This week I went to a fantastic event organized by GameBCN, a local video games incubator. They invited Anchor Point, a new NetEase studio that is opening doors in Barcelona. There was a talk on worldbuilding. I love narrative design, and the speaker was clear and inspiring.
I had the opportunity to meet my friends of the local games industry and, for the first time since years, I have noticed a clear disconnection between the world of LinkedIn and the real one. When I enjoyed LinkedIn the most, before and during pandemic, we didn’t have many tools to automatically create posts. LinkedIn has clearly suffered the process of enshittification that all social media have at some point.
Before it wasn’t like that. Before it was cool to meet in person the same people I met on LinkedIn and see that there were little difference. LinkedIn was a tool to facilitate connections, not followers.
People were worried, many of them are looking for a job or a project to work on. I am calm, honestly. When everyone is in the same situation, why worry at all? I can only focus on build my road, as I have always done.
Maybe it’s time to abandon LinkedIn, which is sad I have a good follow. I will start to use it differently, looking more for connections and less for reactions. Let’s see if the things improves…
I love to teach. Every time I am allowed to do it, I do it. It can be videogames, it can be Computer Science, or math. I love to put that seed inside of people. And I honestly think I am pretty good at that.
I was reading an article on effective teaching that appeared on The Guardian some while ago. I am doing it because I am taking a language course in Catalan and I believe that the teacher is really good. And I am asking why is that good to me. So I need also to make my mental model, as always. Designer professional deformation, I guess.
I am also taking a 3 week intensive course on narrative design with Kim McAskill these weeks. It’s very interesting, so my mind makes analogies and connections of course.
Telling stories
Although narrative design is different from storytelling, the purpose is always the same. It is actually the same as game design. Telling something, telling a story. If you want, we always want that. We always want to tell a story, our job and profession is one way of doing it.
And teaching is also telling a story, but you need your students to learn. In games you need your players to have fun. And having fun means, at the end of the day, to learn. That’s the spark of my idea on how to import things from teaching to improve narrative design.
Ideas for a better narrative design
I will grab the points describe in the article linked above and adapt them to narrative design. That is a branch of game design that puts in relationship the systems with the stories, creating settings, worlds, people, characters and the way of deliver them (dialogues, cutscenes, set pieces, and so on).
Narrative design is game design, and game design always creates narratives.
Let’s go:
Know your subject -> Have clear how Players can reach their goals: the most important quality of a teacher is, of course, to know what he’s teaching. The most important quality of a good narrative design is to know what the players need to reach their goals.
Praise can do more harm than good -> Giving too many rewards early make the Players skip some important step for learning. Players may feel frustrated later and quit, as well as students that may suppose that the teacher will be good with them.
Instruction matters -> Stories matter: the quality of teaching has impact on the students. The same is valid for a story. Games do not need a story, but games with a story may literally change lives.
Teacher beliefs count -> Designer beliefs count: there is something personal and unique in every teacher and designer. Our way of seeing how to teach or how to create fun influences the outcome. There is no best practice or rulebook, there are beliefs. It’s personal, it’s unique,
Think about student-teacher relationships -> Think about player – designer relationships: the interaction of the teacher with the students have a tremendous impact on the climate of the classroom. In a similar manner, designers especially in small realities have the opportunities to create relationships with students.
Manage behavior -> Manage behavior! Study the characteristics of your students and the data of your players to be more effective.
Imagine this business: you write which furniture you want for your flat. A green sofa for your lounge. A carpet for the studio. A small library for your dorm. You select the image of what you like and, for the price of transportation, you get the furniture.
Imagine you live in a country where robbing apartments is not a felony. And you know that this furniture was stolen from someone. How would you feel? You may think in the short term, you don’t have money. You don’t want to go to IKEA and fight the whole day with your spouse. Plus, it’s no felony so who cares?
Let’s switch context for a while…
We have lots of hints and suggestions redacted by millions of people over the years. Doctors who tried to solve some specific health condition. Programmers helping others to understand how backend development works.
Every time we need this information to solve some problem or face a challenge, we invest our time in finding the right answer. Meanwhile, we learn about other things we didn’t consider. In some cases, being faster can save lives. In other, don’t.
You are running for what?
Let’s take game development. The more you learn, the more things you spot you should consider, and the better your games will be. So, is it interesting to be faster?
Sometimes I am sure it is. Most of the time doesn’t.
LLM services offer a collage that makes you feel you can make art, or writing without having the talent needed to craft it. Like the stolen furniture example I made, they are a deliberate steal. They take things made by others and give them to you.
An interesting feature is that they provide a summary of hints too. You look for how to code something and they give you the code. You can be faster, but you need to understand what the code does. Also, the slow process of looking for solutions can make you discover things you didn’t consider. You have lost that if you surrender to LLMs.
In any case, they consume water and energy. They pay for that, but they pay a market price that I am afraid is not aware of the long-term damage.
Is it worth it? No, it isn’t.
It can be worth in a life-or-death situation. If a machine is better than the human eye to detect a condition, that case is good for LLMs.
In 1998, me and my brother were waiting outside of a video games shop, in Naples. The owner promised us on the telephone that the game would have arrived for the opening, the next day.
The game was “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”. Its cost was 120k lire. With the inflation and everything, today would have a cost of 100,52 euros – source
The game was made by a team of more than 200 people and a budget of over $12 million. – source
Today, games with that level of quality have a higher budget and are sold for less money. That’s because of a lot of factors, it’s not simply one reason or another.
Videogames yesterday
In 1998 video games were one of the things that shaped our future as persons. Playing The Legend of Zelda was a life-changing experience. And it was much easier for that Nintendo 64 in our room to catch our attention. We had no smartphones and no socials. We had guitars, a PC with a weak connection, school books, and lots of board games.
The controls of that game were simpler than the controls of the vast majority of AAA games nowadays. The console was offline, you had the game running in less time than today with your PS5. Everything was so simple and so memorable.
Videogames today
Today we have two main challenges, as game creators:
The discoverability of our games. There is no friction anymore in making and releasing a game.
Games are not the super hot thing anymore. Today there are many drivers of culture, influencers and streamers for instance.
I remember when I read about Zelda on Megaconsole, an Italian zine dedicated to Nintendo games. Nowadays, people have no right to focus on a single article without getting spammed by lots of ads and notifications of sorts.
Combat, puzzles, exploration: the promise was unique. Today, I see Zeldas over and over
I remember my eyes popping out of my head when I saw Soul Calibur running on an imported JAP Dreamcast in front of my eyes. The effect is not the same when you watch trailers on YouTube. Games have lost that spark they had when they were pushing the technology and the boundaries.
How to fix that wicked problem?
The future of video games passes by offering Players real life-changing experiences. Players should come out of a game better than they entered. This passes by really curating the content somehow.
At least, that was the promise. Try to sell a game for 100 euros these days, and see what the people will write about your prices. Why? Because of the value they give to the games today, compared to the value we gave them in the past.
Virtual shops should focus on leaving to the influencers the curation of their content. Imagine opening Steam and having tips from the streamers you love. That’s probably the first step. Steam and other shops should never filter people out, but it would be great for everyone to have a reliable curation of content.
But also we, designers and developers, should try to only push out things that matter at least to us. When I meet someone working for a company with a proper contract, too often I see a bored person who is just doing a job.
We have lost that push that differentiate our sector. We need more passionate professionals, preferably with a broader range of skills. We need to build games on top of what can really improve the life of people through fun.
I am not sure that would solve the issue, but if Players are able to find their games and these games will change their lives a little, also with a simple smile, that’s the way to me.
I am playing Elden Ring these days. At start, all I got was lots of frustration, but currently, I am using it to de-stress. I know I will die every few minutes, so who cares? I die and chill, surprisingly. Until I will get bored and move on.
I keep asking myself: how would a f2p Elden Ring work?
First of all, let’s make assumptions about you, the potential players. They like rich lore, beautiful weapons, and big monsters. You decide to play on mobile while watching a Netflix show. Scroll and swipe a mobile game, to get endorphins while doing something passive. You don’t need too much cognitive effort, but you would put the show on pause to make a meaningful choice.
Core loop
The discovery is the most relaxing part of Elden Ring. You can choose the direction you want to go and the map is huge. In case you find a site of grace, you can upgrade your character here.
The combat is too stressful for a mobile F2P game that wants to reach massive audiences. So what if you already know its outcome? You already know that in the next 3 fights, you will beat, beat, and die. Or, beat, random outcome (roll: beat or die), and die
The loot is key because you do not lose your inventory when you die (only your runes)
Death is the catharsis that lets you restart your discovery. You can choose to go retrieve your souls (at your own risk).
The long-term goal is to complete the adventure. The live operations should focus on adding more chapters, on one end. On the other, temporary events and special bosses to loot extra spells and swords.
The puzzle that brings you to return over and over lies in the choice of direction to take to discover and upgrade your Tarnished. You should engage with the community to find the right guidance, or you can decide to discover everything yourself.
Metagame
I like this idea of the Players already knowing that they will die. They can dedicate themselves to relaxing, exploring, and enjoying the combats. Combats should be automatic, the Player can choose the equipment.
The economy of the game should be around enemies, souls, stats, and equipment. You need souls to level up the stats. Stats are useful to use the equipment. The equipment is to beat the enemies. And the enemies give you souls.
Every part of the core loop should be monetizable. Discovery leans on energy systems. Combat has rolls and power-up opportunities. You can multiply the loot. Finally, death can be the occasion to recover the consumables you lost (energies, power-ups, …).
The other day I made a post on my LinkedIn right after posting about the same thing here on my blog. Happens many times that the second post is better than the first one. Reactions are good and I had interesting conversations with people because of that.
If you are looking for a job and you ask any expert, the things they would say you will include:
Apply to job offers and get interviews
Become a specialist in a field
Show up, show up, show up!
This is the playbook, the standard thing. This process will put you in the game of people looking for the “top talent”. The best of the best. I was reading a post boasting that a job they were offering had already more than 300 applications from veterans from top companies. Horrible thing, what are you waiting for? Is that a selection process or a battle royale?
Today I want to propose 4 alternative ways of getting yourself through. No one of them is easy, or evident.
Offer something unique. Something you know that only you and a few people like you can offer. To do that, you should work a lot on understanding what you can offer.
Have people that follow your steps. People that when you are there they are beside you. Start a community around something.
Be famous for something. This is probably the least easy solution.
The easier: become everything you miss to make the job you want to do. Do you want to be a game designer? Become a producer, a marketer, and a programmer too. Make your things become an entire company (with very small projects) and put them out there.
Either of these four things is better than spending hours every week making interviews and assignments that, believe me, rarely bring you to land a job.
Back in the days, when video games starting to be a business, gatekeepers were physical locations (the arcades). You reached your friends there and you played what was present based on the distribution in that area.
Then the console era started, and the shops became the gatekeepers. They decided to put a game more or less visible on the shelves.
Today is extremely easy to develop and put a game out there, there is no friction for that. Also, it’s getting harder and harder to get the attention of the people. The friction imposed by technological limitations was helpful for the few brave enough to decide making video games.
Today, everyone can be a game developer. Also modding has become easier and you can earn solid money with that. Look at the last news from Epic on UEFN, for instance. There is no friction anymore, so where is the secret of going forward?
Tech today lets us become gatekeepers of our own content. We need to find ways of finding and serving very well our audience. It can be small, but it should be happy and engaged. That’s where the secret lies for the companies of the future.
Reviewing the resume of a senior takes time. That’s because we all lie, especially when we need the job. So it takes time to spot the truths within a resume. The same is valid for a portfolio of juniors. It takes time to build them, and it takes time to review them.
That’s why relationships with seniors are very important. A portfolio can be discovered or sent to a company, but they will probably have little time to check it in detail. Instead, if you use the portfolio as a tool to communicate with people you have a relationship with, everything is easy.
Oftentimes when a company needs juniors, seniors already know who to call. Many seniors, like me, are in constant touch with junior talents. And that’s also why you don’t see many offers for juniors out there. Because it is not necessary.
Think of your resume or portfolio as another tool for communication. Don’t send them only to job applications. Job applications are worthless, I have personally never seen a job application go well in my entire life. Use your resume and portfolio as a vehicle to find your voice and spread it out there. Create meaningful relationships.
Today I want to start a new appointment on my blog: Free Flow Fridays (FFF). I want to just leave my mind for one day without thinking about being insightful, or worrying about the SEO and things like that.
This week I was reading and listening to the news and the whole World is in crisis. Everything is suffering a crisis now, from religious institutions to the climate. The industry where I work is in crisis too, and my country is in a crisis too. What can I do as a game designer? The challenge is pretty hard, but one thing I know: I have to bring fun and good things to the World. This starts by selecting also the tools I use. For instance, GenAI tools available are trained on datasets that steal intellectual properties. I will not use them.
Speaking of which, I am not scared by the advent of generative AI, I am pretty sure it is a bubble about to burst. Still, I have to be prepared for the worst as always. I believe that nothing can beat good storytelling in games. And I am sure that good stories will always be uniquely from humans, never from bots. So I intend to insist on that side of game design: game writing and more in general narrative design.
In the last few months I have been suffering fewer clients too, that’s why I am taking a couple of courses to improve my tools and workflows and get more productive in the future. I don’t believe honestly that with 60 years companies will look out for people like me, so I want to prepare my future. There are 3 possibilities I foresee:
Build a profitable company and sell it. Unless something changes, I don’t see myself doing that.
Invest my game design skills into other fields more stable. Honestly, I don’t see myself working for a bank using my incredible spreadsheet skills.
Teach. That’s my thing. I love to explain things, I love the idea of helping create a better future.
I see myself teaching and making my small games before retiring, so yes that’s what I want to work on in the next months. Maybe by starting an Italian book on game design, who knows?
I would start a new RPG development by creating the World and its rules. Then I would start from the smallest possible system to see if the people is actually interested in it. Only then I would proceed. To me make a game without knowing anything is too risky.
Another reflection is that I don’t own Baldur’s Gate 3, but I see some of its characters all over the place. And I can just look at that beautiful piece of art from the outside. As a follower, I cannot influence anything of the World of BG3. In 2024 is absurd, considering that I can interact with the president of a foreign country from my smartphone. Do I have to buy BG3 to interact with its World?
I am currently playing Elden Ring. When I have time, since I have a baby to care. As any RPG there are chores to do. Why can’t I do these chores from my mobile phone? I don’t have anything to interact with the world of Elden Ring when my PS5 is off. In 2024, that is absurd to me.
An idea for the future is to build an RPG like a separate entity, a proper virtual world. And that world can be accessible by multiple sources. A mobile game, a console game, a PC game. But also a TikTok account, a Discord server. Technology is there, you can make donations and send gifts via lots of platforms to the creators. So why don’t we use it to create a fully interactable world?
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