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Author: Paolo

You want to believe

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

There are companies that make games and do not believe in game designers. It may be hard to understand what a game designer is capable to do. Also, not all game designers are able to stand out for the craft. I’ve met people like that who transitioned into other roles.

Every game starts with assumptions. They can be interpretations of market insight or straight fingers pointed at the sky to feel the wind. Assumptions are good to start conversations and show security and vision in early stage, but dangerous for the success of a game. There are successful companies that have in their cultural deck “do not believe any assumption”.

Having people specialized in taking those assumptions and supporting the vision holders to land them down and face reality has a value. These people are professional game designers. In fact, in companies the game designers rarely are the creators of a new product. They are facilitators of game design, that is a role shared among the team.

If you know how to code, that’s enough to make a videogame. If you don’t know it, but you have the money to hire a game developer, you can develop a full game. And if you are sure of your assumptions you can improvise the rest and make a game. There are successful cases that started like this, one I have in my mind right now is Vampire Survivors.

But then there is the reality of the market, of the players out there. And then also the nerdiest anti-social coder will need help on game design.

Same discourse is valid for startup that passed to the growth stage. You may have started making scrappy games filled with ads, and you may assume that you know. But you will need game designers to interpret your (shitty) assumptions and land them down. You need professionals if you want to pass to the growth stage or keep there.

Impossible true stories

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

I watched the splendid documentary on Sandfall and Clare Obscure: Expedition 33 made by the Australian YouTube channel SkillUp.

Apart from the obvious learnings on commitment, passion, vision, and so on, I have found 3 important insight:

1. it’s super important to share what you do also as a side hustle out there. You may never know, maybe posting a couple of fan themes on a lost music forum may lead to meet special people to make special things.

2. a possible strategy for disruptive indie/AA games is to include people who never made a game in their entire life. Especially if you employ them in the parts more near of the final client, the player. Art, music, writing.

3. the best indicator that you are making a hit is in your internal playtests. It is something you feel while you play your build everyday, also one that is bad looking. We make games for others to play, but how can you sell people things you don’t actually like and be successful? If you see that everyone in your team is playing the game for fun, you have it.

Adding new to classics

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

I watched the new Netflix show produced by SONY Pictures Animation called “KPop Demon Hunters”. I am not in their target audience, also if I love the animation on 2s (a new pose each 2 photograms, instead than 1) launched by “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” and I recognize the rest of visuals. Not surprising, but well made.

What I liked was the lore, also if I am too adult (not old :P) to understand the nuances of K-pop. I like its silliness and the irreverence of the protagonists, reminds me a lot of what I notice in teenagers: struggle to have followers, always be perfect, but also lots of stress and anxiety because of the dark present and no light on the long term.

I love the mixture between classic mythology with modern K-pop, also if I felt something missing on the demon side. Still, a great show to watch. I also liked that the characters (at least the female ones) are not too hypersexualized. I would like to say the same for the boys, but that’s not the case 😛

And, maybe it’s for the 3d, probably for the combat too, I think that from that proof of concept new lores may spark more fresh, for the action adventure games of the future! Recommended.

New Strands

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

Last week I have started playing Death Stranding (the first chapter, on PS Plus), and yesterday I have also read an interesting interview to the CEO of Supercell on the need for new type of games. I very much agree with that, so I started connecting the dots.

What console and indie games have that mobile still hasn’t get yet is the “useless beauty”. Things that are not designed or implemented for a specific KPI or data goal. Useless beauty is not that useless to me on the long term, also if you cannot see the immediate benefit. It shows our humanity, and prepares the terrain for cultural and trend settings.

Death Stranding is one of the most impactful experiences I am having in the last 10 year, on gaming side. And it contains a lot of things that make me thing “man, that’s weird, why did you put that?”. Actually, one after another. It’s overwhelming, and beautiful, and it doesn’t explain everything.

Also the last experiments from Supercell, which from a numbers perspective still haven’t found the formula, have something like that. They are much less authorial, the result of a team effort, different purpose, but still. I am sure that Kojima too is willing to make something to be remembered forever, but not played maybe. Different goals, but similar philosophies to me.

I don’t know if they will ever manage to create new genres, but to me the road is correct: not everything must have a direct impact on measures, useless beauty is human and players need wonder, not just mechanics.

The ABC of personal branding

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

Days ago, on a private conversation, a LinkedIn friend of mine told me “you are the best game design influencer that I know”. I am thankful for that comment, also if I don’t consider myself an influencer. I prefer to use the term communicator.

I hold another interesting discussion on “personal branding” which together with that happening made me think… I don’t really believe in “personal branding”, and being an influencer, and stuff like that.

Branding is something manufactured, the risk with thinking in myself as a brand is to start perceive myself as a commodity, somehow.

I believe in ABC: acknowledgement, body of work, and character. I think I work a lot on that, more than branding.

And I worked it CBA:

1. Character building: this is something personal, everyone tackles this in a different ways and I cannot teach anyone how to do that. I can share one of my character built feature: I deliver, no matter what. I don’t say “I cannot do that in such a small time”. Of course, according to the time I can deliver something more or less detailed. But that’s on you that gave me that time, everything is pretty transparent. I wasn’t like that before had to build that. And that is just one thing among multiples.

2. Body of work: you will become better at the things you practice more often, simple as that. Many years ago, I decided to stop focusing on look for a job in games and started just practicing game design, every single day. Also small things, like listening to a podcast and taking notes, sketching my ways of working. Consistently I developed my body of work. Today I see something from my past and it’s so bad that I notice my progress and I am happy. Plus, thanks to these scrappy spreadsheets, today I have my personal way that brings me income.

3. Acknowledgement: this comes only as a consequence of C and B, you need to find your people. Campfires are better than social networks. A campfire is a group of few people, it can be a reddit group or a slack channel. Interact with like minded people, find people to admire and listen listen listen. And send DMs to listen more. On the other end, you need to work on something. And on that point especially nowadays I cannot teach anything, it’s so hard. But I can say that if you have a job and tomorrow lose it, consider the juggler metaphor, from Seth Godin.

Juggler metaphor: manies believe that the secret of a juggler is the catch. Truth is, the secret is the throw!

Consider each job you had and lost not like you failed a catch. You were learning how to throw better, like a juggler! By flipping your point of view on this (very hard, I still hold consequences of that process), you will get more authority over time.

Reworks and crossroads

Published by Paolo on 17/03/2025

Hey reader, thank you for being here today too. It’s been a while, I lost an important source of income and rearranged my forces these days. My game Pawtners Case is moving forward but slowly. Briefly speaking

  • I have pitched to a potential investor. They want to see a demo.
  • I sent the pitch to industry friends (if you’re one of them, thank you very much for your feedback again!) and spotted my potential weaknesses
  • I am rearrarging forces and trying to differentiate my business. In fact I cannot rely only on Pawtners Case to stay afloat. I need to find a source of income and also new projects.
  • I am also retaking my programming side, hope to show you something soon.

Good news I am here, healthy and alive. I have my challenges as you do have others for sure, but I am happy! The important thing at crossroards it’s to make a step forward for our rework.

What I learned in the Playable Stories Workshop

Published by Paolo on 03/03/2025

Yesterday, I participated in a workshop on how to write for playable stories. It was a workshop oriented to professional game writers, and I am not. Still, I found it very useful in improving my skills in narrative design.

It was divided into 3 sessions, with pauses in the middle. Session one was about how games change stories. Session two was about how to make stories playable. The last one was about how to use the storytelling toolbox. The tools all writers have and also the tools that belong only to game writers.

The workshop was packed with practical insight and exercises to train for the next days. In Fall 2022, a company I worked for paid for my fee at the narrative department workshop. This gave me access to a series of interesting workshops at a special price. I am thankful for that.

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?”