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Tag: professional

My thoughts on seniority

Published by Paolo on 22/02/2022

I was talking to a friend and game designer about the future and our wishes. Sometimes I would like to dedicate to projects of a different nature than mobile f2p. Sometimes I would also appreciate to have different kinds of responsibilities.

Companies see my profile and normally contact me for:

  • virtual economies
  • tutorials and first time user experiences
  • game design documents for free-to-play mobile games
  • creative direction

I would love to be able to dedicate a couple of years to an action RPG for PC and Consoles at some point. Maybe I can be very useful in the level design of a moment-to-moment adventure games of the caliber of The Last of Us. I am absolutely convinced of it, even if companies of this type when my resume arrives they discard it in a few minutes.

“You should then start as a junior designer in a new reality if you want to do this. Difficult to be a senior designer there.“, my friend pointed out.

I disagree with this. For me, seniority does not depend on concrete experience in a specific type of game.

What it takes to be a good game designer

Raph Koster says that a designer must express quality in three fundamental fields: artistic, technical and editorial.

The artistic side is essential to have that sensitivity to observe what players are looking for in a certain type of game and offer them an experience that in terms of aesthetics and challenge makes sense. The game designer is a bit of an artist: is the game imitating real life, or do you want to create a game that influences real life in some way?

The ability to write is also very important, especially being concise. I believe that the best designers use the formula 60-30-10 when presenting their ideas: 60% images, 30% text and 10% multimedia references. 30% text therefore needs to hit the spot and inspire. For that you need experience and editorial skills. I’m not even an English native speaker, so I have to constantly update myself on this point.

Finally, there are the technical skills. Using a game engine, knowing how to use spreadsheets and other skills that vary depending on the designer. Personally I am proficient with Unity and Python and I create scripts that often make things easier for me and the team. Others are very good at photoshop and can also create basic concept art. Some level designers come from architecture and therefore are quite more comfortable creating structures that make sense. All technical skills can be learned, however. In fact, in 3-6 months at the most, it is possible to enter a new world and acquire what we need to be fully operational.

What is seniority to me

Senior game designers are people capable of understanding the context in which they move, constructively stimulating dialogues and setting up processes according to the project they are in. They are very aware of the gaming business, too.

While I’ve contributed to various virtual economies, that doesn’t mean an AAA game designer isn’t capable of studying competitors and preparing mathematical models and spreadsheets. These are things that can be easily learned. The design process has stages that are independent of the platform, genre and type of audience. It is a question of understanding which problems must be solved, analyzing how other realities have faced the same problems and defining solutions according to a certain context (team, budget, scope, time and quality).

Seniority is primarily dependent on age, in my humble opinion. When I read “senior game designer” and I see an age under 25 I already start to have suspicions. Being senior also gives you the self-confidence necessary to defend designs with superiors. Except in special cases, if you are 22 it is difficult to overcome certain filters set by the experience of 40+ years old leaders.

Age, previous experience and context make the seniority, for me. Having faced the same kind of problems in the past certainly accelerates, but it doesn’t make the difference between junior and senior. You can be slower at start but way more effective on the long term.

Some reflections on good professionalism

Published by Paolo on 18/02/2022

Lately for personal reasons I have been working at a much slower pace and I am asking myself many questions. Since work is a very important part of my life, I think it is necessary to ask the question “what does it mean for me to be a good professional?”.

Everyone says “be humble”. Humbleness, to me, does not only mean having a humble spirit, it also means having the humility to share the little that is known. It also means having the humility to try to inform ourselves as much as possible about what we disagree with. Humble basically means allowing knowledge to arrive.

Second, have the urge to study new techniques and areas that you don’t know. The video game sector and all technological sectors need constant training. Very often in a programming language course you can’t imagine you discover ways to save a lot of time! Give it a go!

Golden rule of the good professional: there is no free job. Work is always paid. I’ll give you an example: 3 months ago I started a personal project where I am training young people in the art of game design. I only decide to continue or cancel a project. I try to give these projects an exit. My greatest mission is to pass on my knowledge to people involved. I do not claim to generate benefits.

Should I pay or not? Shouldn’t they be paying me to pass on this precious knowledge to them? No. I expect weekly deliveries, updates and meetings from them. This is work and the work must be paid.

What I see in the Supercell’s CEO message

Published by Paolo on 17/02/2022

I read the last message left by the CEO of Supercell on their official website. I really liked three things:

  1. The CEO recognizes that luck is part of the equation, when we look for the reason of success of certain games
  2. The CEO recognizes publicly his mistakes, being a true leader and also a shield for his teams
  3. The CEO still has the mentality of “be bold, take risks” needed to start a project. Also if experts say that, at some point, you should go conservative.

I don’t know this guy, I have only met him once in a fair here in Barcelona years ago. I remind a simple person. That doesn’t make a complete judgement, but messages like this I believe that improve the industry.

Experts may say that Supercell YoY growth has been seriously going down in the last 3 years, but from the other side: the industry needs boldness, the industry needs humbleness and the industry needs honesty.

Best companies know when it’s time to kill a game

Published by Paolo on 07/02/2022

It is dangerous to scale a game with questionable product/market fit because of The Traction Treadmill. Sometimes players show up in your game, and a small percentage of them retains.

You may think it’s time to scale. Just add players, instead of improving your game. And this works, for a time. You can grow fast just by doubling ad spend. Or tripling ad spend.

You have 10.000 players, you buy 20.000 more.

Then a large percentage of those players go away and never returns back. You have to replace the percentage you lost plus buy more players to grow. You lose a percentage of players fast, and you have the budget and funding to replace them- but then can’t keep grow on top!

You may want to optimize your campaigns and spend less per Player. But inevitably the problem will reappear at some point. Team’s morale will do down as options become scarce. Increase retention becomes too slow and complex.

That is why is extremely important to polish your product but also understand when you cannot fix it. Also the best companies in the world know when to kill projects.

Design tips for the match-3 mechanic

Published by Paolo on 05/02/2022

Match-3 is one of the most successful core mechanics in the mobile space and in general in the gaming scene. When we look at its history, simple variations and innovations permitted the creation of highly profitable services and the startup of entire businesses. In this article I will make an analysis of the very core of the genre: the match-3 mechanic.

The first thing I notice when looking at the match-3 mechanic is that the set of rules represented are both to define obstacles and goals. It is a simple but very beneficial mechanic, in terms of the economy of the gameplay. In fact, the simple action that activates the match needs a previous cognitive effort to spot at least a possible combination. That presents a challenge to the players 

Flow

Step 1 – Problem

Observation/Analysis: recognize at least one possible combination of 3+ colors in line

Challenge: Cognitive effort 

Design Tip: board and art style directly influence the difficulty of this problem to solve

Step 2 – Make a choice

Choose the first you spot VS look better VS deep thinking

Difficulty: time may add challenge to this part

Design Tip: implementing a hint system changes this meaning directly. Some Players may passively accept any hint. Consider:Kind of hint to give (if any)Choose the right timing for showing the hint OR let the Players access to them whenever they want

Step 3- Goal

Match: Swipe two adjacent tokens

Challenge: Interaction, cognitive effort

Design Tip: during your playtests, be aware of the dimension and sensibility of tokensSpeed of interchangePlayers do not like to make a move and see another.Also, if the move is invalid the common thing is to not remove a movement from the total amount, if the game challenge is based on movements. [Maybe it’s possible to let the time be retrieved somehow, to remove this possible friction.]

Step 4 – Result

Cascade: See your choice rewarded

Challenge: Surprise, combo, doubt

Design Tip: here the speed and the bounce of tokens falling reinforce the sense of reactivity that the Player has. According to the target audience of the specific game (and its theme), this has to be tweaked. There is a black box: Players don’t know which token will be spawned and they will feel curiosity about the next state of the level board. Be aware of this.

Step 5 – New Board Configuration

New Board: The gameplay may wait for a stable condition before giving the control back to the Player.

Challenge: Restart from Step 1

Design Tip: the faster, the better. Avoid too much particles and effects left on the board at  this step.

Clash of Clans notes on tutorial

Published by Paolo on 29/01/2022

Read the first part of the analysis here.

In this second part I want to write on what I experienced personally during the tutorial experience. It is very important to write down notes for a game designer.

If you have no time for that, you have no time to learn.

The game welcomes you with the main view of the Village. Here the Player can already decide “this is my kind of game” or quit. The welcome is given by the Villager, one of the two characters introduced in the tutorial. The girl has changed visually:

Her expressivity has become more exaggerated and her proportions are nearest to the beauty standards. I preferred the old one, since she reminded me more of a tough and rude viking. But I get why this one was selected: especially on a small screen you need to emphasize gestures and expressions.

The first mechanic is introduced. The tutorial makes you build a cannon to defend from a goblins’ raid. The sequence is pretty memorable. The goblin is fun and informal, but uses sophisticated words and spells correctly. The animation after the build, which is an idle mechanic with its rewards per se in the game. The defense mechanic is not completely introduced to the Players. Players will learn it alone later simply by playing and discovering they can tap on graves to earn some extra elixirs. Which is pretty smart!

Just after, the Player learns the attack feature and all of its mechanics. A group of 5 wizards join your village and you can use them to get revenge with the goblins. First of all, I believe that wizards are chosen because they are narratively meaningful. In fact the Villager has explained that your village is built on a Ley Line, so that your buildings will auto-repair. Magic is on the air. Second, wizards are pretty fast destroying buildings which is great to keep the tutorial shorter. Last, wizards are a kind of troops that a Player can unlock later in the game. So that the Players can get a hint of future unlocks and test two troops during the tutorial (later, they will use the barbarians).

Read the historic deconstruction made by Deconstructor of Fun here

The third part of the tutorial puts its focus on the importance of building and improving your village. I believe that the Developers, after giving an hint on the possible thrills and best moments, considered proper for the Players to really learn the core loop deeply. The Player builds 5 important resources, completing the core loop five times. It is more than enough to learn the basics of the game. 

The tone of the Villager is very formal, and that is when I want to work for personal exercise the next few days. I believe that this part hasn’t aged well and I would like to improve it as an exercise. Many clones of this fantastic game popped out and also many evolutions are at the door. The next successful game can be possibly based on this masterpiece. Especially for new players, I believe that the Villager is a character which should have a more relatable personality. Messy, complicated and interesting. Just like people in real life!

The 2022 tutorial ends with one of the newest features of the game: challenges and rewards. The overview is too fast and based on skipping dialogues, more than actually learning something meaningful like in the first part. Which makes the tutorial experience ending with many questions. This can be interesting for newbie Players, especially for the most hardcore part of the audience that can perceive suddenly that this game is not linear but deep.

When the Players return into the SHOP section, they will find the first offer which is the third builder. No pop-up, no constant prompts looking for no-brain conversions. The value is there. During the tutorial you entered the SHOP enough times and now you know that the SHOP is critical to the experience. You will find the offer and, if you want, you will convert. That is what I call: treating Players with respect.

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.