Your Indie Game WILL SUFFER Without It

i can definitely relate a lot with what you said in that if you're doing it alone you can really change your vision a lot and that's almost to a detriment because then you never get anywhere uh you can like think oh i'm gonna make my game of metroidvania but then what if i added this uh extra mechanic or whatever but if you have a artist that you're kind of beholden to uh that wouldn't entail you know having to pay extra uh money for an artist that maybe is not only working on your game or maybe you don't have that extra money to spend on so you really have to plan advance to make sure okay everything is planned i know exactly what i'm able to do and i can't really go beyond that maybe i can change some little things here and there but the general scope of the game should stay the same because otherwise it kind of falls apart with the team yep and that's that's the big challenge that's the big challenge with teams and that's why i don't know about you but i avoided working with teams for the longest time and i was the you know the solo dev that most people you know when they joined my or they when they subscribed to my channel that's what i was doing is solo dev uh but now it's it's a team it's a team

effort and suddenly the idea of a game design document uh the idea of a schedule and a budget makes way more sense at the time i was like why do you need that stuff it's all in my head but now it's like everybody's got to have clarity and i'm still learning how to do that so i'm just really impressed that you're doing that now i mean it's crazy it's crazy to me most 22 year olds myself included did not know how to do any of that stuff um do you use game design documents or yeah anything like that i basically had to make one for uh pitching to a publisher so everybody they wanted you to do it they forced you to base yeah exactly so i had to send it to them to be like so something that's i mean i'm going to go out not a bit of a tangent but like the game originally had no rpg combat and um they thought that it would uh be better with rpg combat and i completely agreed but i didn't have the money to do that originally and so the publisher really helped me in that regard with providing additional funding to do that and um i had to write a game design

document basically proving that i understood you know how to make a good comment system how to make a good rpg that had these new elements and so ever since then i'm like this is the best thing ever you really need something like this to not go all over the place and make sure that you stay on track wow uh that's that's funny my the publishers i've worked i've worked with three um one of them didn't actually turn into a project i had to buy the project back from them but that's another story but the three publishers i worked with didn't require any of that they were just like i think i negotiated my way into being in complete control actually creative control was part of the contract i had the and maybe that's the way it is for you as well but they didn't they didn't ask me anything like that and i kind of wish they did conrad because it makes things so much easier you know to know in your head okay this is what the game design is this is the loop these are the mechanics and for me you know pinstripe my first

game pinstripe took five years and then never song took like two and a half it just took way too long um yeah and so i think it's great that you're learning now how to how to do that and you'll probably have a super successful career because you're to know how to communicate with a team and and stay within the confines of your budget you know yeah and i think what you said with pinstripe how it took you five years i was in the same boat with my first game took before wow and that's because i didn't have you know a game design document and it didn't make nearly as much money as pinstripe did so uh you can even just like check the reviews and the difference is astounding yeah you can usually look at reviews and know how much the game made financially but it was a great learning experience and that game took me four years and from kickstarter release to when my current game is going to release is going to be maybe just a bit over one so a very major improvement with planning yeah that's crazy so you're thinking you can get this done in a more than a year

is that what you said yes it's going to come out this year and i did the kickstarter last summer that's crazy man what what a huge uh that's an aspiration for me man like i wanna i want my next games to take that long because it's that's what's so daunting about game development is it usually ends up turning into two years plus if you're not careful you know yeah cool well i think the planning really helps with that yeah what's that i think the planning helps extremely with that on top of everything else what about the planning specifically do you feel i think this is important to just stick on for a little bit because so many of you guys listening to this podcast right now planning is the last thing you're thinking about you're thinking about motivation staying motivated you're thinking about money you're thinking about social media marketing what do people think about the game when really guys you should be thinking about the plan the game design document so conrad what specifically about the game design document

i think what what are some things about the game design document that really help you stay within that that yearly budget yes i think the game design document is actually equally important uh to the milestones in my opinion so how most publishers work in my experience when i was freelancing and with my current game yeah is that they set milestones you have to finish certain things by certain milestones so maybe you have like 10 and then maybe every milestone is every month or whatever and then you say you have ten chapters you have to finish chapter one on this month chapter two etc um and so that really helps uh in my opinion because then you're like okay well chapter one has to be finished in this time period for example yeah um and then if you don't finish it maybe you can get an extension here and there but you can't do that forever um and so you either have to cut the content of the game or make sure that you plan the game in such a way that you know that you're going to be able to finish it in those 10 milestone periods yeah and so in my opinion knowing the milestones before you um so in my opinion what you should do is have the game design document and then

you look at the milestone and see okay can i fit everything in these milestones and if you can't maybe you should remove some things that are not super important to games so maybe like a mini game or something and then not only do you get a really tight schedule that way that is basically you know made itself because you have the milestones you have the game design document and they complement each other yeah but on top of that maybe you get a better game because it's less bloated and so the game becomes more focused so in my opinion those two things together work really well so if you're if you don't even if you don't have a publisher you can set your own milestones and be like okay well i want to finish this part of the game like maybe percentage-wise i want to finish 25 of the story by this point then i want to finish 25 mechanics by this point etc and then you go back and look at your game design document think about well is it feasible to finish all this in this time period maybe my game is too big or maybe you finish everything too fast and you're like maybe my game is not big enough which is maybe not normally the case um but i think that's a that's a good way of approaching and that's how i've been

approaching it yeah from mind i think it's crucial honestly i've been learning this more and more and more i've made a lot of mistakes even even last year i've made a lot of mistakes um as a manager of my studio uh and those mistakes are ones that are repeated um these mistakes you know they started with my very first game coma they moved on to pinstripe that the mistakes keep repeating themselves and i feel like such an idiot um because some of the mistakes include things like oh i don't need a i don't need a schedule i'm just going to feel it out like this is a very emotional game i don't want to be limited by a schedule the story will be hurt if i if i put together a schedule milestones or anything like that so i'm just gonna feel it out um that's one major mistake i make over and over and over again now granted it may help the game because my games are very emotional

there's there's heavy stories in them so it does it does need some sort of flexibility with the schedule but ultimately what that leads to is a very expensive game guys a long a long game two years that's expensive that's ultimately what that means is it cost a lot of money everyone right right so that's a huge mistake i've made other mistakes are when working with a team member i assume that they know what i'm talking about uh rather than just doing concept art for them or writing out in the game design document the mechanics or how it should feel or games that it's similar to um so these mistakes if you keep repeating them over and over and over again my what i'm doing right now is i'm just seriously conrad i'm thinking i'm listening to you thinking i'm going to do what conrad's doing because at 22 years old you've you're

clearly focused and that focus obviously staying inspired and maintaining that motivation to finish your game is huge but i think ultimately staying focused and having a a direction you're moving and a goal on your map to get to is ultimately what makes you successful as opposed to so many other game developers out there who are kind of i don't know the right word maybe floundering um trying a lot of different things but not really having a focus and a direction by the way guys feel free to download my free 2d game kit below it's totally free it's my treat to you i used this exact 2d game kit to make a game for pewdiepie in 14 days and then i got to play it in front of his subscribers which was really awesome um so download that use it however you want it's my treat to you yeah okay