I had a baby and I am very happy. I love her so much and met her just 11 days ago. I am on paternity leave.
Being a freelancer, this does not exist fully. I will still support my projects and make new contacts. My intention is to design a game dedicated to her. I am already on it.
With other projects I learned that is better to keep things for me until I have something that I can share and can be interesting for people. Otherwise, my energies may go in wrong directions and I can lose steam.
There are many approaches to game design, but the most common ones are two: “theme -> mechanics” and “mechanics -> theme”.
Sid Meyer is one of the most famous representatives of the “theme -> mechanics” approach. In that fashion, you start from a fantasy, an experience you want to offer to the Players. Then you describe all the mechanics needed to realize that fantasy. Mechanics should offer meaningful choices for the theme to be properly implemented.
Shigeru Miyamoto is a master of the other approach, mechanics -> theme. His games try to find the most engaging and fun mechanics with lots of possibilities. Those games offer surprising twists, using a Japanese technique inherited from drama: kishotenketsu. The mechanics define new in this way new themes. If you look at the most famous games, the theme sounds pretty crazy. It’s because it is defined by mechanics, not the other way around.
What about us? Should we choose one approach and go for it or look for a synthesis? That is up to you, to me the important thing is to be aware of our choice and not leave it to chance.
There is a Brazilian word I learned by practicing Capoeira: mandinga.
Like many words from Brazilian Portuguese, its origin goes up to Africa. The original “mandingueiros” were Muslim literates who compared to other enslaved people knew how to read and write. That’s why they were considered like magicians, almost.
“Mandinga é fazer com pouco, muito!”. Old Capoeira masters speak these words: mandinga is to make a lot with a few things.
This knowledge from the history of our World can be adapted to game design, too:
Put a little bit of mandinga in your game design!
You can buy a plot of land and start planting crops. You may want to build some structure and make changes on the land. You start a new business. Then you may hire farmers to take care of your land and make it grow.
The same is valid for the game as a service business. Often the people who start a game are not the people who make it grow. Often you need a certain type of people to find something new, a new land. But then you may want expert farmers to make it grow.
It’s not that people cannot do both, it’s a matter of will. Creating a brand-new experience requires the ability to spot opportunities and connect the dots. Maintaining and making a game grow requires analytical skills, instead.
Someone says that one thing is to go 0-to-1, and another 1-to-1000.
You have probably seen something like this:
I cannot say that is an universal rule, but it makes a lot of sense to me. So, if I would start a new games company without investors, I will definitely go for GOOD and CHEAP games.
Every time I hear about web3 I feel mixed sentiments. Some week ago at a local games fair, an executive I know asked me “Why are you against NFTs?“. The fact is that I am not against any technology.
I just have my point of view, probably wrong on many points as every point of view. Today I want to expose the contrast I have.
First of all, to me attacking any creator is like a mortal sin. There are people really struggling for innovation working hard every day. I admire and respect those people. They have also the luxury of playing with new toys (blockchain, NFTs, and so on). I worked for one client on a project like this and I clearly saw vision and passion. It may work, it may not. But the passion is there.
Nobody should attack the others for their ideas. I blocked very smart professionals who spend their time attacking others (including me). To me, spaces like LinkedIn are to lift others up. So, to any creator out there: go for it!
On the other side, I have my experience and my career. And what I know is that game companies are not tech companies. Tech companies create technologies to solve problems, their business is there. Games companies, instead, are in the entertainment business. In games, we use many technologies to entertain people and also to improve our business operations.
When I read things like “web3 has proven to be the revolution…” honestly I smile. Web3 means nothing for people and gamers. If they want to play a game, they run their console/mobile/PC and play. Someone plays on web browsers. They look for entertainment, not for web3 entertainment. They choose where to play, at a desk, on the sofa. Web3 offers no new places to play. So that it’s not a revolution.
Web3 is a set of technologies that can in the future solve the huge issue of payment systems and platform fees. Everyone dreams of skipping those costs, so I understand why it can be important. But consumer side, there is nothing valuable to me.
When I play a game with a progression system, a strategy, or an RPG, I already have the feeling that I own what I have inside of the game. What I have inside of a game makes sense only inside that magic circle. There is no value in bringing it outside. Some game like Baldur’s Gate 1 lets you export your character for the second chapter. And that’s cool, but you don’t need web3 for that.
As long as I don’t see any new venue to play or a revolutionary form of entertainment for the players, I will never give credit to any web3 storytelling.
If you want to create a sustainable games business you need to serve an audience.
But game ideas for new intellectual properties almost never come from that logic. A new idea comes while playing a good game, or connecting things belonging to our personal life. Often we need to leave that idea for a while to make it grow. This process can last months, and this time is unpredictable.
Every time I speak with the founders of some indie games company, they say the same. They are constantly working on new ideas while developing the current game. They need to pitch new concepts all the time to publishers. In this way, they can find the funding for the next project, hopefully before completing the current.
When you find your audience with a title, then, is better to focus your firepower. If you understand how to serve a concrete audience you have more chances of being successful again.
In the long term, though, this can become stressful for the creative people of your team. At the last fair, I met a designer of one of the most successful indie sagas of the last few years. And I felt his frustration, he felt like “it’s always the same”. Sometimes those people end up building their own company. Other times, they just leave for new ventures.
Striking a balance between serving an audience and allowing creative freedom is crucial in the games industry. Both are essential for long-term sustainability.
From one side, you have to grow your business, and serving the audience you found is the smartest move. On the other side, you don’t want to lose the members of your team who bring more value on the table. Let express themselves, maybe in smaller projects.
When I read the history of games, I think of its present too. Modern game developers will never become legendary like Miyamoto, Kojima, or Iwatani. We will probably never see a David Jaffe again in the future.
The industry is establishing processes and has become less risky and creative. We will probably never have the chance of being famous again.
And that’s actually a good thing.
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 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.
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.
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.
Advertisements are an opportunity for entertainment and television has demonstrated this. The ads could be very funny.