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Tag: professional

The future of AAA

Published by Paolo on 05/04/2024

AAA is a marketing term. And what happens with marketing terms is that they are repeated so many times that they end up infecting also development. Expectations on AAA games are very high, in revenue and design terms.

To me, AAA means games with push-the-boundaries-high quality, extremely good game feel, and long duration. Two messages are spreading fast these days:

  1. 61% of PC/Console players choose 6+ years old games
  2. AAA development is too expensive and we need smaller games

Both messages are true, I guess. But you can read them also in a dangerous way. It’s a matter of “taste” somehow.

Small games are great. If I were to start a new company I would choose something small and grow from there. But video games are mediums not just to convey a story/experience. They are born to push the boundaries and show the technical capabilities of computers. For instance, I own a PS5 and I have zero games that are showing off its potential. Zero, probably the best game I have technically speaking is Horizon Forbidden West, and it was the first game I got with the console. I didn’t purchase a PS5 to play a JRPG made with RPG Maker, sorry about that.

People still buys high quality games

High-quality games have a market, players love games made with details and authorship. The issue lies more in our productivity as game makers since the overall software world is declining.

You should see this!

We should fight for more quality and more productivity, not less ambition. We should start from simpler abstractions because much knowledge is getting lost in the name of being “faster”. Faster doesn’t mean more productive, generally speaking.

  1. Players choose classics because of many factors. I identify 3 of them:
  2. Classics are highly available thanks to 2nd hand, massive discounts and subscription services
  3. Classics tend to have higher quality (in terms of software quality, less bugs) than new releases
  4. Also the game design slowed down in innovation, so that <GameTitle>7 is not that novel compared with <GameTitle>6. So, if <GameTitle>6 costs 10 euros and chapter 7 costs 70, guess what I’ll play?
  5. Over time, the familiarity with titles grows. We like something the more we see it.
  6. Improvements on technology have slowed down. A new title for PS5 is not that different from PS4 as it were between PS and SNES.
  7. The more games Players will have, the bigger chances to play old ones
  8. Game production has been affected by the post-COVID effect

I am positive, I believe we have all the tools to come out from the limbo. But we have to work on it, and maybe this crisis we are living in will bring good opportunities in this sense.

Useful innovations come from actual needs

Published by Paolo on 04/04/2024

Back in the days, balancing levels for a match-3 game worked, more or less, like this:

  1. you and 2-3 colleagues played like 10 times the same level writing down the number of movements
  2. at the end you had a spreadsheet containing something like “10% of times with 9”, “20% with 13”, …, “90% with 32”
  3. According to the difficulty curve, you put that number in. For example, you had an easy level, you wanted 90% of people to beat it, and you put 32 movements.
  4. the level was out, you received the actual data and made the right fixes integrated with the iteration on the progression curve (to adjust the churn).

Later in the years, this system has evolved with technology. So within the engine, you already had a tool that tracked the gameplay automatically and reported everything in the spreadsheet.

Nowadays, things are more advanced than that. Probably companies that have lots of data are capable, with machine learning, of predicting the curves in real-time while the level designer builds the game. I don’t know it, just speculating.

The same discourse is valid for game engines, if we look at the history of the most successful ones they were born to make concrete games. Today there are solutions to make any game.

What I want to say is that if we’re going to see some evolution in other technologies, for instance, dialogue systems for NPCs, these will come out of actual needs and creativity. It’s hard to design a revolutionary tech for a part of a game without having deep knowledge and a true necessity (apart from building and selling a business) behind it.

Job in games royal rumble

Published by Paolo on 01/04/2024

My LinkedIn feed is filled with people that lost their jobs and are asking for new opportunities. I am talking about, mostly, experienced people. People who worked on games I only dream at night. People much more experienced than the average.

All of these people will send resumes. Eventually, they will be contacted for a first screening. Then they will receive a technical test. Maybe they will have another interview with the hiring manager. And then the team. Sometimes, the CEO herself.

The next months will be a royal rumble and the best talents will face the odds. I feel that is smarter to think laterally, and avoid the battle completely.

Three possible steps to professional autonomy

Published by Paolo on 25/03/2024

I live in Barcelona, not in Montreal. The video games sector here is growing because of foreign companies landing. There are still very few profitable local companies. Plus, the Spanish government has a lot of work to do to give the push that the sector deserves to become an industry.

But I work as a game designer, that’s my profession. So I was years ago in a limbo. On one side, there were no positions for me (apart from big companies, which are not what I look for). On the other, I wanted to make games.

I decided to be the best game designer I could be. I follow three basic steps:

Be realistic: I would very love to help make the next Ocarina of Time. But that is not the case of my reality here. My reality is big corporates whose processes are made to filter out people like me. And small companies willing to find their formulas for profitability. Those companies are 80% mobile and casino. So I started specializing more in those.

A mix of analysis and creativity: from one side I have the skills to analyze what’s in the market. Because when you work as a game designer for a company they want you to find formulas to apply. Especially in mobile free-to-play. So I had to accept it and become a PRO in analysis. But I am a designer in the first place, so I worked on my creativity side. I had to improve my skills in actually designing documents and spreadsheets. Also, I had to dominate the engines, as a designer.

Share every learning: I know that it can look silly. Someone says I want to become an influencer. But that’s not the case. Sharing is caring, as they say. When you share also a small learning you learn to communicate and you leave space. Your commenters will give you insight and also in your private job you will become better.

Four alternatives to job interviews

Published by Paolo on 22/03/2024

The other day I made a post on my LinkedIn right after posting about the same thing here on my blog. Happens many times that the second post is better than the first one. Reactions are good and I had interesting conversations with people because of that.

If you are looking for a job and you ask any expert, the things they would say you will include:

  • Apply to job offers and get interviews
  • Become a specialist in a field
  • Show up, show up, show up!

This is the playbook, the standard thing. This process will put you in the game of people looking for the “top talent”. The best of the best. I was reading a post boasting that a job they were offering had already more than 300 applications from veterans from top companies. Horrible thing, what are you waiting for? Is that a selection process or a battle royale?

Today I want to propose 4 alternative ways of getting yourself through. No one of them is easy, or evident.

  1. Offer something unique. Something you know that only you and a few people like you can offer. To do that, you should work a lot on understanding what you can offer.
  2. Have people that follow your steps. People that when you are there they are beside you. Start a community around something.
  3. Be famous for something. This is probably the least easy solution.
  4. The easier: become everything you miss to make the job you want to do. Do you want to be a game designer? Become a producer, a marketer, and a programmer too. Make your things become an entire company (with very small projects) and put them out there.

Either of these four things is better than spending hours every week making interviews and assignments that, believe me, rarely bring you to land a job.

How to use a resume and portfolio

Published by Paolo on 20/03/2024

Reviewing the resume of a senior takes time. That’s because we all lie, especially when we need the job. So it takes time to spot the truths within a resume. The same is valid for a portfolio of juniors. It takes time to build them, and it takes time to review them.

That’s why relationships with seniors are very important. A portfolio can be discovered or sent to a company, but they will probably have little time to check it in detail. Instead, if you use the portfolio as a tool to communicate with people you have a relationship with, everything is easy.

Oftentimes when a company needs juniors, seniors already know who to call. Many seniors, like me, are in constant touch with junior talents. And that’s also why you don’t see many offers for juniors out there. Because it is not necessary.

Think of your resume or portfolio as another tool for communication. Don’t send them only to job applications. Job applications are worthless, I have personally never seen a job application go well in my entire life. Use your resume and portfolio as a vehicle to find your voice and spread it out there. Create meaningful relationships.

Starting Free Flow Fridays

Published by Paolo on 15/03/2024

Today I want to start a new appointment on my blog: Free Flow Fridays (FFF). I want to just leave my mind for one day without thinking about being insightful, or worrying about the SEO and things like that.

This week I was reading and listening to the news and the whole World is in crisis. Everything is suffering a crisis now, from religious institutions to the climate. The industry where I work is in crisis too, and my country is in a crisis too. What can I do as a game designer? The challenge is pretty hard, but one thing I know: I have to bring fun and good things to the World. This starts by selecting also the tools I use. For instance, GenAI tools available are trained on datasets that steal intellectual properties. I will not use them.

Speaking of which, I am not scared by the advent of generative AI, I am pretty sure it is a bubble about to burst. Still, I have to be prepared for the worst as always. I believe that nothing can beat good storytelling in games. And I am sure that good stories will always be uniquely from humans, never from bots. So I intend to insist on that side of game design: game writing and more in general narrative design.

In the last few months I have been suffering fewer clients too, that’s why I am taking a couple of courses to improve my tools and workflows and get more productive in the future. I don’t believe honestly that with 60 years companies will look out for people like me, so I want to prepare my future. There are 3 possibilities I foresee:

  1. Build a profitable company and sell it. Unless something changes, I don’t see myself doing that.
  2. Invest my game design skills into other fields more stable. Honestly, I don’t see myself working for a bank using my incredible spreadsheet skills.
  3. Teach. That’s my thing. I love to explain things, I love the idea of helping create a better future.

I see myself teaching and making my small games before retiring, so yes that’s what I want to work on in the next months. Maybe by starting an Italian book on game design, who knows?

T34 – The Dark Zone (Good Old FRAG)

Published by Paolo on 07/03/2024

I installed UEFN and tried out some Fortnite maps created by others. I was conflicted regarding how shooters have evolved these days. On one side, there are tons of mechanics and dynamics in Fortnite. On the other, the thing is getting very complicated! Too many things altogether, games back in the day were simpler.

So I decided to start a new project, codename “TH3FR4GGERZ” where for the moment I am rebuilding classic deathmatch maps for the kids to play what I played (ok, boomer).

I started from The Dark Zone from Quake, which I played tons of hours back in the days at LAN parties (ok, boomer x2). Do you remember it?

  • UEFN is an incredible tool, it’s Unreal Engine but it permits you to set up rules playtest, and publish very quickly without having to worry about code and other things.
  • Fortnite is a game where new and old audiences meet together. This is great as a designer because there are many things I have to understand about these new audiences that are not immediate. For instance, unlike games from my time, the Players receive EVERYTHING right from the start in the most successful experiences.
  • I can revisit classics and finally have an excuse to understand all the steps that led us, the FPS players, here today. Nostalgia level: 9.999.999
  • If you are a Fortnite player, please join: 4321-3870-5686
  • FFA
  • No build
  • No stamina, run forever

The future of mobile games

Published by Paolo on 04/03/2024

Mobile phones are nowadays in everyone’s hands. Kids are playing mostly from mobile devices (tablets are a big player, they are used also in many schools). Still, when I listen to people talking about the future of mobile games, the discussion is always going around two things:

  1. effective way of stealing ideas (playbooks)
  2. how to hack the marketing machine and get people to install your game more cheaply (performance marketing).

Well, this can be a tactic for the short term, sure. But for the long one, we need to look at things with a critical perspective: mobile games are always the freaking same. We don’t see nowadays the kind of innovation we saw when Supercell, Rovio, and King arrived on the scene. We are still repeating (and improving) formulas, that’s all. And it’s very boring. The most interesting novelties are coming from UGC experiences inside of Roblox, from one side. From the other, we see an exasperation of FOMO, dark patterns, and grinding for the addicts. We are not going too far like this.

We need more game design, more research, and more risk betting on something novel. Of course, the discourse around distribution is very important, but we are distributing always the same and listening to people who are not building interesting games. That’s a huge problem for our industry.

Generative AI will never improve profit margins for companies, AI design and art are just scams. We need to return to the basics, at the drawing board, thinking really in finding interesting formulas for people looking for fun.

Unprofessionalism

Published by Paolo on 29/02/2024

The recent news in the games industry comes with a bunch of social actions that are unprofessional. In this post, I would like to point those out (without saying names, of course).

The first thing is using bad words and cursing while posting about something. It doesn’t make you feel smarter, also if your content can be more viral. Believe me.

The second behavior is to speak regarding something you don’t know. “Company X laid off YYYY people, shame on you!”. Why are you doing that? Do you really know why it happened? No, you don’t.

The third issue is with people sharing WIP projects on social. Finish things, and show what you are proud of. It’s OK to share that you are working on something if you are looking for help, but it’s not OK to show something incomplete hoping that someone will hire you.

Last thing, we all like humor and cynicism but if you are constantly posting just that you are not putting yourself in a good light. You can look smart and experienced at the start, but then it’s tiring.

Do this instead

  • Try to evolve your communication style and channels
  • Analyze what you post and the results you have
  • Speak always politely, be always gentle

(I wish I could follow these things myself. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible because of the context and design of certain platforms)