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Tag: insight

You want to believe

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

There are companies that make games and do not believe in game designers. It may be hard to understand what a game designer is capable to do. Also, not all game designers are able to stand out for the craft. I’ve met people like that who transitioned into other roles.

Every game starts with assumptions. They can be interpretations of market insight or straight fingers pointed at the sky to feel the wind. Assumptions are good to start conversations and show security and vision in early stage, but dangerous for the success of a game. There are successful companies that have in their cultural deck “do not believe any assumption”.

Having people specialized in taking those assumptions and supporting the vision holders to land them down and face reality has a value. These people are professional game designers. In fact, in companies the game designers rarely are the creators of a new product. They are facilitators of game design, that is a role shared among the team.

If you know how to code, that’s enough to make a videogame. If you don’t know it, but you have the money to hire a game developer, you can develop a full game. And if you are sure of your assumptions you can improvise the rest and make a game. There are successful cases that started like this, one I have in my mind right now is Vampire Survivors.

But then there is the reality of the market, of the players out there. And then also the nerdiest anti-social coder will need help on game design.

Same discourse is valid for startup that passed to the growth stage. You may have started making scrappy games filled with ads, and you may assume that you know. But you will need game designers to interpret your (shitty) assumptions and land them down. You need professionals if you want to pass to the growth stage or keep there.

Impossible true stories

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

I watched the splendid documentary on Sandfall and Clare Obscure: Expedition 33 made by the Australian YouTube channel SkillUp.

Apart from the obvious learnings on commitment, passion, vision, and so on, I have found 3 important insight:

1. it’s super important to share what you do also as a side hustle out there. You may never know, maybe posting a couple of fan themes on a lost music forum may lead to meet special people to make special things.

2. a possible strategy for disruptive indie/AA games is to include people who never made a game in their entire life. Especially if you employ them in the parts more near of the final client, the player. Art, music, writing.

3. the best indicator that you are making a hit is in your internal playtests. It is something you feel while you play your build everyday, also one that is bad looking. We make games for others to play, but how can you sell people things you don’t actually like and be successful? If you see that everyone in your team is playing the game for fun, you have it.

Adding new to classics

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

I watched the new Netflix show produced by SONY Pictures Animation called “KPop Demon Hunters”. I am not in their target audience, also if I love the animation on 2s (a new pose each 2 photograms, instead than 1) launched by “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” and I recognize the rest of visuals. Not surprising, but well made.

What I liked was the lore, also if I am too adult (not old :P) to understand the nuances of K-pop. I like its silliness and the irreverence of the protagonists, reminds me a lot of what I notice in teenagers: struggle to have followers, always be perfect, but also lots of stress and anxiety because of the dark present and no light on the long term.

I love the mixture between classic mythology with modern K-pop, also if I felt something missing on the demon side. Still, a great show to watch. I also liked that the characters (at least the female ones) are not too hypersexualized. I would like to say the same for the boys, but that’s not the case 😛

And, maybe it’s for the 3d, probably for the combat too, I think that from that proof of concept new lores may spark more fresh, for the action adventure games of the future! Recommended.

New Strands

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

Last week I have started playing Death Stranding (the first chapter, on PS Plus), and yesterday I have also read an interesting interview to the CEO of Supercell on the need for new type of games. I very much agree with that, so I started connecting the dots.

What console and indie games have that mobile still hasn’t get yet is the “useless beauty”. Things that are not designed or implemented for a specific KPI or data goal. Useless beauty is not that useless to me on the long term, also if you cannot see the immediate benefit. It shows our humanity, and prepares the terrain for cultural and trend settings.

Death Stranding is one of the most impactful experiences I am having in the last 10 year, on gaming side. And it contains a lot of things that make me thing “man, that’s weird, why did you put that?”. Actually, one after another. It’s overwhelming, and beautiful, and it doesn’t explain everything.

Also the last experiments from Supercell, which from a numbers perspective still haven’t found the formula, have something like that. They are much less authorial, the result of a team effort, different purpose, but still. I am sure that Kojima too is willing to make something to be remembered forever, but not played maybe. Different goals, but similar philosophies to me.

I don’t know if they will ever manage to create new genres, but to me the road is correct: not everything must have a direct impact on measures, useless beauty is human and players need wonder, not just mechanics.

What I learned in the Playable Stories Workshop

Published by Paolo on 03/03/2025

Yesterday, I participated in a workshop on how to write for playable stories. It was a workshop oriented to professional game writers, and I am not. Still, I found it very useful in improving my skills in narrative design.

It was divided into 3 sessions, with pauses in the middle. Session one was about how games change stories. Session two was about how to make stories playable. The last one was about how to use the storytelling toolbox. The tools all writers have and also the tools that belong only to game writers.

The workshop was packed with practical insight and exercises to train for the next days. In Fall 2022, a company I worked for paid for my fee at the narrative department workshop. This gave me access to a series of interesting workshops at a special price. I am thankful for that.

The main challenge of a professional game designer

Published by Paolo on 24/02/2025

It’s one thing to design a game (or a feature of a game) and another to sell it. This is perhaps the hardest lesson to learn during the career of a game designer.

It’s not just about thinking about systems, mechanics, development context. It’s also about convincing someone to go ahead.

  • If you have the funds, this someone can be a potential player. You have to convince them to play.
  • If you don’t have the funds, but you have a great idea, this someone can be a publisher or an investor.
  • If you work for someone, you have to convince them!

The key point is always in the expectations that one has about something.

  • “I will buy this game for 30 euros because I think I will have a fun time”
  • “I have to invest in this project because I see great possibilities of return”
  • “I approve this design because I think it is the right one for our game”

The biggest challenge is that creatives think on a different level than others.

I’ll give a concrete example with my game Pawtners Case. Lately I’ve been proposing it to try to finance it. It is perceived as a game that is too cheap, and so with little potential. It doesn’t matter that I propose something workable and scalable. Publishers prefer to focus more on something unachievable rather than go step-by-step.

My take on Supercell’s CEO last post

Published by Paolo on 17/02/2025

Last week I read interesting thoughts about the latest message released by Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen. This is an annual event that always attracts a lot of attention. It is interesting to watch how the experts’ thinking and the media attention evolve.

Supercell proves to be a company that is as ethical as Nintendo and others. They are the good people in our industry and they should always be respected for this reason alone. I have never worked with them, so I don’t know how they work internally. But the fact that they promote certain values ​​and ways of communicating is enough for me to keep them in my heart.

Every expert has denounced the lack of information this time, and this year I also felt a great lack. The challenges described are due to the fact that the power has shifted from publishers to platforms. Everything else for me is a consequence of this. Especially in the case of companies like Supercell that do their job well.

What I don’t understand is why in 2025 I still can’t play Brawl Stars on my PS5 and my home PC. Why can’t I download it from Steam and the Microsoft Store?

Supercell is leaving money on the table in this sense.

Try Railgods of Hysterra DEMO

Published by Paolo on 15/02/2025

I have had the chance to work on indie games for a year and a half. Many years of working in free-to-play have given me the knowledge, especially in system design, applicable to games with crafting, building, and character growth. I also had the chance to apply techniques I learned by taking narrative design and game writing courses.

The nice thing about indie is that the work is based on solving design problems while remaining consistent with a narrative and gameplay structure. You don’t hear KPIs mentioned, which makes your days more enjoyable.

Another positive thing is that you meet teams that are committed to the game. Generally, you don’t do experiments and you don’t cancel games for not having reached certain numerical results. Games are published, and they can be successful or not. So as a designer, it’s nice to see something that is also yours get published.

One of the games I helped is Railgods of Hysterra. V-Rising meets H.P. Lovecraft. Made with Unreal Engine. You can feed and grow your demonic train and travel the cursed world of Hysterra. I worked for 3 months (usually a client stays with me this time), and I helped with some systems that you can see in the video on my LinkedIn.

The game has a demo available on Steam for FREE, try it! Leave a review, helps out a ton.

Playtest what’s wrong to find solutions

Published by Paolo on 11/02/2025

A good way to learn more about your game is to keep something that you see as problematic and playtest it. You will discover the obvious, that you need to fix it. But you will also understand much more things behind that.

It happened to me last week, I had the opportunity of running a playtest for my game. And for it I decided to create a specific control system. The developers said “we don’t feel it right”, and me neither.

At the playtest, everyone told me that the system was unconfortable. But I had to see their struggle to decide to take action in first place. In fact, I could notice how they handled the things and that helped me find the solution.

Creating engagement versus finding motivations

Published by Paolo on 10/02/2025

When you work for others, very often you are assigned to a project led by a marketing person. Most of the time, you are asked to find formulas to create engagement, addiction, or worse.

However, game design is not this. I don’t know how to define this role of engagement-creator, but it is certainly not game design. It is a magician, perhaps. Or manipulator.

When people say that a game is fun, it is because that game has characteristics that make it enjoyable. But you as a designer do not have a crystal ball, you cannot decide that your game will be fun.

What you can do with your work is find the things that motivate players to play more or complete the game (or parts of it) and enhance them.

Game design is not the creation of the magic flute capable of trapping mice and taking them where you want. Game design is finding the treasure of the duende and digging to bring it to light.