I think it has to do with where one is currently. If you have released at least one game and have not been successful and you have been beating yourself up about it like "why aren't my games successful, am I a bad game dev" etc. then someone telling you that success is really really hard and very very unlikely will certainly make you feel better. Especially if your motivation for making games isn't about being successful but just for the love of making good games. In other words the realization that good games are not always successful games would of course make someone interested in making good games who previously thought that a good game would automatically mean success and therefore their lack of success means their game is bad would of course feel better to know that success is not a reflection on their own quality and craftsmanship. Sorry for the terrible run on sentence, lol.
I also think all of the people creating such videos and writing articles with the same message don't really understand that the majority or those thousands of games are two-months low-quality 2d projects without any innovative ideas or interesting mechanics/graphics. Such projects do not participate in any competition with serious projects in reality. Add to this the fact that the majority of those developers don't research the market, don't try to understand anything about business and don't try to work with a publisher (or when they try to find financing, they undervalue their burn rate and ask $10000 on kickstarter for a 3-year project with 5 full-time employees), leaving their success or failure to the random (making them gamblers with unnecessary steps of creating low-quality copycat games).
And this is exactly the reason why I stopped thinking about game dev as a possible job and converted it into a hobby instead. I want to make games I want to play, not ones that sell.
"You're not special. Nor is your game. And You will never ship a hit." I'm glad the kids who made Baba is You, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Return of the Obra Dinn, DARQ, Re:Call, Heartbound, Velsarbor (the main developer who co-founded the studio behind CrossCode) didn't listen.
I'm glad they didn't listen too. All great example of successes and we definitely talk about success all the time. However, how many failed? We never talk about them.
@@DavidReidChannel do you talk about the guys who make shovelware? Or the guys who put their blood, sweat and tears into one single years over years? Because those are probably far less.
@@o_q thanks, I'm not planning to do that. I'm planning to create something special, which is going to take years, because I feel special (which I am, I have it on paper 🌚) so I should be good and this video shouldn't apply to me.
I like the concept of keeping it real, that if your intire video was only the opening statement I would give it a thumbs up. low expectations is my trick to navigate life hhh
I was never in it for the money. I want to create games in order to realise creative ideas, challenge myself by learning new things and just make something I enjoy. Sure, getting a bit of money would be nice, but I don't want to create double A titles, with large communities and long term support and high replayability. I just want to make fun little experiences. Now assets on the other hand, those I want to create to make money from
Creativity is absolutely the reason to do this. I've spent my entire software career developing mundane business applications that are void of creative thought and surprise, surprise no one cares about them nor will they remember them. That is why I'm building games so that I can finally use my dev skills in a creative way. And in all honesty, if I could make some money along the way, I'd be pretty happy.
Another thing to note is that most games published on steam are also absolute trash, which skew the statistics a lot. If the median is around $1,000 then perhaps the actual average for good or decent games is a bit more. Just something to think about.
"Another thing to note is that most games published on steam are also absolute trash" exactly! and you can't put those in the same basket as the solo game passion projects that became hits!
There's a difference between making a game you want to make money from, and making a game as a hobby because you genuinely want to make something you saw in a dream 2 years ago. Personally, I vastly prefer the weird little games where you can tell that someone just had an idea they wanted to get out there, and made it in their spare time. You can tell that people like Toby Fox and Concerned Ape are those kinds of passionate guys, who just so happened to make something good enough to sell. They'd probably be making small games on the side if they had different jobs. As soon as you make games into whatever the "AAA Industry" is making, it loses so much colour, personality and soul. That sucks the joy out of it. When people aren't passionate about what they're making, and they don't care, you can tell.
I think for a game to be a hit it needs at least a team, in addition to being the right game at the right time, luck basically. The only game I can think of that was a hit which had a one person dev team was Minecraft, but that to me seems like a one of kind scenario. A passionate dev team, scale, scope, concept, quality, aesthetic appeal, audience and then being the right game at the right time. A hit game needs to be the exact game a lot of people are looking for at the right time. The most current example is Palworld, a pocket monster game with some new elements added to the genre created by a dev team that is passionate about making games that are fun delivered at a time when Pokemon, a company that has had the pocket monster genre cornered for the longest time, is completely mismanaging their brand. Essentially its success is built on a fresh execution of a concept that hasnt had any new idea put into it in a very very long time so much so that Pokemon has lost a very big portion of its audience. The last three iterations of Pokemon games have recieved bigger and bigger fan condemnation. Palworld is basically a release of that frustration. It's the Pokemon game that the fans wanted, but never got because of the lazy devs at game freak. And given that Pokemon is a massive world renown brand, they have essentially cultivated the soil for the success of this new title by creating a massive audience for their pocket monster games and then letting them down tremendously.
Luck definitely plays a huge part. You're right about Minecraft. I think the Pokemon issue is more likely to do with poor management rather than lazy devs. It's easy to get rid of devs, its a lot harder to get rid of shit management... Sometimes. Thanks for watching and commenting.
My current goal in order to become a successful game developer is to successfully develop a game :P Nothing less, and nothing more. Won't even release this first one on Steam or charge money for it.
the 14k number in and of itself is meaningless. it doesn't say anything about your competition and your chances at success. all it means that some "publish my steam page" button has been clicked 14k times. it doesn't say anything about the particular market applicable to your product.. - how many of those "releases" are just steam pages that get abandoned? - how many of those games are actually playable? - how many of those games are even remotely comparable to yours? there's many more of these questions you have to filter this number by. in the end, the actual number of releases affecting your chances at success is drastically smaller. and then of course that resulting number must be seen in relation to the much larger number of players. it's important to understand that most players are not just playing one game at a time, too. and even a player opts for a similar game to yours instead of yours, if they enjoyed that one, then yours might just be the next one they get as they are into that type of game and want more of it. this way, your game can actually benefit from games that are similar to it. if a community formed around a game similar to yours, great - all those people aren't going to play that game exclusively or forever, most will want more games of that kind. the numbers on median earning are similarly meaningless taken out of context. a game built in a weak or month is of course not expected to earn as much as a game build in two or three years, so if your project is more in the latter category, then looking at a median value that is skewed by games that are not comparable with yours at all is pointless. > "only 25% of steam games made more than $50k" and why would you put an "only" there? how many of those releases do you think weren't even expected to make any money? for how many of those releases do you think even $100 would surpass expectations? if your game is expected to make more than 50k and you want remotely meaningful numbers to gauge your chances, then of course you must compare it only with other games that ALSO were expected to make more than 50k (if that information was available. it is not, but the point is letting your morale be affected by meaningless numbers is silly).
Hi David. I don't know if you remember me, but I haven't skipped even a day to studyJS since 2021 Oct. Now I started to study TS. Your video has been sophisticated more and I'm glad I can watch your videos again.
@@DavidReidChannel I never thought that I could understand classes, but I didn't stop till I understood. I want to be like you and to make browser games. That's why I can keep going. Thank you David🤓🐨
** Whoa, those numbers are wild!** My friend makes a great point - it can be both discouraging and inspiring to see others' success in game development. It's actually made me re-think my own career path. After years in IT, I'm craving something creative and fulfilling. Game development ticks all the boxes for me: learning new skills, expressing creativity, and building something my loved ones can enjoy. The learning curve seems steep, especially since I'm more of an Unreal Engine person than a Unity developer. But hey, gotta keep trying different things to find my dream job, right? At my age it will be a dream to release something, ... anything. ;) +1 Sub
I can completely relate to this. I too have been developing for years. Corporate environments are often void of creativity. That's why I want to build games. I want to be creative and build things that I'm proud of. Thanks for watching and commenting. Would love to see the game projects that you are working on now or in the future.
Here's how I motivate myself: If I sell a game for £1 and 100 ppl buy it that's £100. Extrapolate that for the actual selling price of my game (or whatever product, and minus steam's cut ofc)
Is worth making a game, when you will make less than $5,000? I'm doing this for fun, and to learn a new skill. If I make any money along the way, thats the bonus side quest!
Survivorship bias is exactly it my friend. We focus on success and completely ignore failure. Failure is definitely an option and whilst that is considered a negative narrative its kind of dumb to focus on a small portion of data that fits our positive narrative.
@@DavidReidChannel How many failures did the guy who created "Angry Birds" have? I recommend the book "App-illionaires". There are lessons to be learned - focusing on the negative is not one of them.
Jokes on you, I have seen the stats of the novel publishing industry (they are far worse) and I decided to take that on . Making games would just be a more financially sound decision for me at this point.
He suggested no such thing. He suggested that your first game should be small because he believes that going small on your first game allows you to learn fast and fail fast. He also believes you should do that for your next few games. He also knows, that thinking your shit hot on day one, doesn't mean you will be. In short my friend, you have to run a few crap races before you can run a good one.
Haha! Good point. I live in Brexit Britain so maybe one day in the future, making $5,000 on a game will turn me into a Brexit pound billionaire. Never thought I'd find a positive argument for Brexit. :-D. Thanks for watching and commenting. Both are appreciated.
I did forget but you are absolutely right. Your channel was my go to place for tips and tricks when I played Civ Rev. Would still be playing it if my Xbox360 hadn't died. Thanks for watching and sharing.
nah bro im not watching past the intro because that's SO NEGATIVE. think negative thoughts, get negative results. so many creators teach game dev and just wanna pour out negativity. Why do yall do that? what's the point? a bit of perspective? there's a better way to do it. I'm sure you're a good person but that mindset is TOXIC
I understand my friend. Negativity isn't always nice to hear but life isn't always positive. And toxic positivity isn't any better than toxic negativity. Figuratively speaking, sometimes you have to wade through the bad shit to get to the good stuff. Had you got past the negative intro you would have seen the positive stuff. Nevertheless, I appreciate the watch and the engagement. Thanks for watching and commenting.
What are your relevant experience ? You seemingly have only made one low stake free game at this point, are you a seasoned dev with many success and failure under his belt ? Right now i get the impression you're regurgitating popular opinions from gamedev reddit as someone that's released a fair few projects of different scales.
To be honest, from your opening salvo, I get the impression that I won't be able to win you over so I'm not going to bother trying. I wish you all the best user-qx9pe2sv4c and thank you for watching the video.
Convert these numbers to a third world currency and it looks like a pretty sweet deal 😆... then when seeing the quality of the bottom 50%.. it only gets better!
@@DavidReidChannel yeah definitely, I would love for that too of course :) I do believe that passion leads to money eventually, keep at it friend! Subbed
Your dream game was yet another Asteroids clone ? Who's going to buy this ? There's like 30 of them on newgrounds for free with the same level of quality yours has. Everyone love to blame the industry and then you try their game and it sucks ass or is absolutely unimaginative
I haven't made my dream game. I did however, mention in the video, that I had a dream game that I wanted to make. And obviously, no one is going to buy the game that I am giving away for free. I mentioned that the game was free in the video too. My "Asteroids clone" as you put it, was a project that introduced me to a) using Godot and b) going through the distribution process on Steam. The project succeeded on both points. I do however appreciate that those objectives are personal and of no interest to the average gamer. Hence why I gave the game away for free. And finally, no one is blaming the industry for anything. Making games is hard. Making commercially successful games is even harder. These are just facts and it would be negligent to ignore these facts.
@@DavidReidChannel Have you released any monetized games that were successful or unsuccessful then ? I can't see any other project under your name. You make a lot of claim in the video but i find it hard to trust when you seemingly have no real experience.
I discussed freely available statistics about the monetary performance of games on Steam. You can actually get this information from Steam yourself. It's hard to make games, its even harder to make successful games. But as I mentioned in the video, that you've apparently watched, Jake Birkett has made a living as a game developer for eleven plus years with out a single hit. That video inspired me to start my journey into making games and distributing them on Steam. You mentioned that it was hard to trust me, to that I say, don't trust me. You don't need to trust me. Instead you can watch Jake Birketts excellent talk. I left a link in the description. I hope his video inspires you the way it inspired me.
@@DavidReidChannel This is a lot of word to say you are completely unqualified to give advice on game development. You're just regurgitating information at that point. You have no relevant experience that would lead to you being able to parse those "freely available statistics" for anyone else. You are legitimately harmful to the journey of beginner dev as they have no experience either and are easy prey for this kind of lazy content.
Well, clearly I'm not going to win you over my friend. With that in mind, I'll let you be and I wish you all the best in your own gaming journey. Thanks for watching and commenting.
I'll ship a "hit". Not Steam, no, just targeting a platform that is more challenging to target and where fans of the system will gob anything up even if it's not special just if it seems to have vaguely enough quality. People should really consider expanding into releasing on classic game consoles. You can sell the same game trice to the same people if you just make limited special editions with barely any differences, one with blue bullets, one with pink bullets and so on. You just have to announce the special editions after the order window for the actual game is closed but while it's not shipped yet. Like DLC except even more pointless, but full price and play on FOMO. Limited? Who's counting? You're counting. You count however you want. :3
I think its a sound strategy to target more than one platform. I'm considering targeting other platforms but would prefer to have a few small releases under my belt first.
@@DavidReidChannel noooo no no no, not necessarily more than one platform. If you're targeting Jaguar or NeoGeo CD or 3DO or TurboGrafx or MegaCD or a cartridge based console you can't just follow a tutorial and slap things together in Unity, you have to actually develop for that one system from the ground up. Then if you want a port, you get to repeat most of that process for some other system.
As someone who played Pocket Pairs previous game Craftopia people are severely underestimating the amount of effort put into Palworld and the massive improvement in quality. The success of Palworld is built upon the failures of their previous game Craftopia. Palworld is just craftopia 2 but with far better designs for the creatures you can capture, far better graphics, far better automation, far better combat systems and quality of life. They didn't just slap the game together, there was a lot of thought and time put into it.
Is it just me or did the numbers he gave at the start make me feel better instead of worse.
Seeing that the odds are stacked against you and feeling better about it is legendary. Thanks for watching and commenting you legend. :-)
I think it has to do with where one is currently.
If you have released at least one game and have not been successful and you have been beating yourself up about it like "why aren't my games successful, am I a bad game dev" etc. then someone telling you that success is really really hard and very very unlikely will certainly make you feel better. Especially if your motivation for making games isn't about being successful but just for the love of making good games. In other words the realization that good games are not always successful games would of course make someone interested in making good games who previously thought that a good game would automatically mean success and therefore their lack of success means their game is bad would of course feel better to know that success is not a reflection on their own quality and craftsmanship. Sorry for the terrible run on sentence, lol.
@@plastictouch6796 Don't be sorry lol, that does make sense, I didn't think of it that way.
I have a feeling you'd make a great gambling addict
I also think all of the people creating such videos and writing articles with the same message don't really understand that the majority or those thousands of games are two-months low-quality 2d projects without any innovative ideas or interesting mechanics/graphics. Such projects do not participate in any competition with serious projects in reality. Add to this the fact that the majority of those developers don't research the market, don't try to understand anything about business and don't try to work with a publisher (or when they try to find financing, they undervalue their burn rate and ask $10000 on kickstarter for a 3-year project with 5 full-time employees), leaving their success or failure to the random (making them gamblers with unnecessary steps of creating low-quality copycat games).
0:46 as someone who is 15 and will be happy if even 10 people enjoy my games I see this as an absolute win
I'm fifty plus and I'd be happy if even 10 people enjoyed my games. Thanks for watching and commenting. :-)
And this is exactly the reason why I stopped thinking about game dev as a possible job and converted it into a hobby instead. I want to make games I want to play, not ones that sell.
Thank you for delivering the motivational speech in the most radical way possible, Sensei 😊
You're welcome my friend. Thanks for watching and commenting. :-)
Great advice. Thanks for sharing this inspirational talk of Jake!
You are welcome. Thanks for watching and commenting.
So youre saying I have a 4% chance of making 1 million revenue? Nice!
Haha! Go for it my friend. After all, your name is lucky, so if anyone can get there it's you. :-)
4% ? …. so… I only have to crank out 25 games … sweet! A million dollar! Here I come!
"You're not special. Nor is your game. And You will never ship a hit."
I'm glad the kids who made Baba is You, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Return of the Obra Dinn, DARQ, Re:Call, Heartbound, Velsarbor (the main developer who co-founded the studio behind CrossCode) didn't listen.
I'm glad they didn't listen too. All great example of successes and we definitely talk about success all the time. However, how many failed? We never talk about them.
@@DavidReidChannel do you talk about the guys who make shovelware? Or the guys who put their blood, sweat and tears into one single years over years? Because those are probably far less.
in contrast, this guy only made a shovelware asteroids clone
Well, as I said in the video, I'm not special, nor is my game and I'll never ship a hit. Thanks for watching and commenting. :-)
@@o_q thanks, I'm not planning to do that. I'm planning to create something special, which is going to take years, because I feel special (which I am, I have it on paper 🌚) so I should be good and this video shouldn't apply to me.
Thanks for the videos! (And the link to this GDC talk, hadn't seen this and I'm loving it)
Can't wait to see more videos from you ^_^
You're welcome and thanks for watching and commenting.
I like the concept of keeping it real, that if your intire video was only the opening statement I would give it a thumbs up.
low expectations is my trick to navigate life hhh
It's definitely best to keep it real. Thanks for watching and commenting.
and 4th. Do not leave your regular job yet :)
Absolutely! Do not quit your job. :-)
Dang! Space this was a great video. Definitely gonna watch that. No hit wonder video as well. Thanks thanks, keep making the no hit wonders.
You should definitely watch it. Provides a little positivity for those of us wishing to make something of our passion for game dev.
You should definitely watch it. It provides a little positivity for those of us who want to spend our days making games.
I was never in it for the money. I want to create games in order to realise creative ideas, challenge myself by learning new things and just make something I enjoy. Sure, getting a bit of money would be nice, but I don't want to create double A titles, with large communities and long term support and high replayability. I just want to make fun little experiences.
Now assets on the other hand, those I want to create to make money from
Creativity is absolutely the reason to do this. I've spent my entire software career developing mundane business applications that are void of creative thought and surprise, surprise no one cares about them nor will they remember them. That is why I'm building games so that I can finally use my dev skills in a creative way. And in all honesty, if I could make some money along the way, I'd be pretty happy.
Another thing to note is that most games published on steam are also absolute trash, which skew the statistics a lot. If the median is around $1,000 then perhaps the actual average for good or decent games is a bit more.
Just something to think about.
I think you are most definitely right my friend. Thanks for watching and commenting.
"Another thing to note is that most games published on steam are also absolute trash" exactly! and you can't put those in the same basket as the solo game passion projects that became hits!
Nah my doctor said i'm very special. I'm so special i get to eat 3 candies per day
Jokes aside, this video was very informative and gave me a better perspective about my project and future projects!
Haha! I can't argue with your doctor. I'm also slightly envious that you get 3 candies a day.
Thank you.
There's a difference between making a game you want to make money from, and making a game as a hobby because you genuinely want to make something you saw in a dream 2 years ago.
Personally, I vastly prefer the weird little games where you can tell that someone just had an idea they wanted to get out there, and made it in their spare time.
You can tell that people like Toby Fox and Concerned Ape are those kinds of passionate guys, who just so happened to make something good enough to sell. They'd probably be making small games on the side if they had different jobs.
As soon as you make games into whatever the "AAA Industry" is making, it loses so much colour, personality and soul. That sucks the joy out of it.
When people aren't passionate about what they're making, and they don't care, you can tell.
I think for a game to be a hit it needs at least a team, in addition to being the right game at the right time, luck basically. The only game I can think of that was a hit which had a one person dev team was Minecraft, but that to me seems like a one of kind scenario. A passionate dev team, scale, scope, concept, quality, aesthetic appeal, audience and then being the right game at the right time. A hit game needs to be the exact game a lot of people are looking for at the right time.
The most current example is Palworld, a pocket monster game with some new elements added to the genre created by a dev team that is passionate about making games that are fun delivered at a time when Pokemon, a company that has had the pocket monster genre cornered for the longest time, is completely mismanaging their brand. Essentially its success is built on a fresh execution of a concept that hasnt had any new idea put into it in a very very long time so much so that Pokemon has lost a very big portion of its audience. The last three iterations of Pokemon games have recieved bigger and bigger fan condemnation. Palworld is basically a release of that frustration. It's the Pokemon game that the fans wanted, but never got because of the lazy devs at game freak. And given that Pokemon is a massive world renown brand, they have essentially cultivated the soil for the success of this new title by creating a massive audience for their pocket monster games and then letting them down tremendously.
Luck definitely plays a huge part. You're right about Minecraft. I think the Pokemon issue is more likely to do with poor management rather than lazy devs. It's easy to get rid of devs, its a lot harder to get rid of shit management... Sometimes. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Stardew Valley was a hit, but the one man building it worked insane hours and it still took him years to release
Baba is You, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Return of the Obra Dinn, DARQ, Re:Call, ... All Solo Developer Game Hits!
My current goal in order to become a successful game developer is to successfully develop a game :P
Nothing less, and nothing more. Won't even release this first one on Steam or charge money for it.
the 14k number in and of itself is meaningless.
it doesn't say anything about your competition and your chances at success.
all it means that some "publish my steam page" button has been clicked 14k times.
it doesn't say anything about the particular market applicable to your product..
- how many of those "releases" are just steam pages that get abandoned?
- how many of those games are actually playable?
- how many of those games are even remotely comparable to yours?
there's many more of these questions you have to filter this number by.
in the end, the actual number of releases affecting your chances at success is drastically smaller.
and then of course that resulting number must be seen in relation to the much larger number of players.
it's important to understand that most players are not just playing one game at a time, too.
and even a player opts for a similar game to yours instead of yours, if they enjoyed that one, then yours might just be the next one they get as they are into that type of game and want more of it.
this way, your game can actually benefit from games that are similar to it.
if a community formed around a game similar to yours, great - all those people aren't going to play that game exclusively or forever, most will want more games of that kind.
the numbers on median earning are similarly meaningless taken out of context.
a game built in a weak or month is of course not expected to earn as much as a game build in two or three years, so if your project is more in the latter category, then looking at a median value that is skewed by games that are not comparable with yours at all is pointless.
> "only 25% of steam games made more than $50k"
and why would you put an "only" there?
how many of those releases do you think weren't even expected to make any money?
for how many of those releases do you think even $100 would surpass expectations?
if your game is expected to make more than 50k and you want remotely meaningful numbers to gauge your chances, then of course you must compare it only with other games that ALSO were expected to make more than 50k (if that information was available. it is not, but the point is letting your morale be affected by meaningless numbers is silly).
Brilliant video. Not much else to say. Wish I'd come across this sooner.
Thanks my friend.
Hi David. I don't know if you remember me, but I haven't skipped even a day to studyJS since 2021 Oct. Now I started to study TS. Your video has been sophisticated more and I'm glad I can watch your videos again.
I do remember you my friend. Glad to hear your studies are going well.
@@DavidReidChannel I never thought that I could understand classes, but I didn't stop till I understood. I want to be like you and to make browser games. That's why I can keep going. Thank you David🤓🐨
thanks for the Non-Ted Talk,Feel a lot relieve /and calm after 1 month + crunch time try to Finish a Simple project
Haha! Nice one. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Amazing I hope to hear more from you on game development tips!
Thank you friend. I will definitely be releasing more videos in the near future. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Gooooood advice. Straight to the point and very detailed.
Thank you my friend
Just watch 💥
Take care David !!! ❤thanjs for the news!
Thanks my friend.
** Whoa, those numbers are wild!** My friend makes a great point - it can be both discouraging and inspiring to see others' success in game development.
It's actually made me re-think my own career path. After years in IT, I'm craving something creative and fulfilling. Game development ticks all the boxes for me: learning new skills, expressing creativity, and building something my loved ones can enjoy.
The learning curve seems steep, especially since I'm more of an Unreal Engine person than a Unity developer. But hey, gotta keep trying different things to find my dream job, right? At my age it will be a dream to release something, ... anything. ;) +1 Sub
I can completely relate to this. I too have been developing for years. Corporate environments are often void of creativity. That's why I want to build games. I want to be creative and build things that I'm proud of. Thanks for watching and commenting. Would love to see the game projects that you are working on now or in the future.
Here's how I motivate myself: If I sell a game for £1 and 100 ppl buy it that's £100. Extrapolate that for the actual selling price of my game (or whatever product, and minus steam's cut ofc)
After spending my last 5 years making games I can testify that everything you said is 110% true.
It's definitely a tough gig but we keep going. :-) Thanks for watching and commenting.
Is worth making a game, when you will make less than $5,000?
I'm doing this for fun, and to learn a new skill. If I make any money along the way, thats the bonus side quest!
Definitely the right attitude. :-)
"You're not special. Nor is your game. And You will never ship a hit." If only the kid who wrote "Flappy Bird" had listened to you...
Haha!
And the kids who made Baba is You, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Return of the Obra Dinn, DARQ, Re:Call.
Look up survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias is exactly it my friend. We focus on success and completely ignore failure. Failure is definitely an option and whilst that is considered a negative narrative its kind of dumb to focus on a small portion of data that fits our positive narrative.
@@DavidReidChannel How many failures did the guy who created "Angry Birds" have? I recommend the book "App-illionaires". There are lessons to be learned - focusing on the negative is not one of them.
Jokes on you, I have seen the stats of the novel publishing industry (they are far worse) and I decided to take that on . Making games would just be a more financially sound decision for me at this point.
Yep, the joke is definitely on me.
4:03
that part is gold lmao
Glad you liked it. :-)
Omg, it's literal Magnus Shale Fist of Iron Clan
Had to google him but Haha. Not bad. Pretty sure I'm taller... just.
Did he suggest making 6 month crap? There are 10k+ games like that every year!
He suggested no such thing. He suggested that your first game should be small because he believes that going small on your first game allows you to learn fast and fail fast. He also believes you should do that for your next few games. He also knows, that thinking your shit hot on day one, doesn't mean you will be. In short my friend, you have to run a few crap races before you can run a good one.
@@DavidReidChannel As long as ALL OF THAT stays OFF Steam. Nobody wants that!
It is presumptuous to speak on behalf of everyone who uses Steam.
5 seconds in and im even more depressed
Don't be depressed my friend. You've got this. 👍😀
Ah I was joking, but thanks for the motivation. I like to look on the bright side of things.
I hope you make it man I really do.
Thank you my friend
Is that millenium falcon on the desk behind you?
Yep. Good spy. It is the only toy I've kept from my childhood.
Thank you, sometimes it is necessary for someone to put our feet on the ground..
Your welcome my friend.
Dave you are the first person that think like me! Realistic and Pragmatic vision without romantic entrepeneur fable! Accept this fact Hurt less!😂😂😂
I do try to be pragmatic. It's not always appreciated but I think its the right approach. Thanks for watching.
well, living in a country where a yearly average is less than 18k $, it's all good news :) if we spend less than a year on a game fulltime
Haha! Good point. I live in Brexit Britain so maybe one day in the future, making $5,000 on a game will turn me into a Brexit pound billionaire. Never thought I'd find a positive argument for Brexit. :-D. Thanks for watching and commenting. Both are appreciated.
I'd be happy to make an indi game that made me $500... Since it's a side hustle
Me too buddy. Me too...
And don't forget to mention that the revenue is pre-tax. So you get even less than that.
I did forget but you are absolutely right. Your channel was my go to place for tips and tricks when I played Civ Rev. Would still be playing it if my Xbox360 hadn't died. Thanks for watching and sharing.
nah bro im not watching past the intro because that's SO NEGATIVE. think negative thoughts, get negative results. so many creators teach game dev and just wanna pour out negativity. Why do yall do that? what's the point? a bit of perspective? there's a better way to do it. I'm sure you're a good person but that mindset is TOXIC
I understand my friend. Negativity isn't always nice to hear but life isn't always positive. And toxic positivity isn't any better than toxic negativity. Figuratively speaking, sometimes you have to wade through the bad shit to get to the good stuff. Had you got past the negative intro you would have seen the positive stuff. Nevertheless, I appreciate the watch and the engagement. Thanks for watching and commenting.
whats the song startin at 0:45 ???
It's from the youtube audio library. Its, traversing by GodMode
What are your relevant experience ? You seemingly have only made one low stake free game at this point, are you a seasoned dev with many success and failure under his belt ?
Right now i get the impression you're regurgitating popular opinions from gamedev reddit as someone that's released a fair few projects of different scales.
To be honest, from your opening salvo, I get the impression that I won't be able to win you over so I'm not going to bother trying. I wish you all the best user-qx9pe2sv4c and thank you for watching the video.
your out here spitting facts lmao
Typo in the third frame of the video lmao
Ah, the first frame. Classic fail on my part. Thanks for pointing that out.
I just want to make a game before i die
I know exactly what you mean my friend. :-)
Convert these numbers to a third world currency and it looks like a pretty sweet deal 😆... then when seeing the quality of the bottom 50%.. it only gets better!
Haha!
Not everything needs a monetary target, right? for some of us game making is a hobby
That is very true my friend. To be honest, its a hobby for me too but I'd be pretty happy if that hobby generated cash. :-)
@@DavidReidChannel yeah definitely, I would love for that too of course :)
I do believe that passion leads to money eventually, keep at it friend! Subbed
Thanks for the sub. :-)
Your dream game was yet another Asteroids clone ? Who's going to buy this ? There's like 30 of them on newgrounds for free with the same level of quality yours has.
Everyone love to blame the industry and then you try their game and it sucks ass or is absolutely unimaginative
I haven't made my dream game. I did however, mention in the video, that I had a dream game that I wanted to make. And obviously, no one is going to buy the game that I am giving away for free. I mentioned that the game was free in the video too. My "Asteroids clone" as you put it, was a project that introduced me to a) using Godot and b) going through the distribution process on Steam. The project succeeded on both points. I do however appreciate that those objectives are personal and of no interest to the average gamer. Hence why I gave the game away for free. And finally, no one is blaming the industry for anything. Making games is hard. Making commercially successful games is even harder. These are just facts and it would be negligent to ignore these facts.
@@DavidReidChannel Have you released any monetized games that were successful or unsuccessful then ? I can't see any other project under your name. You make a lot of claim in the video but i find it hard to trust when you seemingly have no real experience.
I discussed freely available statistics about the monetary performance of games on Steam. You can actually get this information from Steam yourself. It's hard to make games, its even harder to make successful games. But as I mentioned in the video, that you've apparently watched, Jake Birkett has made a living as a game developer for eleven plus years with out a single hit. That video inspired me to start my journey into making games and distributing them on Steam. You mentioned that it was hard to trust me, to that I say, don't trust me. You don't need to trust me. Instead you can watch Jake Birketts excellent talk. I left a link in the description. I hope his video inspires you the way it inspired me.
@@DavidReidChannel This is a lot of word to say you are completely unqualified to give advice on game development. You're just regurgitating information at that point. You have no relevant experience that would lead to you being able to parse those "freely available statistics" for anyone else. You are legitimately harmful to the journey of beginner dev as they have no experience either and are easy prey for this kind of lazy content.
Well, clearly I'm not going to win you over my friend. With that in mind, I'll let you be and I wish you all the best in your own gaming journey. Thanks for watching and commenting.
why are we speaking about money?
Why wouldn't we speak about money?
I'll ship a "hit". Not Steam, no, just targeting a platform that is more challenging to target and where fans of the system will gob anything up even if it's not special just if it seems to have vaguely enough quality. People should really consider expanding into releasing on classic game consoles. You can sell the same game trice to the same people if you just make limited special editions with barely any differences, one with blue bullets, one with pink bullets and so on. You just have to announce the special editions after the order window for the actual game is closed but while it's not shipped yet. Like DLC except even more pointless, but full price and play on FOMO. Limited? Who's counting? You're counting. You count however you want.
:3
I think its a sound strategy to target more than one platform. I'm considering targeting other platforms but would prefer to have a few small releases under my belt first.
@@DavidReidChannel noooo no no no, not necessarily more than one platform. If you're targeting Jaguar or NeoGeo CD or 3DO or TurboGrafx or MegaCD or a cartridge based console you can't just follow a tutorial and slap things together in Unity, you have to actually develop for that one system from the ground up. Then if you want a port, you get to repeat most of that process for some other system.
I don't want this brilliant to be widely spread, thus I don't press the like button.
Good content like this deserves to be shared, how would you feel if someone took that attitude with your creation?
@@ryanman56 u dont get jokes right?
And then there's Palworld an cynically made asset flip they already cashed out with gamepass not believing in the project. Rng is something else
For every hit there are thousands of flops. Don't fool yourself into thinking that those hits are the norm
Exactly my friend. This is what we often ignore.
As someone who played Pocket Pairs previous game Craftopia people are severely underestimating the amount of effort put into Palworld and the massive improvement in quality. The success of Palworld is built upon the failures of their previous game Craftopia. Palworld is just craftopia 2 but with far better designs for the creatures you can capture, far better graphics, far better automation, far better combat systems and quality of life. They didn't just slap the game together, there was a lot of thought and time put into it.
your not special
That's correct. I'm not special. Thanks for watching and commenting. Both are appreciated.
@@DavidReidChannel was just referencing the first second of the vid, was that intentionnal or spelling err
I see. My apologies. It was a spelling error. I'm not special but sometimes I'm definitely illiterate. :-)
@@DavidReidChannel haha all good :) kind response