He's absolutely right about RUclips channels like yours and his. I've culled a lot of channels over the past year and now I almost exclusively only watch stuff relating to game dev, a bit of health/fitness, and a bit of language learning. But it's through these videos that when I do want to take a RUclips break, I'm always watching something that gets me in a certain mindset and spurs me on with my own endeavors. I just participated in my first game jam this past week and I'm immensely proud of what I was able to achieve and it's thanks to videos like yours that keep me going.
I've been subbed to both of you. I saw Pete. On this channel... I was so excited to see this video. You both share wisdom and encouragement, as a hobby level dev, I appreciate both of you!
Wow that's over a thousand fold increase... 😏 The steam reviews have started coming in and... well there's a little of everything. I'm pretty sure you guys will manage 👍. John this would be a good followup on how to properly address post-launch feedback.
I've never been able to finish any of my games, but seeing this is so motivating :) congratz! I wish you the best, and may your game be as successful as it can be!
I like these kind of videos! The success and failure stories are extremely interesting. I always enjoy the realistic point of view this channel has about this subject!
Inspiring. I'm in the mid-game phase. What keeps me pushing is playing games I like and imagining I could do some things differently. Making a game I like to play helps keep me motivated. I also have a few game ideas for the future.
You will never be able to comprehend the struggles and accomplishments of Game Dev unless you’re actually in it. Congratulations to him and his team, they deserve whatever they get! It’s been 1 year for me as a Game Dev & 6 months on youtube. I’m so close to 1K Subscribers & All these gamedev RUclipsrs have helped me so much to stay motivated! I love everything about the journey…
Loving these pre-release interviews/check-ins! It's quite fascinating to see the perspective of someone in that "eye of the storm" as you put it in the last one
What a great response from him. I'm definitely in that "middle" section of my game, so hearing the way he navigated that is super helpful. awesome upload per usual
Aww thats so awesome! I always love hearing about indie devs having things go right. I can't imagine the feeling when that final release feels like after 4 years of development! I've spent 2ish on my project and already have that antsy feeling of like feeling in the dreadful middle. But he's totally right, surround yourself with positive and ambitious people. Keep your mind in the motivational and good stuff.
Can not hit the like button enough times for this video. Good, pratical, relevant knowledge being displayed for free like that... "Das good shit, brother. Das good shit!". A thing about emotional and motivational speech, is that it will always sound "edgy" for a majority of listeners, but there is a smaller part from every audience, who's really out of hope and for those peeps your "base" motivational speech will taste like a mother's meal after a rough day. That way, it's always worth saying it! Cheers, bro :)
I am a fan of both your Channels, Pixel Pete has really helped improve my pixelart. Also just picked up the Four Agreements as I find it hard to not hate my work during the process, I'm literally my worst critic.
6:00 That is a really good idea... When I look at content that angers me, I just feel crappy the rest of the day. But seeing this guy, watching Lost Relic, and other happy and nice fellas, it gets me goin'! That is a REALLY good idea! 11:55 I'm actually wheezing.
Great video! People really should have a life philosophy that is true to us and that makes us do things, be active. The power of Netflix is too strong if we don’t have inner fire.
9 months later the game has only 404 reviews, Mostly Positive rating. I don't know how many people actually bought the game, but with so few (relatively speaking) reviews, how representative could the sales be of that 70k Wishlist figure? Do Wishlist numbers actually mean anything?
@@keurh475 Same, I only use the wishlist so that I can reference it during sales to see what wishlisted games are on deep discounts, and when looking up game bundle contents to determined if a bundle is worth buying. I never use it for "Hey, this wishlisted game was just released, I better buy it!" Then again, I almost never buy games outside of bundles and deep discounts.
It's not completely unrealistic/unexpected, considering the wishlists convert to sales in average 19% in sone random article I found (that's what Valve said), meaning it would be around 14k sales, and then reviews to sales can be 1 in 20 to 50, and 14k/404 = 34. So, it all matches. It's jusr disappointing to see. 70k people is a whole lot of them...
What a cool guy! I do believe that mindset is everything because that is what gets you to sit down and work. "The four agreements" and "The war of art" are imo 2 great short books that are actually super helpful when it comes to facing game dev.
Mad respect for the Captain K'nuckles and Flapjack portraits in the background. The world wasn't ready for that show, but it was amazing. Congrats on your game!
Dwerve looks amazing. I got caught up watching the live stream on steam for a bit, but back to the grind. This gives me hope that I haven't made a huge mistake trying to make an RPG on my own.
Thanks for the video guys, very honest and inspirational, I love to see down to earth truthful videos, not only the "energetic, false positivity videos, to the point of lying to look better"
When he brought up apathy and depression I was able to relate a lot, and his insightfulness and philosophical “pep” (haha) really surprised me. I think I’ll try the motivation manifesto from now on. Funny thing is, I’ve been reading meditations lately and have gained lots of wisdom from it as well. Dwerve’s dev is very well-spoken and I wish him well as an indie game developer.
i know you wont keep this pace of releasing videos, but ive been searching for your videos and getting nothing new a lot lately and getting this many in a row feels nice
and now it sits at Mostly Positive overall and Mixed (86) recent, lol with most reviews negative, saying the game is boring and they refunded it. While most great indie games you can name now, launched with very little marketing and have grown overtime, because the game itself is just great
I wonder how many wishlists Paralives has, since its the most similar indie project I know of to what I want to make. I still find side projects helpful, as they give another outlet when you are stuck, as I got stuck on creating a good, robust system for building houses which would integrate with autonomy AI (much harder than expected), so having a less serious project 3rd party assets to dabble in until I figured out how to progress the cool project.
funny how all these indie devs are always mentally and emotionally unstable when they're about to release or just released because of having devoted a chunk of their life on what is essentially a lottery ticket, similar to Tom Salas from the Falconeer, that guy is a mental wreck but yet so philosophical. 🧠 BTW your outro music is the best
I better check out The Four Agreements, Stoicism and much more, since I'm almost always filled with negativity and I wanna change and be more positive since I am one of those who work on something and then nothing relatable from the past comes out and I get unmotivated, annoyed and can't work since I feel like I am not good enough or something else. So glad I found Lost Relic Games and this message from Pixel Pete which I also watch :)
Wow! Inspirational. Honestly, people often neglect the simple reality that quality is key. Dwerve has the polished characteristics and complexity of AAA titles. No doubt persistence, commitment, perseverance are critical to reaching one's goals, but what inspires the consumer is ultimately quality (which is reflected in customer reviews). It's like the elephant in the room and--to a great extent--the reason so many indies never make it.
Thanks for bringing this game to my attention very nice, I will wish list it! Do you have any general stats on conversion Google says 3-5%. So thats still a long way to go to pay for 4 years of dev especially when you take advertising costs, steam cut and taxes all into account - heyo!
Is that only Steam sales? Are you estimating the number? It sounds about right. 420 reviews on steam, at 60 sales per steam review on average. But then there is also Nintendo Switch. So maybe 30k sales x $20 = $600,000 which is like $400,000 for developers after marketing expenses and Steam's cut. They broke even I'd say. each making 200k for 4 years time.
Fun fact: you can hear an epic sample from "The Four Agreements" used in this uplifting dance track (which is how I ended up listening to the audiobook): ruclips.net/video/LZT7tv1qDqU/видео.html
Looks like it's time to vid "how to make bad start in the game, so people will get annoyed and bash the game with 1/4 of negative reviews" just because of BAD START of the game :)
Launched with 70000 wishlist but after a week it has only 282 reviews at 72%, steamspy says this did not go well. You guys say wishlists are important but I guess only in the slightest.
Shows you how meaningless wishlists are... By comparison my game had merely 1000 wishlists at launch and has completely demolished Dwerve sales/player count wise. Almost exactly the same release date, same price too. I didn't win any silly awards or get much of any press ahead of time either. Make it great, and they will come.
@@robinnico7564 Make it great, and they will come... Which is where this title failed, I think. The other thing I did was send keys to RUclipsrs I thought might consider trying it. Some picked up the game around launch which gave it a good boost. But Steam's algorithms are what really made the game succeed. Some titles just never "get going" if that makes sense. It is like a positive feedback loop.
I also love these case studies, extremely helpful, thank you friend. I do disagree with him though, to a degree, as he's very generic when he says news. Some news is good. Even if its bad. It's best to stay informed. There is also no use for most online arguments. But giving out your opinion on things is good sometimes. You don't want to end up a work drone that just works all the time and has no reflection of society, no critique, no deeper thoughts. While they don't help you in your immediate goal, they help you in life.
But do you believe that arguing with others online is worth it? Personally I’ve detached myself from that, and I understand that gaining insight from other people is valuable, but my one takeaway from what you said would be that you can have a reflection on society, critique, deep thoughts etc., but taking it online and adding mental strain first thing in the morning is a no, I’ll have to agree with him on that.
He's absolutely right about RUclips channels like yours and his. I've culled a lot of channels over the past year and now I almost exclusively only watch stuff relating to game dev, a bit of health/fitness, and a bit of language learning. But it's through these videos that when I do want to take a RUclips break, I'm always watching something that gets me in a certain mindset and spurs me on with my own endeavors. I just participated in my first game jam this past week and I'm immensely proud of what I was able to achieve and it's thanks to videos like yours that keep me going.
7:38 literally when Pete said focus his camera went out of focus
yeah lol crazy
@@PeterMilko oh, wow it's the real pixel pete. Goodluck on your game.
I love your videos
@@NesiAwesomeness thanks!🤞
80,000k wishlist! 🎬 *UPDATE: the conversions where bad 😔
Fresh potent wishlists! Hell yeah!
I've been subbed to both of you. I saw Pete. On this channel... I was so excited to see this video. You both share wisdom and encouragement, as a hobby level dev, I appreciate both of you!
@@rpgbuster Thanks!
Wow that's over a thousand fold increase... 😏
The steam reviews have started coming in and... well there's a little of everything. I'm pretty sure you guys will manage 👍. John this would be a good followup on how to properly address post-launch feedback.
I've never been able to finish any of my games, but seeing this is so motivating :) congratz! I wish you the best, and may your game be as successful as it can be!
I like these kind of videos! The success and failure stories are extremely interesting. I always enjoy the realistic point of view this channel has about this subject!
Dwerve: store.steampowered.com/app/1132760/Dwerve/
Blood and Mead: store.steampowered.com/app/1081830/Blood_And_Mead/
Pete's YT: ruclips.net/user/PeterMilko
Inspiring. I'm in the mid-game phase. What keeps me pushing is playing games I like and imagining I could do some things differently. Making a game I like to play helps keep me motivated. I also have a few game ideas for the future.
You will never be able to comprehend the struggles and accomplishments of Game Dev unless you’re actually in it. Congratulations to him and his team, they deserve whatever they get! It’s been 1 year for me as a Game Dev & 6 months on youtube. I’m so close to 1K Subscribers & All these gamedev RUclipsrs have helped me so much to stay motivated! I love everything about the journey…
What I like about your videos is that it makes game dev feel down to earth and real for indie devs. Thanks John.
Loving these pre-release interviews/check-ins! It's quite fascinating to see the perspective of someone in that "eye of the storm" as you put it in the last one
What a great response from him. I'm definitely in that "middle" section of my game, so hearing the way he navigated that is super helpful. awesome upload per usual
Don't give up man! I believe you can make amazing game too, I make minecraft, animal crossing and terraria as solo dev too
Aww thats so awesome! I always love hearing about indie devs having things go right. I can't imagine the feeling when that final release feels like after 4 years of development! I've spent 2ish on my project and already have that antsy feeling of like feeling in the dreadful middle. But he's totally right, surround yourself with positive and ambitious people. Keep your mind in the motivational and good stuff.
Another game finished. Crazy times! Well done Pete and that was nice to send a message for John. Good stuff!
Your channel is great for indie developers. And good for all of us.
Can not hit the like button enough times for this video. Good, pratical, relevant knowledge being displayed for free like that... "Das good shit, brother. Das good shit!". A thing about emotional and motivational speech, is that it will always sound "edgy" for a majority of listeners, but there is a smaller part from every audience, who's really out of hope and for those peeps your "base" motivational speech will taste like a mother's meal after a rough day. That way, it's always worth saying it! Cheers, bro :)
I've had that apathy. I'm just in the middle atm i think (As the video guy mentions.)(And yes, the yt pep talks help :D )
I am a fan of both your Channels, Pixel Pete has really helped improve my pixelart. Also just picked up the Four Agreements as I find it hard to not hate my work during the process, I'm literally my worst critic.
Good for you man, awesome gig! Glad to see that the indie dream is possible, even though it seems impossible, and probably nearly is
6:00 That is a really good idea... When I look at content that angers me, I just feel crappy the rest of the day. But seeing this guy, watching Lost Relic, and other happy and nice fellas, it gets me goin'! That is a REALLY good idea!
11:55 I'm actually wheezing.
Not enjoying video games during the development (especially when you stuck) is something I can relate with. It's nice to hear I'm not alone in this.
Great video! People really should have a life philosophy that is true to us and that makes us do things, be active. The power of Netflix is too strong if we don’t have inner fire.
It's honestly impressive how well the odd indie game can do. Hard work prevails all!
Awesome video guys
Thank you to you and Pete ... you made good points. Thank you for the prep talk :)
9 months later the game has only 404 reviews, Mostly Positive rating. I don't know how many people actually bought the game, but with so few (relatively speaking) reviews, how representative could the sales be of that 70k Wishlist figure? Do Wishlist numbers actually mean anything?
@@keurh475 Same, I only use the wishlist so that I can reference it during sales to see what wishlisted games are on deep discounts, and when looking up game bundle contents to determined if a bundle is worth buying. I never use it for "Hey, this wishlisted game was just released, I better buy it!" Then again, I almost never buy games outside of bundles and deep discounts.
It's not completely unrealistic/unexpected, considering the wishlists convert to sales in average 19% in sone random article I found (that's what Valve said), meaning it would be around 14k sales, and then reviews to sales can be 1 in 20 to 50, and 14k/404 = 34. So, it all matches. It's jusr disappointing to see. 70k people is a whole lot of them...
Great video! Apathy and discouragement are huge game Dev killers that’s for sure but keep at it someone wants to play your game!
What a cool guy! I do believe that mindset is everything because that is what gets you to sit down and work. "The four agreements" and "The war of art" are imo 2 great short books that are actually super helpful when it comes to facing game dev.
Goes to show that effort is the picture frame of a possiblity of many different things. All it takes is one step
Mad respect for the Captain K'nuckles and Flapjack portraits in the background. The world wasn't ready for that show, but it was amazing. Congrats on your game!
Pixel Pete is a master at his craft and has been teaching others for years. I hope it all goes as well as he 100% deserves.
Dwerve looks amazing. I got caught up watching the live stream on steam for a bit, but back to the grind. This gives me hope that I haven't made a huge mistake trying to make an RPG on my own.
Thanks for the video guys, very honest and inspirational, I love to see down to earth truthful videos, not only the "energetic, false positivity videos, to the point of lying to look better"
When he brought up apathy and depression I was able to relate a lot, and his insightfulness and philosophical “pep” (haha) really surprised me. I think I’ll try the motivation manifesto from now on. Funny thing is, I’ve been reading meditations lately and have gained lots of wisdom from it as well. Dwerve’s dev is very well-spoken and I wish him well as an indie game developer.
Man, this was a great video! a lot of great tips! I can not wait to play Dwerve
Great video
I love you and these kind of video's
love this stuff. is what i need from time to time. Like he mentioned that coach motivating me to continue.
The Four agreements is a great book, GL on the game
Thanks
Now it's the right time to tell you, when I first saw both your channels I thought you are the same guy 😂
Great video, thanks
i know you wont keep this pace of releasing videos, but ive been searching for your videos and getting nothing new a lot lately and getting this many in a row feels nice
Thanks Thanks Thanks, I needed this words
Hype!
I also want hype...
and now it sits at Mostly Positive overall and Mixed (86) recent, lol
with most reviews negative, saying the game is boring and they refunded it.
While most great indie games you can name now, launched with very little marketing and have grown overtime, because the game itself is just great
I wonder how many wishlists Paralives has, since its the most similar indie project I know of to what I want to make. I still find side projects helpful, as they give another outlet when you are stuck, as I got stuck on creating a good, robust system for building houses which would integrate with autonomy AI (much harder than expected), so having a less serious project 3rd party assets to dabble in until I figured out how to progress the cool project.
You're a legend man, I wanna do an interview about my game, been in production for 9.5 yrs.
What a lad. ^^
"This is why I like your video..." - Same for me...
Looks pretty cool..
funny how all these indie devs are always mentally and emotionally unstable when they're about to release or just released because of having devoted a chunk of their life on what is essentially a lottery ticket, similar to Tom Salas from the Falconeer, that guy is a mental wreck but yet so philosophical. 🧠 BTW your outro music is the best
Good stuff!
Pixel pete has an amazing channel about pixel art so that must be partly why this game is so hyped
I better check out The Four Agreements, Stoicism and much more,
since I'm almost always filled with negativity and I wanna change and be more positive since I am one of those who work on something and then nothing
relatable from the past comes out and I get unmotivated, annoyed and can't work since I feel like I am not good enough or something else.
So glad I found Lost Relic Games and this message from Pixel Pete which I also watch :)
This was a nice video.
Just thanx
Wow! Inspirational. Honestly, people often neglect the simple reality that quality is key. Dwerve has the polished characteristics and complexity of AAA titles. No doubt persistence, commitment, perseverance are critical to reaching one's goals, but what inspires the consumer is ultimately quality (which is reflected in customer reviews). It's like the elephant in the room and--to a great extent--the reason so many indies never make it.
70,000 wishlists 😲 I wish I had 7,000 wishlists lol. That's amazing. Good for them, I hope the launch went well
This didn't age well. What a release failure. It is why Steam wishlists do not really matter. But it is a catchy number.
It's funny that we game devs have to become essentially philosophers to mentally survive
Thanks for bringing this game to my attention very nice, I will wish list it! Do you have any general stats on conversion Google says 3-5%. So thats still a long way to go to pay for 4 years of dev especially when you take advertising costs, steam cut and taxes all into account - heyo!
70000 wishlists,it only sold less than 25000 copies.What happended?
Is that only Steam sales? Are you estimating the number? It sounds about right. 420 reviews on steam, at 60 sales per steam review on average. But then there is also Nintendo Switch. So maybe 30k sales x $20 = $600,000 which is like $400,000 for developers after marketing expenses and Steam's cut. They broke even I'd say. each making 200k for 4 years time.
@@eugkra33 Switch sold 30000 copies,how do you know that? Also it is not $20 for every country.
Uploaded 40s ago. I am speed.
was hoping to get tips on how he got to that number, not a self-centered motivational speech, but I guess we have to search for other video
hello there, watched your video pre game launch, and afer a few days the launch did not went so good, what you think might have happened?
Dwerve not quite the success everyone was hoping for. Lessons to be learned here.
Your link from the post about this video doesn't work just a heads up.
Fun fact: you can hear an epic sample from "The Four Agreements" used in this uplifting dance track (which is how I ended up listening to the audiobook): ruclips.net/video/LZT7tv1qDqU/видео.html
Lol I gave up but it's nice to see it's possible for some people
For the algorithm~!
Marcus Aurelius is an achievement in my game
aw yes up there with AAA games like karlson
Looks like it's time to vid "how to make bad start in the game, so people will get annoyed and bash the game with 1/4 of negative reviews" just because of BAD START of the game :)
you said you would put a link to pixel petes youtube channel but unless im blind i dont see it, ill go sub now though
Launched with 70000 wishlist but after a week it has only 282 reviews at 72%, steamspy says this did not go well. You guys say wishlists are important but I guess only in the slightest.
Yup, week 3 and 330 user reviews at 71%.
@@hungrygrimalkin5610 Who cares about user reviews? Sales are what matters.
70 000 wishlists, but only 400 reviews and an all-time peak of 610 players in game. Ouch.
Shows you how meaningless wishlists are... By comparison my game had merely 1000 wishlists at launch and has completely demolished Dwerve sales/player count wise. Almost exactly the same release date, same price too. I didn't win any silly awards or get much of any press ahead of time either. Make it great, and they will come.
oof
@@darkmattergamesofficial 1k wishlists only? can you post a rundown of things you think you did right?
@@robinnico7564 Make it great, and they will come... Which is where this title failed, I think. The other thing I did was send keys to RUclipsrs I thought might consider trying it. Some picked up the game around launch which gave it a good boost. But Steam's algorithms are what really made the game succeed. Some titles just never "get going" if that makes sense. It is like a positive feedback loop.
could be worst. immortals of aveum cost millions more, published by EA and only had 750 peak players
I also love these case studies, extremely helpful, thank you friend.
I do disagree with him though, to a degree, as he's very generic when he says news. Some news is good. Even if its bad. It's best to stay informed. There is also no use for most online arguments. But giving out your opinion on things is good sometimes. You don't want to end up a work drone that just works all the time and has no reflection of society, no critique, no deeper thoughts. While they don't help you in your immediate goal, they help you in life.
But do you believe that arguing with others online is worth it? Personally I’ve detached myself from that, and I understand that gaining insight from other people is valuable, but my one takeaway from what you said would be that you can have a reflection on society, critique, deep thoughts etc., but taking it online and adding mental strain first thing in the morning is a no, I’ll have to agree with him on that.
The saddest most discouraging thing for me as ("a future game dev" i hope :P) is that Dwarve is already out on torrent sites ... :*(
I wouldn't worry about this too much. I haven't heard about a game popular on torrents that didn't sold well.
you look related, is that ur bro?
haha no, not related!
Game looks totally dead now... Very poor reviews as well.
I don't get good vibes from the Dwerve guy.
First time I heard about that game, but after checking reviews - not interested.
Jeez, what's up with all these people getting into Stoicism. It's such a trash philosophy. Can't believe people take it seriously.