Dont waste your time video is click bait, there is no blue print just generic information.

Huge thanks to Brilliant! Use this link and you’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription. brilliant.org/GoingIndie/

While this video is a useful crash course on equity, it's not really anything specific to game devs...

amazing

Your channel is a gem, thank you for sharing your knowledge Cam!

Really useful thanks! Part of the reason I'm a solo dev now is so I don't have to worry about mixing business with friendships, which can be really tricky. This info is really good to know.

Underrated. This channel will someday blow up. Amazing 🙏🙏

This video is pure Gold! many thanks for this.

Stealing an idea can happen but it is super rare. You really have to have something super marketable for anyone to joink it. For example ubisofts assassins creed had this social deduction mode/game. But they were afraid to use it before they bought the company that had made similar game with similar mechanics. Then they tricked the poor dev team to make sequel/remake of their game under their name which now allowed ubisoft then later to make this assassins creed multiplayer experience. Unrecord and Bodycam are kinda similar. Unrecord posted viral tweet but to this day they don't have demo, beta or early access out. Meanwhile Bodycam are using same graphics and same camera placement & mechanics and already are on early access. While one is going to be singleplayer experience and other is pvp i feel like people aren't gonna buy either of these games cuz of gameplay necessary. To me this looks like people hype the graphics "because they are so realistic" and the camera placement immerses people in. I feel like bodycam wouldn't had the idea without those unrecord tweets and that allowed them to cut in line and profit from slow development progress bodycam is having. (Which is fair i guess - i see this as a "players win" kinda situation). And wasn't it during this year we had the Kenney asset drama? Dude shares his assests for free for anyone to use but doesn't make many games... but he has a few out. And someone took the idea of "just pick a game and copy it with a twist" and remade the same room decoration game where the single twist was that his game also had plant or plants you took care of. But the camera angle, the art style, the UI, how items had this small bouncy animation when you placed them on the room.... everything seemed like copy&paste to the point where Kenney called the dude out. They later had back&forth talks and the other person changed some elements in their game (i believe Kenney even helped with that AND promoted the new game which i guess means they are in good terms now). Ok only one of these 3 are about someone stealing game idea before the guy with the "original" idea released their game - but these things still can happen. Average gamedev doesn't have to care about this tho. Heck.. after i get my 1st game done and do the devlog the followup video might be me listing my ideas for games i might start to work on next hoping that someone steals any of those ideas cuz i really would want to play those games. And if someone else made them but me i might save some time (and also if i make game for me then everything is spoiled -- if someone makes the "same" game there might be surprises).

That CTA stuff is *crazy*!

Does this video also apply to EU?

YES! Not seen the video yet but the legal part is exactly what I've been looking for and the part that I am missing. can't wait!

this video is a gem, there are very few videos on youtube about

subtitles not exist

Good material, this isn't talked about enough among indies.

Trying to start making my own game but I work from like 4pm to 6am 4 days a week and usually busy on the weekends with house hold chores 😭

The biggest thing im confused on is the cost of an LLC. I helped my friend start one a long time ago and I believe it was just a one time fee. Now whenever I look find different answers ranging from a one time fee to a yearly filing fee. That also brings up another question, what do you have to file every year once you have an LLC started? Setting one up is extremely easy, and understanding which one to get is all over the internet, but I dont find much about after you have it..

if i dont have a job and i am a solo person looking to start a small single man indie studio. whats the point to spend every year a llc tax? I get it protects from certain things. like in california its 700 min you have to pay to keep being an llc. and I get you can file in another state, but then your going to have to pay your taxes in your own state only. I have only enough money to buy some tech stuff like asset tools and food. if i spend 700 thats a huge chunk of my own small money for me to care. i could afford a steam listing at 100. but when you start adding all this tax stuff. and if its optional like a website. I kinda find it hard to spend the money for this. I guess my goal would be if i make enough to pay the 700 then i will pay it. but its hard for me to guess that a noobie into indie dev will even make enough to pay off all the assets i buy, just to make the game in the first place

Third.....?

Second!!!

First!

my wife and me are starting one.

I hope one day to start a game company creating opensource games. I'm now leading a opensource project to create a game in pygame. Which is very good for my learning experience too

Great video! Super helpful for someone in my shoes.

I absolutely hope he's right about the algorithm being more important in the future. As a solo indie dev, coding, art, and music are far too time consuming for me to spend my time worrying about marketing and social media.

Never seen your channel or videos before. Not even your other channel that I just looked up. But whatever you did or the algorithm that pushed your channel to my suggestions did good/worked out.

Shut up, Flanders.

please change the money icon on the thumbnail to smth different, it rly wasn't clear at first sight that its a dollar.

This is awesome advice!

Great video! This raises some very important questions that I feel I should be answering.

Thank you soooooooo much, this is so useful!

I have no idea how a guy from the 70's know so much about indie gamedev of today. Excellent content, subbed!

I’ve replayed this several times while doing instacart. I want to make games but I’m trying to pay bills. The problem is the more I work the more I want to just create. I need to find a balance. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to be compensated for making a game but is it wrong to want to make a game for the money? The more i work the more frustrated I become knowing I’m not following my dreams but bills are bills. I’m worried that if i approach this as a business I’ll lose the passion for it. Idk maybe I’m losing it lol. Book marking this either way.

thanks man ,really helpful

Clicked on the video expecting advice on starting an Indie Game Studio like the title says, but this is just solo game dev advice.

Wow. What a great resource I just stumbled upon. Thank you so much for making this! Can’t believe you don’t have more subs. Will be sharing this around.

Heads up, the links in the PDF aren't clickable.

This video has to blow up, you made it so concise and realistic.

Impressive video, there’s a lot of insight here. I may have to watch this a few times. Such a little gem of a channel. Also, I’m glad you put up Shadows of Doubt, it’s by far the most immersive detective game I’ve played.

Loving the videos Cam keep am up

Great talk Cam :))

📂 Check out the free blueprint PDF goingindie.co/assets/Indie_Studio_Starter_Kit.pdf ⬆ The resources linked in this document are meant to help save you time, money, and headache on your indie development journey. Every resource may be purchased for less than the cost of a new AAA game.

That last nugget of knowledge was really useful for me🎉

6:00 I'm not sure what he is trying to really argue there. But having a good game that will be interesting to a (large enough) audience is _always_ the number one reason why a game could sell literally any copies. There is no 'do marketing in way A or B and get guaranteed sales' nonsense at play. Not ever. It's why the whole obsession over wishlist numbers or even review numbers is so stupid. Steam algorithms aside, most of which is literally completely hidden anyway, many successful games do not have tens of thousands of positive reviews or wishlist numbers, yet sold well regardless. It's because the game itself is good. 95% of traffic comes directly from Steam, because his KZbin channel is really aimed at developers, not gamers. Also keep in mind that the Steam algorithm will give _all_ games a fair chance of climbing within the algorithmic systems. It's how some of these 'made in 3 months, zero marketing done' type games can still blow up on Steam. It's direct prove of why wishlist numbers are a lot less relevant than they are made out to be. 8:00 That's really just 100% speculation from his side, with random numbers. There are no statistics to support such a claim at all. The actual game is 100000% more important. It's why even being on the frontpage for a bit doesn't guarantee you any sale spikes. There's no comparison to any external traffic being driven anywhere. Steam actually values things like people buying the game, playtime and in-game engagement way more than how people respond to say a random screenshot of your game or a developer announcement on a Steam game page. Consumers also really love a properly valued game at an interesting discount (not just at launch). Most indie devs really underestimate this fact too. 10:00 No, all those algorithmic rewards will always follow trends. There's absolutely no reason why Steam couldn't start to overvalue shorter games that are finished in under 10 hours, allowing people to move on to the next 10 hour game. We saw these types of changes in algorithms on KZbin dozens of times. From focusing on 10 minute videos to super long videos that kept the audience captivated, all the way to overpromoting KZbin shorts in almost a TikTok style. Unsurprisingly, some of this stuff changes just to see if it ends up more profitable to them. You can probably find some type of average playtime statistic underneath all of Steam's algorithms that is currently promoted more than say shorter or much longer game experiences. It's just how statistics and algorithms work by definition.

get rid of the music, it is distracting other than that nice interview :)

The problem is: you don't know if the game looks good and is fun BEFORE you launch a steam page. But to launch the steam page - you pretty much need 50% of the game completed already; have a nice graphics, trailer, screenshots, etc. I've been working for 3 months only on my trailer! And what do you do with a game that shows up not very good? Abandon the project entirely?.. And, well, all of this interview can be summed up to "make good games, don't make bad games, m'kay"... Which is not very helpful >.<'

The background music / ambience was a little bit too loud on this one but nice video nevertheless

I've often wondered why I don't see many indies doing something similar. I like the idea of having a few small games that basically are just used to "bootstrap" larger projects. But, I also see the flipside where you would 1st have to make these smaller titles (months-years) but you would then need to most likely support for awhile which might bleed into development time on larger projects.

You may have higher EV at other things, but there are very few things that have the potential to make as much money as a highly successful indie dev. Notch made $2B+ with Minecraft, ConcernedApe and Tynan Sylvester made $100M+ with Stardew Valley and Rim World respectively. Dozens of solo developers have made $10M+ and hundreds if not thousands have made $1M+. You still have to be in the top 1% of the profession, but there's very few professions that are guaranteed paths to millionairehood

🆒