How a hit Steam game made $10mil, and what a small (successful) Steam launch looks like gamedevreport.beehiiv.com/p/… #gamedev #indiedev

If I could only teach one clean code concept, it would probably be naming. This genuinely is both one of the most important things you can do, and one of the easiest! Not design patterns. Not architecture. Not inheritance. Just naming! Good names make code understandable. Bad names make code confusing. This one change alone MASSIVELY improves the quality of your code. The funny thing is that both versions of the code usually work exactly the same, the compiler doesn't care if your variable is called: x Or playerHealth But your brain certainly does! Whenever you look at code, you're constantly asking: "What does this thing represent?" Good names answer that question instantly. Bad names force you to stop and think. And that tiny delay happens thousands of times throughout a project. So whenever you're writing code, spend a few extra seconds on naming. I GUARANTEE you the return on investment is massive! I have an entire 1hr talk on YouTube all about this topic titled: "How to Write High Quality Code that doesn't fall apart." If you're trying to be a professional game dev as opposed to just a hobbyist building throwaway prototypes, then I highly recommend you learn how to write proper high quality clean code. Best of luck! - Code Monkey

You do NOT get FREE visibility when you launch a Steam page

#### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### (B) Names are not set in stone. If I think of a better name, I should rename it. Modern IDEs make this extremely easy, for example in Visual Studio just do Ctrl + R + R and it will automatically rename every instance of that symbol. Do that whenever you come up with a better name since a better name can instantly make the code easier to understand. Check out my talk on YouTube titled: "How to Write High Quality Code that doesn't fall apart"

What should I do if I later think of a better name for a variable or function? A) Leave it forever because names should never change B) Rename it (answer in reply below)

Why can one game make a massive amount of money and another game make almost nothing? A lot of the time the answer is marketability. Not always, obviously there are many factors. But marketability explains A LOT. Your game idea has to be something players can understand, want, and get excited about. If the idea is not marketable, then even very good execution might not save it. This is WHY genre selection matters so much. Some genres are hot for a while, then become oversaturated. Some genres were never very strong on Steam in the first place. Some ideas are visually exciting and instantly understandable, while others might be good games but are much harder to sell in a trailer, gif, screenshot, or Steam capsule. That difference is MASSIVE. A game with satisfying destruction, tons of particles, and a clear visual fantasy is naturally marketable. Players immediately understand why it is cool. But an abstract arcade survival game might be fun, polished, and interesting, and still be much harder to sell if the genre is weak and the hook is harder to communicate. Same thing with social deduction games like Among Us. At one point, that genre was extremely hot. Later, after tons of games jumped into that space, the same kind of idea became much harder to market. That is why you need to pay attention to what is currently working right NOW. Not because you should blindly chase every trend, don't do that. BUT timing matters! Audience demand changes. Genres rise and fall. What was exciting three years ago might be ordinary today. So before making your next game, ask yourself: * Is this idea marketable right now? * Can I explain the hook instantly? * Does this genre still have demand? * Is this idea visually exciting? * Would players understand WHY they should care? Best of luck on picking a marketable idea and finding success! - Code Monkey

"How to stop Multiplayer cheating?"

Don't fall for feature bloat! When you build for imaginary features, you waste real valuable time! Write code that solves TODAY's problem, if specs change later, refactor! Remember how your first draft is NOT meant to be perfect, you can always change and add things onto it later. - Code Monkey

Build an AWESOME Unity 2D Game in 60 SECONDS!

I've spoken about one HUGE MISTAKE that devs make: They launch ONE game and quit, most devs don't make more games which is a huge mistake because the real magic happens in game two and beyond! You gain tons of experience which then helps increase your odds of success in game 2-3-4-etc, so just make more games! One counterpoint I see pushing against that advice is how devs simply get demotivated after having a failed project and therefore simply cannot push themselves to work on game 2. If that's you then I would say the issue is you're calling your first project a "failure" rather than a learning experience. I made 40 Flash games before I was successful enough to make minimum wage, if I was seeing those 39 games as failures then yea I would also be demotivated and likely would have quit. But I saw those as learning experiences, I saw that I was getting a bit better and learning more about game development with every game that I made. And I figured that as long as I continued in that trajectory then eventually I would mkae it, which is exactly what happened. You shouldn't expect your first game to be your biggest hit, it likely won't be, but it will probably be the project that you learn most from, even if it sells 0 copies. Looking at it that way it's impossible for your first game to be a failure. - Code Monkey

Do you know the Edge of your Knowledge?

#### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### (B) Obviously Hollow Knight, Call of Duty, Pok mon, and Stardew Valley are very different games on the surface. But behind the scenes, they still share tons of the same core building blocks. They need input, player control, UI, audio, game state, saving/loading, interactions, and so on. The genre changes, the visuals change, the details change, but a lot of the foundation is still the same. So in order to learn how to make any game you want, learn the fundamentals first!

Why do I say that most games are "90% the same"? A) Because most games use the same exact code B) Because most games share the same core systems like input, UI, audio, cameras, interactions, state, and game flow C) Because all successful games are secretly in the same genre D) Because game developers should only make clones of existing games (answer in reply below)

Do you know what is the current HOT genre on Steam for indie devs? How much a Daily Deal is worth? How maybe the co-op ONLY games era is coming? Or why this game made $350,000 in 24 HOURS? These are all things I covered in my Game Dev Report Newsletter! The latest Game Dev Insights straight to your inbox every Sunday. Being an indie dev is hard, but if you stay up to date with what is going on in the industry things become much easier. Check out my newsletter HERE! cmonkey.co/gamedevreport

Game Dev answers Google in 60 SECONDS!

What do you consider "success" in game development? This is one of the most IMPORTANT questions you need to answer for yourself, because success means completely different things to different people. For one person, success means making six figures from a game. For someone else, success means making enough money to become a full-time game developer. For someone else, success is just finishing their very first game. And for someone else, success is simply making something fun that their friends can play. ALL of those are valid definitions of success! The important thing is that YOU define clearly what success means to YOU! If your goal is vague, like "I want to be a successful game dev", then how do you know if you're actually getting closer? What does that mean? $100? $10,000? Full-time income? A viral hit? A finished project? Those are all very different goals, and they require very different strategies and levels of commitment. Personally my goal has always been pretty simple: I want to make enough money from games to keep making games. That's it. I don't need to make Minecraft. I don't need a giant multimedia IP. I don't need a movie deal. I just want to keep doing this sustainably for the rest of my life. That's MY own personal goal, it doesn't have to be YOUR goal. Whenever I talk about finding success on Steam or making a marketable game idea or cutting costs to make profitable games, there's always at least one comment that goes something like "all this focus on money is what's wrong with the industry, can't I just make games for fun?" You CAN! As long as you define that for yourself success just means making something for fun then congrats, if you're having fun you're successful, even if you make $0! For example I love working out, I go to the gym every day maybe 15 hours a week, I've been doing that for over a decade and yet I have made $0 (actually spent $thousands) and yet I consider that a success because to me it's just a hobby for fun, as long as I'm enjoying it then I'm achieving my definition of success. So take some time to define what success means to YOU! If you have a clear definition then achieving your goal of finding success becomes much easier. Best of luck! - Code Monkey

This Dev made $5MIL because of this!

Game development is NOT about simulating reality. It is about making the player BELIEVE something is happening! That is a very important distinction. Beginners often think: "If I want a snowstorm, I need to make snow fall across the entire world." But no, you really don't. You only need the player to FEEL like they are inside a snowstorm. That might mean putting particles only in front of the camera and not on the entire huge world. From the player's point of view, it looks like intense snow everywhere. But behind the scenes, it is just a tiny localized particle effect following the player's view. That is game development. It's all smoke and mirrors. This same concept applies to tons of things. Maybe the endless road is not endless. Maybe it is just a looping shape. Maybe the tunnel is not a massive 3D space. Maybe it is just a scrolling texture. Maybe the ocean waves are not complex water simulation. Maybe they are just a few triangles moving up and down. What matters is not what is technically happening. What matters is what the player EXPERIENCES. That does not mean you should fake things badly, it means you should fake things intelligently. Use the simplest solution that creates the right feeling, because if the player believes it, then the illusion works. And if the illusion works, you saved time, saved performance, and still created the experience you wanted. That is a huge part of game development, especially indie game development where you have very limited resources. You have to be very very clever withhow you use those resources. Don't build reality, instead build the FEELING of reality. - Code Monkey

Do NOT launch your Demo before Next Fest!

#### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### #### ANSWER #### (B) JSON is a very useful and widely used text based data format. And despite the name it is not just used in JavaScript. It's human readable and easily editable with lots of libraries to handle it like Unity's JsonUtility which makes it great for Saving and Loading data and interacting with all kinds of Web Services and REST APIs. Personally I use it in so many different ways, like when making some kind of Save System like this one piped.video/watch?v=6uMFEM-n…