No Time, No Budget, No Problem: Finishing The First Tree

In this 2019 GDC talk, David Wehle explains the tactics he used to finish his successful indie project The First Tree even while working over forty hours a week at The VOID and taking care of his family.
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[@xdevantx5870]

"Other people need your game" might be the most inspirational words I've ever heard.

[@peppydip2373]

It is mostly other people that may need you in this world Sort of like maybe you needed this lecture

[@baki9191]

Dr. K calls this DHARMA

[@hh-zm9gr]

@@baki9191 Dharma means righteosness/law/duty in Indian languages.

[@stanksmax2945]

It's a great hope that feels better if done

[@GreedAndSelfishness]

But what if your game is depressing as fuck? Like mine. It bums you out.

[@samohickey]

Avoiding a 0% day is 100% in finishing ANYTHING in life. Great words! If you haven't read the book "The War of Art", not "The Art of War", "The War of Art"; it mentions that if you can just sit down and start.... every day... you'll usually get sucked in. Once you're sucked in, next thing you know it's 100% done. :D Good luck out there my fellow devs, artists, writers, and composers. Much love!

[@sauliustb]

this is absolutely true. I'm doing some dev outside of working hours as well, and at times it's soo hard to get started. but once you get set up(which takes 10-15min for me) you get sucked in for the next 2 hours, and you really really really want to get it to work before you close for that session.

[@samohickey]

@@sauliustb exactly! Once I'm cruising it's hard to find a stopping point. Haha!

[@Aethelvlad]

Very true. I always notice myself getting sucked in.

[@boss_gamers]

This is great advice. Most people don’t know how to start, so they don’t. Just starting gets the motivation moving forward 👍

[@Nebulaoblivion]

thats a bit of a problem though, because if I get sucked in, then I don't eat, or sleep, or drink water, and I'm all fucked up before going to work.

[@CptMunta]

This is pure gold. As an indie dev and father of 4. This gives me hope!

[@mandisaw]

I hope you have a patient wife/spouse and a good job :) Seriously, I think it's an important point that his wife was able/willing to take on the lion's share of parenting & household duties while he pursued his dream. You hear that pattern crop up a lot in these kinds of stories.

[@REXanadu]

Remember, he'd also been working on film editing for a significantly long time before he touched any game design, and most of these asset packs can cost a chunk of change if you don't buy them on sale. That's to say nothing about ensuring you credit all the third-party assets he used in the project. Also, this was a personal project, so he doesn't seem concerned about the revenue of the end product. This game was a passion project, not a major money maker. Keep that in mind when you try to emulate his work, and you'll be fine

[@CptMunta]

The inspiration this video gives me is that I can schedule my time to get things done and finish my game not to make a boat load of sales. I'm parental leave right now and my wife is returning to work so we share household duties. Being a stay at home parent is a full time job so finding time outside of that is what my plan is.

[@reokeokdeo4282]

@@REXanadu "This game was a passion project, not a major money maker" That is not true. Has he say: He did it for money too, that's why he leave his job, and for doing it, was doing an other job beside. If he wasn't doing it for money, he would not making a pure marketing strategy and post his game a 1pm. dont be naive... where you write, is that he doesn't have any programming skills so he paid quasi everything in his game and just change some things. That is a way to do, why not, but that is also a way to be hated by all the indi developers community

[@TheF4c3m4n]

Keep pressing forward and get in the development time when you can. I am also a father who works full time and my significant other who is a great business woman also writes poetry in her spare time that she has got published. This is my dream and she understands that and is 100% behind me. I gave her my story on my Alien Horror Game, and she looked it over for a few days and came back with a detailed, polished version that blew me away. I am glad to see others following their dream of creating a game, staying inspired, and creating something wonderful for everyone to enjoy. Have a wonderful day!

[@noahnichols871]

The guy's nice. Straight up. I wrote him an email and he hit me back with a reply quite quick. Awesome success story!

[@thebloocat]

Wow!

[@lumenwrites]

It's great that Chris Pratt was able to take the time out of his busy dinosaur training schedule to make an indie game! Seriously though - amazing talk, thanks for sharing, congratulations on your success!

[@thanatosor]

Ray Alez hold my prey ! * a T-Rex walk in *

[@imagine-games6677]

lmao.....

[@frostbite6644]

Lol

[@jeffmccloud905]

not Chris Pratt, it's comedian Pete Holmes

[@HighVirtud]

lol

[@harrysanders818]

I think the most important thing to notice here is that this guy knows art fundamentals. He utilizes artistic principles to convey emotion successfully. Like color theory and shape language, so that his game has has a successful art direction players respond to. Without that, no marketing in the world will help you out. I guess it is important to not to forget that you need some knowledge about how art works and what elements it consists of. It is not only the work you need to put in, but also the knowledge. Everyone understands that when it comes to programming, but less people understand that when it comes to art.

[@kombosabinho]

This comment didn't age very well now that we have complete control over AI Art

[@jessikapiche6097]

Actually i think this comment age very well. The game industry is full of people wanting to create a game, but all you get is same game done over and over again. Very seldom do you see a game that is very different but also highly attractive. Those are what people go for, even to this day. Game that set a mood, artistically well balance...

[@alex-qn5xp]

@@kombosabinho What does this comment have to do with AI art at all?

[@fukquro]

@@kombosabinhono amount of ai can give you interesting direction

[@Langorithmic]

​@@kombosabinho imagine being this misled

[@MidoriMushrooms]

"some people will like anything with a fox in it" I feel so called out rn XD I followed your game on twitter and bought it at launch. I...wasn't a fan of some of its launch-day problems but you were pretty cool about trying to address them. I'm glad it was a success because the art is amazing.

[@hanseldsilva2393]

What kinds of problems were there?

[@MidoriMushrooms]

@@hanseldsilva2393 the physics were REALLY garbage at first. Like, the way jumping worked was actually antithetical to how jumping works in basically everything else so it felt uncanny to play. The dev was pretty active about tweaking it to be less weird, though it still remains a bizarre learning curve. (we've had jumping in 3D games forever, why fix what isn't broken?) other minor things like collision were also not working fully as intended but to my knowledge all that stuff was worked out in the first week. I haven't gone back to the game at all really, the narration was a major turn-off personally but apparently others liked it.

[@678crazydave]

I've heard the game is bad, but he made a killing off of it

[@lauren9141]

@@678crazydave the jump mechanic in the game is terrible but otherwise I liked it. It took me longer to complete than he said because I had to redo a few jumps SO MUCH to get all the lights

[@CodeGaff]

As someone with a full-time job and a family, this really hit home for me. Well done to David for his accomplishments, I hope one day I complete a game!

[@ArielJimenez]

this is a perfect example of "No excuses!". "If its important, you will find a way; if its not, you will fin an excuse"

[@shyamarama]

7:42 “Never have a 0% day” 😎👍👍 Great work!

[@TonsOfHunStudios]

Awesome talk! As someone who likes to be a "purist" and is afraid of what others might say about using other assets, it comforts me to hear that barely anyone cared or even noticed other assets were used.

[@otacon1024]

There's no issue with using existing assets, it just gets a lot of hate because of the ocean of low-effort "devs" that just throw a bunch of them into a 3D environment and call it a game, with little actual thought for whether all these assets visually work together. And the "games" are often just a messy 3D environment with little actual structure, depth, gameplay, mechanics, etc. Basically, the "just throw a bunch of shit on the wall and hope some of it sticks" approach to things. It's not about what you use, but how you use it.

[@MattyAlanEstock]

I needed this talk last year, last month, today. No more 0% days!

[@randomrandom450]

Yeah this "no 0% days" was so simple, yet so important.

[@ridho5066]

Thats true. Many time I just think of doing some small things and end up doing a lot of work on it.

[@Mutantcy1992]

So how's it going?

[@randomrandom450]

This is gold. Cause people think the hard part of being an indie developer is having limited resource, limited time, limited people, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The hard part is to get out of obscurity, to be seen, to be known, to get eyes on what you want to offer to the world.

[@PixelGM]

11:04 "If you took two popular thing, people would love it. But if you take a brand new original thing, they don't know how to react", sooo relateable!

[@swearsoft]

It's called the Pareto Principle and focusing your efforts on the 20% of things you do that actually produce 80% of the results is taught in business school

[@reokeokdeo4282]

Agree making a game by buying Unity asset that really is making the less effort as possible lol

[@vagrant5970]

its over for devcels.

[@kcbsuiejd]

@@reokeokdeo4282 I mean, he still had to put hundreds of hours in, ive seen "selfmade" games with less effort. Focusing on what to do yourself is a good skill too

[@CurtisJensenGames]

My big takeaway is to actually spend time on marketing. Developing has been more fun than marketing for me for the most part, but now that I've found Reddit I think it will help me to vent about joys and frustrations of the game.

[@conflagrationTuesday]

Most geeks that develop are more comfortable creating, rather than marketing/selling, for sure. Definitely our weakness..

[@csebastian3]

One of the best presentations I've ever seen.

[@mt401_]

No budget, yet 10k in costs..

[@fransbastian3032]

@@mt401_ but still made a $150k profit from that.

[@blazer5724]

@@mt401_ yeah dude you think console ports are 100% free?

[@mt401_]

@@blazer5724 that implies a budget, the money doesn't come from thin air

[@blazer5724]

@@mt401_ yeah but he ported the game to consoles after the steam release. He even said in the video that he used the steam money for console ports.

[@dsuitor304]

I have a lot of bookmarks for Dev/Marketing/etc, but, after watching this, I created a folder called "Inspiration from Indie Game Devs". You're the first bookmark in it. This will be the folder I go to on those tough days when the self-doubt slams it's way through the front door. Loved it!

[@tomaszkobus3933]

This video is a pearl among hundreds of statements about the work of an independent game developer.

[@Suggestive_Carp]

proud of ya, thank you for tracing your footsteps to allow us up and coming devs to follow.

[@JPMeyer92]

This is really inspiring. I started coding at 12 because of games, and ended up in the corporate space as a web developer - it's soul draining but it pays well. I dabbled a bit with graphics programming in school, but it never really went anywhere. 17 years after writing my first line of code, I've started developing my first game. I work full time, I have no real budget for this, I have a family. I wasn't sure that it could be done, but now I know that it can be done. Thank you so much!

[@Pellepalt]

Thank you for the inspiration!, me and my friend is making a game from scratch as a hobby with a dream of being a full-time-developers... This talk inspires and helps more than you know

[@guillaumejeannot6268]

The end of the speech was priceless. Thank you.

[@ruycalderon8507]

I was not expecting to tear up in a GDC talk. Informative, inspiring, and touching. Great talk!

[@volo7]

Amazing talk. The way he explains stuff in a straightforward manner without trying to sound intelligent is 👌

[@guidewired]

I had a project recently during the same time as having a new child and I really feel this discussion about finding the little bits of time to finish something. Good to hear how other people get through it.

[@poemagames7503]

Thank you for actual examples! Struggling with getting my games out there is frustrating and this helped a lot! ❤ First time I heard about The First Tree, it looks very pretty, will make sure to give it a go!

[@ffthack]

Thank you. Had some tears regarding that one letter. This and another gdc video by creator of slime rancher connected some dots for first time after many years of not going for it.

[@TheEmgriffiths]

This is brilliant, as a father of two working full-time this is giving me some inspiration!

[@tobario]

As a father with a full time job and a similar schedule: This is truly inspirational and helps me to keep learning. I think the key is toget to know your limits, to accept help (assets) and consisteny. Half an hour a day is enough sometimes. Thank you David!

[@AndrewDowell]

Great presentation, good guy working hard for his dream and family. Game purchased! Thanks David, looking forward to seeing what you do next :)

[@KrisLucenDev]

Fantastic talk, so much useful information here! Thank you David

[@hatema]

Hey, I watch your videos...

[@KrisLucenDev]

@@hatema Thank you for the support!!

[@SirNightmareFuel]

@@KrisLucenDev Hey... I watch your videos too... What the heck!

[@benedev9473]

There are just so many priceless tips in this talk!

[@toritogames]

This is the kind of talk I need right now! Thanks!

[@ismael8251]

I really enjoy watching this man being happy and satisfied for his hard work and determination to finish his game.

[@cozymonk]

14:45 When posting on Reddit, just mentioning how easy it was to do something with programming while having no prior knowledge of programming is huge. There are so many tech nerds and programmers on there and they love it when people post stuff that supports the idea that it's really easy to pick up programming and people shouldn't be scared to try.

[@isaacpopstriker9353]

Wow! That's amazing how he managed to make a game with so limited time. Although he gave the steps, it's still very hard to maintain such discipline.

[@netfusionuk]

As much as i love hearing this story and its nice to hear normal day to day folk can have this dream too...that fact is some people wont have a few £100 to spend developing a game...let alone £10k but i think he picked a good aesthetic style which sits really well with indie games which probably helped, but the problem with myself and probably many others is having that drive and motivation to see a project through to completion....I've started SOOO many projects i haven't seen through and its hard to push yourself and commit the time but I love this idea of never having a 0% day....well done to him I say doing this with all his other commitments.

[@KentHambrock]

Heh heh, I was noticing those assets pretty hard. xD Looks solid, though. A true asset flip game doesn't take any time to change anything or even make a story in most cases. You used assets for their true purpose. :)

[@ridho5066]

True. Most asset is created with some purpose to it, adjustment is needed to make it fit any game.

[@moejjoraisin6005]

I THOROUGHLY LOVED THIS GAME! I cried so much, it triggered some really deep, buried emotions inside of me. Wonderful interactive story.

[@NeatGames]

He has a great KZbin channel now!! Game Dev Unlocked

[@marv.innovations802]

Unbelievable. Respect you give one hope.

[@rsoftgames3625]

"You're like a friend next door making a game..." This humanization is amazing.

[@tererezerogamestudio9228]

I am in a similar situation, but without the kids rsrsrsrsrs. I'm working on my games at dawn time, and this talk really inspired me. Thank you David, God bless you.

[@SmartLearningAI]

This is very encouraging. As a single indie dev it is almost impossible to not use store assets and you showed it can be done.

[@tresaidh3y90]

This is super inspirational! I decided this week to become an indie dev and so far it has been a hard journey of learning but I am excited.

[@CosmicApe]

As someone who has a child under 1 at home and has a new burning passion to dive into this world, this gives me a lot of hope where just last night I was sitting thinking "this dream is silly, there's no way I have enough time."

[@dreamingacacia]

even I work full time on my project my hrs/week still lower than many people that only work on evening after dayjob and weekend. well my problem is my body is too weak to work for long time, right now I'm trying to fix this problem while working on my project as much as possible. Well my style is working smart not smack the wall with my head, if I couldn't do I'll just rest. May not appear in the market soon but I promise one day I'll finish my project.

[@hendersonrichards4394]

What's the project your working on?

[@thanhvinhnguyento7069]

What are you working on?

[@AHeroWith1000Names]

Hope your development is going well, please reply to me when you'll have anything you think would be worthy to show, good luck! =)

[@mmmmmmmmmmm10]

Brilliant talk, thanks for sharing so openly your blueprint for indie success.

[@Verinius]

I love your talk and your message. I have bookmarked this video and I will watch this again and again when I feel lost on what to do, how to promote my game, and how to finish my game. Thank you!

[@Grimsikk]

this is an excellent talk. Very inspiring for me as a solo indie dev that's trying to make an amazing arenaFPS game. 💙

[@typingcat]

02:03 "Console porn, I mean console port".

[@alexbabichuk2237]

Jeong-hun Sin lol as soon as I heard him say it I went to the comments

[@amarnathprasad1]

Rule 34

[@nikbates23]

He rolled through that like a champ though haha

[@bottledducky9610]

LMAO

[@jeboteya5489]

Heard it at the exact time i read the comment 😂😂😂

[@Xenonterminus5]

I went to SF and to GDC in 2019, but I really didn’t appreciate it enough at the time and barely spent any time at GDC. In hindsight, I wish I would’ve been more appreciative and taken advantage of that opportunity better.

[@Whisper_InThe_Rain]

no one should be ashamed of using assets! Its so frustrating to see people act snobby against assets, same as art critics who set the rules and if you don't make it yourself somehow, your not real?! use Assets!! They are to help you! I look and watch through tons of assets and I would never even recognize them in a complete project. Don't let some snobs, dictate the field.

[@fateriddle14]

This is an amazing talk for any type of creator on his/her side project, I learned really a lot, thanks for sharing.

[@TheCrimson147]

As much as I love that he had a vision and he executed that beautifully, as a game artist student, my dream is to collaborate on games with my art. His journey to making the game happen was painful and tiring and he worked for the release, mine would be the endless process of creating game assets and enjoying it, without ever stopping to think about the release. It's really weird when we both started first, thinking "I want to make a game" but we have had different mindsets from the beginning.

[@whatsupdude9948]

I really like this guy he's so normal and not a get rich quick shady dude like 99% of youtubers

[@daveyhu]

Great talk and very useful social media list at 18:06

[@GameDesignFoundry]

This was a great talk. Really learned a lot from his experiences!

[@brandonvance9688]

Seems like a very humble guy!!

[@JustDaZack]

Amazing (and smart) talk!

[@hannibalyin8853]

thank you David, this means a lot.

[@Oliver_Koppert]

Incredibly inspiring & informative talk. Thank you David

[@tershenN]

The quote from the anonymous player at 20:35 was beautiful 💖

[@xialah9047]

Thank you very much, it was great! Do you guys have any others relevant and recents videos for starting as an indie dev? Thanks

[@INDIGE_STUDIO]

I enjoyed the video. Clearly he is a good man and deserved the success he attracted.

[@matheuscrepory7013]

My dream is to be good in things that like. The challenge is one of key points of that makes me happy and rewaded. That why Dev game appealed, because, i can lern story telling, visual art, and music all together. Make a story in the way i want, really turns me. But after this video, I'm questioning myself if asserts should be avoided, i think i can learn a lot with them e speed this process by creating some prototype of what i want.

[@ThomasChen-ur2gt]

this is the most inspiring talk I've watched on GDC

[@wilcombebolger]

Such an awesome and inspiring talk thank you so much

[@cregerbot8217]

Glad to see people will play games with fantastic stories that don't rely on often mindless gameplay. This was great to see, and the reaction is inspiring

[@arnmazing3156]

I didn’t know making games was my passion until now because it’s really intimidating. But I am in the same boat as a lot of people, you’re so down to earth and so inspirational. Thank you for sharing this to us!

[@MrRoxx17]

The raytracing on his forhead is spectacular :D

[@caruya]

Holy crap this is sooo valuable info, thank youuu!!

[@fancifilms]

Great talk! I'm also a dad with a full-time day job. Nice to see a fellow Utah-based dev having success!

[@freeju2001]

you're an inspiration bro, hats off to you and your work.

[@clarksteel98]

very honest guy . thx for this golden insights and congrats bro

[@midramble7]

Asset site list at 6:17

[@pizzakidd]

Thank you so much for sharing this knowledge with us indies!!! 🍕

[@TheRealJackArthur]

Awesome talk! 👍🏻

[@ericag45]

Helpful and inspiring. Very useful information about marketing, thank you.

[@TomLeys]

Well Done! Thanks so much for sharing your story.

[@TheNormalUniverse]

Amazing talk, thank you very much

[@33whitten]

I bought this game and I was hoping for another ABZU level quality game and it was not. But I respect how little resources brought it together.

[@Sismanski]

Basically it's all about not having a 0% day, which he mentioned. Staying focused on one project or even one part of a project is essential and I personally fail there a lot.

[@leonardobrawijayamrq8914]

09:14 thank you my guy, think about the streamer, some streamer would just not play a game because the copyright content. like atleast give the option to mute copyrighted song i hope most gamedev will do that.

[@kimmirossi46]

Respect to this man!!!

[@jijinunun5219]

Oh man, you are a much better dev than you are a public speaker! Haha you got a new subscriber! Love to watch your vids and is inspiring me to make a game myself

[@TorQueMoD]

Great work man! Thanks for all the good ideas regarding marketing. Fading into obscurity is my biggest worry too.

[@3djohnboy]

wow, I can really relate to this guy.. this is very inspiring

[@JulaWeg]

I hope my granddaughter who is very artistic will follow your example in his work. Could you advise what equipment did you use?

[@littlecurrybread]

Very inspirational, I'm taking notes

[@barret232hxc]

thanks for the motivation in these trying times. this was very inspiring

[@rapshotgaming8280]

He is an inspiration

[@Tubocass]

click-bait title, but actually a decent presentation.

[@aratnon]

I'm on this journey too, but I also have to spend time in a gym. It's so difficult to manage the time. I wonder if he ever did some exercises or not since he didn't include it in the graph.

[@jesse9056]

He’s amazing

[@vaibhavdn-builds]

Amazing talk

[@rohitmisraa]

Now you are also a role model for many peoples who doesn't know much about coding but wants to make games.

[@deepenigmametroidvaniastea8384]

I'm creating a game, and it is about a few days to finish it, and I realise how dificulty is to be a developer here, in my country, Brazil. I did ask a lot of people to work with me, but I only got bad reception (even if I did offering to pay for the help/work). I try to everyday posting something on my Twitter account, for some people from there (that's my only possibility, since I'm a low budget developer). Thanks for this video!!! :)

[@GuiSBS22]

Opa amigo!! Fiquei curioso, manda ai algum modo de vê-lo!

[@Kyle-ho4lj]

did u ever finish it? would like to see a video on it

[@gurka3141]

i watched through the whole thing, inspiring