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Tag: professional

Systems in symphony

Published by Paolo on 20/02/2025

A game is a form of entertainment. Entertainment is fun. Fun is survival. Even though you don’t need to hunt anymore, you still have this kind of instinct that you feel you’d like to improve. A video game allows you to train it without risk. Other forms of entertainment are not interactive, so you aren’t training. But still, you are learning.

When I design a game, the first question is this: For which instincts do I want to prepare a journey to train them? Creating video games means creating fictitious problems. Very often we confuse game design with general design: solving problems for people. Game design solves the need for entertainment but creates problems to do that!

Once the instincts are clear, a series of systems can form the path to their training. It’s like composing a piece of music, you have all the instrumental lines and have to make them act in a symphony.

There has been a lot of talk about “game economies” that pervaded discussions on systems design, but I think of “game symphonies”. Also because certain games do have an economy. Game economists think about the distribution and conversion of virtual resources. Which is vital for certain services to be profitable.

Game designers, instead, are more centered on rhythm, melody, and harmony of systems.

Try Railgods of Hysterra DEMO

Published by Paolo on 15/02/2025

I have had the chance to work on indie games for a year and a half. Many years of working in free-to-play have given me the knowledge, especially in system design, applicable to games with crafting, building, and character growth. I also had the chance to apply techniques I learned by taking narrative design and game writing courses.

The nice thing about indie is that the work is based on solving design problems while remaining consistent with a narrative and gameplay structure. You don’t hear KPIs mentioned, which makes your days more enjoyable.

Another positive thing is that you meet teams that are committed to the game. Generally, you don’t do experiments and you don’t cancel games for not having reached certain numerical results. Games are published, and they can be successful or not. So as a designer, it’s nice to see something that is also yours get published.

One of the games I helped is Railgods of Hysterra. V-Rising meets H.P. Lovecraft. Made with Unreal Engine. You can feed and grow your demonic train and travel the cursed world of Hysterra. I worked for 3 months (usually a client stays with me this time), and I helped with some systems that you can see in the video on my LinkedIn.

The game has a demo available on Steam for FREE, try it! Leave a review, helps out a ton.

A good use case for Claude.ai

Published by Paolo on 13/02/2025

I just paid for the premium subscription to Claude AI. Writing certain design documents took me 3-4 days. With Claude, 1-2.

Like every AI, it freaks out a lot. But this help me get started on tasks. I tell it to write me certain spec, it writes me something full of errors and that helps me think. It’s like teaching to a dumb student.

Then, when I have my document with wireframes, I pass it to it and first I tell it to act as a programmer. Again, it hallucinates but it helps me understand the “edge cases” the empty cases that I hadn’t thought of.

Finally, after a second iteration on the document, I send it again and ask to act as a quality assurance professional, to generate a test plan for me. This helps me think carefully about closing all the loose ends.

This is valuable. Indeed.

Playtest what’s wrong to find solutions

Published by Paolo on 11/02/2025

A good way to learn more about your game is to keep something that you see as problematic and playtest it. You will discover the obvious, that you need to fix it. But you will also understand much more things behind that.

It happened to me last week, I had the opportunity of running a playtest for my game. And for it I decided to create a specific control system. The developers said “we don’t feel it right”, and me neither.

At the playtest, everyone told me that the system was unconfortable. But I had to see their struggle to decide to take action in first place. In fact, I could notice how they handled the things and that helped me find the solution.

Creating engagement versus finding motivations

Published by Paolo on 10/02/2025

When you work for others, very often you are assigned to a project led by a marketing person. Most of the time, you are asked to find formulas to create engagement, addiction, or worse.

However, game design is not this. I don’t know how to define this role of engagement-creator, but it is certainly not game design. It is a magician, perhaps. Or manipulator.

When people say that a game is fun, it is because that game has characteristics that make it enjoyable. But you as a designer do not have a crystal ball, you cannot decide that your game will be fun.

What you can do with your work is find the things that motivate players to play more or complete the game (or parts of it) and enhance them.

Game design is not the creation of the magic flute capable of trapping mice and taking them where you want. Game design is finding the treasure of the duende and digging to bring it to light.

Working with Chinese developers

Published by Paolo on 07/02/2025

Since October, I have been working with a company based in Singapore. They hired me as a freelancer for a Telegram instant game, and then we switched to a PC premium game for Steam. Singapore is receiving people from China, they bring their wealth there to be successful.

My teammates are from China, and different regions. I have the pleasure of working with people from a different culture. I am learning a lot, and I want to share some of my early learnings.

The first is their sense of work ethic: they consider the work as a way of contributing to society. They work a lot, also extra hours, because they must do so. Once, I said, “I am sorry, I don’t work on weekends”. I got a private message telling me “Do not work on weekends, ok, but please don’t say it.”

They see themselves as a collective, so if you say you won’t work it’s like you don’t want to support the community.

Second learning: they are very formal and polished in their way of communicating. I use Felo as a real-time translator (they have bad English) during our video meetings. Sometimes archaic expressions pop out. We are so used to the f-word in our colloquial English, we think it’s cool and friendly. Well, not for everyone.

Last, but not least, you should be very clear when something is a suggestion or is an order to execute. If you don’t specify, they will understand that’s an order. They are very vertical in this sense, and it’s hard to have straight conversations with them.

I will keep you updated with new learnings!

LLMs to spot design flaws

Published by Paolo on 04/02/2025

I just discovered another interesting use case for current LLM tools. I use Claude.ai at the moment it’s the best in class. I use the free version.

When you design on a document, let’s say a GDD or a one pager for a feature, you should cover the most possible edge cases. In this way, your coders will have everything pretty much clear by reading the document.

If you submit a document to Claude, then you can ask it to simulate the coding in Unity or Unreal Engine for that GDD. It will spit out pseudo code and reasonings. There will probably be lots of hallucinations and things unuseful. Still, there are good chances to discover something you didn’t considered.

Working in a team is self-discovery

Published by Paolo on 03/02/2025

Today I discovered something more about myself, thanks to the creative director of the project I am working on with a company.

I tend to not insist too much on my vision. I explain it, defend it, and usually that’s it. When I see too much resistance from the other side, if I have no real power over the decision, I desist and try to meet the boss’ vision.

This is good, but it can lead to a passive-aggressive way of communicating. “I will do like you say, but I do not agree”. At first it may seem like there’s nothing wrong with that, butthe issue is that:

  • it looks like a “ok, whatever” and can damage the relationship
  • it is vague, proposes no real solution, and can damage the project
  • It is not informative enough for the team to make choices on that

Today I have learn something more about myself. Something I want to fix. And that’s why I prefer to work within a team.

Job applications do not work

Published by Paolo on 31/01/2025

When I was 20 in Naples, it happened that I was with friends and we met unknown people. And we discover some party at a student’s house to sneak in. Sometimes it went well, others we would find ourselves with very different people. Among ourselves, sitting in a corner, sipping the same beer we had bought to join the party.

Today I don’t sneak in anywhere anymore. I like parties, but I prefer the comfort of being with people I already know. Sometimes I go to strangers’ houses, but in general I like to know a sufficient number of people.

The same goes for job hunting. I prefer having groups of friends in the industry and moving with them. I have a job right now because during the first months of my daughter’s life I played Fortnite at night and wanted to learn how to make levels. That’s how I met the person who then put me in the loop. This is the healthiest way to learn about realities and find opportunities.

Some days are just hard

Published by Paolo on 28/01/2025

The game design is a communication job and it’s hard. Communication is one of the most challenging things, because it has a lot to do with perception. Our perception is the way in which we see reality. And it changes according to many factors.

You write specifications and something important gets ignored or misunderstood. Your duty is to report that. They can blame you for not being clear enough.

Sometimes I accept it, some other times I snap. Communication is also to say to someone when they are wrong.