Skip to content

Tag: professional

What is Talent exactly?

Published by Paolo on 27/01/2022

A definition of talent is people or a person with a natural ability to do something well.

Companies are looking for Talents. Recruiters are posting messaging on the importance of finding the right talent. Coaches and leaders are repeating how is important to keep the Talents.

Natural ability. Let’s explore this concept.

What is a natural ability? An ability that’s inherited. Aptitudes that stabilize around age 14, that make certain tasks or activities easy to complete, and that require relatively less time, effort, or energy to perform. When we operate in an environment where we can employ these Natural Abilities, we are happiest and perform our best.

Is it possible to develop a natural ability? Skills are learned and don’t always come easily and take relatively more time, effort, or energy to complete. Natural abilities are just inherited.
According to the experts, you may have or not talent. You can put the effort you want to grow your skills.

Companies and leaders are looking to find and keep the talent. To test your talent they test your skills instead!

You may or may not have the talent, the natural ability. It is not your choice. You may be able to spot your talent and bet on it. You may be able to grow the proper skills and become a skilled talent.

Or you may never discover your talent. I would be a super talented technical artist, who knows! I work as a game designer. Am I a talent? I don’t know. My mother says I am!
You have your passions! So that you are growing your skills to nurture your passions. Still, you have not discovered your talent in this scenario.

You have your job! working everyday you are growing your skills for your job. Also here, it is very possible that you still didn’t discovered your true talent. You would be a tremendous guitar player.

You can think that you have talent in something, but you are just skilled enough to do your job above average.

It is good for our mental health to stop showing off our natural abilities, since those are there. Focus on grow our skills everyday, instead. Because it is the only thing we can actually control.

Can you do the creative work?

Published by Paolo on 06/01/2022

Yesterday a contact on LinkedIn asked for help because he is not able to find any job sending resumes to companies. I told him that that system is completely broken. To me, in fact, it is. I suggested him to focus on his job, to do the job. Then the salary will find him. I am pretty sure about that, especially in a talent eager industry such as the games industry.

Today I read the same guy saying that he would like to create a network of people who can donate maybe 1 euro for him to research and learn new skills everyday. On the same network, on LinkedIn, which is a professional network.

If I imagine to be a company recruiter and I read something like this, in this exact sequence, what can I think about this guy?

Creative work is very different from performing creative activities. If you really want to work in a creative industry like the games industry you should really show off your ability to solve problems, from one side, and be professional from the other side. If you can, you should also worry about what you are sharing with your community.

Working in the games industry is not having creative freedom or being in a hippie community. This is a business that moves billions. You should constantly do the job and learn new things to stay in line with the times. You are there to create serious value bringing fun to people.

Less broken features are more value

Published by Paolo on 04/01/2022

These days I am reading the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It is definitely not an easy lecture, for a non-english speaker. You need time and dedication to fully understand it. I am sure I will need more lectures.

In the edition I have, on chapter 15 called “Linda: Less is More” there is a paragraph where the author reports an experiment run at the University of Chicago. Professor Christopher Hsee asked people to name a price for sets of dinnerware, using a method called “joint evaluation”. The method consists of compare two different sets of things and propose a value. The Set B had a list of items, all in good conditions. Set A, instead, contained the same items of Set B plus more items partly broken.

Since Set A contained exactly the same things that B, but with more things (partly broken), logically participants valued Set A more than B: $32 versus $30 (average).

The professor run the same experiment but with single evaluation. The result is quite interesting: Set B was priced way more than A. $33 versus $23 average.

What does that mean to us game designers? Sometimes the best you can do for a game is to remove some part that is broken. Having a feature that does not work can be a problem. It is better to remove features, and test if the things improve without them. Players can genuinely value our game better without that synchronized broken multiplayer mode, believe me!

My resolution for this year

Published by Paolo on 02/01/2022

My main professional resolution for the next year is to try to build a new reality. A new metaverse, where millions of people will use their cryptocurrencies to buy NFTs and trade them… no, I am joking.

I feel the need of build something, so that this new year I will try an experiment: invest in young talents to make simple games. We will start from mobile, but I do not exclude to try other platforms, too.

Barcelona is a city full of high-level games studies centers. A lot of people every year comes out from universities and private schools. Many of them are real talents, but they struggle in finding their job in the industry. The industry asks to be a “ninja”, to become a “unicorn”, to have “talent”, without defining anything of this. Then they ask for 5 years of experience, which is almost impossible for a junior professional. Only the best joins directly the industry.

What about the others? The others, I believe, have their talent too. Maybe we should stop asking for a lot of references and just believe in the people. Leave them grow, make their mistakes. Support them.

That is my resolution for the next year. I want to build the talents of tomorrow. I want to create a team capable of completing very simple games. And of course, I want to dedicate part of my time in find funds for it.

Subscriptions and more subscriptions

Published by Paolo on 24/12/2021

Are you tired of subscriptions? I am tired of having so many subscriptions.

I am subscribed to newsletters because of my curiosity and need of understanding better the business of making games. 

I am subscribed to Google Suite, because I need to have my documents and researches and everything always available and updated.

I am subscribed to GitHub, because of my studies and experiments.

I am subscribed to fundamental things, things that I use everyday. No bullcrap. Still, I feel very tired of small subscriptions.

Noob, Pro, Hacker

Published by Paolo on 23/12/2021

This year I have worked a lot on hypercasual games. I like the fact that its development requires you not to get attached to any specific idea. You design a game mechanic very quickly, put your hand on the engine with few specifications and then you speak on something done. 

It reminds me of a method proposed by Jordan Mechner, creator of Prince of Persia. 

Working on hypercasual games I learnt that:

  • The Players hate to lose. The failure rate of your levels is directly related with drop off of people, day to day.
  • Players are more tolerant to ads that we may imagine. As a game designer, I hate those freaking ads! Anyways, if your game is good people accept your ads easier than you may expect
  • Players live the experience in three main stages: 

The noob, they really have to understand things well. You need to slow down that difficulty curve, believe me

The pro, they like to have games which permit to spot a perfect path to follow and win

The hacker, they will try to hack the rules of your game. Best games out there permit them to do that, for instance Aquapark.IO

Definition of mechanics and features

Published by Paolo on 22/12/2021

How do you define mechanics and features? This is very important for the success of the development. Many times, we think that just talking about something makes that clear for anyone. This is the most common mistake of inexperienced game designers.

“It’s simple, the character moves with the stick and shoots with the right trigger!”

With this sentence I have a gameplay in my mind and you have another.

You should really make the effort of empathizing with the people you are speaking with. Be as visual as possible. 60% visuals, 30% multimedia and only 10% written content is what I try to follow. It is better to speak on something visual and then find and solve all the related problems. 

Often, the things we define will require some further set up. Maybe you will have to decide the speed of something. Maybe the odds for some reward. The best way to communicate this is to show clearly how you would like to set up the things, in the engine you are using or in some spreadsheet! 

Do them a favor: speak about your needs!

Have you created your framework yet?

Published by Paolo on 19/12/2021

I have been observing the profiles of the most renowned game designers for some time. They all have one thing in common: they have developed frameworks and shared them with the world.

What are the tools and methodologies you use the most to tackle problems? Group everything, create a mind map, and share your thoughts every now and then. Your framework is interesting to the world, believe me!

Don’t waste any more time, start building your frameworks. It helps to think about everything in the form of a system. Excellent tool for optimizing times!

Game designers, do not use Bartle’s taxonomy

Published by Paolo on 09/12/2021

Years pass by and I still see and read a lot of articles and videos that suggest using Bartle’s Taxonomy of Players for MUDs.

Richard Bartle was one of the designers and researchers around the online communities for MUDs, multi user dungeons. The very first version of MMOs.

He identified four different approaches of players of that time to the medium.

What I learnt from his work was that it is very interesting to haver your own taxonomy to create your player persona.

But, people still seem to use it to start thinking in the very first personas as if they were part of a ‘90s MUD. Players changed a lot. Your game is probably not a MMO. Using the same taxonomy for those cases will probably lead to mistakes.

It is true that it may be good to discuss with your team, but you are not doing the right job. Do this instead:

  • Create your personas
  • When your game is running, identify your player personas by interviewing players
  • Create your own taxonomy

Stop using Bartle’s taxonomy, unless you are designing a MUD for telnet. You will most likely not have killers among your players!

Marketing is part of the game

Published by Paolo on 08/12/2021

Marketing people are often not part of your immediate team. They are external stakeholders, people less involved in the day-to-day of your job. Their role is critical for the success of the game. In fact, you can make the best game but a lot of people around the World is making the best game right now. Marketing can drive the success or failure of the whole game.

Pyramid of Modern Marketing

The other day I was reading a blog post on modern marketing by Seth Godin.

Intention is the most important layer. Is about the changes that you are seeking to make with your game. What are your unique selling points? Game designers help in aligning visions and prioritize resources. You may start from your competitors and your Personas and help define every iteration.

Retention is the second grade. Getting new players costs money and if your players are happy with your game they can bring others. Mouth to mouth is still the most impactful spreading medium out there.

Remarkability (conversations that happen as the result of your work) and Permission (the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the people) are part of core marketing activities. You can observe them, but it’s their job not yours.

Working with the marketing team

The marketing team usually does the job alone. Best realities I have worked for have regular meetings with them. Game designers can help with the brand, the voice and the tone consistency. We can help with intention and retention.

In case of f2p a company has to run massive creative campaigns (mostly on Facebook and Google) game designers can be of great help in developing creative concepts. From creative concepts, marketing team is capable of develop multiple variants. The big user acquisition machine is constantly fed up with those creative variants. As you can imagine, your role at the top of this funnel is critical.

Intention:

  • Help to sketch creative concepts that match the game’s brand
  • Maintain and use content guidelines for those

Retention:

  • Make sure that the feature of your game set your players for success
  • Get information about the strength of signal of the monetization events. Those events are sent to ad platforms as postbacks to optimize user acquisition campaigns. Put the strongest ones near of the start of the experience!