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Tag: insight

The future of game design: Accessibility

Published by Paolo on 17/05/2022

All around the World, everyday hundreds of people publish their games on virtual stores. The efforts required to get the attention of the players are enormous. Apple’s new policies regarding player privacy only make this situation worse. The costs of acquisition campaigns are increasing dramatically and it is increasingly difficult to find people who like your type of game.

Look at that copy: nobody will accept to be “tracked”. It’s survivorship!

If we then consider that a substantial percentage of these people have hearing, vision and / or mobility problems, we risk wasting money by acquiring people who will never be able to play our game even if they want to.

There is one thing I have learned in recent years in industry: the development of a game compared to the marketing of the same is cheap. It is less risky to develop a good game, because then the benefits are seen in the announcement phase of the game.
I therefore believe that accessibility features will be increasingly needed in the games of the future, regardless of the platform.

Product lifecycle impacts marketing directly. Source: https://marketing-insider.eu/characteristics-of-the-product-life-cycle-stages/

Reasons

The first reason, as we have said, is the increase in the player base.

In order to improve your sales, make beautiful games that everyone can pick and play despite of physical and mental challenges.

The Last of Us 2 true innovation wasn’t about gameplay. It was about Accessibility.

The second reason is that accessibility allows for better games. Games with friendly interfaces, which perhaps allow you to customize the experience according to the type of player and his physical characteristics. Let’s face it: now a lot has been done in terms of creativity. There are games that metaphorize all kinds of experiences and contexts. There is still room for innovation, but few things are more important than accessibility.

Where to start

For me, a good design process always starts with a diagnosis.

A sincere diagnosis that asks questions and generates hypotheses on which the team can feel motivated to collaborate. Microsoft on its site dedicated to accessibility asks the following questions:

Can you complete the game using a single hand?

Would an average person be able to pick the game up and play?

Can you effectively play the game on a small monitor or TV sitting at a distance?

Do you support more than one type of input device that can be used to play through the entire game?

Can you play the game with sound muted?

Can you play the game with your monitor set to black and white?

When you load your last saved game after a month, can you easily figure out where you are in the game and know what you need to do in order to progress?

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/gaming/accessibility-for-games

Here, this seems to me an excellent basis to start discussing this important feature that will significantly impact the future of games.

Working on my vision of making games

Published by Paolo on 16/05/2022

During my career years I have realised that I cannot predict exactly where my path will lead me. Anyway, I can speculate, dream and plan.

If I continued in the world of free-to-play , I would like to be able to work on a vision that I have been forming over the years at some point. A vision on a positive way of creating free-to-play games.

This type of game needs a huge number of people to play, as normally 2% of them decide to invest money and help you sustain the business. Here’s why we see fake ads, intrusive pop-ups that block gameplay, dark patterns, and so on. On the one hand, the number of instals will be increased by improving the chances of finding players. On the other hand, we try to improve conversion to payers.

If we carefully analyse the market we see that there are games capable of generating enormous benefits in a short time. There are also other games that generate less benefits in the short term, but that last much longer over the years.

Think of the case of hyper casual games, games that when they are successful last very little (at most a few months). Think now of free-to-play web games like Drakensang Online, which have been on the market for 16 years.

These days I will talk about this vision that I have developed and how I would apply it. Maybe I can move some interesting energy!

System designers, learn board games design!

Published by Paolo on 11/05/2022

If you really want to learn how to design game systems, I recommend starting from board games.

System designers are rare and in high demand in the industry. Especially with the advent of new business models and technologies, people capable of breaking down a game into systems and finding the connections between them are really rare and highly appreciated.

The temptation when starting to design systems is to start by opening a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is by far the most used tool for game development. However, there is no need to open it from the start. When you start thinking about breaking a game down, it is best to use all your senses. Better to use touch and sight, above all.

The best way to start thinking in a system is therefore to prototype the system in the form of a board game. When you work as a game designer your job is to study games that already exist. Also to carry out this very important task, I recommend that you synthesize the video game in question (or the more interesting parts of it) into a board game to really understand all its parts.

Creating board games could save you months of development and playtesting!

Everything a Game Designer must know

Published by Paolo on 27/04/2022

A LinkedIn contact shared a mind map that summarises, from his point of view, everything a game designer needs to know.

Link to the original post

His post was shared and appreciated by many professionals in the sector.

In my opinion, instead, the image is misleading. It just looks at one part of game development: free-to-play business. Free-to-play is only part of a very complex world ranging from board games to virtual reality. I know many people in Europe who are dedicated to the development of indie games and I can assure you that, for example, the “Data” part is ignored by them.

This mind map contains what free-to-play game companies expect from a game designer. Which is very different from the declared purpose.

A person with in-depth knowledge in all of these areas is very likely to feel the work of a game designer frustrating. If I know the game-as-a-service business like the back of my hand, I will continually make proposals that probably won’t be heard. Frustration leads many game designers to jump to other roles, such as product management. Pure game designers, instead, are dedicated to something else!

When you work in free-to-play you gain knowledge in all these areas, but a game designer who does his job well devotes himself to two main activities:

  1. Facilitate tools in the team to decide how the game works
  2. Involve the people who will be playing the games in the process

Facilitate game design tools

The game designers are those who help define:

  • the game systems
  • the way in which the story reaches the players
  • the experience in the game levels
  • the actions necessary to activate the mechanics.

System design, narrative design, level design and gameplay design. In the case of free-to-play: economy design, content design, level design and UX design.

It is good to know the business side and the data side to be informed about what to do, but it is very important to be able to realise the very experience you want to offer people in the game. The necessary qualities are of a technical, artistic and editorial nature.

  1. Create and use spreadsheets, touch JSON files and game engines (technical).
  2. Set up a process, help define the essence of your experience and study well the armony of all the elements of your game (artistic).
  3. Document everything and write stories both for internal inspiration and for the Players (editorial).

Involve people

Too often, busy with many daily tasks, team members forget the main component of a commercial video game: the Players.

Most video games in production will not be commercially successful for exactly this reason. The task of game designers is to involve real people constantly to test the assumptions you have about the players and the market. A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. You need to go outside, watch people play the game and have meaningful conversations with them.

Product managers, programmers and artists don’t have the time to do this. It is up to the game designers to take care of this. If you don’t, the work comes down to constant deliveries over long periods of time and then comes to nothing. It happens very often.

Conclusion

Game design is a very complex activity, but the role of game designers is very practical and creative. It is about analysing the games and helping the team to define the tools to create the game. Then you will create gaming experiences using these tools.

It is good to know a little bit of everything. Of course, if you want to have a meaningful discussion with a product manager you should speak the language of the business. If, on the other hand, you want to have a conversation with the art director, learning about the history of art and the theory of colours can help you a lot.

But let’s never forget the fundamentals. We game designers do a very practical job!

Making games for the Impact Economy

Published by Paolo on 25/04/2022

Impact Economy, an economic model in which the main purpose for startups, businesses, investors and organisations is not only to maximise profitability, but also to improve their social and environmental impact.

I recently discovered the Ecosia search engine. Ecosia relies on Bing’s ad services and promises to plant trees based on the amount of searches you do on their engine. It installs easily, even on smartphones, and works really well.

The results are the same as those of other engines (I used DuckDuckGo before) and it is really a pleasure to know that you are doing good to nature just by browsing.

I wonder if it is possible to adapt this business to the video game. In fact, there are entire sectors that survive thanks to advertisements. See the hypercasual market.

Imagine being able to join the services that Ecosia relies on to plant trees and contribute by creating video games where, for each ad you view, trees are planted!

It would be beautiful right?

Can Netflix, SONY and Microsoft integrate ad networks in the future?

Published by Paolo on 21/04/2022

Apple and Google have made marketers’ lives more difficult. Today, it is harder for a game to reach the right audience only through ad campaigns on the major networks that offer this service.

Acquiring new players is more expensive and often ad campaings bring people with different motivations to play.

This week’s news is that Netflix is ​​considering introducing ads to its platform. SONY and Microsoft, which are activating their subscription services, are also seriously considering introducing ads to their games.

New ad networks will be created. Someone calls them “content fortresses”. If these companies play their cards right, companies will certainly be pushed to invest in acquisitions directly on these platforms.

The more you know about people’s actions in other products, the easier it is to reach them. The ads that appear to these people will be more meaningful to them. People who enter a game are likely to be more drawn to the core features and mechanics.

Netflix, SONY and Microsoft can score a big win if they play their cards well. As designers, ads are an interesting tool to get better monetization numbers simply improving the reward ratios.

Players may be tired of throwing their money at gem packs

Published by Paolo on 19/04/2022

According to the Sensor Tower service and some specialised media, the benefits generated by free-to-play smartphone games have decreased. Specifically, spending on the Apple platform is under 2.3%. On Android there was a dramatic decline of 13.8%.

Experts from around the world are also questioning Sensor Tower’s estimation capability. In short, these estimates could be wrong. As a game designer, I have one, single and simple doubt: are free-to-play games for smartphones losing novelty?

Historically, video games have always thought of pushing the limits of graphics and gameplay. If we look at the premium market, with a simple glance we can see how technological progress has supported the evolution of game modes in a superb way. Even there, however, companies have begun to bet on the safe side. That’s why we see so many sequels, remakes, etc.

I’ve been downloading and trying tons of free-to-play games every week for years. I remember when I started in this video game sector, in 2012. The Pareto Principle was applied in a more courageous way: 80% copying a game, 20% introducing new things. This trend has changed lately.

Free-to-play, in order to be sustainable, needs a huge volume of players. To make this possible, acquisition campaigns need to focus on finding a very large audience. Before Apple’s IDFA deprecation, it was possible to find audiences based on concrete actions. “I would like to have inside the people who paid in this other game”. “I would like people who complete the tutorial of these games.”

This led to a new application of the Pareto Principle: 80% copying from one game, 20% copying from another. You avoid risks, you play “safe” in theory.

The result: the games that we see in top grossing are, from a gameplay perspective, always the same. Human beings certainly do not want complete and revolutionary experiences. However, we need to see continuous evolutions, or we will no longer feel attracted to what the market offers us.

A pop-up comes up with an affordable pack of gems, boosters, and some new heroes. The same type of package I bought in 3, 5, 10 games. The novelty effect of long-term gets lost.

How could we try to solve this?

  • Accepting that it is better to aim at a very large audience and, once inside the game, create different experiences for different type of player personas
  • At the same time, put at the center of your game experience something really fresh
  • Try to create games that can be accessed by multiple devices, not just smartphones, to ensure the service scalability.

Pareto principle in videogames conception

Published by Paolo on 28/02/2022

The basic use of the 80-20 rule (Pareto’s principle) in video games is to copy the 80% of a successful or promising game in order to mitigate some of the risks involved in investing time, effort and money in developing it.

Then you have 20% of freedom, where you can put your own secret sauce to the cake.

The risks of this approach come when you do not understand WHY a certain competitor works out there. It may be a successful marketing case. Maybe a special UX is what makes it great. A great level or narrative design may be making the difference. Hard to tell if you do not know basically three things:

The first thing is to deconstruct competitors,

The second thing is to run playtests with competitors games,

The third thing is to study the audience of competitors in a meaningful way.

Design tips for the match-3 mechanic

Published by Paolo on 05/02/2022

Match-3 is one of the most successful core mechanics in the mobile space and in general in the gaming scene. When we look at its history, simple variations and innovations permitted the creation of highly profitable services and the startup of entire businesses. In this article I will make an analysis of the very core of the genre: the match-3 mechanic.

The first thing I notice when looking at the match-3 mechanic is that the set of rules represented are both to define obstacles and goals. It is a simple but very beneficial mechanic, in terms of the economy of the gameplay. In fact, the simple action that activates the match needs a previous cognitive effort to spot at least a possible combination. That presents a challenge to the players 

Flow

Step 1 – Problem

Observation/Analysis: recognize at least one possible combination of 3+ colors in line

Challenge: Cognitive effort 

Design Tip: board and art style directly influence the difficulty of this problem to solve

Step 2 – Make a choice

Choose the first you spot VS look better VS deep thinking

Difficulty: time may add challenge to this part

Design Tip: implementing a hint system changes this meaning directly. Some Players may passively accept any hint. Consider:Kind of hint to give (if any)Choose the right timing for showing the hint OR let the Players access to them whenever they want

Step 3- Goal

Match: Swipe two adjacent tokens

Challenge: Interaction, cognitive effort

Design Tip: during your playtests, be aware of the dimension and sensibility of tokensSpeed of interchangePlayers do not like to make a move and see another.Also, if the move is invalid the common thing is to not remove a movement from the total amount, if the game challenge is based on movements. [Maybe it’s possible to let the time be retrieved somehow, to remove this possible friction.]

Step 4 – Result

Cascade: See your choice rewarded

Challenge: Surprise, combo, doubt

Design Tip: here the speed and the bounce of tokens falling reinforce the sense of reactivity that the Player has. According to the target audience of the specific game (and its theme), this has to be tweaked. There is a black box: Players don’t know which token will be spawned and they will feel curiosity about the next state of the level board. Be aware of this.

Step 5 – New Board Configuration

New Board: The gameplay may wait for a stable condition before giving the control back to the Player.

Challenge: Restart from Step 1

Design Tip: the faster, the better. Avoid too much particles and effects left on the board at  this step.

Less broken features are more value

Published by Paolo on 04/01/2022

These days I am reading the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It is definitely not an easy lecture, for a non-english speaker. You need time and dedication to fully understand it. I am sure I will need more lectures.

In the edition I have, on chapter 15 called “Linda: Less is More” there is a paragraph where the author reports an experiment run at the University of Chicago. Professor Christopher Hsee asked people to name a price for sets of dinnerware, using a method called “joint evaluation”. The method consists of compare two different sets of things and propose a value. The Set B had a list of items, all in good conditions. Set A, instead, contained the same items of Set B plus more items partly broken.

Since Set A contained exactly the same things that B, but with more things (partly broken), logically participants valued Set A more than B: $32 versus $30 (average).

The professor run the same experiment but with single evaluation. The result is quite interesting: Set B was priced way more than A. $33 versus $23 average.

What does that mean to us game designers? Sometimes the best you can do for a game is to remove some part that is broken. Having a feature that does not work can be a problem. It is better to remove features, and test if the things improve without them. Players can genuinely value our game better without that synchronized broken multiplayer mode, believe me!