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Tag: inspiration

Fast & Slow

Published by Tj'ièn Twijnstra on 22/11/2025

Previous post I talked about being part of a high performance team and how we’re able to become so effective in term of our output. This post is about a personal observation in how I’m able to work in such an environment and keep up with the team.

I’ve noticed that my contribution is not consistent. It is fast one day and slow the other day. Ow how I used to hate the fact that I’m slow on certain days, or sometimes even extended periods of time, while seeing the fast periods as normal. But I’ve come to understand that these slower days have a purpose.

Sometimes, being slow means that you need to recover and reenergize from a previous high performance day.

At other times the slower days means that for that particular moment I should spend my time working on something else. When it comes to new ideas and design solutions they sometimes it just require me to be in a particular mood, a particular zone in order for ideas and solutions to come naturally and fast.

Sometimes, being slow means I do not have enough input, or just not spend enough time on finding the solution. Sometimes, it means that I just need to stare longer at the particular problem I want to solve.

In the end, I came to realize that being able to be fast and productive I have to accept that being slow at other times is just part of the process and one does not exist without the other. I’m becoming more mindful of my energy, my own flow, my own limitations and my own process. I’m more accepting of myself.

Why I teach

Published by Paolo on 20/11/2025

This week I started teaching a new bootcamp on video game design and conceptualization. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to teach, even though it’s not a well-paying job. My method requires a lot of effort, and frankly, I would like better financial recognition for that effort.

I believe in the games education, though I must say there are many courses out there that aren’t worth the investment, they just slow students down and drain their wallets.

I’ve found a surprising number of people who study not to learn, but simply to have something to do, too. They aren’t genuinely interested in the subject; they are just there to fill their time.

My mission is always to leave a lasting mark on my students, and to inspire even the most bored ones. To me, game design is a serious craft. I love it with all my soul, and I want to spread its beauty.

Why a 3-Week Prototype Can Beat a 5-Year AAA Project

Published by Paolo on 19/11/2025

Seth Godin delivered an interesting message this week: there is often no correlation between effort and value.

We, in the games industry, romanticize the “crunch” and value the difficulty of creation: “This game took us five years eating pizza; therefore, it is valuable.”. This happens especially in the indie space, I have to say.

But as Godin argues, software isn’t worth more just because it was hand-coded. The player doesn’t pay for the eight years of blood, sweat, and tears; they pay for something entertaining.

Selling Effort, Not Entertainment

Game developers often sell their effort (months spent developing, solving a massive technical debt, or writing a thousand pages of lore) rather than their utility (the value the player extracts).

A game’s success is not determined by its complexity or its budget. It is determined by how efficiently and deeply it connects with people making them let discover new things. You are selling flow, mastery, social connection (Gregariousness), or the thrill of acquisition. More in general, instincts fulfillment.

That’s why a three-week prototype that perfectly fulfills the instinct of Acquisition with a simple, addictive loop will generate more value than a five-year AAA project with complex mechanics that confuse or exhaust the player. The player will pay more for the thing that is useful (solves their boredom, satisfies their urge to collect) than the thing that was difficult to make.

The Value Equation: Effort vs. Impact

The moment you shift your focus from effort to impact, your design choices become ruthlessly efficient.

The Wrong Metric (Effort)The Right Metric (Value/Utility)
“We spent 3 months developing this tool.”“This tool reduced iteration time by 50%.”
“This feature required 10 artists and a custom rendering pipeline.”“This feature drove 30% higher D7 Retention because it amplified the core [Instinct].”
“The lore is 500 pages thick and highly integrated.”“The player’s curiosity is satisfied in the first 5 minutes of play, leading to high Session Length.”

Stop selling the struggle. Start focusing on what matters.

Focus on Utility

To apply the Godin Principle to your work, make this shift today:

  1. Define the Utility: For every feature you build, ask, “What is the specific utility this gives the player?” (e.g., “The utility of this new combat loop is the feeling of Assertiveness and mastery, which we will measure via win rate and feature usage.”)
  2. Scope, scope, scope: Ruthlessly eliminate any work that increases effort but does not commensurately increase utility.
  3. Charge for the Use, Not the Cost: When presenting your work to publishers or stakeholders, never lead with the cost of creation. Lead with the projected impact on player behavior (according to the cultural moments and trends, connecting with the instincts) and business health (Metric Improvement).

Affording High Performance

Published by Tj'ièn Twijnstra on 18/11/2025

I’ve been working in a high performance environment for many years now. I’m amazed about the output of our small team (6 FTE+1 Free Lancer). To give you an example, we’re currently working on a casual puzzle game with a huge focus on narrative and world building. We’re approaching our 2 week release cadence which includes six to seven new fully animated story chapters and 90+ new levels, while releasing big new features every 4 weeks, with small and big tweaks, SDK updates, data gathering and general improvements, bug fixes and localization in many languages, while making sure we keep analyzing incoming data.

The casual puzzle space in which we’re operating is very competitive with thousands of entries a year with only a handful being able to succeed and enter the top 100. To get there, large teams (50-500 members) and large investments (1M-5M) are our competitors. And even in those teams, pressure to succeed is high and nothing but top performance is expected.

I’ve been thinking how we as a team make sure we are coping with this pressure. I believe we each individually have found a way to cope and collectively as a team found a way to facilitate and support each other. A large contributing factor for our small team is working from home. Not only does it cut out commute every day, saving a lot of time for each member. Working from home also afforded the environment where flexibility can occur. This flexibility in terms of working hours for instance is where some of our team members thrive.

We roughly work between 9-5 with strict attention rules around meetings. At least half of our team enjoys the ability to work during the quiet evenings, or pursuit a particular thought in the night. Others are able to schedule kids pick-up or going to the gym. And all of us enjoy the ability to let life happen and attend any important activity during working hours. Our team treats work as the second most important thing, next to our life outside of work. We cover for each other when someone is ill or experiences life changing events, we plan our schedules and priorities around vacations and time off, we accommodate members traveling the world and working from different time zone and generally we all help each other make it work.

But I think all of this would not be possible without a shared goal, without a shared ambition, without our internal drive to want to succeed. This focus enables us to do all of the above and I’m sure will drive us towards success.

The Strategy Fork

Published by Paolo on 17/11/2025

Performance Marketing expert Matej Lancaric issued a strong “WAKE UP call” to Supercell, critiquing their slow pace, their seemingly “random” new projects (like the “BOAT game”), and their failure to launch a hit in years.

Matej’s point: Why isn’t Supercell making a strategy game? Look at Century Games and Rivergame—they are launching hits, leveraging years of development and templatization.

Matej and his colleague Jakub Remiar are fundamentally right about the market reality: Supercell is competing in the same giant mass market as these Chinese juggernauts. However, the strategy Supercell needs to adopt is a matter of competitive advantage, not market segment.

Competing on the Wrong Metric

Jakub points out that the Chinese giants are masters of scaling and aggressive UA. They specialize in perfecting proven formulas, backed by efficient labor and rapid execution.

The mistake for Supercell would be to adopt this same strategy. Why? Because on the field of quantity, templatization, and low-cost labor, it is a lost battle; a race to the bottom that Supercell cannot win without sacrificing its corporate culture and cost structure.

Quality as Novelty

The argument that “quality will save them” is often seen as a defense mechanism, but quality here does not mean polish on a clone. Quality, in the Supercell context, may mean novelty and emergent gameplay.

Supercell’s strength has always been finding new formulas within a strong social/multiplayer framework. If they discover the right key, a system that generates unpredictable, repeatable fun, they create a lasting intellectual property that is inherently difficult to copy. This is true innovation, and it’s their only path to sustainable, high-margin success.

They must either focus on their core IPs (more Clash Royale and Clash of Clans) or they must find a way to put out content faster while still prioritizing the discovery and novelty that defines their brand.

Choose Your Competitive Strategy

The great divide in mass-market mobile design is no longer just between Indie and AAA; it’s between The Template Master and The Emergence Hunter.

  1. If You Choose Templatization (The Century Games Path): Your primary focus must be UA efficiency and Monetization Optimization. Rigorously deconstruct the core loop of existing hits (Last War) and focus your design energy on maximizing retention and revenue curves within that proven framework.
  2. If You Choose Emergence: Focus 90% of your time on building a ruleset that generates an unexpected and delightful player experience. If you can’t discover the fun cheaply, put the project on pause.
  3. Know Your Runway: Innovation is expensive; execution is faster. Your choice of strategy must align with your budget reality.

Offline networking

Published by Paolo on 14/11/2025

Here is one of the advices I give to people trying to break into the industry: make sure you constantly meet people in real life.

Instead of staying at home preparing and sending résumés to dozens of applications, it is far better to spend two hours per day outside, perhaps at the gym or at a local course on something entirely unrelated to games.

This approach offers three crucial advantages:

1. Maintain Human Energy

You keep your energy levels high because you are meeting and talking with real humans, not just staring at a screen. Waiting for a response to an online application is passive and draining; engaging with the world is active and vital.

2. Design for Reality

When you meet people outside your professional bubble, you gain invaluable insight into their context. I often use these interactions to think about game design.

For example, I currently attend a Catalan language course twice a week. The class is full of nurses and public service workers who are there primarily to get a better contract, not necessarily to master the language. I notice they are tired, easily bored, and don’t want too much complication. Their lives are already full, balancing jobs and children.

How would I entertain someone like them? Not with a complex console game, right? They need a simple casual game, but it has to load fast and get straight into the gameplay. This helps me stay in touch with reality. It forces me to design for the actual, busy human being, not the idealized, endless-time “gamer.”

3. Unlock Lateral Opportunities

You significantly increase your chance of finding job opportunities in lateral sectors by meeting people who have nothing to do with the virtual bubble you’ve created in your online networks.

I honestly have the feeling that nowadays, it is often easier to find a job by going to the gym than by applying on LinkedIn.

Kondō and Synesthesia

Published by Paolo on 13/11/2025

I recently read a fascinating article on Enhance, the Japanese developer behind Tetris Effect and Lumines: Arise. Their company vision is, simply put, a breath of fresh air:

“Experience is king, synesthesia is queen.”

Synesthesia—the involuntary experience generated by stimulating one sensory pathway—and the concept of Kondō (to move emotionally) are the core of their design process.

I have a huge weak spot for companies with this kind of vision. They are hard to execute, but they make so much sense to me.

We are currently living in the era of the product managerization of game design, where every creative decision is filtered through short-term metrics. These experience-first points of view come like a breath of fresh air, reminding us of the original purpose of our craft.

We are humans making entertainment. Focusing solely on automation and metric-driven tuning can make us forget the human spark that creates great things.

Intense design discussions, deep conceptualization, and messy prototyping—that’s what I strive for.

Enhance starts by making music and then breaking that music down into pieces to design the right stages (levels). It is an inverted process that prioritizes the sensory and emotional outcome. It’s so interesting; I wish I could be in that room to see it.

Structured work

Published by Paolo on 12/11/2025

The other day, I was reflecting on how I carved out my space in this industry.

Today, that reality has changed. I have other responsibilities, and I can no longer dedicate the same time to my work. My energy levels aren’t what they were 15 years ago. I worked extremely hard to secure the professional space and flexibility I have now.

I still engage with the medium: I play games, about two hours a week, and spend my evenings studying books and taking online courses. Lately, I’ve been particularly focused on the history of games.

Otherwise, I dedicate my energy to activities outside of the games industry. My passion successfully evolved into a job, and ultimately, a job is a job. With time, one has to work less not more.

Strategy as a creative act

Published by Paolo on 09/11/2025

Martin Walfisz, founder of Massive Entertainment and writer of the Connecting Pixels newsletter, recently hit a crucial nerve: Most game companies have ambition, but no clear strategy.

He talks about how, when he started out, his ambition was just “Explosions must look amazing!“. I see this same pattern everywhere. Most teams are building a feature-collage that relies on luck rather than design. The core problem is exactly what Walfisz identifies: we confuse motion with direction.

Ambition is Easy; Strategy is Courage

Ambition is a resume: “This game will be the best in the world, it will hit X million MAU, and it will have blockchain integration.” Ambition is free. Everyone has it.

Strategy, by contrast, is courage. Strategy is saying NO to the 99 good ideas so you can focus on the one great thing that your game, and only your game, is built to master.

Walfisz nails the essence: “Strategy is about deciding where to become great.”

  • Ambition asks: “What else can we add to appeal to everyone so we can make lots of money?”
  • Strategy asks: “What will we say no to, so we can double down on this one, unique feeling that respects the player’s time?”

Companies fear that choosing a lane will limit their creative freedom. But as Walfisz notes, it’s the opposite: boundaries don’t stifle creativity, they sharpen it.

Success Should Compound, Not Reset

When you build a game purely on ambition, its success is a lottery win. Walfisz points out the high cost of this: “Without a clear strategy, success doesn’t compound. It resets.”

If your strategy changes with every new project you are throwing away the expertise, the audience loyalty, and the pattern recognition you earned on the last project.

Success must become a pyramid built on the cumulative expertise of your team, not a single, isolated pillar of luck.

Look at the example of Landfall, which Walfisz cites: they were self-aware enough to realize their strength was “creating inventive, funny, highly shareable multiplayer experiences.” They focused on that one thing and restructured their studio around it. That is the definition of turning your culture into your strategy.

The 100 hours weeks

Published by Paolo on 08/11/2025

Michail Katkoff, founder of the brilliant Deconstructor of Fun podcast, recently made an uncomfortable but valid point about 996: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-days-a-week schedule.

He argues that when you’re early in your career, time is your only leverage. You don’t have the pattern recognition yet. The only way to earn that wisdom, like a surgeon or an investment banker, is through sheer, brutal volume. He says you must work hard before you can work smart.

I agree with him. Volume builds experience, and experience is the only thing that separates the dreamers from those who achieve mastery. But there’s a crucial distinction that separates self-sacrifice from exploitation.

Back in 2014, I was staring at a resume with two incomplete projects. I had lost my second job as a game designer. The industry was already demanding a commitment I hadn’t delivered. It was the turning point where I decided: I am going to stay in this industry, no matter the cost.

The cost was high. Achieving what I have now required working more than 100 hours a week. That is the hard truth of earning my space in this sector. I was fortunate to have a wonderful family who provided emotional and financial support; without them, it would have been impossible.

However, I have never accepted working more than eight hours a day for someone else. I have the luxury of being supported emotionally and economically from my family. The story would have been different otherwise.

This is the critical difference:

  • 996 for the Company is often a management failure masked as ambition. It’s an unsustainable practice where you burn your hours and your health to deliver someone else’s messy vision. It’s exploitation, pure and simple.
  • 100 Hours for Yourself is like hard training, instead. It means building your own systems, and your future.

When I was rebuilding my career, I was awake before dawn, spending my days working intensively and alone. I discovered Michail’s podcast, taking notes at night. I developed my own systems, my own frameworks, and my own unique pattern recognition.

I was working for my competence. I was working to build my own gate so that I could one day invite the market in, rather than begging for access. I couldn’t skip the hours and the volume. I am sure that it’s not the only way, but it’s the one that avoids most of the risks.