The only healthy competition (at least that's true for myself), is a competition against yourself. If I've made something better than yesterday, if I pushed my own limits, if I didn't quit - I already won. This way of thinking really helps me to carry on.
You're probably using inspiration or "Feeling it" to get things done which is how you start a game, the rest is removing distractions and setting a time to sit down and and working on it even though you're not feeling it. Oh and any extras or add-ons get written down for the sequel, don't let scope creep get you, it brings the feeling of inspiration again, but it's a trap that will get you even further from finishing.
@@oldsoul3539 it's definitely the scope of the game that gets me every single time. Every project starts simple but it becomes an abomination. This new one I'm working on right now seems to be going well. Scope is just right and achievable.
Angry Birds is a great example. It looks like instant success, easy money! But it was Rovio's 52nd game. Have you ever heard of their 51 previous games ? Probably not.
Hello! I don’t normally comment AND I’m using my game page because I had to comment asap. I just wanted to comment on this video to say that you are absolutely correct. The hardest part for our studio and myself included was to just finish the product. I could remember working on S.O.N (my first ever title completed in February 2019 and put on the PlayStation Store in March 2019) that NO MATTER WHAT.. I was going to get the game done. It all comes down to how bad do you want it? How bad do you want to publish your game? As cliche as it sounds. I could also remember in 2018 working all year long just hoping things would work.. then boom. November 2018 Unreal Engine informed us we were winners of the Unreal Dev Grant. It was a life changing moment and a gratifying moment. I don’t wanna spill the dev story BUT I wanted to take the time to comment and how much I do love your channel. I want to also say to everyone.. keep going. Keep pushing. Keep deving. The pure experience from making a game is so much more valuable than you can ever imagine. As for you, keep inspiring and keep paving the way! - Jordan
This is spot on. I'm working on my first solo-dev commercial game right now as a full time job. I looked at a lot of similar tier games and their incomes and my first thoughts were "If it pulls in 80k in its lifetime I'll be happy", then "I'd be happy with just 30k", then "12k, just 12k and I'd feel content", then "if it covered the cost to make then I'd be happy". Now I've reached what I think is the right mindset "I don't care if it makes money. I just want to make a good game, have it played by many, and increase my 'street cred'". I'll work for my rep then let my rep work for me. After it sells as much as it'll sell, I'll just give it away for free after that.
Great vid Tim, I heard a scary statistic once about game devs (i really have no data to back it up I think it was said in a GDC talk) "90% of game devs don't ever release a commercial game, and only 10% of those commerical games make more than 1000$"
Luck and being in the right place in the right time... I didn't released my game yet, but I made 2 posts on reddit with almost a month apart, because me first post was shadow banned. The first one (about creating a simple game instead of an MMO that I accutually was working on ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uMHVY6EXDfM.html) was getting a lot of up votes, in no time it got close to 300 up votes, people were loving the game and everything, it was the best moments ever with this game. After a while I made another post... I got 6 upvotes, including my own. Then I realized that timing and luck actually do play a big row!
Hey Tim! Or should I call you Jim ;P Been watching your videos and following you for a long time. You have helped encourage me, as well as so many others, to finish and publish my first game. It went live on itch last night(10/28/19). I just wanted to thank you for creating such informative and informational content. It's hard work, and it's paying off. This was one of my favorite vids. Keep on creating 👍
SURVIVAL BIOS! Daymn you did a great job teaching something I could create a shematic of: How many games I started failed and how many survived. And then compare why they failed and why they suceeded.
Hi Tim! Thank you for sharing man, me and a couple of friends have just started our own company. Gotta tell you I'm very excited and afraid! But I have been watching your video's for a while now, I just want to say thanks for the honesty about everything. You enable us to get a more accurate view of the industry. I appreciate that!
Hey Tim, I just started in game development. I’ve been taking the unity game dev course. And I just want you to know that your videos feel more real than any other game dev channel outlets I’ve ever found and I really appreciate your honesty. I think when I get to the point where I want to make my own game your videos will keep me going. So thanks in advance
Thanks Tim. I had a great launch but I've put my head down to fix bugs players report and as a result of less marketing and presence my sales have slumped and I was feeling pretty bad about it. This was a good reminder that I've actually done the thing and have a great and supportive community and a game for sale on Steam! This was exactly the motivation I needed to take that all in to account and press forward with my next big content release. Thanks man, I needed this.
Survivorship bias I have heard about in a GDC talk as well and as you pointe out correctly it applies to much more things like social media. Good video about giving some better insights on how you can better gauge your progress and accoplishments compared to others. As you mostly only see the successfull people and companies talk it diminishes your accomplishments, but also exaggerates their success. I would also agree that some successes are built on pure luck combined with the right mindset and capabilities.
Great advice. Finishing a game really is the hardest part, especially if it's your first project. But in my experience(I've already launched a medium-sized game) your future projects will be so much easier because then you can compare them with your last game instead of comparing them with other peoples successes.
Thats what ive been contemplating lately. That you really have no comparison until you release the first game. I do feel like i might be just wasting my precious time and it can flop in the long run. Still there is also the effect of investment, so you just dont wanna go back after a year and half of development.
@@xic777 Agree 100 percent, I actually don't have an issue with quitting, as I have stuck to it every day and keep going. I just wanted to say these feelings are there, so I just push trough as it must be part of the process. The uncertainty is hard to swallow, but the goal is clear. The game is quite far, so it doesn't make sense to start small now, I believe next year it will come out. The small scope is something I do recommend to everybody, but the problem is that you feel that the game is then not as good as it could be. But I do see the caveat of not ever finishing it, so I did limit the scope already.
@@Shadefrank I think consistency is very important, no matter how big your game is. The urge to quit my project was the strongest when I tried coming back to it after not having worked on it for 2+ weeks. And also everytime when new game-ideas flooded my head.
@@achetillergames6911 That's why the first thing I do when I turn on the computer is open Unity, so there is no longer period without working on it. Even on days when I don't feel like it at least 5 minutes of work keeps the habit reinforced.
Thank you Tim I love your insights so much, your channel is like beacon that guides me through this game development madness.. I started this 1.5 years ago and much because of your "mental guidance" managed to step over a lot (really a lot) of the pitfalls along the way.. Thanks to that Ive managed to publish a couple of small games on Facebooks Instant Games and one "real" full length game to the mobile stores and these days Im about to finish my second "real" game for mobile.. Ive made some cash from all of these (still far away from being profitable considering the amount of hours I spent on this... but still makes me feel good) And much of this is because of watching your videos.. I cant really thank you enough.. Love your work, love that you came back (in a even more better version of yourself) after a break.. please keep it coming you literally help thousands of people :)
Thanks Tim! Having launched a small game before and having high expectations for it (whether consciously or not) is truly a recipe for burnout and depression. It helps to take a day at a time, and for larger projects, planning is king!
I think another way of thinking about this analogy *if you are* looking at successful people you shouldn't necessarily focus on copying what they did (The bullets on the plane) but on what they didn't do (Where the bullets didn't hit)
That's very true. I think the biggest internal struggles I've had is always comparing my game to undertale, to braid, to hyper light drifter rather than just focusing on what I can do and what I can achieve. Not to say that having ambitions is a bad thing but its definitely an unnecessary burden for the mind for something that should ultimately start as a hobby with low to no expectations outside of finishing. Thanks for the great, thought provoking, content.
Being an indie dev is extra hard since you have to find a way to cover the general life cost for the time you worked on it as well anything spent on the business like ads, promotions or hardware and such. While I'm happy I finally have my game on steam, can't say it feels like a success yet, it's been 4 months but sales are still in the low 2 digits even though people seems to like it so far, I feel like being successful is becoming increasingly harder very quickly, while stressful and difficult it's also super fun creating ideas and sharing them with people, just wish there was a way for people who has put effort to get noticed better somehow, hence why I've also started doing reviews but that's also tricky xD Don't give up yet tough!
Great vid man! Survivor Bias applies to SO many things. Successful RU-vid channels, Athletes, Actors, Musicians etc. For every success there are thousands upon thousands of 'failures'. Odds are that we aren't going to be a big success at anything we try but we need to keep trying! You have a released game and successful RU-vid channel, that's some rarefied air! I currently have about 4 game projects at about 60% but I have no clue where to take them so there are 4 more unfinished game projects out there :).
Hey Tim! I've been watching your videos for a while now and I must say that each and every one of them is just great, but this one is definitely one of my favorites :) You're talking about stuff no one talks about, focus on details, on what's truly worth pointing out. You're perspective of the world is inspiring, the way you challenge reality, analyze the details of different scenarios and conclude those intelligent conclusions is just beautiful! Those kind of videos change mindset and it's really help me keep going on my game dev journey. Simply awesome content!!! You rock! Thank you so much!
Learning failures from failed people is *damn near impossible.* I can't seem to find anyone willing to speak about their fatal mistakes, no articles, no one in forums, in person, no one. I can't even find them. So now what happens? I don't want to be doomed to fail.
It is my first video to watch from 'Game Dev Underground', it is wonderful and I will try watching all the videos that I have missed, keep it on man :)
This video (along with a few more of yours) needs to be stapled to the forehead of every aspiring game developer, so that when they are old enough they will see it, pull it off, watch it, and learn...
i released my first game a month ago and lemme tell you. unsuccessful as it gets. but i was incredibly happy that i was able to do it and have it in the books, and for me, that was a success.
It's always surprising to hear something that should actually be obvious to us all but usually isn't. I've finished and released ONE game out of probably 2 dozen proper projects. It wasn't commercially successful so I began making games for other people and that's paying a lot more. It doesn't leave me a lot of time to make my own though but I can't justify working on my own stuff at the expense of things that make me money. I definitely haven't given up though! I'm too stubborn for that.
Developers really need to share both their successes and their failures with the developer community otherwise, we need to go back to apprenticeships since then we can learn how to not make the mistakes our mentor made and avoid other mistakes they may have been taught how to not make.
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain this to people. It's even more disheartening than this video suggests: whenever you hear a lesson from a "winner", that "winner" will ALWAYS attribute their success to their brilliant insights, but what's far more likely is that 100 people/companies each had a reasonably good approach, and 1 of them - mostly thanks to dumb luck and coincidence rather than brilliance or "special correctness" - worked out successfully. Being aware of this phenomenon is important to how to understand & evaluate basically everything that happens in life, not just to gave dev and business success/failure. When some psychic boasts of their amazing successes, when some hedge fund boasts of how they've beaten the market over the last 8 years, when someone tells you that cats don't die when they fall out of high rise buildings (the classic example of this), when you hear career advice from anyone successful in their profession, when people allow their success to lead them to believing their own BS of their superiority/genius/infalliblity/whatever, when big companies fancy they're too big to fail, when conservatives talk about "American Exceptionalism", when scientists warn about control groups and the placebo effect, on and on and on... this effect should be remembered. HOWEVER, the only one consequence of this phenomenon is to beware the "success stories" effect. The consequence is you need to listen to all advice and examples, and evaluate it all on its merits rather than solely on the apparent "credibility" of its successes or failures. The consequence is that are no shortcuts or magic bullets: you have to listen to, and think through, everything, evaluating it all the best you can, and then do what you think is best - and then, come success or failure, never discard the possible role of luck and happenstance.
We call them outliers or unicorns. Those games that take off and become phenomenal hits. You should always try to gauge your indie game against the mediocre games to get a better understanding of how your game is likely to perform. It sets expectations more realistically (and also looks much more professional if you approach a publisher with that kind of information, rather than ill be bigger than minecraft....)
As always great video Tim. I've been a gamedev for 7 years now and will say you could not of said it better. 👍Hey, not sure if you remember D-Day Gunner? It recently hit over 50k downloads. Not a whole lot but decent. Anyway it's my game and yet even I don't have the answer to why. It could be both some luck and survival. I can say it was released 6 years ago and only recently started hitting pretty good. I have that game to thank because no matter what I release now on Google Play it gets downloads. I really need to improve my damn monetization strategies. We know that Google Play is mostly a freemium market unlike Steam so monetization is critical on Google Play. If I ever get the time I will start doing a few videos myself. I have a wealth of info regarding my experience i can share with other devs. I think it will really help others but it's just finding the time.
Great and very interesting as always Tim. But even if luck and timing really can help, I think what’s more important than anything is hard consistent work. I think most games fail due to people not understanding that you need to spend countless hours on marketing, networking and so on. Thanks, see ya man :)
Hey Tim! I totally agree that survival bias is really governing a lot of our decisions and our judgement and even in defining success. But also there are a ton of other statistical biases emerge when you want to mitigate survival bias. The biggest one is that results from taking average of all games that succeeded and failed and putting them together. This is another big bias as it can literally count every shitty hobbyist game or games done with zero-worth of success. I think personally that we would rather benefit more from removing outliers that are extremely successful and all those that never even had the hope of success. Only then the average, mean, and median would be very reflective of reality and what should be done, and a ton of practical lessons and rationale to set proper expectations. The crude average is reflection of the huge lack of quality of general public of game developers, which isn't that useful for any serious developer. Because he/she is away from that average by the mere definition of being serious. That's my take on this, love your content always useful.
Thank you Tim. Quite valuable information and actually a distilled version of what lecturers teaches in MBA business management classes. Success comes with hard work. On the other hand to be very successful you also need to be lucky in addition to the hard work. Everyone talks about Steve Jobs and his success. However, thousands of other entrepreneurs gone bankrupt in the same period, although they used the similar strategies.
Totally agree with your point! Actually i've just recieved a little piece of motivation for my own project, so thanx you again :) + At this point i think we need some kind of "Game Dev Failures" channel where people could share their stories about how exactly everything went wrong.
I'm aware of the survivor bias. It's unclear to me what to do with it, though. One option, as you mentioned, is to look at stats. And the stats say that this is such a ridiculous winner-take-all market, that no reasonable person will participate in it with a hope to make any money. So unless you like to play lottery or you have a solid argument for why you are absolutely exceptional, you should either quit or plan to do it as a hobby for the rest of your career. That's my takeaway. Am I wrong?
I just want to be able to make a game right now. It's stressful seeing so much success from people that are either way older than you or way younger than you and you can't even get Unity to move a ball across a screen. T_T
you have really put this into the perspective, and spilled the beans the right way, i didnt really get survivor ship bias before, but you have made it very clear, down to the A, B and C. Thank you! also, do you have a lazer in your room? :O
I'm never going to quit on a game again. I started my MMO years ago and quit because I couldn't find anyone to help me out with the project (locally or online) so I quit because I thought it would take too long. So years went by and I eventually go back into game development. And what I learned was that if I would have stuck with it, I would have learned so much and eventually found a way to put everything together. So, what I learned is that, it's not about how much time it takes to do something, it's about finishing.
@@vliedtke True, I know I can't do everything I want to do for my game however, I just want to get it to the point where I can get it up and running and then hire more people to help finish the project.
So, apart from 'luck' and not quitting, what can one do to improve the odds of getting to that 5%? First that comes to my mind is making a game that is actually fun to play. What else?
Don't quit. Reduce your risks. Fail faster and iterate more. Get lots of feedback. Pay attention to how people react to your game, iterate on that too. Release a lot of games. Keep at it. No seriously, keep at it. The more you do the more you learn. There's no set list. And anyone that tells you they have one is lying. You just have to keep at it.
@@tim-ruswick And keep watching Tim's videos. Only my computer knows how many times your videos have pulled me out of the gutter on those low days! :) Thank you!
You're awesome, would love to have a beer with you. Not that I drink but man it would be cool to chill and discuss things. Like metafictional stuff merged with marketing. Because I did that (and never mind what happened, too crazy. I love it tho!
Hey man! I just want to thank you for your amazing informative videos! Videos like this make me go forward day by day with my game. I am an aspiring game dev and I really want to try and put 120% into this, but sometimes you can't. That is when these kind of videos and other videos from game devs keep me motivated and with my head held high. Thanks and take care!
Hi Tim. You did a video where you eloquently differentiated between marketing and exposure. I'd really appreciate any advice you have about building exposure. I'm a long way off the final game and marketing but I'd like generate exposure to create a community for feedback. Thanks
This number is subject to survivorship bias too. 30,000 games survived long enough to be put on steam. There are a shit ton of games that never made it that far. And steam is only 1 of many platforms. I can't prove it but I am telling you there are millions of games on people's project graveyards.
I need your Help. I realize that this video is 7 months old But currently i really want to become a game developer. I have programming knowledge And i have a game idea that i think i can out it into an actual game.. Im currently still learning unity and alot of stuff. I haven't actually done anything so can anyone here please tell what exactly are these hard parts while finishing a game and why do most people quit? I've been thinking about my game idea for a month now. and im always watching a RU-vid video on how i can implement most of these stuff..please please tell me where is tha hard part so that i can adapt to those and pull myself out of such a situation
pls share the dryer model lul edit: could you please call your mom and ask for the model if you dont know it by heart. (you should, if its the best dryer ever made!)
Usually enjoy your videos Tim, but it's very dangerous to chalk everything up to luck and simply say, "I didn't get lucky, my games were just as good". You will stunt your own growth and remove yourself from the harsh truths of why your games didn't find success. The failures are all around us, we seem them everywhere, most games we get hyped for fail: Failed kickstarters, vaporware you see a short clip of and then disappear. Hell, in this day and age, most financially "successful" games that release are RIDDLED with failures. Why do most games fail? Poor planning, poor execution, internal politics, too large a scope, a core plan that wasn't fun to begin with, a lack of polish in core areas, etc. all contribute to these failures. There are tangible and real reasons the vast majority of all games fail. Luck, unless you're hit by a meteor, or involved in a sudden accident, has NOTHING to do with failure. Everyone needs to watch this talk from the creator of Antichamber: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wOlcB-JxkFw.html "Luck is a multiplier on your efforts, I don't think it should be the thing that makes or breaks your success."
Luck has nothing to do with failure. Failure is the default. It however has a lot to do with runaway success. I agree with your definition of luck being a multiplier on your efforts ...the more work you do the luckier you can get. I don't mean that you should sit in your house and launch a game with no marketing and hope luck saves you. I mean that luck is the difference between an infiniminer and a Minecraft. Both great games. Both have developers that work their ass off...one got lucky...and by lucky...I mean working in one direction so long that they were exposed to opportunities and situations that could create a perfect storm of success. Success stories like Minecraft are not replicatable. That makes them luck. But again...the lesson here is not to sit around and get lucky. The lesson is that almost every single game YOUVE EVER HEARD ABOUT got lucky in some way...because they survived. And what you see is subject to survivorship bias. So the lesson here is to learn from the dudes that didn't make it. Hope that helps! P.s. antichamber talk is one of my all time favs.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, I'm glad you brought up minecraft and infiniminer and it reminds me of another great quote from another consistently successful creator, "good artists copy, great artists steal". (hey this might be a good theme for one of your videos and i'd be more than happy if you "stole" this idea ) There are thousands of somewhat successful finished games that weren't "Lucky enough" to be successful. We can see how they function, we can play them and get a feeling for where they are lacking. We are "lucky" in the sense that we have all of these finished products to play and come up with an idea of what was missing in these games. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, we can expand strategically on what exists already. This means success isn't so much left to the winds of luck, it's how you can see an opportunity of what exists and how you can modify it to be better. To have better foresight than others. Look at angry birds and castle siege. World of Warcraft and Everquest. League of Legends and Dota. The absolute most successful games in history were not random chance, they were calculated reinventions of prior games, they brought the polish to key areas and universal appeal to tried and true formulas. There's a certain "je ne sais pas" that these studios bring to the equation that can be considered luck, but it really isn't. It's about knowing the devil is in the details and that your chances for success are far better if you start with a working formulae and focus on the details. As a solo creator we often get destroyed because of this, burned out before we get to focus on the important late stage make or break bits that teams of people can handle far better. I don't think minecraft was successful because Notch got lucky in the sense that he combined 2 random genres together, I think he artfully "stole" from infiniminer and survival games. 2 genres that saw potential, but never struck that magical "Chord" that really resonated with players. Anyhow sorry to ramble. Been a long time viewer and your vids help pump me up to keep workin on the grind. Keep up the good work, Tim.
