The game is based on one of the fantasies from the Fallout series, but, and this is very important, not the central one. The fantasy of the shelters where people take refuge after the atomic apocalypse. A great idea!
In my humble opinion, the best way to use an AAA game’s IP to create a mobile game is not to transfer the original experience to the closest genre there. That’s the way to infuriate the fanbase, actually.
The best way is to find a marginal but recognizable fantasy. A few examples that come to mind:
Horizon: the fantasy of the tribes with their clothes and their colors. A doll dressing game?
Red Dead Redemption: the fantasy of poor towns with their vices. Maybe a dating sim?
I could go on for hours.
Keep always in mind that free-to-play mobile is essentially entertainment. Don’t think about using IP to make more money, think about expanding it.
Imagine you have to inform programmers about the development of a new feature. For the first iteration, it is always better to think of a single use case.
We game designers think in systems. Some go so far as to say “Game design is system design”. A system means having actors in a relationship, creating a space of possibilities.
For a new feature, it’s best to think of a single path to implement first. Someone talks about MVP, a minimum viable product. I have always preferred the expression “prototype”.
Without losing sight of the vision, respect the steps necessary for its development. The first step is best to be on the direct path.
For the second day of the Gamelab I have carefully chosen two types of conferences. On one hand exponents of the indie world, and on the other people who work in the f2p mobile sector.
I did it with a very specific purpose. I have long been convinced that the two tribes, however distant, have much to learn from each other. This conviction probably made me observe specific elements. In turn, these elements have strengthened it.
The mountain
[This metaphor came to mind thanks to a story a Capoeira master told me years ago about martial arts in general.]
Let’s imagine that we want to reach a mountain’s top. In the case of video games, imagine that at this peak are the most spectacular games in history. Super Mario, but also Candy Crush Saga. There is Clash of Clans and there is Minecraft. Stardew Valley and The Legend of Zelda.
We want to get there.
There are many ways to do this. First, why do we want to do this? What drives us?
Meaning and ambition
In most indie realities there is something internal that moves people. Some experience that you want to explore, some specific fantasy they have from childhood. Emotions, memories. We can talk about meaning, in their case.
When I listen to people in the free-to-play world, there is something external. The possibility of reaching millions of people. To create a business that can grow significantly. Structuring a growth and upgrade plan that you can track using technologies and data. We can talk about ambition, in their case.
Indie companies create their games and find that there is a real market. What they are looking for is financial stability, to continue developing their games. They start with meaning, but when the results arrive, they also discover ambition.
Free-to-play companies most often start with a business opportunity. They discover that the trend is to make puzzle-casual games and look for ways to develop them. When they have years working, they understand that their ambition must be backed up with real meaning. There are millions of players out there looking for
relaxation
stress-relief
connection with other people
In this exact order.
Why are they looking for it? What are the fantasies that lead these people to choose to be loyal to a specific game? What does move you to serve those people, really? The main challenge of all free-to-play actors is to make new games. New ideas. From the initial ambition, one begins to search for meaning.
Indies and F2P can learn from each other
Indies can learn from free-to-play that a noble cause has a lot of risks that can be tackled with a data-informed approach. And I’m not talking about retention, monetization, and all these things that you hear.
I’m talking about concrete UX strategies. For me, it’s not enough to give your game to people, observe them and get feedback as I hear yesterday over and over. It is good, but not enough. You need to create concrete heuristics and turn your assumptions into numbers. Create gyms for your game. Prepare Wizard of Oz tests, and measure the behaviors of your players. Test the symbology and game icons, to understand how people interpret them.
[If you look at the paths of the mountain ahead of you, higher up you will see realities that have made it because they have overcome certain risks. Do you want to reach them? Don’t focus on your desire to walk, look at the obstacles.]
Free-to-play companies must understand that all successful products come from a strong foundation. Games offer a set of fantasies that connect with people. People keep playing these games because they find concrete meaning. This meaning translates into value, and value is what ultimately makes the business grow. If you start by exploring your competitors and seeing their numbers to choose who to follow, you go the other way. Look for the meaning first, for the fantasies that connect with people. Indie gaming has a lot to teach in that sense.
[At the base of the mountain I mentioned earlier, there are people starting paths. If other people are higher now it is because someone has already created a path. But if you want to start directly from higher up, well you have to jump. And jumping you risk rolling down.]
Yesterday I went to Gamelab Barcelona, an event dedicated to the video game industry. This year is a more intimate version and better focused, in my opinion.
Regardless of the type of business, the size of the company, its mission, or its artistic style, one thing is clear to me: the vision remains the most important part.
If you have to present your next indie game, or if you are thinking of being acquired by a big corporation. Whether you work as a consultant or want to land your first job in the industry, it’s all the same. You have to be “like a sniper” (quoting one of the speakers).
The video games industry doesn’t stop growing, more and more products are marketed and more and more different realities enter the scene. The only way to stand out is by getting straight to the point. Your vision must be absolutely clear for everyone.
It applies to the motivation of your team. It applies to the peace of mind of your bosses or your customers. It is to convince investors and publishers. It is used to show your value to a possible employer.
It can be done! The possibilities are many! But you have to clarify yourself and you have to focus all efforts to target exactly the weak point of the Death Star. The keyword is vision.
a person, object, or place selected as the aim of an attack.
quality
the general excellence of standard or level.
(oxford language)
Often times I have a discussion around the concept of game genre and game target audience. Usually, the people involved with the business side change the cards on the table. But game design has its literature and history. This post is to clarify two simple concepts.
The game genre
The easiest way of thinking in the game genre is to look at yourself when you are looking for a game to play.
Do you want to relax? run a puzzle game on your mobile phone
Do you want a great story? You have the new JRPG available for your console
Do you need some challenge? A racing game can do the job.
The genre of a game defines its style or category, not its business model or the time to complete a session.
The game target
Everyone knows that we make games for an audience. The world of marketing and advertisers classifies that audience demographics. As game developers, instead, we focus more on behaviors and needs. One point of touch is the time we expect our Players will have to play the game.
If the players will have very little time, to relax: casual games
If the players want to release some stress for 40-60 minutes, also engage with other people: mid-core games
If the players want to escape reality for a while and focus on a set of challenges: hardcore games
The target of a game defines the motivations and time that the Players should spend in it, not its genre.
The game quality
According to the scope and the context, we can afford to make games of a certain quality standard. The quality of a game is often the point of touch between the industry and its players:
mobile game: they need to be lightweight and very accessible, so they often present pizzazz UI and simple visuals
Indie games: they are an achievement to show to the World. They don’t need super high production, also if visuals are very important for their success
AA games: they come from independent studios that have been backed by a bigger publisher.
AAA games: produced and distributed by major-sized publishers, Players expect very high quality.
The game quality defines from one side the context capability of the development team. On the other side, the standard of excellence that Players have come to expect. Players have concrete expectations of quality and quality is not comparable. You cannot compare indie with AAA, there is nothing to compare. You can compare AAA with AAA and have meaningful conversations. Every quality has its own set of standards.
Conclusion
The top companies I see out there specialize in a single genre and a single target. When they grow, they may want to expand to other qualities.
Your Players will never look for a “hyper casual game”. They will look for “something to play while I am on the bus”.
Players may want to know about the next AAA games coming out. The new Zelda game came out. Oh, but I have no time for such a big game right now.
Players don’t care if the menus of that mobile puzzle game have basic colors. But they can quit if the loading times among levels are too high.
If your AA game has not the right standard, some Player can complain that looks like a mobile game!
This weekend I downloaded and played the new Final Fantasy XVI demo on PS5.
I’m not going to give spoilers or give my opinion, because it’s not interesting. I am a gamer like many others, and working as a game designer I am certainly full of prejudices that limit my vision.
What I have noticed, however, is that the vision for the future of the saga includes:
Combat systems that focus on spectacle over strategy
Less depth in the characters’ stats and more depth in their profiles
Make life much easier for those who want to know more about the game world
Ultimately Final Fantasy has always been this: a rich world in which to immerse yourself. An epic adventure with very distinctive characters. And a lot of not-always-exciting fights.
With the arrival of Genshin Impact and Asian RPGs with massive audiences, in my opinion the creative directors of the saga are wondering how to make the series more modern. I must say that I like these types of experiments, beyond the final result.
It is a path that can lead to new masterpieces in the future, even if it is a difficult and so unpredictable path.
I hear too often “Nobody gives a darn about narrative in games”. Or “no one reads on mobile”.
But every successful game I know has a strong narrative component. Narrative is not the line of text, it is the sequence of events that creates a story together with the players.
use a star -> dialogue -> select decoration -> room upgrade -> dialogue -> new tasks -> new level
This is narrative.
swipe -> match -> explosion -> cascade -> match -> special tile -> … -> TASTY!
Often we stuff a mediocre game with readable content in hopes that players will get hooked “for the story”. In this case, the risks of having an expensive and poorly thought-out product increase. A story should always be seen as the last step of a good game.
Fantasy comes first
Then come the actions that can be performed on the fantasy
Then comes the system of resources, rewards, and the game economy
The world is built on this
Stories can happen in the world.
If we start from the other side, however, it works for visual novels but not for mechanic based games.
When you think about your new game’s target audience, think about its childish version, too.
Many people consider video games something childish. Data shows that adults play video games. Children are the people who have the most time to play. They can become attached to the intellectual properties we create.
When we design a new game, we tend to think about people who are like us: adults. In case we have to design a game for children, it is more natural to think of a child audience.
If we design for the mini version of our players, too, we have the chance to create a more accessible and memorable experience. Some say we have to think of our audience like a tree. The target audience is the branches, but the trunk is very important.
The players of our products have all been children. Some of them have children. When we design our games we always think of children as well. This is how memorable intellectual properties are created.
Adults become attached to characters and worlds based on elements they can associate with their own life and context. Children do it experientially.
If we make an effort to always think of a child playing our game, the experience itself will undoubtedly be better. That is valid for any kind of game. Yes, also gambling.
Vanity metrics are metrics that are not used to make strategic decisions. They are used internally and externally by a team to make a good impression.
During the development of a video game, some useful metrics can become vanity metrics. The measure of MAUs, Monthly Active Users for example is often used as a vanity metric. An MAU is a player who has logged into the game at least once during the month. It is a measure that says little, with which few decisions can be made. Yet, if we have many MAUs, our partners and investors will be happy to know about it.
Another vanity metric I see in the world of premium development is the number of wishlists on Steam. Steam algorithm recommends your game based on the speed of getting wishlists. Wishlists are useful, but the metric representing the overall number is not. I have never seen a single company making strategic decisions based on that number. A premium games company decides to make a game and goes until the end. Having many wishlists motivates the team and piques the publisher’s interest. A textbook vanity metric.
Are vanity metrics useless?
Absolutely not! They help move things along, they help with certain discussions. I compare them to the placebo in medicine. Placebo is proven to work on so many occasions. Monitoring, presenting, and discussing vanity metrics allows us to unlock many situations.
If a game has tens of thousands of people returning every month at least once, this opens doors to investors. The fact of having many wishlists allows a publisher to focus their campaigns more on our game. The team benefits from it because it’s easier to prove that artistic decisions are the right ones. Proving artistic choices is hard, art has a strong aesthetic component. That’s where vanity comes in!
I have a soft spot for indie game development. Yesterday I listened to the words of a developer friend who was generous enough to share his battles.
The metrics coming from the Players behavior inside of the game are ignored. This is very different from the game-as-a-service approach.
Game design has an artistic and a scientific component. The latter is based on hypotheses, theories, and experiments. The experiments before were only manual (playtest). After the advent of big data, machines can help us simulate the real world and conduct other kinds of experiments. Free-to-play games aim for a very high volume of players, that’s why you need a data-informed approach to update them properly.
Indie games, on the other hand, keep their focus on creating an original idea designed to please a niche. They are much riskier because there is no data-informed approach that allows a team to learn from one game to be better in the next. The game develops, publishes, and moves on to the next one.
One trend I see in free-to-play mobile is keeping an eye on the indie world for interesting core loops to adapt. Indie developers should in turn “steal” the data-informed approach to improve their processes. They can develop the next game more consciously.
Indie metrics starter pack
Let’s take the example of an indie Metroidvania game in early access on Steam. Let’s say the team has an update roadmap in mind. As an outcome, they want to create a DLC calendar that makes sense.
First Time Player Experience
The first thing to keep track of is the First Time Player Experience. Represents love at first sight, the hook. Its effectiveness can be measured in two ways:
D1 retention: the % of total players who return to play after the 24 hours.
FTPE Funnel: the % of total players who leave the game at each step that belongs to the first experience. We virtually put markers and measure how many people fail each one.
Difficulty curve
Level design is very important in this type of game. It is necessary to have a beat chart designed to measure the failure rate of each segment or level of the game. I suggest to measure:
Drop rate: the number of players who leave the game at each level or segment
Average completion time: the average time to complete the level or segment
Average attempts: the average number of attempts to complete the level or segment
This will measure the difficulty of your game and where you should tweak the levels or segments. In this way, during early access, we can make fixes effectively not just based on what we read on reviews.
Retention for DLCs
Last thing, the metrics needed to create a post-launch DLC roadmap. The best way to create an effective roadmap is to understand which game features people engage with the most. Players may prefer to find secrets or exciting battles. We can measure the retention and engagement of players who:
unlock certain achievements
eliminate many enemies
they discover secrets
they spend more time reading the dialogues and exploring
they use certain skills
Retention is measured by days. We need to check if a player returns after 24 hours, after 48, 72, etc. Those are, respectively, D1, D2, D3… retention!
Engagement is the number of times the Player runs the game over a 24-hour period. Then we check the average time spent in each game session.
We can use retention and engagement to create cohorts, subset of Players. Then we can think in an effective DLC roadmap to target the most interesting and decide a pricing strategy effectively.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
