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Tag: research

We need a simple controller

Published by Paolo on 10/01/2024

Games should be simple to play, for everyone. They can also be difficult, and offer a challenge. But the play itself should be a very accessible act.

A gamepad with over 20 buttons is not simple. We need some courage and go back to the origins. With adaptation to the novelties.

8 buttons for NES pad were more than enough, but the shape was not optimal.

Oculus controller solves the ergonomic problem, but has too many buttons. I would save just the trigger and add a touchpad on top

The touchpads of Steam Deck are a good reference for the top part.

Can you imagine that?

  • Connect it with any device, smartphone, PC or console
  • comes with a dongle to stream on any screen
  • takes gestures too

Play Forms

Published by Paolo on 02/01/2024

If you want to learn how to play like a game designer and you don’t know how to start, the Play Forms framework is a good starting point. It is based on a classic book about play, called “Man, Play and Games“. I have never read it, but there is a lot of material out there if you know how to search.

The framework is based on the conception that play has 4 basic forms:

  • Agon means competition, it can be against the game itself, against virtual enemies or against other Players
  • Alea means chance, the random factor that the Player is not able to control
  • Mimicry means the imitation of something belonging to other contexts, such as real life or fantasy worlds or abstract concepts
  • Ilinx means the vertigo, the senses brought to their limits

Ask yourself these questions while you are playing:

  • Am I competing against someone or something?
  • Does my outcome depend on randomness at some level?
  • Am I interpreting some role or adapting to metaphors that I have already seen in other mediums?
  • Do I feel some of the moments are extremely exaggerated and exciting?

My GOTY

Published by Paolo on 01/01/2024

Data speaks clearly. In 2023, the game that I absolutely played the most was Vampire Survivors.

Small team, simple idea, true indie gem. Simplicity at its finest. Nothing more to add, this was my personal GOTY.

Happy New Year everybody!

Wishes and hopes for 2024

Published by Paolo on 29/12/2023

I want to spend two words to write down my hopes and desires for 2024. I will not write any forecast, those are for non-creative people. People with no vision, people who look for an impossible low risk. A forecast is something to convince people to give money to other people, nothing more. I am a creative person, I don’t believe in forecasts and I prefer to write my wishes.

First of all, I hope that next year will be at least the start of a new way of making games. Companies should think of new kinds of contracts and compensations for their employees. Currently, a professional contributing to generating billions will eventually fall in a round of layoffs. Imagine, you create a new character like Spider-Man and other people will get lots of money. And then you are fired. The others, instead, will continue to make money forever. This is plain absurd. Since job stability does not exist, also contracts should adapt.

I hope to see new fresh concepts for mobile games, as second thing. Currently, the industry is trapped in concepts that have nothing to do with actual game design. Good game design is about understanding an audience and its needs. The industry, instead, is talking about “User Acquisition”, hybrid casual, web3, and things that are not interesting for the Players. I hope to see more fresh concepts, with a renewed interpretation of genres.

Third, I wish to see more people building businesses that last 100 years. We are too much immersed in the mentality of fast success. When we see the most successful businesses, they are built in decades, not years. All these people that have been fired this year, plus the people that will be laid off next one, could build awesome things. They have also the power to let fresh energies enter the industries. Start from team building, maybe creating content for Fortnite or Roblox. Start from the team, while you build a strong vision.

The web shops are popping out, so I hope to see more platforms that will help create a community among gamers. This is my fourth and last wish. Things like Steam but not so focused on PC games. Something that relates also to mobile games. Maybe letting the Players add mods and content to some games. That would be awesome. Too much AI bullcrap this year, the best content comes and will always come from real human beings!

Have a great year y’all!

Before your Eyes, design break down

Published by Paolo on 24/12/2023

Last week I purchased a bundle of narrative games from a popular store. The first game of that bundle, in alphabetical order, was Before your Eyes.

The game is a narrative experience. It doesn’t require much effort for a consumed player like me. There are minigames, but the story goes forward despite your ability to be successful at them. The story is short, but very emotional and effective. It’s about family, expectations, dreams, life, cats, death, disease, friendship, love. Developers managed, within 2 hours, to condense everything. My tears were out at the end of it, probably I am getting older.

Gameplay

As a player, you are in the shoes of a boy who lives his life and afterlife. The camera is in first person and there is a unique hook, which is a mechanic based on the blink of your eyes. If there is a webcam connected to your PC, the game detects (pretty well, in my case) when you close your eyes and play around that. The result is the feeling of a higher immersion into the story. Join that with well-written lines and characters and you get the idea.

The game is divided into chapters, and every chapter has scenes. It usually goes like this:

  • The story and dialogue go, like in a movie. You do not control their flow. Sometimes they pause waiting for you to activate a mechanic.
  • Interesting spots activate on the scene:
    • circles: just look at them to activate the mechanic. Usually, you have to connect with another circle. This is used to open a book, for example.
    • eyes: point at them and blink your eyes to activate a mechanic.
    • eyes with effect: point at them and keep your eyes closed to continue with the scene.
    • musical notes: you have to follow an area to play sounds
    • hand: move your camera in the hand zone to write on a typewriter
    • pencil: look at it and it transforms into a scribble. Bring the scribble on a sheet and blink to draw.
  • In order to pass to the next scene, you have to wait for a metronome. Blink whenever you want to go forward.

Everything is very simple but effective. Also, it permits interesting dynamics. For instance, some scenes may activate the metronome while circles are still appearing. So you can choose to keep your eyes open and complete the scene. One issue is that if you blink you will skip to the next scene. Sometimes I didn’t want to do that. This is one limitation of this mechanic, it is imprecise. The real conflict offered by the game is there. So, it is unique and creates gameplay.

Journey

The game starts with the calibration of your camera. I believe it is pretty confusing, especially for the core audience of this kind of game. Then you start the game and you are immersed in a fantasy. The fantasy is about the afterlife, and the message is clear: life is an awesome thing, no matter what you achieve, no matter who you are.

Engaging with the minigames and making narrative choices brings you always to this same conclusion. The story is linear and goes from start to end. You have no agency over it, still, you can perform over it in one way or another. It’s a smart narrative design solution to not deal with branches and things that can compromise the quality of the final product. The development team is made by 9 people.

Review

Those are the games that remind me of why I chose this profession. These games are not made to trap people’s attention or to monetize. They are not designed for retention. They wait for you to step in their magic circle. And if you want, you continue until the end. Maybe you cry a little. And then they go. Maybe you can play them again after a few years.

If you want to give yourself a beautiful gift, this game is. And after you play it, you may want to watch this talk:

Everything I said in this article was written before knowing the truth about its development.

An epic win is always possible

Published by Paolo on 23/11/2023

I was watching the Half-Life documentary released by Valve a few days ago. Right at the start Dave Riller says “I think most of us had no game development experience… There were 3 or 4 people who had actually shipped a game before”.

This story repeats over and over in the history of games. Baldur’s Gate (the first one) has a similar story. League of Legends, too.

But that was a different time, right? Nowadays, games are more complex and you need a lot of experience to make a successful game.

I discovered this game called Atomic Hearth thanks to a new friend I made here in town. It was released this year, the first game from a remote multi-national small company. They reinvented Bioshock. Huge success.

Someone tells you that you can’t be successful with juniors. Other people say that your first game cannot be a success. You need to fail 50 times, first. I often tend to believe the same things, but facts contradict me every single time.

The history of games teaches us that an epic win is always possible. Do the best you can do with the resources you have. The future is built very often by people belonging to the future. Our industry is where it is because people with no experience had their chance at some point.

The future of games

Published by Paolo on 13/11/2023

This weekend I was scrolling the infinite feed of LinkedIn and reading updates from many experts. I have to say that lately from one side there are lots of challenges. Many layoffs across the whole IT sector and people looking desperate. From the other, lots of experts are sharing their knowledge online. This is absolutely a good thing.

One of the main topic is about the future of games. Right now, it seems that everyone can make and publish a PC game very easily. But the cost of AAA games production is rising and the value perceived by the players is going down.

There is a demand/offer problem, too many games and it’s hard that the people notices you. To me, the solution should come by adopting a different perspective. Unless you have a strong IP, like Call of Duty, you cannot just make a game and sell it. You cannot afford to assume that people will come buy it. Nowadays, you should first get in touch with people, make them notice you. Then the people will eventually buy your things.

There is a trend among content creators, especially tech ones. They use Patreon to arrive to their audience. They build little by little. Play-to-earn crypto games were scam, but they were making something good: making contact with people super early. Of course, the focus there was money which is never something good to relate with entertainment. Still, I liked this very fact.

The key to me is in being able to create a strategy to go towards the people, the Players. Not the other way around. If you are making a game and then you will invest your money in marketing to spread the word, it’s very possible you join the rest of noise. It’s better to start build your player base right now, instead.

On analysis and deconstructions

Published by Paolo on 07/11/2023

In the last decade lots of satellite businesses built around the games. I have to say, especially since the boom of free-to-play, late 2012. One of them is analysis and break downs.

There are lots of services that offer data and screenshots of existing games, successful or not. A company or a private may pay a subscription to get access to those and save time in theory. Make better forecasts.

I have learned over the years that business managers hate uncertainty. Also if it is almost impossible in games to predict a success, economists and marketers hate what we game designers love the most: getting lost into a forest of creativity. Iterate, until the game is perfect. Business people prefer instead to rely on data from other companies, other contexts, other teams and follow their lead. If you want to work as a game designer for the industry, you have to deal with this bs.

I believe instead that every context is a different context. That our life is short, like very short (probably you will have around 40 summers left, think about it). It’s better to create something unique and maybe fail. Than create something that somehow already exists… and then fail!

It’s interesting to read break downs and analysis, but do not forget: those games we love are made by other people in other countries with other budgets and history. Never forget this and focus on put your own voice out. Own your thing.

MDA from artifacts to services

Published by Paolo on 26/10/2023

MDA is great to start, but as you can read on their paper it was created where the games were considered artifacts.

Nowadays many successful games are services, the model should be updated to me.

  1. considering not just mechanics, but themes and fantasies
  2. considering not only dynamics, but the journey
  3. identifying more aesthetics based on “stress relief”, “entertainment” and “engagement”

I am (not) a freakin TikToker

Published by Paolo on 10/10/2023

Living as an underdog has its challenges. I own my time, but that income is unstable. I have a pretty austere lifestyle and few expenses. And I live in a place with free healthcare and stuff like that.

Still, I need to get some extra income for bad times. That is why teaching is the first resource for me. I love to teach and I am good at it.

My target audience is students between 18 and 25 years old. And they are on TikTok. That is why I started a TikTok channel. I already hate myself, but the important thing is having fun and connecting with people here.

Wish me luck.