How I would approach gamedev (if I had to start over)

For over two years I have been working as a game developer and I am also

approach

ing the one year milestone of just being this full time game developer and during that time I have done several things that I have submitted to the industry Forge. which was our first commercial game, I had to make difficult decisions, like canceling our SQL game and switching to something else that we think has more potential and I think the most important thing is that I have influenced many other aspiring game developers through Youtube. The channel you're watching now helps them not make the same mistakes we did and simply make sure their game development experience is as enjoyable as possible.

I think I'm getting to a point where I've been doing this for so long. Until I can

start

to reflect a little more on what are the mistakes we made because I no longer see myself as an absolute beginner, so in this video I'll go over 10 things I

would

do differently if I were

start

ing a Studio in 2024 and we'll try to make our first games with the knowledge that I have now and I think you should also stay until the end because I will also talk about three things that I

would

not change and that I think I would. alright so definitely make sure to check out ire's video and I think the first thing we learned together as studio Al is that we shouldn't continue working on a Jam Prototype game.

Game jams are great for quickly finding out if your game is fun. If there is potential and you like to try it, there is also very little time to do it and we had a small Jam game for the Forge industry where we want to find out if we can make this work. Can we work in unity? The big mistake is once. We had that prototype that was very big quotes, we just decided to keep building on that and that's probably one of the biggest mistakes we made if you have a Game Jam project and you say this is good.

Really enjoy this, be proud of what you made, but then throw it in the trash or don't throw it in the trash, but start again if you decide to pursue the game idea or game concept you created in that game. Jam like In a complete game you are going to have a lot of technical dependency because you will write Cod without having much time to think, this is the most efficient way and if you are going to continue building on such a weak foundation of a game it is only going to ask for problems and it has caused us cost literally months of extra development time because we didn't throw away our game when we had the first prototype and start over with more ideas, the next mistake we made was that we were on A team and a big mistake we made is that we didn't have clear definitions of who was going to commit and how much to our game.

When I do these YouTube videos, I often say, yeah, we started out as four people, but you don't really see the fourth Pur already Jamie because we had some struggles in terms of commitment, there was definitely an imbalance between the four of us and how much we've worked, especially when we were doing that, like the first year, it was mainly Thomas and I who did the most. from work and then William, he quickly faded away a little bit and then left development for several months, similar to Jamie, in the end he also didn't end up committing as much to our game and I think this was definitely something that looks like it's going to happen, but also We made some mistakes there because we didn't really have strict commitments about this is how much we're going to work as a team and we'll try to stick to that and call each other out if it didn't come through.

In reality, we did not achieve the compromise we had originally proposed. I think that would have also helped a lot in the management of the Vibes team, because if everyone has an equal distribution, which we didn't have, but if that is the case. but there is no equitable division of the number of hours worked, you are going to have problems with your team. I can tell you that there will be disputes about it and it is still very avoidable and this low commitment actually leads to the third problem and that is that we half asked to give up, but I think if you give up you should give up or move on, but what we did wrong is that we partially gave up, as I said, Thomas and I continue working on the game. for a four month period basically from March to July, but the other two teammates basically dropped out and I think Thomas and I should have said, "Okay, look, let's give up or figure out something with just the two of us," but We didn't do that.

I'd like to say it ended up working out for us, but it took us a long time. It was four and five months in which development basically ground to a halt. I even stopped uploading these YouTube videos for a while, I think we can see that in the history of devlog 4 and then devlog 5 or something wasn't really good, it basically just hibernated our studio for several months, where we could have used that Time to work. on something else or just continue working on the project we were working on, but we gave up half-heartedly, which in the end didn't leave us with much that was really useful.

The next mistake we made is also related to that Jam game. and we don't spend enough time on the tools, this is something we've already learned, but especially if you're making a game with more mechanics or a game with a lot of elements like we did with Forge Industry, it's worth it. It's spending time on the tools and getting something like Odin, which is a Unity resource. There are probably similar things for Unreal and Gau, where you can make it very easy for yourself to add new elements, for example, add new workstations, because we had a very complicated situation. workflow, we didn't spend time creating tooling which meant deploying a single item to Industry Forge took about 5 minutes and we had 700 items which wasn't an efficient way of doing things and we had a ton of programmable objects and We had prefabs and they weren't really linked together, we had to change certain variables in multiple positions and it cost us a lot of time, but we never said okay, let's spend a little time writing the tools first so we can create the elements, that's something that I think we do a lot better now with Guild Arch.

The first thing we basically did was create tools to create objects in our game, so now it's very easy for us to add new decoration elements, for example, that are part of the game content and sure the first version of the tools you create won't be efficient, but if you always force yourself to use the tools they will get really good very quickly instead of just doing the quick fix of doing everything manually and you. We're just going to hate your life and then another mistake is that we don't spend enough on assets and by this I mean cash basically just about 7 months into the development of the Forge industry we realized that I can't. doing everything myself as far as 3D modeling and that was the first time we actually bought assets that we bought like the Cinti Fantasy Kingdom pack and that was probably one of the best investments we could have made because I remember I paid like 100 dollars for it in I think it was a sale and it hurt a little bit, but on the other hand I was still working full time.

I had disposable income to put into that asset pack and it saved me a lot of time later to improve the game's visuals a bit. They're still not great, but that's also related to Shader and technical art, but just the models themselves, not having to do everything from scratch, they saved us a lot of time and I think this is something I've been preaching a lot on this channel . At this point, but we definitely should have started with Assd packs from day one, whereas for a Jam game we thought we would make everything 100% from scratch, which was a stupid idea, another mistake we made and that I think I especially made.

It's just that I didn't do enough research before getting into game development, so what do I mean by that? I just forced my way into Game Dev. I only look for things if I really have to look for them, like for example, figuring out how to Blender I like the basics of how Blender works, but I've never sat down and like a full course to learn how to model Blender or whatever I always looked for exclusively. I have this problem, what is the solution and it extends even further than that and this is a bug. What I know you're not already doing because you're watching this video is that I didn't watch any YouTubers play.

I really had no idea how indie game development worked when I say this channel is just me documenting the things I fail at. I mean, honestly, I still don't watch that many games on YouTube because I didn't feel like there was much out there back then that really appealed to me and now I clearly appeal to So you're already doing something good there, but because of that, since I didn't have anyone When he was talking to me about the game, we made some very painful mistakes in the process, like trying to launch it in a Steam summer sale, fortunately. we dodged that bullet at the last minute but I still didn't know that that's not what you should do or that your game can be pirated before it's even released because of things like Steam curators, those are things I've had to do .

Only School of Hard Knocks learned how to make videos about this on this channel, but I also didn't actively seek out that kind of content when we were making our first game. To start, another mistake is that we don't focus enough on visuals. I know, once again, I've been beating this horse on this YouTube channel for the last few months, but I didn't know that your game had to look good when you start creating games for the first time, so once again. Only after four five, I think six months, we had actual color and some basic models in our game, we were very far from having a visual game at the beginning and because we will pull some images from the development log of our first versions of Forge Industry.

You can't just put images of that in your game like the last few months and that's why Indry doesn't look better. I would get a lot of comments about it. I know, but it's something you don't even focus on. In the first half year of development you're as good as dead, so I think that's definitely what we're doing with Guild Architect as well. Now we're almost focusing on the visuals first and then just starting to work on the giant complex. mechanics just because that already makes it easier to start thinking about the end result of the game, like the final visual style and things like that.

We didn't think about any of those things when we created Forge Industry, we just focused exclusively on the code and first the mechanics and didn't worry about the visuals at all, then another bug that, again, there isn't much information about is that We went and showed our game at events. Now what I want to say here is that I don't mean. going to small test events at local places with local developer groups, they're great, but what I'm talking about here is that we went to Game Force, that's what it's called in Belgium. It's like a relatively large event that has 20,000 visitors each year, where you can exhibit. your game to regular consumers, regular players and just getting your wishlist that way basically that's the idea we had however it was a waste of money if you ask me it's 2 days of constant talking and constant stress and it also costs you money to go to those. events cost us about ,000 every time we went to those events we got like 60 wishlists and that's not really a good return on investment, plus there's an opportunity cost because those are days before you need to prepare for your game.

There are days where you're there and you can't work on your game and then, like the two days after you go to one of those conventions, you're dead and there's nothing you can really do by working focused on your game, so We've done it three times at this point and the only reason we did it was like, oh, it's cool to get feedback from watching people play your game and giving you feedback directly, being able to talk to your audience, that's nice, but Honestly, it's not worth it. all the time all that money to spend on it, I think indie games that go to Gamescom have their entire budget and just go to Gamescom hoping to get some extra wishlists, it's a waste of money and I'll never do it they will do.

Remember that you are going especially to Gamescom, you will spend between 5 and 110,000 dollars, even if you just want to have the smallest boots and it will take like 5 days to be there, you will need a lot of staff. members, you'll need to get housing and things like that, it's usually never worth it, it's always going to be more worth it to take money and spend it on an artist or spend it on a programmer or anyone who can actually do it. Improve the game because like I said you won't get a good wishlist from these events anyway and then another mistake we made that is related to these events is that we sold game keys at the events this is good and bad on the one hand.

On the other hand, it was good because we had that rush and were able to sell around €600 worth of game keys at that event, so we only had to pay€400 at the end of the day, but the biggest mistake we made here was that we sold. game keys for our Die Hard fans, but once we launched our game we couldn't get to 10 reviews because Steam doesn't count people who have Steam keys as valid reviews because only those purchased through Steam count. Again, this is one of those things that I didn't know existed and that's why we didn't get to 10 reviews when our game launched and we were basically banished to the shadow realm of Steam until we made that video where we talked about our launch was pretty disastrous and a lot of people ended up feeling sorry for us by buying the game and then leaving us reviews which eventually brought us that Spike of the 10 review marker which gave us a lot of extra visibility. through Steam, but we were very lucky with that and the last thing I would change is that it shipped sooner, we should have narrowed the scope again a lot more because now it's been 18 months between the start of development and that includes those four or five months. where we like half of F to give up until July last year July 2023 where we actually launched the Forge industry which is too long honestly we planned to do the Forge industry in just a month which was a stupid idea and we also had no idea what we were doing. game smartly, but we definitely had a giant scope to start with, so I think if I had to start a studio from scratch again, I think the only thing I would focus on is shipping as many games as quickly as possible, so I would do something. like 3 months for the first game, four months for the next game and then 6 months for the next game and maybe once those three games have shipped and we've been able to learn from it, figure out what we're good at.

As a studio, I would then start looking at longer term game development cycles, up to 9 months, a year. Now with Guild Architect we are considering a 9 month cycle, as well as the songs we originally set for a six month period. one and we were able to get it done, but we had some artistic issues along the way, but purely mechanically we could have shipped it, so I think we'll definitely focus on shipping games relatively soon, not like in a week, maybe, but it's still periods very short. Lean a lot on pre-made assets just to figure out how your engine works and how the whole process of marketing your game works by putting it on Steam and stuff like that works too.

The only mistake we also made with the Forge industry, like I said. It took us 7 months to have a game that was actually playable where we could transport items between different workstations and turn those items into a different item? That took too long. We should have had something like this much sooner, like 2 weeks 4 weeks. In development now, I told you we did some things right too, so I'll go over this real quick, but I might break it down in a separate later video where I'll just talk about the things in it. Well, I think the first thing we did right as game developers is that we did it as a side project.

We all had paid jobs to begin with and then spent a few extra hours each week working in the Forge industry and this was definitely the way to go. because we didn't have the stress of oh, we need to release a game as quickly as possible because the first game you're going to make is not going to be a commercial success, it's not going to be a good return on investment if you quit your job and work 6 months to make your first one. similar game as a full time player. There is no way you can break even, even if you don't take into account the cost of your hours as well as your bills. that adds up like groceries and anything that's not worth it, so I think definitely start as a game developer on the side and then maybe if you can gain some momentum after your first release you can consider quitting your job , but definitely don't do it.

I started the game definitely thinking that you should quit your job. I think we did very well. The second thing we did very well that I wouldn't change is that we had a team. I know many of you are alone forever. I can't find someone reliable to work with and I understand it's difficult, but definitely being with two people and you don't even need to combine skill sets can help a lot when creating your first games. We were four programmers, which is basically a pretty terrible combination if you want to make games, but still, the fact that we were together and could talk about our game, we weren't sitting alone in our houses coding in silence for months, made it It would be much more bearable to do our first game, so even if you can get a person who can help you stay accountable, that's already a big win in my opinion because you will be much more likely to finish your game too and you can have some like between comments , you can really talk about your game, talk about all the mechanics in a very focused environment and then the last thing that I think we did well and that was also possible because we had that team is this YouTube channel.

We planned for this to get so big, we just did devlogs really thinking that would be the only way we could do marketing for the Forge industry, which didn't work out at all, but in the end I had this YouTube channel very early on that I could now speak. my wall for literally months without anyone looking because now we had a 1 and a half year Head Start compared to if we first launched Forge Industry and only then started the YouTube channel, creating a YouTube channel is something that takes a lot of time but I think it's also something every studio can do and maybe even should do.

There is a lot of depth to the topic. If you start a YouTube channel, I might do a revamped version of that video at some point, but overall, here are my two submissions. don't do devlogs or at least if you do, do two of them at most, call them devlog zero and devlog one, but I think it's more valuable to create a general Studio-based YouTube channel where you talk about experiences as a studio and the things that you learned along the way I think there is still a demand for that and one of the things that YouTube allows us to do at least is an additional stream of income so that we don't have to worry as much about how Mega Our games are successful and we can focus a little more into developing them and we don't have to cut as many corners when trying to develop our game just because we have to release it and make money at some point, so those are some of the things.

What would I do if I had to start over as Game Dev Studio. I hope you learned some additional things from this if you've been working as a game developer for a while at this point, how would you do things differently with the knowledge? and the experience you have gained so far. I'm really interested to know more about it, leave it in the comment below. I read them all, other than that, if you are new here, we are game developers. We have created our own Forge game industry and are working on our next game. We are documenting the process as a studio trying to make more games trying to get better at creating games, so if you want to follow us along the way and learn. some very interesting stuff for you too so make sure you go down below and subscribe as we do these videos twice a week thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one bye.