I came home from the first week of my desk job sat alone in my office and I cried that cubicle was not my dream my dream was making indie games even worse three years had passed since I started a side project it was this game called pinstripe and I'd worked on it completely solo and I felt like I had made zero progress making games Solo felt like a pipe dream was it or was making profitable Indie Games actually possible I've heard doctors say it's easy to care for loved ones but not so easy to care
for ourselves and I think the same is true for making Indie Games solo you're the only one making decisions and so you're more likely going to make careless decisions that consistently push the game from being complete it's like a never-ending treadmill one day you're happy with your game and the next day you make dumb decisions that push the deadline by several months and this all adds up very fast when I was working on pinstripe I changed the story about three different times initially the game was about some guy in a snowy hotel with his wife
then one year later I felt the need to change the name to project Dixie I have no idea why I did that and I completely changed the character design to a boy looking for his mom and then I scrapped that several months later and made it a story about a minister in Hell looking for his daughter I also distinctly remember focusing on the logo for weeks I changed it about four different times and the art style for the game was a never-ending mix of changes the mechanics and the levels and the music this is one
of like six or seven songs that I wrote that I didn't even use it was honestly a nightmare nobody was there to stop me from sabotaging my own project and by the way I did want to let you know that I have a free 3D course Below on how you can make a 3D game very quickly it's totally free just click the link below if you want to make a 2d game you can download my free 2D game kit which I use to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days and if you're more into
the marketing side of things there's a webinar Below on how to secure six figures in funding with just a demo all three of these are totally free I want to see you guys succeed so it's my gift to you on top of this self-induced psychological warfare there are about 20 different jobs that I had to master to create my own game solo I was the c-sharp coder the Photoshop 2D artist or maybe in your case a 3D modeler a musician a sound designer a level designer a Storyteller a QA department head a beta tester marketing
executive a social media manager a personal assistant an accountant this is a massive workload maybe you're a student or a full-time employee a boyfriend girl girlfriend or a husband or a wife or a parent whoever you are finding time to make games while you're those things feels impossible and for me I had to wake up really early before work to work on a pinstripe I had to work on it through my lunch break and then also in the evenings all of this is a recipe for Burnout it's a recipe for half made projects tossed in
the trash and that's what ninety percent of solar developers are going to do three years after forcing myself to power through this ever-changing house of cards I excitedly submitted a patchwork demo of pinstripe to igf one of the top indie game festivals The Hope was that despite the game making zero dollars that I'd be accepted into a festival and then I'd know I was on the right path a few months passed and I consistently checked my email waiting for that acceptance letter and then it hit an email from igf I looked over my shoulder for
my boss I opened up my email and my heart sank not only did my game get rejected the gameplay was just absolutely frustrating even worse I received a negative performance review from my boss so I went home I sat in the kitchen in the dark and honestly I just screamed into a pillow see there's a dozen reasons why looking back I kind of Built My Own Prison with this solo project it didn't have to be this way and it doesn't have to be that way for you either firstly I know that I just cared way
too much about this game it was my identity to avoid this I eventually put together a milestone document and I tried my best to stick to it I even printed out the Milestone checklist put it on my refrigerator and I asked an accountability partner which was my wife to co-sign it with me and you could do the same with a friend or family member I mean it sucks having a family member promise to breathe down your neck if you don't stick to your plan but it sucks way less than constantly pushing your game's deadline due
to unnecessary changes secondly because I cared too much about this game and made it all about me I did everything the code the art the music the story I was a solo developer after all I was even in a Unity documentary during the production and I basically just painted myself into a corner as a solo developer just because you make a game solo doesn't mean you have to do it all by yourself let me say that again just because you make a game solo doesn't mean you do it all by yourself instead it's totally fine
to use the unity asset store or Turbo squid or you can even hire contract work from Fiverr or if you need music use epidemic sound or pond5 or noun project if you want to use icons for your UI so maybe you suck at code use the unity asset store to purchase entire templates like the FPS templates or procedural dungeon generators what about 2D or 3D art is that not your thing there's plenty of cheap assets at craftpix.net or perhaps you just suck at marketing your game but maybe you want to secure 10 000 wish list
before you launch your game and by the way I do recommend that maybe send your demo off to a publisher and see if they want to partner with you to build some hype around the launch and get those wish lists the developer who tries to reinvent everything by themselves is going to be outsmarted and outpaced by the developer who utilizes assets after being humbled by igf I considered submitting pinstripe to smaller festivals I found a festival called the whippering cup I was accepted and for some reason I just felt the urge to use my savings
to fly out to San Francisco to be a part of this tiny Festival I mean I honestly hated this kind of stuff and I really still do but I just felt like I should go for some reason at the festival I met Nathaniel Weiss he's the creator of songbringer he told me about indie game funding and crowdfunding immediately after arriving home he helped me build up the confidence to create my first Kickstarter campaign in the basement of my desk job during my lunch break I launched my campaign and within the first hour I had raised
over seven thousand dollars after 24 hours twenty eight thousand dollars and after 30 days one hundred thousand dollars and because of that I was able to go full time as a solo developer because of the campaign's exposure I was able to partner with the publisher armor games and they bore a lot of the marketing burden and then I built my second game with a publisher called Serenity Forge and then I signed a deal with Apple arcade and I made a game for PewDiePie and I built this thriving YouTube channel and I'm currently managing a team
of Developers for my third game which is a first person shooter so yes it's totally possible to make a game solo and it doesn't have to suck like it did for me instead I beg you to not take yourself so seriously to stick to a schedule or a milestone checklist and to not feel guilty about using assets to speed up the process ultimately with the right demo in the pitch deck you can secure six figures in funding from Publishers investors or do a Kickstarter campaign and it's going to help you go full time and finish
your game strong as a solo developer okay so I hope this video was helpful to you and if you want to see more indie game development videos like this be sure to leave a like subscribe and hit that notification Bell and just remember about that 2D game kit below there's also a 3D course and also a webinar on how to secure six figures in funding before you even finish your game all three of these are totally free click below and check them out I'll talk to you later cheers
