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Tag: design

LLMs and critical thinking

Published by Paolo on 22/08/2024

One of my duties as a game designer working in a team is to give feedback. Usually, I give it to other designers, artists, and writers. Giving feedback is hard, because when we’re asked for it we tend to look for the defects. Or, at least, I do.

The same is true when I am on the other side. I ask for feedback and I already know that 80% or more of that will be some critical opinion. I accept it, because I know how it is when I am on the other side of the table.

I have developed this interrogation to LLMs that helps me a lot with my designs. I provide the machine with my design goals and elements and ask it to do my job. The result is wrong, and average. I criticize it and find solutions.

The dialogue with a dummy entity helps with my critical thinking.

Pawtners Case

Published by Paolo on 21/08/2024

Today I have completed a set of new mechanics which will be useful for the very first prototype of my game. You can watch here:

I have also changed the name of the game, after listening to the first feedback on a Discord server. The game will be called Pawtners Case, I am studying also layouts for a possible capsule. This is what I got so far:

I am impressed by Unreal Engine. I don’t know why I didn’t use it until now. It has a whole gameplay framework already implemented, you can set things up very easily. And placing object in the level is fairly simple. It doesn’t have the huge community that Unity has, but it’s a powerful tool.

Now I need to focus on the level for the first prototype, and double check which mechanics I am missing.

Snifferson & Solvito: Paws on the case

Published by Paolo on 19/08/2024

I discovered that AEVI, a local association that helps game developers in Spain, activated a help plan for independent developers. They help you financially with the development of a prototype.

My first solo dev game in Unreal Engine is taking shape! I am excited, and I am willing to keep things very small and doable. I want to make a complete game in 6 months, and I can add 2 more for QA and debugging but that’s it.

My intention is to keep things fairly simple:

  • You control a police dog and your goal is to help your human companion solve a case
  • No dialogues, just emojis to express emotions. I want to avoid too many terms to translate. You can develop a relationship with your human colleague which will help you during levels
  • As a dog, you can find valuable items (+$) but also damage the environments (-$) and this will influence the economy of the central station
  • Everytime you perform some action you will learn more abilities during the level which can be useful to solve the case, so you decide
  • No violence, PEGI 12, E10+ game. Explosions and shots will be funny using ragdolls and silly animations

Dog game

Published by Paolo on 16/08/2024

When I was younger I was addicted to TV shows with a policeman and a dog. The most famous one was called Tequila & Bonetti. I still remember that piano music that Bonetti played at night, recalling his dark past.

I am studying Unreal Engine and I had an idea: an action game with a story where you are the dog and have to solve situations to move forward with the story.

For now it’s called simply “Dog game”, I am implementing the first mechanics.

Follow here the development of this game

The courage of logging out

Published by Paolo on 05/08/2024

I was watching this fantastic video, a little clip from an interview to one of my favorite singers.

Apart from the fact that I love when someone I consider a true talent shows humility and thanks his high school teachers, I think lots of things are transferable to my professional life.

The main one is that you have to truly dedicate yourself to something to become good at it. And this is not anything new, but in my life I have:

  • my family
  • my clients
  • my hobbies
  • this blog to maintain
  • a Substack where I teach game design in Italian
  • my LinkedIn account
  • a Reddit account

that means lots of distractions for becoming a true expert in something. That’s why the time in high school is so valuable now to me.

I wish myself the courage to log off and pursue my dreams, today.

Creating content

Published by Paolo on 12/06/2024

“The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.” (G. Orwell, 1984)

Videogames, like music, are perceived by some people working or investing in them as “content”. That’s where the very concept of creativity starts to be corrupted up to a level that is hard to answer quickly to some issue.

Creativity to me has more to do with removing things than adding. It’s like you throw the clay, or something like that, and then you start to dig material away from it.

Everyone who worked with me can confirm this, I start very ambitious and then I work shoulder by shoulder with engineers and artists to remove stuff. It’s better to have 1 thing well polished than 5 generic. It’s better to enhance a strong part of a game than to create a new mode to sustain the weakest ones.

The dopamine culture wants content, and it’s harder to see this simple truth.

The Action Man fantasy

Published by Paolo on 10/06/2024

What I really liked to see yesterday at Microsoft’s XBOX Showcase 2024 was the presentation of the new Call of Duty.

I am never been a COD fan, and I have never played that game too much. But I liked the developers’ interview explaining how they changed a single thing, the fantasy, to innovate meaningfully on the whole game.

The new fantasy of the “action man” led to a whole new set of features and animations. Some of them is designed for new audiences who, like me, are not experts playing that game. Refreshing!

Impressive and you can see how the game design is definitely a role shared among the whole team.

World Tetris Day (the day after)

Published by Paolo on 07/06/2024

I just discovered that yesterday was the World Tetris Day. The history of Tetris is incredible, they made movies and documentaries on that.

I like to hear stories about game design as an invention. Most of the time we work with projects, not inventions. Inventions in creativity have the potential to create nostalgia.

I like vision statements like “games that will be remembered forever”. They mean to work to develop a market, not just saturate it to extract profit.

The day after World Tetris Day I wish you to invent something new.
Have a great weekend everybody!

Grinding and working fantasy

Published by Paolo on 06/06/2024

One thing games and stories have in common is that, for some weird reason we love when they talk about work.

We love stories of lawyers and we love power-wash simulators. A friend of mine bought a freakin’ airplane cabin for his garden and teaches maneuvers to newbies every night on Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad.

We also love games with less fidelity, still on work-related stuff. Nintendogs had a tremendous success, for instance. Some DS owner just got that game and that’s it.

One of the best moments of What Remains of Edith Finch (the most memorable, to me) happens while you are cutting and cleaning fish.

These games can tell stories that we relate to deeply, and give us a different sort of escapism.

When we are kids, many of us play actual professions. I was an astronomer, I bought zines and everything: a true expert! I spent my afternoons with maps, numbers, and theories I didn’t understand.

When a game is bad or “grindy” for us we often say “I feel like I am working”, but the working fantasy has a huge narrative potential.

Games and novels can turn mundane experiences into ones that pull on our psychology of reward faster than the real world. There are sparkles, rewards, sounds, and bouncing numbers.

The working metaphor can be easily related to reality, we can feel productive in terms of that particular fantasy. A well-thought work fantasy can also intrinsically motivate players who like to feel productive and valued.

Squad Busters beat the “voluntary play” test

Published by Paolo on 03/06/2024

Squad Busters is a great toy, for me. I noticed this is a game led by game designers. I guess that they want to prove the long tail of this concept. And I hope they will because they are making something they like.

I bet that this game has passed the first very important test of any successful game. This is NOT the D1 retention that can be calculated in at least 4 different ways to trick stakeholders.

I call this test “voluntary play”: if the team is playing the game for pure pleasure, you have a promising game.

Only 5% of games pass this test. If more people would make this test we would have fewer meaningless games in the stores. We prefer to keep working on something uninteresting because “we should check CPI”, or “Let’s see D3“.

My question is: why should the people play that crap if you won’t?

Squad Busters has a strong hook, for sure. If its tail is high enough, building the mid-experience on vertical progress should be easier than following the old playbook. And if it doesn’t work, it’s still a game related to their brand. They could also try to expand to more platforms.

I would play this on Steam, for example.

And for mobile, I would add a new control system for people like me who prefer to swipe. A system based on giving directions to the squad by swiping on the screen. With points of interest for them to act with elements in the range.