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There is a reading crisis

Published by Paolo on 23/04/2026

Lately I had the opportunity to review a couple of junior profiles, tests and interviews. The main issue I see is that many of them are becoming good at posing but they are also losing reading skills. I am worried, reading is so important to our profession.

During my day I review documents, chat with teammates, receive emails… all those activities involve reading. If I send to a potential candidate concrete instructions in plain English, I can admit interpretation of course. But, if I notice that you simply are ignoring instructions, I deduce that you didn’t read them.

I believe that one of my advantages as a professional are the 5 languages I speak fluently. That open to me lots of doors, because I can show reliability. I can prove with my messages that I am reading you. This is very basic and critical, you shouldn’t (as a designer) improve your technical skills with engines and tools; writing skills are also not more important than listening and reading. If you fail at that, I cannot approve your test.

If you are reading this, congrats, you are a reader. So maybe you are not part of the problem, but you can become part of the solution.

Three loops of Expedition 33

Published by Paolo on 22/04/2026

These days I am playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 pretty intensively (when other 40y-old-man-duties permit) these days. And I am also completing my bootcamp on videogames design and conceptualization. A class I gave was based on the 3 main loops of a game, and today I want to apply this knowledge to the 2025 GOTY.

Moment-to-moment (second-to-second)

This first loop is the central one, and it describes what the player does the most. You can say it describes the core dynamic, somehow. In case of Expedition33:

  • Action: Reactive turn-base combat
  • Challenge: groups of nevrons (enemies)
  • Reward: skill points, loot

WHY to repeat this loot: the game is divided in zones within an open world, the Player wants to complete the zone to unlock the next.

Core loop

The core loop is what the Player does the most during the game and gives meaning to the moment-to-moment loop. We can say that it considers the game session as a whole.

  • Action: Improve team stats
  • Challenge: complete zone sections
  • Reward: Advance with the story

WHY to repeat this loot: as any good JRPG it’s about the map! You want to play to unlock new venues and discover new places into the map.

Metagame loop

This loop describes what keeps the Players engaged, what makes them think “I need to return back into the game because I want to…”. Describes the features and mechanics that make me think into the game when I am not playing it. In the case of Expedition33:

  • Action: defeat bosses
  • Challenge: what will happen in the story?
  • Reward: plot twists and secrets discoveries

WHY to repeat this loot: the game is one great adventure story!

Design docs are about builds

Published by Paolo on 21/04/2026

A good way of thinking in GDD is to write down more details of what’s already in a build of some sort. With this I mean that if you design pages and pages of documentation regarding something not concrete, you are at risk of delivering something disconnected from reality.

Frame the problem, develop prototypes, align, and only after write down specs. That’s the way. You need less talk and more rock.

Give the best of your “more or less”

Published by Paolo on 14/04/2026

Many years ago, I lost my job ad a dream company and I decided to become the best game designer I could possibly be. Part of this is still within me, also if many things changed. One for all, I understood that teams/clients do not need, nor want, the best in class.

If you are reliable, honest, candid, and humble, generally speaking you will be better welcomed into games teams. I notice, especially among junior game designers, the will to be better than others or more knowledgeable. You can easily end up being perceived as superb, like that.

The best way to do your job is to give the best of your “more or less”, without delivering too much. You will lose less energies and your job will be recognized in any case.

Game designing focusing on positioning

Published by Paolo on 13/04/2026

In this age of slop and significative increment of information and leisure that people receive, positioning will be always more critical. One of the mistakes clients make is to think in positioning like something belonging to the game. But positioning it’s in players’ minds, the game is just a medium.

If you see the recent successes you will notice how they well extremely clear in terms of positioning in the minds of people:

  • Resident Evil Requiem: the original and unique horror game
  • Crimson Desert: the open world for fun, not story or stat-oriented players
  • Pixel Flow: high intensity puzzle game, where you should master the speed of the belt

Game design should help in this. In fact, it’s impossible solely using marketing to identify the right patterns to spot a new genre where you position yourself. People in their mind have like 2-3 slots maximum per category. So what’s your?

How to help your team position the game

Every single time a new game starts, you discuss around its genre. The game genre is a shared language among everybody involved. You can say “I want to make a racing game” as a developer, but you can also declare “I don’t like souls-like games” as a player. The genre is a good point of start.

In mobile f2p a common philosophy (because it’s a service business) it to think like “let’s take the players from this other mobile game”. So you are playing to steal somehow players from your competitors. I think it has advantages and disadvantages. The positive thing is that you will become laser focused in offering a bigger/better game that already existed, basing on your own resources and expertise. The disadvantage is that you may ignore the context of your competitor and end up competing with a giant that will crush you. I think in all the companies that are trying to make a Brawl Stars but better. Good luck with that!

Another philosophy is to create your own genre. You spot motivations, study the use cases, determine possible gaps, and innovate accordingly. This is my favorite method, but it holds risks. Because you need real taste and true engagement with the community. You need to really will to also put out fast things that may not work. It’s not for everybody. As a consultant, for instance, I cannot propose that to all my clients.

Conclusions

There are no silver bullets, that’s clear. Otherwise they would have been already taken by others. You need to be really aware of your situation (or the situation of your employer), to decide the best path. Nobody said it was easy, but one thing is important: game design in the AI era is required to care about the game position. Otherwise it will be meaningless.

Unreal Engine and Claude: advantages and headaches

Published by Paolo on 10/04/2026

I use Claude to make my prototypes within Unreal Engine. I don’t have anything embedded in the engine itself, I have the program installed and go back and forth to implement what the LLM suggests me.

It works pretty good, I have to say. On one end, it forces me to structure well the problem to solve; Claude helps with everything, from research to properly framing. I am faster in creating my own JIRA tasks and message my colleagues in a proper and clear way. Then, I use blueprint and I have to say that the results (from a prototype perspective) are pretty satisfying. Also, at the end of each chat I tell it to create a report for its knowledge base, so that in future should be better and better. At least, I hope so.

There is a challenge though: switching back and forth from Claude to the engine to implement what the LLM says is tiring and I end up my days with headache. It’s like having someone giving you suggestions constantly. I know there is a way to integrate everything into the engine, but it’s still experimental and I don’t want to risk on a shared code.

Inspiration and pragmatism

Published by Paolo on 09/04/2026

There is no secret formula to make a successful game, otherwise it would have been discovered already. It’s true, though, that success cases generally involve the right doses of inspiration and pragmatism.

The inspiration is needed to create something novel, something unique, something people wants. When I see games starting from charts and SensorTower reports I already know they are doomed. Games should start from something intimate to someone, and inspiring. It can be a childish fantasy, there is absolutely no need to be a tormented artist.

For instance, think in Royal Match the match-3 game from Turkey: they clearly started from the fantasy of breaking expensive dishes and pots in a royal mansion. Something that many of us had when children, visiting historical places with our family or schools. You need something like that, if you don’t have that do not throw away your money and find it first.

Pragmatism is needed because you need to be very aware of what the market actually wants. In this way, we would have avoided the $80B investment in “the Metaverse” by Meta, for instance. Lots of effort, creative energies involved to try to find the Grail, and for what? It is clear that people doesn’t want VR devices covering their faces. Also Activision/Blizzard, recently presenting a MOBA game for mobile phone with Overwatch IP, for Western audience. People here do not want to play MOBAs, why are you greenlighting something like that?

You need to be inspired by some fantasy and read the room before of starting a new expensive venture, things that I would like to see more here in Europe.

Good leaders and alignment

Published by Paolo on 20/01/2026

I am playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 these days and I am honestly amazed by the game. As a designer, what interests me the most is the tricks they have used to avoid too much costs on things like cutscenes, level design, and so on. No worries, I am not going to spoil anything.

To me, that game is a case of good leadership; you can feel that the people involved worked on something they truly believed in. You can feel the responsibility of each one of them, and also the clarity of the vision holders. This game is a small miracle, in a way.

In fact, imagine you are the leader of a new game, let’s say it’s your own idea. How do you know it’s the good one? You don’t, so it’s better to keep it clear to your team while you cultivate relationships with them. I define this as “alignment”, but this includes lots of things: empathy, problem solving, team involvement and so on.

A good leader is not a genius, it’s the one who leads the team towards success. And that means you should be very aware on where they are stepping into, and how. And if you don’t know what to do (pretty common situation), just say it and find a solution together.

When you start a new game

Published by Paolo on 19/01/2026

Today I started with a brand new client, the first client of the year, and I am happy. They onboarded me in the project and already gave me my first things to do.

When you start with a new game, the first thing you need to do is to engage with the target audience. There is nothing more important than that, actually the best games are designed to steal audience from other games. By being better, by removing frustrations and steps that aren’t fun. That’s what I did today, while starting taking notes and research.

The real challenge is that, also if games are designed for people, you need as a designer to convince stakeholders first. So, in a sense, it’s like you are designing for them not for the final audience. The secret is to include them in the overall audience, trying to transport them in an empathetic state where they can really feel the power of your verbs, and so on.

Put your game on top

Published by Paolo on 14/01/2026

I believe that games should speak from themselves and not for the technology that lies behind them.

Example: you make a great game, very successful, then you reveal how you did it. You can say everybody the technological advancements you did.

The other way around bothers me, it’s pure hype and generally speaking BS. Lately, with recent technologies such as AI, many founders are pushing out BS narratives because many investors are looking at the wrong side of things: how to make the development cheaper.

Game development is already very cheap, compared to the distribution and positioning. It’s a matter of selling and make money, more than spend less to produce. If you find the best tech in the World to replace people, many other teams will find it. That will not be a differentiator, in my humble opinion.

That’s why promoting like “we are a new AI-based studio” has the same importance as “we are a new C++-based studio”, and things like that. It’s not interesting at all. And this without considering the blatant fact that players, generally speaking, hate slop.

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