The Truth About Game Development: Expectations vs. Reality

Show your Support & Get Exclusive Benefits on Patreon! - / sasquatchbgames
Join our Discord Community! - / discord
Check out the Podcast! - sasquatchbstud...
In this video we dive into the truth about game development: expectations vs. reality. Join us, as we share our journey of creating a commercial video game in just 90 days!
We'll discuss our progress, lessons learned, and whether the reality actually aligns with our initial expectations.
Will we meet our deadline, or will the roadblocks of design, programming, and content creation prove too daunting?
In this candid behind-the-scenes look, we'll share the highs and lows of our progress so far: from the adrenaline-fueled hustle to the unexpected curveballs that reality throws our way.
If you're new to our channel, we're Brandon & Nikki from Sasquatch B Studios. We sold our house to start our game studio, and work full time on building our business and making our games, Veil of Maia & Samurado.
---
In need of some Unity Assets? Using our affiliate link is a great way to support us. It's free, and we get a small cut that helps keep us up and running: assetstore.uni...?aid=1100lwgBQ
---
Wishlist our Games:
Wishlist Samurado on Steam! - store.steampow...
Wishlist Veil of Maia! - store.steampow...
Subscribe for NEW game dev videos every Monday & Thursday!
Follow us on Twitter for regular updates!
/ sasquatchbgames
---
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
uppbeat.io/t/m...
License code: R9UNOC8I9BN2YJO4
#motivation #indiegame #gamedevelopment

[@CodeRadGames]

The problem with developing a rogue likes/lites is that there is A LOT of work upfront before you have much of a game.

[@ludomancerstudio]

True that, what make these games fun is the ridiculous amount of content that slowly gets unlocked each run to give that dopamine rush effect of discovering and acquiring something new. Achieving that in 2-3 months is quite hard.

[@doclouis4236]

Don't forget constantly updating the game for balancing purposes/player feedback and a slow drip of content feed post launch.

[@rybek7081]

1. Design a new thing. Sounds awesome in your head. 2. Implement the thing... It will be better after it's polished, right? 3. Find out the thing is not as awesome as it was when it only existed in your head. 4. Tweak the thing till it is acceptable, perhaps for different reasons than initially assumed Or cut it. The game design experience

[@sasquatchbgames]

lmao!! I've been through that 1 or 2....thousand times

[@pamparam3495]

I recommend starting the game and individual features with the creating of an MVP list, this helps to throw out what is not needed or not the first priority for the game

[@PierreHProd]

Hi really enjoy your transparency! Its very educational! On thing I still dont understand is why you're always alone on camera, I think the fact that you do this together with your wife is what makes you unique from other channels and we dont get to see a lot of that. Seeing how you manage working together could be interesting. Anyway, keep it up !

[@shawns4354]

She may be shy or it may be for privacy.

[@shinkouhai919]

making game is hard, planning is so complicated, and that's just the start... just the beginning, and after that designs, arts, music, mechanism, UI, UX, and many things flows, and you got so much problems to the process, you might have a day or 2 day just feeling like doing absolutely nothing.

[@owdoogames]

A day or two? I often have a month or two of doing absolutely nothing! It's a good job I'm a hobbyist game dev or else I'd starve. My main problem is I get distracted by other project ideas, or messing about with other game engines / frameworks / programming languages. I've already moved my main project from GameMaker to Godot, have seen if I can port it to Defold (because Nintendo Switch export is free), and am now considering going back to GameMaker! During that time I've also been learning Unity and C#, dabbled with Unreal, have made a jam game with Love2D, learned the fundamentals of C language, and messed about with Rust. You're right, making games is hard, but for me staying focused is harder. I think I need help.

[@Jess_stpierre]

Best of luck to you and your wife!!! Yall got this!!!

[@ludomancerstudio]

I would love to see a tutorial on your aproach on roguelike upgrades. I've seen videos around youtube and all the current tutorials lack a lot in terms of depth, reusability, performance and polish. I'm making a roguelike myself and the upgrading system was what I wasted most of my time on, refactored multiple times. Stat system is also a pain, so that's also another idea for a tutorial. Anyway keep up the awesome videos!

[@sealsharp]

The tutorial problem. Usually made to be easily followed and in isolation of other systems. And often by people who never worked on a real project. While it is totally fine to make tutorials when you aren't an experienced expert in a field, it shows in the design and structures if the creator never had to deal with the consequences of a design. That's not even a gamedev or youtube tutorial problem alone. I've worked with commercial APIs that clearly show that the person who wrote them never had to work with them.

[@owdoogames]

That 'reality' pic of the Taj Mahal reminds me of when I went to the US in 2001 to visit a friend in LA and we went up to San Fran to check out the Golden Gate Bridge... it was foggy AF and we couldn't see a damn thing. Anyway, a great video as always. A shame that you won't be able to make Next Fest, but completely understandable that Samurado has got you hooked creatively and you want to make it the best that it can be. It's looking like a lot of fun.

[@ThatRazzy]

Good luck guys! Game is looking awesome :D

[@hawkgamedev]

truer words about game dev were never spoken before xD your videos are great and real, thanks for that.

[@youtube_video_patrol]

I truly enjoy your videos. I genuinely hope you achieve great success.

[@inL1MBO]

'Kill your darlings' is a great piece of advice from fiction writing. Sometimes, the idea you're most excited about is the one you need to cut. You might be really excited about the 'race' upgrade system, but if it doesn't mesh with the genre or top down camera, why keep it at all? Especially when you're short on time. Is there another way you can implement these upgrades using the game mechanics already in place? None the less, enjoying the videos and good luck with the games.

[@wazaDev]

Loved your perspective on the matter and approach. Having to manage game dev as well as life an be overwhelming at times

[@sealsharp]

Some people say, estimating times gets better with experiences. I think it is estimating scope and risks. In my dayjob, it is normal that requirements come in some abstract "feature should do x and y" and sometimes it's as late as the implementation when they engineer says "you know that requires a shitload of systems to work, right?". Usually customers don't get how much scope features really are. And well, you are your own customer now. Is this a problem? Well, it's one side of a coin. As an experienced engineer, i got the other side of that coin. When i brainstorm ideas, i can't help but think about the risks and the workload immediately, which is not what should be a thing at the idea stage, where ideas should be able to be mutated and iterated and maybe something with manageable scope can come out of ideas that seem to imply a shitload of work. We all got our biases it seems.

[@shawns4354]

This is why im making a cozy game. Love the genre and can be kept in scope easily.

[@MysticRiverGames]

You just skipped the most important thing in game dev, limit your scope as much as you can so you can finish your games in the time you wish to finish. Adding all those systems takes a lot of time, I made a rogue lite in a month but it took me around 4 months to prepare everything that can be used for any game development I could think of. Because of that I released 3 games in 3 months, though not very fancy, each one help me build and brush my project scope and time estimates

[@agdneto3760]

I had the same problem with my game. I had to reschedule it to August instead of July as was originally planned. I understand how you guys feel. =|

[@kikijewell2967]

Question: what necessary jobs are you most likely to outsource? (Basically, I'm looking for niche jobs no one else wants to do.)

[@veosotano]

It's always the same in all kinds of development projects: if you estimate X amount of time, just calculate twice that, just in case. Believe me, even if you don't see what will take up all that time, it will. Just estimate, then double the amount. On the other hand, since your wife is part of the team of the game studio, she should be talking into the camera too from time to time! And finally, I'd invest a bit more into artwork for the main character of Veil Of Maia. I think it's its weakest point at the first impression. I'd update the character design and also the animations, they need to be a bit more "weighty". Love to see your channel grow, been here since the very beginning!

[@DaNoHypePodcast]

Tbh to me I always thought it would be easy but doing it myself is very complex and difficult,

[@MundoTechconJc]

did yu get it on time?

[@doclouis4236]

Can you make a video on game developers that inspired you guys?

[@BangBang-zb8sf]

00:10 its just weather

[@homeoffice3524]

So in KZbin community nothing else then Steam don't exist? Mobile phone games, PC games without the third party controls, Web games, Nintendo Switch and so on... No wonder games are pretty bad in last years. Just copy paste Unity/Steam games 🤷‍♂️

[@midniteoilsoftware]

First

[@OIndieGabo]

First?

[@OIndieGabo]

Yay...

[@Coco-gg5vp]

First