Skip to content

Tag: ideas

Starting Free Flow Fridays

Published by Paolo on 15/03/2024

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:

  1. Build a profitable company and sell it. Unless something changes, I don’t see myself doing that.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?

An idea for a future RPG

Published by Paolo on 13/03/2024

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?

The future of mobile games

Published by Paolo on 04/03/2024

Mobile phones are nowadays in everyone’s hands. Kids are playing mostly from mobile devices (tablets are a big player, they are used also in many schools). Still, when I listen to people talking about the future of mobile games, the discussion is always going around two things:

  1. effective way of stealing ideas (playbooks)
  2. how to hack the marketing machine and get people to install your game more cheaply (performance marketing).

Well, this can be a tactic for the short term, sure. But for the long one, we need to look at things with a critical perspective: mobile games are always the freaking same. We don’t see nowadays the kind of innovation we saw when Supercell, Rovio, and King arrived on the scene. We are still repeating (and improving) formulas, that’s all. And it’s very boring. The most interesting novelties are coming from UGC experiences inside of Roblox, from one side. From the other, we see an exasperation of FOMO, dark patterns, and grinding for the addicts. We are not going too far like this.

We need more game design, more research, and more risk betting on something novel. Of course, the discourse around distribution is very important, but we are distributing always the same and listening to people who are not building interesting games. That’s a huge problem for our industry.

Generative AI will never improve profit margins for companies, AI design and art are just scams. We need to return to the basics, at the drawing board, thinking really in finding interesting formulas for people looking for fun.

We need time and silence

Published by Paolo on 23/02/2024

The issue of many of us who work with creativity is that we don’t read enough. By “read” I don’t mean just reading texts. I mean reading also other products, playing games critically is a form of reading for example.

We are often too busy working on the “data” we have. We should create things that work, and that are successful. To do that, we need to focus on finding what it works and put it in our creation.

In my case, retention, monetisation, and other weird words came from business jargon. The marketer dominates completely the discourse. And we designers accepted it, in the name of having our job.

A good game designer, instead, should study Scott, Schell, Zimmerman. We should dominate our skills. Not look at numbers on a Tableau dashboard. This is the best way in which companies can prosper thanks to our work. Look at the history of games, look at what made Blizzard games great.

It’s too simple to think that you can create based on benchmarks and breakdowns. We need time for silence and study to create something new. Look out there, look at mobile top charts. It’s always the same game, in the end.

Emergency is the future

Published by Paolo on 22/02/2024

The future of games is not made of new venues to cover. With mobile phones, we covered everything. I had my students playing games while I was explaining something important for their future. Who never?

It is not made of new spending habits. Even if the crypto-bros are right, even if the people will pay for games and things to trade in bitcoins (that will never happen), this will not determine a new era. Because the future of games will be related to the gameplay itself.

The future of games will be not putting monitors closer to our eyes hoping for more engagement. VR is causing headaches, people have been trying to sell that thing for 40 years. Steve Jobs would have never produced a dive mask to go on the streets, I am sure.

So where is the future of games? Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that is always an iteration of something we already have. For instance, the f2p mobile games era (which we can say was revolutionary) was built on top of the Java apps for cellphones, promoted by NOKIA in the Nordics, mainly.

If we look at games that are successful right now, they all offer some level of emergent gameplay. Look at FPS, survival, and horror out there. Look at the top games, the ones that make billions. They all permit a certain level of things you can do if we think laterally about the mechanics. And that unleashes a series of videos and things that people enjoy.

When you think of making a game for streamers, think mainly about emergencies. Do the same when you think of a game for TikTokers. It has always been like that: people want to find in video games something different from real life. Something they cannot do. A playful space to explore. That is where the future of games lies, I am sure.

Build a better future company

Published by Paolo on 21/02/2024

The network is flooded with bad news and hype around new technologies. Then there is the good news that comes from games like Lethal Company or Palworld. All these games share something: are made by inexperienced people. Juniors, to use the corporate jargon.

I see many experts explaining the possible benefits of blockchain, AI, Apple Vision PRO, and other new things that do not have demonstrated anything to the World. They do this to attract investments or offer their consultancies. I get it, I am a consultant too.

If I ignore the hype, thou, I see some bad trends. Corporations are not experimenting really with gameplay. They are chasing formulas, using old IPs, creating remakes, and also producing new GaaS games that add NOTHING to the market value. Like water, you can have different bottles and brands. Still, it’s always water. We can discuss the minerals inside of that water, but yeah… it’s water!

I really believe that the best way to build the company of the future is to hire more juniors and let them work, not investing in new technologies just because is cool.

Don’t get me wrong: I really appreciate the experience, but experienced people like me are very biased too. Maybe we should focus our efforts on guiding these new energies in a meaningful way. Preparing roadmaps, and supporting their ideas with no bias. And in 5-10 years, I am sure, you will have a very strong company with cool IPs.

A simple technique for clarification

Published by Paolo on 20/02/2024

I have this client now who has simple but very effective techniques to clarify things and express his concerns. He opens a Microsoft Paint instance and starts drawing.

He shares the screen with me and, with simple shapes, describes what I presented him, asking questions. Then he passes to express his concerns and makes his change requests.

And then I have another iteration to work on. No need for complex software or subscriptions. MS Paint and simple shapes are more than enough to discuss anything. God bless this simple but effective techniques.

How to evolve chores

Published by Paolo on 14/02/2024

Any video game sets up routines for the Players. Certain genres, like RPG and survival, are based on the concept of grinding. Grinding is making certain things over and over to achieve certain results. Often related to power-progression.

The art of game design in this case is being able to anticipate when certain tasks become a chore and make them evolve into something else. Usually, there are two steps:

  1. First, you make them automate something
  2. Then you give them the possibility to evolve the system so that the player becomes something new.

An interesting example of that is the game V-Rising. You are a vampire building an empire. And you have chores to do, collect things, craft other things, and so on.

The game lets you build special floors that boost that part, so that the game becomes a matter of designing your castle, more than building the next thing to improve your crafts.

The problem with the “Microsoft Game Day Commercial”

Published by Paolo on 13/02/2024

I am European, so I don’t know if Microsoft made this commercial for the Super Bowl or what:

Many thoughts come into my mind, though. I can define the message as worrisome at the very least. I don’t believe in ghouls but I can see greed. Still, I tend to always find the good part in everything. Let’s go with the plot analysis

The ad starts with young people worried about their professional future. One of them wants to have a business, another wants a degree, and so on. The message focuses on an invisible enemy (“they say I can’t…”). My expectation for the rest of it was a revenge-based narrative. Something like “They say this, I show them I can do that”.

Instead, the protagonists accept what “they say” and start using a powerful AI to do the things they love. “Write me the code for my open-world game…”. My? Are you sure that game is yours? “Generate storyboard images for the dragon scene in my script…” Did you feed an algorithm that stole hundreds of artist’s works with your script? So lame!

The campaign perpetuates society’s renunciation of the growth of their future, young people. MS is saying that they should renounce their dreams and put them in the hands of the corporation. I know that they want to announce their service, but the cake is a lie. LLMs are very limited right now. The fact that they are trying to convince creative people to give up on their creativity drives me nuts.

I am also worried about the environment, how much energy and water are these services using?

Starting from UGC

Published by Paolo on 09/02/2024

Imagine you want to create a new team to develop video games. Imagine you have a team of veterans and people with less experience. One of the ways to start is Roblox or UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite).

They are walled gardens but allow you not to worry too much about thinking about the game to develop. Roblox has more players than Playstation and Xbox combined. So there is a solid community of players.

When you start a new project by creating a team of people who don’t know each other, it’s a good idea to start doing smaller tests. So why not try these systems that already have their basis? In my opinion, it is an excellent opportunity to start.