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Tag: myself

F2p microtransactions and recession

Published by Paolo on 29/06/2022

Experts from all over the World are claiming that a recession will hit hard the games industry in the next few months. I am no expert, but I can clearly feel something is going weird.

What about the Players? Will they prefer to spend $70 for a premium complete game or will they still prefer $5 microtransactions? Will microtransactions be considered a luxury good? We really cannot predict that. Players are very diverse and scattered all over the World, it’s hard to make predictions.

The only thing I can say for sure is that there will be always space for good games. With good games I mean games that engage Players in a meaningful way. “Artisanal touches and magical moments that make up a rich and unique player experience”, as the CEO of this brand new company says here.

During a crisis especially those who struggle to understand how to make good games will struggle. Anyway we should remember that with a crisis always come new opportunity.

Can be the new subscription triad game pass/playstation plus/netflix the saver of the old f2p World?

The idea: Duchess

Published by Paolo on 13/06/2022

I have an idea for an indie game and I am pretty bored at my dayjob, lately. So that I will explain it here, let’s see if thanks to that I meet the right people to do it.

Do you remember Duke Nukem 3D? Well, the idea starts from there. I was taking a mooc on Unreal Engine 5 and the project was a fps. What’s the best shooter I have ever played? Duke Nukem 3D.

come get some!

Why? Because it was simple, with a great level design and lot of monsters and you could really feel the character. Was funny, me and my brother were continuosly joking around his sentences and that badass attitude.

So that I was thinking: how would it be a character like that nowadays? Well, I believe it would be the opposite.

Duke Nukem was a white strong male. Duchess will be a skinny black girl. That’s the vision, basically.

First Moodboard

How about the gameplay?

I would like to try out a game which could be possibly exported to many platforms, also mobile. Recently I discovered Vampire Survivors, a great indie game on power creep. I would like to test out the same mechanics on a 1st person shooter.

Core Loop

You fire automatically. Just worry about moving and put in the right spot to kill monsters. Collect XP and coins. On level up, the Players will improve their arsenal. On game over, Players will unlock new things with the coins.

Who’s in for that? I think I need a 3d artist first and find out the possible artstyles.

The term I most hate: User

Published by Paolo on 10/06/2022

The other day I was listening to a video where the speakers named the terms they most hate to hear. One speaker said he hates “web3”. The other “I hate metaverse”, and so on.

The term I absolutely hate the most (well, hate is a strong word isn’t it?) is: User.

To me there are the People. When the People start to play your game, those become Players. Players may become also Clients in free-to-play, if they decide to invest some money. And some of them become a Fan.

Players, Clients, Fans. Those people deserve their degree of respect. Users is a bad term, reminds me the abuse of illegal substances. I hate to say “Users”. Yet, I say it a lot because is very common used.

Dreaming the dream

Published by Paolo on 07/06/2022

I dream of making my own game someday. I have a lot of ideas well organized and stored, for someday do them. There are a lot of indie games there. With indie game, in this case, I mean a game that is not conceived to generate revenue or attract some specific kind of player. With indie game I mean, in this case, a game where I want to tell something.

On Sunday I went to the concert of a supergood rock band, the Schellac. Steve Albini, producer of Pixies, Nirvana and so on. Their rock is minimal, super well played and they keep the rhythm like a clockwork. They are very mathematic while they play. They have really something to say and they seem not to give a damn about making huge revenues and so on.

That concert made me think a lot. In fact, we can consider a gamedev team like a rock band. Everyone has a role and an ego. When you have a team of three people really good at what they do, you can really build something meaningful.

I am a game designer and I have a technical background. So that I am not afraid of using engines, script a little bit and so on. I think that with a supergood artist and with a stellar programmer we could have a good base. Then we need at least one person dedicated to marketing and at least one dedicated to QA. And that’s it, then we can be the Schellac!

Dreaming the dream is not living it, I know. But it’s what I have at the moment.

The value of failing games

Published by Paolo on 01/06/2022

When I started this profession my dream was to participate in some really successful game. A successful game is a game that generates revenues, resonates with a community of Players and brings fun to the World.

Reality is that when you work as a game designer, you are not in charge of a whole project. You hear constantly a lot of success cases and great stories in the indie, AAA and f2p industry. But that is not the normality. The most common situation is you working on a game that is not working and will probably fail. That is the truth.

The temptation is to constantly look for a new job, especially when you clearly see that your game will never be published or will never be viable and sustainable.

But there is a value also in working for failing games. You can inspire people, you can improve processes and you can do something meaningful everyday. It is a struggle, and it’s very hard to resist. And yes, you probably have to look out for a new gig. But try to not stress too much: remember that it’s the most common thing.

Our job is not to design the next hit. Our job is to understand the context and provide the best solutions for that contest. Our job is to own our tasks and do the best job we can do.

I don’t want to specialize

Published by Paolo on 30/05/2022

I work as a game designer and I don’t want to specialize. The Industry is constantly looking for high specialization, but if I imagine myself blocked in a specific role I can easily out of video games.

When I meet some people who wants to join the industry and asks me for an advice, I translate this way of thinking to my mentorship to. Don’t try to specialize.

To me, game designers are a kind of designers. Game design is already a specialization. I am in the f2p sector because it is very common to be there in Europe. Someday, I would love to work on AAA or Indie games, too.

I like everything in game design: the narrative, the system, the level and the gameplay design. I like all their branches. And my dream is to work on a little bit of everything. That’s what motivates me, in the end.

If you are new, do not think in specialization. Start by picking a field, instead. Imagine you pick level design.

Then scan all the companies you would like to work for someday and make some specific level design for one of their titles. Iterate and take notes on every problem faced. Share only the best things. Build your portfolio like that!

Start by picking a specialization, then try to go general!

Hypercasual is dying long live the Hypercasual

Published by Paolo on 23/05/2022

News of past week, AppLovin made some genius operations on the stock market and announced they will probably sell their app business. Which include games. AppLovin is the owner of Lion Studios, a hypercasual games publisher.

Hypercasual games present a simple and very readable innovative mechanic. I worked on them for more than a year and I have to say that I see a similar approach to prototyping only in game jams and indie game development.

The business is not scalable anymore

Hypercasual games are part of the free-to-play business model, but heavily based on ads. The player acquisition cost has to be inferior to the ad revenue for the game to work. Then, a successful game has to scale and grow. That translates in moving a large number of people from game to game, optimizing the acquisition costs. Apple completely destroyed this concept with new privacy policies. So that hypercasual seems not to be a viable business model anymore.

Snackability, YouTubability and other important abilities

Working on hypercasual games, a game designer really understands the importance of the fundamentals. A good hypercasual game is understandable also from a single screenshot of the game. I was always fascinated by this concept, it’s like a jump into the past where the games were simple and colorful. People chose them just walking in a mall or in an arcade room giving a fast hint.

We often forget the importance of the readability of game mechanics. Mobile phones are in the pockets of a huge variety of people. If we want to broad our audience and include everyone, we should focus on delivering a fun experience without loading too much the cognitive systems of our players.

Successful hypercasual games are parodies of real life. I spent hours on social media taking inspiration for new crazy mechanics. I found this awesome. In the industry, in fact, we have the tendency in thinking in games in old terms: dragons, magic, warriors, jumping Italian plumbers and so on.

Hypercasual opened a whole new World to me!

Working on hypercasual, finally, helped me understand a lot of secrets of Unity3D engine. It is great, since the work is very technical. I don’t have to prepare too many docs and presentation, just focus on the game feel of a single concept.

I will always be thankful! This is a game I helped creating, one of the (few) hits we had:

Level Up Runner (iOS and Android)

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!

Streamers and Survival

Published by Paolo on 10/05/2022

I belong to a generation formed before the advent of content streamers. However, as a game designer, I find the phenomenon really interesting. I personally don’t have the patience to follow a streamer for more than 10 minutes. I prefer the short cuts they make to their videos and I understand why they are so much fun. Some people are a television studio summed up in one person!

When I have to concentrate on practical tasks, for example when I have to design levels in Unity, I like to put a streamer in the background. I choose streamers who do the same thing I do: develop games. It relaxes me a lot, stimulates me and makes me focus on my task.

Maybe it’s survival instinct. Perhaps my subconscious thinks “this person is working and will be more likely to find food and reproduce than you”, so I too get to work more willingly. Assumptions, of course.

Sometimes I think: “why not do it too?”. I believe that one of the great evils that afflicts game designers is the overriding of the ego. This public display inevitably ranks against. This same blog also works a little in this direction.

For the moment I prefer writing. I think writing is more difficult, especially in English which is not my native language. But writing opens more doors and reaches people who are really interested.

I don’t like to exclude anything, but I don’t think streaming is for me. Maybe I would if I was working on my indie game. To get feedback and attention, to create a small community to launch with. To aim for the first 10 positive reviews on Steam.

Last post on crypto games

Published by Paolo on 06/05/2022

After many months studying and deepening these technologies in detail, I have come to an important conclusion. The video game industry deserves to broaden the audience and encourage access to more people. We don’t have to shrink if we want to grow.

Crypto technology was developed with the sole objective of evading controls of banks and states on the circulation of value.

There is an attempt to force these technologies into video games, as video games have demonstrated their ability to attract people’s attention.

These technologies are not necessary in video games. The video games are necessary for these technologies!

All implementations are solutions designed for nonexistent problems. We don’t need this bullcrap in our industry.

I understand that there are a lot of investments. We are facing another fever for the novelty. But we are because people, especially those who move money, do not delve into the history of the video game. All significant revolutions have resulted in a broader audience and a significant improvement in accessibility.

These crypto-bullshits, on the other hand, unnecessarily complicate things to create pyramid schemes designed for people who get drawn into these traps!