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Month: May 2022

Working on my vision of making games

Published by Paolo on 16/05/2022

During my career years I have realised that I cannot predict exactly where my path will lead me. Anyway, I can speculate, dream and plan.

If I continued in the world of free-to-play , I would like to be able to work on a vision that I have been forming over the years at some point. A vision on a positive way of creating free-to-play games.

This type of game needs a huge number of people to play, as normally 2% of them decide to invest money and help you sustain the business. Here’s why we see fake ads, intrusive pop-ups that block gameplay, dark patterns, and so on. On the one hand, the number of instals will be increased by improving the chances of finding players. On the other hand, we try to improve conversion to payers.

If we carefully analyse the market we see that there are games capable of generating enormous benefits in a short time. There are also other games that generate less benefits in the short term, but that last much longer over the years.

Think of the case of hyper casual games, games that when they are successful last very little (at most a few months). Think now of free-to-play web games like Drakensang Online, which have been on the market for 16 years.

These days I will talk about this vision that I have developed and how I would apply it. Maybe I can move some interesting energy!

The art of Prototyping

Published by Paolo on 13/05/2022

At the beginning of each game project there is a prototyping phase. Prototypes help teams to agree on a vision, to have something concrete to discuss. Deciding what goes into a prototype is a matter of experience and, I would say, an art in itself!

In most cases, an exciting idea leads a group of people to want to quickly create something well done. The final prototype then focuses on proving a thesis. 

I believe that a football game where the players are books works: we immediately create the typical mechanics of a football game and, instead of the players, we put books on it. It will be awesome.

There are also cases in which a prototype serves to demonstrate what is wrong with the idea. Some skilled designers manage to use prototypes to undermine their assumptions. It is a work of self-criticism, of searching for weak points. It rarely happens in companies, but it happens in independent projects. And it may lead to something truly unique. 

Returning to the example, I believe that a football game where the players are the books works. I created a prototype centred on how silly this concept of books playing football is. I don't devote myself to creating the mechanics of a soccer game, I am dedicated to creating the nastiest version of a book by running with a ball.

And very often, magic happens!

Whichever method you use, the important thing is to establish clear and measurable objectives, and be ready to discard the prototypes if they have not all been satisfied.

I assure you that more than one frustration is avoided!

Homa Games and Popcore cherry picking in Spain

Published by Paolo on 12/05/2022

I notice that the companies Homa Games and Popcore are recruiting many talents who have worked for years in large multinationals. Especially people from King and Scopely are migrating massively there.

If these corporations stopped inventing job titles to try to gratify their most bored staff.
And maybe stopped sending unnecessary technical tests to candidates and focused on finding and growing their talent.
And if they published the salaries with their job offers, to prove that they really are the professional organisation they claim to be.
If they stopped thinking about growth in the early stages of pre-production and focused on finding new winning formulas.

If all of this were satisfied, I’m sure, people wouldn’t move from there! The salaries are good, the colleagues certainly smart and experienced.

When I see so many people migrating to unknown companies, the conclusion I have is clear.

System designers, learn board games design!

Published by Paolo on 11/05/2022

If you really want to learn how to design game systems, I recommend starting from board games.

System designers are rare and in high demand in the industry. Especially with the advent of new business models and technologies, people capable of breaking down a game into systems and finding the connections between them are really rare and highly appreciated.

The temptation when starting to design systems is to start by opening a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is by far the most used tool for game development. However, there is no need to open it from the start. When you start thinking about breaking a game down, it is best to use all your senses. Better to use touch and sight, above all.

The best way to start thinking in a system is therefore to prototype the system in the form of a board game. When you work as a game designer your job is to study games that already exist. Also to carry out this very important task, I recommend that you synthesize the video game in question (or the more interesting parts of it) into a board game to really understand all its parts.

Creating board games could save you months of development and playtesting!

Streamers and Survival

Published by Paolo on 10/05/2022

I belong to a generation formed before the advent of content streamers. However, as a game designer, I find the phenomenon really interesting. I personally don’t have the patience to follow a streamer for more than 10 minutes. I prefer the short cuts they make to their videos and I understand why they are so much fun. Some people are a television studio summed up in one person!

When I have to concentrate on practical tasks, for example when I have to design levels in Unity, I like to put a streamer in the background. I choose streamers who do the same thing I do: develop games. It relaxes me a lot, stimulates me and makes me focus on my task.

Maybe it’s survival instinct. Perhaps my subconscious thinks “this person is working and will be more likely to find food and reproduce than you”, so I too get to work more willingly. Assumptions, of course.

Sometimes I think: “why not do it too?”. I believe that one of the great evils that afflicts game designers is the overriding of the ego. This public display inevitably ranks against. This same blog also works a little in this direction.

For the moment I prefer writing. I think writing is more difficult, especially in English which is not my native language. But writing opens more doors and reaches people who are really interested.

I don’t like to exclude anything, but I don’t think streaming is for me. Maybe I would if I was working on my indie game. To get feedback and attention, to create a small community to launch with. To aim for the first 10 positive reviews on Steam.

Study of Soda Supreme

Published by Paolo on 09/05/2022

Last week I saw a post from some LinkedIn influencer regarding a new liveops from King’s Candy Crush Soda Saga.

When I read the description, I decided to study this feature. In fact, as you can see from the announcement on the game’s official forum, the Soda Supreme feature proposal seems heavily based on monetization:

happy language to announce a disaster

Comments to the feature seem to go into one main direction. Obviously the volumes of people playing these games are huge. The majority is silent and we do not know if it has given good or bad results. As a game designer, I just try to understand the vision behind this, willing to learn from the masters of free-to-play.

That Bricorn may be right!

Then I downloaded the game again and tested the feature out:

I always record my gameplays on my channel (no commentary)

Goals and KPIs

When the Player runs the app, after a second a new screen will appear:

Sorry for the “Screen Recorder” thing on top

The pitch is quite clear: you get rewarded by spending gold bars. The fact that you are using the premium currency is reinforced by a new rewards layer.

Who is the real target of this feature? Payers: Players who use gold bars regurarly during their game sessions.

Probably, the team wants to improve the Gold Bars spending across the game. It will improve ARPDAU, average revenue per daily active user, since it is a time based feature.

Rewards are boosters, power-ups and lives:

the last tier is also the strongest one

There are 20 tiers of rewards. The higher the tier, the better the rewards. Rewards help you beat new games, so that if you spend gold bars you’ll probably beat more levels.

A secondary goal for the feature is probably to improve the engagement with the game. Engagement to me is: session length (minutes) and average sessions per day.

Feature Onboarding

The onboarding is heavily text based
  • The game matches you with a tier, according to your spending rate (I suppose).
  • The promise is to earn 1 special tile booster. I can make that simply by playing!
  • I have 42 hours total to pass to the next tier, otherwise my bar will reset. So that they are definitely looking for more sessions per day and more trials.

I am not sure that is the best way to explain the feature. First of all, I would introduce it starting from the first time the Player spends and/or needs gold bar. Second, the first reward is something I can create by matching 4 tiles in vertical. It would be better having more succulent rewards on lower tiers to foster the will to continue purchasing gold bars also for Players who doesn’t spend too much.

How will I improve this feature?

Candy Crush Soda Saga is an arcade version of the classic Candy Crush Saga. The levels are more blasty and also the challenge is designed for quick results (successes or failures). It’s fast, it’s for the younger cohorts of CCS Players and it has many game modes. The Player has always something to do.

Match-3 games monetize by removing pain points and by adding an interesting layer of strategy. A large part of the Players pay to be able to pass a level in which they are stuck.

  • Pain Point: You have run out of movements, but if you buy 5 more you can beat this!
  • Strategy: You may want to buy a booster to free up some areas on a complicated board.

In Candy Crush Soda Saga gold bars can be bought or won in certain situations. They are a soft currency, so that they are subject to inflation. Which is part of the reason why is very hard to scale those games.

The true potential of Soda Supreme

It would be great to adapt this feature to a ticket system for special levels. You spend gold bars and you earn tiers of special set of levels which give you extra rewards. That would be more meaningful and would probably create a better impact on the game’s community!

Anyway I found this feature really interesting, because it has the courage of taking the monetization directly! We should never forget, anyway, that rewards are great to reinforce successes. They works better as surprises and as the result of a concrete demonstration of skills from the Players. Spending gold bars can give access to new pieces of content, instead, and that would be way more meaningful in my humble opinion!

Last post on crypto games

Published by Paolo on 06/05/2022

After many months studying and deepening these technologies in detail, I have come to an important conclusion. The video game industry deserves to broaden the audience and encourage access to more people. We don’t have to shrink if we want to grow.

Crypto technology was developed with the sole objective of evading controls of banks and states on the circulation of value.

There is an attempt to force these technologies into video games, as video games have demonstrated their ability to attract people’s attention.

These technologies are not necessary in video games. The video games are necessary for these technologies!

All implementations are solutions designed for nonexistent problems. We don’t need this bullcrap in our industry.

I understand that there are a lot of investments. We are facing another fever for the novelty. But we are because people, especially those who move money, do not delve into the history of the video game. All significant revolutions have resulted in a broader audience and a significant improvement in accessibility.

These crypto-bullshits, on the other hand, unnecessarily complicate things to create pyramid schemes designed for people who get drawn into these traps!

Game design consultants: hire who’s better than you

Published by Paolo on 05/05/2022

Some time ago I tried an experiment. I hired some people to try to teach them my way of making video games. My goal was not to earn money with those games. I wanted to train a couple of assistants because the number of clients of my consultings is increasing.

The experiment did not go as expected. My time is scarce, so I can’t invest it in training people. I quickly realized my choice was pretty dumb. However, I realized something very important.

If we don’t have time, it is better to delegate to those who know more than us. We will thus make a good impression on our clients. We will also learn new techniques.

Ask questions during interviews

Published by Paolo on 03/05/2022

A few years ago I found myself in a bar having a coffee with the studio manager of a company that created games for children on smartphones. It was an informal interview process. The interview went somehow well and badly.

Good because this person showed me real numbers and the idea of ​​working on games that reached so many people was stimulating for me. Bad because I did not seem very interested in the development of these games, but just in the economic benefits.

When it came to my time to ask questions, I asked a simple one: How do you rate the quality of the game designers’ work? What makes you say “Paolo, you did a good job”?

The gentleman replied sarcastically: “If I’m drinking champagne from Prada shoes, it means that you did a good job!”

I immediately got up, thanked him for the interview, paid for our coffee and left.

Prepare your questions

Many colleagues find it uncomfortable when we are allowed to ask questions at an interview. I’m not waiting for anything else! Before of the interview, I study in detail everything I can. I go into detail, explore each text on the company’s website and prepare my questions. I have always noticed that it is a key moment.

Especially people at a senior level who are also lucky enough to have a job already, should not forget that an interview is a conversation between two parties. The company is examining us, but we are also examining the company. A great brand is not enough, the news is full of horrible stories about what real life is like in famous and successful companies.

I wish I could write down the questions I always ask, but there aren’t any.

  • First, I carefully study the offer in every single word.
  • Then I study the company’s website in detail.
  • I proceed to look at their titles and the reviews they receive.
  • Finally I study the history of the company on crunchbase and other similar sites to understand how they got where they are.

I find myself with a lot of questions and filter a maximum of three, from which I lead the conversation!

When the market goes wild

Published by Paolo on 02/05/2022

Today’s news of the acquisition by Embracer Group, combined with other news of crazy investments in new products that have not yet proved anything in the world, led me today to make a fairly radical reflection on my personal LinkedIn. Radical and certainly full of bias.

Link to the original post

We tend to evaluate successes and failures in the video games industry in terms of cash flow. The impact of a game on the world is evaluated by stock market experts, who focus on business performance and growth opportunities.

Why then does this news bother me? To understand this it is necessary to understand why I do this job. I study and work as a game designer every day. I do it because I find the idea of ​​having people in the world who spend moments of fun thanks to the fruit of my work truly fascinating.

That’s all.

Does anyone get rich thanks to the fruit of my work? I am very happy for this person.

But that’s not my life goal. My job is to create experiences that are able to marry the fantasies of some people looking for happy moments. The rest is a consequence.

When I see disproportionate valuations for “nice to have” features such as transportable avatars to other games and then see deals made with the creators of epic intellectual properties such as Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider, my head is short-circuited!

I know very well which thing has the most value for the players, between a feature and an epic story. It’s not being able to use a 3D model in more than one game to make a difference in gaming experiences.