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Tag: inspiration

When game designers deal with artists

Published by Paolo on 05/12/2021

I have dealt with game artists everyday for many years. My background is computer science, that is why I find it challenging to understand them well. Someone said to me once “you will never understand artists” laughing at my face.

Something I know, anyways. All the people, all the time, give their opinions to the artist. I like it, why blue? Mmm I don’t know. Honestly? I would put that on the right.

You have to be efficient in talking to them. The best way I know? Describe to them what you are seeing. Use your honest and sincere words and wait for their comment on your description.

If something does not convince you, ask them questions. You are a game designer, but the game design is something the whole team will do. Also them. Do not lose the opportunity to use their brains. Facilitate the act of game design and respect their ego. Which, in some cases, can be very high.

Try this when you get stuck

Published by Paolo on 04/12/2021

When you get stuck in a creative process share your concerns as soon as possible. I advise you to do it with conviction. People react quite badly to extreme things. Propose a sudden extreme draft to your team so that their brains are activated!

I usually get stuck on the writing side. Finding a tone for a new character or for a specific moment. Finding the right words is always very complicated to me. I need time that often I don’t have.

Define a tone according with the context and circunstances. Write down lines as quickly as possible in that tone. Try to do it in an extreme way. Share it immediately with the team. If you have a week to prepare a dialogue (that never happens), imagine that you have one hour. 

Pass your draft in slack or whatever with conviction: “I’m thinking something like this”. People will start to help you with ideas and concepts, believe me. They cannot accept that extreme thing. That is why you may want to be it: to activate their brain defenses!

With this technique you will get 3-5 potential tones and various references that I can explore! The team contributed to that and they will also feel more involved with the whole thing.

I hope this trick is useful to you!

Do this after a game jam

Published by Paolo on 03/12/2021

The most common suggestion I read when people ask “how to work as a game designer?” is: participate in game jams.

In my humble opinion, this suggestion is incomplete. In fact, game jams are a cool event where you are forced to make decisions quickly and to join the ideas of all the team in something you really want to show at the end. The time you have usually is very low, so that you feel you are really pushing your boundaries. As experience is great and you can also make meaningful connections.

BUT, game jams lack a very important element for game designers: Players. The result of your hard work will probably be shared with other game developers and also the final result is often voted by devs. Nothing to do with the real struggle of game design: understanding behaviors and needs of the people that are willing to play your game.

Once your game jam weekend is over, maybe you achieved great results. End a complete experience is a great result, arriving in the first 10 positions is. The first 3 is a great result. The 1st position is awesome! And then what?

Then often you speak with your colleagues, you polish what you did and you just publish it.

Try, instead, let common people play your game. Start with your family, especially the kids if you are lucky to have them around. Look for proof that your game doesn’t work! Do not look to confirm that you had a great idea. You have to put your concept in crisis if you want to really pass to the next step: publish something meaningful.

Is designing games making art?

Published by Paolo on 01/12/2021

We hear questions like this a lot. Are games a form of art? When we create games, do we produce art?

Internet is full of discussions among great minds (and also not so great) around those questions.

Often the discourse moves to “ok, what is art?” or “right, what is a game?”.

Lately I am taking an art course: Long pose drawing and painting. It was really a discovery to see how many things game design shares with art.

Art may have a strict process to follow. You can follow a specific method to create art pieces. You can also decide to just follow your movements and what your mind says. The same exact thing happens with game design. When you work for a company, probably you may want to follow a method and adapt it to the company needs. When we are alone with our mind, instead, we can just sketch. Sometimes the magic happens. Just as in art.

Art is based on the aesthetics. Aesthetics mean the study of the essence of things. When I am drawing a person standing in front of me, I am not really drawing straight. The drawing comes out from the shadows I am able to synthetize with my charcoals. I am constantly trying to find the essence to explain what I am seeing. Same exact thing with game design. You and your team want to deliver an experience, so that the whole game design process is about finding the essence of that experience. Look at the classic MDA framework, where researchers found 8 kind of aesthetics. Someone should continue that research, actually. It was made when videogames were still artifacts. Today games are entertainment, not artifacts anymore.

Art presents a challenge to the viewer. The artists tried to explain the aesthetics of what they were seeing or thinking. The final result is presented to the World and offers always an interpretation challenge. Instead of visual art, think in music. The first musical instrument opens the melody, then maybe a drum puts the rhythm in. Then other instruments join to create the harmony. According to the listener, the music can be noisy or exciting. The music can be very complicated when the listener is not prepared. The same exact thing happens with game design, especially with UX and Level Design. The final game has a complexity which is in general based on audience tastes. Or, at least, I would prefer to be so.

We are all game designers

Published by Paolo on 26/11/2021

There are four main specializations in game design: UX Design, Narrative Design, System Design and Level Design.

Each specialization is part of the game design, which in turn is part of the design. A Narrative Designer is a game designer; is a designer. A System Designer is a designer. And so on.

The difference is in the questions that each specialization asks itself.

UX Designer: What can you do in the game? What do we care that players do? What are the business objectives? Do the business goals support those of the players? Who are our players? How are they using the game right now?

System Designer: How can the gaming experience be broken down? What are the necessary resources for the experience and how do they interact with each other? Where do we want scarcity and where do we want abundance?

Narrative Designer: Who? Where? Why? What? When? How?

Level Designer: What are the metrics? What mechanics do I have? What kind of spaces appear in the game’s magic circle? How long should the level last? With what resources does the player arrive? What resources does the player end up with?

Job offers are always more specialized. In my humble opinion, any extra specialization is a specialization of these four described above.

A combat designer? He is a system designer specializing in combat systems.
A content designer? He is a somewhat UX oriented narrative designer
A game balancer? He is a level designer specializing in balancing numbers, therefore a bit oriented towards system design.

We are all game designers, and all game designers are designers!

My name is Paolo

Published by Paolo on 22/11/2021

My name is Paolo and I am a game designer. I live in Barcelona, ​​Spain.

I work as an employee for a company called Tangelo Games, where I am a senior game designer.

I also have a consulting business for small clients, I manage some projects and offer help on creative solutions.

Since the work has been growing a lot in recent months, I decided to start a blog to express myself. My insights, privileged moments of awareness.


I hope you can find some inspiration to make great games in these pages!

Feel free to contact me I am a pretty open person!