Thomas Brush is an indie developer legend.
Pinstripe, the game that kickstarted his YouTube career, was a solo project that was made over the course of about 4 years. “The lone wolf” worked on Pinstripe in his free time while maintaining a full-time job.
Once the project neared completion, he ran a successful Kickstarter campaign that allowed him to quit his job and focus on the project. The folks at Unity were so inspired by Thomas’ story that they made a mini-documentary on the development of Pinstripe.
It’s great. Give it a watch!
While he has made previous games in the past, Pinstripe was the first project that inspired him to build a lasting audience.
The earliest videos on Thomas’ YouTube channel are trailers for Pinstripe, and the game was officially released on Steam on April 24th, 2017. Not too long after, on September 4th, 2017, Thomas uploaded a video called, “Start Your Own Game Studio With These 5 Tools!”
This was the first video where he officially began to build his channel. In the coming weeks and months, he frequently uploaded and made content about indie game development. The quality of the videos was excellent, but he couldn’t quite yet build a substantial audience.
According to Social Blade, Thomas had around 1,000 subscribers moving into 2018. But it wasn’t until Q4 of that year until he surpassed 10,000 subscribers. He was slowly building momentum, and Thomas was ready to capitalize on it.
Before we can dive into the Thomas’ next big move, we need to talk about a meme (yes, I’m serious).
As of this writing, PewDiePie is the world’s most subscribed YouTuber. In Q3 of 2017, fans started to realize that a new competitor had entered the arena. T-Series, an Indian music and media channel, was seeing almost exponential growth.
A race began. It was T-series versus PewDiePie, and it looked like T-series was going to be the clear winner. The war is still ongoing, but it doesn’t look good for PewDiePie. T-series is a business, but PewDiePie is just one guy.
In order to maintain his number 1 title, Felix (PewDiePie) launched a campaign to rally support. It has since become an off-handed remark where people casually tell all their friends to subscribe to PewDiePie. Numerous stunts have been pulled to gain attention to this movement. Arguably, the most famous piece of media to come from this is “bitch lasagna,” a diss track video to T-series. It has gained over 150 million views and is PewDiePie’s most viewed video of all time.
If you want to see all of the hijinx, check out the full Know Your Meme page on it.
Okay, back to Brush.
With the meme still holding steady into 2019, Thomas Brush decided to add his own “propaganda” to the campaign. Thomas and Felix were already familiar with each other from Pinstripe. Felix did some minor voice acting in the game, so Thomas was in a good position to send Felix a proposition.
On February 12th, 2019, Thomas uploaded a video called, “PEWDIE GAME STREAM (Daily streams! 13 days left! Sub!)” in which he dared Felix to dare him to make a game.
The next day, PewDiePie watched his video and officially dared Thomas to the challenge.
It was on!
Brush has the entire development of the game archived on his channel for all to view. The total development time went a little after 14 days, and according to the archives, it wasn’t a concurrent 14 days. Even still, the project was finished, and the development concluded on March 4th, 2019.
On March 11th, 2019, the trailer was released, and the next day, the game was available to download.
On March 20th, 2019, PewDiePie played through the game with Thomas at his side giving commentary on the development.
For most people, this is where the story ends. However, this is only the beginning for Thomas. Thomas went from about 20,000 subscribers to over 140,000 subscribers from the publicity.
As you can see, Thomas’ channel exploded because of this stunt. He gained a ton of subscribers and fans both on the day that PewDiePie watched his video (February 13th) and the day that PewDiePie played his game (March 17th).
By paying attention to common trends, he was able to ride a tidal wave and see his growth soar.
Thomas threw a hail mary, and now, he is reaping the rewards from it. His next game, Once Upon A Coma, is likely going to financially benefit from his personal growth as well.
This developer is an excellent example of someone who works hard and isn’t afraid to throw himself out there. In my opinion, he’s someone we should all strive to be in our professional lives.
Learn from what Thomas did.
Always still vigilant for opportunities, and be ready to jump on them when they arise.
Subscribe to Thomas Brush
Subscribe to PewDiePie
Download Zero Death
Buy Pinstripe
Atmos Games Website
View Once Upon A Coma’s Steam page
