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Paolo's Blog Posts

Noob, Pro, Hacker

Published by Paolo on 23/12/2021

This year I have worked a lot on hypercasual games. I like the fact that its development requires you not to get attached to any specific idea. You design a game mechanic very quickly, put your hand on the engine with few specifications and then you speak on something done. 

It reminds me of a method proposed by Jordan Mechner, creator of Prince of Persia. 

Working on hypercasual games I learnt that:

  • The Players hate to lose. The failure rate of your levels is directly related with drop off of people, day to day.
  • Players are more tolerant to ads that we may imagine. As a game designer, I hate those freaking ads! Anyways, if your game is good people accept your ads easier than you may expect
  • Players live the experience in three main stages: 

The noob, they really have to understand things well. You need to slow down that difficulty curve, believe me

The pro, they like to have games which permit to spot a perfect path to follow and win

The hacker, they will try to hack the rules of your game. Best games out there permit them to do that, for instance Aquapark.IO

Definition of mechanics and features

Published by Paolo on 22/12/2021

How do you define mechanics and features? This is very important for the success of the development. Many times, we think that just talking about something makes that clear for anyone. This is the most common mistake of inexperienced game designers.

“It’s simple, the character moves with the stick and shoots with the right trigger!”

With this sentence I have a gameplay in my mind and you have another.

You should really make the effort of empathizing with the people you are speaking with. Be as visual as possible. 60% visuals, 30% multimedia and only 10% written content is what I try to follow. It is better to speak on something visual and then find and solve all the related problems. 

Often, the things we define will require some further set up. Maybe you will have to decide the speed of something. Maybe the odds for some reward. The best way to communicate this is to show clearly how you would like to set up the things, in the engine you are using or in some spreadsheet! 

Do them a favor: speak about your needs!

How to build a Metaverse in 4 simple steps

Published by Paolo on 21/12/2021

Simple is not easy, of course. I am writing this post because of the continuous DMs on all channels from small ad agencies who would like to have the help of some cheap designer in southern Europe to build what Mark Zuckerberg is building.

Instead of just adding their contact to the spam filter, I would like to give them a guide to build their Metaverse themselves. Let’s go!

Simple Step 1 – Have a team

Games are made with a complete team of people working hard together to serve some audience with a game product or service. If you don’t have a team already, it is very simple: you have to build one! You don’t want to pay a third party to build your core business, don’t you?

Simple Step 2 – Have a team that completes projects

You have to know that the vast majority of video games that are being produced right now will never be released.  The reasons are multiple: no money, no people, no idea of the business are the main ones. Once you have a team, be simple: research small games and let your team make them. Let them prove they can complete a project from start to finish. Don’t be complex, don’t think in the CRYPTOMETACHAIN yet, think in just complete games.

Simple Step 3 – Have a team that completes projects and sells them

The next thing is to be able to market and sell your video games. That is not an easy task, statistics out there speak clearly: more than 90% of video games never get their investment back. Before conquering the World with your fantastic metaverse on the crypto whatever you may want to assure that you know how to sell your games.

Simple Step 4 – Have a team that completes projects and sells so many copies of them that creates an intellectual property

Apart from passing fashions, one thing is clear regarding metaverses: they are virtual places where real people value virtual things equal or greater than real objects. For a metaverse to be really successful in terms of revenues you may want your Players to receive and create great stories on your platform. If you have a strong IP such as Super Mario or Sonic, you will more probably attract the interests toward your platform more than the other metaverse done by one of the richest men in the World. Which is clearly not your case, because otherwise you were not reading these words.

Remember: simple is not easy. In fact, those are very hard steps. Making video games is not like playing video games, but it can be very simple: is just a matter of controlling your ambition according to the resources and the people you have to realize them.

Napoli, my place!

Published by Paolo on 20/12/2021

I am writing this post from my hometown Naples, in Italy. This is the city where the Pizza was born when the queen of Italy, Margherita di Savoia, was going to the south of the country to visit the people here. That is why the first, and maybe most famous, pizza in the World has the color of the Italian flag and is named Margherita.

Dude look: the perfection!

This city has two active volcanoes, Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei. As you can imagine it is not the safest place in the World. Still it is my mother, here I grew until 28 and here is where I had my basic education. 

With the Pandemic, my job literally exploded. I now work for a company but I offer my services to a client here in Naples. They offer me their office space also when I am here. The client is AppIdeas, they are a strong team doing hypercasual games for publishers. 

This year we had also a success, the hit Level Up Runner reached more than 1 million people. You may want to check it out!

Revenue on SensorTower doesn’t take ads in account for estimations

I really hope this is the start of a new sector here in Italy. Right now there is not so much, especially in the South. Someone has to start helping, I think. I will definitely try it!

Have you created your framework yet?

Published by Paolo on 19/12/2021

I have been observing the profiles of the most renowned game designers for some time. They all have one thing in common: they have developed frameworks and shared them with the world.

What are the tools and methodologies you use the most to tackle problems? Group everything, create a mind map, and share your thoughts every now and then. Your framework is interesting to the world, believe me!

Don’t waste any more time, start building your frameworks. It helps to think about everything in the form of a system. Excellent tool for optimizing times!

People enjoy challenging fate

Published by Paolo on 18/12/2021

This truth is the basis of many of the first games that humans have played. I believe many have seen artifacts of ancient dice at some exhibit in the city.

Many people today condemn games that include gambling in their experience. “It’s just gambling, it’s not a game!”

And who are you to decide what a game is? To me it’s very simple: if there is a form of fun we can consider it a game. If people can learn something new without dying in the test, we can consider this test a game.

Gambling games, play-to-earn games, they are all games. They all offer their own form of entertainment.

Can a game ruin people? No. People ruin themselves. Accept it. People are a lot smarter than you think. Those who fall into addictions do so for a series of personal problems. It is impossible for a game, or any product, to be able to manipulate any human being.

The levels beat chart is your best friend

Published by Paolo on 17/12/2021

Before you put your hand on the engine of choice and design your level, or even think in the level itself, it is good to have a beat chart prepared. In this way you can have a big picture of the result of the level design iteration.

The most common way of doing that is by using the most important tool for game designers: spreadsheets.

Prepare a sheet with the following information

  • Level: the number of the level in the sequence
  • Skill Atom: what should the Player learn/practice/improve in this level?
  • Minutes: how much time should the level last from start to finish in a perfect scenario?
  • Difficulty: what is the fail rate percentage of this level for an average player?
  • Skills: Core, Secondary, Obstacles and so on. Color those cells to represent the presence of old and new skill atoms in the level
  • Author: Who is in charge of designing this level?
  • Comments: after each iteration the other level designers can leave comments here

How to self-educate in designing games

Published by Paolo on 16/12/2021

Improve your design abilities adapting this writing method by Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin was born poor and he stopped being educated when he was 10 years old. He developed a method of self-education and became great at writing informative texts. Here there is his method:

“I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.”

Can this be adapted to game design?

Try this:

  1. Find good videogames and make hints of every interesting part you see. Start from the brickfile.
  2. Wait for a few days and then come back to the hints. Who is the target of this game?
  3. Try to reconstruct the features and mechanics that you can reconstruct. Focus on the simple things, don’t overcomplicate it.
  4. Wait again for a few days and then come back. Does that make sense? Is the audience the same again or you are looking for other kind of Players?
  5. Repeat 3 and 4 until you are happy with your result
  6. Prototype just the things you improved!

The best template to start with game writing

Published by Paolo on 15/12/2021

The best way to learn how to write for video games is to do it. Write, print your work, read it aloud. Reading aloud is critical to develop your text comprehension skills. Do not be shy nor lazy. Read your works aloud!

If you don’t know how to start because you have no time to code or to make a game, don’t worry. Think in the game you love, imagine a situation between two of its characters. The situation can have branches inside, but maximum 2 endings: the good and the bad.

Now it’s time to write your script. Sarah Longthorne released a while ago this fantastic template for branching narrative in visual novels. You may want to start from here. This is one of the best resources I have ever found for free.

If you are thinking in an RPG, of course that will be different from a visual novel. In this case the triggers that bring the story to the players are different.

You should think in those triggers and create your own template!

We need better words

Published by Paolo on 14/12/2021

Yesterday I was reading an interview to a games industry leader in Barcelona. He was speaking about the play-to-earn games and predicting how companies will behave in 2022. He said “it will be a blood bath”.

The other day I was listening to the video channel of a famous industry expert. He was talking about leadership and defended openly the need of “being cruel” in manage people and projects. Not hold the hand, for instance, when someone doesn’t work. Just fire them.

If we really want to have a better industry, we should double check the word we spread to the World. Our words are an important medium of influence of other people. We are all responsible for that.

When we say words, people listening us interpret our speech with their own perception. Perception almost never is equal reality. Perception imposes over our own realities. We are responsible, then, for everything we say and for how we say it.

When you say blood bath, I propose high competition. High competition is safe, is normal in our system and blood baths sadly happen every day in our World. When you say “lead with cruelty” I propose you to lead with patience. The same patience that built the great companies that today publish the greatest game we play.