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Tag: inspiration

I did it, I used the Story Mode today

Published by Paolo on 16/02/2022

I did it. I was tired of challenge. Still I wanted to play the game I am finishing first this 2022. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order.

I was playing at “Jedi Master” difficulty, but today I realized that my enemy was too strong for my stress of the moment. So that I switched to “Story Mode” (easy) and I defeated it. I did it.

Should a “Story Mode” be present in every game? That question makes no sense. Every game is in a different context.

How do I feel? Well, I feel a little like a cheater, still I had the chance to have a relaxed moment of gameplay in a 20 hours videogame. I do not have too much time to play, every stress I can save is a chance more to complete a game.

So, why not?

the moment I did it at 21:08. Shame on you (for judging me! xD)

Today is Valentine’s day, do you love your job?

Published by Paolo on 14/02/2022

“Love, love is a verb. Love is a doing word.”

Massive Attack, Teardrop

I love my job because in the first place I love to see myself immersed in creating playful experiences. I love this job because I love people who can then play the games I help design. I love this job because I love the people I can talk and work with every day.

I believe that love for a job, as well as love for other things, has a very important component linked to other people. Starting with ourselves.

Today for Valentine’s Day, the day of lovers here, I want to celebrate the love for the people who make my work great every day and therefore myself. I hope that my daily action will improve your life somehow.

I also share the love scene that perhaps contributed most to forming the will to become who I am today.

Learning from the history

Published by Paolo on 09/02/2022

I learn about game design more from the history of videogames than from podcasts, videos and experts speaking about the next big thing.

One has to really know how things were made back then.

Documents like this one are pure gold.

New aesthetics, dinamics and mechanics for blockchain games

Published by Paolo on 08/02/2022

The discourse regarding new technologies is very polarized. On the one hand, I see a lot of highly skilled people joining the financial gaming movement, games where you can make money. On the other hand, I see a hatred on the part of some people not only for the question itself, but also towards the creators.

For me, attacking those who are trying to create something new is definitely a mortal sin. The creator is a very often courageous person. She may be attracted to easy money, why not. But no one gives us the right to attack the creator. The creator is always the one who drives our industry forward.

In all the online noise, interesting qualities of the games that base a part of the service on blockchain are starting to be defined. Let’s see some of them using the false line of the MDA framework.

Aesthetics

The question of being an investor for me is the natural consequence of the worldwide trend of recent years of being able to leave comments on any detail of anything. If in the future people can also feel like investors in a product, it will be very interesting for a lot of people.

Feeling the real power of helping to start and grow a project is absolutely fun. These hundreds of Discord game channels dedicated to videogames that don’t yet exist prove it. Quite often they have more people talking every day than Discord channels of games that already exist.

The community plays a key role, in the future we will see in companies that these communities will be treated as a separate product.

Dynamics

Understanding how the heck a decentralized gaming system works is complicated. You have to read documents, get information, create virtual wallets and even play a little on the cryptocurrency exchange. This thing is fun!

In fact, the real game is right there. Very often we see games that are bad copies of f2p games. Nonetheless, people go there and play. Obviously the possibility of earning money, but also the fact of fiddling with all these new tools creates fun dynamics that bring people together.

The real game is the marketplace, it is that part that needs to be playfully enhanced.

Mechanics

All data flow is very transparent on these platforms. There is also a very interesting loss of anonymity. It will be possible to prevent some forms of abuse that are committed by malicious players, if they lose their anonymity.

Also very interesting are the mechanics that allow people to be rewarded for contributing to the community. As an f2p game designer that I am, I have heard several times advice from some hardcore gamers on how to improve the economy.

These games will allow players to create their own currencies in the future. This is absolutely sane and interesting from a gameplay standpoint.

Whenever we criticize something, someone can answer us and give us an opportunity to learn.
Every time we attack someone, however, we lose the opportunity to drink from a source.

Best companies know when it’s time to kill a game

Published by Paolo on 07/02/2022

It is dangerous to scale a game with questionable product/market fit because of The Traction Treadmill. Sometimes players show up in your game, and a small percentage of them retains.

You may think it’s time to scale. Just add players, instead of improving your game. And this works, for a time. You can grow fast just by doubling ad spend. Or tripling ad spend.

You have 10.000 players, you buy 20.000 more.

Then a large percentage of those players go away and never returns back. You have to replace the percentage you lost plus buy more players to grow. You lose a percentage of players fast, and you have the budget and funding to replace them- but then can’t keep grow on top!

You may want to optimize your campaigns and spend less per Player. But inevitably the problem will reappear at some point. Team’s morale will do down as options become scarce. Increase retention becomes too slow and complex.

That is why is extremely important to polish your product but also understand when you cannot fix it. Also the best companies in the world know when to kill projects.

Everyone should be involved in playtesting

Published by Paolo on 06/02/2022

Playtesting is a key activity during the development of a game. Any successful game runs playtests often to see how the people react to the game set in place.

Usually in games company, playtesting is an activity performed by designers and product manager. But when also the engineers spend 1 hour of their weeks speaking with the Players (or potential players) they can also understand a lot and improve things out a lot.

Playtesting should be weekly, it should stay in the calendar of everyone. Especially for games as a service.

A connection between art and game design

Published by Paolo on 04/02/2022

Aristotle thought that art should imitate life. Oscar Wilde thought that it is life that imitates art.

Is your game imitating life or are you offering inspiration for other people lives?

This is a critical choice that drives the whole creative direction.

If you want to create something inspiring you should think in something more complex and fascinating.

Fortnite with its shooter parody creates new trends among the people who played it. Think in all those silly dances.

If you want to create a metaphor of the reality, instead, you should really be able to capture the essence of what you want to represent.

Hypercasual games brings this last concept to the surrealism.

Are prizes good for young game designers?

Published by Paolo on 03/02/2022

My social networks are filled with celebrations and local prizes given to people at their first experience. Then I look for the game itself and sometimes I find a demo on itch.io. Some other a bad rated game on Steam.

I lived that. You feel like the new Hideo Kojima for a minute or two and then? Then the reality returns back and you have nothing really. Wouldn’t be better to work for a company learning from people better than you?

Some reality is hard, videogames are hard to make. But you should focus on making games and avoid feeding your ego the best you can if you want a bright future. A prize is a cake for the ego.

Local communities want to foster their local talent, I get it. But is give a small statue the right way of doing that? Should they expect for some kind of return in terms of visibility or actual game revenue first?

Often happens that there are people getting prizes and other making a good career and eventually earning money.

Is it really worth to get a prize?

Ideas have to settle

Published by Paolo on 02/02/2022

One of the things I need when I start a new project or when I work on a new feature, is the time of seeing ideas settling down.

Good ideas are goods after 2-3 days too. After a brainstorming is better to let the board rest a couple of days. Then you and your team will return back to it with a fresh mind and select the best ideas.

And then, again, you let the selection settle down.

It is not always possible, but I noticed that it is way better let ideas settle down. Sometimes you improve them. Some other time you see you enthusiasm as a team go down and reality force (similar to gravity force) do its job.

Clash of Clans: Brita the Villager

Published by Paolo on 31/01/2022

First I dissected the tutorial of Clash of Clans to get its anatomy.
Then I took some notes based on my personal experience.

The Villager is the first character that the Player of Clash of Clans meets opening the game for the first time. I see margins of improvements for this specific character. She helps the Players understand the game’s basics, but especially in the second part of the tutorial she is too formal. The Players will learn the core loop of the game with the help of standard messages. My goal is to improve the narrative function of this character making her more memorable.

The Lens of Problem Statement

The main reference is taken from one of my favorite TV shows: Norsemen. Particularly, my intention is to use as a guide the character of Liv interpreted by Kristine Riis.

Find her description on this website

“Can Liv from the Norsemen become a character capable of engaging the newbies of Clash of Clans better than the Villager?”

Problem Statement

Resuming:

  • Target: Newbie Players of Clash of Clans
  • Challenge: transform Liv in the new Villager
  • Playtest: observe people that never played Clash of Clans react to the new tutorial and check heuristics

Ideation

I created a brainstorm framework using chapter 6 of the book Game Writing – Narrative Skills for Videogames. Mr. Andrew S. Walsh writes an essay on game characters. The chapter invites game writers to reflect on the Gameplay Purpose VS Narrative Purpose of the character we create. 

Summary of brainstorming process with ideas already selected

The new Villager should onboard the Players, teach them the game’s basics and also reward them when they do good.

Narratively speaking, if I imagine Liv from the Norsemen having to do that: 

  1. I imagine pretty exaggerated reactions toward the success (she is capable of doing anything for her status). 
  2. I imagine her getting a little bit in the way of the Players, in order to achieve what she wants. 
  3. She may also reveal secrets, things she believes she only knows. 

Thinking in adjectives, Liv is generally grumpy (except when she wants something). Grumpy can be funny for the Players, let’s keep this adjective for her personality.

Regarding traits, my brainstorm was focused in finding the right governing, conflicting and secondary traits. After reflecting, double checking the pre-existing tutorial dialogues, I believe that the fact that Liv is a gold digger can be a good reference as a conflicting trait. So I decided that the governing one should be something more like Prudent: showing care and thought for the future. I think that it is a positive trait, since this character will also show the future of the game to the Players, in the revised tutorial. In order to further mitigate the “gold digger” trait, using the same book as reference I opted for “honorable” as a secondary trait.

Final Touches

I notice that the last drawing of the villager has a collar. So I looked for Viking professions and I found the trader and the jewelry maker pretty interesting for my purpose.

Finally, a good character has a name. I looked for Viking names and their meaning and I found an interesting link. The name Brita means ‘dignified’ or ‘noble’, which fits the personality of the new Villager!

What’s next?

Time to revise the dialogues of the tutorial and see if Brita may work the way I am thinking of her.