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Tag: myself

LinkedIn and the real World

Published by Paolo on 18/04/2024

This week I went to a fantastic event organized by GameBCN, a local video games incubator. They invited Anchor Point, a new NetEase studio that is opening doors in Barcelona. There was a talk on worldbuilding. I love narrative design, and the speaker was clear and inspiring.

I had the opportunity to meet my friends of the local games industry and, for the first time since years, I have noticed a clear disconnection between the world of LinkedIn and the real one. When I enjoyed LinkedIn the most, before and during pandemic, we didn’t have many tools to automatically create posts. LinkedIn has clearly suffered the process of enshittification that all social media have at some point.

Before it wasn’t like that. Before it was cool to meet in person the same people I met on LinkedIn and see that there were little difference. LinkedIn was a tool to facilitate connections, not followers.

People were worried, many of them are looking for a job or a project to work on. I am calm, honestly. When everyone is in the same situation, why worry at all? I can only focus on build my road, as I have always done.

Maybe it’s time to abandon LinkedIn, which is sad I have a good follow. I will start to use it differently, looking more for connections and less for reactions. Let’s see if the things improves…

Have fun out there, if you’re reading this!

Let’s talk about generative AI

Published by Paolo on 16/04/2024

Imagine this business: you write which furniture you want for your flat. A green sofa for your lounge. A carpet for the studio. A small library for your dorm. You select the image of what you like and, for the price of transportation, you get the furniture.

Imagine you live in a country where robbing apartments is not a felony. And you know that this furniture was stolen from someone. How would you feel? You may think in the short term, you don’t have money. You don’t want to go to IKEA and fight the whole day with your spouse. Plus, it’s no felony so who cares?

Let’s switch context for a while…

We have lots of hints and suggestions redacted by millions of people over the years. Doctors who tried to solve some specific health condition. Programmers helping others to understand how backend development works.

Every time we need this information to solve some problem or face a challenge, we invest our time in finding the right answer. Meanwhile, we learn about other things we didn’t consider. In some cases, being faster can save lives. In other, don’t.

You are running for what?

Let’s take game development. The more you learn, the more things you spot you should consider, and the better your games will be. So, is it interesting to be faster?

Sometimes I am sure it is. Most of the time doesn’t.

LLM services offer a collage that makes you feel you can make art, or writing without having the talent needed to craft it. Like the stolen furniture example I made, they are a deliberate steal. They take things made by others and give them to you.

An interesting feature is that they provide a summary of hints too. You look for how to code something and they give you the code. You can be faster, but you need to understand what the code does. Also, the slow process of looking for solutions can make you discover things you didn’t consider. You have lost that if you surrender to LLMs.

In any case, they consume water and energy. They pay for that, but they pay a market price that I am afraid is not aware of the long-term damage.

Is it worth it? No, it isn’t.

It can be worth in a life-or-death situation. If a machine is better than the human eye to detect a condition, that case is good for LLMs.

Refusal as a generative act

Published by Paolo on 06/04/2024

Let’s talk about refusal as a generative act. The refusal has something similar to the design, to me. It identifies issues and creates new opportunities.

Right now in my industry, it’s a moment of change and challenges. Dramatic, somehow. But this is where things can change for the better. Refusal is a great tool we have.

I am reading on my feed dozens of posts written by people with huge experience who have been laid off. Now, these people are looking for work. It reminds me a little bit of the classic royal rumbles I watched on my television when I was a kid. Macho Man VS Hulk Hogan VS Ultimate Warrior… you get that! The most muscled guys in the world fake-fighting for a shiny belt.

Am I willing to join that? No, of course not! I can support this or that stunt, but I refuse to be in the ring. I am the guy with the big hand glove in the background, I love their spirit. But I am not joining that!

And this creates other opportunities for me. I work mostly with people who are starting to build new companies. People who are exploring a vision. There are lots of them, more than profitable companies for sure. There is a lot of work to do. And the more I help them, the more things I learn, the more I can help others.

And the best jobs I have had in my career, I mean full-time regular jobs, have started from this spark. Creativity, making games together. Not screening, filtering, testing, trying, questioning, and all these blockers.

That’s how, through the refusal of the standard processes, I keep and foster my passion for making games.

First screening with a web logical test? Not gonna happen. Unpaid home assignment? Not for me. More than 3 rounds of interviews? I am out.

Let’s meet for 2 hours in a room with a dashboard and a spreadsheet. Introduce me first to the producer and only at the end to the HR manager. Show me you’re looking for experience, design, and concreteness. Show me you want to make games.

I have created this post originally for LinkedIn. But then I removed it from there, because it can be read in wrong ways too.

Let’s talk about refusal as a generative act. The refusal has something similar to the design, to me. It identifies issues and creates new opportunities.

Right now in my industry, it’s a moment of change and challenges. Dramatic, somehow. But this is where things can change for the better. Refusal is a great tool we have.

I am reading on my feed dozens of posts written by people with huge experience who have been laid off. Now, these people are looking for work. It reminds me a little bit of the classic royal rumbles I watched on my television when I was a kid. Macho Man VS Hulk Hogan VS Ultimate Warrior… you get that! The most muscled guys in the world fake-fighting for a shiny belt.

Am I willing to join that? No, of course not! I can support this or that stunt, but I refuse to be in the ring. I am the guy with the big hand glove in the background, I love their spirit. But I am not joining that!

And this creates other opportunities for me. I work mostly with people who are starting to build new companies. People who are exploring a vision. There are lots of them, more than profitable companies for sure. There is a lot of work to do. And the more I help them, the more things I learn, the more I can help others.

And the best jobs I have had in my career, I mean full-time regular jobs, have started from this spark. Creativity, making games together. Not screening, filtering, testing, trying, questioning, and all these blockers.

That’s how, through the refusal of the standard processes, I keep and foster my passion for making games.

First screening with a web logical test? Not gonna happen. Unpaid home assignment? Not for me. More than 3 rounds of interviews? I am out.

Let’s meet for 2 hours in a room with a dashboard and a spreadsheet. Introduce me first to the producer and only at the end to the HR manager. Show me you’re looking for experience, design, and concreteness. Show me you want to make games.

Job in games royal rumble

Published by Paolo on 01/04/2024

My LinkedIn feed is filled with people that lost their jobs and are asking for new opportunities. I am talking about, mostly, experienced people. People who worked on games I only dream at night. People much more experienced than the average.

All of these people will send resumes. Eventually, they will be contacted for a first screening. Then they will receive a technical test. Maybe they will have another interview with the hiring manager. And then the team. Sometimes, the CEO herself.

The next months will be a royal rumble and the best talents will face the odds. I feel that is smarter to think laterally, and avoid the battle completely.

Three possible steps to professional autonomy

Published by Paolo on 25/03/2024

I live in Barcelona, not in Montreal. The video games sector here is growing because of foreign companies landing. There are still very few profitable local companies. Plus, the Spanish government has a lot of work to do to give the push that the sector deserves to become an industry.

But I work as a game designer, that’s my profession. So I was years ago in a limbo. On one side, there were no positions for me (apart from big companies, which are not what I look for). On the other, I wanted to make games.

I decided to be the best game designer I could be. I follow three basic steps:

Be realistic: I would very love to help make the next Ocarina of Time. But that is not the case of my reality here. My reality is big corporates whose processes are made to filter out people like me. And small companies willing to find their formulas for profitability. Those companies are 80% mobile and casino. So I started specializing more in those.

A mix of analysis and creativity: from one side I have the skills to analyze what’s in the market. Because when you work as a game designer for a company they want you to find formulas to apply. Especially in mobile free-to-play. So I had to accept it and become a PRO in analysis. But I am a designer in the first place, so I worked on my creativity side. I had to improve my skills in actually designing documents and spreadsheets. Also, I had to dominate the engines, as a designer.

Share every learning: I know that it can look silly. Someone says I want to become an influencer. But that’s not the case. Sharing is caring, as they say. When you share also a small learning you learn to communicate and you leave space. Your commenters will give you insight and also in your private job you will become better.

Starting Free Flow Fridays

Published by Paolo on 15/03/2024

Today I want to start a new appointment on my blog: Free Flow Fridays (FFF). I want to just leave my mind for one day without thinking about being insightful, or worrying about the SEO and things like that.

This week I was reading and listening to the news and the whole World is in crisis. Everything is suffering a crisis now, from religious institutions to the climate. The industry where I work is in crisis too, and my country is in a crisis too. What can I do as a game designer? The challenge is pretty hard, but one thing I know: I have to bring fun and good things to the World. This starts by selecting also the tools I use. For instance, GenAI tools available are trained on datasets that steal intellectual properties. I will not use them.

Speaking of which, I am not scared by the advent of generative AI, I am pretty sure it is a bubble about to burst. Still, I have to be prepared for the worst as always. I believe that nothing can beat good storytelling in games. And I am sure that good stories will always be uniquely from humans, never from bots. So I intend to insist on that side of game design: game writing and more in general narrative design.

In the last few months I have been suffering fewer clients too, that’s why I am taking a couple of courses to improve my tools and workflows and get more productive in the future. I don’t believe honestly that with 60 years companies will look out for people like me, so I want to prepare my future. There are 3 possibilities I foresee:

  1. Build a profitable company and sell it. Unless something changes, I don’t see myself doing that.
  2. Invest my game design skills into other fields more stable. Honestly, I don’t see myself working for a bank using my incredible spreadsheet skills.
  3. Teach. That’s my thing. I love to explain things, I love the idea of helping create a better future.

I see myself teaching and making my small games before retiring, so yes that’s what I want to work on in the next months. Maybe by starting an Italian book on game design, who knows?

Farewell Toriyama-sensei

Published by Paolo on 11/03/2024

I remember staying in a very big room watching cartoons. My mother was cooking, but she was aware of what I was looking at. The story of a young kid with a monkey tail and a stick that extended at request. He seemed unaware of Bulma’s curves. “What are you looking at, Paolo?” said my mother.

Many years later, that room looks smaller. My mother still remembers Dragon Ball. I don’t think I understood the storyline at that time. I just enjoyed the visuals and colors. Everything was so rounded, as well as vehicles. That character was similar to me, he was a little kid but so strong. He wasn’t interested in adult things, just in his quest for dragon balls.

Years later I was buying my first manga comics, one of my favorites was Arale. The creativity was shaping in my mind also with these things. Today I am a game designer and I ask myself: would I be a creator without the existence of Toriyama-sensei?

I don’t think so. God bless you, Akira.

Talent and Effort

Published by Paolo on 01/03/2024

Talent is something that you have or you don’t. You can cultivate it or ignore it. You can also never discover your talent in your whole life. You can work on something, play with something, or make something without any talent. If you do anything with talent, everyone notices it.

Effort is a choice. If you don’t put effort into something it’s because you don’t want to. The context can influence the effort you put into something. You can also measure the effort and its results.

Four scenarios:

  1. You have talent and you choose to put effort into something. Best case scenario, you are the Nick Cave of what you do. Or the Maradona. Whatever you prefer.
  2. You have a talent for something, but you don’t put effort into it. You will never discover what you’re capable of. You can live with that, no worries.
  3. You don’t have talent but you want to do something. You put the effort in. The majority of successful professionals are like that. The important thing is to be aware of that and stay humble. Also, respect (and steal) talents when you spot them, which is not always easy.
  4. You don’t have talent and you don’t want to put any effort. This is a significant portion of people living in this World, as far as I perceive. In the case of creativity (art, writing, design, engineering, science, faith) an impressive business is building for them: generative AI.

Unprofessionalism

Published by Paolo on 29/02/2024

The recent news in the games industry comes with a bunch of social actions that are unprofessional. In this post, I would like to point those out (without saying names, of course).

The first thing is using bad words and cursing while posting about something. It doesn’t make you feel smarter, also if your content can be more viral. Believe me.

The second behavior is to speak regarding something you don’t know. “Company X laid off YYYY people, shame on you!”. Why are you doing that? Do you really know why it happened? No, you don’t.

The third issue is with people sharing WIP projects on social. Finish things, and show what you are proud of. It’s OK to share that you are working on something if you are looking for help, but it’s not OK to show something incomplete hoping that someone will hire you.

Last thing, we all like humor and cynicism but if you are constantly posting just that you are not putting yourself in a good light. You can look smart and experienced at the start, but then it’s tiring.

Do this instead

  • Try to evolve your communication style and channels
  • Analyze what you post and the results you have
  • Speak always politely, be always gentle

(I wish I could follow these things myself. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible because of the context and design of certain platforms)

Is the games industry even a thing?

Published by Paolo on 28/02/2024

Over the past six months or so, the very concept of “making a career in the video game industry” has completely evaporated from my mind.

There is no industry, because there are no guarantees or responsibilities. Whoever breaks it (for example by bargaining much more than you should) doesn’t pay. Indeed, the annual bonus is guaranteed by adjusting numbers on an Excel. Most often, numbers represent people.

The famous “industry” is nothing more than a mass of people who don’t even play video games and who create companies essentially to sell them. In the renowned “industry”, video games are almost an accident, they are not the important thing.

People who dream of video games, who study, who work their asses off, are tossed left and right like cattle. In the illusion of being able to create experiences that make other people dream. I understood this many years ago, thank God.

But it’s just an illusion, it doesn’t exist. The best thing is to do it in your small way and create your opportunities. Much safer, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first glance.