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Tag: ideas

Smiling Suns

Published by Paolo on 26/08/2022

I was talking on the phone with my mom, and she said: “your brother sent me yesterday photos from the beach. He was happy, he also put a Sun that smiles in the message.”

The “Sun that smiles” is her interpretation of the smiling emoji. I grew up typing ASCII symbols to create smileys. Then with MSN, those symbols were automatically translated to a smiley. In our interpretation, a smiley is a face, not a Sun. My mother, instead, had nothing to do with all of that. First time she saw a smiley was in WhatsApp. Her interpretation is a Sun, not a face. And she is right, is a yellow round circle with eyes and mouth. It is not a face, definitely! It is more a Sun.

Her meaning is more poetic than mine, too. A Sun that smiles, a Sun that cries. That is not the face that my brother wanted to show. There was a third entity in their conversation. It was an happy day at the beach, and the Sun smiles. I love it!

Sometimes the same happens to our games. The shapes we present to the Players have a meaning for us, developers. And then the game is out, everyone in the World will play it. Some of them will see a face smiling. Some other will see a Sun, instead. And that’s very powerful.

A VIP idea from Delta Airlines

Published by Paolo on 25/08/2022

Design games for the free-to-play mobile business is whale hunting. Unless you are a genious, like Bit Life developers, you will probably do the math. And doing the math, you will notice that you need high spenders to sustain your business.

Yesterday I saw this comment on a LinkedIn post:

Shoutout to Tom Hammond for this great idea.

I checked out the original Delta program and now I cannot understand why nobody is doing that.

Scenario

Ana, a Slotomania player, is a Black Diamond level VIP client. She gets an ad from your Mobile Casino Game that promises her VIP level can be matched with a challenge.

  • Installs the game, logs in
  • A pop-up asks her if she already has VIP status in other games, she answers that she does and details that she is a Black Diamond in Slotomania
  • Within 12 hours, a person from Customer Support contacts Ana, asking for more information
  • Ana’s VIP level is matched with the game’s VIP level.

Why?

If someone has a high VIP level in another game, it is most likely a whale. It could be a whales acquisition strategy.

Try sell this idea

Published by Paolo on 23/08/2022

A lot of skilled entrepreneurs (skilled entrepreneur = very talented seller) are convincing investors with promises of huge returns on investments coming from concepts that, on the contrary, are demonstrating to be not so appealing to the people. I am talking about metaverse, web3, play-to-earn, gamified economies and so on.

The dream of creating the perfect mousetrap where people come from all over the World to watch ads and spend many hours per day will remain a dream. It comes, in my opinion, from a huge misunderstanding of how games as a service work.

The reality is that is becoming harder and harder to create the right experience for the people. Usually it comes with a great gameplay, usually is multiplatform and usually has no barrier to start. But, I mean, there are a lot of concepts to try out that may actually work. And nothing so fancy, something very simple.

Think in Among Us and its big success during the pandemic. Think in Bit Life, a game made just with text that breaks all the best practices of f2p.

Games like those cannot be proposed to investors, because one has to be honest. One should admit that we know very little things about the future of our industry. The things we know for sure are:

  • We need to create more value for the Players
  • We need to think in a vast geographies, not just rich countries
  • We need more talent to join the industry

Is it possible to really sell this idea to an investor? Is it really possible in an environment where too often we hear words like “growth” before of even write the first line of code?

Gran Turismo Café

Published by Paolo on 22/08/2022

Saturday I got a PS5. I am so happy you cannot imagine. I was chasing the opportunity since a whole lot and I found mine. It came with Granturismo 7, Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring (which scares me because I am very bad at those games) and a second gamepad.

I wasn’t playing Granturismo since its second edition, so that I lost its tracks. Seeing it in its 25th anniversary makes me proud. I was there when the first edition launched. I was there struggling a lot with patents and so on.

With the power and the controllers of PS5 now I can feel way more the cars. The simulation improved a lot. The game converted to a service. You race and complete challenges to earn credits. You use those credits to purchase cars and parts. If you are not patient, you can also purchase extra credits. The game is a service, every day there are novelties. It has a lot of functionalities, mechanics, features and game modes so that a Player may feel lost.

Menu Books and Compass

Using the italian café metaphor, a character named Luca will guide the Players with his menu books. A set of missions designed to drive the Players.

A yellow compass guides the Players to the game mode and section they have to go in order to complete the challenge.

  • The compass is on the map and on the top bar.
  • The top bar completes the information with a sentence

The Player gets content/story on challenge completion

and with a roulette ticket (gacha) which permit to get credits, cars and car parts

Roulette ticket have stars and an expiration date, so that the Players cannot store them and get the last things after some month (thing that happens in a lot of free to play games). They have to invest them.

I am reading a lot of complaints regarding the missions given by Luca at Gran Turismo Café. Sometimes it forces you to purchase upgrades for a car that is not interesting. Still, I notice than the next challenge is always related with the previous ones. The game is thoughtfully designed.

I believe that when the Players have the opportunity to spend real money to skip time and satisfy their impatience, they can be led to believe that everything is designed to grab their money. You should grind a lot in order to get the best cars. Best cars are worth millions of credits and from a single race you get 2-5k. You have to play a lot to be able of purchasing them. The missions that require you to spend those credits that you are saving in order to progress can be a pain in the arse.

Still I am loving this game and this system is a very neat references for games with a lot of mechanics. Now I want to buy a G29 wheel and test the real drive!

Your game may not sell if…

Published by Paolo on 19/08/2022

You are just making the game you would like to play.

You rarely speak with the Players of your competitors.

You already know what to copy, without knowing why it works (are you sure it really works?).

You feel confident that it will sell, without being backed by concrete data.

If you have a vocation

Published by Paolo on 18/08/2022

Many of us who start working in game development feel the urge of delivering something meaningful to Players from all over the World. We hear a call and we struggle in finding the right place to answer this call. We can humbly call this a vocation.

Do we understand all the components of our vocation for game design? It’s important if we want to find the right place to stay.

  • We are born with dowries. Natural virtues that have to be trained to be part of our talents.
  • We have talents, things we can do very well (sorry, I cannot find a better definition).
  • And then we are in circumstances. If Hussain Bolt were born in, let’s say, China in year 2 d.C., he would hardly have been an olimpic champion, right?

If we hear a call for game development, we should consider our dowries, our talents and the circumstances we are in!

Build the game thinking in system

Published by Paolo on 27/07/2022

Making video games is hard and it has a cost. That is why often we feel the need of building an universal system, capable of letting us creating more games in less time.

Players, instead, purchase and play video games for the experience that game has to offer. They usually do not think in systems, also if they are capable of understand what is similar to other games.

To me the best approach is to make a video game. The best is to focus on a concrete platform and a concrete experience having a great vision. Then if that system is designed to be custom, that is great for the production of next games, of course. But the priority is on the game itself, not on the system you are building.

If you think just in the system, I have to tell you, maybe you are not believing too much in your game. Which is completely normal, you should rely on data and results to believe in it from a business point of view. But from the creative point of view you should also notice that little spark waiting to become the next big IP.

Have a nice summer folks, this is the last post before of my vacations. See you soon!

The power of asking

Published by Paolo on 25/07/2022

I notice a tendency of show off everything on social networks instead than asking for help. Especially from Gen Z, I see that many times they are worried more with their personal brands that with building meaningful relationships. The few of them who ask will receive.

There was a moment in my career in which I found myself alone, without a job and thinking seriously of leaving the industry. Naturally, I started to speak with every friend regarding this. Also with new employers. I worked as waiter and as data scientist, always thinking in making video games someday. I also started a blog in Spanish in order to make myself visible, but there was a single activity which I was committed: asking.

I asked everyone I could for help. Most people will try their best, believe me. Asking is way more useful that put a screenshot of a Unity session on LinkedIn saying “first trials with new video pipeline!”. That is not useful at all, there is no polish in what you’are publishing and it’s only noise. Ask instead something to some expert of your field. Ask them everything you can, on all channels you can. Use comments but also DMs. Ask and insist asking for help. Ask is so powerful!

Remote processes

Published by Paolo on 18/07/2022

I work remotely for companies since 2016, more or less. I am very specialized in game economies and UX, so that for them is easy to deal with my tasks and responsibilities.

Game development, instead, is never so easy. You cannot rely just on freelancers to build successful products that potentially may last years. You need a core team fully involved every day. And in order to keep it working properly, you need to set up the proper processes. Also the companies that state that they don’t believe in processes, end up setting up (scrappy) processes in the end. To me, it is better to embrace the process as part of the development. In my opinion, processes are very important.

In 2020 everything shifted online. Remote work was forced by the terrible situation of the pandemic. We had no time to prepare, we had to act fast. In a lot of cases, the same exact process employed before was translated to the asynchronous remote work. Some of the most “boring” things were also eliminated. In their place, nothing new was developed. The new process, then, was like Frankenstein.

Nowadays, many are arguing that we need to return to the office because is not the same online. They are right, online is not the same. But, are you sure you did your job, testing and iterating alternative processes?

Getting inspiration

Published by Paolo on 01/07/2022

We want to create a new game, often times because we played one. So that we got inspired and somehow we want to make our own version of it. Maybe we are working for a company which spotted a market opportunity. So that we start studying the games belonging to that market, try to reproduce the best things.

Games industry is very endogamic. We tend too much to take inspiration from the inside of it. But if we see the best products out there, they take a lot from the outside and bring it to the inside.

Days ago I was talking about the TikTok of puzzle games. That is a way of looking outside. You just study the apps market and think in a better UX for some classic game. It often works like that. If you look at games like Royal Match, they took well known mechanics and the real twist is completely on the UX side.

Another great reference is nature. From nature many game designers created memorable gameplay experiences. Think in Japanese legend Shigeru Myiamoto and the story of how The Legend of Zelda was conceived. If you like to walk and you really start observing you notice that nothing in nature is wrong. Recent game The Ants: Underground Kingdom is another evidence of the power of nature. Especially if you want to get better ideas on gameplay and lore, nature is the way.

Art, toys and objects without purpose are also a great way of getting inspired. The history of videogames is full of examples like that. Think in the indie success GRIS or the mobile game Monument Valley. There is not a superhigh challenge, nor a specific deepness in their economies. The Players can just enjoy the overall game feel.