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What It Takes To Solo Develop a Game (ft. Yahtzee Croshaw) | Dev Heads Podcast
1.6k Plays5 months ago
This week, the crew is joined by Yahtzee Croshaw to chat about his new game Starstruck Vagabond, and the trials and tribulations of solo game development.
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Transcript
Introduction to Game Maker
00:00:00
Speaker
This video is brought to you by Game Maker, the free, fast, and easy to use 2D game engine that helps power modern classics like Undertale, Hotline Miami, and Hyper Light Drifter. Starter templates, official asset bundles, and a wealth of tutorials are available to help bring your ideas to life. And you can export and share your game for free on all non-console platforms.
00:00:20
Speaker
But you don't have to take my word for it, I'm just some jerk. We have an actual bona fide game maker-er on hand. Oh shit, that's me. Yes, I've been using Game Maker for a long time. It's probably the most powerful and easiest to use engine for making 2D games out there. Suitable for both amateurs and hardcore coders, and with all the Steam and console integration stuff for when you're ready to start monetizing your hobbies. I'm using it for my upcoming smash hit game, Starstruck Back Upon. Which I assume will be a smash hit because Game Maker's that bloody great.
00:00:49
Speaker
Head on over to the GameMaker link in the description to begin your game development journey today.
Introducing DevHeads Podcast
00:01:02
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to episode one of DevHeads. The podcast focused on the ins, outs and goings on a game development with hosts experience ranging from indie, double to triple A. I'm Jay and I'm joined by my wonderful co-hosts Tina. Hello. And Mikey.
00:01:18
Speaker
Hello. And today we have a very special guest, Yahtzee Motherfucking Croshaw. How are you, sir?
Yahtzee Croshaw's Game Release
00:01:25
Speaker
I'm good. Hello, everyone. It's me again. It's a special day for you, Yahtzee, isn't it? For multiple reasons. Yes. Yes. It's my birthday today. Happy birthday, Yahtz. Oh, my God. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.
00:01:40
Speaker
And anything else? Oh, Christ. Oh, not much. Just the release of my game that I've been working on for like seven years now. Starstruck Vagabond on Steam. It's been out for all of two hours and 11 minutes at time of speaking. And yeah, it's it's been a nervy one. Yeah, but it's doing quite well, right? We were talking about this just before the podcast began that the it's doing quite well in the Steam charts.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yes, it's currently number one on new and trending. And if you click on top, if you go on top sellers and then get past all the, you know, the triple A shit, scroll down about four times. We're just above hunt showdown and just below destiny to the final shape at the
Game Development Journey
00:02:26
Speaker
moment. Hell yeah. So everyone in chat, if you haven't got it yet, let's see if we can make that change. Let's bump it up. Let's bump it up a few. We believe in you. Let's do this.
00:02:35
Speaker
So yeah, Yachts, you said it's been how long since you started developing Starstruck? I started it one Christmas. I think it would have been around 2017 while I was up in the family cabin. What? Is it on a laptop or? On my laptop, yeah. Yeah. OK. So you were struck by just the idea came to you. Starstruck, if you will. Yeah. Oh my God. Looking up at the sky.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I've been working it on and off as my major hobby project since then. I took a break from it for a year to do my 12 Games in 12 Months Dev Diary Challenge, which is documented on YouTube as my dev diary series. And then I went back to it. Did you use Unity for it? Did you use Unity to build the game? No, Game Maker. Which is why we just had a big ad for that.
00:03:31
Speaker
What inspired, because I always assumed like because you worked on so many small projects beforehand, was it a small project that kind of snowballed into a I wanna solo dev and make this into a full-fledged project or did you always have that kind of idea? I've always wanted to make like big games. Like realistically speaking I know that
00:03:56
Speaker
As a solo developer, the small stuff is the stuff that's the smartest thing to work on to get your skills up. But I'm very much interested in video game narrative and interactive narrative. So my ambition has always been to make something epic. Something that really inspires thought, I suppose. And my little mini games weren't quite good in that.
00:04:23
Speaker
So that's what this was. Space that big jump. You're like... There's a space between big and epic. Space is the one for that. I made a space explosion game when I used to play around with Adventure Game Studio called Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I was trying to do something similar with that. That had a lot of design issues. I was still young. And a lot of that's gone into Starstruck Vagabond. One of the NPC crew members you can recruit in Starstruck is a character from Galaxy Phantom. I don't expect anyone to get that. That was for me, really. So this is a question that I know Tina is interested in asking. How many people worked on this game? Or was it solely just you?
00:05:07
Speaker
It was mostly me. I got some additional art done by the wonderful El Cheshire who does a lot of work for Second Wind and Adventurers Nigh. They did like the character portraits that you can see in the game and quite a few of the background art and the key art as well.
00:05:27
Speaker
And the music is done by Eric Horton, Sam Horton, sorry, and Joe Collinson. And those were the guys who did the music on BPM Bullets for Minutes, who got in touch after I did a positive review of their game. So, you know, exploiting my contacts there. But otherwise, it was all me. And Nick's done, like, got on board with, like, the production and marketing and a bit of that at the end.
00:05:53
Speaker
king producer, Nicholas Chandra. But yeah, it's, that's a big undertaking. Would you say it's taken seven years because of that undertaking or by the fact that you've also been trying to manage having a, you know, be a YouTube personality and a consistent, you know, weekly show? Has that been a difficult thing to do?
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's true. You know, I have always to face the knowledge that I was working on it for seven years with the fact that it was a hobby. That's how I worked on it, like 10 minutes per day, if that so. So, yeah, I haven't given up the day job.
00:06:35
Speaker
How long do you reckon, like if you thought you could just sit down and just dedicate your entire time to a project, do you reckon it would have been shorter or do you would have thought that maybe you would have just added more and more features just because you had that extra time?
Design and Gameplay Philosophy
00:06:51
Speaker
Oh, well I tried to avoid getting into a feature creepy position. Yeah. Which is not to say I wasn't doing a bit of that in the last few months.
00:07:02
Speaker
Like after we showcased it to GDC, I think I said to you, wait, I just had an idea that I should have the ability to throw crates in the game. So I stuck that in at the last minute. You implemented that? Yeah, yeah. Amazing. I liked that. I was playing with that a lot last night.
00:07:21
Speaker
clearly a very good addition. So what would you say are some of your inspirations for this, not just setting, but also just like gameplay style? Like what are some of the games that have inspired you to get to this point? Well, the big one was Stardew Valley.
00:07:38
Speaker
I mean, that was that's like very overtly like the game that's, you know, if you're like that, you're like this. I've been pointing to in the marketing because the observation was Stardew Valley does a great job creating like this addictive sense of always having one more task to do and the work a day routine. And I've noticed
00:08:04
Speaker
clarity of like the post dad game, the work sim with the sort of light approach and the fantasy elements. Yeah. And I guess what I was thinking was, what if you have that sort of thing, but applied it not to farming, but to another sort of grindy workaday task?
00:08:27
Speaker
And I thought of Elite Dangerous, which was a game I also quite like, which is basically, depending on how you want to play it, a space trucking simulator. You move cargo to different star systems and offload it.
00:08:40
Speaker
And there's plenty of slight space sims that will give you that experience. But I felt like there was a gap for the Stardew Valley style cartoon approach, top-down 2D approach for that sort of thing. Because space games, God love them, always tend to be a little bit ass-akingly realistic, I find. Because people like the science.
00:09:04
Speaker
So I just wanted to apply the sort of quirky sci-fi setting to the Stardew Valley worker day loop and that was the influences, I suppose. Yeah, it's one of the things that when I played, we did our little QA streams, which was
00:09:23
Speaker
your humor and your writing, which is something that you're obviously very famous for with all of your books and your YouTube series and stuff like that, this setting has allowed for that to shine through. Has that always been, when adding mechanics, have you always been thinking, how can you add your little spice humor into that? Has that always been a process? Well, it is a strength of vinyl, I think. I think you've got to play to your strengths, especially when you're a solo developer.
00:09:50
Speaker
And you're not going to be able to compete with something with like 500 people working on it. I know that I can do witty writing. So I have to make sure to emphasize that.
00:10:00
Speaker
For the writing side of things, I guess I was influenced a lot by sci-fi TV shows like Red Dwarf, like Star Trek Next Generation, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, that sort of thing. And one of the things I wanted to create in the story aspect of the game was that feeling of being part of a ragtag crew of misfits who go around space just trying to make a living and every now and again get into weird space phenomenon shit.
00:10:30
Speaker
I think because for me, playing Star Trek Vagabond, that's what breaks up the what could be monotony in the game. Because I do like games like Elite Dangerous, but sometimes you can get a little bit stuck in the motions and it can get a little bit tedious. But I find with Star Trek Vagabond,
00:10:50
Speaker
Those moments of levity come from the humor and the interactions between characters, which allows for those trucking moments in between to be a bit more relaxing. You kind of get a break from it. And that's, I think, what makes Star Stroke what it is.
00:11:06
Speaker
Well, the point I took from Early Dangerous is that that's a very strong game in the sense of peaks and troughs, which is something I appreciate in a game. You got your long, peaceful, relaxing, meditative flights through space, and every now and again something exciting happens. You get attacked by pirates, or you discover some weird treasure floating in space. And I noticed something similar in Stardew Valley.
00:11:32
Speaker
Because I did a lot of research into it as I moved to APIT. One of the things I observed about it is that the thing that makes me keep playing Stardew Valley is the character stories. And every now and again you're just going about your business and then suddenly you stumble into a cutscene with a character because you've gotten them to a certain depth of relationship track.
00:11:54
Speaker
And that's what I wanted to recreate, I suppose, because those like shows I mentioned, like Cowboy Bebop and Red Dwarf, you get the sense with a lot of the dialogue in the game is that the characters in those shows, their lives are like 90% boring routine. It's like 90% just twatting about space, trying to kill time, playing cheese slice a snap. And then every now and again, something exciting happens and those are the only bits we see. Those are the episodes.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so that was the approach I wanted to take for Starstruck. Mostly the boring routine. And every now and again, you run into an episode of the TV show that you're in. So seven years ago, you decided you wanted to pick up Game Maker and make this game. I'm curious, where did you start? Did it start with a story? Did it start with a setting? What kind of kicked off everything?
00:12:50
Speaker
Well, with Starstruck, it started with just a dude in a room. OK. Because the first thought was, the first thing I need to do is to get the ship mechanics working, like get the core mechanics working, because I learned in my like 12 games in 12 months, a dev diary series that the most important thing is the core gameplay loop. Mm hmm.
00:13:11
Speaker
like Mario 64, like for the first few years it was literally just Mario in a room and they iterated and iterated until that was fun to move around. So the first thing was the ship, like getting the ship in place, getting all the systems in place, because another game that influenced me was a game called Far Loan Sales, which was a game, an indie game where you were piloting a vehicle
00:13:33
Speaker
from left to right and you had to maintain all the systems on the vehicle. Like you had to make sure the engine had fuel, make sure all the components were in line. And that was sort of what I wanted to follow on from. I liked that sense of the gameplay that comes from being in control of a big machine and making sure all the components are working. So how long did it take you to get to a place where you were satisfied with it? Well,
00:14:03
Speaker
I don't know if I've completely satisfied with it even now. But there was a lot of iterating over the years. I think one of the lessons I've learned is that you need that I probably should get testers in earlier and figure out what works and what doesn't. Because I was making tweaks to the core gameplay quite a few times along the lines.
00:14:24
Speaker
along the years. What does that external testing process look like? Like at what point did you start to bring other people in and for how long were they there, their backgrounds, that kind of thing? Well, as I say, I should have been starting a lot earlier. I think the first time I really got someone else to play it was when Jay was playing it on string. That was one of the first times.
00:14:45
Speaker
When was that? A few months ago? Yeah, just a few months ago. So as I say, the lesson learned for going forward, testing, get started on that a lot sooner, because there's still, I was like fixing bugs right up to the wire, frankly.
00:15:02
Speaker
But that's really common. I will say like I didn't know I was one of the initial first people to test or see that aspect of the game. I think you did a fantastic job getting to where it was because I don't know if you remember most of the feedback I had were like tiny, tiny mechanical changes just for game feel. Not any game breaking bugs. They were just these tiny things.
00:15:27
Speaker
We went into a few crash desktops with the testing phase. Because not too long ago, we put a call out for testers on the Discord and just asked them to fill in a little form. And we were offering a payment to just test the game. And we had 500 people offer their services. We hand-picked the ones that had actual QA experience.
00:15:56
Speaker
And so they were great. They found a lot of the really important things, a couple of soft locks. And but the embargo dropped like two days ago and a couple of reviews came in and both of them found like one of them found a crash a desktop and one of them found a soft lock. I was like, shit. They always do, man. It's inevitable. All the machines out there. It's crazy.
00:16:20
Speaker
But people understand that, right? Like, not just when games are first released, you know, some of these small things do get through the cracks, but also from a solo dev, right? One of the pitfalls of solo dev developing that I've warned against, and I guess I failed to take my own advice here, was not to put too much of yourself into your own work. And I've had like anxiety generally. So I think the whole reason I didn't get
00:16:44
Speaker
people to play it earlier on was just that anxiety. It was like knowing that they're going to find problems and knowing that I know it would be irrational to like take it personally, but I did anyway. So I just put it off, put it on, put it off.
00:17:03
Speaker
brought that up because, um, you know, you've been on the journalist side for quite a while and, um, you know, you're pretty well known, um, your critiques and, you know, witty banter, uh, being on the other side now and having a game out, was there any sort of, um, lessons or criticism that you gave that sort of incorporated into
Tutorial and Feedback Importance
00:17:25
Speaker
your thought process behind developing your game?
00:17:30
Speaker
Well, I like to think a lot of my history of reviewing has given me as an insight. And that's part of what went into Dev Diary. The focusing on the primary gameplay loop, I've always found that's important to me in a game. So you've got the continual sense of catharsis.
00:17:54
Speaker
It helped me, like, notice some of the things I wasn't liking in the game as I was playing it. Like, earlier on, like, when I was aping Stardew Valley more closely, we had, like, a day-night cycle. Well, I had a day-night cycle where there was, like, a bunk bed on your ship, and when you'd run for things to do, you'd just go to sleep, wake up the next morning, and take it and get on the work anew. Because, like, that was how you, like, you pass travel time.
00:18:20
Speaker
But when that was the case, I found that I got into this rather not particularly satisfying loop where you'd take care of the ship, you clean up all the components and get them back in line, go to sleep, wake up, and then have to do all that again because all the components have gotten dirty again and all the components are back out of line. And that didn't feel particularly fun or satisfying.
00:18:46
Speaker
And I wanted to and it also felt like we weren't getting like the chill out time that I wanted because I like playing games and listening to podcasts. And that was one of the goals for this game. This with the sort of game you could just chill out with, listen to a podcast while playing. So what I did was I shortened the travel time a little bit so you wouldn't have to sleep through it and just made it so you just have to wait to get to places. So you got time to listen and meditate.
00:19:12
Speaker
It's really interesting because I was talking to Billy Basso, the solo dev of Animal Well, the other day, and he said something really interesting, which was, and I can see it in your design process as well, Yachts, which is when you're designing, you are not developing from the
00:19:31
Speaker
perspective solely as a developer, but also as a player, you think, what does this feel like to play? What would this feel like to the player doing? What would they want to be doing while doing this task? And I think, you know, having such a wealth of experience, you know, critiquing games gives you that kind of permanent insight of what is this going to be like from a player perspective, not from a design perspective. And I think that's to your strength.
00:19:59
Speaker
I like to think so. I mean, the experience of reviewing games and the experience of playing games. Because first and foremost, what I wanted to make from the very beginning was the sort of game I would want to play. And I think that's all you can do. If you try to worry too much about making something that will have really broad appeal, then it stops being something you can be passionate about, I think.
00:20:25
Speaker
definitely, definitely becomes more of a product than like a piece of art that you want to show, right? And like in line with that, I'm curious to hear coming from that critic background. I know this isn't like your first time developing, but with this project specifically,
00:20:42
Speaker
Were there any moments or elements that you were like, hmm, you know what? Back when I was more focused on the criticism side, I didn't see how difficult this piece was or how multifaceted this piece was. Was there anything like that that sticks out in your mind?
00:21:00
Speaker
Well, what I did find is that you absolutely need to get somebody else to play it and watch them play it. That's kind of why I wanted to get Jay to do it, because there's a lot you overlook when you know how everything works, I suppose.
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah. So the tutorial went through like an awful lot of iterations. Oh, and by the way, dude, the tutorial is awesome. Like I play a fair amount of indie games. I watch a lot of indie games. Um, and it's very easy to get wrong just for the exact reason you're saying, right? People, but it was clear that you put a lot of iterative time through that and that you just took
00:21:34
Speaker
you introduced everything in sort of a piecemeal, easy to understand way, because the gameplay is unique, right? It's sticking out from everything else. You have some complicated aspects like with the ship management, and you have some like cute fun aspects of like crushing the slimes of the crate, you know? So it was a good balance and introduction of all those things.
00:21:55
Speaker
It was a long time. Like even when we did QA, Yahtzee was concerned that I was, I gave a lot of, you know, small technical feedback, but the majority of my feedback was this tutorial on what I experienced here was really good. Yahtzee, I don't even remember saying was like, well, you kind of have to say that, right? Cause we work together, but it's,
00:22:17
Speaker
If it was bad, for your benefit, I would have tried to critique it and rip into it as hard as I could. But it's always been that smooth, right? Even before it changes. And as I say, it's had a lot of work on it over the years. I thought it was done and then we took it to GDC and watched a couple of people play it at the mix event.
00:22:39
Speaker
And I had to take some more changes after that, because I mean, this wasn't like a public event and it was very noisy. And you know what, journalists are like at live demo play. But, you know, I thought it would be enough to just have the thing and have a huge arrow pointing at the thing, but apparently not. Really? Because the UI wasn't clear enough?
00:23:05
Speaker
Tutorials are so unsexy, but they're so important at the same time. Like, for example, during the tutorial, there's a bit where you get a hull breach and you actually get two hull breaches. You get one in one of the nacelles and one on the outside, so you have to fix them both. In the original tutorial, the door leading to the hull breach didn't open. It was closed and you had to open it to see it.
00:23:32
Speaker
But the hull breach that was outside you had to deal with appeared over your head. So I noticed a lot of testers assumed they were supposed to be fixing the thing that was currently in the room with them. So I just added a little thing so that the door, like when that hull breach happens, the door jerks open. So you instantly see the hull breach and know that that's the thing you need to fix.
00:23:55
Speaker
And that's all it takes, right? The testing phase is so important because, like you said, you kind of get trapped inside your own head of understanding how a system works and it might be funny. If you're interested in development and you only take one thing away from this, get someone other than yourself to play the game and watch them play it. And don't help them.
00:24:18
Speaker
You'll learn the shit ton for sure. Because everyone's kind of experience is different and you kind of put that into your game in a sense with the personality types. Can you speak to what it was like writing a game where certain aspects change based on the personality type chosen at the beginning?
00:24:42
Speaker
Oh, I bit off a large thing for me to chew on here, didn't I? I mean, I had this, because I wanted to use this as like a test bed for some like gameplay concepts I've had.
Narrative and Player Choice
00:24:51
Speaker
One of the things I've always been like thought about is the idea of the semi-custom protagonist. Because I've observed, particularly in the Saints Row series, that people get weirdly attached to their Saints Row protagonists.
00:25:06
Speaker
in the way they don't in other games where you can customize the main character. And my theory was that that was because, as well as choosing your appearance, you also choose their voice. And in a certain, because of that, their personality. But then once you've chosen all that, you don't have any characters or choices from that point forward. The game takes over your character. You don't choose their dialogue. You don't choose their actions in cutscenes.
00:25:36
Speaker
they do all that stuff for the story by themselves. And I think it's that combination of having a character that you created, and that's yours, but who can also surprise you in the story by doing cool stuff, makes them more likeable, at least it does for me.
00:25:59
Speaker
So what I wanted to do was when you create a character, you also choose one of nine personalities. From that point on, you don't choose your dialogue and certain crew member cutscenes have different outcomes based on whether they their personality type gels with yours.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, so for people that haven't played yet, when you're playing through the tutorial, you can choose a dialogue option. And then whatever options you do choose impact what personality is suggested to you at the end of it, right? So when I was playing, I was streaming to Mike.
00:26:31
Speaker
And I thought I was picking all of the, I don't want to say respectful, but like decent options out of both. I was like, I was trying to be a nice person. And then the personality that was recommended to me was Cersei Lannister. And I was like, what the fuck?
00:26:47
Speaker
I tend to play like that in games, right? I try, I'm like kind of an asshole, but I wasn't expecting that this time. And that really surprised me in a funny way. But like, how does, is it randomized or are there specific dialogue choices that impact that?
00:27:06
Speaker
There are specific choices, yeah, because how the personality matrix works is that it's like the D&D alignment system, you've got attitude against motivation. So your motivation is either you work for yourself, you're an egoist, so you do whatever furthers your position, or you're an altruist, you do things that help other people, that help the world around you, or you're just indifferent either way.
00:27:33
Speaker
Those are the three motive thoughts. And the attitudes are upbeat, private, and bitter. So if you're upbeat, then you're generally optimistic towards the thing that motivates you. If you're an upbeat egoist, you have a very positive image of yourself. If you're an upbeat altruist, you generally think the world is good and you want to make it better. But if you're bitter, if you're a bitter egoist, you hate yourself. And if you're a bitter altruist, you hate the world, but you're trying to make it better.
00:28:01
Speaker
And so what you got was private egoist, which means you took conversation options reflecting the fact that you were focused on yourself and your own safety and you were like sort of holding back your feelings at certain times. Oh, Tina, how do you feel about that? I'm thoroughly impressed with how much thought you put into that personality matrix.
00:28:23
Speaker
And, um, I was not as satisfied with being Circe Lannister. So Mike and I were like looking at the other personalities and I had to Google one or two of them. Um, and I think that just sort of, uh, my own, uh, not misunderstanding, like who you were referencing at the bottom of one of the descriptions, but I saw Ripley was an option. I was like, hell yeah, I'm going with that. No, no, no.
00:28:48
Speaker
Easy choice. Yeah, that was mentioned on Twitter as well. Like one of the characters I reference is Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf. And again, that's something for me, because that was my favorite show growing up. Yeah. And British people. British people will get that, but that's about as far as they go. By the way, if you haven't seen it, guys, Red Dwarf is really good. And I'm pretty sure it's on Netflix, so check it out.
00:29:14
Speaker
I think it's a Brit box. Some Brit. Oh, okay. Yeah. If you've got Amazon Prime, you can add Brit box to your subscription. I think they just removed Brit box. Oh, okay. They've like taken it off. So maybe we'll see legally. Yeah. I canceled my Netflix and my Hulu like two days ago because I realized I'd never used them.
00:29:34
Speaker
Well, I was I was watching something before this. I was watching something on Prime and got adverts in it, even though I pay for it. And I was like, what's happening? We're getting off topic. Yeah. Fuck subscription service. Yes. As far as the personality stuff goes, I like when I like that you did that because in these kinds of games,
00:29:54
Speaker
You, um, uh, it helps to have like a little push as far as the role play goes. And that was the one that I, I forget what I got as my, like, uh, the, the, the assigned personality, but I was torn between choosing, uh, I think it was private apathy spikes Beagle from cowboy bebop. And, uh,
00:30:13
Speaker
which is a great person for that, by the way, I thought. And then I think it was private altruism, Jean-Luc Picard, right? Captain Picard. And I ended up going with Spiegel because I thought, well, you know what? I might be a little too middle of the road good guy if I do private altruists, although I like the private angle to it. So let's see what Spike would do, which meant when I came out of the pod, I was like, well, just shave all my hair off because I don't give a shit anymore.
00:30:40
Speaker
I don't know what I'm going to do with this life, but I also am trying to learn to be okay with that. And, uh, that was the kind of push that I think I needed. Cause otherwise you get kind of like, uh, uh, lost in, uh, uh, finding a projection to give on to. Right. That's cool. You get into it. I'd be interested to see what, I mean, I guess I should have included something to track this, but I've been interested to see what personality types end up being the most popular. Yeah.
00:31:08
Speaker
And seeing like how, how it changes and shifts things, because I think something that was really interesting that you mentioned was with, you know, Saints Row, you're giving a projection and a choice to a player that gives them, you know, this image of themselves, but still leaves room for surprises. Is that something that you, you were trying to think of consciously with your writings? Like,
00:31:34
Speaker
What aspects would change and then what aspects did you want to leave to be just a surprise for the players? How was that writing process? Well, it was changeable. I went through some changeable moods.
00:31:50
Speaker
I had my doubts about forcing the players into a single personality for a while. I had an idea for a while to include the ability to change a personality type by some weird method, because I thought there might be some weird people who want to romance every single crew member on a single save, which you can't do with a single personality type. But in the end, I just stuck with my guns and just focused on
00:32:19
Speaker
dialogue of the different crew events, I suppose. That focus goes a long way, I feel like, because otherwise you're trying to write for a billion different scenarios, right? And then you can feel as a player, you're like, hold on. I don't want, it's not dumbed down, but it's like flattened, right? Because you can't be multidimensional if people need to be able to just change their mind. You can't be as multidimensional, I feel like.
00:32:41
Speaker
like it's like you're making choices but you're not because it's so flatlined like you mentioned it's but in a sense where you get to choose your personality type you're kind of choosing your trajectory and how is the narrative going to evolve from that rather than my own individual dialogue choices which never you know mean anything anyway in games you know choices and illusion so I'd much rather have a
00:33:09
Speaker
a more guided, handwritten narrative that I can kind of choose its direction from the beginning rather than, you know, based on this choice, you either get the red or the blue ending, you know, that's just bullshit. Yeah. Well, one of those, one of the things I've railed against in games is what I've called the ending Tron 3000, where you just make a choice at the very end of the game. Yeah. And then you get one of three endings because then none of the endings feel like they have any impact.
00:33:35
Speaker
But for one game that I did find interesting was Wolfenstein The New Order because that takes an interesting sort of opposite approach where instead of a choice right at the very end, you make a choice right at the very beginning and then have to live with that choice throughout the entire rest of the run based on which character you save and which one you sacrifice.
Release Reflections
00:33:59
Speaker
Yeah. I remember that. I remember being like, oh, cool, I get to hang out with Jimi Hendrix because of this horrible choice that I had to make. So the game is out now, Yahtzee. How does that feel to you as someone who's put so much time and energy into a project? Because I can't fathom spending seven years on a project. Like, how do you feel about the release? No way. I get a little jolt every time someone tells me they found another glitch.
00:34:29
Speaker
like someone just not messaged me on Discord as we were talking, saying they found one. But you know, I think I'm going to need some time to process it. Yeah. I think I've worked on this for so long and I just had a book come out as well. So I'm officially in I have no projects on mode.
00:34:51
Speaker
So once like I'm satisfied fixing mode, which you'll be in for a while because yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But once I'm satisfied, this one's stable enough. I'm probably just gonna, I'm actually looking forward to just sort of taking some time off, focusing on the day job and waiting for an idea to come along that I can get really excited about. Yeah. I'm curious. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.
00:35:17
Speaker
I just think another thing that I tried to bring across in my Dev Diary videos as like a piece of advice to creatives was that you're never going to be as excited about your project as you are at the very beginning when you start it. That's the best feeling in the world, starting a new project and being really excited about it. But at some point, you know, the will to see something through has to take over. That's the hump period.
00:35:46
Speaker
And it takes a lot. It takes a lot to do that, right? The amount of projects I've seen or even been involved in where, you know, like you said, that spark is so strong at the beginning, but then when it actually comes down to, you know, three, four months in where the actual.
00:36:01
Speaker
I don't want to say grunt work, but the more tedious side of game dev begins, a lot of those projects die off because people can't see it through. And you've had to juggle not just solo developing something, but doing it with, you know, not a lot of time to dedicate to it because of how intense your day job is. And I think that's crazy.
00:36:23
Speaker
I've had to learn willpower. I have to keep telling myself that everyone starts projects and everyone gets excited about starting projects and none of it. And starting projects doesn't really mean anything. And having a finished project, even if it's bad, is worth an infinite amount of having started a million projects.
00:36:43
Speaker
Definitely. Dude, you shipped, man. You shipped. I totally hear what you're saying about like, initially you're, I don't want to say in shock, but like you, you have to process everything. It's a little bit surreal. I imagine how it feels now. I certainly get that. I'm curious how J and T have felt with their projects, but, but it does come and it might come in waves. You'll feel the pride. You'll feel more nervousness. You'll feel anxiety. You'll feel excitement.
00:37:07
Speaker
And as far as the excitement portion goes, I always like to kind of think of it like you're giving that excitement to other people and then it's going to multiply and we'll share it with others and it's going to really last for them too. Because you're right, that is the most exciting creative blue sky thinking part of creating something, but it doesn't go away. It just gets transferred. It's a fun way to think of it, I think.
00:37:30
Speaker
I did want to ask you, I want to dive deeper more into, you know, game journalists churned indie game dev side of things a bit. You mentioned one of the more difficult parts was the vulnerability of having someone else play and having Jay play was sort of a
00:37:52
Speaker
Comfort right because you knew him and I guess knew that you could trust his feedback would be constructive Now that you know you you've shipped this game and people will provide feedback is Do you feel like anything?
00:38:12
Speaker
intrinsically changed within you about moving forward and critiquing games. Do you feel like you are more equipped to understand the game dev side of things? I feel like that's a very rare perspective to have. The fact that you shipped something, it took seven years. That's to be applauded and I don't think... Matt and many journalists do that kind of thing.
00:38:39
Speaker
Well, the thing is, I feel like I was a game dev even before I was a journalist. Because it was always like my ambition before game journalism. I was making games when I was a kid. I used to make Point Look Adventure games with Windows Visual Basic when I was in high school.
00:38:57
Speaker
Cool, I didn't know that. That's awesome. Yeah, and then I moved on to like Adventure Game Studio. I put out a couple of games called the Chizome, I thought, that I got some of my very early internet notoriety from.
00:39:11
Speaker
And I put out and I've shipped a game based on zero punctuation called Hatfall. That's still on Steam, I think. And I put out a survival horror roguelite called The Consuming Shadow that's still available on Steam. I dropped the price for that for $1 in celebration of having another game out. So if you want to see like one of my previous games in my developmental period, check it out.
00:39:36
Speaker
So yeah, I've always felt closer to game development than game journalism, to be honest. I feel like I know more game developers than fellow game journalists. Yeah. So yeah, there wasn't much of a change. It is an interesting perspective though, right? Being able to have that under your belt, you know, and in a way it adds weight to
00:40:04
Speaker
you know, past and future criticisms you bring to to Game Dev. But do you feel like it's a little bit of what Tina was speaking to, like kind of a huge part of what we're trying to do on this podcast is like humanizing Game Dev, right? Yeah. And like giving a human perspective to it and just, you know, showing that we are people and, you know, have anxieties and, you know, one worries and stuff like that. Do you feel like releasing and shipping such a big project by yourself has given you a new perspective on, you know, other developers and their
Handling Criticism and Feedback
00:40:34
Speaker
big project?
00:40:34
Speaker
Oh, um, no. I mean, I'm completely self-absorbed. I'm very brave of you. Well, no, I just, I mean, other like, uh,
00:40:50
Speaker
I feel like a lot of other games are designed by much bigger teams, and I just find it really hard to get into the mindset of being part of a team like that. I guess I'm very focused on the auteur side of things, the artistry. It's solo devs that are the people I would fanboy out at most if I met them in public. Indie devs. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Lucas Pope's stuff. Stardew Valley, of course. Undertale is one of my favorite games of all time.
00:41:18
Speaker
And I really feel a kinship to that kind of creator. More than I do to like the big team developers, it's hard to me to get my head around that, I suppose. It's like a completely alien experience to me, working on something that isn't my personal baby. Do you mean having like complete control over the creative? Yeah. As I say, I'm like being an auteur. I have ideas. It's difficult in our space, right? Because
00:41:47
Speaker
It's whenever we make criticisms, like, you know, speaking to games media and Yahtzee more so than me, but me as well can be quite heavy handed in the way we criticize specific aspects of design. And I've even had devs reach out, you know, saying, hey, you know, remember that there are people that make this when you make these heavy handed criticisms. But it's difficult to kind of, it's difficult to
00:42:14
Speaker
sympathize when it is on such a huge scale because when I criticize say a design on you know a map design or how some puzzles are designed in a lot of these bigger companies it was it's teams of like 10, 15, 20 people who are working on it
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean rather than with you yachts when I was criticizing your stuff And you know giving you specific suggestions on hey, you could tweak this this this and this I was very conscious that the thing I was criticizing was yours and you and That didn't change how I did it But it it was something that I had to think about like I'm calling you out on a thing rather than a faceless company, right? Not to say the algorithms can't hurt those people as well, you know
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, having said, like, you know, it's fun to be an auditor and take ownership. It's also important to remember that you're not your work.
00:43:08
Speaker
and not to take that sort of thing personally. I think that's another pitfall, like solo creators fall into. It can lead to overprotectiveness, constantly rejiggering and trying to fix to make it perfect before you've just got to accept that it's probably not going to be perfect and everyone's going to like it, I suppose.
00:43:32
Speaker
people are going to give you that feedback. But I felt better about criticising games because I've met a lot of developers who've worked as part of a big team and a lot of them are just as you say because they're part of a big team they don't have that sense of personal ownership so they're all saying things like yeah I completely agree with everything you said everything you said I brought up to my project lead and he said we didn't have the time to fix it so thanks for the
00:43:56
Speaker
Uh, thanks for the justification there. Or he said, wow, those are great ideas. Thank you so much. We're going to integrate those immediately through our systems that exist. And, uh, let's talk about your career growth. And then none of that shit ever happens. That's another one. Have you guys experienced that? Like Tina and Mikey, have you, you know, released a bigger, a bigger game, received criticisms and had people internally take things personally or, you know, 100% happens all the time.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, okay, so I work on the games that Yahtzee doesn't like because it's all AAA. But, you know, when you're a big team, everyone is going to receive criticism differently. And when they read things on the Internet, you know, there's always going to be a spectrum of responses.
00:44:47
Speaker
The bigger the game, the bigger the spectrum of responses that you get. And sometimes there could be a storm and a teacup where you just see the negative and you think that's all there is out there. And that's not necessarily the case. So, yeah, I've worked with colleagues that took things pretty hard on themselves. You know, it never feels great to ship a game, spend, you know, a few years of your life on it.
00:45:12
Speaker
and then see that it's reviewing badly. I don't think anyone loves going through something like that.
00:45:20
Speaker
You know, it just, it kind of snowballs. Like you start thinking, could I have been the changing factor in a bad review? Should I have crunched more? The crunch culture is absolutely terrible, right? So it's just, it gets you thinking and you know, it can spiral, but, um, I always try to encourage people to sort of, when you're making a game, you have to be vulnerable. You have to be, um,
00:45:48
Speaker
okay with people critiquing your work because that's just the nature of making anything in entertainment. So there's almost like a... I guess it's an unspoken requirement where you have to be okay with criticism whether you like it or not.
00:46:06
Speaker
You can't make it in the industry if you can't. In a lot of creative industries, working on YouTube with me and Yachts, if we couldn't take criticism or learn to ignore the absolute, you know, drivel that some people come out with.
00:46:22
Speaker
you you couldn't make it if you took every comment seriously you would you would die because that's what comments are telling you to do right it's kind of it's sort of um it is funny because i feel like what we're talking about it's such a it's such a wide spectrum right there's the over here side of criticism which is not even criticism honestly it's because it's proceeded with or followed by you should die so it's not
00:46:50
Speaker
But the funny thing about that comment is there might be a little bit of feedback in there that is worthwhile, so you either got to pick that out or ignore it and go to the next comment and find the one that's going to help you. Teams that I've been on, yeah, we definitely take it personally. I have too. I think as a developer, there's a lot of energy dedicated toward taking that seriously and making sure you never do anything like
00:47:13
Speaker
rude or unprofessional as far as responding on a forum post or Twitter or whatever. And I've definitely had those moments where I wanted to say something but didn't. Oh, trust me. Yeah, that's something I've learned to suppress over many, many years. And you need to. But at the same time, you also need to be the person who's open, the person who puts it out there and says, all right, well, I do need to hear the feedback. So I'm just going to sift through everything the best I can. It's very difficult.
00:47:42
Speaker
For me, it's like the responses to my videos online. That's where you see a comment every now and again. You just want to go, you completely misunderstood me and I really want to set you to rights.
00:47:54
Speaker
But you're just going to resist that urge because you just come across as a hypersensitive psycho. Yeah, it's because at the end of the day, like whatever, they either get it or they don't. And that's that. Not everybody writes. Look at the view count versus the comment count is what I always try to say, whether it's game or whatever. Like you have to understand most people play stuff and they look, they could have been doing anything else in their life, but they were watching your video. And it was probably for a reason. Same with playing games, too.
00:48:22
Speaker
I think the best thing to do as a developer is to, and this might become a dated reference, but it's to go into the kitchen and bitch with other people on the team and they're like, oh, did you see that guy? He doesn't get it. If only he could see all the actual things that happened, he would understand that what he's asking for isn't realistic. Then you go back to your desk and you get back to it. So you vent a little bit. That kind of thing's important.
00:48:46
Speaker
and also to remind each other to not focus on it too much. I've been in the room where I've said like, guys, like, yeah, that person, their video, it's pretty annoying, but like, they simply don't know. We just have to move on. Let's not respond and let's not focus too much on it. It's that balance that you're always trying to strike.
00:49:02
Speaker
Arguing against it's going to do nothing, right? Like in speaking to you, it'll be bad. Yeah. It's speaking to YouTube comments. Like every design delve I release is in a way it's own little mini lecture.
00:49:16
Speaker
like game dev lecture and i put a lot of attention into trying to teach and educate and putting it in a very concise way and then to have people in the comments that disagree which is fine right and and needed right having these discussions is what brings us all um to another level but for them to just be like
00:49:36
Speaker
know you're wrong, you know, KYS, you know, it's you want to respond and be like, you just this, this and this, but you you can't, because it was something you said in Slack about a related thing ages ago. You were like, there's nothing you can do to convince an idiot or something like.
00:49:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think I said there's... Talking to Nick, I believe, with the trouble he's been having on Twitter lately, was that there's no magic combination of words you can say to make an idiot stop being an idiot. So, you know, the best revenge is to live well.
00:50:14
Speaker
that's my attitude it hurts but you just got to ignore it and move forward right like and trust that people will have the the sense their own sense to read it and go that's complete bollocks and then just move on you know and i'll get into a death spiral
00:50:30
Speaker
Have you been worried about that, like those kind of responses to your game? Because everything I've seen so far, you know, has been super, super positive. It's all looking pretty positive so far. Hot news from the top sellers list. We just popped above manor lords. Yeah, screw manor lords. Yeah, manor lords and Hellblades 2 we just popped above.
00:50:55
Speaker
There you go. Our next guest might be topical to Mana Lords, so we can talk to them about that and say, hey, look at Yahtzee's game. Just two positions away from going above Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty. Damn. Well, guys, everyone in chat, have you haven't got it yet? Go check it out. Let's bump that up a few. Let's bump that up a few. Yeah, but yeah, what was I saying? Something about
00:51:24
Speaker
Oh yes, worried about the reaction. Just like knee-jerk negative reviews. I guess not so much for this sort of thing because...
00:51:33
Speaker
Well, when you're in a solo developer, you project that it's much more like a one to one, I suppose. So while I'll expect that sort of shittiness on like YouTube comments or directed ads, like large companies, there's lots of people where you don't feel like you're complaining to an actual face.
00:51:56
Speaker
I think a lot of people realise that they're talking directly to a single person, so they tend to be a lot kinder on the reviews of Starstruck and of my books as well.
00:52:11
Speaker
I've never seen much in the way of really unreasonable criticism to those things. It's usually just, this isn't for me, but some of you might like it. Active, constructive feedback, right? Because I feel like with solo dev, you know, just like with some of the things we spoke about when we did our first QA stuff,
00:52:30
Speaker
A lot of the changes that I suggested or stuff that we spoke about in GDC, you then went away and immediately implemented those things and changed the game for the better. And as a solo dev, if I play a game with a solo dev, I know that if I leave a review with some criticism and some feedback, there is a higher likelihood of that actually being implemented. So my time of trying to put criticisms forward
00:52:57
Speaker
feels warranted like no offense to you know people in this chat who have worked on Call of Duty but like if we made some Call of Duty criticisms we know they're not gonna probably get changed right because there's so many people working on them but with you know your game there might be a higher likelihood of them getting changed I mean Tina if you disagree I'd love to hear your perspective on this
00:53:21
Speaker
It all really depends. There's a lot of feedback given to, well, at least while I was on Call of Duty, there was a lot of feedback. And I was their community manager for maybe a good year. And that was one of the most intense jobs I've ever had because it's almost like you
00:53:42
Speaker
for the, I'm not even being sarcastic here. It's like you are walking with the sins of every cod game that ever existed, even if you never personally worked on it. So when people like gave feedback, it was like, it's your fault. Um, it definitely inspired me to get away from being the spokesperson because I wanted to have an impact.
00:54:07
Speaker
and fix the things that people were upset about, right? And this is just kind of generalizing, going in a completely different direction about community management, but yeah, like they are an unsung hero of just trying to give a clear understanding of the lay of the land for developers.
00:54:27
Speaker
But they're always bearing the brunt of the worst of the criticism as if it was their own personal. And I find that people that don't understand game development are the ones that attack community managers the most. Which is unfortunate. Did you see that a lot of those criticisms that you were compiling because you did want to make that positive impact? Did you find that a lot of them were worked on?
00:54:52
Speaker
Some of them left on the cutting room floor because of timing. It was almost like a 50-50. It really depended. Some of it was, I personally don't like this weapon and here's why. And it's like, well, you're one person out of, I don't know.
00:55:07
Speaker
a large number of people. But when it was, hey, this thing breaks the game, obviously that would be fixed. I think it definitely got to the point when I was on Call of Duty where we made so many patches through Xbox and PlayStation that I think the
00:55:28
Speaker
probably I should say this I don't think they ended up charging us for some of the fixes at you know at some point it was just like there's so many patches I don't know what the case is with that relationship anymore but yeah it was just like 45 50
00:55:44
Speaker
patch releases which is something that indie games don't necessarily do not because they can't or won't it's just you know the more people you have the more you can do with it right but also the more you can break so it's it's like a
00:56:00
Speaker
Well, my advantage is that if someone does find a serious bug, I can just pop it to the build, fix
Community and Genre Dynamics
00:56:08
Speaker
it, build the new application, stick it straight into Steam, and get all that done in like half an hour. And Steam doesn't charge you for updating the game, right? No, you can upload as much as you like, I think.
00:56:23
Speaker
Yeah. So with first party games or even I'm sorry, not games, but on platforms like PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox, they will charge you for providing an update to players. Steam even lets you like upload the build through your browser if it's under two gigabytes. Wow. Wow.
00:56:44
Speaker
Do you guys feel like, one of the thoughts I've always had about this kind of topic of like what feedback looks like for games is it feels very genre dependent. I feel like toxicity level and constructiveness of feedback, even the brevity of a bit of feedback for like a call duty adversary or multiplayer shooter.
00:57:05
Speaker
You know maybe a higher degree of noise and toxicity than say like a niche strategy game or a life sim or something like that. What do you guys think the Delta is there? Who do you think is the worst? The worst genre of players that give the feedback.
00:57:23
Speaker
OK, yeah, that's that's up there. I was going to say open world PvP MMOs. Yeah, those people. Overworld PvP MMOs got that sounds like the most as a MOBA and like an MMO aficionado. Yes, that's the worst. I was with Yahtzee with MOBAs until you just said that. That's absolutely what was really bad, too, of course. I agree. But what do you think, Tina?
00:57:52
Speaker
Yeah, I should think there's good and bad everywhere. I just can't let the bad people ruin it for everyone else. So maybe it's not genre dependent. Maybe it's just.
00:58:01
Speaker
I think it's all bad. Have you seen that Dan Olson video titled, it's bad manners to suck at Warcraft? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the name. It's rooted suck at Warcraft. Yeah. Yeah. What's that about? Well, it's how that whole attitude, as you're talking about, like MMO PvP players, where if you're not playing with actual optimal strategy,
00:58:27
Speaker
and using optimal gear, then everyone will hate you and yell at you.
00:58:33
Speaker
I remember when I first discovered Dota with like Warcraft 3 custom maps. I loved Warcraft 3 custom maps. And to play custom maps, usually you would join a lobby and you would download the map. There was like a little number that appeared next to your name and would go from zero to a hundred to download the map. And they were often pretty fast, like three or four seconds. I remember trying to play Dota because I didn't know what it was when I was younger. And I would get kicked every single time I tried to join because I saw I was downloading like, nope, we don't want to deal with you. Get out.
00:59:03
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's why mobas and you know things like what a warcraft and stuff like that are so toxic for that because if you are Okay, so what a warcraft. I'm a huge world warcraft fan. I was playing today and Let's say you're playing you have a tank a healer and free DPS, right? if your healer is below par and
00:59:28
Speaker
At certain levels of the game, you cannot play. The rest of the game for those four other players is done. You cannot play it. So, you know, people get shitty, they, you know, kick them, they do stuff like that. And this is the same in Mobis, right? I have a video on why League of Legends is designed for toxicity because the way those games are designed with their feedback loops, they breed toxicity because if you suck, you are making the game actively harder for everyone else, right?
00:59:57
Speaker
And also, with things like WoW or MOBAs, there is a high degree of skill based in one specific class or character. So players feel ownership over them, which makes them feel like they know everything. So they'll go to the devs and be like, well, this champion is busted because X, Y and Z, because they feel like they understand it so much better.
01:00:21
Speaker
And to a certain degree, sometimes they do know things better than the devs because they spend hundreds of thousands of hours playing one specific character. No dev, regardless of whether you designed the systems, can have that much understanding of how something plays.
01:00:40
Speaker
I wonder how they put it forward, you know? I wonder if esports is to blame for some of the decisions of the community because people aren't just, you know, having fun playing the games anymore. Now there's a potential career in it. Worth millions, right? In MOBAS, the prize balls for winning a tournament is insane. I know. Suddenly the stakes are so high and people are all thinking, no, if it weren't for this one healer, we could be impressing scouts in the audience.
01:01:08
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, it's crazy. Yeah. Because it's so toxic. Yeah. Right. Well, looking at the time, I think considering how long it took us the last time to get through the donations. And I think because it might be a certain special birthday boy's birthday, we may have got a huge influx.
01:01:30
Speaker
So I'm going to go through some of these and some of them are questions, some of them are birthday wishes and stuff like that. So we'll just take it as it comes.
01:01:40
Speaker
Philip J Frylock with $5 says, ran into a Steam issue buying Starstruck Vagabond where the game was 20% off for a limited time only special offer. This should cover the difference. So they've given you the excess money backyards. Isn't that nice? Don't, don't joke about that. Like the comment starts right into an issue. I have a minor heart attack. Oh no. Spicy.BP with $5 says, also offsetting the weird Steam discount issue with Starstruck Vagabond. Another joke. Thank you Spicy.
01:02:08
Speaker
We'd suggest a launch discount, everyone does it. Giving yachts another heart attack. Steve Ward with 10 euro says happy birthday Yahtzee. I want to be writer and game dev who is also a British expat and only a few days older than you, you are an inspiration. Have you ever considered writing an autobiography?
01:02:31
Speaker
I can't imagine it would be that interesting. And then I spent 16 years playing video games in my room and writing about them and stuff. And every now and again I do something interesting like go meet Gabe Newell.
01:02:46
Speaker
Don't say interesting story. Immanuel Kant just sat in his room and wrote stuff down and then went for a walk once a day in Konigsberg or whatever. He was interesting. There's more going on. There could be more to say about your journey and the path between criticism and development.
01:03:05
Speaker
I went skydiving once. I could write about that. What was that book you showed me? A whole chapter right there. There was something you showed me at GDC Arts, which was the book that was published about you, which is just very clearly AI-generated. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is on Amazon. There's just like an e-book being sold that's just like the biography of Yachty Kroger.
01:03:25
Speaker
And I looked at the example text and it was all completely wrong and it's all AI generated. And I sent an email to Amazon saying, hey, could you maybe not sell this? And I haven't heard back, so I don't know what the fuck to do about it. Well, if you wanted a biography, guys, instead of buying that drivel, go buy Starstruck Vagabond and support that. There you go. You might get an insight into my personality somehow.
01:03:51
Speaker
Wow. John Brooks with 10 quid. Thank you so much. There's many happy returns. Good sir. Enjoying being in space parcel force, laughing out loud at the humor in the writing. Congratulations on the launch. Thank you very much. Steady Goblin Wood with $10 says, console gamer by nature, but downloaded Steam just for this. Congratulations on all your hard work, Yahtzee. Question, who was your favorite character to write in the game? Also HPDH as well.
01:04:19
Speaker
I was hoping someone would ask me that. I think my favourite NPC crew member of the nine available is Cassandra Kairos. She's the bitter egoist. She's a time traveller from the future trying to prevent apocalypse and having trouble getting past her own ego. She was the character I had the most fun with, I think. Oh yeah, I bet. That sounds great.
01:04:46
Speaker
So, yeah, we've got a whole bunch more donos. Just as a reminder, guys, all donations go directly to funding, you know, wonderful shows like DevHeads and everything else on Second Wind, including, you know, fully ramblimatic design delve and all the other wonderful shows you enjoy. So if you want to see more of this and keep us going, these donos help. So thank you so much.
01:05:06
Speaker
It actually also helps. Yeah. The, this name, PM, PM mass trip. Sorry for butchering your name. $10 contributing to birthday amaretto.
01:05:21
Speaker
Thank you very much. Wizard of the Void is 1749. It says, playing for about a half hour now, completely drawn in. Soundtrack is awesome. It has a nice frenetic fun pace for discovery. Much shorter fun discovery cycle for new fun items, i.e. Elite. Thank you very much. That was very much the intention. It's Elite, but by way of the 2D 16-bit style of Stardew Valley.
01:05:51
Speaker
Hell yeah. GG lagmaster with 25 Ron. Yachts, you're a currency maestro. What's a Ron? I don't know. I keep seeing Ron and I should probably look it up. Ron, the currency, it's the Romanian loo. Yeah. Okay. I always hear, you know, somebody what was going on. I'll save that for Ron.
01:06:12
Speaker
later on, which is a banter joke, but not a currency. Yeah, I'm completely familiar with all the Scandinavian currencies because I feel like we get a lot of Scandinavian viewers at this time of day. Well, now we've learned what Ron is. Hello Yachts. I'm one of the testers. Did you make a spiritual sequel to Fallout New Vegas on purpose or by accident? Love you. Happy birthday.
01:06:35
Speaker
I wouldn't say that, but thank you very much. Did you like that? It's a high compliment. Also their first, their first super chat as well. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thanks for your putting in the work with the testing. Did you like all the testers? Thank you so much. Sure. Yeah. Massive help.
01:06:55
Speaker
C.S.I. Frick gives $19.99. Here's a bud. There's H.B.D. Yahtzee. Okay, so Mikey and Tina, H.B.D. is happy birthday. It was a very early second wind stream. Marty came up with H.B.D., which sounds like a sexually transmitted disease.
01:07:13
Speaker
Um, but I think it's pretty true. It's not, I interpreted it as happy birthday, but now that you've got it, I interpreted it as something else. When we, when we were discussing it or Yahtzee having HBD today, I was coughing earlier, the best present.
01:07:38
Speaker
Well, HPD Yahtzee, congrats on the launch of Star Trek Vagabond. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Steam, only PS5, but my son does and is a huge fan. He already has all of your books and will definitely be buying your game. That's lovely. Thank you. Thank you very much, PSO Freak. I hope your son enjoys it.
01:07:57
Speaker
massive absolutely gargantuan don't know from gay bear bro $200 thank you so much and says I'm gonna go buy the game but congrats on publishing Yahtzee and HPD thank you very much you very rich person you very rich or extremely generous either way thank you Celtic bowler gives 20 oh my god HPD Yahtzee
01:08:24
Speaker
Why are you so big? You have to blow the candle out. Happy birthday. Why are you bigger than the cake? Oh my God. We need a knife to keep the coffee. What flavor is it? Hey, we're going to share that. Ooh, toothpaste. Okay. You can continue then. That's all yours.
01:08:59
Speaker
Yay, okay. I will try not to move while I'm the birthday boy doesn't have his hat. There you go. Thank you. There it is First thanks, Eric Celtic bowler a ten. You're I thanks says congrats the arts I'd love to play the game but only have Only have a non gaming laptop. What's the recommended specs for the game? I
01:09:19
Speaker
Oh, they're pretty low. I think we've pretty much just copy pasted Stardew Valley's recommended specs. I test it on my laptop, so you'll probably be alright. Alright, yeah, give it a go. You know, Steam has a really good refund policy, so you can always test it out, refund if not, or keep a hold of the game, and then just get it when you can access it. So, you know, is there a plan for potential console release if the game does well?
01:09:43
Speaker
I'd have to work with, like, another publisher, I think. Okay. Someone who actually knows how to port the consoles would be useful. Alright. It played pretty well on Gamepad, by the way. I played on Gamepad. Yeah, I didn't have one, so I'm just taking everyone's word for that. No, yeah, I played on Gamepad. It was lovely. Did you test it mostly on mouse and keyboard?
01:10:09
Speaker
On my laptop, yeah. Oh, I do have a... Oh, gamepad, yeah, I got one of those. I thought you meant Steam Deck. Which I don't have, but some people have played it on Steam Deck and apparently it works on that. Yeah, but it's lovely. Oh, good to know. No apparent effort on my part, but good to know. Did we ever get that working GDC? Didn't Nick have... Yeah, he had a weird third party thing. Oh, it was like an A6 thing or something. Yeah, but it worked on that pretty well.
01:10:40
Speaker
Well, there you go. I think anything laughing at the comments because some guy, Maddie D says he upgraded to the art RTX 40, 90 for starstruck. Hell yeah. Good for you. Wow. It runs like a dream. It'll be smooth. Multiboxing has like five different versions of it running.
01:11:00
Speaker
Gotta see all of the different personality types. Senu gives $9.99. Thank you Jesus. Can some other than Yahtzee sing this? I'm not sure in what tune you want to do this in. Can you guys see Senu's donation? Hold on. I'm looking. I'll screenshot it because you guys might know the tune. I don't know the tune.
01:11:26
Speaker
They want us to sing? Let me send it to you in chat. That's not going to work. It's going to sound like shit, I feel like. We don't sing. Yeah, I don't think we're all... I can sass. Everybody's singing together, just like the timing of it. Oh, no, no. I think one of us, I think the timing would be absolutely garbage. Can you sass it, Tina? Can you sass that comment? Don't make Tina do this.
01:11:49
Speaker
Yeah. Happy, happy birthday on your special day. Happy, happy birthday on your new game. I will play. Oh my God. Wow. There's a nice twist there. HBD.
01:12:03
Speaker
Brian J. Lancaster gives $2, says Poacher was both huge and epic. Oh, that was another of my old games. When I was learning Game Maker, I made a sort of platforming Metroidvania thing that I've at least freeware. And that ended up, I ended up throwing like a huge epic story into that as well. But I'm glad you remember that Brian J. Lancaster that was quite a time ago. Would you say that's made your BD?
01:12:31
Speaker
So that ends.
01:12:34
Speaker
The release of a seven-year project might have made it. Yeah, which is currently sitting just below Phantom Liberty on the top seller's list. Goddamn. Here we go, guys. Come on, let's get it above before the end of this stream. Yeah, so you have a few questions. Is that OK? Yeah, OK. So I went into this not knowing too much about you, and I Googled you, and Google says that you're 6'4". Is that true?
01:13:03
Speaker
Yes, I am. Well, actually, I'm six for five, so I don't know what Google is on about. No, they need to update that. And then kind of test to Yahtzee being large. The other question I had is, you know, you've critiqued games for a little while. How do you feel when you meet devs that have been on the worst end of your critiques?
01:13:25
Speaker
Um, a little awkward, but there's a part of me that sort of fanboys a little bit as well. Yeah, go ahead. When I met John, when I met John Ramiro at CDC 2019. Yeah. He was a really good sport. We got on pretty well, but I was a little nervous at first because yeah, I talked a lot of shit about John Ramiro over the years. Yeah. What else can bring up when talking about John Ramiro?
01:13:56
Speaker
I mean, I think his influence really helped the original quake. Cause after he left, they made quake too. And I thought that game was boring as shit. He had a huge effect, but yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, no, I was just going to say, there you go. Like, can you ask for any better praise? You left now game shit, you know, there you go. That's pretty good. What are you saying? I thought Tina had another question. I wasn't going to jump in. What were you going to say? No, it was.
01:14:25
Speaker
It was just more about the awkwardness part. I can understand that. I think on the dev side, though, hopefully there's not any awkwardness. It's just everyone's doing their own jobs. I don't know. Yeah. And I missed the time I talked to devs, so they seemed pretty stoked that I did a review of their game.
01:14:48
Speaker
And you're pretty funny. So funny, you have a big reach. People know your name, at least for like our, our, our, our generation. Like you were, you were a cultural force
AI in Game Development
01:14:59
Speaker
there, right? As far as game video content, game reviews. So yeah, of course they'd be stoked. And I feel like at the end of the day, a lot of developers are gonna, they'll get it, right? They just understand. Yeah, whatever. Like it's part of your personality. Like we spoke about, you know, Yeah.
01:15:17
Speaker
Alright, we have a gigafuckton of don't know who to go through, so I'm gonna pass through some of these. Philip J. Frylock with $11.95, very specific amount. What day is today? It's the answer's birthday. What a day for a birthday. Let's all have some cake. You want to buy a slice of birthday cake for just $11.95?
01:15:38
Speaker
Well that's all getting spread out across everyone a second wind, so I ain't getting much cake from that, but thank you. I'm gonna get one tip of that, toothpaste icing, that's it. There you go. Alex Armstrong, five dollars, says, as much as you give respect to solo indie devs, would you also give respect to triple A devs who then go indie because of how they've been treated by triple A?
01:16:00
Speaker
Oh, definitely. I mean, that's the standard cycle, isn't it? Your studio gets shut down, then the next thing you know, there's 500 million indie development teams in the local environment. That's how it always worked back in Brisbane. Like, Brisbane used to be like... I think there might have been a tax break or something, but there were a bunch of big studios open there, like Chrome and THQ and Pandemic. And all of them, one by one, they all shut down. And then, like, there was this huge indie game scene in Brisbane.
01:16:29
Speaker
That's where Fruit Ninja was made. Oh. Yeah. Good connecting. Yeah. Big old Fruit Ninja. Fruit Ninja was on Connect? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I loved Connect. That was like one of the few people that did, but... You were one of the three people that actually engaged with Connect. I love Dance Central. So that was dancing.
01:16:55
Speaker
Word gives $40, thank you so much, and he says, I just bought the game and getting ready to load it up. Here's the difference in cost compared to all the other games out there, just as a gift to you and the crew at second wind. Oh, and happy birthday, friend. Thank you. That's nice. Give us the difference to what a AAA game would cost. That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Word. Blue McD's nuts gives $2.
01:17:23
Speaker
Sorry guys chill has a serious question that would like us devs to answer which is roadblocks tutorials uh gms app market advice uh yes game maker has tutorials and stuff and it's pretty easy to pick up yeah i haven't really messed around with the app market
01:17:50
Speaker
But I noticed someone in the chat was asking if Game Maker takes a cut for any games you release commercially. They do not. It's a one-time payment and you can do whatever the hell you like with what you make. So that's the reason I recommend it. And it's stupidly accessible. Game Maker has a lot of tools and a lot of ways to learn.
01:18:08
Speaker
It's not the tool for you if you want to make 3D games. No. You probably want your Unity for that. But if you just want to stick to 2D, Game Maker is like the best engine on the market, if you ask me. How much was it at the one-time payment? Yeah. How much was the one-time payment? I can't remember. It's changed a lot since I bought it. Oh, that was seven years ago, right?
01:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, way before then I made my last game in Game Maker. Long time.
01:18:48
Speaker
HumaneShield999 says, first, happy birthday, Jans. The question I have to the group is that do any of you think that after the hype and villainy of AI tools passes, do any of you see a positive use in solo game development? Good question. Well, I have thought as someone who does it all myself, it would be useful to have someone to make all the ground textures for me.
01:19:14
Speaker
The art is probably one of my biggest weak points. That's why I had LSHR come in to do like the big stuff. Something you could probably do procedurally, right? Doing ground textures, you could... Yeah, yeah, I mean... Then do it procedurally. Often when I'm working in Photoshop, I'll just use like random noise functions to add texture or something like that. And that's basically using AI, isn't it?
01:19:40
Speaker
Mikey Tina, do you guys have any thoughts on how once the the vitriol dies down, could we see some use cases for AI to help developers not destroy their jobs? I want to spend a whole podcast on this. I agree. I agree. I will say for mundane things like adding like clipping geo would be great.
01:20:08
Speaker
UV mapping is one for me. But it sucks to see AI taking away the fun out of making a game like being the writer or replacing the artist. That seems bad if you have artists and writers that love doing their job.
01:20:31
Speaker
I forget who said it, but I've been quoting it many times, but there was a quote on Twitter, I think, saying that AI should be used so that creative people can get the boring stuff done and not so that boring people can get creative stuff done. Yeah. Perfect.
01:20:48
Speaker
I can see it helping out indie devs, right? When there's like, like Yasi said, there's like a need for more art. That would be cool to see more games from indie devs in that way, but just recruit other devs that are good at that. If it's just like utilitarian art, I mean, I wouldn't want to use it for character art, but if you just need like some brickwork for the background, then sure.
01:21:14
Speaker
And that we already have systems like you said, noise functions and specific ways of doing this in game dev, right? Substance Designer, which is a very popular texturing program, has systems to generate variations of specific textures you make to give variation. And you could consider that.
01:21:35
Speaker
AI but it's that is would be tedious grunt work to to other texture artists right so it's not taking away jobs it's making those texture artists jobs easier and quicker which is where I think like Tina was saying the benefit could be do you have anything to add add there Mikey or do you want to save that for a specific AI episode
01:21:56
Speaker
You know, I feel like the only thing I would have to add there is I feel like the deaths of jobs is inevitable and scary, not just here, but otherwise. I don't think it's a doomer philosophy. I think it's just kind of true. And the
01:22:12
Speaker
There's interesting conversations we had about regulation and stuff, but I feel like there's also the inevitability of avoiding or skirting or that regulation becoming lax. So I try to think about what are some good ways to integrate AI that, just like Yahtzee was quoting, you get rid of the boring stuff, you focus on the creative.
01:22:30
Speaker
but even that could remove jobs right and then there's the maybe a slippery slope i guess that you could be entering so the whole thing just scares me not just in game dev but for humanity as a whole so i would be i guess i'd be bringing that philosophy to the bigger talk but that's basically the only thing i would add is
01:22:53
Speaker
It's, uh, uh, I feel like no matter how you, here's what I'm saying. No matter how you try to say, well, it's okay here, but here I feel like it's just going to all get wiped away at a certain point. It's just a matter of time, which is a cynical idea for Yahtzee. Uh, come up with a speed run AI replaces all mode for your game. The game plays itself. What do you mean? I want you to clean the fix anything on the, on the ship. The AI's got you covered.
01:23:23
Speaker
Wow, this game is so fun. That's all the fun part there. Oh my god, what a perfect analogy. What AI is going to do to games having a lot of other industries. Let's put a pin in the AI stuff, because I think this would be a really good topic for an entire episode. And maybe we'll get somebody on who has a different perspective to us. I think we all have very similar perspectives.
01:23:48
Speaker
on as
Game Release Strategies
01:23:49
Speaker
Gamedev, where AI is going and what negatives and positives it's going to bring. So maybe we'll try and bring someone on who has a different opinion to us and we can start our discussion.
01:23:59
Speaker
All right. I still have about 85 million to go through. This happens on wind breakers every week. Yeah. I mean, we appreciate you guys. Uh, Alex Armstrong with $2 and says, have you ever got def threats from devs indie or triple A? I'm assuming that's not good. No, I don't think I've, uh,
01:24:21
Speaker
reviewed anything made by anyone who had that sort of personal ownership and lack of self-awareness.
01:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, death threat for you, LinkedIn, will be pretty bad play. There was a post they saw on Twitter which was just like people being incredibly sexist and you know, horrible on LinkedIn, just like commenting on other people's LinkedIn posts. It's like, we can see everything about you and contact your employer. It's like, you dumbass.
01:24:59
Speaker
These people are dumb. Anyway, Ernesto with five dollars says, I just got back home and just bought the game. It's it's chunky at 500 megabytes. So I see myself having a blast for the time being. You'll see on demand. Yes, sir. Admittedly, a big percentage of that is probably the soundtrack. Yeah, compressing sound is a little bit a little bit of a.
01:25:26
Speaker
Strom Theory gives $9.99, thank you. He says, congrats Yance, bought Starstruck this morning on Steam because I couldn't buy it on GOG. What considerations does an indie developer have when deciding the platform on which to release the game? Which one's easiest, I suppose. Steam makes it pretty easy these days, although the back end could use some tweaking, I think.
01:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, I play on Steam all the time, so I put it on Steam because that's the thing I know the best. Makes it accessible, yeah. And I think, like, as much as I'm a big advocate of GG, Steam makes it a lot more accessible as well to the less conscious gamer, if you will. If you like. Yeah. Reaper's Grim gives 50 Canadian dollars. Thank you so much. Says, here, here for another year.
01:26:24
Speaker
Alex Armstrong, $2, thank you. It says, happy birthday, yachts. I'm loving the game. Thank you. Beneath 1111, 11 to 1111, gives 50 sec, SEK, yachts. Swedish krona. Oh my God.
01:26:45
Speaker
Happy birthday. It's one we see a lot of. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, the Swedes. We love you. Happy birthday, Jantz. Please do a smile that requires pure childhood happiness. Can you do a childhood happiness smile, Jantz? And say Tuck. That's how you say thank you in Swedish. How do you say it? Tuck. T-A-K. Tuck. Tuck. Tuck. Tuck very much. Otherwise, you might do a smile for him. Well, you've just got one from me, so I'll do one too.
01:27:17
Speaker
winning. Young Yattish gives five dollars and says how do you know how do you know iterate without us coming to overthinking asking for a friend asking for me? How do you iterate without overthinking? I don't know. I guess you just
01:27:39
Speaker
It's hard to explain, really. You just don't overthink things. I think I have one. Correct me if I'm wrong, Yachts, but I think the fact that you have also such a stressful day job with, you know, producing content every week might help that because you don't have time to overthink. You kind of... I suppose not, no. No, I mean, you don't end up like feature creeping.
01:28:06
Speaker
When I was talking about adding the throw mechanic right to the very end, I knew I could do it pretty easily because most of the basic nuts and bolts are already in the code. There's gravity mechanics, there's hold down mechanics.
01:28:24
Speaker
So I feel like, uh, I feel like time boxing is another kind of thing. Like, okay, I have a thing I want to do. I need to build an iteration time. I'm going to take two weeks with this. And if it's not fun, I'm dropping it. That's it. Just give yourself time and hold yourself to the time. I think helps schedule.
01:28:43
Speaker
schedule, which is especially important with, with, with the modders. I think it's so easy to just be like working on something forever because you're not happy with it or it's the cool thing. Meanwhile, you're ignoring all the important stuff. So I think setting a schedule and timeboxing is important. What do you think, Tina? I agree with that. But you know, when you don't really have a deadline, pick all the time you want. It's hard to define fun when you have no deadline. Mm-hmm.
01:29:12
Speaker
And it also depends what type of person you are. Some people need rigid schedules, and even though they don't have a release date in mind, they need that rigid schedule to allow them to get things done. I- Yeah, I find-
Industry Challenges and Originality
01:29:24
Speaker
I didn't care. Just work on it a little bit a day. Like, keep the momentum going. At least some momentum going. Like, when I write books, I set myself the task of writing a page a day. No more, no less. And that way, that's a lot easier to just pace yourself.
01:29:40
Speaker
And you can take time away from the project, right? One of the, when creating art, one of the worst things you can do is just do it day in, day out all the time, because that's when you become truly blind to it. But like you were saying with your writing, if you forcibly take a step back the next day, you come back to it. You can, you can see it with fresh eyes and it's a very different experience.
01:30:03
Speaker
Gullparack? $5, thank you so much. It says happy birthday and congrats on the game launch yards. Bought it, can't wait to get started. Still no exclamation points, still a dick. Okay, thank you very much Gullparack. Is there context to that? I don't know what it means. No, is that a good or bad thing?
01:30:21
Speaker
It's lost on me, I'm afraid. Beastmarsh, $5, thanks so much, says happy birthday, Yahtzee. Just bought the game, so here's the discount. Thanks for all the great work over the years and congrats on six months of second wind. I begrudge you a discount, Jesus, but thank you very much. Yes, six months. So that's a thanks, Beastmarsh. You kind of gave me a heads up. What is it next Thursday, Yahtz? We're doing our six month celebration stream?
01:30:51
Speaker
on the 30th yes on the 30th yeah tune in for that we'll be uh streaming some games together announcing some new stuff and giving away some stuff as well giving away some stuff as well some consoles and stuff like that so yeah stick around guys come down for that and you will have a good time they're all right another ship simulator game
01:31:12
Speaker
Oh, yes, I've been looking forward to that. I love games about submarines. Oh, yeah. Sorry, Jake. Go ahead. That's all right. Zoll gives two quid. Thank you so much. Did I miss the birthday cake mukbang? HPD. No. Well, yes, you did. Unless you saw the cake fiasco that we had about 10 minutes ago. But I think you may have missed it. Sorry, Zoll.
01:31:33
Speaker
My wife tells me she's getting the kids to help her make my cake today, so I'm looking forward to see what comes out of that. That's super sweet. I look forward to hearing about food poisoning.
01:31:46
Speaker
But it's sweet nonetheless. Snake in the Garden gives two euro, thank you so much. It says, I donate when Eric makes me laugh. Symbols, yep. Well, there should be a few more Snake in the Garden because Eric's working overtime. Oh, I'll bless it. Eric is not very well at the moment and is working while ill. We love Eric. Everybody say thanks, Eric. We appreciate you. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Eric.
01:32:11
Speaker
SocialEnemy87 gives $5, yep, and says, happy birthday, Yance. Thank you. Alex Armstrong, $5, and I apologize for being that guy, Yancey, but when you eventually do work on your next game, will it be consuming Shadow 2 or something new and innovative?
01:32:29
Speaker
Well, I have got an idea in mind for my next project. I've actually already started prototyping it, but I haven't like started working on it in earnest. But the idea is, when I was doing like 12 Games in 12 Months, I did a thing called BRTV, which was basically a battle royale simulator. Yeah.
01:32:47
Speaker
where you're just overhead watching all the little dots on the map killing each other. But my idea was to do something like that. But instead of what I was doing in that game, your task is to identify each corpse. Your task is to go over the battlefield in the aftermath and identify each corpse and who killed them in a sort of procedural return of the Obra Dinn detective game. That's awesome.
01:33:10
Speaker
I'm looking forward to putting some more work into that, because I'm pretty excited about it. That sounds awesome, yeah. Yeah, it does. Well, there you go, Alex. You got the scoop? Zauno, $20, thank you. He says, happy birthmas and happy launch day. Any plans on releasing the game on physical media in the future would be happy to get a physical copy one day.
01:33:29
Speaker
No plans on my part. I guess that'll depend on if we end up working with the publisher and or on console ports and if it's important to them. I mean, if we do a Switch port, they might want one. I know just what the Switch likes to put out boxed editions of the indie games it puts out. Yeah, there's company specific companies that will do a small release of indie titles that come out, which is if they if they do well on their Steam and PC releases. So, you know, fingers crossed.
01:33:58
Speaker
RMP. RMP. $5. Thank you so much. It says HPD yachts. Enjoying your game on my Steam Deck and listening to the stream. Runs great. Thank you very much. As you intended, yachts. You're playing while listening to a podcast. There you go. It's all coming together.
01:34:15
Speaker
That's clear. $9.99, thank you. He says, congrats on the Yawn Slarch and HPD. Also, a general thank you to the whole second win group heading back to work from maternity leave. We'll miss catching these wonderful streams live. Oh, sad to lose you, but you can catch up afterwards. It'll all be good. We'll still be here. Congrats on your baby. Hell yeah.
01:34:38
Speaker
Aerolang gives 5 euro, thank you, and says happy birthday Yahtzee, been playing Star Trek Vagabond for a couple hours now, feel quite cosy to play, I like it. That's the intention, it's a cosy game. Oh my god, more snake in the garden, don't know, so the 2 euro, thank you, and says Tina versus Amy, dance, game stream, when? I'm gonna have to do a dance battle. They're gonna like, dust off my Kinect, is that what's gonna happen?
01:35:08
Speaker
Don't know if you know of Amy, she's a she's a fellow content creator here on second wind. She's absolutely fantastic. She's an adventurous night and is a fantastic dancer and teaches, you know, I think she teaches dance and fitness and stuff. So seeing you two have a dance battle on your connects would be great. That would be awesome. Alex Armstrong, two dollars. Thank you so much. Has Toffee given you their B-Day Kisses yet, Jars? Not yet. I'll wake him up.
01:35:39
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sorry, Toffee. I know you're having fun in there. Hi, Toffee. Do I get kisses? No, you're just upset that I woke you up. We need a better angle for the kisses. Oh, okay. What a cutie. Toffee just lives inside of Yahtzee's jacket. Did you show him your pedante? No? Nah, he was working. Tired. He was sleeping. I was snoozing, bruising Dad. Leave me be.
01:36:04
Speaker
Alright, nearest 25? It's 25. God, you just told me what Rons are, and I've still- Romanian, Romanian loo. To all, have you ever had an idea that you wanted to add to your game, but someone else beat you to the punch? No, but if that happened, it wouldn't stop me. I mean...
01:36:28
Speaker
lot everyone like cribs off each other and there's validity in doing something that's not necessarily new as long as you do everything right I'd say yeah there's there's a game that I'm currently working on and we're putting our prototype together and it's going really well
01:36:44
Speaker
but the other day I saw a game that's just launched that is similar but is just absolutely garbage so I'm like yeah we can do that better so let's just keep going right if they did great and it was they told gangbusters and it was really well done you know then there's a little bit of a you know are we going to be labeled as copycats because this game's success and stuff like that but because they
01:37:11
Speaker
Didn't do it, you know, as I would say, justice to the idea. I'm kind of like, yeah, we'll keep going. And so it's all good. I got one. Oh, sorry, unless you know, I was going to ask you guys if you've experienced that.
01:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, this was on Insurgency Sandstorm. In a lot of shooters in FPS, like you'll notice, there's a lot of reloads now, where when you go to pull out the new magazine, you might be holding two magazines in your hand, right? You know, you take out the fresh one, and then you, with the same hand, it's holding the fresh one, take out the spent one.
01:37:45
Speaker
throw it down and put in the new one and it looks really cool. We were going to do that and I think it was popularized or started by Modern Warfare 2019. We were going to do that in Sandstorm and we had some animations for that looked awesome. It's just an art thing but it kind of fit our game because we treated magazines separately as opposed to Call of Duty where they all merged together.
01:38:04
Speaker
And we wanted to do it, but we just didn't have the time to do it. And so for that reason, we weren't there. We didn't get to beat them to the punch and they did it. And now all kinds of FPS animations have two mags in one hand. So that was a shame.
01:38:19
Speaker
And the funny, uh, not irony there, but the guy that I was talking to about it, we had like one person animating all of her guns, Ben Turtell. And I was asking him like, can we do that? And he's like, dude, I have to redo everything. And I said, you're right. At this stage, we don't have time. And then he went on to work on call duty. So, well, there you go. Fungus finder, $2 says the arts. When is the massively multiplayer version out then?
01:38:47
Speaker
Oh Christ. I wouldn't even begin to know how to code multiplayer and that's, and I hate playing multiplayer. So, so yeah, never. Do you see a future for co-op though? I like co-op with friends. Okay. That's just, that's a good way to ask. Just spending the hours to make time for it. Like if you're going to be in the game. Yeah. Call your stuff. Hmm.
01:39:14
Speaker
Gabe Ebro, two, gives five dollars, thank you. Says, didn't realise the answer was taller than me, six, four. I don't know why that makes me feel salty. Yeah, when you're as tall as I am, every time you meet someone who's slightly taller than you, you have this little sort of existential crisis. It's like, man, this dude's just trampling all over my identity as a very tall person.
01:39:38
Speaker
Somehow nice to hear that tall people get insecure about height as well somehow, which is... I'm sure that's fun to think about when you're cramped on a plane, right? Yeah. Well, it's one of the most obvious things about here. It tends to be something people focus on. That's true. That's true. Brad for $5. Thank you so much. Says, give a launch discount so people give super chats to go to second wind so they give a good review. Smart. Very smart. Yes. Unintentionally smart.
01:40:08
Speaker
It's our scheme. It is, yeah. It's all a conspiracy. Make a friend about it. Eric. Eric gives 19... Eric, help me with the currency. Sargentinian... Some things. Some things.
01:40:24
Speaker
It's something. It's a currency. He says peso. Thank you so much, Eric. We love you. Thank you, Eric. Fungus Finder. We've only got two more chats left. Oh my God, we're coming to the end. Fungus Finder, $5. Thank you so much. Also, damn you for releasing such an addicting game on a day I should be packing for vacation. Also, HBD. Thank you very much.
01:40:50
Speaker
I'm glad that people are getting absorbed. I think that reflects a good gameplay loop. It's the thing that absorbed me that grabbed me, I'll just say real quick. You wove.
01:41:02
Speaker
you wove the, I guess the loop, the core loop into the narrative pretty well. I was surprised when I like went to go buy something at the shop and then all of a sudden the game locks up for a second like, what's happening? And now a stranger is yelling at me because I'm stuck on the pad doing that thing of just like, I'm shipping freight. Like what is this? I actually felt like I was doing my job and like a weird guy came up to me and started arguing with me. It was really cool to see that.
01:41:27
Speaker
And then you have other interactions with this character Sarge, right? Just like the, I really liked how you, you wove it in to the normal gameplay of being a freight person. Yeah. That's how it works with the NPC crew members. Uh, there's like catchment periods in the critical path and each one's got like a activity, a standard activity that if you do, you start that character's storyline. So in his case, it's opening the trading post.
01:41:53
Speaker
Right. But there's a character you get if you hit an asteroid. There's a character you get if you survey a planet. Find them all. That's the game. That's the game. Dr. Theo, $5. It says, game's great yachts. I haven't played it yet, but I trust you. Well, you could also trust Steam, where it is now one spot above Phantom Liberty. Ooh. Next target, Grand Theft Auto 5.
01:42:21
Speaker
Hell yeah. Now that is an achievement if you get over GTA V. If, however briefly, outselling GTA V on Steam. Yeah, no, it's always in the top sellers, so that would be a great achievement. Dogmatic Director gives $2, thank you. He says, last minute don't know for the birthday boy. Thank you. And Gay Bear Bro with, Gay Bear Bro 2 with $20, thank you so much. It says, payment for Toffee's dog food.
01:42:52
Speaker
Another one's just come in. Cameron Rowe gives two Australian dollars. Just happy birthday Toffee. I really like Star Trek Vagabond.
01:43:04
Speaker
Thank you. You're welcome. If people want to support the game, but they've already bought it, what can they do? Write a Steam review or what else? Steam review, always good for algorithm engagement. You could stream it. You could...
01:43:24
Speaker
posted around on Twitter. I don't know. I mean, steam review would probably be like the number one choice. That's what I feel like. Yeah. Steam review is easy. Uh, and it really helps a lot. I know when I go to find a new game, I look straight at the steam reviews before anything else. And if I see blueness and a high eighties, high nineties, I'm like way more interested. Yep. Yep. A hundred percent and the amount of them as well. Currently a hundred percent positive after 11 user reviews.
01:43:49
Speaker
Damn. We'll see how that evolves after people have played it for like 20 hours. More reviews, guys. If you're in chat and you're playing and you're enjoying it, go drop it a review because you can always alter your review based on based on time spent. Right. So. Yeah. Go give it a review now. Help those numbers out if you're enjoying it. Again. Twenty dollars payment for Ludo's dog food. Thank you so much.
01:44:13
Speaker
Our own Erika suggested that you gift the game to a friend on Steam. That's a good idea. Oh yeah, that's something you can do if you think they like it.
01:44:22
Speaker
Actually, I should mention that we're going to be selling the soundtrack separately. We're hoping to bring it out alongside the game, but I only was able to upload it to the Steam backend like earlier this week, and we haven't had enough time for getting it cleared by Steam. But we'll be selling the soundtrack, and that money will go directly to the composers if you appreciate it, if you appreciate the music. We've had a lot of comments on the soundtrack, so if you want to spot them, go do it. And we'll be bundling the game with the soundtrack for a slight discount on there. So if you want to wait,
01:45:07
Speaker
Thank you. I think that's a bluey reference. Right. I think that is us done as long as nobody surprise donos. Oh shit. Just a second. Nick's just started posting Steam keys for Starstruck Vagabond in the chat. Get on that quick chat, readers. Grab them up, drop a review. There you go. That's the deal. If you get one of those codes, you got a review.
01:45:17
Speaker
Until then, that would be another good time to buy a second copy for someone.
01:45:34
Speaker
Am I breaking weird steam TOS rules saying that? No, no, it's okay. Cause I think it says I received this code for free. Doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. If you, uh, transparency, like there was a review from one of the QA testers that went up, there's, I think it was the first review to go up and it says underneath there's a little orange bit of text saying product received for free at the top of the review to give people context.
01:46:01
Speaker
Well, beautiful. All right. Yeah. So Yachts, thank you so much for joining us. I'm sure it's been an absolutely crazy day. Not at all. Continue to be one. Not at all. And I love talking about my weird personal projects. Yeah. It'll be good to have you on when you're in another seven years, when you finish your next one, you know, and play your, your detective battle royale corpse game.
01:46:25
Speaker
Got another donation. Oh my God. SPSGuru2000 donated five euro asks, what effect on making the game does it have to have a day job and the game does not have to be a success or else you will starve? Well,
Balancing Game Development with Other Roles
01:46:42
Speaker
it makes it easier, I suppose. I mean, for me, like the measure of success is whether or not people like it. So that's what I've been mostly worried about.
01:46:53
Speaker
I guess, uh, that's the luxury I have in because I do have a day job as well. Yeah. Closing out the stream Yahtzee. Uh, I know you said you want to kind of, you have to ruminate on a lot of your feelings, which makes sense. Definitely the same experiences I think for a lot of developers. Um, do you have any like final thoughts or feelings after talking for the past couple hours about this, this, uh, seven year idea that you had that's finally shipping?
01:47:21
Speaker
Well, I guess I feel a lot more relaxed. Good. Just to know that enough people are playing it and the game apparently is working for most of them. I don't need to patch it anytime soon, hopefully. Soon the pride will come. What happens when the chat keeps donating? Do you guys just go on forever? We do them until I've done the outro and then we say sorry to the people.
01:47:49
Speaker
Yeah, we got one from Squirtle Squad 420, $5, which is going to start playing now. Should I use keyboard or controller? HPD? I'd use controller myself. Me too. I like using keyboard and mouse. It's been optimized pretty thoroughly for both, I'd say.
01:48:10
Speaker
Okay, well, guess we should wrap this up before any more Superjets show up. Yeah, let's wrap it up before people say another thousand dollars to us. We appreciate you. So, thank you, Yahtzee, for coming on. Thank you to Mikey and Tina for joining today. It's been a really, really interesting stream and podcast to hear your perspective as a solo dev. It's really nice to see the success you're having with it, Yahtz. You deserve it.
01:48:35
Speaker
Next week Mikey am I right in saying if I say the name Tim what I'm right saying they're confirmed for next week
01:48:43
Speaker
Uh, yes, but, uh, but we got to talk a little bit more about that just because I won't say what potentially is next next week, then, uh, the week after. So yeah, we, we have lots of guests. I will say that we have lots of guests lined up and we are currently shifting and juggling where they're going. Um, and who's coming on because of theirs hours, um, and lots of different factors to do with schedules, but we have watches. Will it safer?
01:49:11
Speaker
Oh, yes. Let's keep it cryptic, I think. But yes, there is a Tim or two in our future, we hope. But yeah, we're juggling a lot right now, as Jay said. Yeah, you're right. There are a couple potential couple Tims. So we'll let the team, the listeners, put a hazard and guess on who they might be. But yeah, a Tim channel and Discord for speculation and theory. Yeah, we're going to need a Tim chat.
01:49:40
Speaker
But yeah, thank you so much for joining guys. It's been wonderful having you here, listening to us go talk about all of our game dev bollocks. Just a reminder that if you enjoy this podcast and the other content at second wind, please check out our Patreon where you can go to support all of our different shows and keep them running. It goes directly to us and we appreciate you.
01:49:59
Speaker
So much stick around. We've got loads of streams coming, especially next week on Thursday on the 30th. We have our big six month anniversary celebration. We're going to be raffling
Support and Future Shows
01:50:10
Speaker
off a whole bunch of different consoles. We're going to be announcing a bunch of different content. So come hang out and have a good time. But yeah, other than that, I think that's all from us and we will speak to you later. Bye bye, guys. Bye bye.