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Tag: design

My thoughts on seniority

Published by Paolo on 22/02/2022

I was talking to a friend and game designer about the future and our wishes. Sometimes I would like to dedicate to projects of a different nature than mobile f2p. Sometimes I would also appreciate to have different kinds of responsibilities.

Companies see my profile and normally contact me for:

  • virtual economies
  • tutorials and first time user experiences
  • game design documents for free-to-play mobile games
  • creative direction

I would love to be able to dedicate a couple of years to an action RPG for PC and Consoles at some point. Maybe I can be very useful in the level design of a moment-to-moment adventure games of the caliber of The Last of Us. I am absolutely convinced of it, even if companies of this type when my resume arrives they discard it in a few minutes.

“You should then start as a junior designer in a new reality if you want to do this. Difficult to be a senior designer there.“, my friend pointed out.

I disagree with this. For me, seniority does not depend on concrete experience in a specific type of game.

What it takes to be a good game designer

Raph Koster says that a designer must express quality in three fundamental fields: artistic, technical and editorial.

The artistic side is essential to have that sensitivity to observe what players are looking for in a certain type of game and offer them an experience that in terms of aesthetics and challenge makes sense. The game designer is a bit of an artist: is the game imitating real life, or do you want to create a game that influences real life in some way?

The ability to write is also very important, especially being concise. I believe that the best designers use the formula 60-30-10 when presenting their ideas: 60% images, 30% text and 10% multimedia references. 30% text therefore needs to hit the spot and inspire. For that you need experience and editorial skills. I’m not even an English native speaker, so I have to constantly update myself on this point.

Finally, there are the technical skills. Using a game engine, knowing how to use spreadsheets and other skills that vary depending on the designer. Personally I am proficient with Unity and Python and I create scripts that often make things easier for me and the team. Others are very good at photoshop and can also create basic concept art. Some level designers come from architecture and therefore are quite more comfortable creating structures that make sense. All technical skills can be learned, however. In fact, in 3-6 months at the most, it is possible to enter a new world and acquire what we need to be fully operational.

What is seniority to me

Senior game designers are people capable of understanding the context in which they move, constructively stimulating dialogues and setting up processes according to the project they are in. They are very aware of the gaming business, too.

While I’ve contributed to various virtual economies, that doesn’t mean an AAA game designer isn’t capable of studying competitors and preparing mathematical models and spreadsheets. These are things that can be easily learned. The design process has stages that are independent of the platform, genre and type of audience. It is a question of understanding which problems must be solved, analyzing how other realities have faced the same problems and defining solutions according to a certain context (team, budget, scope, time and quality).

Seniority is primarily dependent on age, in my humble opinion. When I read “senior game designer” and I see an age under 25 I already start to have suspicions. Being senior also gives you the self-confidence necessary to defend designs with superiors. Except in special cases, if you are 22 it is difficult to overcome certain filters set by the experience of 40+ years old leaders.

Age, previous experience and context make the seniority, for me. Having faced the same kind of problems in the past certainly accelerates, but it doesn’t make the difference between junior and senior. You can be slower at start but way more effective on the long term.

Clash of Clans: Forest Path for Brita

Published by Paolo on 10/02/2022

First of all I dissected the current tutorial of Clash of Clans.

Then I took a deep reflection on that tutorial.

Then I sketched the new Villager: Brita.

Today I used the forest paths method by Alexander Swords to sketch out a new narrative arc for a possible new tutorial. You can find here an introduction to the method.

So that I reflected on what the Player is doing and what the new villager, Brita, should do during the tutorial. My high concept formula is this:

see bigger here

As we said, Brita is a trader and a jewelry maker. She will onboard, teach and reward players. She will manage Gems, Gold and also the five magicians. Her main obstacles are the Goblins who want her gold. Her gold is important to her life, so that she will be pretty distrustful toward the Player at tutorial start.

Then I passed to sketch the narrative forest for Brita, based on that:

see bigger here

I love this method because it directly puts in relationship the story with all activities, resources, obstacles and goals.

The new tutorial story will be a story about trust and confidence. You, the Player, are the new Chief of the village. First thing you will do will be to collect gold! Brita will not like, it’s HER gold. During the story, you will successfully defend the village from the Goblin attack and also demostrate her you can lead your troops.

courtesy of clashofclans.fandom.wiki

The Grand Warden represents the Mages and this collective is very important to Brita. In fact, a new detail on the lore will be that Mages are capable of transforming everything in gold. And, as we said, gold is very important for Brita.

The Player will successfully past a trial given from the Grand Warden itself, and Brita will finally have confidence in the new Chief of the village.

Now we have a concept for our new tutorial, next step is to define it!

Learning from the history

Published by Paolo on 09/02/2022

I learn about game design more from the history of videogames than from podcasts, videos and experts speaking about the next big thing.

One has to really know how things were made back then.

Documents like this one are pure gold.

New aesthetics, dinamics and mechanics for blockchain games

Published by Paolo on 08/02/2022

The discourse regarding new technologies is very polarized. On the one hand, I see a lot of highly skilled people joining the financial gaming movement, games where you can make money. On the other hand, I see a hatred on the part of some people not only for the question itself, but also towards the creators.

For me, attacking those who are trying to create something new is definitely a mortal sin. The creator is a very often courageous person. She may be attracted to easy money, why not. But no one gives us the right to attack the creator. The creator is always the one who drives our industry forward.

In all the online noise, interesting qualities of the games that base a part of the service on blockchain are starting to be defined. Let’s see some of them using the false line of the MDA framework.

Aesthetics

The question of being an investor for me is the natural consequence of the worldwide trend of recent years of being able to leave comments on any detail of anything. If in the future people can also feel like investors in a product, it will be very interesting for a lot of people.

Feeling the real power of helping to start and grow a project is absolutely fun. These hundreds of Discord game channels dedicated to videogames that don’t yet exist prove it. Quite often they have more people talking every day than Discord channels of games that already exist.

The community plays a key role, in the future we will see in companies that these communities will be treated as a separate product.

Dynamics

Understanding how the heck a decentralized gaming system works is complicated. You have to read documents, get information, create virtual wallets and even play a little on the cryptocurrency exchange. This thing is fun!

In fact, the real game is right there. Very often we see games that are bad copies of f2p games. Nonetheless, people go there and play. Obviously the possibility of earning money, but also the fact of fiddling with all these new tools creates fun dynamics that bring people together.

The real game is the marketplace, it is that part that needs to be playfully enhanced.

Mechanics

All data flow is very transparent on these platforms. There is also a very interesting loss of anonymity. It will be possible to prevent some forms of abuse that are committed by malicious players, if they lose their anonymity.

Also very interesting are the mechanics that allow people to be rewarded for contributing to the community. As an f2p game designer that I am, I have heard several times advice from some hardcore gamers on how to improve the economy.

These games will allow players to create their own currencies in the future. This is absolutely sane and interesting from a gameplay standpoint.

Whenever we criticize something, someone can answer us and give us an opportunity to learn.
Every time we attack someone, however, we lose the opportunity to drink from a source.

Everyone should be involved in playtesting

Published by Paolo on 06/02/2022

Playtesting is a key activity during the development of a game. Any successful game runs playtests often to see how the people react to the game set in place.

Usually in games company, playtesting is an activity performed by designers and product manager. But when also the engineers spend 1 hour of their weeks speaking with the Players (or potential players) they can also understand a lot and improve things out a lot.

Playtesting should be weekly, it should stay in the calendar of everyone. Especially for games as a service.

Design tips for the match-3 mechanic

Published by Paolo on 05/02/2022

Match-3 is one of the most successful core mechanics in the mobile space and in general in the gaming scene. When we look at its history, simple variations and innovations permitted the creation of highly profitable services and the startup of entire businesses. In this article I will make an analysis of the very core of the genre: the match-3 mechanic.

The first thing I notice when looking at the match-3 mechanic is that the set of rules represented are both to define obstacles and goals. It is a simple but very beneficial mechanic, in terms of the economy of the gameplay. In fact, the simple action that activates the match needs a previous cognitive effort to spot at least a possible combination. That presents a challenge to the players 

Flow

Step 1 – Problem

Observation/Analysis: recognize at least one possible combination of 3+ colors in line

Challenge: Cognitive effort 

Design Tip: board and art style directly influence the difficulty of this problem to solve

Step 2 – Make a choice

Choose the first you spot VS look better VS deep thinking

Difficulty: time may add challenge to this part

Design Tip: implementing a hint system changes this meaning directly. Some Players may passively accept any hint. Consider:Kind of hint to give (if any)Choose the right timing for showing the hint OR let the Players access to them whenever they want

Step 3- Goal

Match: Swipe two adjacent tokens

Challenge: Interaction, cognitive effort

Design Tip: during your playtests, be aware of the dimension and sensibility of tokensSpeed of interchangePlayers do not like to make a move and see another.Also, if the move is invalid the common thing is to not remove a movement from the total amount, if the game challenge is based on movements. [Maybe it’s possible to let the time be retrieved somehow, to remove this possible friction.]

Step 4 – Result

Cascade: See your choice rewarded

Challenge: Surprise, combo, doubt

Design Tip: here the speed and the bounce of tokens falling reinforce the sense of reactivity that the Player has. According to the target audience of the specific game (and its theme), this has to be tweaked. There is a black box: Players don’t know which token will be spawned and they will feel curiosity about the next state of the level board. Be aware of this.

Step 5 – New Board Configuration

New Board: The gameplay may wait for a stable condition before giving the control back to the Player.

Challenge: Restart from Step 1

Design Tip: the faster, the better. Avoid too much particles and effects left on the board at  this step.

A connection between art and game design

Published by Paolo on 04/02/2022

Aristotle thought that art should imitate life. Oscar Wilde thought that it is life that imitates art.

Is your game imitating life or are you offering inspiration for other people lives?

This is a critical choice that drives the whole creative direction.

If you want to create something inspiring you should think in something more complex and fascinating.

Fortnite with its shooter parody creates new trends among the people who played it. Think in all those silly dances.

If you want to create a metaphor of the reality, instead, you should really be able to capture the essence of what you want to represent.

Hypercasual games brings this last concept to the surrealism.

Ideas have to settle

Published by Paolo on 02/02/2022

One of the things I need when I start a new project or when I work on a new feature, is the time of seeing ideas settling down.

Good ideas are goods after 2-3 days too. After a brainstorming is better to let the board rest a couple of days. Then you and your team will return back to it with a fresh mind and select the best ideas.

And then, again, you let the selection settle down.

It is not always possible, but I noticed that it is way better let ideas settle down. Sometimes you improve them. Some other time you see you enthusiasm as a team go down and reality force (similar to gravity force) do its job.

Clash of Clans: Brita the Villager

Published by Paolo on 31/01/2022

First I dissected the tutorial of Clash of Clans to get its anatomy.
Then I took some notes based on my personal experience.

The Villager is the first character that the Player of Clash of Clans meets opening the game for the first time. I see margins of improvements for this specific character. She helps the Players understand the game’s basics, but especially in the second part of the tutorial she is too formal. The Players will learn the core loop of the game with the help of standard messages. My goal is to improve the narrative function of this character making her more memorable.

The Lens of Problem Statement

The main reference is taken from one of my favorite TV shows: Norsemen. Particularly, my intention is to use as a guide the character of Liv interpreted by Kristine Riis.

Find her description on this website

“Can Liv from the Norsemen become a character capable of engaging the newbies of Clash of Clans better than the Villager?”

Problem Statement

Resuming:

  • Target: Newbie Players of Clash of Clans
  • Challenge: transform Liv in the new Villager
  • Playtest: observe people that never played Clash of Clans react to the new tutorial and check heuristics

Ideation

I created a brainstorm framework using chapter 6 of the book Game Writing – Narrative Skills for Videogames. Mr. Andrew S. Walsh writes an essay on game characters. The chapter invites game writers to reflect on the Gameplay Purpose VS Narrative Purpose of the character we create. 

Summary of brainstorming process with ideas already selected

The new Villager should onboard the Players, teach them the game’s basics and also reward them when they do good.

Narratively speaking, if I imagine Liv from the Norsemen having to do that: 

  1. I imagine pretty exaggerated reactions toward the success (she is capable of doing anything for her status). 
  2. I imagine her getting a little bit in the way of the Players, in order to achieve what she wants. 
  3. She may also reveal secrets, things she believes she only knows. 

Thinking in adjectives, Liv is generally grumpy (except when she wants something). Grumpy can be funny for the Players, let’s keep this adjective for her personality.

Regarding traits, my brainstorm was focused in finding the right governing, conflicting and secondary traits. After reflecting, double checking the pre-existing tutorial dialogues, I believe that the fact that Liv is a gold digger can be a good reference as a conflicting trait. So I decided that the governing one should be something more like Prudent: showing care and thought for the future. I think that it is a positive trait, since this character will also show the future of the game to the Players, in the revised tutorial. In order to further mitigate the “gold digger” trait, using the same book as reference I opted for “honorable” as a secondary trait.

Final Touches

I notice that the last drawing of the villager has a collar. So I looked for Viking professions and I found the trader and the jewelry maker pretty interesting for my purpose.

Finally, a good character has a name. I looked for Viking names and their meaning and I found an interesting link. The name Brita means ‘dignified’ or ‘noble’, which fits the personality of the new Villager!

What’s next?

Time to revise the dialogues of the tutorial and see if Brita may work the way I am thinking of her.

Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames

Published by Paolo on 30/01/2022

This book is one of the best I have ever read on the art of making games.

I like books that permit me to create my frameworks easily. This is one of those. Multiple authors so that you don’t get the vision of just one person. And it’s great because every chapter brings insight, practical examples and a final set of exercises to make in order to grow as game writer.

I loved it!