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Tag: myself

My learnings on leadership

Published by Paolo on 19/10/2022

I am thinking on my past with the lens of “why that thing didn’t worked out?” those days. It is an useful exercise to do at times. I have a diary and I like to take old entries and read them with my new point of view.

Finding a good leader is a gift from God. Very often we have to deal with creative leaders that are not creative at all, managers that repeat your job and in general people that want to impose their (often wrong) views.

Enabling others

A great leader almost never says “no”. Best leaders you can find out there, in fact, are capable of taking any of the proposals and discussions from the team and use it as an opportunity for the growth of the entire team. Let’s say I am working on Super Mario Bros 4 and I have the “brilliant” idea of putting long dialogues between level and level. That’s clearly wrong, right? Why is it? A good leader can reason with me simply making me describing well the idea. Then is myself that can realize “ok, not a great one”. The same is valid for very tiny questions.

A bad leader believes that the job is “know when to say no”. When you meet someone like this, believe me: this person will probably make the whole project fail. No one knows when to say no, in fact. The no from a leader is a way of shut down a communication and gives no opportunities to grow. What are the best assets for a company? Teams are! Do not cut them off with a NO. Never.

Being honest

A good leader recognizes when the house is on fire and try to put the focus of the whole team on the problem. The team or part of it must extinguish the fire. Otherwise the house will. It’s very important maintain the calm but being honest at the same time. In case of fire, every member should participate or at least stay aware of it. Try to burn the smallest number of people.

A bad leader shows that everything is great at any meeting. The important thing for them is to stay positive. That person is not interested in the team and the product at all. That “leader” is just interested in taking the salary each month and having the title on the resume. Saying that is all good, until everything falls down. Then they will have the perfect excuse: the project was great, but the company shut down. Not my fault. New companies will see their resumes and see that they were in a leadership position for a while. Someone will hire them again, probably.

Why I do like stories in games

Published by Paolo on 13/10/2022

I am completing this week the fall edition of The Narrative Department, by Susan ‘O Connor. Each Wednesday we have a writing prompt from her. I want to share with you the result of yesterday’s writing prompt.

Prompt

Write about why you like stories in games! You can talk generally, talk about a specific game, talk about what you like about writing, etc. Think of it like talking with a friend who shares your enthusiasm.

Text

I like stories because they make me connect with the activity that I am doing while playing. Every game, also Tetris, tells a story to me. But when I see a written story I can appreciate the dedication of human beings behind that craft. I appreciate that because I admire other human beings like me at the end.  I believe that these abilities are Gifts so that make me connect more with God and all creation.

When I see a bad story or a story badly delivered, somehow I am happy that the story is still there. For example, in the mobile games that I play often I skip dialogues entirely and I feel that I lose part of the story somehow. That feeling can be a little frustrating, too. I do it anyway, but with the sensation that something is missing from my experience. Which tells me that the story is still important to me.

I am playing Horizon Forbidden West now. At the start I followed all the branches in dialogues with NPCs, now I want to complete the game so that I am skipping most of the optional dialogues. I have to say that part could be improved a lot, because the dialogues do not add too much to the experience. I like more when a dialogue has a meaning and delivers me something apart from just more context. Often it is better to deliver a story with less words, to me. Also if I imagine that there is a type of Player who likes to read everything and hear a lot. I respect that, but still I think that there is a margin of improvement. 

I like when the game is delivering you a story, because oftentimes you are not interacting with the game during the delivery itself. In dialogues, cutscenes and so on. It’s a way to distress my brain, and I like to have that moment of breath. A game to be memorable should offer many levels of intensity at any moment. 

I remember in The Last of Us the feelings that I had moment to moment. Appreciating all that work was great, made me love even more video games. Made me feel more engaged with the team that made that game.

What if mobile AAA is possible?

Published by Paolo on 12/10/2022

Today I woke up with this simple question. Maybe it’s just me wanting to work on something different than simply think in engagement, retention and monetization mechanics. Which is typical in mobile free-to-play.

I am 40 years old now and I grew up with consoles and PC. Industry experts say that immersion is only possible on a sofa looking at a TV screen. I feel really immersed with my right hand on a mouse and the left one on WASD.

Teenagers today, anyway, have always a device in their hands: the mobile phone. They are immersed in social activities and networks and they spend almost 10 hours per day swiping, liking, sharing and so on.

I hear often that mobile players look for engagement, not immersion. Still I believe that great adventures like the games we play on console can be possible to achieve on new mobile devices.

What if the time is now? Maybe the average age of hardcore players is gone up only because teens prefer to interact with another device.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Designer VS Author

Published by Paolo on 10/10/2022

A game designer is the facilitator of the act of game design among a team. Everyone in a team participates actively to the design of the game. From the producer to the junior QA, everyone is making the effort of delivering a great experience to the Players. Which is to design a videogame.

A friend of mine made me this question today: what if you make a game alone? Are you still a game designer?

I answered him: no, you are not a game designer. In that case you are an author, which is different.

He insisted: but you are designing a game, right?

Yes you are. Making a game alone is game design, too. In that case, all the work is on you. You are not facilitating the act of game design among a team.

To be a professional game designer ready to work for companies you need a completely different set of skills. You should be able to:

  • Understand the business goals translating concepts like scope, budget, KPIs to the gameplay
  • Being able to inspire your team analyzing and breaking down other games and by preparing specific proposals
  • Create and maintain well written documentation so that the vision will be the less ambiguous as possible
  • Run playtests and undestand the pain points of your game. Being able to translate that insight to all stakeholders.
  • Be present in a lot of meetings often facilitating creative workshops.

All of those things are different when you are making a game alone. Which is why I differentiate a game designer from an author. An author is a game designer, but can be a bad teammate. A game designer is a facilitator, but can have not the right talent to make a game alone.

If you want to work for a company as a generalist game designer prove your ability to work in a team. You will unlock a lot more possibilities!

For juniors, with love

Published by Paolo on 06/10/2022

If you are Picasso, you can share just two lines on a blank page and the people will feel the meaning of your art. I ask you: are you like Picasso?

I write this because junior game designers willing to join the industry often do this: they share uncompleted things or just some capture with a game engine opened and two blocks in the Scene. This is NOT how you show your talent to the World out there. This is noise, ego and insecurity.

I know you are struggling because it is very hard to get a job as junior. Believe me, I lived the same years ago. You want to get noticed by recruiters and maybe managers and CEOs. Sharing the first draft of a level means that you opened the engine and you put blocks in a scene. Just this.

  • What’s your reasoning behind that level?
  • The beat sequence?
  • What are the design goals?
  • The mechanics involved?

I can see nothing interesting in those posts.

The worst happens when social challenges like Blocktober appear. I am completely in favor of those challenges! I took those challenges in the past and I will probably take them in the next future who knows. But the results of those challenges are not something worth sharing on a professional network nor on your portfolio. Those are for you to improve, not for the others to see. If you are junior you should work hard everyday on your talent. Do not complete tasks just for the sake of showing off.

I did the same, years ago. It meant nothing. Believe me.

With true love,

Paolo

A serious doubt

Published by Paolo on 27/09/2022

The other day a friend of mine passed me this message:

“Never until now have people boasted of not having read a book in their lives, of not caring about anything that might smell slightly of culture or that requires a minimum intelligence.

Today’s illiterate people are the worst because in most cases they have had access to education, they know how to read and write, but they don’t exercise.

Every day there are more and every day the market cares for them more and thinks more about them. The media compete in offering content designed for people who do not read, who do not understand, who ignore culture, who want to be amused or distracted, even with the dirtiest gossip.

The whole world is being created to suit this new majority, friends. Everything is superficial, frivolous, elementary, primary… so that they can understand and digest it.

They are the new ruling class, although it will always be the dominated class, precisely because of their lack of culture. And so it goes for those of us who are not satisfied with so little, for those of us who aspire to a little more depth.”

Jesus Quintero, Journalist, writer and presenter of radio and television programs

I work in mobile free-to-play since 2012. I started my journey in video games in 2007, dreaming of joining Bethesda, Bungie or Nintendo. More in general some company that impacted deeply in my personal life with their titles.

Free-to-play is based on a simple concept: you need a huge amount of people playing your game. For that reason, everything should be very smooth. Frictionless. We ignore conflict for the sake of keeping attention and awareness toward our service. People has to stay, everyday, with you. So that an obstacle may frustrate too much someone, and that person will go away. They will churn.

Many free-to-play games end up becoming an escuse to get people’s attention without offering any spark of culture. Without requiring any mental effort. Just come in, it is easy and rewarding!

Investments go towards those products, because they can scale dramatically. They can become profitable business. People doing game with passion, games that make people think, instead, have to fight every month to survive. To pay salaries and their bills. Maybe a YouTuber will take their game and stream it next week. Will someone simplify it for the people? Few people will invest in them, because they do not promise growth. They promise a message to the World.

My doubt today is: what am I doing?

How to build the next Supercell

Published by Paolo on 07/09/2022

I have a secret to build the next Supercell. Really, I have it! Have I ever built a company like Supercell? Of course not, but I mean: we live in the age of suggestions, advices, best practices, influence, likes, follows… So why shouldn’t I write some wise article about how to do things, right?

As any secret, this one is very easy to understand too: stop treating people like children. Easy, right? Let’s see three common ways in which you are treating your people like babies, including before they join your company.

Technical tests and assessments

In some case those are necessary, especially for junior talent or for talent that is switching radically the sector. For instance, passing from free-to-play to AAA. Anyway, if you are hiring a person in his forties please: give me a break!

Our curriculum, carreer and our ex colleagues speak from themselves. We have nothing to demonstrate anymore and we are completely capable of doing the job at a technical level. Do I really need to show you how I structure an economy in a spreadsheet? Do i really need to demonstrate my presentation skills? Do you want me to create a flow and a wireframe? Or worst, a single GDD bible? Please, I do this since probably before you joined that company. Again: give me a break!

Do this instead:

  • Interview for cultural fit
  • Review in detail past experiences
  • Ask for referrals of ex colleagues and employers

When I see a test proposal I just think: “ok, you are not capable of evaluating my kind of profile. Next.”

Show me the next things to do with no context

I remember when I was a little dude asking to my father: “Why should I do that?”.

“Because I say so”, was his answer.

35 years later, history repeats. And I am very tired of that. You give a task and a deadline, with no perspective. I will do that for you the best I can. I swear. But I will never understand anything like this. Why is this important for the project? And how will we demonstrate that in fact it was? When we shoud have some learning? What about the past iteration? How did it go?

Maybe you are too busy to explain well the vision behind any choice. That means that you are not doing the job you should, to me. Because if you are my manager, you should be focused on manage my team and myself. Not the game. Not the code. Not the art.

Put your hands on my work

This is tipically something that you do to game designers. And tipically something that occurs in small-mid sized companies. We spent weeks designing something, researching, getting the problem right, sync with all the people involved. And then you decide to change everything because you have your own idea in mind. You are the founder or the leader of the project and you have the last word.

I could be wrong and you right, of course. Still, you are stealing my opportunity to learn more about the audience and the kind of product we are doing together. I just feel that my solution will never be tested on the field. Your solution maybe can be successful. And probably you will be happy and still will recognize my work. But you stole my opportunity of seeing a design I made going out there.

Stop play with my toys, those are mine!

Push your boundaries

Published by Paolo on 06/09/2022

I see a lot of professionals getting a name in the industry working on successful projects. Then they decide to go indie. And they do the exactly same thing they were doing at the mother company, but with less resources. After a while, they return back to some corp. Classic.

One of the things I always suggest to the people I mentor is this: do not remake things you already did before. I am not sure it is the right way of thinking, honestly. It is just mine.

To me, remaking stuff is always a mistake. Maybe the thing you want to remake is an old experiment that failed for some reason. Learn from it and do something else, don’t try to take shortcuts or you will repeat other errors you did for that same experiments that were eclypsed by the major errors.

If a project was successful, instead, it probably was for a bunch of reasons. It wasn’t just your work and effort, but also the timing and the context of that time. If you decide to invest your time and effort for a new project, try always to push your boundaries instead. It is usually a better choice.

Being loyal

Published by Paolo on 05/09/2022

Year ago I was running a very promising free-to-play project in a local incubator. It was very promising, it was the future. My lead artist said: you are inventing the devil. Of course, it was just in my head. The project had no chance to go forward, because I wasn’t being loyal to my will of creating a new company around it.

Being loyal with ourselves is not just to maintain the promises we make. It’s not to respect the compromise. Is also to make well our numbers. If you want to build anything and we consider ourselves game designers it is necessary to stop and think well to all costs and scopes of the things we want to build. And then add a 20% of error to all of that. Otherwise we will most probably fail.

My project failed at many levels, but the main one is that you cannot start a free-to-play ambitious project without great professionals and lot of money behind. The art of giving games for free is very expensive, needs a good monetization strategy and the acquisition of new Players requires huge efforts.

I am glad that I didn’t invented any devil, and I am glad to be here happy telling you those stories.

Your indie can become the Metaverse

Published by Paolo on 02/09/2022

I am actively looking for a new job, while preparing my next step which will be a course on game writing and also a deep study of the Unreal Engine. I am arrived at a point where I consider myself pretty good at free to play, but I am constantly playing indie and AAA games. Why not try do some small indie experiment?

So that I fell in this paradox lately. I see a lot of huge investments and acquisitions towards companies and projects which are basically clones of existing success cases. I see also a bunch of independent people with really good ideas struggling to pay the bills at the end of the month. What the heck is going on? Why those people cannot manage to get investments?

So that the next guess is that maybe they don’t even try to sell something. Every game studio needs something who knows how to sell the idea behind. And suddendly some very old concept, like 3d lowpoly characters in a 3d World becomes the Metaverse. And some people buys that idea.