🛠️ Building a fulfilling creative career as a solo dev

You might remember my friend and fellow game dev Thomas Stewart from:

• His YouTube channel @ThomasStewartDev
• His video review of my book
• His games (Tanks, But No Tanks and Bridges & Docks)
• The Make the Game episode we recorded together

Thomas invited me to appear on his show How This Indie Dev..., and we had a great conversation! Give it a listen and/or a watch.

📺 Watch the Video

We discussed the various challenges we face as independent game developers, including:

1. How do you juggle all the various hats you wear?
2. How do you decide what to prioritize?
3. Who is this guy? (my train of thought lost me here, the train boss got me again)
4. What's it been like looking for a publisher? (update: got one!)
5. Which indie game folks do you follow?
6. What do you think about making game dev courses?
7. YouTube time versus game development time
8. Building out your team
9. On building a game dev "shell" (covered in 💰 The Money Episode)
10. How long should developers spend making their games?
11. Save it For the Sequel (from my book)
12. Sticking to a genre
13. On motivation

💬 Quotes

In its purest form, marketing is just trying to find people who want what you are selling, and you're matching that up, and you're making it easier for them.

-Thomas Stewart

Would it be cringey to quote myself? Oh right, I just remembered that I'm already cringe so it doesn't matter anymore:

Sometimes you just need to answer, "Is this the right thing for me to do or not?" and the only way you can answer that is by doing it.

-Matt Hackett

That's it for now. I'm cooking up a new episode of Make the Game, so look for that soon. Subscribe to Thomas Stewart because he's quite good at YouTube (and making games).

Good luck with your game and I hope to see you in the Valadria Discord!