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.
Study your target
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.
Look at companies you would like to work for
Look at their game designers and try to find their portfolios (you can also ask them on LinkedIn)
Create your porfolio using well your references
At the end of the day doing a portfolio is a for of design!
What to put in a portfolio
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:
Start with a video gameplay with most meaningful moment of each exercise/job. People don’t want to have to download anything to see what you did.
Add some capture with very special moments, most memorable moments.
Notes on what you learn and on your process. You can use the STARR method that is also used by some recruiter.
Link to external documents and references. I use Google Drive for that!
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.
A friend of mine, indie game developer, is trying to join the industry. He managed in a brilliant way getting his first interview. He study their game and made a feature proposal for them.
A few months ago, I sent my CV to the same company and for the same position. I have far more experience than my friend, still they rejected my application. He was smart and proactive. I didn’t, I just applied. He deserves that position!
Today he asked me for a way of preparing for his interview. I suggested him to get informed regarding the main KPIs, key performance indicators. Those are very important when you are giving the core of your service for free.
Then you have to study the company’s game and at least 2 competitors of the same game. Look on Game Refinery and Deconstructor of Fun for more depth on the genre.
This post is for my friend. He deserves the position!
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:
Start with the theme: which is the theme of your game or the update of your game?
Translate the theme to the genre: which genre is the new game/update?
Think in all the systems needed to properly translate the theme into actual gameplay, according to the genre.
During the development of a videogame you will notice that many activities are repetitive. Activities like putting texts into a dialogue system or assigning sprites to your boosters.
Game developers use to develop tools to make our life easy in our repetitive activities. So that we can focus, as designers, on what really matters.
From the other side, we should assure that the things that are being developed really matter! Game development, otherwise, will focus the efforts in developing tools.
Here’s a new tool that permits to easily download a PNG icon from our servers so that in our live events we don’t need to make another build for our players. Great idea. And then you discover that no one plays that kind of live event, so waste of time.
We develop a game for Players to have fun. We don’t develop a game for you having an easier life. Our focus should always be on the Players, tools come later.
When looking for information on how to become a game designer the results are quite confusing. There is a famous video from years ago that claims that a game designer must know everything.
That video is right but scary!
In my opinion advices included in this video does not help those who are trying to prepare for the future. Rather, it helps those who are already on the way to feel very very cool!
Learn to design games
Getting started in game design is hard. There is no single path, but all paths have two things in common:
Create something playable.
Let people try it out by observing how they interact with the artifact you create.
It is very difficult because on the one hand you have to arm yourself with a lot of willpower and time to be able to get something done. On the other hand, it takes a good dose of cheek to go and ask people to try a game and be observed.
In my opinion, however, it is the only real way to learn. A lot of people, for example, suggest joining game jams to get started. Game jams are great for the first point, but they lack the fundamental component: the players. Players are by far the most important part of a video game, from a game designer’s perspective.
This article is for people who want to join a company as a game designer. To be a game designer, you don’t need to join a company. You can create and publish your own games. And you will be a great game designer if you insist. But companies look for other things: they pay you to solve practical problems. To learn how to solve them, you should start your journey from another starting point.
Generalist or specialist?
Game design is a very broad discipline and normally people tend to recommend specializing in a game design area. Industry is also looking for more and more specialized professionals. However, if I think of having to take care of only one thing for the rest of my life it is intolerable to me. I understand the needs of the industry, I understand the advice of the experts, but they are not for me. So there will be other people like me. I will never recommend specializing.
The starting point of all achievement is desire.
Napoleon Hill
My advice is, instead: pick a starting point. After, your career will advise you on whether to specialize or remain a generalist like me. Time puts everyone in their place.
Game design consists of four fundamental areas: level design, system design, narrative design and gameplay design. These areas in the mobile world are called level design, game economy design, content design and UX design. It is inaccurate, I know, but what I observe is this.
Choose one of the four areas, scan the companies you would like to work for and their games. Remember to study well the business model behind, try to get an approaximation of their team dimension using LinkedIn, game credits and public information. The business model influences the game design a lot.
Professional game design puts in relationship the Players with the business model, the game theme and the game itself. It’s creating a language between the business, the team and the people playing. A language to deliver stories and experiences.
Level Design
The level design relates the mechanics with the theme and the game experience in a way that is logical and that offers the right degree of complexity and challenge to the players at every step of the journey. It is a very profound art, to really master it it takes years. At first it may seem like a mountain, and it is.
To get started, I recommend to take games that allow the creation of levels. You don’t want to start directly from handling engines like Unity or Unreal Engine (you’ll get there, just don’t start from there), but you better start from other games that already have their metrics and skill atoms well defined. Plus you can connect with their community of modders and grow with your peers too.
Get a game that allows the creation of levels
Learn the creation system of that game
Study and document all the mechanics and the skill atoms for that game
Place the skill atoms in vertical and the mechanics in horizontal on a spreadsheet and make a beat chart with the original game level design to understand its philosophy
Connect with the modders community
Create your own levels and have them try
Great starting point for mobile level designers
If you are interested in the level design of smartphone games, however, you will hardly find level editors. In the Unity engine, however, very often you will find a complete game of that type in the asset store. I recommend that you pay less than 50 euros to have the asset and be able to work on it. In that case you have to start from the engine, yes. Prepare your match-3 or endless runner levels from there!
The narrative design connects the theme and game mechanics to the story. It’s about designing how the story is delivered to people through the game. The best way to learn is to create fan fiction about popular games and implement the dialogue in some way: in the game or by recreating parts of the game itself.
A narrative designer reminds a little of a dungeon master when you start
Choose the game and create fan fiction
Have a few fans of the game read your story and try to improve it
Create a version of the game that allows you to receive the story as it is delivered, using Twine or rapid prototyping tools
You can also consider of creating a role playing game based on that game
Let someone try the new dialogue and watch their reactions!
System Design
System design is the branch of game design that relates the theme to the mechanics at its base, in the invisible part of it. It focuses on the connections between all the atoms of the game. Normally you need to know how to use tools such as spreadsheets well. However, the best way to really learn system design is by creating board games.
Choose a game you like
Create the tabletop version of that game
Try it if possible with fans of the game, but also with normal people
Iterate and improve your board game
Translate the rules to digital documents and spreadsheets
Gameplay Design
The gameplay design also relates the game’s theme to its mechanics, but from a more player-oriented perspective. It deals with the most tangible experience part, it is one of the most difficult branches and has many ramifications. The best way to really learn gameplay design is to start by researching and watching players interact with existing games.
Learn here how to research games
Take a game and have people who have never played it trying it in front of you
Take note of all behaviors, beautiful moments and struggles
Take detailed screenshots of the entire game and organize them in a file, as shown in the video above
Chooe a component of a game and try to create a variation in the form of a prototype
Let someone try the variation and see the differences
It takes a lot of willpower to start this profession. There is no single path, this is the one I recommend. Companies look for portfolios, especially in the more junior profiles. If this portfolio is created by working on existing titles, and if these titles are theirs, that’s even better!
Few people, in fact, have the necessary talent to create some work that really stands out from the others. We normal people have to look for shortcuts. Better to work an existing game yourself than to create the “wonderful adventure of the boy in the woods” that everyone creates.
If you want to hire a game designer for your company, the process can be long. It is very hard to find the right fit, especially for a role like this which touches so many areas of knowledge at the same time.
Tech Test nightmare
The standard nowadays is to make a set of 1-2 interviews and then send a technical test to complete within a week. The test is usually composed of 2-3 tasks which can be completed in 8-16 hours. Anyway, since you have 1 week to do it you will probably invest at least 32 hours trying to get the best result.
Then you send the test out and the outcome can be good, in which case you pass to the next stage. If the outcome is not good, you will have no chance to defend your thoughts and process. You spent 32 hours of your time, nobody pays for that (also nobody uses the outcome of your work) and you are sad. Free work for nothing.
What can you do instead?
Raph Koster in an old post said that a good game designer has writing, technical and artistic skills. Technical tests usually focus on the technical part, but include the other two parts in most cases.
You may want to be sure that your next game designer is the right choice. In front of you there is a junior professional, a mid or a senior (or superior) ones. The process should be different in the 3 cases.
Junior Game Designer
Junior game designers should provide support to the senior professionals. If you want to hire a junior, you should already have at least one senior capable of mentoring this designer. The new hire should be chosen mainly by the senior designer.
2 hours interview
Focus on deconstruct a specific game together
Specific task live, the senior can see how the junior will tackle a challenge
Think aloud to express yourself
After the call, the designer should write a small report on the learnings and the activities and send it via email
Mid Game Designer
Those people are already capable of working autonomously on specific tasks. They don’t have to work always on a strict supervision. They start to contribute to the game vision meaningfully. They are capable of facilitating brainstorming sessions and creative meetings.
2 hours interview with development team
Portfolio review with deep discussions on problems faced and problem solving
Creative session simulation
After the meeting, send notes and ideas selections
Senior Game Designer
A senior is someone capable of understanding the context, analyze potential solutions and find the best fit for the game scope. We fought many battles and faced many problems already.
2 hours interview with design team
Provide a specific context and see how the designer solves the problem
Collaborate with the designers for them to be successful at the interview, not to filter them out
After the meeting, let the designer prepare a small presentation or demo
Arrange another interview with the presentation or demo and comment deeply with the team
Conclusions
When you are alone completing a technical test, you are applying your professional knowledge to complete specific task. You are working.
Nobody pays you for that. You are working for free.
It does not matter that the challenge is so cool or that the company is so important. They will not use your work to make profit, but still you worked for free.
The right company for you is the company that sets you for the good during the interview. The interview process is not to discard people, but to find the right fit! Support your candidates to see their true potential, instead of trying to spot what doesn’t work. And don’t worry to find the best of the best. There is always someone better, of course, the important is to find someone great for the position.
Some time ago I tried an experiment. I hired some people to try to teach them my way of making video games. My goal was not to earn money with those games. I wanted to train a couple of assistants because the number of clients of my consultings is increasing.
The experiment did not go as expected. My time is scarce, so I can’t invest it in training people. I quickly realized my choice was pretty dumb. However, I realized something very important.
If we don’t have time, it is better to delegate to those who know more than us. We will thus make a good impression on our clients. We will also learn new techniques.
In my dayjob I use a lot: Google Suite, Unity3D, Python, Github (and git in general) and a bunch of tools more such Slack, Discord or Machinations.
I work into the cloud, so that every document and every simulation or concept or prototype I produce is instantly available from everywhere.
Those are strange times, anyway. We cannot take the Internet for granted forever.
What if tomorrow you cannot access to the GDD you were workin on? What if you cannot pull the last commit from your devs? Can you work offline for, let’s say, a week?
Probably it’s time to return back to the Office Suite too…
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:
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:
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.
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!
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