Really wish he mentioned the total unit sales of 1849, not seeing actual data on a multi year long venture (savings into game development) is rather important. The biggest hint we got with regards to this is when he said, "if we didn't have the extra sales from Android or iOS then we wouldn't have continued to make indy games" or some shit along those lines. Data like that is objectively important for people who see their selves in a relatively similar frame of reference (just graduated with Marketing degree). Some of the smaller marketing tid bits (ie: just talk to everyone approach) is something I figured and was assured by, but mentioning the fruits of said investment is relatively important. The strongest knowledge learned here not found in other GDC talks is with regards to the pros/cons of game expo's, which I hadn't thought of before. Regardless, the content that we got was a worthwhile read. Thanks

@JoeGeorge319

7 жыл бұрын

***** I actually went to that site, went to the wrong area for searching, it had the following steam numbers: Owners: 22,410 ± 3,933

@Megalomaniakaal

4 жыл бұрын

@Nub93 net or gross?

We love tycoon games and simulations in Germany and the market is big compared to other countries in Europe. So an early localization is always a good idea. imho

@ColinJWiens

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah you can outsource translations to fans too, Matt Roszak does that and gets like 10 translations for free on his games (just gives them a free copy)

@AmbientSounds205

4 жыл бұрын

Trust me the meme is real we know

Amazing talk, learned a ton, will be rewatching it again when we are closer to our first release to remind myself about some of the topics. Thanks!

@ThatsPety

7 жыл бұрын

Game Soup hey, it's game soup!

@jakegillenwater9240

6 жыл бұрын

Oh hey - it's the dudes

@aminoshift1158

6 жыл бұрын

Game Soup what game are you guys launching?

I have 5 dollars and can type "hello world" to command prompt. How long will it take me to make a game?

@killingfeveronline_archives

6 жыл бұрын

Honestly you can make your own game in a week if you find a game engine that best suits you, though that would be a "first game" and not something you'd sell just yet.

@meesacalledjarjarbinks3500

6 жыл бұрын

Anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 decades.. start cracking

@crt3275

6 жыл бұрын

a few weeks for a text adventure :)

@trallaton

6 жыл бұрын

In Notepad: @echo off echo Hello world! pause Save as a .bat file

@trallaton

6 жыл бұрын

That's very true man

His sip of water is the stock gulp sound from every game you can drink in.

@GiraffeFlavoredCondoms

2 жыл бұрын

23:15 for the curious (assuming you meant this one on this 2 year old comment lol)

@mittyxxx8791

2 жыл бұрын

@@GiraffeFlavoredCondoms thanks!

how to get divorce in 12 months and marry your computer

@dayanyar2656

7 жыл бұрын

Was thinking about it tho. But need to live with my in-laws to save money.

@spydergs07

6 жыл бұрын

A good spouse would be behind you all the way. My wife wouldn't leave me if I decided to quit my job and go full time on my game development.

@charlietownsend2826

6 жыл бұрын

spydergs07 Get your point. But I, personally would feel terrible about going through such a low point and having my wife witness it much less carry even a small part of that shit. Just feels wrong.

@theguardian8317

5 жыл бұрын

Translation for most men saying: "my wife would support me if I decided to quit my job to do what I want" --> "My wife earns decent money and would support me FINANCIALLY when I'll quit my job. Also there's a high probability I'm a selfish person"

@vegurion2

5 жыл бұрын

We'll dependent on the woman... If she can't stand to be married with a broke, antisocial man who doesn't even talk to her or even comes out of his room anynore and he becomes paler and weaker day after day, then I say... good none should be married to such a miserable excuse of a man :p If she can tho... Then she... probably forgot that she has a man... so yeah.

That composer should not have been doing some shameless self promoting. The guys is like "if you have any questions about my game you can ask them and ill try my best to answer them" and shes like" so im a composer and if any of you want some music for your game ill be staying in this room" you can also see how the whole crowd looks back at her like wtf are you doing XD

@SylversVolpe

3 жыл бұрын

Eh, never judge too harshly. You never know what difficult circumstances people might be dealing with.

@gengar807

3 жыл бұрын

@@SylversVolpe Shit I honestly forgot about this comment, but yeah you could be right.

@MrSharmabros

3 жыл бұрын

@@gengar807 Im a composer, wanna make games anyone? :^)

@gengar807

3 жыл бұрын

Coming back to this comment 3 years later. I will say I was a bit harsh about the composer. It’s really hard for musicians to make money and to make a living off it almost impractical for a majority of musicians. While I still think it was wrong for the composer to self promote like that, it was likely just out of desperation to make a living off of something she loves.

@SylversVolpe

3 жыл бұрын

@@gengar807 Haha honestly, you don't see this self reflection on youtube everyday. That said, I totally agree with you on how dicey and dry that field, as far as opportunities are concerned. And yes, shameless self promotion is never a good look. But when I saw that, I thought to myself "things must be very bad if she felt compelled to out herself like that". I pray I'm never in that position, or anyone is for that matter.

I'm gonna go buy his game just to pay him for this great talk - plus it looks fun.

Tough crowd, he was a pretty good and funny talker... ;P

@hrabia

6 жыл бұрын

game maniacs, probably tried to press some key combinations to send emojis

@theguardian8317

5 жыл бұрын

- he's like the bootleg version of a bad impression of a poor's man Tim Schafer? - Did he get lost on his way to a TED talk and ended up on the GDC by mistake? - did he learn humor from a pewpewdie 101 humor course for youtubers? now these comments and most of the ones in this page from other users are funny. The Presentation wasn't at all and it doesn't have to be. Again, GDC isn't TED talks.

@damiangonzalez_esp

5 жыл бұрын

maybe there was no mics taking them, only taking him.

@airpoint9715

5 жыл бұрын

No! He’s a very bad presenter. Cringy jokes, constant “humm-ing”, drinking into sentences, dancing behind the laptop, just painful to watch and listen

@sinetwo

4 жыл бұрын

I felt the same - really good speaker and speaks from personal experience, as opposed to a massive script. I laughed.... behind my computer.

Years later, this is an inspiration. Thanks a lot for this!

It may have taken him 12 months to develop, but what he doesn't tell you is that he spent like 4 years saving to start. So, it's more like how to do it in 5+ years. Unless you're blessed enough to have a large amount of cash already.

@Megalomaniakaal

4 жыл бұрын

Well, he kinda did say that.

@sosig6445

4 жыл бұрын

you could also do it as a part time job work on it for 2 years instead of 1, and that way you don't need to save up for 4 years (maybe just 1 as a safety check) but I don't really know how efficent or tiring that is.

just stumbled across this GDC channel...loving it. another great video.

Very solid talk covering a lot of interesting topics. Nice one :D

Very nice talk, here is the video layout.. ======================= 02:08 Talk outline 02:24 Section One - Preparation 04:47 Butchery features 07:00 Section two: Self-Marketing 07:40 Building community 09:43 Press outreach + PR 14:43 Section three: Self-Publishing 18:15 The revenue summary 20:45 The tale of the tail 25:30 Q&A ======================================================= We are yolostudiogame - an indie game studio with two members. We are seriously learning about the game industry. So we tweet a GDC video summary every Tuesday. Happy making game, everyone!

I was laughing most of the time. Dont get why the audience was so solemn.

The response from the Reddit mod was immature and stupid, but it's not surprising as most forum mods act like they are some kind of gatekeeper. I guess living in a basement kind of make some people vindictive and they need a way to lash out. I'm almost certain people would choose cancer than be friends with forum mods.

@cinderheart2720

4 жыл бұрын

For all we know he was posting on a subreddit that was still under construction.

@firstnamelastname1343

3 жыл бұрын

majority of reddit mods are 15

I appreciated this talk, very concrete and actionable advice. Thank you.

@fullanalysis93

7 жыл бұрын

numgun Going through all the GDC talks too? I'm having a great time with these

"We knew how to use Flash with our eyes closed, blindfolded, in the dark" Triple redundancy eye closing.

@peteypablo09

4 жыл бұрын

In a cave. At night.

@danielschroedinger2090

4 жыл бұрын

@@zissler1 a) No need to be so aggro about it b) He wanted to emphasise that they knew flash very well and did so by claiming they could operate it under adverse conditions. Giving multiple examples for the same condition does not aid his point. Could have instead said something like: "eyes closed, one handed and drunk."

@ultimaxkom8728

4 жыл бұрын

@@danielschroedinger2090 1. It's just a joke, no need to be so aggro about it. 2. I prefer number dot over letter bracket listing, or just none.

@danielschroedinger2090

4 жыл бұрын

@@ultimaxkom8728 I Was it a joke? I don't think so. II The comment by zissler, that I was referring to doesn't show up for me anymore. Was it deleted?

@S.Korolev

4 жыл бұрын

@@danielschroedinger2090 α Don't you overthink? β More things should be deleted

Great talk! Thank you, puts a lot of things in prospective

"Are you ready for Lodes of Fun??" [sips water] I laughed

@tehf00n

7 жыл бұрын

huhuhuh. loads. man loads.

@Sparky0350

6 жыл бұрын

Haha, I read this comment the same time Matthew said it. It was creepy for a moment.

@hansgerber8654

6 жыл бұрын

"bad" puns are always the best

@RJMc819

6 жыл бұрын

It's an AWESOME pun. Fuck you all.

@JPOfAwesomeness

4 жыл бұрын

Sparky0350 that happens to me alpt

Wow, the end was priceless! I just found out you guys developed Project Highrise, one of the most played games on my steam account! Cheers! :D

I like these post-mortems. Thank you.

Nice Video, I realized at the end of your presentation I met you at Pax West 2016 and played project Highrise. Bought the game after and loved it. It was a little odd to do a simulation game demo at pax, but loved the idea of scheduling a time to play that you did.

Great talk! Did watch it twice - once before and again after starting to work on a serious project - and I earned valuable things twice :)

Amazingly helpful talk. Love this!!

I think the #1 justification you can give for a differential pricing between PC and Mobile is the relative size of the install bases. Steam reportedly has 95 million MAU, while there are reportedly 728 million iphones in use today and 2.5 billion android phones. Yes, the game might cost 1/10 the price, but the size of the potential audience is much larger.

@absalomdraconis

Жыл бұрын

The size of the real audience won't be sufficiently larger to justify the price drop.

Amazing talk! very informative. Thank you very much! :)

for total beginners this really helpful insight

26:41 Hey! Great talk guys! Anyone have work for me? I'll be here!

@amadeusakreveusmusic3356

2 жыл бұрын

WTF!? What's wrong with u people? She's looking to develop a game with other people who'd like to do the same, hence she's turning heads 'cause everybody who can make a game can't necessarily make music and needs a composer. The sonorities of a game is so important, and to work with someone who shares the passion for making soundtracks for games and enjoys making games period is super awesome. The only music, literally, I listen to is video game OSTs, which is made by brilliantl people like this woman. I wish her the best.

Terrific talk, a lot to learn as an indie.

!Disclaimer - these are just my notes, that I want to keep under the video. I encourage You to watch it from start to end. I also might have missed some of the important information! Lessons Learned from this video: * avoid mentioning other games in your elevator pitch. * game media is a key - rock, paper, shotgun; pocket gamer; polygon; depends on your game * important youtubers * indie game stand is good for the early stages of the game, the community is nice * the steam community has too high expectations * have different selling points for different platforms * ads are communication, don't just say - "come and play!"

That composer hahaha it probably was so cringy.

@jgcooper

7 жыл бұрын

talk about shameless self promotion lol

@UltraBran

7 жыл бұрын

Felt nauseous at that part...

@Pixiez

7 жыл бұрын

Just wanted to write about this. My god this was so pathethic... she could have put a question at least... start your question by "I'm a composer bla bla". gizas...

@aFewBitsShort

7 жыл бұрын

And she couldn't even compose a question..

@Pixiez

7 жыл бұрын

Imagine how nice would it be to work with her!

About to release a VR game and this has some stuff i didnt know that i wish i did when i released my last mobile game. Cheers for this gdc

Awesome Seminar, a lot of great info ......Thanks

Very informative. Thank you!

Lots of great small points, but holy crap does their studio have great leadership. People who actually want to plan, are creative in using social media and smaller avenues, and who have connections.

I seem to keep looping back around and end up watching this talk about every 6 months. Which I'm okay with, good talk.

Almost 4 years later and I'm still working on my game, but it is a 100% solo endeavor. Thought about hiring an artist due to the amount of animations but I'm in no rush and I do enjoy it. Good talk but most of this has been covered in other talks I've watched.

@DaimonTrilogy

6 жыл бұрын

Anything to show me so far? We are doing a similar thing, and I know some good ways to get sustainable artists for your work ;)

@Little1Cave

6 жыл бұрын

What kind of artists? I actually would love to help out with environment/character/prop concept designs if you’re still looking for people. Lol

@QueenElizabeth1sth

3 жыл бұрын

So? Where are you after 2-3 years? Any success?

@LtVax27

3 жыл бұрын

@@QueenElizabeth1sth Thought you were a fake EA channel then I saw the 8 subs and realized it's real. Was doing alright until the world went sideways.

@QueenElizabeth1sth

3 жыл бұрын

@@LtVax27 personally I have no idea who are those 8 people. I wish you luck and durability to survive everything, that 2020 has already brought to us)

16 minutes in.. great talk so far

When I was developing I used SWAG and didn't even know it. When my boss asked how long something would take, I made a guess, doubled it and that's what I told my boss. I was right most of the time... No idea why that worked...

Thank you, this was really good

I dont usually rate videos, but this one was fantastic.

Good content. Thanks for sharing. Germans love simulation games, as far as I can tell - this type of game has quite a history in our country. So you did really well with your decision targeting german players with i18n.

thanks man. great talk

What a journey you have to take to become a game dev. Great talk

Awesome, we will share it on our social media if you won't mind!

Concise and informative ;)!

Really helpful talk.

There was just one problem with 1849. It was way too simplified, to the point where I bought the game, loaded it up, played 1.8 hours of freeplay, saw everything the game had to show me, then refunded it because I couldn't see any replay value in it. The first rule of making a game is that a half-decent player shouldn't be able to blaze through it within the refund period.

@RudolfJvVuuren

4 жыл бұрын

Good point, thx.

@puntalic

2 жыл бұрын

Or atleast have an amazing time doing it.

Not until the end... Project Highrise that I was playing!? Wow! To me, those are really great (and seem the sales are good too). Congratulations!

Can't believe there's a game that features my hometown of Placerville. Purchased.

As someone who is developing a game totally unfunded, this is helpful, thanks! I'm convinced keeping the actual game secret until it's really ready to show is the best way to go about it, so I'm sadly stuck working with no one to talk to, or about my game with. @_@ I thinks channel may be one of my new best friends!

@randinonsense7360

5 жыл бұрын

I wish it was simple for me. I had to become a care giver I stopped making music and didn't even get to start the basic. Anyone I know wouldn't do this so 😔

@phee3D

Жыл бұрын

How'd it go? Did your opinion about keeping your game a secret change?

@ThrottleKitty

Жыл бұрын

@@phee3D I ended up leaving the game development field despite making a fair amount of progress on the game, as i was no longer financially able to handle it.

I'm a game music composer, but I intend to learn more about the "game world" in general. Keep it up, everyone!

@heartattackbeatz

Жыл бұрын

👏👏👏

26:40 Seriously?

@ThePreyBrigade

5 жыл бұрын

Jim Giant IKR

@AlexVoxel

5 жыл бұрын

Pretty weird

@theguardian8317

5 жыл бұрын

Nerds reaching out

@sleepingdogpro

5 жыл бұрын

I don't know why this happens, but I've encountered it in the film world too, and it's only composers. No one else is ever pushy like that. Just composers. No idea why.

@Megalomaniakaal

4 жыл бұрын

@@sleepingdogpro Desperation.

Is the miner rotoscoped from that guy in princess mononoke or are they only vaguely similar?

Your 12 months is my eternity

What's really cool is that their next game Project Highrise appears to have been a decent sized hit!

What are some ways to get featured on mobile? Besides the good quality of the game, is it just luck? Can developers do anything to get one's game featured on appstore?

ty, great video.

Congratulations on your successful #1!

Simple question, I know nobody wants to share. Was it worth it? Should you have kept your day job and work part-time? Did your profit exceed your old job salary?

Great talk! :)

You could add games they are talking about, their studios too, into description.

Great point about not going to investors if you can help it. It's likely you'll build the game they want - it's investment not cookie cutter clones we're looking for on our own Project Ardent.

i love this guy.

Indie Game Stand is gone, kaput, finito! Does anyone know if there are any good alternatives to Indie Game Stand for beta/greenlight distribution?

I fookin' love Tigsource!

@15:25 Is there anyone here that can e-mail this part to Microsoft?!?! They need to hear this so badly....

Of course this game sells in Germany, 1849 looks really similar to Anno 1404, which is a popular game made there.

I don't get the reddit "not now" response. What was happening??

@BlueBoy0

7 жыл бұрын

Exactly.

@Hoijof

6 жыл бұрын

Not now.

@TheDJLiquify

6 жыл бұрын

I also thought this was poorly communicated. It sounds like they tried to plug their game in a general subreddit and a mod kept deleting their stuff and was too busy to tell them why. My best guess is the speaker honestly doesn't understand how reddit works and didn't want to go deeper.

@OwenPrescott

5 жыл бұрын

@@TheDJLiquify How does "reddit work", genuine question because I also get shutdown for sharing (promoting) my work on Reddit. XD

@rebbiejoanthony5362

5 жыл бұрын

In most subreddits, self-promotion posts get deleted instantly, to maintain the quality and trust of the subreddit. The users do not want to be sold to. So check the rules before posting.

Oh the project highrise devs. I wrote a college paper my senior year of college on how that game taught its users how to play it.

*Your first browser game*

Nice Talk

God bless. The technical part of programming is so taxing

Love the composer plugging herself in the Q&A wtf hahaha

Totally superb video ! Amazingly brilliant info's .. Thanks :)

Wow. Those guys are the Project highrise guys?? That's cool. Had no idea they made it.

How much people were working on the game?

@jennyada1429

7 жыл бұрын

Email him and let us know :p

@Weltenbruch

7 жыл бұрын

I mailed him :D Two programmers and additionally two artists - 4 people :3

@kamranbigdely

7 жыл бұрын

Steam shows 140 reviews for this game. I 'assume' 1 in 10 puts their review on the steam. That means 1400 people bought his game on steam. The game's price is about $ 17. This means the game made 140*10*17 = $ 23,800 on Steam so far (after about 3 years). On Android, there are 636 review on their game and the game costs $ 6.5 that means the android game has made 636*10* $6.5 = $ 41,340 The same formula for app store gives us 80*10*5= $4000. So the rough estimate is that they made $23,800 + $41,340+ $4000 = 69,140 $ which is unbelievably low! Even if 1 in 100 leaves a review then it means they made $690,140 in 3 years. Start considering the cost of renting in San Francisco and other costs and also consider that 4 people made this game then it seems that the game was a failure financially. Where am I wrong?

@Weltenbruch

7 жыл бұрын

Why don't you look at steam spy for data?

@kamranbigdely

7 жыл бұрын

Wow...from steam spy, I can say my initial assumption about percentage of players who leave a review was totally wrong. I assumed 1 in 10 leaves a review but from steam spy it seems roughly that one in 150 leaves a review!

That composer, I hope nobody talked to her after that.

@randomrandom450

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, wtf

@ChapterMasterADO

4 жыл бұрын

I did! I was there! She was actually really hot

@blackfrogstudios6670

4 жыл бұрын

The Brotherhood uhhhhh....k

@Valvex_

4 жыл бұрын

@@ChapterMasterADO What has her looks to do with the way she acts?

@andrewtate8007

4 жыл бұрын

@@Valvex_ hot girls are used to getting things for granted

To add here. 5:27 if you are solo developer. Stop building your own game engine. It will take more time than what your savings can afford to till.

@pajeetsingh

3 жыл бұрын

@MXSKED ACE Not everyone can do everything. Few can. Whether you want to make and bake your own cake or buy pre-made cake. Nothing stupid about either way. But when you make your own cake you learn a skill. Few people value skills.

Thanks for putting this up. Learned a lot. Hope I can project it to my own process.

Hey! I live in Stockton!

People in germany love these type of simulations, look at settlers and anno

I've never heard anyone explain Reddit better in my life.

@k0nidias

4 жыл бұрын

Post about your game on one subreddit, get tons of likes and interest and people complimenting your game... Post about your game on another subreddit and get people telling you to screw off and advertise elsewhere. What amazes me is when indie game subreddits ban people from advertising their game... like if any place should understand the struggle indie developers face in getting their game out there, it should be indie game subreddits.

Interesting video :)

The SWAG bit reminds me of game dev tycoon.

What was he trying to say with the “not now” thing

Great

excellent video. But wasn't Fallout Shelter on Mobile first than PC?

@angelsegarra1908

7 жыл бұрын

Yeah, but it was a 'Hey, you like the Fallout series?' Here's a mobile game for an on the go fix. It initially wasn't as good as it is now. The wasteland quests are the best addition, IMO at least. Since it wasn't that great in the beginning, why would someone waste time playing it in PC or console when that meant not playing Fallout 4 (New Vegas for me)? Once it got good, it only made to offer it on Windows as an App. You have to keep in mind now Touch Screen laptops and desktop monitors are common and it is much easier to port from Mobile to PC because you don't have to take away features, so why not port when you can and have another revenue stream.

you say getting that extra 40% market exposure on mobile is the difference between making a second game and not, but isn't there a significant cost to porting games including not just code but assets too? I assume then the margin is there but...

at 25:03 is when I 100% knew to trust these guys cause I already had project highrise and I love it!

It's amazing to me how when you pick some video about game development off your KZread suggestions, and the developer says "hey this is the game we made," it is somehow REALLY REALLY EXCITING to realise you have totally bought and played that game. It doesn't really matter if you liked it (according to Steam, I played it for 51 minutes, which suggests I was not THAT big a fan). Or even if you remember it; I mean come on, I buy upwards of a hundred games a year, I can't remember all of them. What matters is that you are in some way CONNECTED to this person on the stage, so their entire talk is in turn connected to you and becomes more relevant for no rational reason at all. Kind of the way I immediately like this developer more because he's Italian. Does that really matter? No. But my dad's Italian, so "I'm like your dad" matters for some reason.

lol at the composer rudely plugging herself during your conference!!! :( What a world. It's all about having a good developing crew already in place. I haven't played 1849 yet because I'm working hard to produce my own game, but I'm sure my path will not be the same. You did give out some very helpful advice and thanks for that.

How to make and publish a game in a year: have connections and pay people to do the legal shit

The 1849 game isn't compatible with Android 8.0 for some reason.

so no one will talk about that composer ad

Why not 360p?

How many people is “we” . Keeps referencing this but without context it’s hard to imagine the amount of money saved and how much work it took

looking back it made me feel hopeful, but my game tanked. :(

Is TIGForums still useful?