Thanks for watching! For more Ask Gamedev, check out this list about the 7 common marketing mistakes that indie devs make: ruclips.net/video/9nZ2dHtYNus/видео.html. Also, make sure to check out No More Robots on RUclips as well: ruclips.net/user/nomorerobots
Hello there, I wanted to start an indie game publishing company, is there a way I could reach out to you guys. I have some(a lot of) questions I'd like to ask please 🙏
This is so helpful! We are making our very first game and the question "should we go with a publisher?" can be really intimidating lol Thanks for all these really cool advices! 😃
Thanks! Mike was great to hang out and chat with! He has a wealth of knowledge regarding indie game marketing and the industry as a whole. We're really glad that we were able to do the interview.
I was approached by some publishers, and so I was researching, and came across this video. No More Robots sounds great, but when I check their channel, it has 37k subs, and I don't recognize any of the games they have listed. To me... A company that says they know how to market, that only has 37k subs after 3 years, and not one of their games is something I've even heard of, is a red flag. They may be awesome, but me holding up a T-Shirt and saying it's the top seller on Amazon, and no one recognizing it, is odd.
Absolutely phenomenal tips! I'll be sure to be taking notes of those! It's a sad reality not every game dev will become a millionaire out there, but at least being able to get our game out and have people enjoy it and not starve to death because our game did not sell spetacularly, it a good enough accomplishment! Thanks for the honesty. It hurts, but it must not hurt as much as suffering through these issues ourselves.
@@edo.creative The big one? No, not yet. I haven't even started working on it yet. hehehe It's just not a priority currently. It's gonna be made some day, that's for sure! In the meantime, I did however make some prototypes of ideas I had with some friends as college work. Slow and steady I'll get there!
This video came in handy! I'm so afraid of lending my game to a publisher... as the guy said in the video, my game is my baby. It took me a lot of effort to make and it's hard to just let someone who had no participation in the building process to suddenly manage a huge part of it.
My friend, for some reason the machine translation subtitles are failing, can you please verify your video in video editing CC "Automatic" options and validate the overlap?
Pretty much only a computer and free time. These days there's a lot of good programming tools, game creation tools, and tutorials available for free online. It'd benefit you a lot to get better at programming, so I'd suggest gradually working on that too. It's invaluable when making games. Starting off it's a good idea to use a game engine like Unity instead of making your own engine. There are 1000s of tutorials for using Unity online so that's another good reason to use it. Should probably also start with a 2D game instead of a 3D one since 2D games are less complicated and you'll be able to make your own assets more easily. Finally, I'd say the most important thing is to stick with it. It might not be easy at first, but if you don't give up and keep learning you'll get there
@@moneyl6594 well I would like to follow in the footsteps of other successful indie developers by making a tight demo and then creating a kickstarter so I can hire people to help. but before that, I need to make a demo on a zero dollar budget. you can't pay people with promises. that's the bad part. It'll need a lot of spit and polish
@@StudioUAC To be clear, I haven't sold any games, so I may not be the best to ask about that specifically. I have some thoughts on it though. I really think you should take a few steps back and start with some smaller, less ambitious games that you can do on your own to hone your skills. Starting a kickstarter and hiring multiple people is a risky move, and for your first game it's better to keep things small and safe so you don't end up in massive debt. When you see a very successful kickstarter with a solid demo that's probably not that persons first game, and often people will self fund for a while or work on their free time alone. Like Mike said in the video, don't start off making the game of your dreams and investing tons of resources into it. You're likely to make some mistakes or be unprofitable for the first game so it's better to start small and learn common gamedev pitfalls. A 2D game with reasonable scale is totally within reach of a solo developer at zero additional cost. Starting off you might be using some simple art you made in GIMP or Paint DotNet, but you could either hire someone to replace that later or learn how to make better art yourself. There's a lot of pixel art tutorials online these days.
You need: - A game engine like Unreal, Unity, Godot, GameMaker. I personally recommend you Godot or Unity. - Assets Creation tools: • krita/photoshop/GIMP for textures • Blender for 3D modeling, painting, animations and a lot more • Audacity or Flstudio for sounds and music. This tools are just the first ones that come to my mind because they are some of the most used. For some project you may need extra tools but that's pretty much it. I suggest you to start learning an engine, to understand how things are gonna work, you can find free assets online at the beginning and then learn to make your own later. I suggested you Godot and Unity as they are more beginner friendly than say Unreal, and are more used by indie. Unity is very powerful and basically free until you earn 100k/year with a project, then you start to pay. Godot is 100% free and opensource, it has nice documentations and growing community, it is not as powerful as Unity or Unreal in 3D yet, but it is one of the fastest growing project on github right now. Hope this helped, good luck!
PLEASE ANSWER THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: I am making my first 2D rpg videogame, and I absolutely need your help. Basically at the start of the game you get to choose your name and your character (there are 3 of them) let's call them A, B and C. All of them are in the game, two as your friends and the third is the Player. Let's say I chose B, I want A and C to be in the game as my friends but I want the B NPC to no longer be in the game as I am B now. Also as I chose B, I want the character's name to no longer be B but the name I chose at the start. How do I do that, I am really confused😥 could you make a video about it?
There are several ways to do it. You can keep the player as the 1st index of an array of characters. I'll give a C++ example (not optimized neither has boundary checks): class Class { int WhichClass; bool NPC = true; string name; public: bool isNPC () {return NPC;}}; //The modus operandi. array roles; //Create the 3 characters. TODO: give default values, include headers and use 'std::'. //TODO: ask the user for his/her informations, and change them in the class. const auto Player = find_if (roles.cbegin(), roles.cend(), [](Class &Role) {return !Role.isNPC();}); //Find the human being. swap (roles[0], *Player); //Exchange it with the 1st. TODO: check if Player was already the 1st. Now you know that the Player is always the 1st index; NPC for the rest.
At the moment i'm looking for indie developers for a 3d realistic fighting game for consoles. Had some bad stories with a big company so i want to go indie. Hit me up. ...Then i will rewatch this video before looking for indie publishers :)
@@AskGamedev the animated videos and the basics. Like I would love to see a video on coming up with ideas for a video game or on how to get started making a game, organising a team or how to find a team. IMPORTANT THINGS SIMPLYFIED AND ANIMATED THAT WAS WHY I SUBSCRIBED BUT I GUESS PEOPLE LIKE THIS TOO.
Probably because all of the work that would have been done by the publisher was done by the game dev team. Zero games become spontaneously popular. Someone must get the word out. Just sayin
Thanks for watching! For more Ask Gamedev, check out this list about the 7 common marketing mistakes that indie devs make: ruclips.net/video/9nZ2dHtYNus/видео.html. Also, make sure to check out No More Robots on RUclips as well: ruclips.net/user/nomorerobots
Hello there, I wanted to start an indie game publishing company, is there a way I could reach out to you guys. I have some(a lot of) questions I'd like to ask please 🙏
Thanks for chatting with me! If anyone has any questions, feel free to reply here and I’ll try to make sure I respond!
Joe Higashi we don’t have a standard! Every deal we’ve done up to now has been entirely different to the last
Did you create the Descenders trailer? I remember reading (or watching) how much that helped build interest in the game.
This is so helpful! We are making our very first game and the question "should we go with a publisher?" can be really intimidating lol Thanks for all these really cool advices! 😃
Do you consider games still in preproduction phase or you require a playable prototype?
Can i ask how do i not quit with my project?
This guy is actually really cool. Hes good at explaining how publishers are bad and how to spot if they are bad! Great video! 👍
Thanks! Mike was great to hang out and chat with! He has a wealth of knowledge regarding indie game marketing and the industry as a whole. We're really glad that we were able to do the interview.
wait.... why is the thumbnail guy pointing at me..... why?
Bro with the yoyo rizzing up yhe chick in the background is my hero
I was approached by some publishers, and so I was researching, and came across this video.
No More Robots sounds great, but when I check their channel, it has 37k subs, and I don't recognize any of the games they have listed.
To me... A company that says they know how to market, that only has 37k subs after 3 years, and not one of their games is something I've even heard of, is a red flag.
They may be awesome, but me holding up a T-Shirt and saying it's the top seller on Amazon, and no one recognizing it, is odd.
The yoyo dude in the bg of 6:15 is my spirit animal
TheRedRusher that’s No More Robots guy Dan, wielding a No More Robots branded yo-yo! We give 100s of them away at shows :)
@@NoMoreRobots Tell Dan him and I are now linked...
@askgamedev i miss you guys, you really helped the indie scene! Thank you for all of your help
Absolutely phenomenal tips! I'll be sure to be taking notes of those! It's a sad reality not every game dev will become a millionaire out there, but at least being able to get our game out and have people enjoy it and not starve to death because our game did not sell spetacularly, it a good enough accomplishment! Thanks for the honesty. It hurts, but it must not hurt as much as suffering through these issues ourselves.
Did you release your game?
@@edo.creative The big one? No, not yet. I haven't even started working on it yet. hehehe It's just not a priority currently. It's gonna be made some day, that's for sure! In the meantime, I did however make some prototypes of ideas I had with some friends as college work. Slow and steady I'll get there!
This video came in handy! I'm so afraid of lending my game to a publisher... as the guy said in the video, my game is my baby. It took me a lot of effort to make and it's hard to just let someone who had no participation in the building process to suddenly manage a huge part of it.
I APPRECIATE HIS HONESTY
My friend, for some reason the machine translation subtitles are failing, can you please verify your video in video editing CC "Automatic" options and validate the overlap?
Thanks for your feedback! We've updated the closed captions on the video accordingly :)
@@AskGamedev Thank you very much, it is the difficult task to do the same for all your videos, you can thank google (youtube) hehehe a hug.
I’d recommend votch.tv for making subtitles, you can even translate them into different languages using that site. It’s been helpful for me.
This guy seems like a Santa and Jesus mix disguised as human ... He's a big help and really got sense in his advice 😊
12:00 that advice really helpful thank you Mike👍
Constructive and helpful advice! Thank you!
what do you need to start making a game? I'm not the best at coding and I don't have a lot of money.
Pretty much only a computer and free time. These days there's a lot of good programming tools, game creation tools, and tutorials available for free online. It'd benefit you a lot to get better at programming, so I'd suggest gradually working on that too. It's invaluable when making games. Starting off it's a good idea to use a game engine like Unity instead of making your own engine. There are 1000s of tutorials for using Unity online so that's another good reason to use it.
Should probably also start with a 2D game instead of a 3D one since 2D games are less complicated and you'll be able to make your own assets more easily. Finally, I'd say the most important thing is to stick with it. It might not be easy at first, but if you don't give up and keep learning you'll get there
@@moneyl6594 well I would like to follow in the footsteps of other successful indie developers by making a tight demo and then creating a kickstarter so I can hire people to help. but before that, I need to make a demo on a zero dollar budget. you can't pay people with promises. that's the bad part. It'll need a lot of spit and polish
@@StudioUAC To be clear, I haven't sold any games, so I may not be the best to ask about that specifically. I have some thoughts on it though.
I really think you should take a few steps back and start with some smaller, less ambitious games that you can do on your own to hone your skills. Starting a kickstarter and hiring multiple people is a risky move, and for your first game it's better to keep things small and safe so you don't end up in massive debt. When you see a very successful kickstarter with a solid demo that's probably not that persons first game, and often people will self fund for a while or work on their free time alone.
Like Mike said in the video, don't start off making the game of your dreams and investing tons of resources into it. You're likely to make some mistakes or be unprofitable for the first game so it's better to start small and learn common gamedev pitfalls.
A 2D game with reasonable scale is totally within reach of a solo developer at zero additional cost. Starting off you might be using some simple art you made in GIMP or Paint DotNet, but you could either hire someone to replace that later or learn how to make better art yourself. There's a lot of pixel art tutorials online these days.
You need:
- A game engine like Unreal, Unity, Godot, GameMaker. I personally recommend you Godot or Unity.
- Assets Creation tools:
• krita/photoshop/GIMP for textures
• Blender for 3D modeling, painting, animations and a lot more
• Audacity or Flstudio for sounds and music.
This tools are just the first ones that come to my mind because they are some of the most used. For some project you may need extra tools but that's pretty much it. I suggest you to start learning an engine, to understand how things are gonna work, you can find free assets online at the beginning and then learn to make your own later. I suggested you Godot and Unity as they are more beginner friendly than say Unreal, and are more used by indie. Unity is very powerful and basically free until you earn 100k/year with a project, then you start to pay. Godot is 100% free and opensource, it has nice documentations and growing community, it is not as powerful as Unity or Unreal in 3D yet, but it is one of the fastest growing project on github right now. Hope this helped, good luck!
Very helpful, thanks!
Very interesting video, thanks for sharing!
Amazing interview
PLEASE ANSWER THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT:
I am making my first 2D rpg videogame, and I absolutely need your help.
Basically at the start of the game you get to choose your name and your character (there are 3 of them) let's call them A, B and C.
All of them are in the game, two as your friends and the third is the Player.
Let's say I chose B, I want A and C to be in the game as my friends but I want the B NPC to no longer be in the game as I am B now.
Also as I chose B, I want the character's name to no longer be B but the name I chose at the start.
How do I do that, I am really confused😥
could you make a video about it?
There are several ways to do it. You can keep the player as the 1st index of an array of characters.
I'll give a C++ example (not optimized neither has boundary checks):
class Class { int WhichClass; bool NPC = true; string name; public: bool isNPC () {return NPC;}}; //The modus operandi.
array roles; //Create the 3 characters. TODO: give default values, include headers and use 'std::'.
//TODO: ask the user for his/her informations, and change them in the class.
const auto Player = find_if (roles.cbegin(), roles.cend(), [](Class &Role) {return !Role.isNPC();}); //Find the human being.
swap (roles[0], *Player); //Exchange it with the 1st. TODO: check if Player was already the 1st.
Now you know that the Player is always the 1st index; NPC for the rest.
Good salesman for sure. shitting on other companys is a big no no.
great video, thank you so much for your content!
Thanks for watching!
Just Keep it up! you are simply amazing guys!!!....
Wish this video existed before
Is Bust-a-Nut on GooglePlay weird enough for No More Robots?!
At the moment i'm looking for indie developers for a 3d realistic fighting game for consoles. Had some bad stories with a big company so i want to go indie. Hit me up.
...Then i will rewatch this video before looking for indie publishers :)
6:16
i very highly dislike the fact that the thumbnail's pointing at me with the text "how to spot a bad indie game developer"
First step: make sure their name is not nicalis
Critical Bliss is a great indie developer ☺
Awesome!
I like this man xD
We do too!
His gdc talks are like a Bible 👀👌
Roger that.
Cool
Thanks!
Add to the list: When a publisher won't stop talking about himself.
Who else misses the old videos
nebyu daniel Were always looking to improve- is there anything specific about the old videos that you want us to bring back?
@@AskGamedev the animated videos and the basics.
Like I would love to see a video on coming up with ideas for a video game or on how to get started making a game, organising a team or how to find a team.
IMPORTANT THINGS SIMPLYFIED AND ANIMATED THAT WAS WHY I SUBSCRIBED BUT I GUESS PEOPLE LIKE THIS TOO.
Games have become popular without publishers need too......just sayin
Probably because all of the work that would have been done by the publisher was done by the game dev team. Zero games become spontaneously popular. Someone must get the word out. Just sayin
Robert topala?
It can be done but its not easy