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Tag: ideas

Game design connected with empathy and culture

Published by Paolo on 21/09/2023

I was walking with a friend and we were thinking about why so many f2p games aren’t good, from a design point of view. So excluding bad market research, imprecise budgets, lack of planning, and things like that.

There are games that are enjoyed by players more than other games that are essentially identical. Is it due solely to the firepower of marketing? Or is there something in the design?

For me, there is a great responsibility in game design. Game design intended as the collective effort of the whole team, from the head of product to the junior QA.

On the one hand, there is the problem of copying, without understanding why a certain type of game works. A desk is a dangerous place from which to see the World, John Le Carré said.

At the other extreme we find teams capable of empathizing, but who do not share the typical practices of free-to-play. They never spend a cent on a game downloaded for free, they don’t put themselves in the players’ shoes. Even if they have the ability to empathize, they do not.

Games that fail do so for a thousand different reasons. Those that are successful, however, have always a clear reason behind it: a team that believes in the product. And it does so because empathizes with the Players. There is a cultural discourse that must be taken into consideration.

The company culture is shaped by each person who comes in with their own energy. You can define the values you would like in your team, but people are much more complex. It’s about understanding what people are with you and what you can create with that. The empathy starts with you.

  • Empathy doesn’t mean your child likes the game your company is playing.
  • Empathy does not mean achieving a good D3/D1 ratio.
  • Empathy does not mean that the reviews are positive.

Empathy means putting yourself in a player’s shoes and participating in the event you launched this weekend. Become a player of your game, play your game every day. Be present in playtests where unknown people try your game and also other similar games. If your team connects with people, a social casino game can be very stimulating even for a technical artist who wants to create RPGs.

Three ideas on ads

Published by Paolo on 18/09/2023

Ad-based monetization mechanisms have established themselves in the mobile market in recent years. There are many providers and related SDKs that need to be implemented in our games. From a business perspective, they make completely sense. Players get free entertainment and in change they are exposed to promotions.

To date I haven’t met a single game designer who likes ads. Why?

The answer is very simple, ads work against the game itself from a gameplay perspective. You are participating, you are involved in the game and you are offered to see an ad. This advertisement may also take you out of the game to install a new one. Generally, in fact, advertisements in games are for other games.

This is working against your own game, risking losing the players’ attention. In the long term, among other things, they can be really boring and affect people’s retention. Too many announcements, I’m not coming back!

I as a player, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, use ads as breaks. I start the ad to get a benefit, I move away from my cell phone to do other things. The ad is a pause.

But does it have to be this way?

Advertisements are an opportunity for entertainment and television has demonstrated this. The ads could be very funny.

  1. We could show things more related to the universe of the game itself. If we refuse privacy permissions, the advertisements are generic and random.
  2. We could integrate the content with the characters and lore of the game we are playing. Instead of starting a generic video, the characters could give us purchasing advice. With new programs that use machine learning algorithms, this blend is very workable.
  3. You could show ads alongside recommendations for the game we are playing. You play the ad, and a video plays that explains specific things about the game. In the bottom half, the announcement of another game. This way, seeing a video makes sense and we will also show an advertisement.

Shape up your game development!

Published by Paolo on 13/09/2023

I am studying Shape Up these days, a new way of working with remote and asynchronous teams created by 37signals. Game development is software development so I believe that Shape Up can be adapted.

Instead of working on a product backlog, that oftentimes becomes huge and gives guilt (a good feature now can be not a good feature in 3 months), you work on giving form to the ideas. In game design, we call them concept documents. In Shape Up they call them pitches.

Your job as the creator should be to develop your taste and motivate the appetite of the team. Shape Up is based on betting on specific pitches. At every iteration, instead of reordering priorities on the product backlog, you sit at a table and decide on which concept document you will bet on.

Your team is composed of adult people, they should be able to self-organize to complete a project in a 4-6 weeks fixed time frame. Maybe this time window may vary with game development, we have a heavy art pipeline.

The constraint here is the time to complete a project. Other processes require the team to be involved in too many meetings and to estimate the time of each task. With Shape Up you don’t need any of that, so you can just focus on bringing value to the table.

Seems to me more agile than agile!

Raw ideas, good ideas

If an idea is a good idea you will see it very often. From your collaborators, community, and critics.

There is no need to store all the ideas on a list.

Instead of doing that, land ideas down preparing concept documents. Spend time on giving values to good ideas, not on storing every idea.

Concept document structure

  1. Problem (Use case) – What motivates this idea
  2. Appetite (Constraints) – How much do you need to spend developing this idea
  3. Solution (Overview) – bullet point list with core elements needed to properly realize the idea
  4. Rabbit Holes (Risks) – Detect all things that are not central to the concept and can slow down the development
  5. No Gos (What is NOT) – Define well what is NOT included in the idea

At every iteration, you sit at the table and review all the concepts. Then you decide with which you proceed. It’s a bet, you need a taste.

Get rid of product backlogs

Product backlogs kill productivity. They are a list of things to do that grows over time. You spend time looking at them, you may also feel guilty.

Get rid of product backlogs! Some raw ideas that seemed interesting 3 months ago probably are not anymore. Your team is designers, artists, and engineers. They need autonomy to work on concrete, well-shaped ideas. They are not ticket-pickers.

What to do instead? Develop your appetite for ideas, and train your taste.

  • What motivates you?
  • How would you define sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami?

Indie Dev Day recap

Published by Paolo on 11/09/2023

This beautiful week was Indie Dev Day. I have seen this fair born and evolve, this year the growth has been astonishing.

Cities like Barcelona allow us to follow our passions. There are many entities that allow people to try and make their way into the industry of their dreams. We have free rights, healthcare is the classic example, so we can try without running too many risks.

What is talent? I did the math. I counted 101 stands with Spanish studios. Let’s say 1 out of 5 (I am being optimistic here) manages to find success.

What is success? As a talk from The Game Kitchen rightfully said: “Success is when you earn 1 euro”. You make the game, a bunch of people during years. Your time has a value, maybe you have salaries. Expenses. Then you start selling the game, and part of the revenues go to the platform and publishers. Eventually, you recoup and maybe you earn the first euro. Profit. 1 single euro. Can you do that? Well, you had success.

Now 76 teams, made out of 5 people on average, will not have success. 76×5 = 380 talents. Why talents? Because they struggled for success, they learned things the hard way. And, my bet, is they will be very grateful and compromise employees for companies. They have been on the other side, making hard choices.

I had the opportunity to try various games presented in more than 80 stands. There are three main trends:

  1. Conceptual games of simple artistic expression. They are presented as an installation rather than something with a commercial release.
  2. Content-based games. A story to complete, levels to pass. Time and energy are invested in content that is only experienced during a moment. You need a great vision.
  3. Games based on repeatable systems. Especially rogue-lite and coach co-op games. Games that invite you to play and repeat, and above all to connect with the community. Online, to understand which are the best builds (rogue-lite). Play with your family and friends at home (coach co-op).

These games I have to say are my favorites. Especially if RPGs, the genre that accompanied me to this profession.

Recommended games to check out:

Perception, reality and imagination

Published by Paolo on 08/09/2023

Our perception shapes the reality that is presented to us. This is a double-edged sword, and any person working with creativity knows it.

We get the information using our cognitive system and we form meaningful patterns. Perception is the system that holds those patterns. On the one side, we have fewer things to store in the memory. On the other, our cognitive system doesn’t have to understand everything. It can reuse those patterns quickly!

Challenges

Working every day as game designers, our perception of games forms lots of patterns. And so does the reality we think we know about the Players in our games. And we are players too, maybe in other kind of games.

We work almost always from a desk, too. And a desk is a dangerous place from which to see the World, as John le Carré said in a novel.

To mitigate the risks of perception:

  1. Be aligned with the business, understand how the system works. Listen to your producers. How can our design be impactful?
  2. Be aware of the context and processes that will deliver the final piece of software. Understand the code architecture, and how art pipelines work. Something that seems like “a little change” can turn into weeks of work.
  3. Get in the players’ shoes and empathize with them. Understand what they do in our game and why. Be informed on what they will be looking for.

Nowadays we have a lot of information available! When I start a new project or the design of a feature, I start by researching the solutions already adopted. Be aware of the business. I use Liquid&Grit which offers reports and has a db full of captures and videos. In that way I speed up my work, every design takes me 20% less than before.

Then I switch to YouTube, looking for gameplays to watch and take notes. Many games nowadays have a Reddit page and a Discord server, too. It is not that hard to put ourselves in the Player’s shoes. I need to really get their jargon, and understand what they look for. I need to form new patterns with which to read reality.

Advantages

Perception helps our memory system. We form patterns we can reuse in a different context. And this helps our imagination as creators. For instance, when we have to create the plot for a story. 

The image below is a joke, it’s Friday! I am a lover of fantasy and was a heavy D&D player. Because of that, I have already many patterns formed.

  • The left side is a quick overpaint I made with GIMP on a very popular photo of one of the lowest moments in the history of sport.
  • The right part was generated with Midjourney using the prompt: “a dungeons and dragons scene where a mind flayer has taken the head of a female ranger in his head to attack her”

I am a game designer

Published by Paolo on 07/09/2023

I remember the opening of Jesse Shell’s book, The Art of Game Design. There is a mantra: I am a game designer.

When I think about game design I identify 4 main areas:

  • Systems design
  • Gameplay (or UX) design
  • Level design
  • Narrative design

To be more concrete, all game design is system design. Level and narrative design create gameplay and shape the player experience (UX, if you prefer). Narrative design has many things to share with level design too.

The narrative design delivers the most evident pieces of the game, from the Player’s perspective. The system is less visible but rules them all. In the middle, there is gameplay and level design.

Rules, which are part of the gameplay to me, influence the design of the UI. The UI is that part of gameplay (or UX) that connects with the narrative. UI is evident and tells something to the Players. So that is narrative to me.

There are many points of view on that, and that’s good. The simple term “design” has a broad meaning. And the geo where we work influences our vision too. Companies from the US tend to focus more on hyper-specialization. Here in Southern Europe, we do EVERYTHING. Also the coffee!

Then there is the personal factor. I am a game designer. That to me means:

  • work with everything from system to narrative
  • grab a course on narrative design and a year later on level design.
  • strive to master Excel, Unity, Unreal Engine and all the tools to create systems and gameplay
  • take screens and create wireframes and docs detailing rules and mechanics.

Trees and leaves

Published by Paolo on 05/09/2023

When we talk about free-to-play casual puzzles, we generally hear about a predominantly female and adult audience.

However, we have no idea how many kids play the most popular match-3 games. If you notice, the narrative theme is very childish in most of them. There is a reason for that: a connection between adults and children. Adults also download games for their children, and children influence the choices of adults. It’s fun to play a game that your kid also plays, right?

There are successful puzzle games with adult themes (see Gardenscapes, Lily’s Garden, Project Makeover). But pay attention: the most popular (Candy Crush Saga, Royal Match) offer childish fantasies. The concept of reign, candies, smiles, and so on.

When you think about your audience, also think about their child version. It works like a tree: on the trunk, there are the children, and the branches are all the directions they can take in life. The leaves are the adults.

You may want to think in the whole tree if you are aiming to build the next free-to-play hit. Every adult was a child in the past, there are fantasies that still resonate with us when we grow.

It’s always good to start from the trunk if you want to have a massive audience!

Remote or face-to-face?

Published by Paolo on 29/08/2023

Large corporations and Venture Capital investors are returning back to face-to-face or hybrid. Very often there are also interests in real estate investments that lead to that choice.

Other companies see remote working as an advantage. They can:

  • find qualified people in wider geographical areas
  • offer to employees quality of life.

The two positions do not need to be in conflict. Too often I read sentences about one or the other position that make me smile. There are common points on which to work:

  • It’s good for everyone to know that there is a place, an office to go to. It offers professionalism and an optimized space for work, which not everyone has. It is mentally reassuring. I believe it also improves loyalty, somehow.
  • We all know the problem of climate change and we know that a significant part is due to transport. Being able to reduce contaminant transport is one of the measures we must take, as humanity. There are people who deny this problem, and I respect it even if I don’t share it.
  • We are social beings whose evolution has been built on cooperation. Human contact is necessary in any case. There are people who are more or less introverted, in different situations. In all cases, it is good to think about how to improve the environment within the company, and its culture.
  • We all need time to take care of our private life, our family, and the people and animals we love.
  • We all want the companies we work for, or clients, to be successful. In this way, our work and salary will benefit. The problem arises when there are abnormal growths that cause a lot of stress to employees. Those aren’t healthy, and I’m convinced that big investors don’t like them either.

More issues

Having talent from large geographic areas means access to very distinct salary ranges. This can become good or bad depending on how you use it.

  • It can be beneficial for smaller companies, or in areas where there is no developed ecosystem.
  • It can be great for some professionals who would otherwise have a hard time finding work.
  • Employees in areas of higher density, where rents and expenses are high, may feel in danger.

My take

Neither face-to-face nor remote work is dead. On the hybrid solution, I reserve my doubts, since I don’t have enough data and I have never worked like that.

We need to shift focus to the betterment of our society. Working to build companies that add value from an ethical and human point of view. It is not a matter of remote/face-to-face, it is a matter of vision. How can you create value and make this World better? That is the question.

Combat: the center of gravity of game design?

Published by Paolo on 22/08/2023

Lately, I am seeing a lot of high-level solo projects popping around. I don’t know you, but sometimes I am so amazed that I think “What am I doing instead? Am I really a game designer? I mean, look at that!”. I guess it’s completely normal when you have passion for what you do.

One thing in common that I see very much is that the videos shared always show combat. So one may ask:

  • why combat?
  • Are we just violent monkeys always thinking and dreaming about fights and shots?
  • Why does combat have this sort of gravity that always sucks in the best designers?

To me, it’s not that we are doomed, to me it’s because combat fits perfectly in the true meaning of games. Let me explain.

Good reasons to put combat everywhere

We play games for a lot of reasons, but most of them are directly linked to our survival skills. To have fun is, to speak synthetically, to learn. And to learn is to improve our survival skills. Having to beat something or someone is part of the metaphor of survival.

Another good reason to me is that combat is a great way to realize game mechanics into a meaningful feedback loop. If you throw a ball for nothing, that physical mechanic in the long term can be very boring. If you have to hit cans you have a more interesting goal. If the objective is not a can but something that can hurt you, that gives you more motivation. The fun closure happens when you can throw the ball -> the ball hits and you see the feedback -> your score improves after that feedback! So that you can do the same over and over again and improve your score.

Combat has become in recent years also a design specialization. You can see a lot of offers out there for “combat designers”. Combat is for Players accessible and compelling. Many mechanics are easy to model and mix thanks to combat.

So, friends, we can rest assured. We are not awful beings, as humans we intuitively spot and take all possible shortcuts. As Players, we love to aim and kill, because we can train without getting hurt. As Designers, we can show off our craft and present our ideas in a fun context.

Exciting goals

Published by Paolo on 13/07/2023

The structure of the objectives of a game must be clear, but also and above all exciting.

At the time of classic arcade games, players had to pass the level and get the highest score. This was exciting in that context, where one could brag to friends or show off one’s prowess.

The console age built on that, adding storytelling over the years. Also in other contexts, the players could comment on their achievements. I remember phone calls with friends to explain how to beat a Weapon in Final Fantasy VII. Strategy guides and magazines with reviews were popular. And it was like this thanks to this desire to understand and discover new exciting goals to achieve.

Social games have summed up all this past, allowing us to collaborate to achieve goals. The metagame concept has developed, you can reach certain objectives even without playing. The experience allows even casual players to take part in something fun. There was also a cleaning up of objectives that were getting too complex. This is thanks to understanding and profiling players.

As game designers, we must always ask ourselves where they will play and how much time they will want to invest.

Fun fact: the most engaged casual players and those who will spend the most will

  1. come back every day (regulars)
  2. come for a minute, but stay for an hour.