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Author: Paolo

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.

The skill that opens all doors

Published by Paolo on 29/04/2022

The job of the game designer basically consists in knowing how to communicate. Communication is a process that includes several parts. One of these parts is the production of documents. Creating documents consists of a fundamental skill: writing.

The skill that opens all doors is the ability to write. When you dominate the editorial office, you have a lot of career opportunities. It’s also one of the things most of us neglect when we’re young.

I notice a terrible demotion in recent years. Syntax, semantics and spelling are definitely at an all-time low. Someone says it’s the applications we write in, I’m not an expert. I just observe. People’s writing skills have been terribly low lately.

In my days I happen to hear people read aloud. At work, when I give lessons, or even in public transport. No tone, no points, no cadence.

Care of your editorial skills. Write every single day. Read aloud what you write. Listen again. The doors will open for you!

Superbiased rant on NFT Devs

Published by Paolo on 28/04/2022

Digital goods are taking on a great importance in our lives. My LinkedIn profile has value to me. This blog is a digital good. Scarcity and authenticity are two values ​​that can be found in some digital goods. Guilds in video games are composed by a limited number of Players and this scarcity generates a market. On Twitter many want the blue symbol of verified profile, authenticity. Scarcity and authenticity of digital assets are the real potential of NFTs.

Three types of people are making NFT video games: newbies, f2p explorers and the old guard.

Newbies

Newbies are groups of people who have never made a video game and want to start on the hardest part. Some of them worked in e-sports, so that they have experience in community management. They include game mechanics that bring Players to purchase NFTs. There are huge technological challenges, aside from the normal struggles of making a great game for the right people. 

F2p Explorers

They have spent a period of their lives in the f2p industry. Both SaaS professionals and AAA veterans have joined the movement of free games as a service. They have explored the importance of connecting people in order to create services that can last for years. In NFTs they see the possibility of creating groups of people that stick in a game to be part of the elite. People who, in exchange for a hefty investment, will connect with other wealthy people like themselves. The main value added to the market with the disruption of free-to-play was democratisation of gaming experiences. So that they are most willing to look for the right balance between the two philosophies. 

The Old Guard

Well-respected names, successful game makers. These folks seem to be absolutely fascinated by the potential of NFTs and are using their way of making games to experiment with this new toy. Of the three groups, they are perhaps the ones who have the most chance of getting something interesting out of it. Something that will probably be copied and improved and people after them will get the real economic benefits. Not a problem for them, those people are already wealthy!

Conclusion

NFT are a solution in search of a problem to be solved. I came to this personal conclusion after a careful analysis lasting a few months. Maybe in 10 years we will see something interesting coming out. 

What the sector needs right now, urgently, is to speak the language of Players. All the content I see and hear out there is speaking the language of traders. This is attracting the attention of people interested in an easy way to make money. We should put our focus on goals, experiences, rewards, entertainment, competition, self-expression. Our aim should be the people looking for “gamename tips for doingthat” and not “how to make money with gamename”.

This is my superbiased rant, hope you liked it!

Everything a Game Designer must know

Published by Paolo on 27/04/2022

A LinkedIn contact shared a mind map that summarises, from his point of view, everything a game designer needs to know.

Link to the original post

His post was shared and appreciated by many professionals in the sector.

In my opinion, instead, the image is misleading. It just looks at one part of game development: free-to-play business. Free-to-play is only part of a very complex world ranging from board games to virtual reality. I know many people in Europe who are dedicated to the development of indie games and I can assure you that, for example, the “Data” part is ignored by them.

This mind map contains what free-to-play game companies expect from a game designer. Which is very different from the declared purpose.

A person with in-depth knowledge in all of these areas is very likely to feel the work of a game designer frustrating. If I know the game-as-a-service business like the back of my hand, I will continually make proposals that probably won’t be heard. Frustration leads many game designers to jump to other roles, such as product management. Pure game designers, instead, are dedicated to something else!

When you work in free-to-play you gain knowledge in all these areas, but a game designer who does his job well devotes himself to two main activities:

  1. Facilitate tools in the team to decide how the game works
  2. Involve the people who will be playing the games in the process

Facilitate game design tools

The game designers are those who help define:

  • the game systems
  • the way in which the story reaches the players
  • the experience in the game levels
  • the actions necessary to activate the mechanics.

System design, narrative design, level design and gameplay design. In the case of free-to-play: economy design, content design, level design and UX design.

It is good to know the business side and the data side to be informed about what to do, but it is very important to be able to realise the very experience you want to offer people in the game. The necessary qualities are of a technical, artistic and editorial nature.

  1. Create and use spreadsheets, touch JSON files and game engines (technical).
  2. Set up a process, help define the essence of your experience and study well the armony of all the elements of your game (artistic).
  3. Document everything and write stories both for internal inspiration and for the Players (editorial).

Involve people

Too often, busy with many daily tasks, team members forget the main component of a commercial video game: the Players.

Most video games in production will not be commercially successful for exactly this reason. The task of game designers is to involve real people constantly to test the assumptions you have about the players and the market. A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. You need to go outside, watch people play the game and have meaningful conversations with them.

Product managers, programmers and artists don’t have the time to do this. It is up to the game designers to take care of this. If you don’t, the work comes down to constant deliveries over long periods of time and then comes to nothing. It happens very often.

Conclusion

Game design is a very complex activity, but the role of game designers is very practical and creative. It is about analysing the games and helping the team to define the tools to create the game. Then you will create gaming experiences using these tools.

It is good to know a little bit of everything. Of course, if you want to have a meaningful discussion with a product manager you should speak the language of the business. If, on the other hand, you want to have a conversation with the art director, learning about the history of art and the theory of colours can help you a lot.

But let’s never forget the fundamentals. We game designers do a very practical job!

A game is a language

Published by Paolo on 26/04/2022

A few days ago I said to a student “a game is, after all, a language to deliver a story”. He objected: “Not all games have a story!”. The student was right, but his objection is due to the semantic context of the term “story”.

A story can be a component of a game, generally expressed through its contents. By interacting with the game mechanics, players create a narrative. There are many games without a story, but the sequence of actions and events always creates a narrative. That piece you were waiting for finally appears and saves your game of Tetris. You were losing, now you have been saved by fate. If someone told the story of your match, this event would be part of it.

A story is also the path that brought your game to where it is. Your live game is constantly updated and this creates a story. The core of your player community will know your story through the various updates.

A story can also arrive absolutely asynchronously. A few years ago I discovered what was behind titles like Super Mario and Zelda. The creator of these games brought his personal childhood story to the players.

A story can also be created on other platforms thanks to your game. Some people use whole games, or parts of them, to create entertainment for other people.

Making games for the Impact Economy

Published by Paolo on 25/04/2022

Impact Economy, an economic model in which the main purpose for startups, businesses, investors and organisations is not only to maximise profitability, but also to improve their social and environmental impact.

I recently discovered the Ecosia search engine. Ecosia relies on Bing’s ad services and promises to plant trees based on the amount of searches you do on their engine. It installs easily, even on smartphones, and works really well.

The results are the same as those of other engines (I used DuckDuckGo before) and it is really a pleasure to know that you are doing good to nature just by browsing.

I wonder if it is possible to adapt this business to the video game. In fact, there are entire sectors that survive thanks to advertisements. See the hypercasual market.

Imagine being able to join the services that Ecosia relies on to plant trees and contribute by creating video games where, for each ad you view, trees are planted!

It would be beautiful right?