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Tag: professional

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.

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.

Show your impact

Published by Paolo on 31/08/2022

When you get an interview you can demonstrate your skills in three ways:

  1. Taking a test
  2. Showing a portfolio
  3. Demonstrate the impact of your work

Often, you are required to do more than one thing at the same time. In fact, many companies ask you to take a test. Before, they review your portfolio and later they ask you about the impactful initiatives you lead in your previous jobs.

Impact is, by far, the most interesting thing. Still it’s not really easy to understand the specific impact of your designs. Many times (too many times) your designs are strongly influenced by the context. It may be some specific software constraint or also the green light process at which every initiative is submitted.

Still it is very important to learn how to estimate the right impact of your work. In data driven contexts, like f2p for example, you should also accompain your reasonings with concrete KPIs increment (in % to not break any secrecy).

A VIP idea from Delta Airlines

Published by Paolo on 25/08/2022

Design games for the free-to-play mobile business is whale hunting. Unless you are a genious, like Bit Life developers, you will probably do the math. And doing the math, you will notice that you need high spenders to sustain your business.

Yesterday I saw this comment on a LinkedIn post:

Shoutout to Tom Hammond for this great idea.

I checked out the original Delta program and now I cannot understand why nobody is doing that.

Scenario

Ana, a Slotomania player, is a Black Diamond level VIP client. She gets an ad from your Mobile Casino Game that promises her VIP level can be matched with a challenge.

  • Installs the game, logs in
  • A pop-up asks her if she already has VIP status in other games, she answers that she does and details that she is a Black Diamond in Slotomania
  • Within 12 hours, a person from Customer Support contacts Ana, asking for more information
  • Ana’s VIP level is matched with the game’s VIP level.

Why?

If someone has a high VIP level in another game, it is most likely a whale. It could be a whales acquisition strategy.

Failing at premises

Published by Paolo on 24/08/2022

Successful games are games that manage to meet the right audience willing to invest their money in them to get the kind of fun they expect. And that is nothing new, it’s game design 101. It’s the very first lesson you learn anywhere when you start designing games. You should design a game for some audience.

There are many ways of failing at this. Actually, the vast majority of games fail to deliver this exact point. Which is why video games are a very risky business.

The experience may help you avoid some mistake, and mine has a almost constant issue that I see: failing at premises.

In fact, a lot of times I hear sentences like:

We want to make a game like <CoolGameTitle> but more [casual|hardcore|midcore], just like <NewTrendyGameTitle>.

Senior VP of Product Ownementshipssss (or some fancy title like this)

I don’t know if the syntax I am using is completely clear, I guess it is not. But the truth is that when you want to change a playstyle from a specific audience, that almost for sure leads to disaster. Casual, midcore and hardcore to me are a way of describing the gameplay session time.

It is good that you take your references, but if you are willing to force a significant change in gameplay behavior you are on the wrong way. If you know that a specific successful game has that playtime, you should consider that seriously as a pillar and not as something to change. We can be misled to think that “making things simpler” means “shorter/longer gameplay sessions” and that is almost never the case.

Never say never of course, but that is in my experience one of the false premise that make a game lose the money and efforts you and your team invested in.

The power of asking

Published by Paolo on 25/07/2022

I notice a tendency of show off everything on social networks instead than asking for help. Especially from Gen Z, I see that many times they are worried more with their personal brands that with building meaningful relationships. The few of them who ask will receive.

There was a moment in my career in which I found myself alone, without a job and thinking seriously of leaving the industry. Naturally, I started to speak with every friend regarding this. Also with new employers. I worked as waiter and as data scientist, always thinking in making video games someday. I also started a blog in Spanish in order to make myself visible, but there was a single activity which I was committed: asking.

I asked everyone I could for help. Most people will try their best, believe me. Asking is way more useful that put a screenshot of a Unity session on LinkedIn saying “first trials with new video pipeline!”. That is not useful at all, there is no polish in what you’are publishing and it’s only noise. Ask instead something to some expert of your field. Ask them everything you can, on all channels you can. Use comments but also DMs. Ask and insist asking for help. Ask is so 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.

Deserving the position

Published by Paolo on 19/07/2022

A friend of mine, indie game developer, is trying to join the industry. He managed in a brilliant way getting his first interview. He study their game and made a feature proposal for them.

A few months ago, I sent my CV to the same company and for the same position. I have far more experience than my friend, still they rejected my application. He was smart and proactive. I didn’t, I just applied. He deserves that position!

Today he asked me for a way of preparing for his interview. I suggested him to get informed regarding the main KPIs, key performance indicators. Those are very important when you are giving the core of your service for free.

Then you have to study the company’s game and at least 2 competitors of the same game. Look on Game Refinery and Deconstructor of Fun for more depth on the genre.

This post is for my friend. He deserves the position!

Remote processes

Published by Paolo on 18/07/2022

I work remotely for companies since 2016, more or less. I am very specialized in game economies and UX, so that for them is easy to deal with my tasks and responsibilities.

Game development, instead, is never so easy. You cannot rely just on freelancers to build successful products that potentially may last years. You need a core team fully involved every day. And in order to keep it working properly, you need to set up the proper processes. Also the companies that state that they don’t believe in processes, end up setting up (scrappy) processes in the end. To me, it is better to embrace the process as part of the development. In my opinion, processes are very important.

In 2020 everything shifted online. Remote work was forced by the terrible situation of the pandemic. We had no time to prepare, we had to act fast. In a lot of cases, the same exact process employed before was translated to the asynchronous remote work. Some of the most “boring” things were also eliminated. In their place, nothing new was developed. The new process, then, was like Frankenstein.

Nowadays, many are arguing that we need to return to the office because is not the same online. They are right, online is not the same. But, are you sure you did your job, testing and iterating alternative processes?

The reality of giving games for free

Published by Paolo on 15/07/2022

You start a new project with your team, and you read that someone is getting rich with a f2p mobile game. There are people, called whales, that are willing to spend thousands of euros each month. You can be rich too! You have a great idea!

Then you find the right investors and you build your team. You study the market well, mitigate all risks and put your product in soft launch, after 2 years of development. Then you struggle with metrics. Day one, day seven, day thirty retention. Average revenue per user, lifetime value.

You spend two years more in development. Investors want to see their return on investment. Your team is tired, many of the original members are gone. And you fail.

Was you a disaster? No, you are just the regular situation. Read here:

Link to the original post

I asked to this expert how to prove your KPIs potential early. He answered me that:

And I tell you: it is NOT easy all of that. First of all because when you are under pressure is super hard to admit that your KPIs are not promising to the investors. You need talented people, and that’s pretty uncommon.

Many of us feel that F2P is dominated by white collar people full of money and addicted “users” that cannot stop play. The reality is super different. The reality is that 99.71% of projects fail. That’s the regular situation.