Here is some advice from someone who made many games, find an old game you really liked, and see if there is anything like it released. If not you have your dream game with potential of success. Honestly guys, it's very hard to force yourself to make something because it's the right genre, or a popular topic. It is much easier to work on a game that you feel like is missing from the market.
I totally agree. That's the approach I took with my big solo game, RoadHouse Manager. I would not be able to create enough enthusiasm to make a survivors clone, or chase the latest trend.
It's not fair at 4:30 to compare these successful games with all the other ones because what they do and what everyone else does isn't the same thing, so we shouldn't expect the same result. Stardew was an okay game with a great music while keeping every other part of it at least passable, in the farming sim niche which was (and still is) lacking games of above average quality. Whereas what the newer "developers" make is some 2D or 3D platformer that is absolutely horrendous in every aspect, terrible graphics, no sound, barebones UI, extremely simple level design and so on. And then they blame it on marketing or something when their game doesn't get any kind of traction when it never had a reason to, in a completely oversaturated genre where they can't even make one part of the game passable. Again, it's misleading to compare successful games with all the other ones when they're not doing the same thing to begin with. We're not saying "you should expect your first job to be terrible, not everyone is a doctor or whatever" when not everyone is even trying to be a doctor, so in this case it's quite obvious that we get different results when we do different things, so why isn't that the same with games?
This. Also look at comment sections of tutorials or asset previews. Sometimes half of it, if not more, appears to be a bunch of kids asking for the most benign things to fix or outright asking the CC for help on their project. Just recently have I seen a comment under a tutorial asking: "Can you show me how to make a GTA-like game please?" As if there was a button somewhere hidden in the engine that just magically manifests an open world RPG. 😂 Also interesting is that lots of CCs that make really good tutorials often seem to have less of a clue how to design an actually good game. Less experienced devs may fall into that trap and consequently create mediocre stuff.
I'm talking for me When I say: Learn how to use the engine and how to develop the systems that I imagine is only the beginning, cause , the real game starts to show with good game design
I'd argue that having that rigorous time constraints like said in the video isn't always the best. It's a balance between creative vision and polish versus economy. If I have a banger prototype, it would feel premature to just get it out there as fast as possible. Sometimes it can be better to let it brew a bit more. Yeah, yeah, I already hear the 80/20 rule ringing in my head, but who says that the last 10-20% of a project aren't worth the effort?
I think funding your first game is not as hard as surviving with it in the long term. Chris Zukowski made an interesting graph long time ago, where it shows that about 80% of all game developers make one game and then give up on game development forever, whether they become successful with it or not. A small scoped game helps you reduce the financial risk, but if it fails chances are very high, that you just fit into that graph, too.
I think it's important when choosing the first game you make, to actually pick something that can be made quickly, and make it to the best of your ability, rather than choosing a game that's fairly large, and doing it as quickly as possible just to get it done so you can "make a good one" later. Doing the first helps you learn how to make a good game. Doing the second helps you learn how to make trash.
honestly yea, opening up stardew valley can unironically be useful because it's a great representation of what is possible to do as a solo dev. Of course it's a top 0.1% game but the fact that a single man made the game is extremely inspiring to me
Let's not forget the one thing that has been miscommunicated and everything you don't have to have a studio to do any of this. You can very well do it by yourself or with a group of people and pay them or give them a small cut of the sales and that's it. No one has to go into debt you may not have you don't have to lose a business a studio and lose everything to a giant corporation like EA or Ubisoft or something like that. Everything you make can be 100% yours.
Very good advice. I wanted him to say, "If you want to make money, focus on building your team." If you have an idea you love, see if you can get help making it. Especially from people with complementary talents. A team of 2 will typically make a product that is much more than twice as good, and much more quickly. And more help is better, up to a point. You probably have to agree to some kind of revenue-sharing, but a product that is twice as good should make more than twice the money. I think the reasons there are a lot of poor games out there that don't sell is 1) it's a poor idea to star with, and 2) not high enough quality because it's made by a team of 1-2. And if nobody wants to work on your game, that might tell you something about the idea as well.
From what I've seen on forums over the past several years, professionals usually don't work for free, and if they're paid, they'll work even if they don't like the idea. Some non-professionals may work on other people's ideas for free, just for the sake of interacting with others and building relations, until they get bored. I agree about 1), most ideas suck, I have over 100 ideas and only few of them I feel have potential for big success. About 2), the quality problem is not because of the size of the team, but because of the skills of the team. Gamvedev is a very complex matter, requiring a whole bag of skills, each of which requires years of study and practice.
More people often leads to a better outcome, but the team size is limited on how much communication is needed. In the agile development space 9 people is seen as the upper limit for a team. More professional shops can get around the 9 people limit by having separate teams specific to a part of the game like audio or cut scenes etc. Officially the is no lower limit but with 3 people and more the coordination things like a Kanban board and the rules around it start to make sense. Often creative people object to any structure they are put in, but having a process will make things more professional and the team have a backbone.
Great video again Mr BiteMe (i know u are Marnix, i just like that meme from the email example you showed few videos ago). A lot of good stuff to take notes on. 11:49 "the real way to market your game, highest return on investment by far is"..... ..... ... demos and steam online fests? "Influencer outreach". Ok... thats the 3rd biggest.. at least was 2 years ago according Chris Zukowski when he was talking about how free demos are a way to gain instant visibility. Especially thru steam fests (not just nextfest but also the other ones that can have other niche theme such as country, genre, aesthetic or size of a team). His graph even put tiktok ahead of "streamers" (which means youtube video content makers as well). According to the stats he got from 80 different games that were just released/being made during 2022 festivals give bit more wishlists than "streamers" aka influencers do. While i asked myself has he done another graph where "streamers" overtook festivals... i actually found 2024 video with similar graph but now he says "hundreds of games" instead of 80 and the top 3 order is the same as before: festivals, tiktok and then "streamers". Altho maybe it is the same graph and he forgot the exact numbers cuz the bars look very similar if not the exact same. Its just different colors mostly. Am bit surprised you put influencers over festivals as i thought we were watching/reading same videos/blogs from Chris. Mentioning top 3 way to market (or rather "promote") isn't a big mistake tho. Especially since these both are free and both more or less need a demo (altho sometimes influencers can make content even from trailer, playtest or prototype - its just maybe better with freely available demo so their audience can get to play as well). Still a great video. Sry if im nitpicky. Love your content
There is an audience difference between Chris Z and BiteMe viewers. Chris Z's audiences are Steam events like Awards shows, Gamescom/TGS, Top performers on Next Fest,... Chris his target audience isn't 1-3 man dev teams with barely enough money for the Steam credit. Sure festivals can give you 100k WLs, but only 1 dev gets that many/festival. Influencer marketing can be more "fair" then. Also, I've spoken with Chris about, and I feel like he has a bit of a bias against what he calls "Streamers". Probably because the guaranteed coverage requires you to spend 2-20k on a video, and the free approach (which I preach and love) isn't as predictable. -M
I never got that impression from his videos and blogs. Went back to watch these again and at the end of one there even was a question if dev should pay for influencer promoting the game. And his answers was "no, at least not on your 1st round of sending emails, always do free rounds first and then see if game gains attraction and only then consider if paying influencer at this point benefits the game" (this wasn't exact quote but in lines what he said). His blog about this from september 2024 says: "note that most of the techniques: Festivals, Streamers, the Press, just rely on you emailing someone" and "To get people to feature your game, you don’t have to schmooze people over drinks at a hip bar. You just send an email". Maaaybe the big bars on the chart are indeed from devs who paid to streamers but his advice pretty much always have been to do the free promotions (both for festivals and for reaching out streamers). I feel like devs should do both: streamers and festivals (especially the free ones). I just wish you mentioned fests there too somewhere. Again: still a good video. And this is very minor thing. And am sure anyone who is actually interested will find videos (or blogs/other texts) about fests anyway so no harm ^^
Amazing advice very inspiring. I love the idea of developing 'small scope games' and continuing to work on my lack of discipline lol to make it happen.
is it doable? ive been struggling with this forever. "small scope with fun game loop" at this point i would literally pay someone a good chunk of money to give me a great idea. if someone had told me to make mini metro before it came out, that advice alone would be worth thousands of dollars at least if i knew it was advice to be heeded
@TESkyrimizer Hi, I think the key is to break away from thinking you have just ONE great idea for a game, as Steve Jobs once said "great artists steal" . in my opinion, you don't have to reinvent the wheel find way of remixing what's already on the market and make portfolio of games without making them soulless cashgrabs. I would say you should invest sometime playing mobile games in the causal/arcade category this help narrow your scope and and watch old gameplay videos of retros games from the 1990's (metal slug, contra, King of fighters 98 as some Examples) Then find a interesting twist you can add to one of those games that have grabbed your attention. I hope this advice helps you out.
10:47 So...tell me the basic concept of this 'ibex game' What was the idea? What's the gameplay loop? 11:27 Do I really have to go back to 'that' video to figure out why a potted plant is being used as a microphone?
Every genre that you got passion or understand lot is better starting point than something that bores you or a genre that you have never played. The biggest problem could be the high cost of animations, detailed 3d models, voice actors, music, ... etc. To coordinate all that could be at the beginning overwhelming for most beginners. A good advise, take paper and write down your concept and all assets that would be needed for the project. Draw a storyboard like filmmakers do with scenes and dialoges. Ask friends what they think about the story (it's like reading a comic), change boring parts till your storyboard is good. After that you can start to make your game that is mostly storydriven. ^^
You do realize the fallacy in your reasoning. The solution to competing against the 18000 games released on steam in 2024 is NOT to release more small crappy games. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️instead focus on finding your genre and carve out a niche by delivering quality over quantity. Can't do it without money? Yeah guess what - that is how business works. I am so tired of everyone & their grandmother defining themselves as game devs and releasing shovelware like its candy and then the industry complains its "hard to be seen". And then they all make youtube videos explaining how to be succesful at releasing [5] shovelware games per year to make 30k in sales.
They're not saying release garbage, they're saying to make smaller, shorter games that don't take as much time to develop and thus are less risky and less likely to bankrupt your studio
@@dobrx6199 Smaller games have more competition and it's much easier for another developer to remake the game in a better way. It's just a matter of time before someone watching this channel goes "oh you made Unicycle Pizza Time in a month, well I can make it much better in two months and advertise to the same audience". There's more risk when it comes to competition, but is less risky if the developers aren't confident in their ability to see a large project through to the end and actually make it fun/marketable. It's not as cut and dry as you're saying.
@@dobrx6199 it is called shovelware. I have been watching their videos and others like them for a while and often the advice they and others give is dreadful.
lets say I want to find someone to make a game with that lives in another country. when we finish the game and upload it to steam how can we make sure that no one runs with the revenue or steals the game or somthing like that?
Steam wire transfers your money to you bank account. You configure said bank account, and you are liable for your bank accounts security. Only the Steam account that owns the developer profile can change the bank information, so as long as you make sure that one doesn't get hacked, you're fine. -M
"Nobody knows what consumers want" They want good games. No microtransactions, no lootboxes, no other bs. They want games like Binding of Isaac, Stardew Valley, Balatro. Fun singleplayer games where gameplay is focus.
You can’t look at the highest grossing games on Steam and say this with a straight face. Consumers at large obviously don’t dislike micro-transactions.
@@donkeykong315 th-cam.com/video/oLWMOzocfNw/w-d-xo.html "you didn't mention the amount of bots that idle for items that alone makes the player count so much bigger" "Great video! I would have mentioned also that bots can inflate numbers a lot. Games that are bounded to some kind of earning are naturally flooded with bots, skin and hats were/are/will be farmed with bots alongside human players. I can't believe that many people are clicking bananas, a big chunk must be bots." "The thing about TF2 is that cosms and paid stuff actually went down for like 2 weeks in the summer and nobody cared"
Here is some advice from someone who made many games, find an old game you really liked, and see if there is anything like it released. If not you have your dream game with potential of success. Honestly guys, it's very hard to force yourself to make something because it's the right genre, or a popular topic. It is much easier to work on a game that you feel like is missing from the market.
100% agree
I totally agree. That's the approach I took with my big solo game, RoadHouse Manager. I would not be able to create enough enthusiasm to make a survivors clone, or chase the latest trend.
My favourite Belgians return once again
Thanks for all the advice, and happy new game year to everyone!
Good advice, more new devs need to hear this lol
So what I take from this is I should email Markiplier about my nsfw platformer game?
It's okay to think LARGE but aim for a Small or optimized work load. Generally, Thinking small is just shying away from making appealing games.
It's not fair at 4:30 to compare these successful games with all the other ones because what they do and what everyone else does isn't the same thing, so we shouldn't expect the same result. Stardew was an okay game with a great music while keeping every other part of it at least passable, in the farming sim niche which was (and still is) lacking games of above average quality.
Whereas what the newer "developers" make is some 2D or 3D platformer that is absolutely horrendous in every aspect, terrible graphics, no sound, barebones UI, extremely simple level design and so on. And then they blame it on marketing or something when their game doesn't get any kind of traction when it never had a reason to, in a completely oversaturated genre where they can't even make one part of the game passable.
Again, it's misleading to compare successful games with all the other ones when they're not doing the same thing to begin with. We're not saying "you should expect your first job to be terrible, not everyone is a doctor or whatever" when not everyone is even trying to be a doctor, so in this case it's quite obvious that we get different results when we do different things, so why isn't that the same with games?
This.
Also look at comment sections of tutorials or asset previews. Sometimes half of it, if not more, appears to be a bunch of kids asking for the most benign things to fix or outright asking the CC for help on their project.
Just recently have I seen a comment under a tutorial asking: "Can you show me how to make a GTA-like game please?"
As if there was a button somewhere hidden in the engine that just magically manifests an open world RPG. 😂
Also interesting is that lots of CCs that make really good tutorials often seem to have less of a clue how to design an actually good game. Less experienced devs may fall into that trap and consequently create mediocre stuff.
I'm talking for me When I say: Learn how to use the engine and how to develop the systems that I imagine is only the beginning, cause , the real game starts to show with good game design
I'd argue that having that rigorous time constraints like said in the video isn't always the best. It's a balance between creative vision and polish versus economy.
If I have a banger prototype, it would feel premature to just get it out there as fast as possible. Sometimes it can be better to let it brew a bit more.
Yeah, yeah, I already hear the 80/20 rule ringing in my head, but who says that the last 10-20% of a project aren't worth the effort?
You mean the final 80% of the project ;) -M
I think funding your first game is not as hard as surviving with it in the long term.
Chris Zukowski made an interesting graph long time ago, where it shows that about 80% of all game developers make one game and then give up on game development forever, whether they become successful with it or not.
A small scoped game helps you reduce the financial risk, but if it fails chances are very high, that you just fit into that graph, too.
I think it's important when choosing the first game you make, to actually pick something that can be made quickly, and make it to the best of your ability, rather than choosing a game that's fairly large, and doing it as quickly as possible just to get it done so you can "make a good one" later. Doing the first helps you learn how to make a good game. Doing the second helps you learn how to make trash.
So, looking at my notes: "Open World Stardew Valley", did I get that right?
Yaaa man you are on the right path 😅
honestly yea, opening up stardew valley can unironically be useful because it's a great representation of what is possible to do as a solo dev. Of course it's a top 0.1% game but the fact that a single man made the game is extremely inspiring to me
Always look forward to your uploads! ❤ hope you guys had a good holiday season, can’t wait to watch this video
Let's not forget the one thing that has been miscommunicated and everything you don't have to have a studio to do any of this.
You can very well do it by yourself or with a group of people and pay them or give them a small cut of the sales and that's it. No one has to go into debt you may not have you don't have to lose a business a studio and lose everything to a giant corporation like EA or Ubisoft or something like that. Everything you make can be 100% yours.
Very good advice. I wanted him to say, "If you want to make money, focus on building your team." If you have an idea you love, see if you can get help making it. Especially from people with complementary talents. A team of 2 will typically make a product that is much more than twice as good, and much more quickly. And more help is better, up to a point. You probably have to agree to some kind of revenue-sharing, but a product that is twice as good should make more than twice the money. I think the reasons there are a lot of poor games out there that don't sell is 1) it's a poor idea to star with, and 2) not high enough quality because it's made by a team of 1-2.
And if nobody wants to work on your game, that might tell you something about the idea as well.
From what I've seen on forums over the past several years, professionals usually don't work for free, and if they're paid, they'll work even if they don't like the idea. Some non-professionals may work on other people's ideas for free, just for the sake of interacting with others and building relations, until they get bored. I agree about 1), most ideas suck, I have over 100 ideas and only few of them I feel have potential for big success. About 2), the quality problem is not because of the size of the team, but because of the skills of the team. Gamvedev is a very complex matter, requiring a whole bag of skills, each of which requires years of study and practice.
More people often leads to a better outcome, but the team size is limited on how much communication is needed. In the agile development space 9 people is seen as the upper limit for a team. More professional shops can get around the 9 people limit by having separate teams specific to a part of the game like audio or cut scenes etc.
Officially the is no lower limit but with 3 people and more the coordination things like a Kanban board and the rules around it start to make sense. Often creative people object to any structure they are put in, but having a process will make things more professional and the team have a backbone.
Respect the honestly you trying to communicate about the industry, real important for people to hear even if they really don't want to.
It's been cool to see your journey and learn along side you with my own studio. I think small games might be the move, low risk and fast learning.
and feck there's a lot to learn
Great video again Mr BiteMe (i know u are Marnix, i just like that meme from the email example you showed few videos ago). A lot of good stuff to take notes on.
11:49 "the real way to market your game, highest return on investment by far is"..... ..... ... demos and steam online fests? "Influencer outreach". Ok... thats the 3rd biggest.. at least was 2 years ago according Chris Zukowski when he was talking about how free demos are a way to gain instant visibility. Especially thru steam fests (not just nextfest but also the other ones that can have other niche theme such as country, genre, aesthetic or size of a team). His graph even put tiktok ahead of "streamers" (which means youtube video content makers as well). According to the stats he got from 80 different games that were just released/being made during 2022 festivals give bit more wishlists than "streamers" aka influencers do. While i asked myself has he done another graph where "streamers" overtook festivals... i actually found 2024 video with similar graph but now he says "hundreds of games" instead of 80 and the top 3 order is the same as before: festivals, tiktok and then "streamers". Altho maybe it is the same graph and he forgot the exact numbers cuz the bars look very similar if not the exact same. Its just different colors mostly.
Am bit surprised you put influencers over festivals as i thought we were watching/reading same videos/blogs from Chris. Mentioning top 3 way to market (or rather "promote") isn't a big mistake tho. Especially since these both are free and both more or less need a demo (altho sometimes influencers can make content even from trailer, playtest or prototype - its just maybe better with freely available demo so their audience can get to play as well).
Still a great video. Sry if im nitpicky. Love your content
There is an audience difference between Chris Z and BiteMe viewers. Chris Z's audiences are Steam events like Awards shows, Gamescom/TGS, Top performers on Next Fest,...
Chris his target audience isn't 1-3 man dev teams with barely enough money for the Steam credit. Sure festivals can give you 100k WLs, but only 1 dev gets that many/festival. Influencer marketing can be more "fair" then.
Also, I've spoken with Chris about, and I feel like he has a bit of a bias against what he calls "Streamers". Probably because the guaranteed coverage requires you to spend 2-20k on a video, and the free approach (which I preach and love) isn't as predictable. -M
I never got that impression from his videos and blogs. Went back to watch these again and at the end of one there even was a question if dev should pay for influencer promoting the game. And his answers was "no, at least not on your 1st round of sending emails, always do free rounds first and then see if game gains attraction and only then consider if paying influencer at this point benefits the game" (this wasn't exact quote but in lines what he said). His blog about this from september 2024 says: "note that most of the techniques: Festivals, Streamers, the Press, just rely on you emailing someone" and "To get people to feature your game, you don’t have to schmooze people over drinks at a hip bar. You just send an email". Maaaybe the big bars on the chart are indeed from devs who paid to streamers but his advice pretty much always have been to do the free promotions (both for festivals and for reaching out streamers).
I feel like devs should do both: streamers and festivals (especially the free ones). I just wish you mentioned fests there too somewhere.
Again: still a good video. And this is very minor thing. And am sure anyone who is actually interested will find videos (or blogs/other texts) about fests anyway so no harm ^^
Great video! Love your material :)
you make it easy and less stressful. small games it is the way
Amazing advice very inspiring. I love the idea of developing 'small scope games' and continuing to work on my lack of discipline lol to make it happen.
Very good information
“Magnus Opera”
So the key is to make small scope, Fun games with a unique hook. Sounds quite doable especially when your start out
Thanks for the advice, good sir
is it doable? ive been struggling with this forever. "small scope with fun game loop"
at this point i would literally pay someone a good chunk of money to give me a great idea. if someone had told me to make mini metro before it came out, that advice alone would be worth thousands of dollars at least if i knew it was advice to be heeded
@TESkyrimizer
Hi, I think the key is to break away from thinking you have just ONE great idea for a game, as Steve Jobs once said "great artists steal" . in my opinion, you don't have to reinvent the wheel find way of remixing what's already on the market and make portfolio of games without making them soulless cashgrabs.
I would say you should invest sometime playing mobile games in the causal/arcade category this help narrow your scope and and watch old gameplay videos of retros games from the 1990's (metal slug, contra, King of fighters 98 as some Examples)
Then find a interesting twist you can add to one of those games that have grabbed your attention. I hope this advice helps you out.
10:47 So...tell me the basic concept of this 'ibex game' What was the idea? What's the gameplay loop?
11:27 Do I really have to go back to 'that' video to figure out why a potted plant is being used as a microphone?
Focus on games about fountains. That's my 2 cents
😂
⛲️
Great tips there
For visual novels or interactive movie games like her story, immortality , until dawn how to validate them
Are they good genres to start with ?
Every genre that you got passion or understand lot is better starting point than something that bores you or a genre that you have never played.
The biggest problem could be the high cost of animations, detailed 3d models, voice actors, music, ... etc. To coordinate all that could be at the beginning overwhelming for most beginners.
A good advise, take paper and write down your concept and all assets that would be needed for the project. Draw a storyboard like filmmakers do with scenes and dialoges. Ask friends what they think about the story (it's like reading a comic), change boring parts till your storyboard is good. After that you can start to make your game that is mostly storydriven. ^^
Hmm, maybe I will make some games in 2025.
Sounds realistic. :)
Hooray the sheep farm in New Zealand!
You do realize the fallacy in your reasoning.
The solution to competing against the 18000 games released on steam in 2024 is NOT to release more small crappy games. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️instead focus on finding your genre and carve out a niche by delivering quality over quantity.
Can't do it without money? Yeah guess what - that is how business works.
I am so tired of everyone & their grandmother defining themselves as game devs and releasing shovelware like its candy and then the industry complains its "hard to be seen". And then they all make youtube videos explaining how to be succesful at releasing [5] shovelware games per year to make 30k in sales.
They're not saying release garbage, they're saying to make smaller, shorter games that don't take as much time to develop and thus are less risky and less likely to bankrupt your studio
@@dobrx6199 Smaller games have more competition and it's much easier for another developer to remake the game in a better way. It's just a matter of time before someone watching this channel goes "oh you made Unicycle Pizza Time in a month, well I can make it much better in two months and advertise to the same audience". There's more risk when it comes to competition, but is less risky if the developers aren't confident in their ability to see a large project through to the end and actually make it fun/marketable. It's not as cut and dry as you're saying.
@@dobrx6199 it is called shovelware. I have been watching their videos and others like them for a while and often the advice they and others give is dreadful.
lets say I want to find someone to make a game with that lives in another country. when we finish the game and upload it to steam how can we make sure that no one runs with the revenue or steals the game or somthing like that?
Steam wire transfers your money to you bank account. You configure said bank account, and you are liable for your bank accounts security. Only the Steam account that owns the developer profile can change the bank information, so as long as you make sure that one doesn't get hacked, you're fine. -M
@@bitemegames Thanks a bunch!
3:25 I unintentionally clicked off xD
"Nobody knows what consumers want"
They want good games. No microtransactions, no lootboxes, no other bs. They want games like Binding of Isaac, Stardew Valley, Balatro. Fun singleplayer games where gameplay is focus.
You can’t look at the highest grossing games on Steam and say this with a straight face. Consumers at large obviously don’t dislike micro-transactions.
@@donkeykong315 th-cam.com/video/oLWMOzocfNw/w-d-xo.html
"you didn't mention the amount of bots that idle for items that alone makes the player count so much bigger"
"Great video! I would have mentioned also that bots can inflate numbers a lot. Games that are bounded to some kind of earning are naturally flooded with bots, skin and hats were/are/will be farmed with bots alongside human players. I can't believe that many people are clicking bananas, a big chunk must be bots."
"The thing about TF2 is that cosms and paid stuff actually went down for like 2 weeks in the summer and nobody cared"
First