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Author: Paolo

Why do you design games?

Published by Paolo on 06/12/2021

The other day I was listening to a YouTube video (yeah, listening) with 2 people that I consider industry experts talking about leadership in videogames.

One of the two quoted this sentence from Orson Welles:

“…in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

His point was that, as a leader, you shouldn’t try to create a peaceful environment. In fact, great things come out from hard times.

This post is not to enter in the center of the question. In fact, those persons are people with at least five years more experience than me. And in companies with great products where I dream working someday. So that for the sake of this post they are right.

But I ask myself: what do I want to do with my job?

Do I want to become a name like Leonardo or Michelangelo? Or do I want to create something that brings fun in every place it is placed, like a cuckoo clock?

When game designers deal with artists

Published by Paolo on 05/12/2021

I have dealt with game artists everyday for many years. My background is computer science, that is why I find it challenging to understand them well. Someone said to me once “you will never understand artists” laughing at my face.

Something I know, anyways. All the people, all the time, give their opinions to the artist. I like it, why blue? Mmm I don’t know. Honestly? I would put that on the right.

You have to be efficient in talking to them. The best way I know? Describe to them what you are seeing. Use your honest and sincere words and wait for their comment on your description.

If something does not convince you, ask them questions. You are a game designer, but the game design is something the whole team will do. Also them. Do not lose the opportunity to use their brains. Facilitate the act of game design and respect their ego. Which, in some cases, can be very high.

Try this when you get stuck

Published by Paolo on 04/12/2021

When you get stuck in a creative process share your concerns as soon as possible. I advise you to do it with conviction. People react quite badly to extreme things. Propose a sudden extreme draft to your team so that their brains are activated!

I usually get stuck on the writing side. Finding a tone for a new character or for a specific moment. Finding the right words is always very complicated to me. I need time that often I don’t have.

Define a tone according with the context and circunstances. Write down lines as quickly as possible in that tone. Try to do it in an extreme way. Share it immediately with the team. If you have a week to prepare a dialogue (that never happens), imagine that you have one hour. 

Pass your draft in slack or whatever with conviction: “I’m thinking something like this”. People will start to help you with ideas and concepts, believe me. They cannot accept that extreme thing. That is why you may want to be it: to activate their brain defenses!

With this technique you will get 3-5 potential tones and various references that I can explore! The team contributed to that and they will also feel more involved with the whole thing.

I hope this trick is useful to you!

Do this after a game jam

Published by Paolo on 03/12/2021

The most common suggestion I read when people ask “how to work as a game designer?” is: participate in game jams.

In my humble opinion, this suggestion is incomplete. In fact, game jams are a cool event where you are forced to make decisions quickly and to join the ideas of all the team in something you really want to show at the end. The time you have usually is very low, so that you feel you are really pushing your boundaries. As experience is great and you can also make meaningful connections.

BUT, game jams lack a very important element for game designers: Players. The result of your hard work will probably be shared with other game developers and also the final result is often voted by devs. Nothing to do with the real struggle of game design: understanding behaviors and needs of the people that are willing to play your game.

Once your game jam weekend is over, maybe you achieved great results. End a complete experience is a great result, arriving in the first 10 positions is. The first 3 is a great result. The 1st position is awesome! And then what?

Then often you speak with your colleagues, you polish what you did and you just publish it.

Try, instead, let common people play your game. Start with your family, especially the kids if you are lucky to have them around. Look for proof that your game doesn’t work! Do not look to confirm that you had a great idea. You have to put your concept in crisis if you want to really pass to the next step: publish something meaningful.

Game Designers, use this onion to design your prototype

Published by Paolo on 02/12/2021

The onion model is the base that I use to think in any prototype of a new video game. I discovered it in a video years ago and I have never stopped to use it. I have never found that video again, sorry about that.

This onion model is made to be started from both sides. It works better to start from the narrative side and go toward the center. We have already a lot of core mechanics that are proven to work. Fire, match-3, gamble, merge, harvest, etc.

Which kind of feelings do you want your Players to have?

First question: which kind of experience do we want to give the Players? What are the feelings we want for our Players?

The answer can be pretty vague: “just a relaxing and quick experience.”

Or it can be detailed: “I want my Players to feel they are managing a video games company with its budget and people.”

Usually, this model works better with the second kind of answers. Try to spend the right amount of time in this part.

Then I try to identify the personas. Do not forget to use OCEAN!

I facilitate a session with all the team, in which we decide the kind of narrative we want to deliver. Content has a high cost, so that you may want to start from here believe me. It is good from the very beginning to start estimating its dimension.

Once we have the narrative, it’s time to pass to the progression part. Example:

Narrative: “You are a space traveler. You have to stop the evil Empire from oppressing the universe.”

Progression: “explore the universe, complete missions and quests.”

Do you really want to start with an open world game?

Progression: “beat the levels and defeat the bosses”

Ok, that seems better! Will the bosses have special behaviors?

Progression: “try to reach the best score and climb the leaderboard”

It’s Social, I like it. Is the leaderboard for real? NEVER do a real leaderboard for a prototype!

Only later think in the mechanics!

The secondary mechanic is related with the meta part of the game. Think of your Players when they are NOT playing your game. Which things do they think in when they have the intention to play your game again? 

“I have to enter because I have to collect my boosters” (Candy Crush Saga). Boosters are your secondary mechanic.

“I need to play again because they are attacking my base” (Clash of Clans). Raids are your secondary mechanic.

“I need to play again because I have to beat the Royal Griffin” (The Witcher 3). Spells or Crossbow are your secondary mechanic.

Now you have it! The core mechanic, I am sure, will come alone!

No? Really? Do you want to create a new one? OK.

  • Forget about all that we said and make a prototype including ONLY the core mechanic.
  • Iterate on that until you have it.
  • Playtest a lot, put your core mechanic really in crisis.

Then, and only then, you may want to add all the rest. My suggestion is trying to be really conservative on the other parts if you want to avoid headaches.

Is designing games making art?

Published by Paolo on 01/12/2021

We hear questions like this a lot. Are games a form of art? When we create games, do we produce art?

Internet is full of discussions among great minds (and also not so great) around those questions.

Often the discourse moves to “ok, what is art?” or “right, what is a game?”.

Lately I am taking an art course: Long pose drawing and painting. It was really a discovery to see how many things game design shares with art.

Art may have a strict process to follow. You can follow a specific method to create art pieces. You can also decide to just follow your movements and what your mind says. The same exact thing happens with game design. When you work for a company, probably you may want to follow a method and adapt it to the company needs. When we are alone with our mind, instead, we can just sketch. Sometimes the magic happens. Just as in art.

Art is based on the aesthetics. Aesthetics mean the study of the essence of things. When I am drawing a person standing in front of me, I am not really drawing straight. The drawing comes out from the shadows I am able to synthetize with my charcoals. I am constantly trying to find the essence to explain what I am seeing. Same exact thing with game design. You and your team want to deliver an experience, so that the whole game design process is about finding the essence of that experience. Look at the classic MDA framework, where researchers found 8 kind of aesthetics. Someone should continue that research, actually. It was made when videogames were still artifacts. Today games are entertainment, not artifacts anymore.

Art presents a challenge to the viewer. The artists tried to explain the aesthetics of what they were seeing or thinking. The final result is presented to the World and offers always an interpretation challenge. Instead of visual art, think in music. The first musical instrument opens the melody, then maybe a drum puts the rhythm in. Then other instruments join to create the harmony. According to the listener, the music can be noisy or exciting. The music can be very complicated when the listener is not prepared. The same exact thing happens with game design, especially with UX and Level Design. The final game has a complexity which is in general based on audience tastes. Or, at least, I would prefer to be so.

5 takes on the future of games

Published by Paolo on 30/11/2021

I read this new report that covers many respondents from all around the globe. The research focuses on three kind of Players: veterans, returning players (players that were inactive before of the Pandemic and then reactivated) and new players.

In 2021 one fifth of Players are new players. The majority of those are women. We move toward a future with more gender equality. Veterans are more willing to spend for games, that is why we should consider all kind of audience.

Subscriptions and Metaverse

First considerations are regarding subscriptions. Especially in PC/Console market new players were attracted by subscription services. Most popular: Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Now and Nintendo Switch Online. What is Steam waiting for?

TAKE 1: If you are making a game for any platform consider subscription as part of your monetization strategy.

Videogames confirmed their role of social media platforms. Social and multiplayer games are the most used platform after traditional social apps. Google offers also its personal definition of metaverse: virtual and persistent worlds that unlock creative spaces and identities for social human experiences.

Being able to create and customize your avatar is the single most important factor for Players. That means that the metaverse plays on the basic need of self-expression and triggers motivations that traditional social media are not capable to do (still).

TAKE 2: How does your game trigger self-expression?

Streaming and Platforms

Content streaming and live gameplays have become the second most important way of getting to know new games, after peers and family. Google says that looking at YouTubers and Twitchers is becoming part of the game’s experience.

TAKE 3: Create games that are fun to play online for other to watch and try to engage with content creators.

The future of games is not about a specific platform anymore. The biggest companies are investing for experiences that can be played from many devices and services. Look at Genshin Impact, check out the new projects from Zynga and study the Asphalt porting that Gameloft is doing to Xbox. The next take is clear.

TAKE 4: the future is not about which platform to develop for, but more about how let your Players to access to your game from every platform.

The report closes with the growing importance of Cloud gaming, especially in the American continent. If the chance to play the latest games from any device is interesting, I honestly believe that this conclusion is another way of Google to try relaunch Stadia. I honestly don’t see it at the moment.

Conclusions

The majority of new players will not stick with videogames after the pandemic. They will probably fade away. Some of them will become a veteran. It is important to consider different retention narratives for all the three kind of Players:

TAKE 5: The game can be the access door, the culture that creates around it will keep the Players coming back!

I played: Merge Animals 3D

Published by Paolo on 29/11/2021

The thing I like the most about the hypercasual trend is that I really cannot deeply understand why all of this works. My professional mind has collected a lot of assumptions regarding game design theories. So that I am constantly challenged when I see millions of people playing silly games. Fascinating!

Merge Animals 3D FTUE

This weekend I tried out Merge Animals 3D that is performing well on mobile phones. The concept is pretty cool. The game is about trying out different combinations of animal traits on a runner and see how they do perform on the track. The main character is a human anonymous mannequin. He is competing against two mannekins more, also them with random configurations. The camera is top-right and impedes having a clear view of what is coming, so that some reflexes are needed to overcome obstacles. Then you unlock a new animal trait which will permit to overcome other kind of obstacles.

There are five kind of possible traits to dominate with an animal prothesis: strength, water, climb, fly and run. I haven’t found much more. It is impossible to arrive the last, I have tried everything. If you don’t end the race first no worries: you will still pass to the next levels! No lose condition at all.

The colors and textures are completely plain, that suggests that the game works with the part of our thinking system which looks for immediacy. No complex thoughts involved at all. Classic for the hypercasual games!

The game monetises with ads. I am afraid there is too few challenge right now. Maybe developers are trying out the core loop and then they will iterate on that.

Merge Animals 3D Core Loop

After a while I found pretty frustrating having to choose manually the mutations I wanted to face the next “challenge”. A UX improvement would be in that sense.

There is nothing suggesting to the Player why is doing all of that. A narrative design improvement would probably include a level sequence or images unlock. You discovered a new animal trait? tell me something about that animal.

Levels have basically no challenge. In order to maintain that philosophy, a Level Design improvement would probably be including some bonus level where the Player could collect letters or other elements useful to unlock new mannequin skins, for instance.

The game system is super simple. For the System Design part I would probably try to find some idle mechanic for the levels. Leves are a rewarding moment and not a challenging one, as mentioned before. Probably the Players who stay more than 2 days would find fun having some automatic system where they can grind other elements related with experiments and merging.

You will find the brickfile on github, as usual.

How to deal with your boss

Published by Paolo on 28/11/2021

One of the things I wanted to understand earlier when I started working as a game designer is that part of the job is making your boss successful.

Your boss could be the founder of the company you work for, in the case of small businesses. In this case, he will likely have to be accountable to investors. Try to understand the pressure he has and adapt your proposals to it.

It is not important in the profession to be right. The important thing is to deliver the things done. It does not matter that your idea is not accepted, very often there is an external pressure that causes them to take paths that may seem wrong.

Better to make our proposals, but willingly accept the impositions. The facts may prove us right, or we may discover other things we have ignored.

If your boss is a more technical person, better focus on trying to guide him on the more business side. We try to understand the context in which we work and which solutions can be simpler and faster to implement. Our importance in the team will increase!

If your boss is a manager, or a person who generally reports to the CEO or some other manager, it is appropriate to accompany our proposals with spreadsheets with numbers that we can generate. Money, or success metrics!

We must try hard to deliver these numbers, otherwise we risk our proposals being rejected because our boss is unable to defend them properly to superiors.

It is important to empathize with our leaders and understand what profile they have. If they are successful, we’ll be that too!

Game designers and Product managers

Published by Paolo on 27/11/2021

The difference between a Game Designer and a Product Manager sometimes seems subtle. There is quite a big difference in concept, instead

Both figures exercise the act of game design. Deciding how the game should be. In fact, the whole team does that. Game designers are just facilitators of the act of game design.

Both figures are involved in studying the competitors in depth.

The main difference is the following: while the game designer works in the game, the product manager works on the game.

The product manager is the figure who defines roadmaps, objectives and above all who deals with the positioning of the game on the market. It is the bridge between development and business.

The game designer defines the mechanics and features in detail, making sure everyone on the team is really contributing.

It often happens that game designers, frustrated by the fact that they have no decision-making weight, look a product manager position. Only to find themselves frustrated that they are not working in the game, but on the game.

Too often I have met with product managers who are basically ex game designers and enter into issues they shouldn’t. Not because of inability, of course,. but because they take time away from other duties.