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Category: Opinions

Inspiration and steal

Published by Paolo on 12/09/2024

I come to your house and I like your sofa, a lot. Then I can decide:

  • I’ll go buy one from my own apartment
  • I’ll steal it!

The first choice is similar to taking inspiration. Inspiration is doing my thing inspired by yours. It is different from stealing, which is taking your thing to do mine.

The current trend, I am sure it will end soon, is to use tools that take other people’s job and give it to you mixed with other robbed stuff. Which is worse than stealing, at least when you steal you know the victim. Here we’re talking on another level, completely.

It’s inevitable, they say. Well, it’s not. I am against that. You should too.

The “deconstructor” is not fun anymore

Published by Paolo on 09/09/2024

It’s easy to talk about other projects when we are off the hook. Using strong words is also easy to gain traction. That’s what the whole business of podcasts is based on, in the end.

Enrico Fermi used to say that you should never read a book on inventions written by someone who has never invented anything.

The same is valid for what we decide to watch and listen, I guess.

On success and failure

Published by Paolo on 30/08/2024

I posted a question on my LinkedIn, and most of the answers misinterpreted it. It’s part of the deal of posting thoughts on something so noisy as a social network.

Someone claimed that you should work on something trend-setting when you work on a game. You shouldn’t follow trends. I do agree, but let’s be real: that rarely happens.

If you have the luxury to work on a videogame, you will probably work on a game that never ships. And if it ships, the probability that nobody will play it is high. And if people play it, they will very likely find it a boring or average game. And if instead, it is a good game, the odds are that it will be not great…

What’s the point of my rant? I prefer to focus on the beauty of my craft, intended to my progress within it, and the people I work with. Because making games to be rich and famous can be too much delusional for someone like me.

Always keep making games!

Published by Paolo on 02/08/2024

I have just read a terrible article appeared on the website TheGamer.com. It’s terrible because it uses some of the issues we have in the games industry to create victims and entitlement among its readers.

I do not agree with this kind of messages because they use problems as an excuse to do nothing. It’s true that greed oftentimes invades the corporations, it’s the older story in the World. But this doesn’t invalidate our ambitions to work in an industry and build great games for the people.

I believe that nowadays we live in a big crisis. Plus the hyper connection in which we are installed make the bad news spread faster. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that everything is bad, that executives are bad people and we should not work to be their slaves. It’s simply not the truth, though.

The truth is that we are struggling with different challenges that inevitably influence also the games industry. And for that reason we should never complain and work hard. Always be creating. Someone will work for someone else. Others will work for themselves. Others will offer job to people. That’s how it goes.

Always be creating great games!

LinkedIn and the real World

Published by Paolo on 18/04/2024

This week I went to a fantastic event organized by GameBCN, a local video games incubator. They invited Anchor Point, a new NetEase studio that is opening doors in Barcelona. There was a talk on worldbuilding. I love narrative design, and the speaker was clear and inspiring.

I had the opportunity to meet my friends of the local games industry and, for the first time since years, I have noticed a clear disconnection between the world of LinkedIn and the real one. When I enjoyed LinkedIn the most, before and during pandemic, we didn’t have many tools to automatically create posts. LinkedIn has clearly suffered the process of enshittification that all social media have at some point.

Before it wasn’t like that. Before it was cool to meet in person the same people I met on LinkedIn and see that there were little difference. LinkedIn was a tool to facilitate connections, not followers.

People were worried, many of them are looking for a job or a project to work on. I am calm, honestly. When everyone is in the same situation, why worry at all? I can only focus on build my road, as I have always done.

Maybe it’s time to abandon LinkedIn, which is sad I have a good follow. I will start to use it differently, looking more for connections and less for reactions. Let’s see if the things improves…

Have fun out there, if you’re reading this!

Let’s talk about generative AI

Published by Paolo on 16/04/2024

Imagine this business: you write which furniture you want for your flat. A green sofa for your lounge. A carpet for the studio. A small library for your dorm. You select the image of what you like and, for the price of transportation, you get the furniture.

Imagine you live in a country where robbing apartments is not a felony. And you know that this furniture was stolen from someone. How would you feel? You may think in the short term, you don’t have money. You don’t want to go to IKEA and fight the whole day with your spouse. Plus, it’s no felony so who cares?

Let’s switch context for a while…

We have lots of hints and suggestions redacted by millions of people over the years. Doctors who tried to solve some specific health condition. Programmers helping others to understand how backend development works.

Every time we need this information to solve some problem or face a challenge, we invest our time in finding the right answer. Meanwhile, we learn about other things we didn’t consider. In some cases, being faster can save lives. In other, don’t.

You are running for what?

Let’s take game development. The more you learn, the more things you spot you should consider, and the better your games will be. So, is it interesting to be faster?

Sometimes I am sure it is. Most of the time doesn’t.

LLM services offer a collage that makes you feel you can make art, or writing without having the talent needed to craft it. Like the stolen furniture example I made, they are a deliberate steal. They take things made by others and give them to you.

An interesting feature is that they provide a summary of hints too. You look for how to code something and they give you the code. You can be faster, but you need to understand what the code does. Also, the slow process of looking for solutions can make you discover things you didn’t consider. You have lost that if you surrender to LLMs.

In any case, they consume water and energy. They pay for that, but they pay a market price that I am afraid is not aware of the long-term damage.

Is it worth it? No, it isn’t.

It can be worth in a life-or-death situation. If a machine is better than the human eye to detect a condition, that case is good for LLMs.

Job in games royal rumble

Published by Paolo on 01/04/2024

My LinkedIn feed is filled with people that lost their jobs and are asking for new opportunities. I am talking about, mostly, experienced people. People who worked on games I only dream at night. People much more experienced than the average.

All of these people will send resumes. Eventually, they will be contacted for a first screening. Then they will receive a technical test. Maybe they will have another interview with the hiring manager. And then the team. Sometimes, the CEO herself.

The next months will be a royal rumble and the best talents will face the odds. I feel that is smarter to think laterally, and avoid the battle completely.

The future of mobile games

Published by Paolo on 04/03/2024

Mobile phones are nowadays in everyone’s hands. Kids are playing mostly from mobile devices (tablets are a big player, they are used also in many schools). Still, when I listen to people talking about the future of mobile games, the discussion is always going around two things:

  1. effective way of stealing ideas (playbooks)
  2. how to hack the marketing machine and get people to install your game more cheaply (performance marketing).

Well, this can be a tactic for the short term, sure. But for the long one, we need to look at things with a critical perspective: mobile games are always the freaking same. We don’t see nowadays the kind of innovation we saw when Supercell, Rovio, and King arrived on the scene. We are still repeating (and improving) formulas, that’s all. And it’s very boring. The most interesting novelties are coming from UGC experiences inside of Roblox, from one side. From the other, we see an exasperation of FOMO, dark patterns, and grinding for the addicts. We are not going too far like this.

We need more game design, more research, and more risk betting on something novel. Of course, the discourse around distribution is very important, but we are distributing always the same and listening to people who are not building interesting games. That’s a huge problem for our industry.

Generative AI will never improve profit margins for companies, AI design and art are just scams. We need to return to the basics, at the drawing board, thinking really in finding interesting formulas for people looking for fun.

Talent and Effort

Published by Paolo on 01/03/2024

Talent is something that you have or you don’t. You can cultivate it or ignore it. You can also never discover your talent in your whole life. You can work on something, play with something, or make something without any talent. If you do anything with talent, everyone notices it.

Effort is a choice. If you don’t put effort into something it’s because you don’t want to. The context can influence the effort you put into something. You can also measure the effort and its results.

Four scenarios:

  1. You have talent and you choose to put effort into something. Best case scenario, you are the Nick Cave of what you do. Or the Maradona. Whatever you prefer.
  2. You have a talent for something, but you don’t put effort into it. You will never discover what you’re capable of. You can live with that, no worries.
  3. You don’t have talent but you want to do something. You put the effort in. The majority of successful professionals are like that. The important thing is to be aware of that and stay humble. Also, respect (and steal) talents when you spot them, which is not always easy.
  4. You don’t have talent and you don’t want to put any effort. This is a significant portion of people living in this World, as far as I perceive. In the case of creativity (art, writing, design, engineering, science, faith) an impressive business is building for them: generative AI.

Unprofessionalism

Published by Paolo on 29/02/2024

The recent news in the games industry comes with a bunch of social actions that are unprofessional. In this post, I would like to point those out (without saying names, of course).

The first thing is using bad words and cursing while posting about something. It doesn’t make you feel smarter, also if your content can be more viral. Believe me.

The second behavior is to speak regarding something you don’t know. “Company X laid off YYYY people, shame on you!”. Why are you doing that? Do you really know why it happened? No, you don’t.

The third issue is with people sharing WIP projects on social. Finish things, and show what you are proud of. It’s OK to share that you are working on something if you are looking for help, but it’s not OK to show something incomplete hoping that someone will hire you.

Last thing, we all like humor and cynicism but if you are constantly posting just that you are not putting yourself in a good light. You can look smart and experienced at the start, but then it’s tiring.

Do this instead

  • Try to evolve your communication style and channels
  • Analyze what you post and the results you have
  • Speak always politely, be always gentle

(I wish I could follow these things myself. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible because of the context and design of certain platforms)