Color Switch Creator on Game Design with David Reichelt

So, in this presentation I'll be going over I guess I have it right here. Color Switch some details on that who I am and mindset design which is phrase I coined or term and game design and then I'll go into how I designed Color Switch because people have asked me a lot about the design process and what that looks like so I'm actually going to take you behind the scenes with that and finally I'll be sharing some game design tips with all of you.

Some of these oh perfect. Some of these will kind of cross over each other some of the same concepts but going over these more than once is good so it can stick in your brain. Now how many people here are designing games? Okay I got one two three scratch that could be a game designer. Okay so most of you aren't game designers. Not a problem because as you'll see it when I'm going through these concepts you'll all explain how you can use any of these things for non game ideas.

Cuz really all these tools that I've either utilized when I was making games before Color Switch and during Color Switch and then things I learned after the fact just looking back at the results I got these can be applied to anything. So let's go into Color Switch. So I made this for roughly $3,000 and it was basically the cost of the software because I programmed it myself. I'm not a real advanced programmer. I found software that kind of does a lot of work for me.

I just drag things around. It's kind of dummy proof. Um so I basically just had to pay for that and I did the work myself. Which software was it? Buildbox. Yes, Buildbox software. They They're They have Buildbox 2.0 which does a lot more than what Buildbox did and I think they're going to come out with Buildbox 3 and kind of keep on expanding the tool set. So Color Switch launched in 2015 December 2015. Today we have about 160 million downloads worldwide.

About well maybe it's 16 months now. Um we were in the top charts one of the top games 2016. We were the number one overall app on Apple for about a month so we beat Facebook and I mean we didn't our the we didn't leave the number one spot for a month so we just stayed there which is pretty cool. I didn't know all this would happen. You know I as you'll see you can plan for things and but you don't know the extent of the results you'll get. No one can really tell the future however when I tell you the details you'll see that well I was focused on a big result like this.

So who am I? You know oftentimes you may look at someone who had a big success or a big breakthrough and a lot of people will say well it must be nice to be lucky or um that person must have had some special situation or you pretty much come up with something a lot of people do so that you can give yourself an excuse for not doing uh something that will get you your own breakthrough and and then it kind of keeps you from ever having your own breakthrough because you give excuses for someone else. So uh I just want to give you some details for does everyone does do some of you not know my story my personal story?

Okay. Oh a lot of you good. Just want to make sure I'm not kind of rehashing things everyone's like we know that part get to the good stuff. You rude audience. So going back to high school I dropped out and I dropped I didn't just drop out. I dropped out spectacularly with a 0.8 GPA. I went one day of my junior year and then I was done. Cuz basically I slept through high school. I I essentially had no high school education. I didn't even pass pre-algebra class.

Um never took a math class after that actually but uh I had the point GPA because the 0.8 because I had a teacher who inspired me. He was a history teacher. If you've ever seen the movie Dead Poets Society I had that teacher and he would just fill you with all this inspiration and I got an A in his class and I went back to sleep for the rest of high school. That's not an exaggeration. Uh uh I'm also musician. I play guitar since I was 17 and I'm I'm going over things that have come into play later on not just uh list things I've done but they helped me later on. I was an army medic.

I went in the army in 2003 and went to Iraq in 2005 and then I was a medic there for about a year and got out of the military I think 2006 and then my contract ended 2011. Uh before right before we went into the military me and my buddy we got inspired to make a film so I got interested in filmmaking since then and he went off to he's worked on I don't know dozens and dozens of movies since then. Um I should I wish I brought a clip of what we made. It's pretty It's like blackmail material so I could be I could be blackmailing myself right now if I was showing it.

It's pretty bad but you have to be bad before you can be good at anything. And to that you know I have I do have plans to get back into that once I'm kind of done building this whole game business. I worked as a magician for a while. I got interested in magic when I was in the our the army and when I got back from Iraq I just and you know I'm ever since since I was a kid I've constantly been wanting to learn new things so I'm always teaching myself something. I got a couple books on card magic and then before I knew it I was the magic medic and the doctors were pushing patients aside so they could see the newest trick sometimes.

It was It was funny. Um but I that led me to working as a magician. I've been a member at the Magic Castle for 5 years and that opened up a lot of um opportunities got me a lot of different places. I've been a Toastmaster since 2011 and everyone familiar with Toastmasters? Yes okay. For those some some of you who aren't nobody everyone knows okay. Uh it's a public speaking organization international so you go there and you work on your your public speaking skills and you can meet on a weekly basis. They have contests international contests.

Um it's uh very helpful for anything you're going to do and you know when my game blew up when I started doing some PR you know I did some shows here some in podcasts whatever it makes it much easier because you get rid of a lot of your anxiety you don't get too nervous speaking in front of people. Theater major I cleaned pools. I was a pool service person uh man pool service man for like 3 months. It didn't last too long but uh I was also limo driver. I parked cars. My last job was as a valet in downtown LA.

And when my game went number one I was still a valet technically I hadn't quit and they they called me in for one last shift or not one last shift but I guess they had some new art um facility open and they say hey we need all hands on deck and I guess I could have easily been like I got number one app see you later. Who what? Valet? The peasants the peasants? But no I I went and did the shift with everybody and I was happy too. I don't think you should ever get to a point to where you feel like you're above people.

Oh. I. Wow he caught me he caught me red-handed there. Um and so I did a shift and I put in my notice though cuz I said well I'm doing this full-time now. And game designer so I valet was the last job I had and then to game designer. Now during uh you know I got into games since 2013 and so since then I whatever job I was doing was usually part-time limo driver valet you know magic gigs whatever um so I could spend most of my time working on game design and designing games.

So that's a little bit about my background so uh and and just so you know at the time I was in the midst of designing games I was like 80 grand in debt. I was your typical American. You know. Uh there's laughter to truth. And uh so but you know I I literally had to dig myself out of this with my bare hands, and I didn't get any help. I just had to up work and apply these things that I'm going to go over with you today.

This is planned. I have my special helper here. And he will continue the presentation for me. Thank you. Now, mindset design. To do anything in life, you must first you must first think of it first. You cannot breathe, you cannot answer someone's question, you can't take a step. You literally can't do anything unless you think about it first. So, if you want to do something very big in business, or you have a big lofty goal for your personal life, how can you make that happen if you haven't first designed the right mindset to make it happen?

Now, I think a lot of self-help books can kind of give you fluffy kind of nice-sounding things, but everything I'm going to talk about today is through application. I'm only saying these things because this is how I think when I attack my own problems, and and this is a mindset that I continually work on and grow. So, the next time I do a presentation, thank you. Um first point of mindset design is to improve how you think.

Now, if you think of the famous quote or definition for insanity, it's doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result, right? Story of my life. You know, I I would constantly do things not making any headway. Well, there's a missing piece from that definition, and it's so important because most people live their entire lives, and they miss this one piece. It's very simple. Many things in how to solve problems and apply yourself in uh in improving your thinking and various things. It's improving how you think. So, if I attack a problem from the same mindset, the same perspective over and over and over, of course I'm not going to get a different result.

It's only by actively and consciously putting new information that I can process and then attack that problem again, can I get a gradually different result. So, the more information you put in about what you're focused on, and that information can be from anywhere. It can be within the industry that you're focused on, or it can be outside of the industry. Um any information from any perspective can help you improve your thinking.

And it's only by gradually, and this isn't happen overnight, but by gradually every day doing something that improves your thinking, you will gradually get to the point to where you have your breakthrough. But, if you don't consciously do that, if you don't actively do that, if you if you just attack the problem as you always have, then yes, you will get the same result, and often times people get too frustrated to continue with that, and they go to something else.

So, my favorite book, ThinkerToys, the author actually sent me a signed copy when I told him I had a lot of success using the techniques in his book, and he wrote a quote in there he said, "Life isn't about waiting for storms to pass, it's about learning how to dance in the rain." In other words, there's always you're always going to have problems of the day to to be solved. And you have to face those problems and find creative solutions.

So, case in point, I'll just adapt what I'm doing, and and you just have to wonder what the next slide is. Surprise. Maybe it makes it even better and more suspenseful. Almost like we planned this. You notice this didn't happen with the other presentations. Highly planned for months, if not years. Passive intake versus active intake of information. Again, I don't know someone may have coined this term, I don't know. I just create these terms as I think about things, and this is a term I coined. Passive intake versus active intake of information. Most people have passive intake of information.

Uh we go through our life. Everything that comes in to all of our senses, we don't really put too much thought into it. And if you look at everything, if you smell, hear, listen, see everything as everyone else does, you'll have no other result than everyone else does. So, you have to actively use the information that's given to you. So, when you're coming to something like this, um I think earlier I was giving the example of a cup. You know, if I looked at a cup as everyone else does, I will use it like everyone else has.

But, if I look at a cup and I start breaking apart what it is, and I start thinking about how to design another cup, then I'll start creating some new ideas. So, like if I took a cup and and I thought of Back to the Future, and then I because I thought of Back to the Future, I thought of like hover technology they used in the car, and then I create a cup that has some kind of hover technology, maybe voice-activated. I could say, "Cup, go fly to Patrick's table."

And then it hovers itself and goes to Patrick's table. I have a brand new product. I have a brand new cup. But, if I passively looked at a cup as everyone else does, I'm not going to think of any new ideas. So, that's the difference, and that's what I mean between passive intake of information and active intake of information. Conceptual blending. This is probably one of the most important concepts you'll come across in my presentation, if not in your life.

And I say that because knowledge of this concept has completely changed my life by applying this concept. Anyone ever heard of the uh the term conceptual blending? Patrick has. Anyone else? Not for me, but Okay. It's so important. Like I said, this is if you write anything from my presentation down, write that down. Uh conceptual blending is where I take a concept over here and a concept over here. Now, on their own, they have no relation to each other, and I wouldn't think of like if I have a cup and uh a microphone, you know, on their own, I just think of those. I look at them as everyone else does. But, something magical happens when I put the concepts together. Your brain starts blending them into a hybrid concept. So, it could be a cup with a secret listening device maybe the FBI uses, or maybe it's a microphone you can drink from. Do we need this product? I don't know, it's just an idea.

But, we thought of it, and we wouldn't have thought of it unless we blended the concepts together. This is the core of every creative thought, the idea of conceptual blending. And all the creative thinking techniques that I've used for solving all the problems in my personal business have based on conceptual blending. And that's from my favorite book, ThinkerToys. If you haven't bought it, it's only $12. It's to me it's priceless because by applying I got this book in 2011, and by applying the techniques over the last 7 years, I've slowly changed how I think and view everything.

And when I got into game design in 2013, it made complete sense to use these techniques to generate all my game ideas, and uh using and applying these techniques, you know, it took my flipped my life upside down from what it was to what it is now. The two techniques I use from that book, I like there's more I like, but it's kind of really one of those books where you pick and choose what makes most sense to you and what you enjoy the most. Those are slice and dice and SCAMPER. They have different purposes, and but they they easily are used together. So, slice and dice, we'll get into how to use these, but slice and dice lets you break up a concept into many attributes, as many attributes as you can think of, and SCAMPER lets you manipulate any one of those attributes in an infinite amount of ways.

And it's an acronym. It stands for substitute, combine, add, magnify/multiply, put to some other use, eliminate, reverse or rearrange. We don't have time to get into all the specifics. You'll just have to read about it. Okay, the infinity principle. I was saying this again at our table. If you look at anything, whether it's a person or an object, um the sky, a smell, the breeze, or a cup, you have to realize that this is only one representation of an infinite amount of representations of what this can be.

I mean, if you took if you made a list of all the things in this room, and just this cup, and you kept on taking one thing from the list and pairing it up with the cup, you'll start you'll generate so many ideas, you won't know what to do with them. And what that tells you is because you're focused on, let's say, designing a new type of cup, a new type of product, it shows you that you could make lists forever, but because there's so many things you can combine with this cup, you could do It could be three different things, four different things, five different things.

It doesn't have to be just one other concept. But, by blending concepts together in different combinations, there are an infinite amount of combinations, and there are infinite amount of representations of what any concept or idea can be. You know, you go through life and you learn through the through programming because as kids we're all 100% creative, but as you go through life and you have to fit in with different social groups, you have to be educated, which kills your creativity in a lot of cases, you forget this stuff.

And it kind of sounds foreign. But, this is how kids work. So, you have to realize that anything is not what it appears. That's just one of an infinite amount of things that it can be. Fluid thinking. When you apply creative thinking techniques and you are constantly looking at things and breaking them apart and manipulating the concept, what happens, you break mental chains because we put everything in boxes, we crystallize thinking about concepts. You know, in in the science community we can say, "Yep, the science is settled on this or this or this or this." Not so.

Um what happens is you create crystallized thinking and your thinking dies. And there's no way to have any kind of big breakthrough if you have closed thinking like that. So, it's kind of like you have to constantly break mental chains. We have assumptions about everything. There's a great ThinkerToys technique called False Faces, which you list all your assumptions about a problem and you reverse every single one. And just by doing that, let's say if you want to develop a new car and you list all your assumptions about cars. The first one could be people drive cars.

Reverse it to cars drive people, and now you have automated cars, you have a multi-billion dollar idea. That's exciting. Yeah, it it is. I mean, once you get used to and are conscious of breaking mental chains and crystallized thinking, that's when all the ideas open up. And that's when you stop saying, "Oh, I I wish I could be creative like that person." You can be as creative as you want. It's all up to you. So, fluid thinking is what you strive for. Again, that's looking at something not as what it is, but what it could be.

And that could be an infinite amount of things. You should always follow what I call the 99.9% principle. This is something that is said in a lot of ways, but I just coined my own way to say it. You should always assume that you don't know 99.9% of what there is to know in your business or in life. It's true. I don't care if you become a multi-trillionaire, you know 0.1% or maybe probably much less of what there is to know.

And this being understanding this and understanding that you're a constant student and there's constantly things to ingest and learn combined with uh the conscious idea of creating fluid thinking, you'll constantly have improvements in what you do in life and the problems you're able to solve and the breakthroughs you're able to have. So, you should always you should never Another way to say is you have to make sure you don't get a big ego about a success. That's uh unfortunate side effect for a lot of people who have a big success, they get a big ego.

And what what does that mean? It means I have all the answers. I'm I'm this, I'm that. And then because you're stuck in that mental chain, that crystallized thinking about yourself, you stop learning. And you got to be inspired. If you look at any big work that touches many people and you look at the details, often times that person who created that work was inspired by many things. Well, how can you be inspired if you think you have all the answers? How can you be inspired if you look at everything the way it is and the way the way everyone else looks at it?

There's Those are all old ideas. You need to think of new ideas. So, when you look at someone who's very who's worked on their creativity and produced something and you look at the details, you find it was inspired by many things. And you can only be inspired if you're if you're a constant student. And any work, I mean, Color Switch I've said many times is a product of thousands of failures. And a lot of people quit when they reach a number of failures and they don't like the feeling and they go to something else.

But, that's a mistake. You can't give yourself a deadline. You can't give yourself a number of I'll once I fail five more times, I'm done if it doesn't work. Or by this time next year if it doesn't work, then I'm done. You have to be willing to fail endlessly and that's what this acronym means. It's learn, apply, fail. You learn something, you apply what you learned, you're going to fail. What did I learn from that failure? Takes you back to the beginning, you apply that new understanding, and you fail again. And you have to be willing to loop this endlessly. If I had stopped at 35 failed games, I wouldn't be here today.

Or 40 games cuz this is number 41 Color Switch was. And even on my computer I had another 100 project projects or so that never left my computer that were all half-baked ideas or things I I I decided not to continue. But, I was unwilling to quit. I was willing to fail endless endlessly. So, that's all again a part of mindset design. Being aware of these concepts and applying them is it's giving yourself the the correct tool set. You know, you wouldn't think of a mechanic going to take apart an engine with his bare hands.

Well, why would you attack problems in your business without giving yourself the proper tool sets? And again, this isn't self-help like $5 self-help book stuff. These are things I applied and then things I realized even afterwards cuz I'm always working on trying to improve. I strive for improved thinking. So, that's that's a very important tool set for me and it and you know, even if there's one tool in there that makes sense to you, I think you'll get a lot out of using it.

Okay. So, game design. This is I mean, you can create your own process. This is a pretty pretty basic road map. Um you need to choose a specific game type. Pick a theme. Generate many ideas, tear apart other ideas, conceptually blend, pick design principles, and build. It's as simple as that, people. And ThinkerToys, he talks about Michael Michalko, the author, talks about how it well, at the step one of any ThinkerToys technique, any creative thinking techniques creative thinking techniques uh creative thinking technique step one is state your problem in a succinct way.

If you state your problem in a broad fashion, you're not focused. You're unfocused and your results will be unfocused. So, in choosing a specific game type, if I said, "Okay, I want to make a great game." Well, that's much too broad. Oh, so if I get a little more specific, I could say, "Okay, I want to make a casual mobile game." That's better, but that's not specific enough. So, to be super specific, you can pick a specific game type.

So, in my case I said, "Okay, I want to make one of these games where you tap the screen and something goes up." That's very specific. Now, the creative thinking techniques that I use will help me generate a solution to that problem. Okay, and the others we'll get into actually in the next couple slides. Okay, let's go let's actually apply them to how I designed Color Switch. Choose a specific game type. I saw these games like Doodle Jump, the middle one's called Flight, and another one called Bounce. And you know, all these games have a character that goes up the screen. So, I slice and dice these.

I don't know if I put that example on the slide, but for example, Flight, the middle one, you just tap the screen and a little triangle goes up through rotating obstacles. So, I if I slice and dice that into all the attributes, I could it could be mobile game, product, tap, one tap, minimalistic, rotating object with one opening, um flat graphics, so on and so on and so on. Doodle Jump, you know, it could be uh I could say charming sketch style artwork, um a jumping mechanic, um uh and you know, and so on and so on.

And the same with Bounce. Bounce is just a game similar similar to Doodle Jump where you're bouncing off of platforms. Okay, so choose a theme. I thought about this and I I said to myself, "I want to create a game that could be have a huge impact, could be around for years." And I thought, "Okay, I need to make a game that's based off shapes and colors. What's the most fundamental theme that everyone could be affected by every day?" Shape And I thought shapes and colors. So, I also thought um Well, actually I get into that later.

So, that So, I I I had shapes and colors in my mind for for the the theme. Um now I need to generate many ideas and tear the ideas apart. So, I did this by utilizing creative thinking techniques and and specifically I used slice and dice and SCAMPER. Slice and dice. Again, you have to state your problem. I should have said in a succinct way. List as many attributes of your problem as possible. Take each attribute one at a time and think of ways to change or improve it.

When you look if I was designing a glass again cuz it's an easy example, it's right here. Um if I look at a glass as it is, I won't think of a new idea, but if I break it up into all its parts, now I can find some piece of it, some attribute that inspires an idea, but you're not going to see it if you just look at it from one perspective. When you break something up into many perspectives or many attributes, it gives you many perspectives to attack your problem from.

Okay, and you need to strive for fluent and flexible thinking. Again, the more you use these, the more that will happen organically. Okay, so I looked at sources of inspiration. That included Simon. Actually, it included four game ideas and then one non-game inspiration. So, Simon, Pac-Man. Pac-Man was the first game I thought of. I said, "What's the game that's been around for years that everyone likes?" Pac-Man. And I started breaking that apart. Um Uno.

I mean, Uno and Simon, you can already see inspiration there. They both use four colors. Um they both have like a dark background going on. Um they have this color Well, Simon has a color matching like a memory thing with colors. Uno it has a uh color switching card, a wild card. So, you can see how already how I drew inspiration from these. Gmail. What's the loading icon when you log into Gmail? Yeah, it's the color It's the color ball, right? What's it doing? It's changing colors.

Now, remember how I said look at something not as it is, but what it could be. I look at icons all the time and I say, "That's not a icon, that's a video game idea." And I always thought that about the Gmail loading icon. And one day when I was thinking about a game based on shapes and colors, that was one of the things I put down. I said, "Oh, Gmail loading icon. Let me put that down on my list." Now, if we break these apart, Simon.

Color patterns, four colors, uses memory, hardware, four buttons, they light up, it's a toy, universal appeal, colors and shapes. Gmail logo, color changing icon. Pac-Man, ghosts, four colors, black background, color changing aspect. When you eat the big power pellet, the ghosts change color, you know you can eat them. It's a side element, it's not the main element. Um you got the power-up, some you have a maze, you can die.

Uno. Again, you see the same thing in a lot of these things, four colors, um color changing, um and then flight. It's a one-tap game, you jump up the screen, it has gravity, and then minimalistic, rotating obstacles, one opening. Okay, let's conceptually blend. So, I picked four things. I said, "Four colors. I want a game that has four colors, a color changing aspect, uh uses the that color changing ball from the Google icon, and it's one tap."

And these are So, the I I I I gradually thought of you know, I mixed these ideas together and um again, this magic thing of conceptual blending that your brain does did its thing almost without me even having to think about it. And all of a sudden, I saw this rotating circle with four colors and this color changing ball that would go through it. And then I created these graphics. As soon as I thought of it, I sketched it out, created these same graphics in 20 minutes, and then I spent 10 minutes to make a demo.

Now, if you trace it all the way back to all the inspirations, you can clearly see how it was inspired, but it's a new idea. It's a hybrid idea based of all based off of all the inspirations. Again, I reiterate the fact that if you are not highly inspired, how can you produce a highly inspired work? I wouldn't have thought of this without all my inspirations and tearing things apart, manipulating things. And as you can see, it's not hard, but you can you can produce results that are much bigger than what you anticipated.

Okay. Now, once I had the idea, I still had to use some other game design principles. Um one is the idea of surprise. Um so, some questions I could ask uh about my game are, "What will surprise players when they play my game? Do the game rules have surprises? Does the artwork? Does the technology?" And you know, going back to my past experience as a magician, I knew how surprise really has an effect on people. And that's actually what first got me to wanting to put surprise as the main element and also helped me get to the color switching aspect because it's a constant surprise after you go through each obstacle.

So again, asking the right questions will get you specific results. Okay, the flow state. That's another game design principle. The flow state basically means challenging your game player at and and and upping that challenge incrementally over time. Questions you could ask, "Does my game provide a steady stream of gradually increasing challenges? Are the player's skills improving as expected? How can I change that?" So, this is what the flow state looks like. If you're not in the flow, if the game's too hard, people have too much frustration, too much anxiety. If it's too low, they're bored.

You need them in this flow channel, this flow state of constant challenge, constant skill building. But it's not going to be linear. You have to give them a little bit of a break, so this this this wavy line represents challenge, tension release, tension release, tension release at increasing rates, incrementally increasing rates. And last step, you got to build. Buildbox didn't pay me any money. I just enjoy Buildbox.

Uh so, that's what I always recommend for people who don't have advanced programming skills and they want to design a game quickly. Okay, lastly, game design tips. You have to have a good understanding of what you're designing for. So, me I play mobile games constantly. So much so that I may not enjoy playing games most of the time cuz I'm so used to analyzing. You got to You got to play them and analyze them. Why does this game Why Why do I think it's not made well?

How can I pinpoint those things? Having a knowledge of a lot of game design concepts helps you focus on each one of those. Okay, if it's not surprising enough and the game needs to be surprising, how would I improve the surprise? Where else in the game could use surprise? Um if it's a great game, what makes it great? You have to analyze good games and bad games. Um you have to fail a lot and quickly. Don't spend a year on a game.

I spent 6 months on my first game. I learned a lot, but when I made 40 games in 6 months, I learned a lot more. Number three, utilize creative thinking techniques. Again, I would not have thought of my color switch idea if I did not use the right tools. One of those most important tools was creative thinking techniques from the book ThinkerToys. There are other books, that just so happens to be the one I use. Model and improve. Again, don't copy things, but taking inspiration from many sources and then creating an improved concept that's a hybrid of those is in is a new product inspired by many.

Inspiration from one idea is cloning. You have to listen. You have to listen to your own sensibilities, listen to other people's perspectives, listen to the world around you. Um And that means many different things. So, you have to constantly constantly listen, improve how you think, and improve how you listen. You have to love what you do. If you don't love what you do, how are you going to spend time and and how are you going to want to learn things?

Um you have to pick the right problem and the right solution. My problem was always, "How do I travel and do my own work?" Well, if I become a full-time plumber, maybe that's not the right solution for that problem. Um have I defined the right problem? What if I really want to travel and I haven't really found that out about myself, and I do have that full-time job. I'm not traveling anywhere and I'm not I don't know why I'm happy. That comes down to trying things and being curious and learning.

By trying things over and over in many different areas, you'll find out what you do and don't like, and that's how you find out about yourself. So, you have to define the right problem, and then you have to find the right solution. Oftentimes, people don't define the problem or they don't find the right solution or they haven't thought about either. And everything is about problems and solutions. And in general, you have to be inspired by everything because you never know where the breakthrough idea lies. It could be in in literally everything. You can't just live by sitting at your computer. You have to get out and do things. There's inspiration in every kind of activity.

And know you guys have a supercomputer. Everyone has is born with a supercomputer. This is the only thing known in the universe that can take any thought and turn it into a physical reality. There's nothing else. And when you realize you have that ability, you then realize, "Okay, what am I going to focus this supercomputer on? What's the problem I want to focus it on? Did I What What's the life I want to create?" You know, I'm I I focus on games. I didn't focus on astronomy or being a surgeon or There's a billion things, an infinite amount of things you could focus on, but you need to focus on something. Most of the time, people don't focus on anything specific, and they don't get results that are specific to themselves. They're like many other people's results. So, you have to know that you You this this supercomputer that can create whatever you tell it to create.

Lastly, you got to build games. You can theorize and intellectualize all you want, but you have to take action. Ideas are nothing without action. Everyone's got ideas. People come to me all the time, "Well, I got this great app idea. You build it and we'll share the profits." I can't tell you how many times I hear that. So, I've come to the end, but these are the books I recommend you get. Thinker Toys and The Art of Game Design.

It's game design college for under $100. Not bad. And I continually buy more books. I have I have like I spent so much money on books, history books on video games, other game design books, books on chemistry. I tear I use things from chemistry and biology for game design. Um, you know, again, I study everything I can. And there I am as of LA. Right before Color Switch hit. Uh, and uh, you know, but but whatever you're doing, you should be willing to do your day job while you're working on what you want to do full-time. And I was willing to park cars in the middle of LA and not have a problem with it.

So, again, if I can you know, create the life that I always had in my head and I started from making 10 10 bucks an hour right before, anyone can. So, that's my presentation. I hope you enjoyed. I don't know if I went crazy over time, but do we have time for Q&A? Anybody have any questions? Yes. What did it feel like to go from hanging out being in LA to the app money? You know, like like did everything change for you?

I mean like What am I trying to ask? I guess yeah, what did that feel like to go from being in LA to the world of apps? Um, I mean it was exciting. Um, I like to think that Well, I mean whenever I'll have like parties in my house, I have video games everywhere. Patrick knows. It's video game central in my place. So, I'll invite all the guys from all my past jobs of LA, everybody. You know, I'm still I keep in touch with everybody, but it was I know it's I guess again, you said how was it to get into the app money? It was never really about like money was never my main concern.

And I think um, it was always my focus was game design cuz I thought, "Man, if I could get really good at game design, everything will come after that." So, it was more of maybe a vindication feeling of, "Okay, I spent all these years, all this time trying to figure out what I wanted to do." And then when I finally figured it out, I didn't stop focusing on that specific thing which was games until I had my breakthrough. So, I guess it was more of a vindication knowing that I didn't waste all that time.

Um, and it was exciting you know, it definitely was exciting. And uh, and then it's it's a it's a nice feeling to be able to be in a position probably one of the best side effects is I can go talk places like this and hopefully share some insights that someone could use for their own breakthrough cuz I think the more people that have breakthroughs, the better. Um, so yeah, it was just it was you know, it was very very nice feeling for sure.

Anybody else? Yes. Super interesting and super inspiring. Thanks for sharing this stuff. It reminds me of a story a professor at University College class in art who said, "Your job and you'll be graded on this create one perfect pot." One pot or three pots. And so one person spent the entire semester trying to make the one best pot. Somebody else made 50 pots. The last one was the best one, right? And very cool, inspiring story is what I wanted to say. Oh, sure. Thank you.

That's a No, it's a perfect story for that. And then you had a Same just to resonate, you know, it was great to talk about things. It's extremely powerful stuff that you're sharing and it can go under the radar like, "Oh, that's nice." But if you really dig in, you'll you'll see how how important this is. And I think you touched on this in the presentation, you know, you went into the application, but can you talk about some of the daily habits you have that are how you put this into work? How you put this into into your daily life?

Um, you mean when I was just in the building mode or now? Now or both, I guess. Right now that you have this you're aware of this, but now you've even taken it to the next level. You've seen the results. Are you continuing to to do the work and you put that in your daily life? Well, I I'm home most of the time and so I must have spent like $3,000 on books this year. Um, cuz that's one form of education. And then it's really um, it you know, I just I'm not going to lie, it's not like I procrastinate sometimes. I'm not 24/7 trying to improve my thinking superhero.

Uh, I'll definitely just watch just blindly watch movies all day. Like I watched all the Fast and Furious movies this week. It's like, you know, you want to scoop ice cream, but you eat like a gallon instead. Not a good idea. Um, but uh, yeah, I'm just always thinking, "Okay, how can I improve my thinking?" So, I'm I read more books on more subjects than I read before. Um, I will play I'll read, you know, video game history. Like I said, chemistry, biology. I have a really creepy book on taxidermy. Um, it's it's really creepy. I don't think I'll get any inspiration from there.

But I'm always I'm just going any kind of media source, uh, going going hanging out with a friend, uh, you know, like even inviting Patrick and then we're talking about ideas and you never know what's going to come from a conversation. So, I'm always just aware of doing something different and breaking not having a pattern. So, I don't even have a routine every day. Um, I I have I'm kind of not doing anything in order.

Um, I I I try to do something different every day, you know, unless unless I'm vegging out on Fast and Furious. Uh, anybody else? What about before before you had Oh, before. Um, oh, it was all about being on my computer. It's like 15, 20 hours eating pastries all day, fueling you know, uh, my uh, myself to keep going. But uh, yeah, I I kind of locked myself. Someone said they locked themselves inside for a couple years.

Yeah. Um, I was kind of the same way. But now that I don't have to be tied to my computer cuz I don't build anymore. I I have people build. I just think of the ideas. Um, but that's how I was before. I was just focused on it and um, once I was done, I was like, "Okay, I'm not going to be sitting at the computer all the time anymore." Um, so that's kind of like I guess before and after. Yeah, I want to ask more about So, you have a great idea. It's an amazing idea. It's so simple it seems to really do well and really take off.

Talk to us more about kind of the marketing and the success and like how, you know, was there any work involved there that Not for me. I mean I I got a deal with the publisher. Um, at some point I'll become my own publisher. Um, and scale that's how I think I would scale up. But it's you know, it's finding it in the moment what makes sense for you as a business. Am I good at this? If I'm not, I need to get someone else to do it. So, when I made my game, I knew I had something. I thought, "You know what? I think this could go number one." I hadn't seen anything like it.

And I knew I knew, you know, how I put it together. And so I found a I found my publisher and they do all that marketing. They do I know they do social marketing campaigns. The thing with that is you can market something, but I know other games that use the same marketing. Um, and the marketing will get your game up there, but it's up to the game to either go up or go down. And I I I know someone his game got a couple million downloads.

Um, I know another game that doesn't have much replay value like 20% of people keep it on their phone. Um, and it just so happened that my game with the same marketing took off. And the only thing I can say is it's in the game design. It's in the the thought process, the inspirations, you know, were were unique to me. No one else had the same inspirations. Um, I could I could say those two specific games that I'm thinking of, I'm not going to name them, but the inspiration is not there so much. And so that's the differentiating factor.

Again, I'm not the marketer. I I have done none of that, but um, those are that's how I understand it. Looking at it. So, you talked about this deal with this publisher. Did they just say, "Hey, we like your game. We'll do the marketing for Wait, say that again? Can you unpack this deal with the publisher? Oh, it was super simple. Um, I made a Again, my past coming up coming back to help me. I thought of a um, I I went to school for film editing and when I made my game, I had a sense for I had worked on trailers just for fun when I was in film school. So, I made a 30-second intense trailer of my game.

Sent the link to my publisher who I met just through another friend on the forums. And instantly he said, "We could take this game number one." He said, "Just wait for us to do it. We'll do it." It's simple as that. If you create a good game, the game will do its it'll sell itself. But if you want to if you can give them visuals, that helps out a lot, too. Like letting them play also see a video of it. And so I would just say make a short video. Don't make a 3-minute video.

Make a short, exciting video. Yes. Do you link the video somewhere? Um, yeah, I can look it up while I'm still out here and I'll I'll show you guys. I'll say um, it's you know, the title of it or whatever. It's still up there. Um, oh, with a publisher it's just a revenue share. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. I I'm not I have a NDA. I'm not supposed to say. You know, there I can't It could be anywhere from you get 20% to you get 70%. It depends on the publisher and what they're able to do for you and how much Yeah, what how much they're doing for you and and then if they have passion results, you can also base it off of that. So, it depends on every you know, all those factors.

It's probably a combination of a lot of things. It they could have done some deal like, you know, social again, when you market online, you can do deals with social influencers. So, but some some social influencers might want views by using a product that's popular as well. So, it's probably a combination of things cuz I know like if you go on Twitter, I can never stop scrolling the Color Switch tweets. Those are all organic. So, it's a combination of organic, paid campaigns, all that stuff. Again, even me, I don't get these details from my publisher.

That's like proprietary information. You know, but that's the way I understand it. Anyway, if there's any questions later, I'll still be here. So, happy to answer any. I'm not What's that? Yeah, I'll be here tomorrow. Yeah. Thank you, guys.