Thanks for watching! Hope you learned a ton. Get 10% off Squarespace w/ promo code THOMASBRUSH: www.squarespace.com/thomasbrush ► Learn how to become a full time game dev, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-how-to-make-six-figures ► Enroll in my 3D workshop, free!: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-15-minute-3D-game ► Make your game instantly beautiful with my free workbook: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-instant-beauty-color-workbook ► Get my 2D game kit, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-2D-game-kit ► Join my 2D character workshop, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-2d-character-art-workshop ► Wishlist Twisted Tower: store.steampowered.com/app/1575990/Twisted_Tower/ ► Learn how to make money as a TH-camr: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-indie-game-income-workshop
I keep starting these small projects -- then I'm like "how do I make this actually fun though?" then it starts getting more story, more mechanics, etc., then I realize it turned into a full-scale $40 to $60 game concept when I was only going to make a $5 indie game. Then I decide to set that aside until I can put out some small project first and come back to that big idea later.
3:30 In a fit of perfectionist insanity I spent a week and a half eliminating a small flash from a window that 99 percent of people would never even notice. Then later, I removed that window from the interface anyway.
Will You Ever Finish Your Game? I'm damn perfectionist, so I guess the answer for me is "no". And the worst in the story is that I have a list with over 100 game ideas. xD
Im on the final stretch! Never made a game this big before and actually finish. Is it perfect? Nope, but its turning into something and this is giving me extra motivation seeing the end result around the corner.
Haha sort of? I have several titles on Steam, but I havnt finished my big projects. 2 years ago I posted this so I probably was working on "One Hunt" or "Escape Halloween Forest" I am probably referencing One Hunt which is still in alpha and I havnt released the story mode yet. Escape Halloween Forest is done so that's cool! I also released a mini dinosaur game called Pteranodon. My 3 big projects that need to be finalized are One Hunt, Zukara, and Pteranodon 2. Pteranodon 2 is scheduled to be completed before 2023 ends. Then I will finally finish One Hunt and then work on Zukara. It's been fun but my progress is really slow.
@@Zoltoks hey man good for you though seriously! The fact that you have released that many games really shows that you are more than able to finish what you have started. I’m going to go take a look at what you have up. 🤘🤘
@Dailyfiver Thanks! Feel free to share any projects that you are working on! I have the developers curse of having lots of fish to fry. Between my actual job, my games that I like to make, and being co-owner to a backpacking company, I struggle to stay on topic! That being said, I love to watch others people progress on whatever creative adventure they are on. :)
@@Zoltoks will do! I’m currently working on my first ever programming project to learn the process but I should be getting that up on steam sometime soon haha. Just a small little game 😁
I'm 90% done with my game took 2.5 months to develop. My friends and family are play testing it now, while I'm polishing the game. I would never develop a game again on such a short amount of time.
I need to finish my game! (I make devlogs for it now) I think I need to comprise more to make sure I finish haha. I wanted 100 levels... Perhaps I should go down to 50! 30ish so far. PS. He has an AWESOME GDC Talk too
Hey I'm starting a game studio with my friends any tips on getting them to like work when they need to rather than whenever they want. I'm the co head.
Not throwing shade, but if you’re genuinely concerned about “getting them to work,” you might not want to start it with your friends! That is, if you are focused on really making things happen. On the other hand, maybe just lower expectations of what will get done and have fun with your friends!
If you're paying them, in the nicest possible way, remind them of that. If you aren't paying them, if they aren't really pumped to work on the project there isn't much you can do frankly. They have to want it just like you. I stopped working with friends in a production capacity because I cant pay them yet and I cant really ask them to put their lives on hold to work on something for me.
1. Pay them. 2. Plan for long term. 3. Work on the plan incrementally. 4. Set milestones and cut off points. 5. Create a "bin list", for features to be disposed wherever you failed or is failing to hit a milestone to polish more on existing features. 6. Develop "team mentality", ie. if we go down, we go down together, it's not one person's fault, it's the team's fault, everyone involved is in fault.
One of my top take from all these great experiences shared is not go be stubborn with principles and not to take things so seriously, see just focus on focal point or of your game. Thanks Thomas
Huh, I actually didn't consider that while I've always been very insecure about using premade assets of any form create something and thinking people would judge me for it, I never had that mentality to other artists or game developers for using premade assets. When they put it like that, I can see the need to build off of things that are readily available rather than spend precious time trying to create something from scratch. It makes far more sense to just get the damned thing done rather than making the thing 100% yours.
So true, my game is 99% assets and I honestly think most people will not notice. If you remove what I have bought and keep what I made, you have a ton of code that no one can see, and a ton of cubes with no material and zero sound. I look at assets as out sourcing, even rockstar go to studios and say hey make us 200 trees, and 200 buildings. So long as it isnt blatantly and completely unchanged over and over it's ok I think. I think asset flipping really is supposed to mean people who take a demo game and release that, not people who buy and use assets, otherwise why do they exist. A great video to wake up to thanks Thomas. One last point I am all over asset store and didnt notice any assets in the first tree, starting to wonder if even the fox itself is an asset, but who cares... I certainly didnt even consider it was using opsives 3rd person controller!
Wow just the first 2 mins hit me hard. I'm in the middle of a 3rd person open world game in the line of Zelda. What I've noticed while being a first time developer is there's a battle in me about what I want my game to be, what I can feasibly create, and what I think people will enjoy. I feel like if I don't add certain systems into my game it will be a failure just because of what the standard in the industry is for my type of game.
I feel like is not actually compromising vision per se. This perfectionist phenomenon tends to happen when a person made their first or second game, because just simply overwhelmed by passion. When one realised he/she need to ship a game, the reality part of game dev kicks in and forces us to think rationally. People got passed this point will approach game dev with more rational instead of pure passion. This all has to learn by experience. Its the mentality of: You wanna make the game perfect? Sure! Find the point where the game is shippable, ship it first then I'll slowly patch in content to perfect it. vs You wanna make the game perfect? Yes! But, Im gonna make the game as perfect as possible before shipping it.
I'm glad that i finished and launched my mobile game on playstore , even tho the game is not perfect having 24 installed and the next day having 22 uninstalled but guess what ? We can always update and improve our game this day on no matter what platform. We are human creative genius , we got 1000 creative ideas in our mind and we are greedy. we just can't implement everything in it and is okay to have a bad review , we learn from there and remember, We can't please everyone.
Sorry kiddos, 99,9999999999999% of the people that try to do this will fail. Its a world where demons fight and the ground is litered with bones of devs that never had a chance. Do it while your young but always have a way out.
I think it's more accurate to say that 99% of people give up as soon as they learn just how hard it is and how much competition there is. If you're willing to do it for 5 years without making any money at all, you might have a 20% chance of making a profitable game. But you're essentially right.
8:35 - I heard about this before but this is interesting and makes a lot of sense now. It's great that these asset developers would help out to integrate or improve their technology in our projects! 🤯
Man! First minute I’m like yeah, I get that. I haven’t if fixed even writing my game yet, I’ve barely learned how to open unity let alone figured out should I do a 2D or 3D or even how Big to make it. And I have a LOT of trouble making things small. I’ll start there and then 5 minutes later I’m from Tetris to elder scrolls 🤣 I watched a video from 2018 about 5 things to get started and I feel more informed but now I feel like I have way more questions. Like- Why does the 2D look like 3D? You mentioned several design software but mentioned what I was planning and not sure what to do. I was planning to go unity and blender, do I need a bunch of different softwares to use both? Think I’ll leave it off with 2 🤔 btw you don’t talk fast. You make it easy to listen.
Hey, wow, hi, I'm high... what's wrong with this opening? Maybe just "hey everyone"... Or what about "I'm combing my hair today and not snorting cocaine"?
Yes this is a technique all developers need to use. Set your MVP and try to reach that if a feature seems too far out of reach put it in the ice box. You want to release a polished product for people to use and you can always release features in later updates. So your goal for MVP should be a product that does what you want to do or in the case of game dev a game that gets your vision across even if it doesn’t have everything you initially wanted, and this product should be polished. If you release a polished product that works well even if it’s not as robust as you’d like that says a lot about you to consumers using your product. If you force features that seem out of reach at the time you often end up releasing something really buggy or something that almost goes in a direction away from what you initially wanted. Another good thing about ice boxing features and releasing a polished mvp is that you start getting user feedback which really helps you shape your product or game. That’s valuable feedback you aren’t going to get if you spend forever trying to add all those things that popped into your head when you initially envisioned your product.
Great video as always. I wish you could talk about something that's really a problem for me. I have a lot of unfinished projects, maybe 20 by now. I started learning Unity and C# 10 months ago. I know a lot of people do this, start and don't finish projects, but the real question is why people do that? In my case I already figured it out: I have an idea, I start the project, I greybox it/prototype it, and when I'm testing my ideas I just realize it sucks. It was good on paper or in the GDD but in a pratical way, it really sucks. When testing it, I see it's a crap idea, or it's really boring playing, or even to make this project good I would need to buy a lot of assets, and I don't have all this money. So if you could share something like how do I find the right project or even what is the right way to test my project to see if its good or not, it would be great.
I know this comment is 2 years old, but I think I know why you are/were having that problem. You're trying to invent some really unique idea. I think it's better to come from the perspective of why you want to be a game developer -- and it's usually because there are certain games that you love to play. Maybe just think about how you would have made that game if you were the lead designer. What would you have done differently with the visual style, UI design, story, etc.? Then try to make a game like that. And, of course, it would need to be scaled way down as a solo indie project.
Hey, you made a new video, I've been sending you emails for a while now because you haven't been really uploading videos, and I was worried, am glad to see your okay though
Thanks for watching! Hope you learned a ton.
Get 10% off Squarespace w/ promo code THOMASBRUSH: www.squarespace.com/thomasbrush
► Learn how to become a full time game dev, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-how-to-make-six-figures
► Enroll in my 3D workshop, free!: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-15-minute-3D-game
► Make your game instantly beautiful with my free workbook: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-instant-beauty-color-workbook
► Get my 2D game kit, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-2D-game-kit
► Join my 2D character workshop, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-2d-character-art-workshop
► Wishlist Twisted Tower: store.steampowered.com/app/1575990/Twisted_Tower/
► Learn how to make money as a TH-camr: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-indie-game-income-workshop
Of course once im done with studying. And then married, and when my kids are 18 i will finish my game for sure.
I keep starting these small projects -- then I'm like "how do I make this actually fun though?" then it starts getting more story, more mechanics, etc., then I realize it turned into a full-scale $40 to $60 game concept when I was only going to make a $5 indie game. Then I decide to set that aside until I can put out some small project first and come back to that big idea later.
hahah man same.
3:30 In a fit of perfectionist insanity I spent a week and a half eliminating a small flash from a window that 99 percent of people would never even notice. Then later, I removed that window from the interface anyway.
I Know how you feel bro, I did something like that tons of times.
It wasn't useless unless you learned something about that damn flash
Haven’t watched yet Thomas but just wanna say u da man and congrats on your recent success with neversong bro !
Will You Ever Finish Your Game?
I'm damn perfectionist, so I guess the answer for me is "no". And the worst in the story is that I have a list with over 100 game ideas. xD
meanwhile me just wanting to get an idea to actually do something lmfao
@@cearaj405 this is me too man lol
@@jamesnienaber277 trust me its better to struggle finding an idea than to struggle focusing on one idea.
Im on the final stretch! Never made a game this big before and actually finish. Is it perfect? Nope, but its turning into something and this is giving me extra motivation seeing the end result around the corner.
Hey man! Any update? Did you release it on steam? Haha
Haha sort of? I have several titles on Steam, but I havnt finished my big projects. 2 years ago I posted this so I probably was working on "One Hunt" or "Escape Halloween Forest"
I am probably referencing One Hunt which is still in alpha and I havnt released the story mode yet.
Escape Halloween Forest is done so that's cool! I also released a mini dinosaur game called Pteranodon.
My 3 big projects that need to be finalized are One Hunt, Zukara, and Pteranodon 2.
Pteranodon 2 is scheduled to be completed before 2023 ends. Then I will finally finish One Hunt and then work on Zukara.
It's been fun but my progress is really slow.
@@Zoltoks hey man good for you though seriously! The fact that you have released that many games really shows that you are more than able to finish what you have started. I’m going to go take a look at what you have up. 🤘🤘
@Dailyfiver Thanks! Feel free to share any projects that you are working on! I have the developers curse of having lots of fish to fry. Between my actual job, my games that I like to make, and being co-owner to a backpacking company, I struggle to stay on topic! That being said, I love to watch others people progress on whatever creative adventure they are on. :)
@@Zoltoks will do! I’m currently working on my first ever programming project to learn the process but I should be getting that up on steam sometime soon haha. Just a small little game 😁
I'm 90% done with my game took 2.5 months to develop. My friends and family are play testing it now, while I'm polishing the game. I would never develop a game again on such a short amount of time.
I have this with writing. And now that I started game development, I'm starting to have the same issue...
I need to finish my game! (I make devlogs for it now) I think I need to comprise more to make sure I finish haha. I wanted 100 levels... Perhaps I should go down to 50! 30ish so far. PS. He has an AWESOME GDC Talk too
Making a game is hard but possible.
Hey I'm starting a game studio with my friends any tips on getting them to like work when they need to rather than whenever they want.
I'm the co head.
Not throwing shade, but if you’re genuinely concerned about “getting them to work,” you might not want to start it with your friends! That is, if you are focused on really making things happen. On the other hand, maybe just lower expectations of what will get done and have fun with your friends!
Or just do you job and don’t care that much if your friends will
Just inspire them with your actions
If you're paying them, in the nicest possible way, remind them of that.
If you aren't paying them, if they aren't really pumped to work on the project there isn't much you can do frankly. They have to want it just like you.
I stopped working with friends in a production capacity because I cant pay them yet and I cant really ask them to put their lives on hold to work on something for me.
1. Pay them.
2. Plan for long term.
3. Work on the plan incrementally.
4. Set milestones and cut off points.
5. Create a "bin list", for features to be disposed wherever you failed or is failing to hit a milestone to polish more on existing features.
6. Develop "team mentality", ie. if we go down, we go down together, it's not one person's fault, it's the team's fault, everyone involved is in fault.
One of my top take from all these great experiences shared is not go be stubborn with principles and not to take things so seriously, see just focus on focal point or of your game. Thanks Thomas
Huh, I actually didn't consider that while I've always been very insecure about using premade assets of any form create something and thinking people would judge me for it, I never had that mentality to other artists or game developers for using premade assets. When they put it like that, I can see the need to build off of things that are readily available rather than spend precious time trying to create something from scratch. It makes far more sense to just get the damned thing done rather than making the thing 100% yours.
So true, my game is 99% assets and I honestly think most people will not notice. If you remove what I have bought and keep what I made, you have a ton of code that no one can see, and a ton of cubes with no material and zero sound. I look at assets as out sourcing, even rockstar go to studios and say hey make us 200 trees, and 200 buildings. So long as it isnt blatantly and completely unchanged over and over it's ok I think. I think asset flipping really is supposed to mean people who take a demo game and release that, not people who buy and use assets, otherwise why do they exist. A great video to wake up to thanks Thomas. One last point I am all over asset store and didnt notice any assets in the first tree, starting to wonder if even the fox itself is an asset, but who cares... I certainly didnt even consider it was using opsives 3rd person controller!
Filing my LLC this month to start Trunko Studios!
Wow just the first 2 mins hit me hard. I'm in the middle of a 3rd person open world game in the line of Zelda. What I've noticed while being a first time developer is there's a battle in me about what I want my game to be, what I can feasibly create, and what I think people will enjoy. I feel like if I don't add certain systems into my game it will be a failure just because of what the standard in the industry is for my type of game.
Do you love indie game development?and what are the benefits ,and I hope you to make a vedeo about this case
Please what’s your desktop computer 🖥 specs
I feel like is not actually compromising vision per se. This perfectionist phenomenon tends to happen when a person made their first or second game, because just simply overwhelmed by passion. When one realised he/she need to ship a game, the reality part of game dev kicks in and forces us to think rationally. People got passed this point will approach game dev with more rational instead of pure passion. This all has to learn by experience. Its the mentality of:
You wanna make the game perfect? Sure! Find the point where the game is shippable, ship it first then I'll slowly patch in content to perfect it.
vs
You wanna make the game perfect? Yes! But, Im gonna make the game as perfect as possible before shipping it.
So you literally reposted a part of an older video? Well done!
I'm glad that i finished and launched my mobile game on playstore , even tho the game is not perfect having 24 installed and the next day having 22 uninstalled but guess what ? We can always update and improve our game this day on no matter what platform. We are human creative genius , we got 1000 creative ideas in our mind and we are greedy. we just can't implement everything in it and is okay to have a bad review , we learn from there and remember, We can't please everyone.
while everyone has problems finishing their games I on the other hand have trouble starting one
It's also really helpful. 1-2 years and I will finish my game (I hope :-) ).
Very inspiring. Gonna go finish my game Sweet Pea. If ya get some free time hop over check it out and throw me some pointers. 😁
Sorry kiddos, 99,9999999999999% of the people that try to do this will fail. Its a world where demons fight and the ground is litered with bones of devs that never had a chance. Do it while your young but always have a way out.
I think it's more accurate to say that 99% of people give up as soon as they learn just how hard it is and how much competition there is. If you're willing to do it for 5 years without making any money at all, you might have a 20% chance of making a profitable game. But you're essentially right.
Great conversation from developers who I've loved to see. It's also really helpful, thanks a lot.
Loved the chat! Having a recognizable main character definitely seems important!
8:35 - I heard about this before but this is interesting and makes a lot of sense now. It's great that these asset developers would help out to integrate or improve their technology in our projects! 🤯
Great vid really insightful.
oh so this is just a clip from the hour thing
that's cool, I guess
yeah...
Dude the game he made had little to no gameplay. Lol
Man your titles are depressing
U trying to start a game my issue is animation movement.
A bit late but congrats on 200k
did you start your first jam game ?
Man! First minute I’m like yeah, I get that. I haven’t if fixed even writing my game yet, I’ve barely learned how to open unity let alone figured out should I do a 2D or 3D or even how Big to make it. And I have a LOT of trouble making things small. I’ll start there and then 5 minutes later I’m from Tetris to elder scrolls 🤣 I watched a video from 2018 about 5 things to get started and I feel more informed but now I feel like I have way more questions. Like-
Why does the 2D look like 3D?
You mentioned several design software but mentioned what I was planning and not sure what to do. I was planning to go unity and blender, do I need a bunch of different softwares to use both?
Think I’ll leave it off with 2 🤔 btw you don’t talk fast. You make it easy to listen.
the problem is forming an LLC to publish games
specially for non residents
Hey, wow, hi, I'm high... what's wrong with this opening?
Maybe just "hey everyone"...
Or what about "I'm combing my hair today and not snorting cocaine"?
Uh! That feeling once you finish a game, satisfying!. It's also hard to self-motivate to work on your next game. lol
Yes this is a technique all developers need to use. Set your MVP and try to reach that if a feature seems too far out of reach put it in the ice box. You want to release a polished product for people to use and you can always release features in later updates. So your goal for MVP should be a product that does what you want to do or in the case of game dev a game that gets your vision across even if it doesn’t have everything you initially wanted, and this product should be polished. If you release a polished product that works well even if it’s not as robust as you’d like that says a lot about you to consumers using your product. If you force features that seem out of reach at the time you often end up releasing something really buggy or something that almost goes in a direction away from what you initially wanted. Another good thing about ice boxing features and releasing a polished mvp is that you start getting user feedback which really helps you shape your product or game. That’s valuable feedback you aren’t going to get if you spend forever trying to add all those things that popped into your head when you initially envisioned your product.
Thanks for your videos your latest game is very beautiful and his game first tree is really beautiful as well
Principles are meant to be broken anyways😂😂😂, but not always
Thanks for posting this Thomas, I really needed to hear that. Thank you.
What specs on a pc would be preferable for game development
You don’t have to get too crazy, Ryzen5 series and a 1660 is a good entry point. I have a 2700x and rtx2080 which is way more than enough.
Matt Oliver oh I see thanks
Great video as always. I wish you could talk about something that's really a problem for me. I have a lot of unfinished projects, maybe 20 by now. I started learning Unity and C# 10 months ago. I know a lot of people do this, start and don't finish projects, but the real question is why people do that? In my case I already figured it out: I have an idea, I start the project, I greybox it/prototype it, and when I'm testing my ideas I just realize it sucks. It was good on paper or in the GDD but in a pratical way, it really sucks. When testing it, I see it's a crap idea, or it's really boring playing, or even to make this project good I would need to buy a lot of assets, and I don't have all this money. So if you could share something like how do I find the right project or even what is the right way to test my project to see if its good or not, it would be great.
I know this comment is 2 years old, but I think I know why you are/were having that problem. You're trying to invent some really unique idea. I think it's better to come from the perspective of why you want to be a game developer -- and it's usually because there are certain games that you love to play. Maybe just think about how you would have made that game if you were the lead designer. What would you have done differently with the visual style, UI design, story, etc.? Then try to make a game like that. And, of course, it would need to be scaled way down as a solo indie project.
Hey, you made a new video, I've been sending you emails for a while now because you haven't been really uploading videos, and I was worried, am glad to see your okay though
Check his Instagram. He posts there somewhat often
I can feel the bro love from here.. mad respect!
Thanks for bringing back the intro
Love For India 🇮🇳
it's incredible how this podcast feels like both of them filmed in the same place. even the way you guys lighted the scene is similar.
😚😚😚😚😚
i love you man ❤️❤️
*HMMMMMMM*
Great video!