If it makes you feel better, I've ignored all of this bad advice. I like watching you guys because you genuinely seem like you enjoy what you're doing and I enjoy the authenticity, even if I don't always agree with what you're saying.
A game studio with zero artists and 3 programmers is a big mistake. One of you needs to take the leap and actually learn how to make good art or hire an artist.
or become a tech artist. You can't guide an artist unless you know how to communicate to them. Artists want freedom, but it needs to be within constraints and to have proper direction.
I am glad I did not take your advice. Thank you for that :) The problem with making quick short games, is that you easily do "half assed job" with everything. I tend to prototype a lot more, so that I can do deep dives to things, like completely learn how to create 3D characters from scratch and get them to game(UE). How to create all possible material settings(Like creating master material and instances), instead of using premade basic stuff... If you always take the "quick route", you just learn to use premade stuff, instead of creating stuff. With shortcuts, you easily end up being mediocre in everything.
For me, Small scope games doesn't mean quick and short. It just means reducing your workload, condensing quality, but still putting in the amount of time required.
Completely shit take 😂. Short games doesn't mean it's rushed that just goes to show you rush games. Doesn't mean it applies to everyone. Short games = keeping scope creep in check.
For protoyping, those examples are... interesting. Diving deep on creating visuals (art / model / material ...) in prototypes, instead of using it to real-test the designs, sure is interesting.
I think our community needs to be encouraged to pair up with artists. We are mostly programmers and engineers, but one of the hardest lessons to learn is that if the game doesn't look good, people won't give you the time of day. Solo developer is a bad idea, step one is to swallow your pride, suck it up, and make friends with an artist.
Idk I feel like it's the other way around. Artists regularly join this community, but most of the ones I'm aware of don't actively look for programmers to team up with or aren't usually willing to join teams without a payment incentive. Again completely anecdotally, but a lot of the artists who are interested in gamedev that I know are either self-taught programmers as a secondary skill OR they tend to just use assets packs to accomplish what they want.
The challenges that you have two people that want to make games. And many times those are two different games. Now you have to determine who takes the lead. Often because artists seen as the Lesser commitment of game dev, the lead role normally goes to the programmer. Unless the program is going to pay the artist it's really hard to keep an artist engaged in a project where they have minimal input
@@KindSparkdev agree, I am a self-taught 3D artist and it is not for payment but with chatgpt and knowing the basics I never felt that I needed a programmer to make my game, except that I wanted to add multiplayer which few programmers know how to do. in fact I feel another artist would be more productive. solo developer is better for artists than programmers
I think there are a lot of hot/shit takes on this channel but I'd rather say that there are also a lot of valuable and honest, post-mortem type, lived experience advice which makes watching your content enjoyable. So never stop admitting when/how/why you erred because it's very refreshing. Most game dev channels are not honest, blame everybody else for their own misfortunes and misrepresent their skills/experience.
I have been making games for studios for 15+ years but your idea of getting something done quickly and not aiming for the unreachable perfect got me finally started to try solo dev. While my game maybe not done after 3 months I’m actively working on it instead of just dreaming. Even if it was not 100% right thank you.
You pretty much addressed some of the biggest problems I had with some of your previous videos. The thing that gets me is that you are too young and inexperienced to be so sure of the things stated on this channel and there's a lot of taking statistics for granted.
I disagree 😂 there are many different ways to make commercial games that work for some developers and don't work for others. Sometimes a wishlist that was 5 years does well because it's an anticipated game or sometimes it does not. There is no one way to do something and get similar results
It's refreshing to see such honesty. And I don't think you should freak out about giving bad advice. You are very honest in your videos about how long you're studio has been running and you don't promise instant success. So I always take that advice with a grain of salt. Personally, I follow your channel to see the process. It's an interesting drama: will the studio survive? Tune in next week to find out! BTW: we're hoping for your success!
I was quite happy for you that after all the hard work you had some quick success with Unicycle Pizza Time. However it was sort of clear that it would not be easy to replicate that success 12 times per year. Maybe your next quick game could be about moving houses. I can see some fun game in quickly getting all the stuff out of one house, stacking boxes and hoping they don't fall while moving them. Tetrising it all into a truck and than putting it sort of back in a new house, maybe based on some vague memory. Just an idea.
Great video! A lot has changed in the game dev landscape in the last few years, too. What worked then might not be the best thing anymore. Time to adapt!
@@TESkyrimizer His very early vids were decent, but for a long stretch he has exclusively sold his courses and the "myth" of game-dev. Most of it now is interviews discussing other people's games.
Appreciate your down to earth honesty. I'm brand new to game dev at 40 years old and hoping I can maybe make a career out of this. Your videos and passion are inspirational, even if you don't have it 100% nailed yet. I'd rather learn with someone who isn't intentionally blowing smoke up my ass to sell me a course. You guys got good vision, you're figuring it out, keep on pushing hard. You guys are solid.
Well you can cram out a game in 3 months, if its a game genre you already worked and released in and its not too complex. But learning the ropes will take longer.
Small games are great (IMO) if you want to get the ball rolling in your game dev - OR if it's going to be your business model to make small games frequently. Probably due in part to Marnix's most popular videos, I produced my first game & learned to code in about 5 months. This counts time spent learning C# & Unity. Sometimes I think an even better approach is to start with the smallest game possible you could make, create it, then progressively take on larger projects until you're making "full games."
I love your guy's honesty. I think most devs know not to take all of the advices but still I really liked watching your videos because it's pretty entertaining and gives a bit of insight as to what's happening with another dev's mind who's also in the progress of learning the ins and outs and sharing them what they have learned thru the means of making not only successes but also thru their mistakes which is a really valuable insight
Oh man lol. I totally bought the idea of 'post your steam page ASAP' and ya, may have had that idea from you talking about it! And ya, it was a bad idea for my game, it was too early, I didn't have enough to show when I first launched it and it didn't make an impact, the game changed a great deal in the development process, and honestly my page was bad. Live and learn! I'm going to relaunch RoadHouse Manager with a new title and new page to capture a more refocused audience and a 'proper' launch, with the demo nearly complete, full trailers, gifs and accurate descriptions etc. Thanks for the apology haha, accepted.
Well, if am being honest the video on mobile games dev as being a lost cause, to me it about how you approach a problem rather than seeing it as hopeless. In a sense that the app store gets 2.5 billion monthly visitors, and you are telling me, you can't cook up something that even just one percent of those people will consider playing.
2 Months in, approx 12h day and i still don't have the foundation built. Knew this before i started . Really glad you made this video, hope it removes at least 2 or 3 slop releases.
Takes a big person to admit they messed up. I appreciate your honesty. I think there's nothing wrong with not being a "full time" game dev but you still want to make games. If you have an idea and putting in the work part time will see it come out in a few years that's fine. Sometimes your best ideas will come to you while not focused on game dev at all.
I don’t remember all the things I didn’t agree with 😅 Probably some genre tiers. Which likely boil down to knowledge about the genre. I really appreciate how you straight up say what you think and believe but accept that your answers are not perfect. I learn more from this way because I see things through your perspective.
You got this, Marnix! You guys are a wonderful team of artists that are growing everyday. Be nice to yourselves and enjoy the creative process, no matter where it takes you or how you may change. You guys are humble and kind.
I have a game idea and I spend in school around 40 hours a week, I want to give myself 3 months to learn unity with C#, and then make a game idea I have in a period of 6 months, I do have 1 year of experience with Roblox studio, aka (lua,Blender, Photoshop,researching) I know how important evading tutorial hell is and I feel this video has made me realize Its not gonna be easy but this is something I want to do and I feel not following my feelings won't be a option
Everything I've done and said beyond 3 months is likely wrong so..., whatever. As opinionated participants in this space, we appreciate one another and we appreciate raw/candid thoughts and sharing hot-take opinions so please, keep it coming.
Well done, I really enjoyed your videos but after hearing some of your views I struggled to continue watching you vids. Not watching was actually a very tough decision to make as I really want you to succeed. Maybe partly because I decided to spend my time coding games about the same time you started streaming. I am delighted I watched this one and will be back for more of your vids. Small games are great though, you might of overcorrected on this. They give you a chance to 100% complete a project, and you can then experience that the last 20% is hardest part, but equally as important as the first 80% of the work. Small games do need a great idea to make them popular, your crazy idea of delivering pizzas on a unicycle is a great grab you idea. I know this is financially a bad idea, but I would like you to continue working on Forge and fix the few bugs that are in the game, then see how you could improve it. A lot of great games started from lowly places - it could be a great game. Take you time if you do this, think of it more has a hobby project.
I fell on the trap of releasing Steam and Itchio pages too soon. Both are dead now 🤣, itchio "algorithm" don't even understand the genre of my game and apparently can't be fixed . Now I'm trying the opposite approach, lets see how it goes! (I don't blame you, that advice is everywhere)
I think my first game took about 3 months, but I would not ask people to pay for that. oh yeah its like 10 hours of content... only the writing was any good, and that's just cus I had 10 years of writing practice LOL
This isn't necessarily a take you've made but rather the attitude towards art asset creation is what I disagree with. I suggested in chat during your "last stream" just taking an hour or so to learn some fundamentals of art (not master them, just literally skimming on it) so that you can make some fairly decent programmer art as placeholders. However, you took it as if it was a callous advice (like I was saying just go to the gym to a heavy person). Art is literally like the pain point of almost every one of your games. Even Chris Zukowski of all people pointed that out. If you're not willing to listen to the most obvious of criticisms, I don't know how else you would succeed in the indie game dev sphere. Then again, I am just game jammer so you can take my advice with a solid crystal chunk of salt.
I feel like I've mostly just agreed with the programmer you have on sometimes. Otherwise, it's interesting content for the subject of game development even if I end up disagreeing.
Your earlier videos and opinions definitely seemed to come from a place of trying to make money first, games second.. That's never the way to make a great game.
I was watching Thomas brush and a dev said, in my interpretation, the world is entirely mechanical and nothing like god or magic exists. It was so repulsive to me i couldn't finish the video
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
If it makes you feel better, I've ignored all of this bad advice. I like watching you guys because you genuinely seem like you enjoy what you're doing and I enjoy the authenticity, even if I don't always agree with what you're saying.
A game studio with zero artists and 3 programmers is a big mistake. One of you needs to take the leap and actually learn how to make good art or hire an artist.
I think they do have or at least had artist interns but I don't think that went far.
or become a tech artist. You can't guide an artist unless you know how to communicate to them. Artists want freedom, but it needs to be within constraints and to have proper direction.
I forgive you
I don't
😂
I don't I can't believe this, it's totally insane. (Kidding by the way) 😂
Hmph! It's not like I want to forgive them or anything! **Turns head away**
I am glad I did not take your advice. Thank you for that :) The problem with making quick short games, is that you easily do "half assed job" with everything. I tend to prototype a lot more, so that I can do deep dives to things, like completely learn how to create 3D characters from scratch and get them to game(UE). How to create all possible material settings(Like creating master material and instances), instead of using premade basic stuff... If you always take the "quick route", you just learn to use premade stuff, instead of creating stuff. With shortcuts, you easily end up being mediocre in everything.
Bad game is better than no game.
For me, Small scope games doesn't mean quick and short. It just means reducing your workload, condensing quality, but still putting in the amount of time required.
@@AndreyMakarov-i7h depends a lot on the stage of the developer
Completely shit take 😂. Short games doesn't mean it's rushed that just goes to show you rush games. Doesn't mean it applies to everyone. Short games = keeping scope creep in check.
For protoyping, those examples are... interesting. Diving deep on creating visuals (art / model / material ...) in prototypes, instead of using it to real-test the designs, sure is interesting.
I think our community needs to be encouraged to pair up with artists. We are mostly programmers and engineers, but one of the hardest lessons to learn is that if the game doesn't look good, people won't give you the time of day. Solo developer is a bad idea, step one is to swallow your pride, suck it up, and make friends with an artist.
We need some sort of indie game jam community to find each other
Idk I feel like it's the other way around. Artists regularly join this community, but most of the ones I'm aware of don't actively look for programmers to team up with or aren't usually willing to join teams without a payment incentive. Again completely anecdotally, but a lot of the artists who are interested in gamedev that I know are either self-taught programmers as a secondary skill OR they tend to just use assets packs to accomplish what they want.
The challenges that you have two people that want to make games. And many times those are two different games. Now you have to determine who takes the lead. Often because artists seen as the Lesser commitment of game dev, the lead role normally goes to the programmer. Unless the program is going to pay the artist it's really hard to keep an artist engaged in a project where they have minimal input
This is a big one. Not enough coders have any art skills or even basic art education.
@@KindSparkdev agree, I am a self-taught 3D artist and it is not for payment but with chatgpt and knowing the basics I never felt that I needed a programmer to make my game, except that I wanted to add multiplayer which few programmers know how to do. in fact I feel another artist would be more productive. solo developer is better for artists than programmers
Your Transparency is my most appreciated part of your channel. 😊 you are human. And you guys have never been afraid to show that.
I think there are a lot of hot/shit takes on this channel but I'd rather say that there are also a lot of valuable and honest, post-mortem type, lived experience advice which makes watching your content enjoyable. So never stop admitting when/how/why you erred because it's very refreshing. Most game dev channels are not honest, blame everybody else for their own misfortunes and misrepresent their skills/experience.
Finally, you gathered your wisps and realized that the quality needs to be higher. You can't just put any garbage there and have big hopes.
Using common sense I put my Steam page up near the end of development. Didn't feel right to put it up with poor quality placeholder art.
Yeah I regret doing ours so early, didn't even follow this channel by the time we put it up either, got that advice from somewhere else.
Marnix didn't apologize in this video for doing tier lists wrong, by placing tier items half way between two tiers.
🤣
That requires a bow, a dogeza, and then a handstand dogeza. Maybe also a dance.
Respect. Takes humility to acknowledge when things didn't go well.
Really enjoy your content lately. Not just content wise but also big improved in terms of self reflecting :)
I have been making games for studios for 15+ years but your idea of getting something done quickly and not aiming for the unreachable perfect got me finally started to try solo dev. While my game maybe not done after 3 months I’m actively working on it instead of just dreaming. Even if it was not 100% right thank you.
You pretty much addressed some of the biggest problems I had with some of your previous videos.
The thing that gets me is that you are too young and inexperienced to be so sure of the things stated on this channel and there's a lot of taking statistics for granted.
Successful or not, I am grateful you made the previous videos.
3 years and still learning. Three months, i couldnt even able to explore the basics of game engine.
I disagree 😂 there are many different ways to make commercial games that work for some developers and don't work for others. Sometimes a wishlist that was 5 years does well because it's an anticipated game or sometimes it does not. There is no one way to do something and get similar results
Props to you for calling yourself out. Takes someone with good ethics to do that in public.
I always knew you were wrong... Thank you for admitting it. It's time to get good!
It's refreshing to see such honesty. And I don't think you should freak out about giving bad advice. You are very honest in your videos about how long you're studio has been running and you don't promise instant success. So I always take that advice with a grain of salt. Personally, I follow your channel to see the process. It's an interesting drama: will the studio survive? Tune in next week to find out! BTW: we're hoping for your success!
This channel might be a hot mess but thats exactly what im here for 💀
I didn't know when to launch my Steam page. Now I know!
Thank you for your advice!
Glad to see you be so frank and honest about your experience 🙏
I was quite happy for you that after all the hard work you had some quick success with Unicycle Pizza Time. However it was sort of clear that it would not be easy to replicate that success 12 times per year. Maybe your next quick game could be about moving houses. I can see some fun game in quickly getting all the stuff out of one house, stacking boxes and hoping they don't fall while moving them. Tetrising it all into a truck and than putting it sort of back in a new house, maybe based on some vague memory. Just an idea.
Great video! A lot has changed in the game dev landscape in the last few years, too. What worked then might not be the best thing anymore. Time to adapt!
Generally speaking, doing the opposite of thomas brush videos yields uncommonly great results.
as someone who doesnt watch TB what advice does he give?
@@TESkyrimizer His very early vids were decent, but for a long stretch he has exclusively sold his courses and the "myth" of game-dev. Most of it now is interviews discussing other people's games.
@@TESkyrimizer When you said TB I suddenly thought of TotalBiscuit.
Appreciate your down to earth honesty. I'm brand new to game dev at 40 years old and hoping I can maybe make a career out of this. Your videos and passion are inspirational, even if you don't have it 100% nailed yet. I'd rather learn with someone who isn't intentionally blowing smoke up my ass to sell me a course. You guys got good vision, you're figuring it out, keep on pushing hard. You guys are solid.
Well you can cram out a game in 3 months, if its a game genre you already worked and released in and its not too complex. But learning the ropes will take longer.
Small games are great (IMO) if you want to get the ball rolling in your game dev - OR if it's going to be your business model to make small games frequently. Probably due in part to Marnix's most popular videos, I produced my first game & learned to code in about 5 months. This counts time spent learning C# & Unity. Sometimes I think an even better approach is to start with the smallest game possible you could make, create it, then progressively take on larger projects until you're making "full games."
I love your guy's honesty. I think most devs know not to take all of the advices but still I really liked watching your videos because it's pretty entertaining and gives a bit of insight as to what's happening with another dev's mind who's also in the progress of learning the ins and outs and sharing them what they have learned thru the means of making not only successes but also thru their mistakes which is a really valuable insight
8 years in and my philosophy on game dev hasn't changed. integrity, focus, and having a target audience in mind at all times.
Oh man lol. I totally bought the idea of 'post your steam page ASAP' and ya, may have had that idea from you talking about it! And ya, it was a bad idea for my game, it was too early, I didn't have enough to show when I first launched it and it didn't make an impact, the game changed a great deal in the development process, and honestly my page was bad. Live and learn! I'm going to relaunch RoadHouse Manager with a new title and new page to capture a more refocused audience and a 'proper' launch, with the demo nearly complete, full trailers, gifs and accurate descriptions etc. Thanks for the apology haha, accepted.
Well, if am being honest the video on mobile games dev as being a lost cause, to me it about how you approach a problem rather than seeing it as hopeless.
In a sense that the app store gets 2.5 billion monthly visitors, and you are telling me, you can't cook up something that even just one percent of those people will consider playing.
I agree small scope games are viable but with a lot of caveats. I'm going to try to make some in the future.
2 Months in, approx 12h day and i still don't have the foundation built. Knew this before i started . Really glad you made this video, hope it removes at least 2 or 3 slop releases.
Takes a big person to admit they messed up. I appreciate your honesty.
I think there's nothing wrong with not being a "full time" game dev but you still want to make games. If you have an idea and putting in the work part time will see it come out in a few years that's fine. Sometimes your best ideas will come to you while not focused on game dev at all.
I don’t remember all the things I didn’t agree with 😅
Probably some genre tiers. Which likely boil down to knowledge about the genre.
I really appreciate how you straight up say what you think and believe but accept that your answers are not perfect. I learn more from this way because I see things through your perspective.
your greatest enemy is always your former self, who squandered your time and resources on bad ideas 😢
You got this, Marnix! You guys are a wonderful team of artists that are growing everyday. Be nice to yourselves and enjoy the creative process, no matter where it takes you or how you may change. You guys are humble and kind.
I have a game idea and I spend in school
around 40 hours a week, I want to give myself 3 months to learn unity with C#, and then make a game idea I have in a period of 6 months, I do have 1 year of experience with Roblox studio, aka (lua,Blender, Photoshop,researching) I know how important evading tutorial hell is and I feel this video has made me realize Its not gonna be easy but this is something I want to do and I feel not following my feelings won't be a option
We getting another one of these videos in 18 months? 😁
that's me every 6 months
This is why we love you.
Everything I've done and said beyond 3 months is likely wrong so..., whatever. As opinionated participants in this space, we appreciate one another and we appreciate raw/candid thoughts and sharing hot-take opinions so please, keep it coming.
With this nice white shirt, i must forgive you.
It's like... we watch you stumble, so we can... walk...?
But great vid, nothing to hate on, sorry 🤷♂️
I watch your videos because it's fun to see the views of other developers! No worries about being a big pro or anything.
Well done, I really enjoyed your videos but after hearing some of your views I struggled to continue watching you vids. Not watching was actually a very tough decision to make as I really want you to succeed. Maybe partly because I decided to spend my time coding games about the same time you started streaming.
I am delighted I watched this one and will be back for more of your vids.
Small games are great though, you might of overcorrected on this. They give you a chance to 100% complete a project, and you can then experience that the last 20% is hardest part, but equally as important as the first 80% of the work. Small games do need a great idea to make them popular, your crazy idea of delivering pizzas on a unicycle is a great grab you idea.
I know this is financially a bad idea, but I would like you to continue working on Forge and fix the few bugs that are in the game, then see how you could improve it. A lot of great games started from lowly places - it could be a great game. Take you time if you do this, think of it more has a hobby project.
I fell on the trap of releasing Steam and Itchio pages too soon. Both are dead now 🤣, itchio "algorithm" don't even understand the genre of my game and apparently can't be fixed .
Now I'm trying the opposite approach, lets see how it goes!
(I don't blame you, that advice is everywhere)
Very good decision to cancel MGG.
Did they?
@@davidsvezhintsev3073 yea
Don't think they have - still seems to be improving in the clips
@@mandisaw I'm a patron
@@RohanDaDev Oh, that kinda sucks then. I think there was promise there, but they needed a lot of work on it.
Very brave video to make.
THANK YOU for honesty and updated tips. authenticity is king.
props for owning up for past mistakes, you shall be forgiven
RUclipsr value increased.
the first step to improve is to admitted your own false. congrats on improving dude.
Very good video
I think my first game took about 3 months, but I would not ask people to pay for that. oh yeah its like 10 hours of content... only the writing was any good, and that's just cus I had 10 years of writing practice LOL
Who makes the thumbnails for your videos and what asset packs are you using for them?
The chat and comments did tell you it was going to add to the slop, tbf lol but you were like "yolo yass kween no cap cowabunga" regardless 😜
Can I have a refund for my now doomed steam page?
Jk. I figured it out myself that i just don't have enough to share. So apology accepted 😅
This isn't necessarily a take you've made but rather the attitude towards art asset creation is what I disagree with. I suggested in chat during your "last stream" just taking an hour or so to learn some fundamentals of art (not master them, just literally skimming on it) so that you can make some fairly decent programmer art as placeholders. However, you took it as if it was a callous advice (like I was saying just go to the gym to a heavy person). Art is literally like the pain point of almost every one of your games. Even Chris Zukowski of all people pointed that out. If you're not willing to listen to the most obvious of criticisms, I don't know how else you would succeed in the indie game dev sphere.
Then again, I am just game jammer so you can take my advice with a solid crystal chunk of salt.
Ur ok marnix. We all understand :) u still rox! :)
I feel like I've mostly just agreed with the programmer you have on sometimes. Otherwise, it's interesting content for the subject of game development even if I end up disagreeing.
I belived in you😢
Your earlier videos and opinions definitely seemed to come from a place of trying to make money first, games second.. That's never the way to make a great game.
What a bro.
:O Use a different
Game Engine: Blazium
XD I am shameless
Taking accountability 💪💪
I was watching Thomas brush and a dev said, in my interpretation, the world is entirely mechanical and nothing like god or magic exists. It was so repulsive to me i couldn't finish the video
Marnix is wising up.
Make a game in a day brah just ask chatgpt and boom ma dood ez
Shoutout to all my fellow ninjas, lets keep working from the shadows! 🥷
I belived in you😢