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Tag: design

Do not get fooled

Published by Paolo on 29/11/2024

In recent years I have become an avid listener of content disseminated by experts on the video game business. The tendency is to take the few extreme successes and start breaking them down using visuals with curves and Venn diagrams.

Thanks to this content I have learned to interface with the business side, to better communicate my opinions and design solutions. I am immensely grateful to be able to live in the age where all this information is free.

However, I want to insist on one point: a video game is a fundamentally aesthetic experience. Aesthetics means many things, in ancient Greece aesthetics was the science that studied the essence of things. Video games touch fibers that are difficult to explain with charts.

We are approaching the time in the year in which all the experts will make their predictions, stating them with conviction and using swear words to underline the importance of what they say. Inevitably, this will affect some investments and opportunities. As always, those will not become reality, but then the marketer is always capable of changing the semantics.

I just want to say that it can be difficult to see the reality amidst so much noise, do not be fooled.

Monument Valley 2

Published by Paolo on 28/11/2024

Netflix has many games that you can download and play offline for FREE if you are subscribed to their service. I have completed yesterday Monument Valley 2.

I purchased the first chapter of this saga years ago on my iPad 2. The essence of the first chapter is still there, actually, the art style is the same and the core gameplay is almost identical. This second chapter adds an interesting narrative layer, and the theme is the relationship between a mother and her daughter.

Probably I was missing some little monsters and the patterns that are typical in Escher’s work. I think I would have appreciated something like that, representing better the dangers. The only things that break the order are buildings that collapse when the characters touch a trigger (sequence) and a new mechanic with a plant that you grow and shrink. I feel that more things could have been done there.

Monument Valley 2 is a little gem, a pleasure for your senses, a little box full of life. It’s based on Escher’s art and absurd geometries, but it adds color and animated characters to it. It is the kind of game that shows the potential of mobile in telling stories. It features a narrative full of metaphors and few texts, and I am not smart enough to have understood any detail. But it doesn’t matter, in the end. It’s the aesthetic experience that matters.

Embracing creative

Published by Paolo on 18/11/2024
  • creative: a person whose job involves producing original ideas or doing artistic work (Definition of creative from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus)
  • creative director: a person in a company or advertising agency who is in charge of the work involving original ideas about how to design, advertise and sell products (Definition of creative director from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary)

I don’t know if Cambridge University is to blame, but there is a substantial difference between business and design/art in the concept of “creative“.

Concretely, in business, it is important to think about how to sell a creative product with original ideas. However, we often ignore this nuance when we focus on the more artistic part of our work.

It took me a while to understand that a game designer works for someone, not for players in general. In the sense that we have no control over what will come out at the end of the production process. What we have is the responsibility to facilitate this process, which is very different.

When you understand this and accept it, you live much better!

What do you do the first day?

Published by Paolo on 11/11/2024

You are a game designer and for the first day you are on a new project. The game is not your idea, it belongs to a company that wants to improve its business. What do you do?

You play, that’s what you do. You play a lot, and you take notes. And you ping your colleagues and try to understand their point of view.

The rest will come, avoid jumping directly to solutions. Good game design is about connecting elements and removing superfluous. In the first stages, the risk is adding too much. A simple technique is to write down a story of a player playing your game from a first-person perspective.

Respect your Creativity

Published by Paolo on 06/11/2024

Yesterday in a post I shared a GDD of a personal project. I found the right collaborators for my case, I thank all the people who helped me.

I edited the message and removed the link, it is no longer necessary to share. You can write to me privately if you are interested, no problem.

I work in this sector with great passion. But one should not confuse passion with professionalism. I love my job, but it is still work, the way I support my life.

I say this because some people wrote me quick messages like “Hi, I use Unreal Engine, I would like to help you with the game. I’ll do it for free.”

I respect everyone’s will to make it out there, but I would never dream of putting someone to work for free on a commercial project.

  • You didn’t tell me who you are and what you do and what you have done
  • You didn’t ask me for details about the project
  • You offered to collaborate for free, giving me a “cheap” image of you.

This is one of the problems of our sector, and if we want to improve it we have to do it “from the bottom”. That’s why I see smart people accepting “technical assessments” that are nothing more than unpaid jobs, in the hope of a position. Then we end up working for companies that don’t respect our work, on projects that don’t go anywhere.

Let’s be serious! I have experienced first-hand the frustration of not having a job and not seeing opportunities. I also cyclically find myself having to review my strategy. But we must never lose sight of the great creative capacity that we all have.

It’s better to work on your shitty project than to work for free for anyone.

It’s better to send a message of “Look what I did, can you give me your opinion?” rather than “I’m looking for a job, help me”.

It’s better to focus on improving your knowledge than showing unfinished projects to others.

I’m the first to not follow this advice. Human consciousness works unpredictably. But it’s still important to share them. I am not a master here, I am just a voice.

Virality, Virulence, Infectiousness

Published by Paolo on 04/11/2024

A new team of ex-<FamousCompany> wants to “create games worth sharing, with two core pillars – socially engaging games with a word-of-mouth-worthy brand.“

This reminds me of a study I did with two colleagues when I was working at Digital Chocolate. A study on a made-up and also widely abused word: virality.

Virality is a term that doesn’t exist in any dictionary, but two words compose it:

  • Virulence: the strength of the thing’s ability to cause disease
  • Infectiousness: the capability of a thing to spread rapidly to others.

Most of the efforts towards this dream concept, virality, focus only on infectiousness. Invite friends, guild systems, and leaderboards. There are many best practices around that topic and it’s easier to find experts to help you.

You need to focus on virulence to create something innovative. If it were up to me, I would add a weekly internal playtest and a monthly external one. Clear heuristics to measure progress from an engagement perspective.

Again, SDT is the way.

Creativity and productivity

Published by Paolo on 31/10/2024

A common misconception in this age is that creativity means productivity. But creativity doesn’t mean completing things and shipping them.

I am very creative, but I am unproductive with most of my own projects. You know, those books I want to write and indie games I want to make. The intention to change that is always there, but it is what it is.

If you want to increase your chances of financial success you need to be productive, or “lucky”. But you can always choose creativity, it’s free.

Indie, AA, and AAA fundamental questions

Published by Paolo on 30/10/2024

The 3 main markets on PC and Console are indie, AA, and AAA. The discussion around them focuses on things like budget, scope, and quality.

I would like to propose two questions to address each of these three challenges. The first will be around our ambition (why), while in the second one, we will use the lens of the art (what).

Indie

Indie games for me are a message to the world. The message can be important on a personal level and an exercise of talent. You can want to change the world or show that we are here. So let’s ask ourselves:

1. Ambition: why do I want to say this to the world?

2. Art: what does the world should have the courage to listen to?

AA

These games come from companies who want a commercial product, doing a few things well. Let’s ask ourselves.

1. Ambition: why are we focusing on these 1-2 mechanics?

2. Art: according to current and past trends, what will be trending in 2 years?

AAA

These are spectacular games and full of things to do. We can consider these games like monuments, and the mental effort of the team is enormous. Let’s ask ourselves:

1. Ambition: why do we want to build a monument that big?

2. Art: what will make this work a masterpiece?

Do well the easy things first

Published by Paolo on 28/10/2024

I write for the Internet a lot, sometimes much more than I would. I feel an unstoppable desire to share my thoughts, especially on my beloved games industry. That has consequences, as you can imagine.

One of the bland consequences is that some people, usually more inexperienced, believe that I am “successful”. Meaning I make a lot of money. Well, my friend, in this age of Feudalism 2.0 I am struggling just like you. Thank God I can maintain my family with my work, but I have also the support of my parents often.

I have periods with 0 clients and 0 incomes, but I was born on the richest side of the World. You may want to say that I am very passionate, and I really am. But if you believe that I am economically successful, I am afraid you are in the wrong direction.

What I really achieved in the last 10 years was to not add problems on top of systemic ones. The fact that we live in a gig economy, that the job market is unstable, that the games industry is built too often on pure dreams… I cannot control that. What I can control is my way of being a professional.

  • I show up on time
  • I put the time in my tasks
  • I work towards making a difference on a small scale (you never work on the next Zelda as a freelancer)
  • I am not looking to work on good games, I am looking to make important work. Work that matters to SOMEONE.

When I say that I work in creative direction, vision, and so on, someone will probably imagine Hideo Kojima at work. That is not the case. Most of my job is to:

  • Create detailed tasks for coders and artists
  • Review builds and write notes
  • Review visuals and send my feedback
  • Write down or create content that sets up a direction. It can be a pitch, but also a level design.

Important to note that I am always working, as a freelancer, on projects ideated by others. I do not agree with the basis of many of them, but those pay my bills. I am appreciated because I deliver and I speak clearly. I do not fight for my ideas, because I know that the more I am in the industry, the more I am biased as well as experienced. So who knows in the end?

A console concept for Netflix

Published by Paolo on 25/10/2024

After the shutdown of a Netflix studio, I read the opinions of many experts. One of the most common ideas is that Netflix needs its hardware to create a healthy games business.

To sketch up this idea, I also used LLM platforms. I will not publish any images, because they are based on stolen copyrights, but still, I want to admit that I used them for inspiration.

Netflix can reinvent the concept of the console, as they reinvented the business of VHS renting years ago.

Audience

The core audience is, of course, people (like myself) who have a Netflix subscription and who love video games. People that probably have kids, and work using technology.

We love to jump from series to series, we are nostalgic about the old days when games were simpler and gamepads had fewer buttons!

Features

The new console should:

  • Use common smartphones both as screens and controllers
  • Load games from fast support with no extra connections required
  • It will work as a “radio”, with knobs and everything, but for podcasts!
  • Once you own it, you are part of an ecosystem where you can also stream to others and create your program

Games

The games allowed on the platform should follow these rules:

  • The Player will be able to play opting out completely from micro-transactions
  • Every game must have a single-player experience and the content length will be public
  • Games can come with physical support that should contain the whole game and that will be played forever
  • Games are owned by the players forever and can be played on that console forever

Mood

The console can have a retro look but its colors and curved lines will attract new audiences.

The gamepads will have fewer buttons than new consoles. Every game should be simpler than competitors. Also, they can “wrap” a smartphone inside.