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Tag: design

Designing for the Great Conjunction

Published by Paolo on 06/11/2025

Chris Zukowski, the industry analyst behind How To Market A Game, recently published an optimistic take: indie development is in a “Great Conjunction.”

He argues that a perfect storm is brewing: genres that are “easier to make” are also the genres that Steam players are desperately hungry for. This creates a low-risk, high-upside scenario for small teams to release rapid, viral hits like Friend-slop co-op games or Horror-Casino hybrids.

But simply chasing the “Friend-slop” or “Idle Game” trend is the lazy route. A true designer knows that success is not just about the genre, but the transferability of insight, meaning the system behind the mechanics.

If you are going to take advantage of this “Great Conjunction,” you need to know why these genres are working. You need to identify the core human instincts they are satisfying.

The Designer’s Roadmap: Mapping the Great Conjunction

In my experience, the foundation of every successful game is not the graphic style or the business model, but its ability to satisfy a primal human need.

Here is a practical framework, using Instinct Mapping (the concept of identifying the core Survival and Social instincts a game satisfies) to deconstruct the “Great Conjunction” genres. I am writing a book on this topic, so stay tuned:

Great Conjunction Genre (Zukowski)My Instinct Mapping ProxyPrimary Instincts (The “Why”)The Design Hook (The “How”)
Idle / Incremental GamesIdle GameAcquisition, Rest, BuildingThe player gets a continuous drip-feed of Acquisition (loot/progress) with minimal effort, justifying the Rest (downtime) and satisfying the need to passively Build a growing system.
Friend-slop Co-op (e.g., Lethal Company)Party GameGregariousness, Play, LaughterThe core loop is dedicated entirely to Gregariousness (social connection) and unconstrained Play, with the physics or design chaos used to trigger Laughter. Human interaction is the feature, not the polish.
Horror Meta-GenreHorrorEscape, Curiosity, RestThe challenge (Horror) is driven by the thrill of Escape and the pull of Curiosity (what’s around the next corner?). The ‘Rest’ is the temporary moment of safety (e.g., hiding, a brief safe zone). The Horror-Casino genre simply layers this instinct over Acquisition.
Autobattler / StrategyAutobattlerAssertiveness, Combat, PlayThe player’s success relies on Assertiveness (making the strategic decision) and Combat (the resulting conflict), packaged as a simple, repeatable loop of Play that allows for quick experimentation.

The Formula: Market + Instinct

The success of these rapidly developed indie games proves that players will overlook polish and graphics if the core design loop is tight, fun, and deep.

Your task as a designer is two-fold:

  1. Analyze the Market (The ‘What’): Identify the “hot quadrant” in the Game Business Matrix (Session Time $\times$ Player Interaction) where there’s a confluence of hunger and low cost (like those mentioned by Zukowski).
  2. Design the Instinct (The ‘Why’): Deconstruct what primal need that market is tapping into, and use the instincts (like Acquisition or Gregariousness) to structure your Opening (hook), Core loop, and Closing (satisfaction).

Don’t be a martyr for a years-long art project when the market is begging for focused, fun systems built quickly. Use the Great Conjunction, but design with a framework. That’s how you turn a trend into a sustainable victory.

Beyond your resume

Published by Paolo on 05/11/2025

Companies and investors look at the past experience of a candidate or an entrepreneur to determine if the person is right for the position or investment. This makes sense because you want to reduce risks as much as you can. Having people with concrete experience on something working on that something gives at least the feeling that they can do it well.

In the case of game design, this translates to genres and platforms. Companies look for economy designers who have worked on idle RPGs, for instance. Investors will probably fund ex-Riot people to make a new MOBA game for the US market.

But if you are a real game designer, you can work on different genres. I mean, if you know the basics of problem identification, audience, deconstructing mechanics, and so on, you can work on a platform game for PS5 even if you previously worked on casual match-3 games for mobile. We are not finding the cure for cancer, right?

In most cases, the only way of proving this capacity is alone or in a game jam. It’s hard to be hired by a company in a completely different environment. But the reality is that there are fashions, and maybe that popular genre in your area becomes uninvested, and you have to reinvent yourself.

How to do that? I prefer to start by applying my past experiences to the new challenges. The capacity to adapt insight and look at everything as a system is key. And it is a talent, so you need to cultivate it. I hold a design diary and often take notes of these cross-references and analogies.

The art of discovery

Published by Paolo on 04/11/2025

What is art? To me, art is everything that makes me discover something new. Video games are about fun, and fun is basically discovery. It’s the discovery of some skill we have, the discovery of how a certain story will end. It’s the discovery of a new technology, or maybe the discovery of a new type of appearance or visual style.

It’s clear that video games are pure art under this optic. This includes even games made purely for cash, like gambling games or aggressive free-to-play games. We discover something about ourselves in any case. Of course, that “something” can be bad as well.

New social-gambling game idea

Published by Paolo on 03/11/2025

Watch this video and, if you like it as much as I do, listen to this idea.

Here are the rules:

  • The board is a circle.
  • There are 4 balls of different colors: green, blue, red, and yellow.
  • Balls start with a random speed in a random direction.
  • Every time they hit the circular border, they create a connection.
  • Every time they hit the connection of another ball, they take possession of that connection.
  • When a ball has no connections, it disappears from the board.

Let’s talk about the real game:

The Player Input (The Bet)

Imagine being able to bet on a color. Each bet directly contributes to the strength of the ball. The more you bet on a color, the more you influence its force or mass, the more likely it is to smash an opponent’s connection.

The Reward (The Jackpot)

The final prize will be proportional to the number of links the final remaining ball possesses. This proportion can be explored because there are clear opportunities for jackpots: imagine a scenario where a single color quickly dominates and consumes the entire board’s connection count.

What do we have here?

We just designed a new kind of gambling game. It combines:

  1. Observable Physics: It feels “fair” because you can see the action.
  2. Social Conviction: You are betting on belief, not just chance.
  3. Variable Reward: The proportional reward and jackpots drive engagement.
  4. Minimum Interaction: And players can continue betting as long as the game goes.

We used colors, movement, and the irresistible draw of a collective bet.

Game design for modern pyramids

Published by Paolo on 01/11/2025

“The hardest part of making games used to be getting them to work. Now it’s getting anyone to notice.”

I read this interesting post on the current state of the games industry. I spoke about the rock philosophy a while ago, so the post resonated with me. It’s right, the current problem also of game design is getting attention. The technical side of games is easier today thanks to the many tools we have to choose from.

How can you help as a game designer with the attention? The important here is the “invitation to play”. Your art style, the genre (or genres) you are willing to tackle, how do you show them that your game is different (make a trailer before of the game, said Derek Liu years ago), the memorable moments, the goals evidence, the feedback impact… you have lots of tools to use! It’s not just a marketing thing, modern rock teams should avoid silos and think horizontally: a game design choice is a marketing opportunity. Market research drives game design. And so on.

Sound effects are art

Published by Paolo on 31/10/2025

Music and sound effects are responsible for setting the emotions and tone of a game. Specifically, sound effects are a great tool, from a game design perspective, to direct the player’s attention when they are concentrated on other things. Sounds are fundamentally about feelings; they act straight into our limbic system, much like smells, for example.

When I have to think about sounds for a game, I record a whole session (or set of sessions) in video form. Then I grab competitors and study where they put sound FXs, and I try to understand WHY. In general, there are clear patterns:

  • Every time the player interacts with UI and buttons, there is a sound.
  • Every time a player skill is used, there is a sound.
  • Every time an item is used, there is a sound.
  • Every time there are special statuses, there is a sound.

Usually, sounds are implemented through event systems, so I try to predict them or talk with programmers to understand the underlying architecture. Then, I add the event triggers to my sound specifications.

Sounds depend a lot on the art direction too, so I make sure to talk with artists to assure we are aligned on the tone. It’s easy to understand if you should use cartoony or realistic sounds, for instance, but the tone (serious, funny, epic, impactful, etc.) really makes the difference, also in terms of how players will perceive the art per se.

Imagine a rounded and gummy button, and then you add an explosive sound when the player taps on it. The feeling of that material will change completely.

Discipline in the attention economy

Published by Paolo on 30/10/2025

Microsoft’s CEO said that Xbox is competing with TikTok, not just with PlayStation and Switch. He is the CEO of one of the top companies in the world, so I assume he is correct in his observation.

Well, if I’m honest, that worries me. To me, video games are a powerful medium that can improve our chances of survival. They are entertainment, of course, but an important form. One of the best things they can teach us is how to wait for a reward. This might seem minimal, but it’s absolutely useful for our well-being in life. Discipline and self-control are probably more important than intelligence in this sense.

TikTok, however, is designed for the opposite: it’s an infinite feed of passive content to consume, like a digestive tract. We absorb whatever comes our way, passively. TikTok is entertainment because it’s capable of quickly satisfying our instincts. And it’s true that, in the attention economy, it is in direct competition with a gaming console.

But if top industry players decide to fight that battle, I’m afraid that the very purpose of video games will get diluted into videos with minimal interaction. That is a problem, and an opportunity for the brave.

Ways to lose the game

Published by Paolo on 29/10/2025

Since 2016 I worked as a freelancer for many realities. This fact gave me certain insight on the typical mistakes leaders, product managers, and producers, do when they decide on the strategy to follow.

1️⃣ Starting with the Metrics

“Data” is just an unformed, meaningless glob until you apply a creative hypothesis to it. You need to start with the “why” and the “what if,” not the number on the spreadsheet or the curve you saw on Sensor Tower. Stop treating data as a god; treat it as a confusing cloud of information. Your goal is to get your references at the start, not make decisions on them. Decisions have to be made on what makes you (you, intended as a team) special.

2️⃣ Seeking Consensus

Good strategy is always contrarian. If everyone in the room agrees that your next game should be “Fortnite, but with dragons,” be terrified. Consensus, by definition, is average. Have you read the Age of Average? This is how it starts. If everybody is doing something in the market, that something is not disruptive anymore. Follow others is not a good strategy, it can be a tactic for a while. But your goal as a leader is to create the right strategy to disrupt.

3️⃣ Providing a Goal, Not a Strategy

Many “strategies” are actually goals dressed up in fancy slides. “We need to hit X million MAU.” Okay, but how? That’s a target, not a strategy. KPIs are indicators used to understand many things; among them, you can also understand if you reached a specific goal of course. But the goal has to be something like “invent a new genre”, or “make the most downloaded free puzzle game on Steam”. Something achievable, of course, but ambitious.

4️⃣ Running a Strategy Workshop

You can’t expect creative strategy on a timetable, or to arise from a formula. Strategy emerges messily over time. In the shower, in the gaps between the work (remember my “eureka” moment?). It doesn’t come from a neat stack of Post-Its. I have been in plenty ultra long workshops where in the end nothing happened.

5️⃣ Putting Strategy in the Calendar

Strategy isn’t a “task” that you “schedule,” like an art review. It occurs in the unprompted, serendipitous moments that surprise you. It’s always on, somehow. It emerges from nuances, suddenly. Do the work, think as a strategist and it will come. And if not, you already have a strategy: shut down the project and stop losing money.

6️⃣ Looking for Proof

All strategy is a punt. A gamble. You can get some validation from soft-launch metrics, sure. But you’ll never be certain. The only proof you’ll find is by trying it. Stop looking for certainty; the real world is a chaos engine. These podcasts that only speak bad about the others? These “pundits” are not really in the game, they are judging from the outside many times. Again, do your work, step by step, every single day.

7️⃣ Making it Many Things, Not One Thing

Strategy is not a “list of stuff” (e.g., “We will integrate blockchain, launch F2P, and focus on narrative”). Strategy is one thing: the core fantasy, the single unique hook. Then organize and define the list of stuff you’re going to do. If you can’t point to that one thing, it doesn’t exist. Players want something important, not stuff to play.

8️⃣ Mistaking Boring for Intelligent

Man, with all those charts, all that jargon, and all that complexity, this strategy MUST be good! Ha, no. This isn’t a research paper for a thesis committee. It needs to be exciting—it needs to motivate the team, or it will never make a great game. Boring is fatal. And the team is probably composed by people really passionate about games.

9️⃣ Asking the Customer

Yes, of course, you must speak to the Player. But this doesn’t mean you should ask them what you should build and then build it. If it was that easy, every studio would be printing money. Their job is to tell you what they hate and what they love of what you are doing; your job is to build what they didn’t know they needed. It’s hard, very hard, but that’s the only way I know.

🔟 Hiding Your Opinions

You are not objective. Your strategy isn’t objective. And it shouldn’t be! Strategy is about making a choice. A subjective, opinionated bet. Those who embrace the fact that it’s all opinions and commit to them are the ones who master it.

We are based on deadlines

Published by Paolo on 26/10/2025

The games industry is a deadline-based industry. That’s why you often see terrible practices like crunch. Crunch is typically concentrated in the last few weeks of a project, and it is fundamentally a management failure. Systemic crunch makes things unsustainable. People will become stressed, burn out, and quit—and this could eventually damage the entire industry.

Great games are made by teams that strive for success. If you are both ambitious and smart, you can design a game to be sustainable. But you must be acutely aware of deadlines and accept that our sector is based on them, because you can’t really control everything else.

Always Optimize Tools

Published by Tj'ièn Twijnstra on 25/10/2025

I’ve been working in the game’s industry for about 2 decades now and I’ve come to learn is that one of the best things a team can do is to optimize their tools. Any tool that helps facilitate the game development process is worth optimizing, but most specifically the tools that create the content that is directly consumed by the players.

Many readers of this blog will know from experience that second-to-second gameplay, levels, missions, challenges, cut-scenes, narrative intersection bits, music, sound effects, controls and everything else the player experiences in your game will become better with iteration. The more designers go through the process of playing and improving the better the experience becomes. Nintendo famously calls this process “finding the fun”, and that’s exactly that. Fun needs to be discovered in the game you’re creating.

Games are almost exclusively created in a high stress, pressure cooker environment and in many studios there is hardly any room to play. But playing your own game while questioning what will make it better, what will make it more fun, how to surprise the player is vital. After you made some adjustments, some tweaks or some experiments it vital to play again and again. But in a pressure cooker environment, nobody has time for that, I hear you say

That’s why you need great tools! Great tools reduce effort and create time within your project that you wouldn’t have without them. Great tools afford more iterations and inevitably make a game more fun.

There’s another superpower that I can attribute to tools and that is that they motivate! Nothing kills the motivation of an intelligent person more than repeating boring work, repeating hard to imagine setups and long waiting times between adjustments and experiencing the adjustments in the game environment. The faster the designers can round trip between their adjustments and the experience, the more motivated the designer will be to do the experimentation and playing required to actually “find the fun”.