Hi Chris, great talk, I learned a lot. As someone who is making an auto battler, it's great to know the genre isn't saturated yet. A question on the steam page. When should I set a release date for it? Do I launch my page with or without a release date? Should I set a release date once I get the 7000 wishlists? Can I change my release date and would you advice this if you're short the 7000 wishlist goal?
Hey Chris, thank for sharing your knowledge together with CodeMonkey! I found it all very insightful but at the same time I fall in the category of working on a larger project as my first game. More specifically I'm creating a JRPG called Monster Haven (most of my stuff is on Twitter for now, it's done moderately well there). While I'm happy with how the game is shaping up personally I'm now a little worried that I'm wasting my time as I have zero audience on Steam thus far. What would you suggest me or other people in a similar situation do? Should I scrap working on the whole JRPG'ish story and focus first on just releasing say an auto battler? So I at least already have a starting audience after which I can continue on the main game?
@@MonsterHavenDev I think you’re falling into the exact trap Chris is talking about. I found you quite easily on twitter, but I don’t see your steampage? I found a Reddit post from 3 years ago, so you’ve been working on this for a while, but you don’t have a steam page? How are you going to get a following on Steam without a steampage? As Chris said, you aren’t going to get much following on twitter. If you want to make money off the game, your next Steam should be building a Steam page and linking to it from twitter and everywhere else you have. You spent quite a lot of time and I can tel you already have some screenshots for the game, so making it shouldn’t be that difficult. Hope it makes sense? PS: If you don’t plan to make it a commercial project, then just keep working on it as is and enjoy the process.
@@testitestmann8819 Yes, but it's content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet (unlike game development, which has millions of tutorials and videos). Additionally, it includes a lot of great data analysis work accumulated over the years, making it totally worth it.
Good publishers can help with a lot more than just wishlists, they can help with Localization, Porting, they have contacts with Press, Streamers, they can get you in contact with Xbox/PS/Switch for events and special deals, etc. You might be able to get to 50k wishlists by yourself but might not have enough time (or contacts) to make the rest of that happen. Or you might simply need funding to finish your game. But yes definitely avoid a bad publisher that will just "post about your game" in return for 70%.
The calculus is if you can make more money with the publisher's help at that point vs on your own. Maybe they will cost you $100,000 or more but if they pay for themselves and more then it could be worth it, such as by localizing your game to new markets or porting it to new consoles, they could net you far more than they cost at the end of the day.
Just to clarify. You don't need to get 50K to get a publisher. When you sign with a publisher they often say "Our target is to launch your game when you get 30k-50K wishlists"
Chris is amazing. But I also want to say that Hugo is the best. I mean the questions that he asked, it was almost like I was lucky enough to have a direct conversation with Chris. This entire video is so genuinely informative that it would take someone months to gather this knowledge by themselves. Thank you so much Hugo and Chris.
I don't know how did 52 minutes finished so quickly , it was like a fun smooth movie. Really great and informative video , thanks Code Monkey for this collab 💝. I am looking forward to these Collab videos , as courses are just too expensive for me to buy even after discounts.
I always learn a lot from listening to Chris' talks. He is one of the few people teaching game marketing that is not constantly shilling his course but actually teaches valuable info without a paywall.
Watching this video, it is so nice to know that i do everything right, lol) I told the team, like "First, we're gonna do a couple of simple ideas in a couple of months to kick this whole thing off and we're gonna market it through Steam festivals and apply to indie-centric youtubers/streamers" etc. Still, really nice to have some more nuanced insight into the whole process.
Following Chris techniques has led my game Sky Harvest to bag front page of steam for a whole week which led to an exclusive IGN Interview. This guy realllly knows what he is doing and he is soo good at it. 🙏
Chris! What a fantastic pairing of two of my favorite game dev informers. Thanks for the great video, actual useable and applicable knowledge is so helpful.
I watched this video on 1.5x by accident and there is so much info in here that I feel like I hooked up a USB cable to Data from ST:TNG. Very awesome vid, lots of good suggestions, some of which I'm going to try right now. Cheers
This is probably the most helpful video on this topic on this site. Chris's earnest and authoritative tone definitely helped me temper my expectations as an indie dev working on my first game. I'm gonna keep working on my 3D platformer but I'm definitely gonna scale it down and follow his marketing advice!
Amazing how many points align intuitevely with mine... all makes sense. I am on my first game and I only think of it as a graduation game - no money needed now, just a proof of work and a foundation to keep building on. Amazing video guys, you help the community a lot.
Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate that! This was a relatively complicated edit because I really wanted to show on screen everything we were talking about
Hugo, thank you so much for making this video. I learned so much from Chris right here, and the things he said make a lot of sense. This video is a goldmine.
This is a great video! Thank you for putting it together🔥 I love Splattercat's channel! Most of the indie games I buy come from watching him. He's been doing this for a long while.
All true and good advices from Chris. I am just starting out with 3D in Blender and i want to make some maps for Assetto Corsa game. So the maps are kinda like my first games which will teach me the basics, maybe later i will make my own game, but right now, i'm not ready for that.
Thank you very much for this valuable insight! I am close to release my game Cursed Dungeon Raider in hard mode on Steam and thanks to you guys, now I know what I have to do to make my marketing, my whole presentation better. Really appreciated!
I think Chris has some good insights into marketing your game on Steam. Although, the part about it being impossible to be successful with your first game isn’t true. I think you should make the game you’re most passionate about but make sure your scope is within your timeline. Passion is key to finishing a project, no matter the size. My first game took 5 years to make and it was very successful.
It's not strictly impossible, it's just extremely difficult. You need to be either extremely talented or lucky or both. I made 40 games before I managed to make minimum wage. Congrats on your success!
@@CodeMonkeyUnityWere those commercially quality games or just prototype demos? From my observation, most games that don’t make it were never polished enough and fully completed, but I know it’s hard to make money from games. It’s a crystal ball, but I think the more stuff you can do to increase your chances, obviously the better. It’s a tough business that’s for sure. 😅
Ive been hovering around the game dev community a little bit lately... I'm trying to get ready to make my first game as a hobby project and an academic exercise. That said... my dream project is basically an rpg haha. So... what i take away from this is I might want to tinker in the world of game dev a little before committing to a bigger project like what I have in mind now.
I've been taking most advices from Chris except the "hire someone to make the thumbnail" bit... At least for my first game on steam. I just want to walk through the whole process by myself at least once and wouldn't wanna miss out on that. I guess whatever traffic I can get from my self-made store assets is what the game deserves
Great content! A lot of Early Access games fall into the stigma created by big studios with 'Pre-Orders'. Very tricky step to take and agree that version 1.0 > all. Game development takes time, if you want early support - it gets hard :/
About puzzles and platformers. Unless you're big into these genres, chances are that you've played only the best of the best they have to offer. We're talking games that took multiple years and multiple people to develop, and even more years the developers had to spend prior studying the genre to avoid pitfalls you'd likely never know about unless you're familiar with that particular iceberg.
the best thing to do is find some streamers to play your games, gift it to them, i duno it's hard to market games for sure. i've seen so many good games not get noticed this year. The Last Medic needs more attention. that game is the best thing since Celeste for me.
Definitely sign up for his free newsletter! And if you don't have money but you do have time then go read his entire blog archive, there's weekly posts going all the way back to 2015. If you take the time to read all of that you will gain a massive amount of knowledge!
I think it can be worth while spending a good amount of time on a game. It needs to feel fulfilling for you, otherwise it won’t carry the soul needs to make something other people are going to enjoy too. You can keep at it if you keep the passion fuelled :)
I don't have a dream game -- my first Steam game was a roguelite FPS. My next game will be an open world first person RPG -- I considered a dollhouse life simulator, but that would have been much, much harder to make really work and be good quality. The RPG I can definitely finish. (Of course, life sims are so few the audience is chomping at the bit to have more than one game available, if you can make a good one.)
I wish I loved myself a tenth of how much this dude loves himself. Respct ❤️ Let me recap. I’m suggested to make a cookie toucher simulator, make 4 staged screenshots in different biomes, edit a trailer, contact the organisers of a festival and tell them they can be the first to announce my game and then open a page on steam. Anyway, will you be in Barcelona in September for that Unity stuff?
heh yup technically if you do that then your odds of finding success are quite a bit higher than if you were to do a generic puzzle platformer with a single world, no trailer, no festival. Yup I'll be at Unite 2024!
@CodeMonkeyUnity even if taken individually are good pieces of advice I was joking about how incompatible are all together😅 I think no festival will be happy to announce in world premiere my “four biomes cookie toucher”. And also was a bit confusing the answer to “when should I start marketing my game?” “as long as you got 4 staged, no ai, no script biomes screenshots” and “a nice and polished trailer”, those are two very distant stages! Nice you’re there!
Right, the part which said "people use their game designer brains and there must be this system and that system...just make the horror game! just make it scary!". This is something I wanted to convey to people, but somehow it's super hard to tell them. I kinda understood why people started with platformers. It's because there are abundance of free tutorials on platformers. I don't know real origin, but even me started with 2D platformer for my first game. What I want people to understand is that game development sometimes could be about experimenting which Code Monkey seems to love. Sometimes it's about storytelling, sending messages, or making an artwork. You people should start asking yourselves what do you want to do in game development. For me it's just storytelling because I love working on world building. As for you, well just ask yourselves.
If you realease an early access game I 100% expect regular updates. Not necesarily code, but some sort of activity on the steam page. This is not a 'weird' position. This is the deal. You get money early to finish the product, I get to participate in the process on some level.
Chris was more referring to the people that demand non-stop daily updates. Expecting the game to be finished is absolutely a valid expectation, but there are people that say "dead game" even if the last update was less than a week ago, I know I've received those comments myself despite updating my own Early Access games every 1-2 weeks.
Definitely sign up for his free newsletter. All the posts are archived so if you have time definitely go through as many as you can and you will learn a lot, there are blog posts all teh way back to 2015
I've always had good experiences with Early Access so far with on eexception. Maybe because I develop RPGs but the feedback from players has so often been helpful for fine-tuning. It also had a big advantage for the release. But nowadays people are so critical on steam that you really need an Early Access with a lot of polish. With our last title, Dead Age 2, we were initially on Mixed (45%) and had to work our way up to 76% with lots of updates. Coder got a burnout because of this hard time and I had gotten sick because of the pressure situation. (better now ;-)) Just one example of what negative things can happen. But now that you've experienced it, you know what souls like horror awaits you, so EA is fitting if you make it through. ;-)
Look at Chilla's Art. Their horror games are not that complicated, but they have some sort of a story. Their graphics style is also very unique. Like PS1 style graphics.
no no no, wrong mindset. Don't see similar games as competition. Contact them, befriend them, cross-promote and make a steam bundle together. Big opportunity.
If you wanna dip into horror without necessarily liking the genre, you could try for something like Plants Vs Zombies or more of a child-like version of horror. So like certain Disney movies can have scary moments (Frollo is pretty scary) but are clearly not on the same level as Saw or Resident Evil. You could argue Zelda games have horror elements with things like ReDeads that are always terrifying even though that's not in the same class as Silent Hill.
what about Early Access as a finished product just to get in the Early Access discovery before your actual release and go into actual discovery for your games genre? like a double dip scenario.
🎮 Get Chris' Masterclasses! Ending SOON! cmonkey.co/howtomarketagame
This site is blocked due to a possible security threat lol
Hey I have a question: I want to market my horror game with an ARG series (the reveal is at the end). How do I incorporate these tips?
Hi This is Chris, thanks for watching. Let me know if you have any questions. I will answer them here.
Hi Chris, great talk, I learned a lot.
As someone who is making an auto battler, it's great to know the genre isn't saturated yet.
A question on the steam page. When should I set a release date for it?
Do I launch my page with or without a release date?
Should I set a release date once I get the 7000 wishlists?
Can I change my release date and would you advice this if you're short the 7000 wishlist goal?
Thanks for sharing all your knowledge Chris!
Hey Chris, thank for sharing your knowledge together with CodeMonkey!
I found it all very insightful but at the same time I fall in the category of working on a larger project as my first game.
More specifically I'm creating a JRPG called Monster Haven (most of my stuff is on Twitter for now, it's done moderately well there). While I'm happy with how the game is shaping up personally I'm now a little worried that I'm wasting my time as I have zero audience on Steam thus far.
What would you suggest me or other people in a similar situation do? Should I scrap working on the whole JRPG'ish story and focus first on just releasing say an auto battler? So I at least already have a starting audience after which I can continue on the main game?
@@MonsterHavenDev I think you’re falling into the exact trap Chris is talking about.
I found you quite easily on twitter, but I don’t see your steampage?
I found a Reddit post from 3 years ago, so you’ve been working on this for a while, but you don’t have a steam page?
How are you going to get a following on Steam without a steampage?
As Chris said, you aren’t going to get much following on twitter.
If you want to make money off the game, your next Steam should be building a Steam page and linking to it from twitter and everywhere else you have.
You spent quite a lot of time and I can tel you already have some screenshots for the game, so making it shouldn’t be that difficult.
Hope it makes sense?
PS: If you don’t plan to make it a commercial project, then just keep working on it as is and enjoy the process.
Very informative - thanks buddy.
Chris is awesome, he's one of those rare people who actually know what they are talking about and are not just trying to sell you some scam course
@@edupe6185 you just steal my words :)
@@edupe6185 lmfao, do you think thomas brush is selling a scam course?
@edupe6185 Lol oh god not him. Doesn't he charge over $500 for a game dev course 😂
Chris is also selling a 500$ course here.
@@testitestmann8819 Yes, but it's content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet (unlike game development, which has millions of tutorials and videos). Additionally, it includes a lot of great data analysis work accumulated over the years, making it totally worth it.
Imagine a publisher requiring 50k wishlists to sign a deal, surely getting there alone would mean you don't need a publisher anymore
Good publishers can help with a lot more than just wishlists, they can help with Localization, Porting, they have contacts with Press, Streamers, they can get you in contact with Xbox/PS/Switch for events and special deals, etc.
You might be able to get to 50k wishlists by yourself but might not have enough time (or contacts) to make the rest of that happen. Or you might simply need funding to finish your game.
But yes definitely avoid a bad publisher that will just "post about your game" in return for 70%.
The calculus is if you can make more money with the publisher's help at that point vs on your own. Maybe they will cost you $100,000 or more but if they pay for themselves and more then it could be worth it, such as by localizing your game to new markets or porting it to new consoles, they could net you far more than they cost at the end of the day.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity But you can hire people to help you with the launch instead at that point.
Just to clarify. You don't need to get 50K to get a publisher. When you sign with a publisher they often say "Our target is to launch your game when you get 30k-50K wishlists"
@@spiderspyy yeah, and some publishers are essentially just like that, but they also have the power of their own brand to market your game even more
Chris is amazing. But I also want to say that Hugo is the best. I mean the questions that he asked, it was almost like I was lucky enough to have a direct conversation with Chris. This entire video is so genuinely informative that it would take someone months to gather this knowledge by themselves. Thank you so much Hugo and Chris.
Thanks! Yeah I tried my best to come up with questions that I thought people would want to know
Can anyone send me hugo links
I don't know how did 52 minutes finished so quickly , it was like a fun smooth movie. Really great and informative video , thanks Code Monkey for this collab 💝. I am looking forward to these Collab videos , as courses are just too expensive for me to buy even after discounts.
I always learn a lot from listening to Chris' talks. He is one of the few people teaching game marketing that is not constantly shilling his course but actually teaches valuable info without a paywall.
Great having his teaching updated since most of his video was a bit old. I like his teaching because he always very positive, so I like positiviness.
Watching this video, it is so nice to know that i do everything right, lol) I told the team, like "First, we're gonna do a couple of simple ideas in a couple of months to kick this whole thing off and we're gonna market it through Steam festivals and apply to indie-centric youtubers/streamers" etc. Still, really nice to have some more nuanced insight into the whole process.
Following Chris techniques has led my game Sky Harvest to bag front page of steam for a whole week which led to an exclusive IGN Interview. This guy realllly knows what he is doing and he is soo good at it. 🙏
That's awesome!!
That's awesome! Congrats!
With those questions you asked, it shows you did your homework for this interview ! This was a very informative and knowledgeable interview.
It's great to see a collab like this on the channel. I've been a fan of Chris' talks for a while now, really insightful!
Chris! What a fantastic pairing of two of my favorite game dev informers. Thanks for the great video, actual useable and applicable knowledge is so helpful.
This guy is a treasure. Great knowledge, great personality.
I watched this video on 1.5x by accident and there is so much info in here that I feel like I hooked up a USB cable to Data from ST:TNG. Very awesome vid, lots of good suggestions, some of which I'm going to try right now. Cheers
This is probably the most helpful video on this topic on this site.
Chris's earnest and authoritative tone definitely helped me temper my expectations as an indie dev working on my first game. I'm gonna keep working on my 3D platformer but I'm definitely gonna scale it down and follow his marketing advice!
Oh my, what a great interview. Congrats to Hugo and Chris. I learned a ton and will start reading Chris blog
dude, just cuz of the content and length, here it comes my like!!! tnkssssss dude. u the best!
recently bought his course! he's amazing thanks for this video!
Nice! I hope it helps you find success with BUMBI!
It's such a good course.. I'm going through it now.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Thank you :)!
@@samyam haha he said don't make platformers khhhh
I stumbled across Chris' videos for the first time yesterday and binged all of them. So it was awesome to see this pop up in my notifications!!!! 🤣🤣🤣
Amazing how many points align intuitevely with mine... all makes sense. I am on my first game and I only think of it as a graduation game - no money needed now, just a proof of work and a foundation to keep building on. Amazing video guys, you help the community a lot.
What an amazing person Chris is! Thank for this great talk!❤
Awesome interview thank you! I've seen a lot of Chris's talks but every time I learn something new or get reminded of something I had forgotten
Wow! Loving his way of explaining things using gestics
Thank you for all the added content like the steam pages of the games being discussed. Very well made video!
Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate that! This was a relatively complicated edit because I really wanted to show on screen everything we were talking about
I'm going to do my best to follow your advice, and I will start documenting my progress!
Best of luck in your game dev journey!
Hugo, thank you so much for making this video. I learned so much from Chris right here, and the things he said make a lot of sense. This video is a goldmine.
Chris setup lights in that way, so i thought he was made in UE5
Lol 😂
He looks like Gman from Alyx
Hahah fun comment!
This is a great video! Thank you for putting it together🔥
I love Splattercat's channel! Most of the indie games I buy come from watching him. He's been doing this for a long while.
All true and good advices from Chris. I am just starting out with 3D in Blender and i want to make some maps for Assetto Corsa game. So the maps are kinda like my first games which will teach me the basics, maybe later i will make my own game, but right now, i'm not ready for that.
Nice! Modding is always a great way to get started in game dev!
So cool to see you both in one video
Thank you very much for this valuable insight! I am close to release my game Cursed Dungeon Raider in hard mode on Steam and thanks to you guys, now I know what I have to do to make my marketing, my whole presentation better.
Really appreciated!
I think Chris has some good insights into marketing your game on Steam. Although, the part about it being impossible to be successful with your first game isn’t true. I think you should make the game you’re most passionate about but make sure your scope is within your timeline. Passion is key to finishing a project, no matter the size. My first game took 5 years to make and it was very successful.
It's not strictly impossible, it's just extremely difficult. You need to be either extremely talented or lucky or both. I made 40 games before I managed to make minimum wage.
Congrats on your success!
@@CodeMonkeyUnityWere those commercially quality games or just prototype demos? From my observation, most games that don’t make it were never polished enough and fully completed, but I know it’s hard to make money from games. It’s a crystal ball, but I think the more stuff you can do to increase your chances, obviously the better. It’s a tough business that’s for sure. 😅
I learned a lot from Chris’ free course and it‘s nice to see my fav Dev RUclipsr collaborate with him 👀👾💪🏻 Awesome video
Ive been hovering around the game dev community a little bit lately... I'm trying to get ready to make my first game as a hobby project and an academic exercise.
That said... my dream project is basically an rpg haha. So... what i take away from this is I might want to tinker in the world of game dev a little before committing to a bigger project like what I have in mind now.
Damn. This was a joy to listen to this guy
Thank you for the quality and free content
I've been taking most advices from Chris except the "hire someone to make the thumbnail" bit... At least for my first game on steam. I just want to walk through the whole process by myself at least once and wouldn't wanna miss out on that. I guess whatever traffic I can get from my self-made store assets is what the game deserves
One of the best videos i saw on game marketing
This video is almost like a treasure given by those gentlemen, thanks a lot
Thanks for all the info, Tim Roth
Thanks for sharing! I am a little overwhelmed in where to start.
We're all in this together!
I had CaseOh play my game and that single 10 minute bit on his stream was the best marketing that happened to me in 3 years of gamedev
Amazing interview!! Definitely will get the course!
Cris is the coolest indie game marketing teacher
Thanks a lot for this content.
There is a lot of material here. working on my first game, I'm taking lots of notes :)
This was great! Thank you for all of this amazing information.
You are putting out really valuable stuff on the internet. Thanks for all the work you do monkey :)
This is gold, i actually watch this twice.
Thanks Hugo for this video. It's one of the most useful one I've seen so far about this topic. 😀
Two of the best men in gamedev.
42:19 I hope this happens to me 😂
Thank you guys so much for this helpful video! I‘ve learned a lot! Chris is a master! 🙌🏻👏🏼
GOATED! TY man, epic content
Great content! A lot of Early Access games fall into the stigma created by big studios with 'Pre-Orders'. Very tricky step to take and agree that version 1.0 > all. Game development takes time, if you want early support - it gets hard :/
Thank You for this information 😁💯👍🏻
This is really valuable.
Great video! I love Chris' insight. He's got such fantastic advice!
About puzzles and platformers. Unless you're big into these genres, chances are that you've played only the best of the best they have to offer. We're talking games that took multiple years and multiple people to develop, and even more years the developers had to spend prior studying the genre to avoid pitfalls you'd likely never know about unless you're familiar with that particular iceberg.
isn't that basically every genre at this point?
Chris is awesome, thanks for sharing!
Chris got some good camera lighting right there, very sweet.
thankyou so much to you both for this video
A long video, but packed with good stuff!
Best colab in indie games!
Fun story,I connect those two 🎉
Haha! Nice :)
the best thing to do is find some streamers to play your games, gift it to them, i duno it's hard to market games for sure. i've seen so many good games not get noticed this year. The Last Medic needs more attention. that game is the best thing since Celeste for me.
Amazing interview ... thank you !!!
oh dat is awesome gonna learn it later (now having fun first weeks of coding transporting) smashing around objects in Unity and UE so fun.
Fantastic video. These tips are gold.
This guy seems like he knows his stuff BTW, thank you Code Monkey for having him on!
This is absolutely gold 🤯
This was great! Wish I had the means to get the course, but this was already so informative!
Definitely sign up for his free newsletter! And if you don't have money but you do have time then go read his entire blog archive, there's weekly posts going all the way back to 2015. If you take the time to read all of that you will gain a massive amount of knowledge!
Really cool video!
Great interview, thank you very much
what a great video, it's simple enough for a non marketing person to understand
I think it can be worth while spending a good amount of time on a game. It needs to feel fulfilling for you, otherwise it won’t carry the soul needs to make something other people are going to enjoy too. You can keep at it if you keep the passion fuelled :)
Great information, thanks!
great talk, great informations, got tons of ideas, thanks guys
I don't have a dream game -- my first Steam game was a roguelite FPS. My next game will be an open world first person RPG -- I considered a dollhouse life simulator, but that would have been much, much harder to make really work and be good quality. The RPG I can definitely finish.
(Of course, life sims are so few the audience is chomping at the bit to have more than one game available, if you can make a good one.)
This is gold, thanks!!
thank you, you the best as always🎉🎉🎉
love the interview, good knowledge..
but this is basiically the meme of devs being introvert and marketing being extroverts :D
love this... I need to do all this for my game
I wish I loved myself a tenth of how much this dude loves himself. Respct ❤️ Let me recap. I’m suggested to make a cookie toucher simulator, make 4 staged screenshots in different biomes, edit a trailer, contact the organisers of a festival and tell them they can be the first to announce my game and then open a page on steam. Anyway, will you be in Barcelona in September for that Unity stuff?
heh yup technically if you do that then your odds of finding success are quite a bit higher than if you were to do a generic puzzle platformer with a single world, no trailer, no festival.
Yup I'll be at Unite 2024!
@CodeMonkeyUnity even if taken individually are good pieces of advice I was joking about how incompatible are all together😅 I think no festival will be happy to announce in world premiere my “four biomes cookie toucher”. And also was a bit confusing the answer to “when should I start marketing my game?” “as long as you got 4 staged, no ai, no script biomes screenshots” and “a nice and polished trailer”, those are two very distant stages! Nice you’re there!
Chris Zukowski has THE BEST GDC talks
Great video!
Right, the part which said "people use their game designer brains and there must be this system and that system...just make the horror game! just make it scary!". This is something I wanted to convey to people, but somehow it's super hard to tell them.
I kinda understood why people started with platformers. It's because there are abundance of free tutorials on platformers. I don't know real origin, but even me started with 2D platformer for my first game.
What I want people to understand is that game development sometimes could be about experimenting which Code Monkey seems to love. Sometimes it's about storytelling, sending messages, or making an artwork. You people should start asking yourselves what do you want to do in game development. For me it's just storytelling because I love working on world building. As for you, well just ask yourselves.
ChrisZ keeping us Tucson devs on the map!
520 represent!
Chris looks epic with that lighting
amazing content, as ever
If you realease an early access game I 100% expect regular updates. Not necesarily code, but some sort of activity on the steam page. This is not a 'weird' position. This is the deal. You get money early to finish the product, I get to participate in the process on some level.
Chris was more referring to the people that demand non-stop daily updates. Expecting the game to be finished is absolutely a valid expectation, but there are people that say "dead game" even if the last update was less than a week ago, I know I've received those comments myself despite updating my own Early Access games every 1-2 weeks.
Wish I could afford it, seems like some great knowledge. Back to the school of hard knocks for me.
Definitely sign up for his free newsletter. All the posts are archived so if you have time definitely go through as many as you can and you will learn a lot, there are blog posts all teh way back to 2015
Will do thank you for the info!
I've always had good experiences with Early Access so far with on eexception. Maybe because I develop RPGs but the feedback from players has so often been helpful for fine-tuning. It also had a big advantage for the release. But nowadays people are so critical on steam that you really need an Early Access with a lot of polish. With our last title, Dead Age 2, we were initially on Mixed (45%) and had to work our way up to 76% with lots of updates. Coder got a burnout because of this hard time and I had gotten sick because of the pressure situation. (better now ;-)) Just one example of what negative things can happen. But now that you've experienced it, you know what souls like horror awaits you, so EA is fitting if you make it through. ;-)
Chris has really improved his lighting, I call this look "God of Analytics"
Look at Chilla's Art. Their horror games are not that complicated, but they have some sort of a story. Their graphics style is also very unique. Like PS1 style graphics.
2 legends!
29:20
Chris: Make small games
Dev: What you want me to crunch?
Chris: NOOOO!
Haha amazing xDD
Thank you!
Listen guys. PLEASE, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS ADVICE...if you also make strategy and Tycoon games and have a release date close to one of mine😅
heh best of luck with the release!
no no no, wrong mindset. Don't see similar games as competition. Contact them, befriend them, cross-promote and make a steam bundle together. Big opportunity.
If you wanna dip into horror without necessarily liking the genre, you could try for something like Plants Vs Zombies or more of a child-like version of horror. So like certain Disney movies can have scary moments (Frollo is pretty scary) but are clearly not on the same level as Saw or Resident Evil. You could argue Zelda games have horror elements with things like ReDeads that are always terrifying even though that's not in the same class as Silent Hill.
I'd love to see the stats of what genres do best in Early Access. Perhaps some genres, benefit more from Early Access.
what about Early Access as a finished product just to get in the Early Access discovery before your actual release and go into actual discovery for your games genre? like a double dip scenario.
Dude’s intimately positioned to his camera