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Tag: design

Renovation Mechanic

Published by Paolo on 18/10/2022

According to the Cambridge Dictionary the renovation is the act or process of repairing and improving something, especially a building so that it is in good condition again.

Industry experts don’t stop talking about the trend of renovation mechanics in casual games. Why do they work? According to this brand new video, because they are a driver for Player progression.

Game design disciplines

Renovation mechanic is so popular across teams because gives work to all the design team:

  • Narrative design plays a critical role in delivering a memorable story
  • Level designers can use the environment to convey the story (environmental storytelling)
  • UX Designers are key to deliver a smooth experience, making the switch between puzzle match and renovation as smooth as possible
  • Systems Designers help find the right economy to support all the actions according to the Players’ session daily number and duration.

Acting for the renovation

In casual games, the act of renovation consists of:

  1. choosing a task to complete
  2. use one or more stars to perform it
  3. introductory dialogue
  4. select a style for the furniture
  5. renovation cutscene
  6. story dialogue
Town Story: Renovation Match-3 Puzzle Game

The story is usually delivered as a consequence of the act of renovation.

Repairing and Improving

Have you ever asked yourself WHY is this mechanic so popular among casual games? To me it is because those games are about putting things in order.

  • In match-3 games you put things in order, in line
  • In popper games you clean the patterns that you spot
  • In merge games you make space on the board

All those games have extra goals that consist often of an obstacle. The frustration of not beating a level for that obstacle is a driver for monetization but also of churning out, as this brilliant LinkedIn post by Yasin Hatiboğlu.

All those levers fit perfectly with repairing and improving, with the metaphor of renovation.

Building

Last but not least, in service games for mobile phones there is something very present in Players’ minds. You have a world waiting for you that you are helping build somehow. You don’t just have a game to complete, those games are infinite.

The fantasy of free-to-play games, the aspirational aspect of those, almost always contains this: it’s your help and your choice that help build the World you have in your pocket.

New narratives for mobile casual games

Published by Paolo on 14/10/2022

I loved this NoClip documentary on the making of Dishonored.

I believe that in terms of narrative there are a lot of interesting aspects that can be taken from this concept. Take the match-3 with decoration genre for a moment. You earn a star beating a level and you use that star to complete the next task. A cutscene with dialogues is shown and then new tasks are opened. You have to play more levels and see how the story goes on.

What if:

  • we can make the environment speak more about what’s happening
  • we can let the Players explore better and interact with environment discovering where to use the stars to fix things
  • we can deliver the story reacting to the Player’s actions instead than stop it to show a cutscene or a dialogue

What if mobile AAA is possible?

Published by Paolo on 12/10/2022

Today I woke up with this simple question. Maybe it’s just me wanting to work on something different than simply think in engagement, retention and monetization mechanics. Which is typical in mobile free-to-play.

I am 40 years old now and I grew up with consoles and PC. Industry experts say that immersion is only possible on a sofa looking at a TV screen. I feel really immersed with my right hand on a mouse and the left one on WASD.

Teenagers today, anyway, have always a device in their hands: the mobile phone. They are immersed in social activities and networks and they spend almost 10 hours per day swiping, liking, sharing and so on.

I hear often that mobile players look for engagement, not immersion. Still I believe that great adventures like the games we play on console can be possible to achieve on new mobile devices.

What if the time is now? Maybe the average age of hardcore players is gone up only because teens prefer to interact with another device.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Designer VS Author

Published by Paolo on 10/10/2022

A game designer is the facilitator of the act of game design among a team. Everyone in a team participates actively to the design of the game. From the producer to the junior QA, everyone is making the effort of delivering a great experience to the Players. Which is to design a videogame.

A friend of mine made me this question today: what if you make a game alone? Are you still a game designer?

I answered him: no, you are not a game designer. In that case you are an author, which is different.

He insisted: but you are designing a game, right?

Yes you are. Making a game alone is game design, too. In that case, all the work is on you. You are not facilitating the act of game design among a team.

To be a professional game designer ready to work for companies you need a completely different set of skills. You should be able to:

  • Understand the business goals translating concepts like scope, budget, KPIs to the gameplay
  • Being able to inspire your team analyzing and breaking down other games and by preparing specific proposals
  • Create and maintain well written documentation so that the vision will be the less ambiguous as possible
  • Run playtests and undestand the pain points of your game. Being able to translate that insight to all stakeholders.
  • Be present in a lot of meetings often facilitating creative workshops.

All of those things are different when you are making a game alone. Which is why I differentiate a game designer from an author. An author is a game designer, but can be a bad teammate. A game designer is a facilitator, but can have not the right talent to make a game alone.

If you want to work for a company as a generalist game designer prove your ability to work in a team. You will unlock a lot more possibilities!

For juniors, with love

Published by Paolo on 06/10/2022

If you are Picasso, you can share just two lines on a blank page and the people will feel the meaning of your art. I ask you: are you like Picasso?

I write this because junior game designers willing to join the industry often do this: they share uncompleted things or just some capture with a game engine opened and two blocks in the Scene. This is NOT how you show your talent to the World out there. This is noise, ego and insecurity.

I know you are struggling because it is very hard to get a job as junior. Believe me, I lived the same years ago. You want to get noticed by recruiters and maybe managers and CEOs. Sharing the first draft of a level means that you opened the engine and you put blocks in a scene. Just this.

  • What’s your reasoning behind that level?
  • The beat sequence?
  • What are the design goals?
  • The mechanics involved?

I can see nothing interesting in those posts.

The worst happens when social challenges like Blocktober appear. I am completely in favor of those challenges! I took those challenges in the past and I will probably take them in the next future who knows. But the results of those challenges are not something worth sharing on a professional network nor on your portfolio. Those are for you to improve, not for the others to see. If you are junior you should work hard everyday on your talent. Do not complete tasks just for the sake of showing off.

I did the same, years ago. It meant nothing. Believe me.

With true love,

Paolo

People like us

Published by Paolo on 05/10/2022

I hear at almost any meeting and occasion to speak about game design people’s personal opinion. To me this is not clear. I like when I do this and that happens. When I see something like this I feel angry. And so on.

That is because we naturally relate with people like us. Fact is that people like us are a myth. A utopy. Each one of us is unique and we have our tastes and behaviors. Which makes our job as designer so interesting.

Instead of referring to people like us it is better to think in missions, journeys and more in general activities that those people like to do. People who like to run with their dogs. People who play chess with friends on thursday afternoon. People who only eat vegetables.

That is where the most interesting things are considered.

Games and stories

Published by Paolo on 04/10/2022

I am taking a course on game writing and learning the hard way how a game can live and be successful without a story. Games do not need stories.

When gameplay and story marry well the story can boost the experience for it be remarkable and memorable. This is because play is a problem-solving activity, useful to improve some of the skills useful to survive. Stories instead help us understand better people and how to relate with them. Games are about things, stories are about people. This is why is so hard to link a game with a good story.

Point of touch among design and writing is that designers look for fun. And fun is a feeling. Writers look for feelings. You can easily spot there is an interesting overlap.

How to analyse any game

Published by Paolo on 03/10/2022

When you work as game designer for companies you will invest a lot of time studying other games. The best thing you can do is to prepare and evolve a personal framework to optimize this job. This post is to detail what I would focus my efforts on.

Specializations

Game design is a huge word, the word for a container. Jesse Schell writes that game design is “the act of deciding how a game should be”. As you can read, everyone practices that. We, game designers, are facilitators of that act.

To me, game design has four main specializations:

  1. Level design
  2. Narrative/Content design
  3. Gameplay/UX design
  4. Systems design

If you work as a generalist, you should focus on all four. If you are a specialist, it is still good having clear the relationships and overlaps with the others

The Experience

The most important thing for a game designer is NOT the game. Really, it isn’t. The game is a medium to an end. And that end is called: EXPERIENCE.

We can write a book only on this term, but for the sake of the article it is important to mention that we game designers should be able to understand the experience of other games under two lenses:

  1. what is the intention behind them
  2. what does them say actually

Understanding the intention is a matter of dealing with lots of analysis, but nowadays developers publish a lot of content. My suggestion is to watch videos and read articles and hear podcasts to try to spot all that’s possible. Playing the game completes everything, and it is very important to play it deeply. For example, if you are really analysing a free-to-play game you should also buy something to understand how it feels.

In order to really understand what the experience says, the best way is to take notes on everything related with your specialties. And when I say everything I mean absolutely everything.

  • Record all game sessions and take screens
  • Copy all texts, level maps and try to empathize with those designers
  • Create documentation and be detailed.

Practices and frameworks

Published by Paolo on 29/09/2022

I discovered recently a great article on how to think in the first steps of the design for a new game. I can’t wait of facilitating some workshop based on this framework.

How to use any framework

  • First you test it with a workshop facilitation. In this way you can understand how the framework you consider is really useful inside of a team. You will see other people interacting with it, which is great.
  • Then you use the framework in question to breakdown and deconstruct existing games, especially competitors.
  • Finally you take notes of all of your learning and create a new framework starting from it. It is almost never a good idea to use a framework in the same way it is. Remember: a specific context and a group of people created that framework, you cannot adapt it to your reality without changes.

Very often we hear about best practices like things we should apply religiously without questioning. That is almost never the case, also because when a practice becomes a best practice, usually it becomes also an old one.

Has “put genre here” died?

Published by Paolo on 28/09/2022

Online discourse regarding the gaming industry is very often monopolized by marketing and business people. Which is normal, since they are “selling” ideas and spreading new and old trends.

What makes me smile often is when I read that a specific genre has died. It is like “hey, everyone! Stop doing this because now people don’t want to play this kind of game anymore.”.

As a designer, anyway, I know that Players look for experiences capable of satisfying fantasies. This has nothing to do with a specific genre. Good games start with an assumption on fantasy. “Be a cat” can be a fantasy (STRAY, an indie game). “Win big at Casino” can be another one (SlotoMania, free to play mobile game). “Dominate your opponent mind” (Chess, classic game).

Starting from fantasy, then you build your actions and mechanics on top. And then you design your economy starting from goals structure. You can eventually add up a setting/world and, finally, the story.

During the process of defining your actions and economy, you should study the market and its trends of course. But I would like to invite you not falling into the trap of riding a trend for the sake of it OR rejecting ideas just because there are not much success cases.

When the market is emptying of a specific genre there are usually a series of reasons. Something that doesn’t work for the most can be a huge opportunity for your reality. Don’t be a follower, write your own story.