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Tag: howto

A sit at the table

Published by Paolo on 16/01/2024

Companies hire game designers (and other profiles) to build their business. Game designers have a specific focus on features and content. When we design features, the best way of showing their value is to focus on the benefits of that feature.

  • Business leaders love to hear about the impact of a certain feature, more than the quality of it.
  • It’s better to speak about the benefits of reducing cognitive load instead of selling a “cleaner” design.
  • One of the goals of feature design is to improve the long-term profit, more than improving the gameplay.
  • Things like accessibility, inclusivity, and so on are useful to reach untapped markets. They are not just a good thing to do.
  • Managers love to hear how to improve the path to purchase, more than vague concepts like flow.

If more designers take this approach, we will see less of them switching to Product Manager roles just to get a sit at the table.

Top game design voice badge

Published by Paolo on 12/01/2024

I have been on LinkedIn for 14 years. I use that platform a lot because of my personal branding activities. When I was fired from Digital Chocolate, because of a bad relationship with my direct manager, I decided to become the best game designer I could possibly become. Part of my strategy involved starting to share my ideas and discoveries of this complex micro world.

In fact, you need to explain things to others to become a recognized expert. It’s not just walk the walk, you need to talk the talk. Also, the language of business is not my native one, so I needed a tool to improve my English. I needed to find my own voice.

And the results are good, I have a healthy small business with my clients. Also, when I go to local meetups often I am reached by people that I don’t know who thank me for something related to my writings and videos. I can say that I feel I am in a good way. Of course, many things can happen and I can screw everything up with a mistake. In fact, pushing your ideas out there is no easy task.

Collaborative articles

For all this, I have never received any badge of any sort. But then LinkedIn published a new feature, called collaborative articles. That feature is probably meant to substitute experts in certain fields in the future. I honestly hate it. So I decided to take action.

Every morning I do this:

  1. I select randomly 5 collaborative articles on Game Design
  2. I copy one of the questions, also a random
  3. I paste it on Bing AI
  4. Then I copy and paste back part of the answer

Tadaaa! In just 10 days I got my badge. It was just grinding, nothing more. These social networks don’t care about the true value of their content.

Are you on the right path?

Published by Paolo on 03/01/2024

This is a question that pops out often while you are making a new game. Especially when you lead business discussions as a game designer. You often need to see your work greenlighted by some marketer or business guy. That’s because they are often at the top.

But the question focuses on the outcome, on something that nobody can control. Often, there are “fortune tellers” in companies that win the internal battles just because they can be very convincing. But nobody can predict the revenue of a game in development.

You can have the top talent and a system that is informed with data. With that, you can cope, adjust, and leverage the unpredictability. That’s it, and it’s more than enough!

Do you want to know if you are on the right path? Are you making the best game you can with the resources you have? Then, you are.

The most sincere form of flattery

Published by Paolo on 28/12/2023

Clone

  • a plant or animal that has the same genes as the original from which it was produced
  • someone or something that looks very much like someone or something else
  • a computer that operates in a very similar way to the one that it was copied from

You will never be a professional game designer until you understand the art of cloning. From a first perception, it may seem like something unfair. You are stealing, copying, and ripping things off. But it’s not. Cloning is the most sincere form of flattery.

The risk of copycats

The problem with cloning in companies is that businesses are led by business people. People working ON the game. And business people are not designers (usually). When they see that there is something successful, they want to replicate the success. The smartest ones dream to make it grow better than the original.

And that becomes a problem, often, for designers. More in general, for developers. For people working IN the game. While we struggle to find the best way of understanding why something is working and how to improve it… Looking for other games that the same core audience is playing, to find how to integrate… the “orders” we receive is to put “that thing that the CEO’s son saw in that game” in. No discussions.

What to do?

The non-obvious solution, to me, is that designers should earn a sit at the table. And to do that, you need to learn the business language and adapt to it. If your company decides it will dedicate its effort to hybrid casual games (it’s a mere example), it’s a loss from a creative point of view. Your Players will never look for a hybrid casual game. They will look for a simple game to play on their mobile phone. It makes no sense, from the client’s perspective, that kind of wording. So our goal is to understand how to communicate with the business in their crazy way while we work for the Players.

Factors, scope and popularity

Published by Paolo on 22/12/2023

Every game plays around 3 factors: skill, luck, and stats.

  • The first is the actual cognitive effort required to play it.
  • Luck is about everything generated at runtime, developers set up rules for generation.
  • Stats are carefully designed values that give the Players the first goal: grow them.

There are skill-based, luck-based, and stat-based games. Games whose principal factor is one of the 3. Within this game is possible to add more of the other 2 factors. You may earn more opportunities, for instance for monetization. On the other hand, you complicate a little the things. This translates usually to a more niche game.

What’s the key to creativity? The capacity of scoping things, removing the superfluous. Many successful games started with this concept in mind. Eventually, they evolved more complicated as their popularity grew. Some of the new Players will resist a little bit of friction to be part of the crowd, to not be left out. It’s important to see where they started if you desire to replicate their success.

The first production tip

Published by Paolo on 16/12/2023

We can speak ages about games production and how to manage people. But there are things that are universal and very useful.

  • Make a list of features you would like to see into your game
  • Order them by priority. Priority is calculated based on specific factors, it’s a formula
  • take the top 3 in your list and set the next deadline at 6-10 weeks around them.

Easy and uneasy questions

Published by Paolo on 14/12/2023

Do you believe in your project or not?

Someday the game you are making is exciting.

Some other day you feel like nothing works. It’s the worst game ever.

This is completely normal and common. Track these days. Play the build, every single day. And speak with your team. Do you believe you are on the right track?

If you are not sure about that from many milestones, it’s time to question harder topics.

Loops

Published by Paolo on 05/12/2023

Loops are a great way to drive design discussions with everyone on the team. They are a simplified version of a flowchart and the last element connects to the first. I see that there are different definitions of loops and today I want to show you mine.

As with many other definitions related to game design, the fact that there are different versions implies often that you need to make an effort to understand the point of view of who’s driving the conversation.

Game, Core and Meta loops

When I say game loops, I mean the sequence of most used features within the game.

  • The example above represents an action-adventure game like Uncharted
  • Every circle represents a feature, a collection of mechanics that creates one or more dynamics
  • The arrows represent how the game is supposed to lead the Players to the next feature

With core loops I mean the sequence of actions that the Player performs more often during the gameplay

  • The example above is the core loop of a match-3 game
  • Every circle represents a mechanic
  • The connecting arrows can be read as “so that”: As a Player, you swipe tiles SO THAT you match 3 or more tiles you get a new board status SO THAT you can decide which tiles to swipe next.

Finally, there are the metagame (or economy) loops, which represent the construction of the economy on top of the actions. A good economy makes you think about the game when you are not playing.

  • the example above represent (a simplification of) a possible metagame for an RPG
  • every rectangle represents a game feature, mechanic, or concept
  • arrows indicate that a system adds or subtracts elements from the next rectangle. For instance, speaking to an NPC will increment the number of quests that the Player has. Collecting loot will remove inventory space.

Conclusion

There is not a single way of looking at loops, what is important as a designer is to have your voice. Oftentimes clients show me their “core loops” and in my definition, those are “game loops” instead. And there is no problem, the client is always right and I can adopt their jargon easily. The important is to keep my base strong to drive meaningful discussions.

Loops are useful to express concepts and drive discussions, they don’t have to be perfect. They are a medium for a concrete purpose: clarity. I saw very complicated loops, for instance, that do not add clarity. In that case is better to break it down into different feature loops (which are game loops that describe a single feature, when it’s too big).

Finally, the loops should be meaningful. Good loops have a long-term goal associated with them. You decide to repeat the loop over and over to reach that goal. So ask yourself what is the goal for every loop you identify.

One game per year

Published by Paolo on 21/11/2023

We live around 75 years. We have 75 summers, around 80 travels (in my personal economical condition of course). The people we will meet are relatively few, the projects we can tackle too.

Imagine you start to work at 25 years, because you are born in the lucky side of the World. You have 40 years working. If a game takes 3-5 years, you can make around 8-14 games in your life. Game for companies, that may be successful or not.

Or you can go indie, maybe solo dev, going alone and try to publish one game per year. Small game, of course. In that case you can leave 20-30 good games (the first will surely be a disaster). That can be your legacy as a game designer.

The future of games

Published by Paolo on 13/11/2023

This weekend I was scrolling the infinite feed of LinkedIn and reading updates from many experts. I have to say that lately from one side there are lots of challenges. Many layoffs across the whole IT sector and people looking desperate. From the other, lots of experts are sharing their knowledge online. This is absolutely a good thing.

One of the main topic is about the future of games. Right now, it seems that everyone can make and publish a PC game very easily. But the cost of AAA games production is rising and the value perceived by the players is going down.

There is a demand/offer problem, too many games and it’s hard that the people notices you. To me, the solution should come by adopting a different perspective. Unless you have a strong IP, like Call of Duty, you cannot just make a game and sell it. You cannot afford to assume that people will come buy it. Nowadays, you should first get in touch with people, make them notice you. Then the people will eventually buy your things.

There is a trend among content creators, especially tech ones. They use Patreon to arrive to their audience. They build little by little. Play-to-earn crypto games were scam, but they were making something good: making contact with people super early. Of course, the focus there was money which is never something good to relate with entertainment. Still, I liked this very fact.

The key to me is in being able to create a strategy to go towards the people, the Players. Not the other way around. If you are making a game and then you will invest your money in marketing to spread the word, it’s very possible you join the rest of noise. It’s better to start build your player base right now, instead.