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Tag: insight

UI driven skinner boxes

Published by Paolo on 17/01/2024

Skinner boxes are artifacts where the user taps a button in the hope of getting something. In the original ones, the user was a lab rat willing for food. In Monopoly GO! the user is a Player looking for dopamine rushes.

Skinner boxes work very well, because of two factors. The first is the variable ratio variable schedule rewards. It means that the user doesn’t know if and when the reward will arrive. The other factor is that they are simple to use. That means that also a lab rat can do that.

There are many ethical questions around Skinner boxes, but humans can choose to play a game or not. The lab rats, instead, have no choice. Of course, we can consider the addiction to dopamine a form of slavery, there are no easy answers.

In games, Skinner boxes are often associated with a series of tasks to perform. Usually, the UI leads the Players on what to do next, so they don’t have to worry. They can continue to follow the series on their television set or the class while playing the game. Their dopamine system will stay stimulated and it will feel pleasing.

A sit at the table

Published by Paolo on 16/01/2024

Companies hire game designers (and other profiles) to build their business. Game designers have a specific focus on features and content. When we design features, the best way of showing their value is to focus on the benefits of that feature.

  • Business leaders love to hear about the impact of a certain feature, more than the quality of it.
  • It’s better to speak about the benefits of reducing cognitive load instead of selling a “cleaner” design.
  • One of the goals of feature design is to improve the long-term profit, more than improving the gameplay.
  • Things like accessibility, inclusivity, and so on are useful to reach untapped markets. They are not just a good thing to do.
  • Managers love to hear how to improve the path to purchase, more than vague concepts like flow.

If more designers take this approach, we will see less of them switching to Product Manager roles just to get a sit at the table.

Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is dead

Published by Paolo on 04/01/2024

Long live King Kardashian: Hollywood.

I remember this game took people like me in crisis. We read a lot of breakdowns to try to understand why this game was so successful at the time. Almost nobody understood the real value of that “exposed gem”.

The system was very simple and the economy was pretty aggressive. Only whales, VIP players, were treated with actual respect and that fit great into the game’s metaphor. Of course, for someone like me with my gaming background (as a Player) all of that looked like garbage. But hey, lots of people prove me wrong. People wanted to be entertained by that sort of point and click dating simulator with dolls mechanics.

There was a perfect marriage among a dominant mimicry and an alea. You performed actions using energy and in change you could get some special perk. Fantasy, narrative and expression were the main aesthetics.

We all learned a lot from Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. So that at the end it will pass to the game history, somehow. That shitty game!

Future: remove uninteresting choices

Published by Paolo on 27/12/2023

An experiment I ran this year was TikTok. I made an account and started recording videos in Italian on game design. In a few days, I was completely sucked into the platform. I stopped playing my games for pleasure, TikTok was my unique source of mobile entertainment. I uninstalled that crazy demon from my smartphone.

The algorithm works just great, understands where I stay the most and keeps serving me what it considers to be the best. There were no surprises, every time I needed some fast stress relief I got it.

From a game design standpoint, the lack of uninteresting choices is a great thing when I am the consumer. This doesn’t happen when I run a social casino suite or a mobile RPG. Lately, it has not happened with Roblox and Fortnite either. It doesn’t happen with Steam.

I run these games and I have to choose: which game mode, minigame, or experience, do I want to play? Rarely did I decide this before running a game. So I spend 10 precious minutes deciding.

And in that context, this decision is not meaningful at all! I want to have fun and make meaningful choices in the game. Not on the main screen.

I am completely sure that the next mobile hit will understand this concept and serve the Players with straight gameplay, according to their tastes. With the possibility of swiping them away. And of course, leveraging content creation. 

Factors, scope and popularity

Published by Paolo on 22/12/2023

Every game plays around 3 factors: skill, luck, and stats.

  • The first is the actual cognitive effort required to play it.
  • Luck is about everything generated at runtime, developers set up rules for generation.
  • Stats are carefully designed values that give the Players the first goal: grow them.

There are skill-based, luck-based, and stat-based games. Games whose principal factor is one of the 3. Within this game is possible to add more of the other 2 factors. You may earn more opportunities, for instance for monetization. On the other hand, you complicate a little the things. This translates usually to a more niche game.

What’s the key to creativity? The capacity of scoping things, removing the superfluous. Many successful games started with this concept in mind. Eventually, they evolved more complicated as their popularity grew. Some of the new Players will resist a little bit of friction to be part of the crowd, to not be left out. It’s important to see where they started if you desire to replicate their success.

Game design is not fortune telling

Published by Paolo on 18/12/2023

One of the mantras of game design is that you should be able to predict the future, somehow. This is something that I read a lot, but that is plain wrong in my humble opinion.

You cannot predict the future. You should read and analyze your audience and try to understand how to bring meaning to them in a novel way. It’s not about prediction, game design is a practical craft. It’s empathetic, it’s about the present (and why not? also the past).

Leave predictions and forecasts to consultants, focus on creation instead.

PRO TIP: creativity is about cutting off things, not add more stuff.

The first production tip

Published by Paolo on 16/12/2023

We can speak ages about games production and how to manage people. But there are things that are universal and very useful.

  • Make a list of features you would like to see into your game
  • Order them by priority. Priority is calculated based on specific factors, it’s a formula
  • take the top 3 in your list and set the next deadline at 6-10 weeks around them.

Easy and uneasy questions

Published by Paolo on 14/12/2023

Do you believe in your project or not?

Someday the game you are making is exciting.

Some other day you feel like nothing works. It’s the worst game ever.

This is completely normal and common. Track these days. Play the build, every single day. And speak with your team. Do you believe you are on the right track?

If you are not sure about that from many milestones, it’s time to question harder topics.

Form follows function or aesthetics?

Published by Paolo on 13/12/2023

Game design takes concepts from broader design also. One of the most important books, “The Design of Everyday Things” (Don Norman), set the base for UX design today.

One concept is that form follows function. When you, as a designer, must decide which form something in your game should have, it’s better to think about its function first. Many games adopt things like this. You can see that a power-up that makes things explode is a bomb, while a water engine in the last Zelda game looks like a hydrant.

But is it always the case? Every game has aesthetics that combine with the fantasy it offers and the motivations it gives to the Players. It’s clear that the casual Player of Candy Crush Saga is looking for immediacy, but the Player of a From Software game may be looking for something more complicated to use, in the name of the “beauty” of it.

Form follows function but it is always guided by the aesthetics!

Freelancing is not a therapy

Published by Paolo on 06/12/2023

When a client hires me usually is for a whole project preproduction. It can be the startup for a new game or the research stage for a new feature of a live game. I help them during the whole process of finding the right formula. I work per day, every day is one slot. Every client can get from 1 to 3 slots per week.

Happens that during my service I realize that my help is not needed. It may happen for a lot of reasons. Sometimes I see that the team is on the right track and I am slowing things down. Other times I see that the client that hired me didn’t want my help with game design, so that I am useless.

In any case, my business is not like a therapist. When I realize that I am not needed anymore, I let go the client. I speak with them and explain any reason. It was a pleasure to be there, please leave your testimonial. You will not lose your money, I will not lose my time. Everybody wins.

(and very few of them leave the actual testimonial)