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Month: February 2025

Another chapter closed today

Published by Paolo on 28/02/2025

If you work in games during the next 5 years, you will probably work for or with Chinese companies.

Here in Southern Europe, the story was: China does things quickly and cheaply by copying. Today, in my industry and others, the story has changed. China now does better games. Maybe that story about doing things fast and dirty to arrive at perfection was true, in the end.

I have completed 5 months with Chinese developers and had challenges. I want to share my learning and also learn more from other people in my network and outside.

First of all, I have to say that I was born in Naples, Italy, and live in Barcelona, Spain. I speak 5 languages, and I am genuinely interested in other cultures. But still, I am biased like everyone. My intention is not to be disrespectful. I just want to share my observations through the lens of my context. And I repeat, I am interested in your takes.

Here’s what I have learnt in 5 months of working every day with Chinese colleagues:

1. They work a lot, and not because they are slaves of some system of sorts. They work a lot because they believe in community. Our concept of hard work here in Europe is related to our individual growth and improving shareholders’ value. In their case, it’s different: they work hard because they believe it improves society.

Fun fact: once I said “sorry, I don’t work on weekends”, and then I discovered that my sentence was offensive. Of course, it’s like saying, “Sorry, I don’t want to contribute to society” under their lens.

2. They will not argue nor question anything. A colleague told me that there is a saying in China: “Peace is the most valuable thing”. Here, we are way straighter in saying things, and sometimes we need conflict to progress. There, on the other hand, they are very polite. It was like working in the Italy of the ’50s in some cases.

Fun fact: during a meeting, an artist, red in the face, told to a European colleague, “you say a lot of f* words and it’s funny…”. It was embarrassing for them. Like I said, in the Italy of the ’50s, you didn’t say bad words!

3. They didn’t renounce their myth. In our culture, we passed (to say this very shortly) from myth to philosophy to science. Now, we “believe” in science mostly. For us, the term “myth” is similar somehow to a lie. “This is a myth” is like saying “this is false”. China has integrated the myth with the science, instead. And this reflects on their behavior and culture, a lot.

Fun fact: once I asked them, “why have Chinese games always hypersexualized characters?”. The CTO of the company answered me: “Because to us things like those are not important. These are just games and we want to sell them.”. Important things are others, in a society that didn’t lost the myth.

If you work with or for Chinese developers, please comment your thoughts!

GT7 a live-service game made with passion

Published by Paolo on 27/02/2025

I read the latest AMA from one of Polyphony Digital’s employees about Granturismo 7.

GT7 is my favorite live-service game. It relaxes me and it’s a title I’ve always followed, since the first Playstation. In the AMA I discovered that it’s a passion project of the creative director. It reminded me that message from the CEO of Larian Studios at The Game Awards about the importance of working on something you really believe should be out there. Certain things touch the hearts of players even if they can’t be measured.

Another interesting note is that to create a track it takes between 20 and 30 people and a year of work. About 40,000 man-hours. It surprised me a bit, because I’ve never worked on a similar title. But it says a lot about the claims I read about the productivity boost that certain technologies will offer in the future.

Making games requires a lot of work and that’s it. If one day a technology arrives that can reduce times, rest assured that it will do so without warning. Be careful what you believe without seeing, there is always an agenda behind it.

On technical skills

Published by Paolo on 25/02/2025

Let’s talk about technical skills. I read a question around often and sometimes some students ask me: what skills should I have?

The question comes most of the time from our innate desire to fit (gregariousness, submission). There is a job market and we want to get in. This is fair.

As far as I’m concerned, the answer is like learning a new language. If there is no valid reason behind it, we will make a lot of effort to learn it. I learned English to better understand songs and video game stories. I learned Spanish to be able to live where I live. I learned Portuguese because of the culture and history behind Capoeira. I did learn because I felt would improve me as a person.

Likewise, the technical skills I decided to cultivate for game design come from there. Spreadsheets because I have always liked math and put things in order. The most common engines, especially for level design, because it puts me in a state of flow like when I play a video game. Game writing because, as you can see, I love writing. UX/UI because I don’t know how to draw, but I still like to arrange things visually as a form to clarify my ideas.

The question for me is not “which skills should I learn?”, but “which are the technical skills that can help me find my voice and let it come out?”

The main challenge of a professional game designer

Published by Paolo on 24/02/2025

It’s one thing to design a game (or a feature of a game) and another to sell it. This is perhaps the hardest lesson to learn during the career of a game designer.

It’s not just about thinking about systems, mechanics, development context. It’s also about convincing someone to go ahead.

  • If you have the funds, this someone can be a potential player. You have to convince them to play.
  • If you don’t have the funds, but you have a great idea, this someone can be a publisher or an investor.
  • If you work for someone, you have to convince them!

The key point is always in the expectations that one has about something.

  • “I will buy this game for 30 euros because I think I will have a fun time”
  • “I have to invest in this project because I see great possibilities of return”
  • “I approve this design because I think it is the right one for our game”

The biggest challenge is that creatives think on a different level than others.

I’ll give a concrete example with my game Pawtners Case. Lately I’ve been proposing it to try to finance it. It is perceived as a game that is too cheap, and so with little potential. It doesn’t matter that I propose something workable and scalable. Publishers prefer to focus more on something unachievable rather than go step-by-step.

Systems in symphony

Published by Paolo on 20/02/2025

A game is a form of entertainment. Entertainment is fun. Fun is survival. Even though you don’t need to hunt anymore, you still have this kind of instinct that you feel you’d like to improve. A video game allows you to train it without risk. Other forms of entertainment are not interactive, so you aren’t training. But still, you are learning.

When I design a game, the first question is this: For which instincts do I want to prepare a journey to train them? Creating video games means creating fictitious problems. Very often we confuse game design with general design: solving problems for people. Game design solves the need for entertainment but creates problems to do that!

Once the instincts are clear, a series of systems can form the path to their training. It’s like composing a piece of music, you have all the instrumental lines and have to make them act in a symphony.

There has been a lot of talk about “game economies” that pervaded discussions on systems design, but I think of “game symphonies”. Also because certain games do have an economy. Game economists think about the distribution and conversion of virtual resources. Which is vital for certain services to be profitable.

Game designers, instead, are more centered on rhythm, melody, and harmony of systems.

My take on Supercell’s CEO last post

Published by Paolo on 17/02/2025

Last week I read interesting thoughts about the latest message released by Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen. This is an annual event that always attracts a lot of attention. It is interesting to watch how the experts’ thinking and the media attention evolve.

Supercell proves to be a company that is as ethical as Nintendo and others. They are the good people in our industry and they should always be respected for this reason alone. I have never worked with them, so I don’t know how they work internally. But the fact that they promote certain values ​​and ways of communicating is enough for me to keep them in my heart.

Every expert has denounced the lack of information this time, and this year I also felt a great lack. The challenges described are due to the fact that the power has shifted from publishers to platforms. Everything else for me is a consequence of this. Especially in the case of companies like Supercell that do their job well.

What I don’t understand is why in 2025 I still can’t play Brawl Stars on my PS5 and my home PC. Why can’t I download it from Steam and the Microsoft Store?

Supercell is leaving money on the table in this sense.

Try Railgods of Hysterra DEMO

Published by Paolo on 15/02/2025

I have had the chance to work on indie games for a year and a half. Many years of working in free-to-play have given me the knowledge, especially in system design, applicable to games with crafting, building, and character growth. I also had the chance to apply techniques I learned by taking narrative design and game writing courses.

The nice thing about indie is that the work is based on solving design problems while remaining consistent with a narrative and gameplay structure. You don’t hear KPIs mentioned, which makes your days more enjoyable.

Another positive thing is that you meet teams that are committed to the game. Generally, you don’t do experiments and you don’t cancel games for not having reached certain numerical results. Games are published, and they can be successful or not. So as a designer, it’s nice to see something that is also yours get published.

One of the games I helped is Railgods of Hysterra. V-Rising meets H.P. Lovecraft. Made with Unreal Engine. You can feed and grow your demonic train and travel the cursed world of Hysterra. I worked for 3 months (usually a client stays with me this time), and I helped with some systems that you can see in the video on my LinkedIn.

The game has a demo available on Steam for FREE, try it! Leave a review, helps out a ton.

A good use case for Claude.ai

Published by Paolo on 13/02/2025

I just paid for the premium subscription to Claude AI. Writing certain design documents took me 3-4 days. With Claude, 1-2.

Like every AI, it freaks out a lot. But this help me get started on tasks. I tell it to write me certain spec, it writes me something full of errors and that helps me think. It’s like teaching to a dumb student.

Then, when I have my document with wireframes, I pass it to it and first I tell it to act as a programmer. Again, it hallucinates but it helps me understand the “edge cases” the empty cases that I hadn’t thought of.

Finally, after a second iteration on the document, I send it again and ask to act as a quality assurance professional, to generate a test plan for me. This helps me think carefully about closing all the loose ends.

This is valuable. Indeed.

Stories come from consciousness

Published by Paolo on 12/02/2025

A guy that I follow on LinkedIn said: “TikTok is already testing TV-like series with 90-second episodes, some titles generating hundreds of thousands of views behind modest paywalls ($5.13 for 10 episodes). Instagram creators are building millions of followers through episodic Reels, while YouTube embraces serialized content on YouTube TV.”

I understand the interest that an AI-generated story can generate.

“hey look at what this new technology is capable of doing!”

In this sense, I understand why there is so much engagement. There is something new and people want to see what it is. There is a long way to go from here to thinking this is the future. The “future” arrives organically, and it is difficult to predict. I work every single day with creativity and storytelling. Like everyone else, I am using tools that promise greater productivity. I am noticing improvements, especially in “unlocking” my mind in certain tasks.

Example: new task, with a poorly defined problem. I send a prompt to Claude, who gives me a wrong and summary answer. I start mentally criticizing the answer, and this makes me think on the right track.

But there is a long way to go from here to thinking that I can create stories that keep people engaged for a long time. These stories come from consciousness. Consciousness is impossible to reproduce in electrical signals because it does not come from there. It comes from something above us.

But that’s my belief.

Playtest what’s wrong to find solutions

Published by Paolo on 11/02/2025

A good way to learn more about your game is to keep something that you see as problematic and playtest it. You will discover the obvious, that you need to fix it. But you will also understand much more things behind that.

It happened to me last week, I had the opportunity of running a playtest for my game. And for it I decided to create a specific control system. The developers said “we don’t feel it right”, and me neither.

At the playtest, everyone told me that the system was unconfortable. But I had to see their struggle to decide to take action in first place. In fact, I could notice how they handled the things and that helped me find the solution.