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Tag: myself

Smiling Suns

Published by Paolo on 26/08/2022

I was talking on the phone with my mom, and she said: “your brother sent me yesterday photos from the beach. He was happy, he also put a Sun that smiles in the message.”

The “Sun that smiles” is her interpretation of the smiling emoji. I grew up typing ASCII symbols to create smileys. Then with MSN, those symbols were automatically translated to a smiley. In our interpretation, a smiley is a face, not a Sun. My mother, instead, had nothing to do with all of that. First time she saw a smiley was in WhatsApp. Her interpretation is a Sun, not a face. And she is right, is a yellow round circle with eyes and mouth. It is not a face, definitely! It is more a Sun.

Her meaning is more poetic than mine, too. A Sun that smiles, a Sun that cries. That is not the face that my brother wanted to show. There was a third entity in their conversation. It was an happy day at the beach, and the Sun smiles. I love it!

Sometimes the same happens to our games. The shapes we present to the Players have a meaning for us, developers. And then the game is out, everyone in the World will play it. Some of them will see a face smiling. Some other will see a Sun, instead. And that’s very powerful.

Love your manager

Published by Paolo on 20/07/2022

I want to design games at work. I love to do it and I put all my effort in it. I study everything in detail, I try to understand the problem, the context and also the competitor’s choices. Then I come up with a vision for a new game or feature. And the politics start!

Usually, I work for managers: product managers or producers. Many times they come with a lot of ideas already regarding what to do and what not. So that it’s important to understand well those ideas first, because anything out of those ideas is really hard to get approved.

I would love to not having to deal with politics, not having to defend my work always. Sadly, this is not possible in the company context. So that we should embrace it and love it. Love it by loving our teammates, first. This is very important: do you love your manager?

Love is an act of empathy and humbleness, in this case. You don’t love your manager as you love your wife, of course. Love is to really try to understand your manager and the vision and the background that brought to that vision. Love is to listen the reasons and be able to discard your own brilliant ideas in the name of theirs. Love is wanting your manager to shine, because if the manager has success, the whole team has it.

Everything is clear

Published by Paolo on 14/07/2022

You are at your desk, everything is clear in your mind. The new game mode should feature a new energy system which permits to spend energies in change of doing a whole set of special actions in your RPG. You can throw bolts, run away from fights, hit with a sword. All with this energy system.

Then the engineer writes you on Slack: hey, can you check this? You see that nobody understood the vision, so that check your documents. “Look, is all there!”. They didn’t read the comments under the flow, your document was too long to read. The leader of the project says it’s too late. And the leader starts imposing own design, without thinking too much. Discussions starts, but in the end the vision changes.

You update your documents.

Documents that no one, except from you and maybe QA, will read. Satisfied you will shut down your PC. And hope for the best.

Friday, I’m in love

Published by Paolo on 08/07/2022

I would love to build my own company, after many years serving many projects and teams. I have developed a vision, I feel I can somehow foresee part of the future.

I would like to focus on gameplay first short games. I would probably start from PC games. 3 months development, plus 3 refinements and then 6 months to see the return on investment.

I have everything clear, but I don’t want to stay behind burocracy, contracts and all the things. I guess I will have to, at some point of course. If I want to really put in place all the knowledge I had those years.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a guru or something like that. I know for sure that I am wrong in so many ways. I just feel that in order to really grow more I need a period building something I really believe in, in a way I feel the best.

As Italian, I am a fan of the stories of Olivetti and other entrepreneurs like him. To me a company needs to improve the society where it is founded, in a meaningful way.

And I think I have this way, I just need to try.

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!