You are just making the game you would like to play.
You rarely speak with the Players of your competitors.
You already know what to copy, without knowing why it works (are you sure it really works?).
You feel confident that it will sell, without being backed by concrete data.
Hello people, I am back from my well deserved vacations ready for a new year full of content for free for you! Hope you all did enjoyed a nice vacations with your families and your best people.
The other day an ex student of mine made a question in a WhatsApp channel we are both in: “Can someone recommend where to create a game design porfolio?”
There is no specialized website, as far as I know, to create a portfolio. That is bad, because of discoverability, but is good because forces us designers in thinking out of the box and not using templates and pre-defined layouts.
I personally use itch.io, also if there are a whole lot of things that I cannot put on my portfolio because they belong to specific companies where I signed NDAs. That’s the eternal issue of our job.
When you prepare your portfolio, you should think in WHO will read it. Will it be an HR manager? Maybe a lead game designer? Or a CEO? Every people speaks differently and every company does so, too.
At the end of the day doing a portfolio is a for of design!
As I said before, I think there is NOT a general rule, a template, a standard, a best practice. You should find your way and make your own talents shine!
I can tell you what I would put:
Making video games is hard and it has a cost. That is why often we feel the need of building an universal system, capable of letting us creating more games in less time.
Players, instead, purchase and play video games for the experience that game has to offer. They usually do not think in systems, also if they are capable of understand what is similar to other games.
To me the best approach is to make a video game. The best is to focus on a concrete platform and a concrete experience having a great vision. Then if that system is designed to be custom, that is great for the production of next games, of course. But the priority is on the game itself, not on the system you are building.
If you think just in the system, I have to tell you, maybe you are not believing too much in your game. Which is completely normal, you should rely on data and results to believe in it from a business point of view. But from the creative point of view you should also notice that little spark waiting to become the next big IP.
Have a nice summer folks, this is the last post before of my vacations. See you soon!
The first time user experience, or FTUE, is a mandatory thing to design for every videogame. Your players are going to have their first time experience, that’s for sure. So that if you leave that to the faith, that first experience will be completely random. For free to play, first time experience is made of tutorial and onboarding.
The tutorial is usually between 3 and 15 minutes and, step by step, all the most important features of the game are revealed to the Players. In order to design the best tutorial, you should look deeply at the theme of your game and at what are you proud of. If we analyze successful games like RAID: Shadow Legends and Dislyte, we notice that the first one puts all the value in the beautiful heroes you can unlock with gachas. The latter, instead, is very proud of its lore. They both work, the important thing is to really understand all kind of players you may want to serve and like them. If you really like your players, I mean as persons, you will definitely design the best tutorial for them.
The onboarding is usually made by the first 2-5 sessions and it’s the stage in which engaged players will fall in love literally with your game. The Players will discover all the systems of your games, and unlock the first things. They will feel they can grow if they stay with you. In order to design the best onboardings, you should focus on the Players’ motivations and try to bring them values around that.
Things don’t work from the very first iterations, so it’s better to make small iterations and improve step by step your tutorial first and your onboarding second.
When I started playing online, I did it with a pirate version of Diablo. With my 56k modem, I connected to the official server with a cheater character. Re_del_male was his name (King of Evil, in Italian). I joined the clan Apocalypse Knights. I spent hours playing with them, exploring dungeons and stuff.
Next online experience was an Italian shard for Ultima Online. I joined with real life friends, we were orcs. I learnt to use bots to farm and mine while chatting with my friends deciding what to raid next. Also there it was completely free, we just had to purchase the game.
All those experiences were about inclusion and lot of things to do. There were scarcity for some resources, and someone made friends with the game masters in order to get more things, such as land and castles. They had to demonstrate first to them that they were active players. The scarcity frustration was compensated by active participation and will to contribute to the game.
Nowadays, the most similar game to this concept is Minecraft. Mojang stated yesterday that they are not willing to include NFTs, because of the following reasons:
In our Minecraft Usage Guidelines, we outline how a server owner can charge for access, and that all players should have access to the same functionality. We have these rules to ensure that Minecraft remains a community where everyone has access to the same content. NFTs, however, can create models of scarcity and exclusion that conflict with our Guidelines and the spirit of Minecraft.
You are at your desk, everything is clear in your mind. The new game mode should feature a new energy system which permits to spend energies in change of doing a whole set of special actions in your RPG. You can throw bolts, run away from fights, hit with a sword. All with this energy system.
Then the engineer writes you on Slack: hey, can you check this? You see that nobody understood the vision, so that check your documents. “Look, is all there!”. They didn’t read the comments under the flow, your document was too long to read. The leader of the project says it’s too late. And the leader starts imposing own design, without thinking too much. Discussions starts, but in the end the vision changes.
You update your documents.
Documents that no one, except from you and maybe QA, will read. Satisfied you will shut down your PC. And hope for the best.
Game theme is something that in f2p is not discussed too much. That’s a pity, in fact the art of game design is the craft of synthetizing a theme into a playful experience. All games have a theme. Also if you don’t think well on the theme of your game, your game will have a theme!
We often start by thinking in systems, directly. Specifically, we start from the economic system. But that is just one of the systems a game need. Also a f2p game, where the economic system is one of the most important.
Do this instead:
Game designers play the build. Everyday. At least for a couple of minutes. Then we play other builds too, during our working day.
And then maybe we play again the build. Just to check out all the differences.
Someday this rule is not respected. Sometimes those days are many. Sometimes are in the row.
And when this happens there is the possibility that the game is not so engaging to you, anymore. Ask yourself if it’s time to move on.
I would love to build my own company, after many years serving many projects and teams. I have developed a vision, I feel I can somehow foresee part of the future.
I would like to focus on gameplay first short games. I would probably start from PC games. 3 months development, plus 3 refinements and then 6 months to see the return on investment.
I have everything clear, but I don’t want to stay behind burocracy, contracts and all the things. I guess I will have to, at some point of course. If I want to really put in place all the knowledge I had those years.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a guru or something like that. I know for sure that I am wrong in so many ways. I just feel that in order to really grow more I need a period building something I really believe in, in a way I feel the best.
As Italian, I am a fan of the stories of Olivetti and other entrepreneurs like him. To me a company needs to improve the society where it is founded, in a meaningful way.
And I think I have this way, I just need to try.
I join a new company as a game designer and the first thing I get in the meeting with my manager. She says “our next game will be for everyone”. I start worry seriously.
Why? Because especially with this state of the market it is way better to target the smallest possible audience and make them happy. Build a great game for a few people, and those few people will recommend your game to their friends.
If you manage to create a small community of people really willing to pay for your game and play it, then step by step you can grow your community.
When you make a game for everyone you will never know who is really playing the game.
Everyone will be possibly in your game. The success of your design and development will be strictly dependant from the performance marketing. Specifically from its capability of bringing into your game a lot of people cheaply. Most of them will churn out, someone will stay. A team of data scientist will study all the data generated by those people. If things work out, then, your game will be updated with new features from other similar games. You will test those game modes against hypothesis made by your product manager and you.
Can you foresee what’s involved in here? A huge structure. It is great when you are a big player, but if you are a small company this can lead you to disaster.
When you focus on serving the smallest possible audience, instead, you are taking a hard but affordable challenge. You still should rely on data and information, but you will have the privilege of adding qualitative insight on top of all that.
Final thought: hardcore players can play casual games. Casual players will almost never play hardcore games. If you want to build the best small viable audience, find and serve the hardcores.