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Tag: research

Good news for the ecosystem

Published by Paolo on 08/01/2025

Today’s news is that ex-Annapurna staff is acquiring the Private Division team. This means that Annapurna Interactive (the official one) will continue make “transmedia” things with contractors. Meanwhile, Take Two interactive will focus on live service PC and mobile games.

Win win for everyone. I hope this newly formed team do great things. Especially, I wish they start from small things. I have said this many times, I will repeat it: to me the games industry is like a forest.

And a forest to be healthy needs not only big trees. It needs also the underwood, the little mushrooms. The ants working everyday, the snakes representing a danger. Over the last 5-10 years the expectations from investments and media were just looking at the big trees like Roblox and Fortnite. But for Roblox and Epic to survive, a healthy ecosystem needs also small games. AA games, indie games, instant games. Small games.

I like to write and design all by myself

Published by Paolo on 03/01/2025

I am noticing a trend against LLM platforms, coming from people that enjoy writing, like me. On the other side, enthusiasts explain how the performance improved thanks to these services.

It seems to me a case of beauty and intuition versus rationality and data. And this is something deeper than one can think at a first glance. Over the last decades the discourse around productivity and success got a huge boost. AI fits in this because it helps people build a storytelling that may feel credible with a quick read. And if you are not a creative person, this is a wonder.

There are consequences, on multiple levels. Internet today is a different place than 5 years ago, and I believe this is not right or wrong. It is what it is. I watch or listen anything and first thought is “let me check this has not been auto-generated”. Sometimes I fall in the trap, too.

Will AI boost “productivity”? Well, does it really matter at this point?

How to make a stream-able game

Published by Paolo on 12/12/2024

Yesterday I discovered this channel and this specific video by Gavin Eisenbeisz, the creator of the successful horror game Choo-choo Charles.

The man shared useful information about creating a game for streamers. It contains something I have been thinking a lot these days, and implementing in my indie game Pawtners Case.

There is something that PC/Console games should learn from mobile games: you run the game, you are in the game. It is good to welcome the Player into the experience, but often, it gets slow and overwhelming with more than three steps to arrive at the gameplay.

The video features a document containing all the information, in case you are more of a reading person. Enjoy!

Readability and permissiveness

Published by Paolo on 05/12/2024

I read that gamers spend more hours watching others play than playing videogames on their own.

This inevitably leads to the creation of games that are more fun to show to others. Games that are too complicated to understand or with many fail conditions are penalized. Games are designed not only for players but also for streamers, which are an important driver of sales.

A streamer wants to entertain but also show that he is good. Spending two hours thinking or losing miserably because you made bad strategic choices at the beginning is not the best. This is probably why puzzle games are not so popular on Steam. This is also why RTS games are not trendy anymore, probably.

Streamability depends not just on the genre, but on two factors:

  1. the readability of the mechanics, having something that can be understood from a 5-second video is key
  2. the permissiveness of the rules, the black box is better if it allows epic wins even at the last moment.

Monument Valley 2

Published by Paolo on 28/11/2024

Netflix has many games that you can download and play offline for FREE if you are subscribed to their service. I have completed yesterday Monument Valley 2.

I purchased the first chapter of this saga years ago on my iPad 2. The essence of the first chapter is still there, actually, the art style is the same and the core gameplay is almost identical. This second chapter adds an interesting narrative layer, and the theme is the relationship between a mother and her daughter.

Probably I was missing some little monsters and the patterns that are typical in Escher’s work. I think I would have appreciated something like that, representing better the dangers. The only things that break the order are buildings that collapse when the characters touch a trigger (sequence) and a new mechanic with a plant that you grow and shrink. I feel that more things could have been done there.

Monument Valley 2 is a little gem, a pleasure for your senses, a little box full of life. It’s based on Escher’s art and absurd geometries, but it adds color and animated characters to it. It is the kind of game that shows the potential of mobile in telling stories. It features a narrative full of metaphors and few texts, and I am not smart enough to have understood any detail. But it doesn’t matter, in the end. It’s the aesthetic experience that matters.

Distribution is challenging

Published by Paolo on 20/11/2024

Consumption habits have changed a lot in the last few years. Nowadays that is a significant number of people that buy a console to play a single game. Usually, that game is Fortnite.

Games are not underground like before, now they are mainstream. This brings a lot of challenges to distribution. They are cool, they are the normal thing one does. Before it wasn’t like that.

How to face this challenge? Phil Spencer said “less Excel” yesterday, and maybe he is right. It’s not about using a budget to push the thing out, but more about trying to have a conversation with the right crowd.

Why not “best DLC”?

Published by Paolo on 19/11/2024

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is a candidate for “best game of the year” at The Game Awards. But it’s not a game, is it?

It would be wonderful if these events kept up with the times. We are clearly in the era of games no longer as artifacts but as entertainment. Living games, updated to keep the public’s attention for many months.

It is absurd to reward only the new, when an update or a DLC, as is the case of Elden Ring, receives so much admiration from the public. The Game Awards should start considering awards such as “Best DLC”, “best live event”, etc. The market moves on completely different perspectives than 10 years ago when these awards were created.

Nexflix will close the games department in 3 years maximum

Published by Paolo on 05/11/2024

At long last, I am ready to talk about what I’m doing next: I am working on driving a “once in a generation” inflection point for game development and player experiences using C++. This transformational technology will accelerate the velocity of development and unlock truly novel game experiences that will surprise, delight, and inspire players.  

I am focused on a creator-first vision for C++, one that puts creative talent at the center, with C++ being a catalyst and an accelerant. C++ will enable big game teams to move much faster, and will also put an almost unimaginable collection of new capabilities in the hands of developers in smaller game teams.

Sounds like weird, right? Well, someone wrote the same stuff, but instead of C++, he spoke about genAI. That guy earns more money than me, you, and everyone who will read this post altogether.

The difference is that in my version of the statement I named a technology that actually helped lots of people make fantastic games. This is not the case with genAI, which is a theft created to destroy jobs.

Game making is a creative activity, which means that there are a lot of micro-decisions that we have to make every day. It involves conscience. And conscience is not the result of a set of electric signals, it’s something higher that comes from above. The most powerful processor, or GPU, can create many signals and solve complex operations faster than our brain, but it can never have conscience.

Netflix will shut down its games operations in a maximum of 3 years. If you want to have a more secure/safe job do not work for a company that will fail.

Blue and red Oceans

Published by Paolo on 29/10/2024

For me, game genres are not markets. For example, there is no “merge games market”. There are “merge games” in the “mobile market”.

Every time I see a team created like this:

  • someone believes that a genre has formed a market (on the last sad news you can find a lot of “hero shooters”)
  • hires talents who already work in that “market”, also if they would enjoy better another kind of game, in some case
  • the offer is attractive and the project is new, easy to convince the bored employee

in 3-5-7 years everything gets shut down without results. Surprise, there was no market at all.

When do I see that things work?

  • a group of enthusiasts of a genre get together to explore it
  • the team (including marketers) engages for real with the players
  • concrete and measurable experiments are done to define a vision well
  • after years of effort, they publish the game.

In this case, the probability of success increases. Even if the timing is somewhat unpredictable (never seen a success in less than 7-10 years, in mobile f2p).

Games please our entertainment needs uniquely.

  • People play Royal Match to relax, brain train, tournaments, curiosity… Not because they want to “play a match-3 game”.
  • millions are playing Metaphor: ReFantazio because of the story, map revealing, and challenge with combat… not because it’s a modern JRPG.

The fact that a specific game gets massive doesn’t mean we have a new market around its genre.

This means it has found its audience in the market, which is different!

For a brighter future for games

Published by Paolo on 24/10/2024

The YouTube channel of popular game director Masahiro Sakurai has come to an end.

This will remain an outstanding document that hopefully will teach basics to generations to come. Thank you Masahiro San!

Regarding this last video above, I am impressed with the work ethic and discipline. I couldn’t never have this level of mastery because I have a different background and life. Still, there are something to learn not just on video production, but on content design in general:

  • Everything was planned right from the start: outline, scripts, footages. Everything.
  • Focus on 1 task at the time and cover the entire content length
  • Keep everything extremely organized in folders and find name conventions for easier queries
  • Collab with external partners only when everything is well defined, because you will have management overload
  • Use the email with bullet points for feedback and general comms.

Masahiro San says that he invested around $630k and got $0 as revenue. He did this just for the improvement of our beloved industry. I would like to see more Masahiros around here…