first game project origins
“I googled "how to make an MMO" because that's the type of game that I wanted to make. And the first results all said "don't, it's too ambitious, you can't make an MMO on your own." So I scrolled past them.”
going full-time indie
“I've always had in my memory that I had quite a large number of subscribers at the time, so it made sense that I might be able to manage full-time somehow, but checking my analytics I actually only had around 900 subscribers at the time.”
Sokka One Kickstarter failure
“I really thought it was the end, but actually it turned out to be only the beginning.”
Equilinox mid-development crisis
“There was actually a time in the middle of development where I was seriously considering giving up on the project. It had already taken way longer than expected and the end was still nowhere in sight, so my motivation had really started to dip.”
Equilinox release delay
“Just 2 days after announcing the release date, I went to the dentist because I had a sore on my tongue, and it turned out to be a little bit of cancer. So obviously I suddenly had very different worries... these extra few months of development were actually really useful and allowed me to polish up the game very nicely.”
making his own engine
“I just find it really satisfying doing everything from scratch. I love knowing how every little bit of the game works and having control over how every single byte of every vertex in the model is stored in memory.”
custom engine vs Unity
“For anyone who's not specifically interested in engine development though, and doesn't want to spend years learning about it, I would always recommend just using an engine like Unity. It's definitely a quicker and more efficient route to take, but less enjoyable for me at least.”
first full-time year output
“I'd made over 100 videos in total that year, which today is still almost a third of all of the videos on my channel.”
Patreon funding after Kickstarter
“Around the same time, I started using Patreon, which a few people had suggested after the Kickstarter failed. My hope was that I might be able to make enough income through YouTube and Patreon so that I'd only need to get a part-time job, leaving more time for game development. But thanks to the incredible support of some of my subscribers, it ended up making just about enough for me to continue full-time game development.”
Equilinox game concept
“I mean, it's a game where you literally watch grass grow.”
indie Kickstarter era 2015
“Around that time, Kickstarters were all the rage. In fact, the team who had made the devlog videos that had inspired me to get started with YouTube had also recently done a successful Kickstarter campaign, and they only had a bit over 1,000 subscribers on YouTube.”
city builder project burnout
“I could feel myself slowly falling out of love with game development. So on January 1st, 2022, I began work on yet another game.”