Be Excited About Your Game – 3 Reasons Why You Should

Today we’re talking about excitement because excitement is really exciting. When it comes to game development, I know the types of people that are in the range of the spectrum. I know the people that are super excited, super passionate about the game; they can’t wait to share with everybody. They’re all over the place to posting on Twitter, on Facebook and everything. Then I know the guys that don’t say a word, that don’t talk about the project, that don’t even really want to show people they’re just working on the shit. They’re all technical and they’re building stuff. They may want to read some tech documents and all that stuff, but they’re not really out there.

What’s the difference between these two people? Well, if you met them both and you had to choose whose game to buy, whose game would you buy? I would choose the excited guy’s because that leads us to the first point that I think is really important about excitement.

1. Excitement is contagious.

I’ve never met a great salesman that wasn’t excited about what they were selling. You can’t be a great salesman without being excited about what you’re selling. That’s one of the key principles of why salesmen get great at what they’re doing. It’s because they’re usually really excited about the whole process and the thing they’re selling. But this applies not just from a sales perspective.

This also applies from a relationship building perspective, from a getting people to care about your game, getting feedback, getting other people involved, and getting teammates. So many things can be improved just by showing off your excitement for the game.

I know people that have been in harsh families or have had negative people in their lives. Sometimes from having people shit on your stuff, you tend to close off a little bit. It can be scary for people with this experience to share their stuff. I know that that’s an issue. I wanted to be the guy today to encourage you to share your stuff and get excited about it because excitement is contagious.

2. Excitement is an energy source.

When you’re excited about something, you can acquire, or you can will into existence more motivation than the average person has because you’re excited. That excitement can keep you going. That excitement is more powerful than a Red Bull. It’s more powerful than anything that you can think of to get your body hyped and ready to build stuff. Excitement is like this energy, much like an energizer bunny. If you’re not excited about your game, you’ve have to start asking yourself questions like, “Why are you doing what you’re doing? Why are you building games? If it doesn’t excite you, what’s the end game? What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to do?”

I know a lot of people that are excited about their game but they are reserved about their excitement. They don’t show their excitement. Understand the actual benefits of showing excitement. It’s contagious as well as an energy source. I know a lot of people that get hooked on that excitement and they use it as an only energy source. It’s one of the reasons why “shiny object syndrome” is such a big thing in game development. It’s when you jump from one thing to the next, or start getting really excited about something, start work on it for two days or two weeks or whatever, and then just quitting it because it’s not that cool anymore and you want to jump on this new thing and start working on it. That’s a cycle and that’s bad, so don’t do that. Understand that it is a tool that you can use and kind of moves you forward.

3. Excitement is monetizable.

You can make money from your excitement. Here’s what I mean by that: We talked about how salesmen, when they’re excited, they can sell stuff better. If you’ve ever watched a video on YouTube of something funny happening and a bunch of people are laughing in the video, it’s hard not to laugh. This is because you’re watching other people laugh—when you’re in a room with people laughing it’s so contagious.

It’s the same thing with excitement. If someone came up to you, it doesn’t matter what it is they’re so excited to show you, their like, “Look at this thing, it’s so cool it’s so cool like”, That is addicting. You want to be around people like that, even if they’re excited about something you don’t care about. Excitement makes the person interesting and you can’t help but ask questions on what he’s excited about.

I hired a plumber one time. He was super excited about the intricacies of the toilets that he was building. He had these super low water toilets that had a sink on the top. In order to fill up the toilets , the sink water had to pour through a little tubing and you could wash your hands with the same water that was going to be used to flush the toilet. And he was super excited about toilets. I was like, “Dude, I didn’t give a shit about toilets 10 minutes ago but you were so excited about them. Can you tell me about this shit? Explain it to me. What do you like about it? What’s so exciting? Why are you this amped for toilets?”

The same thing can happen with games. That guy ended up selling a toilet—he really did because he was so excited about it. He monetized on his excitement. And you can do the same thing with your games. Especially at event, 100,000% at events. If you go to events and you’re there with your game at a booth, like indie mega booth, and you’re super excited about your game and you’re sharing it with everybody, you’re calling people in from a crowd, like, “Check this out man! I worked on this for 2 years. It’s awesome.”

People are going to get excited about your game, that I guarantee you. I should do a test where we put a super boring dude next to an awesome game, and we put a super excited dude next to an awesome game and just watch how many different reactions we get of people on the same game.

You can actually change people’s perception of the game. I’m not saying manipulate them and get them to buy a shitty game. I’m saying that your excitement level and how you sell yourself because you are the creator, you’re the business owner—your excitement level matters. It’s monetizable in the fact that if you are really excited about something, and you really want to show people, and you genuinely want to explain things to them, and show off the things, and tell them what’s cool about it, they’re going to want to buy it.

Now, this doesn’t appeal to all people. You still need to make sure it’s a target market and work on all that stuff. But if you get all the basics right and all things equal, you’ve got an excited person and that’s not excited personally, that excited person is going to make more money every time. It carries over to everything you do. The description your on Steam account, the way you set up the landing page, the trailer—all of that carries through with excitement. When you’re excited about something, it just comes out in every way. I think my excitement comes off on camera sometimes I when I talk about a subject that I’m really passionate about. I’m a lot different when I talk about a subject that I really care or know a lot about because I get really animated when I’m excited and it’s contagious, it really is.

When I’m in a meeting with the CEO or with some kind of business owner and we start talking about games or gamification, I light up and I’m so excited to talk about it. I’ve sold so many contracts, so many different freelance games to many different people just by the fact that I get excited. They’re like, “You know, we had a couple of different gigs from other people”, or “we got proposals from other people”, but when they talk to me, and I’m just excited about it, I win their business. That’s really cool. Excitement is awesome.

One of the reasons I love indie games so much is because there are so many developers out there that are excited about their games. But I also see the guys that are scared to show their excitement, or they’re scared to be let down, or they’re scared of the rejection, so they’re more reserved.

To those guys, listen man, games are exciting! That’s why we all make games. We love to make games, and just share with the world. Be excited about your work, show people how excited you are, and I promise you it’s contagious. It will make you money and it will help you out in so many different ways.

That’s all I want to share today. I just want to promote excitement in every way, shape, or form because games are awesome. So leave me your comments below, I’d love to hear from you guys.