This week I started teaching a new bootcamp on video game design and conceptualization. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to teach, even though it’s not a well-paying job. My method requires a lot of effort, and frankly, I would like better financial recognition for that effort.
I believe in the games education, though I must say there are many courses out there that aren’t worth the investment, they just slow students down and drain their wallets.
I’ve found a surprising number of people who study not to learn, but simply to have something to do, too. They aren’t genuinely interested in the subject; they are just there to fill their time.
My mission is always to leave a lasting mark on my students, and to inspire even the most bored ones. To me, game design is a serious craft. I love it with all my soul, and I want to spread its beauty.
Seth Godin delivered an interesting message this week: there is often no correlation between effort and value.
We, in the games industry, romanticize the “crunch” and value the difficulty of creation: “This game took us five years eating pizza; therefore, it is valuable.”. This happens especially in the indie space, I have to say.
But as Godin argues, software isn’t worth more just because it was hand-coded. The player doesn’t pay for the eight years of blood, sweat, and tears; they pay for something entertaining.
Selling Effort, Not Entertainment
Game developers often sell their effort (months spent developing, solving a massive technical debt, or writing a thousand pages of lore) rather than their utility (the value the player extracts).
A game’s success is not determined by its complexity or its budget. It is determined by how efficiently and deeply it connects with people making them let discover new things. You are selling flow, mastery, social connection (Gregariousness), or the thrill of acquisition. More in general, instincts fulfillment.
That’s why a three-week prototype that perfectly fulfills the instinct of Acquisition with a simple, addictive loop will generate more value than a five-year AAA project with complex mechanics that confuse or exhaust the player. The player will pay more for the thing that is useful (solves their boredom, satisfies their urge to collect) than the thing that was difficult to make.
The Value Equation: Effort vs. Impact
The moment you shift your focus from effort to impact, your design choices become ruthlessly efficient.
The Wrong Metric (Effort)
The Right Metric (Value/Utility)
“We spent 3 months developing this tool.”
“This tool reduced iteration time by 50%.”
“This feature required 10 artists and a custom rendering pipeline.”
“This feature drove 30% higher D7 Retention because it amplified the core [Instinct].”
“The lore is 500 pages thick and highly integrated.”
“The player’s curiosity is satisfied in the first 5 minutes of play, leading to high Session Length.”
Stop selling the struggle. Start focusing on what matters.
Focus on Utility
To apply the Godin Principle to your work, make this shift today:
Define the Utility: For every feature you build, ask, “What is the specific utility this gives the player?” (e.g., “The utility of this new combat loop is the feeling of Assertiveness and mastery, which we will measure via win rate and feature usage.”)
Scope, scope, scope: Ruthlessly eliminate any work that increases effort but does not commensurately increase utility.
Charge for the Use, Not the Cost: When presenting your work to publishers or stakeholders, never lead with the cost of creation. Lead with the projected impact on player behavior (according to the cultural moments and trends, connecting with the instincts) and business health (Metric Improvement).
I’ve been working in a high performance environment for many years now. I’m amazed about the output of our small team (6 FTE+1 Free Lancer). To give you an example, we’re currently working on a casual puzzle game with a huge focus on narrative and world building. We’re approaching our 2 week release cadence which includes six to seven new fully animated story chapters and 90+ new levels, while releasing big new features every 4 weeks, with small and big tweaks, SDK updates, data gathering and general improvements, bug fixes and localization in many languages, while making sure we keep analyzing incoming data.
The casual puzzle space in which we’re operating is very competitive with thousands of entries a year with only a handful being able to succeed and enter the top 100. To get there, large teams (50-500 members) and large investments (1M-5M) are our competitors. And even in those teams, pressure to succeed is high and nothing but top performance is expected.
I’ve been thinking how we as a team make sure we are coping with this pressure. I believe we each individually have found a way to cope and collectively as a team found a way to facilitate and support each other. A large contributing factor for our small team is working from home. Not only does it cut out commute every day, saving a lot of time for each member. Working from home also afforded the environment where flexibility can occur. This flexibility in terms of working hours for instance is where some of our team members thrive.
We roughly work between 9-5 with strict attention rules around meetings. At least half of our team enjoys the ability to work during the quiet evenings, or pursuit a particular thought in the night. Others are able to schedule kids pick-up or going to the gym. And all of us enjoy the ability to let life happen and attend any important activity during working hours. Our team treats work as the second most important thing, next to our life outside of work. We cover for each other when someone is ill or experiences life changing events, we plan our schedules and priorities around vacations and time off, we accommodate members traveling the world and working from different time zone and generally we all help each other make it work.
But I think all of this would not be possible without a shared goal, without a shared ambition, without our internal drive to want to succeed. This focus enables us to do all of the above and I’m sure will drive us towards success.
Performance Marketing expert Matej Lancaric issued a strong “WAKE UP call” to Supercell, critiquing their slow pace, their seemingly “random” new projects (like the “BOAT game”), and their failure to launch a hit in years.
Matej’s point: Why isn’t Supercell making a strategy game? Look at Century Games and Rivergame—they are launching hits, leveraging years of development and templatization.
Matej and his colleague Jakub Remiar are fundamentally right about the market reality: Supercell is competing in the same giant mass market as these Chinese juggernauts. However, the strategy Supercell needs to adopt is a matter of competitive advantage, not market segment.
Competing on the Wrong Metric
Jakub points out that the Chinese giants are masters of scaling and aggressive UA. They specialize in perfecting proven formulas, backed by efficient labor and rapid execution.
The mistake for Supercell would be to adopt this same strategy. Why? Because on the field of quantity, templatization, and low-cost labor, it is a lost battle; a race to the bottom that Supercell cannot win without sacrificing its corporate culture and cost structure.
Quality as Novelty
The argument that “quality will save them” is often seen as a defense mechanism, but quality here does not mean polish on a clone. Quality, in the Supercell context, may mean novelty and emergent gameplay.
Supercell’s strength has always been finding new formulas within a strong social/multiplayer framework. If they discover the right key, a system that generates unpredictable, repeatable fun, they create a lasting intellectual property that is inherently difficult to copy. This is true innovation, and it’s their only path to sustainable, high-margin success.
They must either focus on their core IPs (more Clash Royale and Clash of Clans) or they must find a way to put out content faster while still prioritizing the discovery and novelty that defines their brand.
Choose Your Competitive Strategy
The great divide in mass-market mobile design is no longer just between Indie and AAA; it’s between The Template Master and The Emergence Hunter.
If You Choose Templatization (The Century Games Path): Your primary focus must be UA efficiency and Monetization Optimization. Rigorously deconstruct the core loop of existing hits (Last War) and focus your design energy on maximizing retention and revenue curves within that proven framework.
If You Choose Emergence: Focus 90% of your time on building a ruleset that generates an unexpected and delightful player experience. If you can’t discover the fun cheaply, put the project on pause.
Know Your Runway: Innovation is expensive; execution is faster. Your choice of strategy must align with your budget reality.
Tatu Pohjavirta, an experienced CEO and futurist, recently posted a brilliant take on why Venture Capitalists, and so developers, get stuck. They ask, “Are you the next Supercell?” or “What’s the next Netflix?”
As Tatu points out, they are looking for le futur, the foreseeable sequel to the present, when what truly changes the world is l’avenir, the radical, unexpected break from the past.
“The true future doesn’t really inherit the present—it breaks from it.”
This is an inability to step outside the invisible grasp of the present. We assume that our current systems are permanent. But they are just historical accidents waiting for the next great interruption.
Building the Unforeseen
Ourjob as game designers is to increase the risk of predictability by building something genuinely “other.”. Our work is not to design the next of something; it is to design the first of something else.
But how do you design l’avenir when you don’t even have the language for it? This is where your methodical approach, the discipline you apply to strategy and prototyping, becomes the most powerful creative tool.
Design a game where the question becomes, “What is that?”
Deconstruct Your Genre’s Assumptions (The Historical Accident): Take the genre you know best and list all its “permanent” features (e.g., Shooter: First-Person Camera, Health Bars, Headshots). Identify the Historical Accident, the feature that isn’t essential to the instinct (Combat, Acquisition, Escape) but exists purely because of platform or technology limitations 15 years ago.
Prototype the Vocabulary: Tatu asks, “What’s the wildest thing you can imagine into existence that you don’t yet have language to describe to others?” Your job is to prototype the vocabulary. Build a prototype that demonstrates this “wildest thing” using only simple geometric shapes and text. Playtest it with people and watch their reactions.
Your job is to stop being trapped by le futur and start building the unexpected arrival of l’avenir.
Here is the weekly rundown of industry news and my thoughts:
1. Steam’s Home Console Play
The news about new hardware devices from Steam makes one thing clear: they are aggressively attempting to erode the distinction between PC and Console to win the battle for the home living room.
I can’t predict if their strategy will ultimately work, but if I were Sony, I would focus my energy elsewhere. Sony is proven to be exceptionally good at narrative-driven, high-fidelity single-player experiences. You only need to look at the sales figures for games like Ghost of Tsushima (or Ghost of Yotei, if that is the internal name you meant)—that caliber of experience is Sony’s real golden goose. They should double down on what they master.
2. Embark Studios: Practical AI Integration
Another interesting news item this week comes from Embark Studios (developers of Arc Raiders and The Finals). They appear to have found a cool, practical way to integrate AI into their development process.
This is exactly what I like to see: No hype, just pure gameplay utility. They released a world-class game, and they’ve released useful tools for the community. Embark is positioning itself as one of the most promising development realities here in Europe.
3. The AI & War Reflection
On a more sobering note, a friend recently sent me an Instagram post detailing new tactics adopted by the Russian invaders in Ukraine. This led me to a chilling thought:
Perhaps we are seeing so much investment in AI for games because games are essentially a free and unregulated territory to train models made for war. The complex environment, the decision-making under pressure, and the dynamic systems found in games provide perfect training grounds for military AI development. It’s a sobering perspective on the intersection of our entertainment and global conflict.
Here is one of the advices I give to people trying to break into the industry: make sure you constantly meet people in real life.
Instead of staying at home preparing and sending résumés to dozens of applications, it is far better to spend two hours per day outside, perhaps at the gym or at a local course on something entirely unrelated to games.
This approach offers three crucial advantages:
1. Maintain Human Energy
You keep your energy levels high because you are meeting and talking with real humans, not just staring at a screen. Waiting for a response to an online application is passive and draining; engaging with the world is active and vital.
2. Design for Reality
When you meet people outside your professional bubble, you gain invaluable insight into their context. I often use these interactions to think about game design.
For example, I currently attend a Catalan language course twice a week. The class is full of nurses and public service workers who are there primarily to get a better contract, not necessarily to master the language. I notice they are tired, easily bored, and don’t want too much complication. Their lives are already full, balancing jobs and children.
How would I entertain someone like them? Not with a complex console game, right? They need a simple casual game, but it has to load fast and get straight into the gameplay. This helps me stay in touch with reality. It forces me to design for the actual, busy human being, not the idealized, endless-time “gamer.”
3. Unlock Lateral Opportunities
You significantly increase your chance of finding job opportunities in lateral sectors by meeting people who have nothing to do with the virtual bubble you’ve created in your online networks.
I honestly have the feeling that nowadays, it is often easier to find a job by going to the gym than by applying on LinkedIn.
I recently read a fascinating article on Enhance, the Japanese developer behind Tetris Effect and Lumines: Arise. Their company vision is, simply put, a breath of fresh air:
“Experience is king, synesthesia is queen.”
Synesthesia—the involuntary experience generated by stimulating one sensory pathway—and the concept of Kondō (to move emotionally) are the core of their design process.
I have a huge weak spot for companies with this kind of vision. They are hard to execute, but they make so much sense to me.
We are currently living in the era of the product managerization of game design, where every creative decision is filtered through short-term metrics. These experience-first points of view come like a breath of fresh air, reminding us of the original purpose of our craft.
We are humans making entertainment. Focusing solely on automation and metric-driven tuning can make us forget the human spark that creates great things.
Intense design discussions, deep conceptualization, and messy prototyping—that’s what I strive for.
Enhance starts by making music and then breaking that music down into pieces to design the right stages (levels). It is an inverted process that prioritizes the sensory and emotional outcome. It’s so interesting; I wish I could be in that room to see it.
The other day, I was reflecting on how I carved out my space in this industry.
Today, that reality has changed. I have other responsibilities, and I can no longer dedicate the same time to my work. My energy levels aren’t what they were 15 years ago. I worked extremely hard to secure the professional space and flexibility I have now.
I still engage with the medium: I play games, about two hours a week, and spend my evenings studying books and taking online courses. Lately, I’ve been particularly focused on the history of games.
Otherwise, I dedicate my energy to activities outside of the games industry. My passion successfully evolved into a job, and ultimately, a job is a job. With time, one has to work less not more.
Tim Plöger on LinkedIn shared a critique of the glib advice given to laid-off developers: “You got fired? Then start your own studio!”. This message often gets mixed up, confusing the business problem with the craft problem.
Tim, coming from a focus on the structural and financial side of the industry, correctly points out that starting a studio is not the answer. A studio isn’t just about making games; it’s about allocating people and financials, legal structuring, and sales. That’s a different type of work, and often, a recipe for quick failure for someone whose expertise is in pure creation.
The advice tells you to become an Executive/CEO when all you need to do is remain a Designer/Developer. My counterpoint to Tim was simple: “You don’t have money to buy bread? Well, maybe you have it to buy flour and cook your own bread.”
If your job is to design games, your energy should go into designing games. Spending six months, a year, or even two years sending out résumés without a response drains your energies. It is better to do your job every single day than to beg others while your energy wanes.
When you are laid off, you are given a clean slate, a golden opportunity to build the things you need.
Cook Your Own Bread
You have the chance to prove your adaptive insight (your ability to transfer design knowledge across genres). Here are three immediate actions for any designer, artist, or programmer who is waiting for “the next job”:
Stop Applying, Start Prototyping: Turn your application time into creation time. Build simple, fast, collaborative projects. Don’t worry about polish; worry about fun and flow.
Master the Instincts of the Market: Use this time to apply System Thinking. Pick a successful micro-genre (like the recent Friend-slop games) and try to replicate its core loop. Don’t copy the art; map the instincts (Acquisition, Gregariousness, Escape) that make it tick. This process demonstrates analytical skill far better than any résumé.
Join the Flour-Buyers: Seek out other developers who are also “baking their own bread.” Join forces for a focused, two-week game jam or prototype challenge. The goal is not profit; the goal is to keep your creative engine running and generate concrete work that proves you’re a builder, not a waiter.
The best way to get hired is to be actively doing the job, with or without a corporate logo on your title.
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