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Tag: design

Plans for 2023: Simple and well made games

Published by Paolo on 01/02/2023

I had time to think about my future. And yet I have not come to any conclusion!

Being a consultant is great but very stressful. Being employed is less stressful, but also less beautiful. My career has been oriented towards free-to-play mobile. New frontiers of video games are being opened. AAA game companies are taking an interest in data oriented game designers. AAA are the games that interest me the most as a player.

Many experts are pointing out the challenges of free-to-play to find new players. Free-to-play is based on the frantic pursuit of whale players. People capable of spending large amounts of money in order to have more power in the game. These people however join games that are very successful among free players. That would be the players who play without spending a cent and that consist of more than 90% of Players. Quick math, you need a LOT of people playing your game. And those people is not cheap to get.

The result is that there are a number of best practices that make free-to-play mobile games all the same, by genre. Open any puzzle game and it will probably have the same characteristics as the others. People are tired of seeing the same thing over and over again.

The hyper-casual trend is dying because its business model is no longer sustainable. Apple took countermeasures against Facebook and destroyed the UA strategies of those games. However, the development process that requires a quality video game has become redundant.

While on the one hand they offered original ideas, on the other they didn’t devote the necessary efforts to create unique experiences. The important thing was to fit into the equations on CPI and D1 retention and that’s it. The vision, the underlying fantasy, the actions, the objectives and the economies were literally sketched out. For me, that was the real reason why the system didn’t work. It’s obvious that people like to see new games that are fun and easy to use. But it’s also obvious that people want to have well-made games!

I hope this 2023 to contribute to this point: create simple but well made games!

End of the year, end of the World

Published by Paolo on 20/12/2022

As we approach the end of the year, clients always become more demanding. I am afraid that I will have no time to post for a while since we have important deadlines to reach.

This post is to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

From February I will have two days a week that I can dedicate to some new clients.

My specialty is mobile f2p, but I’m definitely a very versatile game designer. If you need to transform your creative vision into a successful game, don’t hesitate and contact me! System, level, narrative, and UX/gameplay design. One person, multiple skills!

(The tariff is the right one to balance the loop described in the diagram below)

Start from Personas

Published by Paolo on 19/12/2022

When you study game design, you usually focus on documents and prototypes for small games. The first steps that are taught in educational centers are purely technical.

Then you are in the market without the skills that make you a professional designer. Which are not the techniques, but are those oriented toward the video game business.

Normally a team reports to one or more managers who maintain a business vision. Our role as designers is to understand how to realize this business vision. We have to think more about endorsing the product than creating something directly. Players will receive the product packed and polished. Technical skills are important, but our ability to understand the business is critical.

Personas are one of the methods that allow this communication across the whole team. I share with you this workshop that aired last Saturday. The audio is bad, but the content is excellent.

If you want to work for companies as an employee or consultant, you need to come up with frameworks that solve concrete business problems. Thinking about who will really play and how to structure a product for them requires effort and is not intuitive.

Removing loot boxes is a mistake

Published by Paolo on 13/12/2022

Journalists and many game developers hate loot boxes. Players of games that feature this mechanic, however, love them. Just see the comments on this video:

It is true that very often considerable amounts of money are invested in order not to get what one wants. This leads many people to overspend and feel guilty. But in general, the thrill of opening a surprise is loved by the Players.

Eliminating these elements from a gaming system is risky because it damages the spend depth on the service. In practice, players will be able to spend much less money to get what they want. Given the number of people paying for a free-to-play game, this measure can be detrimental and seriously damage the service.

I think that this choice was made without taking data into consideration and without listening to the people that plays the game: the Players.

Surely there is a part of the players who will have left because of the disappointment of spending money and not getting what they want. This move maybe is a way to re-engage part of the churn. But successful games are built on Players, so people who stay and play, not those who choose to leave.

  • They could have tried split testing workarounds instead of announcing the new design before of getting the numbers proving that it actually works.
  • They could have those new ideas running in parallel with the loot box system.

This is NOT how we use to work in free-to-play. It seems like a AAA brand awareness move. I believe that they chose to follow their instincts. They are the experts, of course. For me, it is a big mistake.

Create tools only for good games

Published by Paolo on 06/12/2022

As game developers, we often focus on the wrong things which can lead to not achieving our objectives. We might worry about having the wrong team or not having enough time or money, but there is one thing that we don’t talk about enough: production choices.

In f2p, a mistake is to focus on developing development tools without first having a profitable game. For example, if you have a game with characters with their stats, you might develop a tool that allows you to update and set those statistics. But if the game itself doesn’t work, then that tool will have been a wasted effort.

In the past, it was common for developers to create an engine for a series of games. It meant investing a lot of time and money into something that hadn’t been proven to work. The development team would then focus on making the best engine rather than the game itself.

The great masters of game development have always said that the key is to focus on the game itself. The tools should be developed to support the game, not with plans for possible “plan B” games in mind. There are countless examples of games that were unknown or failed, but had great tools behind them.

In short, it’s important to focus on the game itself over the development tools. Only by doing so can we achieve our objectives and make great games.

AI to improve my workflow

Published by Paolo on 05/12/2022

Recently, I began a new collaboration that I hope will yield positive results. I apologize for not writing in a while due to the overwhelming amount of work I have been facing.

act like you are an interactive romance story

I am currently testing the ChatGPT tool and find it incredibly fascinating. I believe that this type of technology can help me become more productive and improve my abilities.

Using ChatGPT, you can write prompts and generate well-done, yet basic, content. To create truly human and original content, you will need to add your own input and edit the generated content.

Overall, I believe that using ChatGPT will save me hours of work and allow me to focus on other important tasks.

Connect and open your mind

Published by Paolo on 29/11/2022

If you want to stay in this video game industry for a long time, I recommend you connect with many people. I take part in various Discord and Slack groups and this allows me to have a broader view of things. Sometimes simple things happen that make me completely change my paradigm.

During a casual conversation on game design, I discovered this article on how to write good GDDs.

I start with the UX when thinking about a new design. But after discussing it with the writer of this article I have changed my mind. The message of today is this:

I used to think that my client, as game designer, is the Player. But I actually have two clients: the Player and the Product Manager. My duty, during the development of a game, is to provide solutions to the Product Management so that they can deliver value to the Players through the game.

Ethan Levy

He passed me this interesting speech of his from 2018, and I recommend it to everyone.

Respect the art of game design

Published by Paolo on 28/11/2022

I met a prospective client the other day who needed simple service. Given a set of published games, derive a design document that specifies everything that should be included in the final game.

The goal of the document was for a programmer to take it and figure out exactly what to do to produce the final game.

I told him his dream is beautiful, but that remains so. Making a game is not an assembly line; the specification documents that other developers need to work with must be produced based on real development needs.

The best way to be successful in video games is to maintain a certain degree of realism and respect for this art that is so difficult to master.

Mobile cloud as a feature

Published by Paolo on 15/11/2022

The classic way to start a new mobile game is:

  1. For some reason, I arrive at the virtual store
  2. I choose the game to install and tap the Install button
  3. I wait for it to install. Some games are huge.
  4. I start and there is a stage where the screen is dark
  5. I wait while looking at a splash screen for a few seconds, less than 15
  6. In case there are updates this time increases
  7. I am introduced to the game.

The games of the future should be like this:

  • For some reason, I arrive at the virtual store
  • I choose the game and PLAY
  • I wait less than 2 seconds
  • I am introduced to the game

It seems like an impossible feature, but that’s what will make the difference for me.

Reviews are your best friend

Published by Paolo on 10/11/2022

Whenever you are starting a new game project or if you are working on LiveOps for an old one, you have a free asset that is very useful: reviews.

Only a small part of Players are willing to leave reviews for your games, especially in free-to-play. Videogames can ask directly in-game to leave a review, but not everyone does so. They do not represent in any case the dominant opinions, but they are useful to spot opportunities for your game.

  • If you read critical reviews and you notice something that repeats a lot, that something can be converted into a unique selling point for your game.
  • If you read positive reviews and you notice something that repeats a lot, that something should be a must-have for your game.

Use Steam or Data.ai to filter out positive and negative reviews. Remember Pareto’s principle. Use always 80% of other games and innovate on the 20%.

  • 80% you should take can be read in positive reviews that repeat
  • 20% of novelty can be read in critical reviews that repeat

Analyze the reviews of the main game you are taking as a competitor, but also of its clones and competitors!

What? There are NO clones of that game? You are probably choosing the wrong competitor and you will hardly manage to have success in its field.