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Author: Paolo

For a brighter future for games

Published by Paolo on 24/10/2024

The YouTube channel of popular game director Masahiro Sakurai has come to an end.

This will remain an outstanding document that hopefully will teach basics to generations to come. Thank you Masahiro San!

Regarding this last video above, I am impressed with the work ethic and discipline. I couldn’t never have this level of mastery because I have a different background and life. Still, there are something to learn not just on video production, but on content design in general:

  • Everything was planned right from the start: outline, scripts, footages. Everything.
  • Focus on 1 task at the time and cover the entire content length
  • Keep everything extremely organized in folders and find name conventions for easier queries
  • Collab with external partners only when everything is well defined, because you will have management overload
  • Use the email with bullet points for feedback and general comms.

Masahiro San says that he invested around $630k and got $0 as revenue. He did this just for the improvement of our beloved industry. I would like to see more Masahiros around here…

The important moves

Published by Paolo on 22/10/2024

It always makes me smile when a team member says in a meeting “I don’t know what to do right now…”

I think about the luxury that underlies this expression. A farmer or a factory worker could never say something like that!

One thing I communicate is the importance of being professional. Game design is about identifying the systems and timing to make certain moves.

Systems, timing, moves.

The moves can go well or badly, it doesn’t matter. I mean, of course, it does, but even if they go badly, it is important to do them on the one hand and learn on the other. A client last year told me: “Look, I accept bad news. What I don’t like are surprises”.

Examples of moves we can make when we don’t know what to do:

  • plan
  • look for player insights
  • try to understand the why of certain systems and define the problem
  • understand and outline business goals
  • measure what has already been released
  • share insights with the team
  • plan experiments and playtests

It’s up to you to identify the systems and the timing, and now I hope you have something to do!

Improve your communication

Published by Paolo on 15/10/2024

A programmer introduces bugs into the code. An artist creates assets that perhaps go a little outside the visual style of the game. A game designer explains himself poorly.

Communication is where we make the most mistakes in our work as designers.

So don’t say:

  1. this is not my job
  2. it’s in the GDD
  3. No, you don’t understand
  4. Players don’t want this

Even when you’re asked for something that is outside your duties. You’re sure you wrote it in the GDD. Even when your colleague doesn’t seem to understand. You’ve been in contact with players and you know for sure that they don’t want it.

Communication, unlike bugs and visuals, can create friendships and enmities. Every misunderstanding is an opportunity to strengthen a creative vision.

Do this:

  • Open paint/gimp/… and use simple shapes to explain live how things work (recording a video and sending it counts)
  • Record yourself miming certain situations, even if it seems ridiculous
  • create one-page briefs where necessary.

Playing with my Dreamcast

Published by Paolo on 12/10/2024

Sometimes I dust off my old Dreamcast, connect it, and replay Crazy Taxi, Soulcalibur, Frame Gride, and Chu-chu Rocket. I feel like they are gifts that I sent to myself from the past.

Before, the support contained the entire game, not just a license. You bought it and they lasted “forever”.

The market has evolved, and commercial expectations have changed. In the last generations, you can play a game you bought until it is removed. There are many reasons for this, but in the channels I follow to get information I often read the frustration of many people. Games are perceived as something expensive (it is not true, they are not) and uncertain. You buy the license, but you do not know if it will last.

Game-as-a-service has added limitations on top of that for this specific audience: they are always connected games, potentially infinite.

In summary:
– it is not clear whether the game belongs to you or not
– it is not clear how long you will have access when you buy it
– it is not clear why you have to wait for connections to servers and login to external services
– it is not clear who’s this guy on the other side playing with me and what are his real intentions
– it is not clear if and when you can beat the game
– it is not clear what will happen if you miss some event

In this, frankly, I prefer the old style, where the only thing that was not clear was how the game itself worked. Onboarding to games has improved a lot, but before you just had to press a button and you were in a few seconds.

Not anymore. Today, pressing a button makes us feel a bit spied on by systems that want to figure out how to get more money out of us.
It is very true that the industry has matured, that it employs many more people, and that these are increasingly sophisticated games. However, the player experience for this specific audience (which is a big audience) has worsened in many ways.

And I see a business opportunity there.

Every game for itself

Published by Paolo on 09/10/2024

Reading the terrible news about a company that is praised in the industry, I think we are approaching one of the worst moments in the industry. I am talking about Roblox, of course.

The feeling I have is the domino effect, which will spread especially in businesses that are supported by attention.

We have all played that game that makes us think “but how can this game be so successful?“

Well, often it is because the numbers are rigged and the players are not real people, but machines. New technologies only make this situation worse. I am afraid that many CEOs are playing the wrong game here. Faking the numbers, looking for the short term, that is the result.

It’s sad, but it’s good for the future of the industry in my opinion. We need some people out.

Interior chaos, dancing stars

Published by Paolo on 02/10/2024

I read with interest the reflections of some journalists, because of the release of Jason Schreier’s new book on the Blizzard company. The attention is focused, as it should be, on the projects and budgets.

Interesting details about failed attempts and canceled projects appear here and there. Some conclude that internally the situation at Blizzard seems chaotic.

Well, I’ve been working in the industry since 2007. I’ve never worked at Blizzard, but I’ve worked on projects that have had a fair amount of success in their small way: the internal situation is always chaotic. I’ve never seen, in my career, a single project/team where absolute chaos doesn’t reign.

“Only from internal chaos can a dancing star be born“, wrote the teenage girl in her diary when I was a teenager. There, that.

Lemme show how AI can… STOP IT!

Published by Paolo on 01/10/2024

Yesterday a guy in a Slack channel sent the link to his post, shilling that he was showing the true potential of generative AI. The post is this one. Let’s break it down as a simple example of why all this hype is damaging the collective mind and how easy is to trick a brain using the right wording.

Preparation

Claim: “15min with just using GPT-4o and GPT-1o to create a complete game idea & concept“

This guy is looking for something quick and fast, not just getting ideas. He wants a complete concept. I consider myself a fast professional, I like quick and dirty things more than slow and perfect stuff. But 15 minutes is ultra-fast. Creating a complete game concept takes a huge portion of my mind, especially my conscience. How can a chipset have a conscience? Come on.

Prompt: “I want you be my my Lead Game Designer who knows all about mobile gaming, all genres, all mechanics, market trends etc I want you to come up with a compelling idea with USPs. I want you to pick the genre and sub-genre for me based on market data, some where that has high potential and is sorta blue ocean and high chance of success. The idea should be mobile friendly with simple mechanics and at the same time good depth so at first players can easily pass and progress but soon they have improve their skills/characters or whatever in order to progress further“

This man’s role to the machine is “his” lead game designer. This is a pretty common fetiche among game leaders. “My game designer”, “my programmer”. Some people believe that teammates are like pets or something.

The expectation is that this virtual pet knows all about mobile gaming too. That’s the dream, really! You take a selection process anywhere and you can feel that. Now, the good thing is that the machine is connected to the internet so it has access to lots of data. But, does that mean that the machine “knows”? Can the machine actually understand what it’s reading? I don’t think so.

The task given is not well defined, and too generic too. Lots of “sorta” and “whatever”. This happens also in real life, that’s one of the challenges of my profession. And don’t misinterpret me, I love it! It’s part of the beauty of my job to understand what people actually want.

Game concept and generated ideas

– Title: Eden Rising: Rebuild & Survive
– Genre: Hybrid-Casual City Builder with Survival Elements
– Setting: A post-apocalyptic world where players lead a group of survivors to rebuild society

Mechanics Overview
– Resource Management: Start by collecting basic resources (wood, stone, food) through simple taps. As the game progresses, automate resource collection and manage supply chains.
– Building and Upgrading: Construct homes, farms, workshops, and defenses. Upgrading buildings unlocks new functionalities and improves efficiency.
– Survivor Management: Assign survivors to roles based on their skills. Manage their well-being by providing shelter, food, and security.
– Dynamic Events: Random events like storms, raids, or resource booms that require quick decision-making and adaptation.
– Exploration Missions: Send teams to explore ruins, forests, or other settlements. These missions can yield rare resources, new survivors, or story developments.

Why This Game Will Succeed
– High Engagement Potential: The blend of simple mechanics with deep strategy caters to a broad audience, encouraging both casual and dedicated play.
– Market Gap: The unique combination of genres fills a niche with little direct competition, positioning the game for standout success.
– Scalability: Regular updates with new content, events, and features will keep the game fresh and retain players over time.
– Social Integration: Community-building features enhance player retention through social engagement.

I don’t know where to start, honestly. If you read this and think that is good I suggest you to start studying game design for real, because you have no idea of what you’re talking about.

Game design is NOT this, at all. Game design is engaging with an audience and a team, understanding a market, and making micro-choices according to a set of problems to solve. As a game designer, you are invited to lead a process of discovery:

  • You may want to give a role to your players and see what happens
  • You can explore a mechanic or a set of mechanics
  • You may want to discover a new World that you and your team are building
  • You maybe want to set up a relationship with your players, thing that happens in live games
  • You may want to deliver a concrete experience
Miyamoto built his whole career on the concept of miniature garden

A lead game designer is a game designer who leads a team of game designers. So a lead game designer would tackle this issue very differently from the words soup you can see above.

The moodboard

Not happy with the shameful result, our friend added 4 unrelated images:

The first image is a generic and boring village in the middle of a north-European wood. You can see there is no central structure, nothing to drive the eye of the players. Just a generic composition.

The second image is a supposed sequence of upgrades of a building. In this case, it looks like a barrack that becomes a wooden house. The evolution makes the roof change orientation and each evolution is unrelated to the ones before.

The third image is a set of character concepts. Explorers from a utopic past or a dystopic future, I don’t know. Some of them have arrows but no bow, and some others just a bow. There are cool details, probably stolen from some Artstation page. Nothing special, nothing that tells a story about the game itself.

What is most important, these visuals are NOT hybrid-casual style like stated in first place by the machine.

Last but not least, The Last of Us. What does this mean in the game? Can you “conquer” this zone or explore it? And why? It’s just to remind us of TLOU, right?

Conclusions

I am tired of this shit, frankly. Look how many reactions and comments this guy had! Look at the position he covers. And you will understand why the state of games, especially mobile games, is desperate.

I went to IndieDevDay24

Published by Paolo on 30/09/2024

I was at IndieDevDay24 and I came with good insight. Only one selfie, this is me waiting for a free piñacolada.


Game development is getting faster thanks to growing technologies.

I was impressed by an overview of Construct that a nice guy gave me. You can make a prototype on the web as quickly as editing a video for TikTok.

Instant games combined with live elements can bring audience to small creators.

Another thing, you will read everywhere that tens of thousands games are published every year on Steam and that the market is overcrowded.

But then you meet people doing games for Steam and you discover that a huge portion of them made their plans on the concept of “hope”. They hope to find a publisher, hope to finish the project, and hope it will work.

Hope is not a good strategy. I get the beauty of tackling game development as a liberal discipline, without servile constraint. And I love it, but you should make a discerned choice.

Speaking of which, the best emotion for me is to meet former students. They always call me loudly, they make me sit and play their games. They take notes on my comments. I love to teach, also if there is a bureaucratic wall around teaching that pushes me away from it. But I always try to come back in some way.

You can control your development time and your budget. You can design good games around that. Game design is removing things!

Tens of thousands publish every year on Steam, but few take care of these things.

There is still much space for indie games, market saturation is just a Chimera.

Sorry for not posting a couple of days

Published by Paolo on 20/09/2024

I am currently stuck in a limbo, and I will not come out easily from here. But I will do it.

I am preparing all the material needed to participate to the IndieDevDay24. I have hired a freelance artist to help me to the promotional material (one pager and pitch deck) of Pawtners Case.

For now, zero publishers accepted to meet me. I don’t know if this is normal because it’s the very first time I am willing to pitch to indie publishers. Anyway, the experience is worth to me. I am doing something different, at least.

For the rest, here’s the limbo: from one side I have companies that are offering very high positions to me, but then they disappear because I have never held that same position in another company. From the other side I am getting in touch with smaller realities that value well my work but they are offering too low compensation.

That’s a mess, and it’s hard to be patient with money running out of the bank every month. Wish me luck, if you read this.