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Paolo's Blog Posts

Vision notes on FFXVI

Published by Paolo on 26/06/2023

This weekend I downloaded and played the new Final Fantasy XVI demo on PS5.

I’m not going to give spoilers or give my opinion, because it’s not interesting. I am a gamer like many others, and working as a game designer I am certainly full of prejudices that limit my vision.

What I have noticed, however, is that the vision for the future of the saga includes:

  • Combat systems that focus on spectacle over strategy
  • Less depth in the characters’ stats and more depth in their profiles
  • Make life much easier for those who want to know more about the game world

Ultimately Final Fantasy has always been this: a rich world in which to immerse yourself. An epic adventure with very distinctive characters. And a lot of not-always-exciting fights.

With the arrival of Genshin Impact and Asian RPGs with massive audiences, in my opinion the creative directors of the saga are wondering how to make the series more modern. I must say that I like these types of experiments, beyond the final result.

It is a path that can lead to new masterpieces in the future, even if it is a difficult and so unpredictable path.

Narrative matters

Published by Paolo on 23/06/2023

I hear too often “Nobody gives a darn about narrative in games”. Or “no one reads on mobile”.

But every successful game I know has a strong narrative component. Narrative is not the line of text, it is the sequence of events that creates a story together with the players.

use a star -> dialogue -> select decoration -> room upgrade -> dialogue -> new tasks -> new level

This is narrative.

swipe -> match -> explosion -> cascade -> match -> special tile -> … -> TASTY!

This is also narrative.

arena overview -> goal -> countdown -> GO! -> move character -> spot enemy -> hide -> collect gem

And this as well.

The story stack

Often we stuff a mediocre game with readable content in hopes that players will get hooked “for the story”. In this case, the risks of having an expensive and poorly thought-out product increase. A story should always be seen as the last step of a good game.

  • Fantasy comes first
  • Then come the actions that can be performed on the fantasy
  • Then comes the system of resources, rewards, and the game economy
  • The world is built on this
  • Stories can happen in the world.

If we start from the other side, however, it works for visual novels but not for mechanic based games.

Kids are the base of your tree

Published by Paolo on 22/06/2023

When you think about your new game’s target audience, think about its childish version, too.

Many people consider video games something childish. Data shows that adults play video games. Children are the people who have the most time to play. They can become attached to the intellectual properties we create.

When we design a new game, we tend to think about people who are like us: adults. In case we have to design a game for children, it is more natural to think of a child audience.

If we design for the mini version of our players, too, we have the chance to create a more accessible and memorable experience. Some say we have to think of our audience like a tree. The target audience is the branches, but the trunk is very important.

The players of our products have all been children. Some of them have children. When we design our games we always think of children as well. This is how memorable intellectual properties are created.

Adults become attached to characters and worlds based on elements they can associate with their own life and context. Children do it experientially.

If we make an effort to always think of a child playing our game, the experience itself will undoubtedly be better. That is valid for any kind of game. Yes, also gambling.

Always a game designer

Published by Paolo on 21/06/2023

A lot of game designers when entering the world of games as a service become product managers.

They then go from working “in the product” to working “on the product”.

Probably in this way, they can access better salaries and not have to go through too many filters to see their ideas realized. Being a game designer in an industry where everyone interprets data in their own way is a big challenge. It takes a lot of patience and really trying to adjust to one’s view, even if it’s totally wrong.

I like to focus on the craft of game design. While I have my own way of looking at the data, I recognize that it is likely clouded by personal bias. So I prefer to focus on grounding ideas and bridging teams.

When a product manager tells the team that “we need to put our efforts into improving D1 retention”, the effect is like an orchestra of monkeys with trombones and drums. It means nothing in the mind of anyone who wants to know where to put the effort. The technical artist or programmer wants to know what they have to do, the numbers don’t make sense.

A game designer, on the other hand, knows that the product manager is referring to having a clearer core loop and a more powerful hook. Therefore, I will create a list of assets needed to unlock that technical artist. A series of configurations and flows to unlock the programmers.

For me, the step forward is not to become a product manager. The step forward for my career is dedicating myself to better games. But I will always remain a game designer.

STPIDS Devlog #1

Published by Paolo on 20/06/2023

Two months ago I started a side project called Gamafish, with two purposes:
1. Have a free space where to make the games I would like to see out there
2. Help junior talents to find their first job in the industry

The first game is a 10 minutes reverse bullet-hell called Super Tiny People in Deep Space (STPIDS). The idea is to play with the fantasy of the family and with simple controls (like “Vampire Survivors”).

I manage to find a small team of fantastic talents. Ignacio Krichman, Fabricio Gili Barboza, Jessica Fung and Bárbara García.

(We are looking also for a Unity developer, right now I am coding everything.)

Here you can see what we have done with around 10 hours per week during one month or so. Imagine what it could be full-time! 🙂

Devlog No.1

Data informed lenses

Published by Paolo on 15/06/2023

I’m just a regular-everyday-game-designer. The best game design book is The Art of Game Design.

I always use its deck of lenses. In my case:

  • I used them the first years of my path trying to convince people more expert than me (with scarce results)
  • I abandoned them to focus on data-driven approaches. I was readapting industry trends and practices to the games where I was working on. That is what a mid-game designer does in free-to-play.

Now with the experience, I am integrating those into my workflow again! Thesis, antithesis, and now synthesis.

Take a look at this one.

How can we use this in the data hegemony we have today?

You want to make a new game and need to run a couple of CPI tests, IPM, or whatever. You want to find the right experience to design.

  • What emotions do you want to show in your creatives? why?
    • KPI: Number of impressions
  • What emotions are Players (including me) having when they decide to click? Why?
    • KPI: click-through rate (CTR)
  • How can I bridge the gap between the emotions players are expecting and the emotion I’d like them to have in the game?
    • KPI: Installs per mile (IPM)

Creativity and patience

Published by Paolo on 14/06/2023

For me, there is a direct relationship between creativity and patience. Ideas need to rest before being properly evaluated. Teams need to have the space to make their own journey and thoughts to make a game happen.

Most games never get published. This is due to many factors. But, a good pre-production phase helps mitigate the risk of not seeing the light.

I’ve read many articles explaining how AI tools help speed up the pre-production stage of a game. Some say that companies can also create content faster. I am very skeptical on this point.

In the pre-production phase, a team measures its potential toward a concrete challenge. The AI tools promise to give us concept art of a pretty high standard in minutes. We can also create stories and document templates. We can get quick code snippets.

But then we’ll find ourselves having to edit here and there. This editing process is different from the process that created successful games.

Since when did we decide that faster is better?

A good dish takes time to cook. A good vertical slice or demo, too. People need time to make meaningful connections, the sparks that ignite the engines. If we entrust this process to machines, then we end up working for the machine.

I enter my prompt and await the results. I review and analyze them. I iterate with these results by introducing more prompts. I review everything and make my changes. Instead of me acting and creating, it’s like I’m making corrections to an assistant. And it’s one of the worst assistants because it doesn’t actually think!

Fail faster is good advice, but it doesn’t mean we have to rush things. If something not created by us fails, it will be more difficult to grow. We will have no memory or connections that will make us understand which steps need to improve.

When did we decide that jumbled datasets are better than looking for references?

People need the process of searching for references to achieve creative goals. While the result of a prompt may appear to have excellent quality, it is still a mindless mixing of elements.

Our urge to have “the thing” now causes us to end up feeding a machine that will create something average. It makes us disperse in a mass.

The process that created the hit games that are on everyone’s lips works differently. There are two types of goals, project goals and personal goals. Every maker must have time to reflect. This time is invested in looking for references and organizing them. The same goes for an artist, a writer and a programmer. If this process is skipped in the name of speed, we will be acting like monkeys. Can we make something good? Just by chance.

Is it possible to use these tools in a healthy way?

The quick answer is no because datasets are a sophisticated intellectual property assault.

For the extended answer, imagine that there is no ethical/legal problem. Assume that the datasets are completely legitimate.

These tools can be used to unlock meaningful internal conversations for the team.

If I, a game designer, have to communicate some concepts to artists, these tools can facilitate my work. If a producer is briefing game writers, these tools can help estimate the number of words to use.

AI tools can help us learn to communicate with people belonging to other departments.

There is a direct correlation between the time a team works together and their odds of success. We should foster this necessary time with patience.

  • Instead of thinking about speeding up critical passages, let’s improve cross-department communication.
  • Instead of trying to get to the end faster, let’s improve our understanding of how everything contributes to it.

The art of vanity

Published by Paolo on 13/06/2023

Vanity metrics are metrics that are not used to make strategic decisions. They are used internally and externally by a team to make a good impression.

During the development of a video game, some useful metrics can become vanity metrics. The measure of MAUs, Monthly Active Users for example is often used as a vanity metric. An MAU is a player who has logged into the game at least once during the month. It is a measure that says little, with which few decisions can be made. Yet, if we have many MAUs, our partners and investors will be happy to know about it.

Another vanity metric I see in the world of premium development is the number of wishlists on Steam. Steam algorithm recommends your game based on the speed of getting wishlists. Wishlists are useful, but the metric representing the overall number is not. I have never seen a single company making strategic decisions based on that number. A premium games company decides to make a game and goes until the end. Having many wishlists motivates the team and piques the publisher’s interest. A textbook vanity metric.

Are vanity metrics useless?

Absolutely not! They help move things along, they help with certain discussions. I compare them to the placebo in medicine. Placebo is proven to work on so many occasions. Monitoring, presenting, and discussing vanity metrics allows us to unlock many situations.

If a game has tens of thousands of people returning every month at least once, this opens doors to investors. The fact of having many wishlists allows a publisher to focus their campaigns more on our game. The team benefits from it because it’s easier to prove that artistic decisions are the right ones. Proving artistic choices is hard, art has a strong aesthetic component. That’s where vanity comes in!

Data-informed indie development

Published by Paolo on 07/06/2023

I have a soft spot for indie game development. Yesterday I listened to the words of a developer friend who was generous enough to share his battles.

The metrics coming from the Players behavior inside of the game are ignored. This is very different from the game-as-a-service approach.

Game design has an artistic and a scientific component. The latter is based on hypotheses, theories, and experiments. The experiments before were only manual (playtest). After the advent of big data, machines can help us simulate the real world and conduct other kinds of experiments. Free-to-play games aim for a very high volume of players, that’s why you need a data-informed approach to update them properly.

Indie games, on the other hand, keep their focus on creating an original idea designed to please a niche. They are much riskier because there is no data-informed approach that allows a team to learn from one game to be better in the next. The game develops, publishes, and moves on to the next one.

One trend I see in free-to-play mobile is keeping an eye on the indie world for interesting core loops to adapt. Indie developers should in turn “steal” the data-informed approach to improve their processes. They can develop the next game more consciously.

Indie metrics starter pack

Let’s take the example of an indie Metroidvania game in early access on Steam. Let’s say the team has an update roadmap in mind. As an outcome, they want to create a DLC calendar that makes sense.

First Time Player Experience

The first thing to keep track of is the First Time Player Experience. Represents love at first sight, the hook. Its effectiveness can be measured in two ways:

  1. D1 retention: the % of total players who return to play after the 24 hours.
  2. FTPE Funnel: the % of total players who leave the game at each step that belongs to the first experience. We virtually put markers and measure how many people fail each one.

Difficulty curve

Level design is very important in this type of game. It is necessary to have a beat chart designed to measure the failure rate of each segment or level of the game. I suggest to measure:

  • Drop rate: the number of players who leave the game at each level or segment
  • Average completion time: the average time to complete the level or segment
  • Average attempts: the average number of attempts to complete the level or segment

This will measure the difficulty of your game and where you should tweak the levels or segments. In this way, during early access, we can make fixes effectively not just based on what we read on reviews.

Retention for DLCs

Last thing, the metrics needed to create a post-launch DLC roadmap. The best way to create an effective roadmap is to understand which game features people engage with the most. Players may prefer to find secrets or exciting battles. We can measure the retention and engagement of players who:

  • unlock certain achievements
  • eliminate many enemies
  • they discover secrets
  • they spend more time reading the dialogues and exploring
  • they use certain skills

Retention is measured by days. We need to check if a player returns after 24 hours, after 48, 72, etc. Those are, respectively, D1, D2, D3… retention!

Engagement is the number of times the Player runs the game over a 24-hour period. Then we check the average time spent in each game session.

We can use retention and engagement to create cohorts, subset of Players. Then we can think in an effective DLC roadmap to target the most interesting and decide a pricing strategy effectively.

New Apple Vision PRO

Published by Paolo on 06/06/2023

Apple has shown that they understand that MR devices compete with traditional screens in the physical space.

They haven’t made the same mistake as Meta, of promising virtual worlds where we can meet our friends. The promise is easy to make, very difficult to execute. Also because reality always has more weight than virtual worlds, who cares? They didn’t speak about the metaverse or anything like that. They forged the new term “spatial computing”.

Apple in its typical way of communicating things offers us a simple message. Buy Apple Vision PRO and you will have how, where, and when you want all the screens you want. No more arguing with your wife about where to put the television. You can wash the dishes and have the news of the day ahead of you. You can join a business meeting without having to switch tabs to check your social media.

  • The current price is for early adopters and companies that want to explore the potential of this device, not for the mainstream.
  • I’m not sure if this device can overcome the natural instinct of the human being not to want his face covered.
  • The battery promises a duration of two hours, which seems few to me for use cases.
  • I expect a change of direction in Meta communication for the new Quest 3, now.
  • “Spatial Computing” is still a hard wording for the mass market.