirit Farer team at the time. And we went through a lot of those questions of of culture of branding of okay, what is a Thunder Lotus game?

Because it was really important to me that when 33 Immortals came out, it was not uh the first game from a new team at Thunder Lotus. It was Thunder Lotus' next game. And I think we accomplished that. and and but because the people you have on your team will influence the result. Especially when you're in a small team like we we're around 15 people between 15 and 20 people on our productions. So when you're that few people on a on a team then the influence that each person has on the result of the game is going to be enormous. And obviously as team size goes down that percentage and that impact goes up. So it's kind of impossible to dissociate the people who are making the game to in the context of obviously like more artistic endeavors like more like or premium games. If you're talking about free to play, you're talking about TripleA, obviously that's kind of out the window. I'm talking about things from from our perspective, but yeah. Yeah. So it's it's it's uh it's very much influenced by the people you make and your voice is important and that

comes down to you know who you are as a creator, who you are and people are going to like who you are and that obviously what I'm talk this is this is 10 years in the making you know like this is a lot of work and a lot of consistent results throughout the years and a lot of focus on on what's important for up for us as a studio and the type of games we make and the
and and the reputation we've built up. But um it's impossible to dissociate those things and that voice is important and that voice can be kind of what makes things different. Coming back to Rick Rubin, that's why that's why I wanted to get back to Rick Rubin is that your voice as a game creator can be your interpretation of the world can be your interpretation of the world and therefore
um can have value and can set you apart and should set you apart and it should be uh it should be like important if you're making you know the types of games that we make.
I'm curious. I feel like when I look at your portfolio, you guys have clear clear vision about what your games, what

your brand is. Your games all have almost the exact same look. I'd say Joten looks a little bit different than the other ones. Sunder was a bit of a departure from the Jotin look, I felt, but overall on average, you've got a pretty solid looking portfolio. Is that something you can build to sell? I'm not saying you're gonna, but I'm just saying in general because I think about a lot of my friends. They build construction companies and then they sell the construction company. You know, with games, I'm curious, is that difficult to do to build something to sell to build a brand to sell? I'd say that's often times the, you know, if you're talking about non solo devs, I'd say it's it's a pretty common, not common, it doesn't happen often that you sell, but like if we look back over the last 5 years, there's been enormous amounts of acquisitions and throughout 2020 and and the pandemic and all that, it was kind of craziness. So, yeah, you can sell your company as a game studio. There there are plenty of plenty of examples

who've done it. And generally what I've seen is that it's either either people are buying a team. Um so like in the case of
Bungie selling to Sony, Sony are saying, "Well, we want to buy um the team that made Destiny." They're also buying the IP. They're like, "Oh, we want to own Destiny." So the IP has value if um to an acquirer if it has value, you know, by itself, either monetarily through sequels and stuff or because it's strategic for them. they wanted to get into that part of the business or whatever. Or uh you're you know you're selling your company based on a multiple of EBIDA and you're you know a profitable company and a bigger company are like well we want to you know bring that into our balance sheet and take that over type thing but I don't know maybe this is too too financial but like um you know I think you can you can sell your company for a bunch of different reasons. A lot of people, not a lot of people do, some people do. Obviously, there aren't that many acquisitions going on right now uh in the state of

the world, but um
yeah.
Yeah. The reason I ask is cuz um of course, I mean, I personally I didn't have that mindset when I was in my 20s. I was like, I just want to I the idea of even making games full-time alone is a huge stretch for a lot of people. A lot of people listening right now, they think that that's impossible, you know, but the next step is, well, how do I build a studio and a brand that's it's a product in and it of itself um that can eventually be sold cuz the older I get, the more I meet people my age who have done that. You know, they've built they've built something that not only is the products they create available for sale, but the but the studio itself can be sold. Um, it definitely sounds sleazy or like too corporate, but it's like you're putting all your money into this this studio at least at least make it something that's can be sold one day, you know, for your family.
I I personally hope to never sell

Thunder Lotus and to make a lot of money through the successes that we have within our studio. So, from the games themselves, I think we have an industry that allows that. If you have uh games that generate a lot of money then obviously that can be shared with the team that can be shared with the shareholders that can go back to the founder that can go back to you can reinvest with future projects you can share the profits with your team uh you can share your revenue with your team which is what we do uh at the studio and and therefore if our games have enormous success that is shared within the team um so I think that's super important for a for sustainability from a sustainability standpoint because if you sell your studio, chances are uh 5 years down the line that studio no longer exists, which is um you know, you're going to cash out. You can you you can share that that money with the employees and people generally do
uh pay out big bonuses and stuff like that. Um but you don't necessarily have

to. If you build a machine that builds successful games, you don't have to sell in or in order to to achieve that that financial goal, you know? So, that's kind of where that's more like where my my uh where my hopes and dreams are is like let's not uh let's let's keep this going for as long as possible and make the best games possible and then, you know, make sure that the people who are making the games are uh getting rewarded for that. Can I segue to another question? Do you have time? Maybe 20 more minutes. Okay,
that I'm so glad you said that because I'm sitting here going what what made Spirit Farer so successful and Sundered not so much. I'm curious if we could compare them. And and the goal here, Will, would be to help the audience understand when to pour their when to pour their money and their time into a product um to know that it's probably going to be

successful, right? And so I just would love to glean from you. What did you learn from from Spirit Farer and what did you learn from um Sunder?
Yeah. So I think every book um a book that every entrepreneur or someone who starts a venture or creative or games or whatever they should read the lean startup by Eric uh Ree Rise I don't know how to spell his last name how to say his last name but I just reread it. It's an amazing book. The summary is basically the scientific method hypothesis test conclusion and that's your loop. It's the scientific method. Uh obviously the book goes into much more detail into how you actually implement that, what it means for a tech startup. It's actually he actually had a company making a MMO avatar chat thing kind of like Second Life, you know, in the early 2000s I think or something. So anyway, super super interesting. That's kind of like go read that. That is like the first way of how do you make great things without

overinvesting or you know making sure that you're actually building the right thing. I think that's a great great great resource for Thunder Lotus and for Sunder to Spirit Fair. I would go back to Joden to Sunder.
So after we shipped Joten, we looked at Jod and we said,
"Okay, what what went well? What didn't go well?" So, the the things that worked well for Joden were um the handdrawn art, uh the immersion, the music, the authentic take on Norse mythology, uh and the boss fights. Those were like the three main things that worked really well. And what didn't work well with Joden was
well, uh the levels in between the boss fights were really quite boring. Uh it wasn't great game design. There wasn't a lot of stuff there. And
yeah, it was what it was. It was a short game and with the resources we had, but that's definitely one of the low points of the experience. Um, we had a decent amount of YouTubers and streamers pick up the game at launch and play the game,

but they played for 5 hours and then finished the game and so therefore stopped playing it, stopped sharing it. So, we'd got gotten our foot in the door, but we weren't able to keep that door open for very long. And then the last thing was people who watched people playing Joten, people who watched streamers or influencers kind of got the whole experience of the game because it's a single player uh narrative, very linear experience. So why would I go buy it? I I I kind of can watch my favorite streamer kind of they go through the whole thing and and if I bought it and played it, I'd have literally the same experience unless I really wanted the challenge of the boss fights. Was there anything variable about it other than the player choosing certain weapons and
No, not really. Um,
there was a separate pathing or
Yeah, you could choose the um choose the order in which you did the bosses, but ultimately it didn't.
Okay. So, that's kind of like what would

you say? Uh, Dark Souls kind of. I feel like Dark Souls is I I I refuse to play Dark Souls because it makes me angry. But I feel like
Yeah, I'm the same. I've tried many times and and have
But I think you could choose certain bosses. Uh you could choose certain paths at the beginning, but at the end of the day, everybody's going to play the same amount. You know, they're going to all do the same thing.
Exactly. So, so in that sense, it didn't really have a material impact on your experience. So, those we took and those you can see how those translated to sunder, the uh resist or embrace where you can choose to corrupt uh your abilities or not and then really have an impact. the skill tree, all these player choices, all these different things, these different paths. Yeah. You can uh you can have a different experience while you're playing, multiple endings, the rogike aspect where you die and you play a lot. That was also in order to kind of
uh buffer out the total play time so that if streamers did pick up the game, they could play longer, increase our exposure, and th that kind of went from there. And then the stuff that we kept obviously the the art style uh HP

Lovecraft was that same sort of creative u technique where we said okay this is super cool inspiration let's bring it in the big bosses we made them even bigger and sundered even crazier and that was super cool part of the game too. So so that's how we kind of went from Joden to Sunder and then when we launched Sundered as I said like the the tough launch and the difficulty of the game and the combat and everything we were like we're never making a combat game ever again. Let's make a game without any combat. Like, we're we're done.
Uh Joe, our art director, was like, "Will, I am not drawing darkness anymore. Like, I'm sick and tired of your heavy metal inspirations. I don't I don't care about them. I know you like them, but like I'm not interested."
And so, that kind of brought us to uh to Spirit Fair where it was like, "Okay, well, you know, more play time definitely was great. More player choice was was awesome." uh and uh but let's do a 180 in terms of theme and in terms of

uh gameplay. Let's do a game with no uh no combat. And so we said, okay, that's kind of our starting point. Then we were inspired by uh the hotel and Spirited Away. We're inspired by Stardew Valley. We were inspire inspired by Undertale in terms of character development. All that brought all those things together. And then a huge change on the team was me stepping away from uh creative direction. At that point after sundered the team was like will you can't be creative director anymore. Uh I had become a bottleneck to production. There was too much stuff going on on the marketing side on the business side. And at that point I stepped out of production and we hired Mik who ended up replacing me as creative director on Spirit Fair. And then he brought the whole narrative aspect and everything to Spirit Fair. brought it to the next level and and brought it really elsewhere and made it the game and the that it that it became.
Can I ask you a question about that stepping down like that?
So, like you're the owner,
right, of Thunder Lotus.

Yep.
I have a co-founder and and uh we actually have a minority investment as well, but I'm still majority.
So, did that hurt you? Yeah, it comes back to uh what I was saying before about identity and and and all that. Yeah, it had a huge impact on me. Um it left a huge hole uh in in inside of me really uh stepping away from that. It was the right thing for the business and as you can probably tell by you know our conversation I I enjoy the business side of things. I like that. that I like the entrepreneurial side of things, but the creative side is also super important to me. And um even though it was the right thing to do and the and the you know the right uh the right move uh it was very hard for me and that was one of the low points also throughout my career and and like the whole thing about personal identity and being like okay well now I've stepped away from from this role. I'm no longer creative

director. What am I doing? I'm just waiting for the game to come out now. I'm going to wait in for three years and do nothing. And and so, you know, psychotherapy, a lot of stuff, but also uh second production team, you know, filling that hole with uh with uh with something else. And and obviously that that was
well, I just want to say really quick, will like last time you and I talked, you were counseling me on Kickstarter
in 2017, I think it was 2018, one of those years,
right? And I remember that conversation very well. You probably don't remember it, but I do because I was trying to get
I remember I remember we talked. I don't remember.
No, I I remember it very clearly because I was I was gleaning everything I could because I was in panic mode and needed to get this Kickstarter funded. So, I remember everything about it. And I just want to say you are totally different.
I feel like you're totally different than when I talked to you. Really?
Yeah. Like six, seven years ago. I just you're just different, man. Like you're very chill. Uh at the time, you felt very um And I was this way, too. in your

20s, you know, you want to change the world. Uh, you feel like you want to be like the s I I wanted to be like the savior of the world. I'm going to make the greatest things ever. And now you're so chill and I I just wanted to say that psychotherapy seem to help.
Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. I I definitely recommend it to everyone. There's there's huge stigmas around it, but yeah, obviously psychologists know what they're doing and they will help you.
Yeah.
You know, know thyself. Well, I do want to say though rel relating related to your old self. I'm looking at 100 right now. Okay. You turn the ship around. You're very positive. You know, I'm assuming the game made millions or a million plus. You don't have to answer. You can answer. My editor will
The game was profitable. The the game was uh did end up making more than its production budget.
Okay. So, you made money. You made a game that people love. We're sitting at 2,000 plus reviews on Steam for the Eldridge edition. Point being,

clearly you're a good creative director, right? Wouldn't you say now?
Well, thank you.
I feel like it
we have a good team. We have a lot of people working on the team and so
I know you're being without going into too many details. Uh there might be there might be something coming in
in the near.
Yeah. And that's that's what I wanted to ask you because I was actually talking Do you know Serenity Forge at all?
Yes. I haven't talked to them in a very long time. But yeah,
Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z is now in a creative role. So, and I guess I should ask him if I can say this, but he's now in a creative role and less in an administrative or like C-level role and he's he feels he feels a sense of freedom, like he's able to to get back into the creative world. And so I'm curious if you feel that way and you don't have to answer because I know you got a team who are probably going to watch this podcast and you don't want to discourage them, but I'm curious if if you you miss being on the creative side of things. You mentioned in in the email and again I can cut all of this, but you mentioned in the email you haven't opened Unity since 2017.

Do you do you miss that? You know,
I don't miss Unity. I do not miss Unity. I have a I have a bachelor in computer science uh with a double major in computation arts, but like I hated programming like like I like I do not miss that one bit. Um but uh yeah, I've been yeah since 2017 is when Nico joined us. Um, I've been in much more of a strategic role just kind of accompanying our productions, uh, with our producers and creative directors and a lot on the marketing side and then figuring out what our business strategy is and you know figure out like how we grow as a studio and all that because we're we're 50 people now. So, it's a it's a pretty big uh machine at this point.
Yeah.
Um, but I'd always say I'd say that I am a macro manager. I am the opposite of a micromanager. Uh, so, uh, I really believe in the autonomy of our teams. Um, I try and and and empower people to

be able to to to do the best that they can do. They're they're much, you know, they know what they're doing. We have great people in the studio, uh, and across different parts of the business. But that means that I've kind of been, you know, not telling people what to do, but more on the sidelines and analyzing and and critiquing more than actually doing for the last, you know, seven or eight years and and you know, telling people, oh, this this has to be better or or, you know, ultimately just accompanying people and our teams uh in that perspective. So yeah, I think it's it's probably time for me to uh you know to to prove that I still have it and to uh to jump back in at some point. But yeah, that would be that would be great.
But you're not going to open up Unity. You're going to open up GDAU. I I feel you string as a GDO guy. I don't know why.
Oh, I wish I wish I wish. But uh no, we every time we've looked at it, it's it's not uh it's not quite there for for our needs.
Okay, dude. I think that's the podcast.

I feel like we've we've covered a lot of ground here. Um, that was a lot of fun.
Absolutely.
A lot of fun, dude. I'd love to have you on again. Um, it's you're really easy to talk to.
Oh, so are you. Uh, very, very welcoming and very easy.
Appreciate it, man. Okay, so anything you want to leave in the description to point listeners to.
No, just check out our games. thunderlordsgames.com.
All right, I'll put that in the description, Will. Um, but that is
Oh, maybe the um Yeah, our um Ad Fates End uh Steam page.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. By the way, it looks awesome. I love the cover art
that the cover that's a nice piece that's a nice illustration. That's a very nice piece of art. That's
again, it's our our team is amazing. And
you know, the through line you were talking about is is because of the artists that we have.
Yeah. Yeah. All right, bud. Cheers.
All right. Thank you.
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