GOAT: GUY YOGEV aka Game Design Powerhouse

hello hello here we are in another episode of gamen on a today goat I love the name and we have guy here I think it's always nice to have the guy that named guy because you can make these type of cringe jokes to him and here what we have as a format you introduce yourself amazing okay so um as you already been established my name is guy I am next week one year older so I will be 36 time flies by yeah yeah yeah I heard like I heard your last episode of yakob like uh he's talking about like um his second kid so he's like growing with XP like his progression is higher so I just uh got like the my first kid was born two months ago so I'm handling stuff I'm a game designer at Super Sonic from unity and also I'm lecturing about game design at Israeli college and that's it lecturer this designer father

and human right maybe give or take I don't know I hope to be like a humanoid or something I don't know yeah actually uh how we met is so nice so like it's all about the gaming content the industry so I really love how Mobile gaming industry is bringing people together because it's not the case for others you know like if you go back to I don't know literally any industry it's so you so I love it and basically like I really want to uh ask about like starting from since you're feel this uh design like how how do you feel how do you think about the game design can we say it is your big passion it is like you know just tell me it wasn't my biggest passion like at the beginning like at the beginning I I I've been playing uh um games like you know all of the game designers used to say it like I've been playing for as long as I

can remember but but but really I've been playing a lot I got my um mega drive or Sega Genesis I've been playing sonic the edgehog like crazy and I really lik games but my pathway like my professional pathway took me to other places so I went over and study psychology my B degree is in Psychology which is like an important uh Junction in my life and moreover like I did a lot of stuff but I I never thought about doing games and when I thought about doing games so I went for a master's degree in game design and development and because I want to like a um to switch not from just being a gamer but also to being a game designer but at the time I didn't know what to do I didn't know about all different roles and all I knew nothing so I started to inquire I started to to deep inside to to see what it's like to develop games what it's like to work on the narrative aspect what it's like and and eventually I

found out that that game design is actually my passion and I think that when I like bring my former background in Psychology there so I think that this is like the complete closure of it because I I think that I tend to focus more on user experience people that did not come from this background and or maybe to give a fresh point of view about it so I think that this is and not just that like Also regarding monetization and and game design so it is really important to to be like a um like a multidisiplinary and and to to to know a lot about stuff so this is an important aspect of being a game designer actually it's also surprising that you know yakob also has a psychology degree so I think we really need to talk about the correlation between design especially game design and the psychology degree like how from

your side like totally a personal perspective how do you see this listen I think that we the nowadays we see a lot of games focus on creating some sort of like you talk about when you develop games so you talk about like creating some sort of intricacies and and complex game systems and they want to take this one and that one and sometimes they don't necessarily interact with each other like you need to focus on the on the natural flow of the game on the paas of the game the rhythm of the game sometimes that that we as as designers as developers we tend to to overlook it uh and moreover I think the connection like between monetization and game design to to psychological structures and methodologies not not just from psychology also from behavioral economics my thesis is is about like um implementing uh theories and methods from Game Theory into games so this is like the heart of of my focus when I create games and I found it with no surprise that like as you said like

jackob is also from a psychology degree because you need to figure a way to come with all of this together um I think this is the most uh important part of it that's that's true and actually from literally basic logic how to say when you know the player psychology you actually think about like extra extra neurons work from your side this could be this because it's not just about arts or not designing it's it's also about art sometimes we tend to also forget about this but but when especially in the okay let's say we're talking about like the wonderful Beast that nowadays we call it hybrid casual so we want to create games that at the heart of it they are like um if I want to to capture the audience eyes so I want to to them to have the the the notion that the the the game itself the core gaml it's easy to pick up it's nothing too complicated that

they need like H only like half hours or 40 minutes to actually understand the we it's it's not that we we're not focusing on that we're focusing on on creating a seamless and this is the most important word seamless uh environment that you don't need to work you don't need to sweat so I think this is the most important aspect of it and for sure like uh like art and the visual design and the all design language should be coherent and should be like play a lot of like uh uh an important role in this so for sure and actually I'm also curious like um like we of course mentioned about your degree in Psychology and now you are a game designer but let's talk about the transition a bit because like in the beginning you said that uh when you first uh like coming into design field it was not the like you know big passion wow so then in time it developed can you tell me about like what changed yeah for

sure I think that by the middle of my um Backle of degree my ba so I started to work at the food industry and starting to grow from from like from small roles to big roles and then like I worked there I think for nearly a decade and um nothing was on my mind regarding games I didn't have the time to play games but then covid came and everything got messed up and then I thought okay I need to change something in my life I need to change something in my aspect and then I I started to think about at least going to to to study this because I think that and and I found it extremely important to to notice the difference between thinking as a gamer versus thinking as a game designer like it is important for a game designer to be a gamer in my eyes for but but not all Gamers can be game designers so so it's it's it's quite important to to actually notice what is

the difference I think that that what like there was something around this time that I thought okay I I love it I I think this is like a an important like crucial Junction in the road of creating games because like you have the developers and you have the artists and you have the um and you have a lot of other like and you have of course the marketing but I think game designers are trying to encapsulate the truth tone and the true passion feeling of of of the game and basically like we talk a lot we talk really a lot about Gams and this should be that and this should be that and you should implement this one and this will impact your retention day 14 and so on and so forth sometimes I talked with my my students about it at the core basic of it Games should be fun if it's not fun it's not going to work we can talk a lot and we'll try to like visualize it and we'll try to to like encapsulate and to put it into metrics

and to to try to make a workflow out of it but if if you're feeling the game it's not fun for you when you test it so yeah it's not going to work you cannot make a not fun game a fun game so you need to to think maybe it's too complicated maybe it's too hard to pick up on maybe it's too um and and not just uh not just um um games also when you pitch a game this is another important aspect I had a lot of of friends in the indust they are amazing amazing individuals amazing amazing guys they are extremely talented developers but they don't know how to pitch their idea they don't know how to to make it work and and for me I think that like it is another important aspect another thing that I focus with my students is like to pit the game I think that like uh and to peit an idea and this is important to know your audience and by by the time you know your audience you need to make sure that I will come up you know I'll tell you a short story one day I came

back to visit my my grandma and she told me listen what what do you do what is your job your your job description so I told her listen Grandma I'm I'm a game designer so in Hebrew designer it's a it's a tricky word because it's like um the connotation of it is like you draw games you actually you are the artist so so she told me so you paint no I don't do that so okay so what do you do so I thought listen I'm I'm doing I'm working on on a feature in the game what is a feature so I need to go back so and then I told her I I'm doing a research and creating a a wireframes to provide the behavior for other departments to work to actually work on it and then I'm explaining I really like from the scratch and she looked at me and said like this sounds boring as hell and I told her like you're right and I love it I love it amazing as much as it borings to you so yeah I love it I actually love what I'm that is that is

so nice story actually I just remember like it's even from my angle it's always so hard to tell to like not just my parents but also like relatives what are you doing like not just say in gaming industry when you go deep like questions come after another it's not like I'm dentist yeah yeah yeah it's not it yeah for sure like on the and it's not like she doesn't play games she plays solitary in her tablet like in her iPad but still she for her she see the the the the product she see what she's playing she doesn't know that in um in order to do so there is a lot of people that think of how to convey the idea and to convey everything so for what is this what is this yeah so so true well this this is me I like it I like I like the grind I am a I am a gamer that like if I face like um not all games but on games that are strongly focused on social aspects so I like if I fail I will grind to to make myself good

because I want the comparison I want the competitiveness but on games that doesn't offer like um the social aspect I will I will churn I don't care about this same for me yeah that's why I'm a big fan of um Clash Royale yeah yeah yeah for sure yeah yeah Clash Royale and and also I played a lot of squad Busters I didn't play it for for a while but Squad Buster was amazing to me I know that there was a mixed uh mixed feelings of players regarding this game but still I think it's amazing one I actually wanted to ask about like since um like you are also lecturing currently and actually how many years have it been this is my second year no second third year I don't remember yeah okay so the question is basically in the industry like most of the majority of the game designers are actually how to say like without much theoretical side just like

either Masters or lecturing so like how do you see the difference you know I'm just curious about it um this is amazing question I I think that like there was a game designer that I replaced he was a game game design lecturer and for a long long time and in this College tillan college they mostly focus on like uh preparing students to actually get involved in the industry and I think this this is extremely important because you see a lot of not it's not just in in our field in a lot of other fields they finish like U degrees and they they go out to the world and then they see they didn't do anything they are like uh they need to come up from scratch so I think that like um the most important thing is uh to actually get the notion of an industry and the previous game design lecturer he like to call himself like the purist he's a game design purist he will show you like the uh the Bible of

game design and and I'm mostly because of my role today in the mobile industry because I first of all I come from the mobile gaming industry yeah and moreover I'm coming from a big publisher so I think that I am a twinner I would call it I don't think that there is a place today for a purist game designers in the mobile industry at least not in the publishing environment so I they should come up with like uh they are more of a product oriented m and I and I explain a lot to my students about like the difference the key takeaways of of looking at a game as a game or looking as a game as a product versus looking as a game as a as a service so but still I think that you know I talked to them about Metal layers I explained to them about Metal a in the last lecture and I told them like listen this is like the um academic approach regarding metal air but moreover when you talk about actual metal layer and so I want to explain what is the added value regarding kpis I want to explain

why we did that why why is the why there was a metal eror to begin with what was the the initial thought and this you can only gain when you actually do something in the industry and the connection between the academy and the industry is is sometimes tend to be a bit like um loose and I think we should strength it more so this is like one of my life mission that's that's so true actually like both of them is adding up to to one another and like basically when imagine like on the school side like in your lectures if they don't have any idea about the like user acquisition cpis kpis creatives Etc it's about okay we design now yeah we're doing it for art exactly and this is amazing art is amazing it's what you like it's your passion amazing but never forget this is this is a business and and you don't like um you not a writer or you not you don't write poems and you

write it and you put it in your drawer and you say oh amazing I wrote an amazing song Today an amazing amazing short story or something amazing it's I don't like uh like I it's not that I think it's bad amazing we still need to combine between the two and and to have the the business vision and to to have it because otherwise you cannot succeed in the world and and what can we do this world can be quite quite crel and actually if we talk about game designers mainly what would you call one or two like common mistakes about game design because your inside theoretical business Etc like what is the common one I think the most common one that I see nowadays it's like see um and and rest assured that when I'm talking about mistakes I did all of those yeah so no don't worry yeah I'm not like smashing other individuals but sometimes designers mostly developers they tend to go deep

without even thinking about the bigger picture I thinking about the bigger picture for me it's like what is your monetization plan what is your business okay let's go back what is your business model and then when you think about the business model what is your mization structure what what do you think what would you add when would you okay this is amazing and then they add a lot of features together and then like um um and then you need to find a way to make all of this work and not all of the time it works so I think the common mistake is like I think the project manager or mostly the game designer together but I think they should work together to come up with the bigger picture and then dive deep inside because if not it is almost impossible to you cannot edit along the way it's impossible because then you need to all the time you need to be on your high heels to oh I need to fix it I need to fix it and then you need to justify to yourself I did this because no it's not how it's going to work and if it works

so amazing it mostly happened by accident and it's amazing Kos to you but it's like um my manager said like uh and and and I listen to a lot of a lot of the stuff that he is telling me because it's really interesting like he said like you open a business you don't just uh go and okay let's open it and you need you need to work your way you need to have like a a proper plan a proper and and sometimes you don't you don't see yeah that's that's actually very solid like yeah I also like want to ask about your like Niche expertise since like we also should understand what supersonic is doing right now Etc like we know that it's basically has the hybrid casual approach and from totally personal perspective like how how much do you enjoy how do you see the genre evolving just personal the genre of hybrid okay so I'll start um I'll start from the genre and then I'll go back to

to me again I'm talking a lot about myself today it's weird that's why you are here yeah yeah yeah I think that in general today most of the people will say not just from supersonic the most of people will say that it's difficult to launch a new heat like in comparison to I don't know three years ago four years ago um I think that the hybrid casual is mostly moving away just to focus like back in the day you focused mostly on IAA yeah and now which was extremely heavy on intertial Focus so now we are tending to more trying to find the correct equilibrium between the Ia and IAP and and not all games can can sustain uh um like High um percentages of IAP so it's okay but if still you're going for the IAA so you need to focus more on RVs more on videos rather than uh on on

interstitials and I think like this notion even without saying this is important on the psychological term because I watch RV because I want to watch RV I'm I'm I want to progress further in the game I want to do something that the game is offering me and and I think it could help me it could be beneficial so I think that moreover like in addition to having a strong marketability and strong LTV so which has always been a key right but I think in the new and changing industry a mobile game needs to think about its monetization strategy as I told you so you're starting from building the core to like um working your way to trying to add meta layers or at least a proper features to sustain it and then you end up with liveops so we see success stories of games that like manage to increase their revenue by three to five times once they addit the liveops layer so I think together like uh with it it's

I think it's the the the new Norm of of multiple monetization units and we still focus on a lot of other stuff like trying to work our way around the subscription models all of those season pass and all of those trying to make it more user friendly MH and of course like a AI will no doubt play an important role in this endeavor and and me as as a game designer I find it extremely crucial because you create a lot of stuff and it is easier to simulate it and to see what it's like on the non-natural environment and to sum up all of these and to conclude I think that um you know I started my major breakthrough was in plarium yeah and I worked there as a game designer which was an amazing experience to me but Plum is mostly working like the the plum portfolio mostly focused on on midcore games and the focus on the game design

Department it's it's more resembles to the core game design or the purist kind of game design I think that once I I came to supersonic the focus is more product oriented you need to create because the pipeline is is shorter you don't create the midore games you create the hybrid casual games so it this Evolution from hyper casual so the junction should be a lot faster I really enjoyed it I find it really fulfilling I like I come back to a home and and I talk to my wife with the time I have to to hold my my baby boys um I I I I told I tell her that I I enjoy what I do because I see an impact I hope that the impact would be positive because not all the time we are right sometimes we are like um we're doing stuff that is can be quite detrimental uh but at least you doing you're impacting something so now you need to you need to really be

cautious and not to ruin stuff but moreover you need to sometimes you need to go over the limb and say I am ER recommending to doing this and that um I think game design I think it's like uh I I don't go by percentages but I think that around 70% around yeah it's it's making a thorough research I play all the time all the time and everything everything every everything I I go by even Dark Places I play a lot of weird stuff and not just for mobile because you need to be able to see okay like this is the the or or maybe this will be the trend so it's kind of like doing some sort of market research but not per se but you need to make the the thorough research because you cannot hunches are good but it's not enough in our industry I think so it's also really nice if they

catch up with the new trends Steam games even console games I think game design is one of the like Niche ones in the industry because like it doesn't add up much for use acquisition person for example or like if you're in the business Etc okay even for developers I think they don't care much because it's about coding when it comes to designing you can I think even in real life probably you have like the how to say like even in normal like real life scenarios you can sometimes think about oh actually this could be like affecting the design maybe like does it work something like that um I will add to this and say that sometimes the game designers in in like B corporates are are people that they're being hated because they are like the annoying people that create all sorts of documentations that nobody reads and then you need to because you know that nobody will read them so you you need to make it more approachable so you create some sort of wireframes and diagrams and St but still you need to find a way to mate and and and to to

speak on on on kind of the same language as because you don't speak the same language as you as you talk with your developer like you talk with your artist like you talk with your publisher like you talk with it's kind of a chameleon so I think it's it's a it's a really challenging it's a niche one yeah for sure but it's a it's moreover it's a challenging role and and yeah we love like challenging your life otherwise will be boring that's wow it's it's been like already more than half an hour it was like also pretty cool and informative for me as well like I am not working for like game design side but I'm always like super interested in understanding because it's also about empathy like I have so many friends like more than hundreds of game designers friends now I feel them even more that's that's really cool how would you wrap it up how would you end our podcast feel

free go for a shot wow encourage a lot of people to to to try it out and moreover don't afraid to to come to to people via LinkedIn via whatever and talk to them this is how I met Omar and our amazing relationship uh brought to life I think that and don't afraid I I know that sometimes like a game designers or people from this IND industry sorry can be quite introvert yeah quite shy so don't try to overcome I know it's hard but try to overcome it come up please go inside my LinkedIn send me messages talk to me I think this is one one of the um first stuff that the OM presented to me want to create some sort of a hub that people would come and talk about games like freely I think I I I thought back in the day and still I'm still like the fan the fan of it that says like let me help you I want to do it as well I think it's extremely important not for us because we know

games we talk a lot about games we learn a a lot of new stuff for sure you know I met Jacob in the a last AGC in Berlin we talked and we talked for a while and I heard his talks and it's amazing but still like most of the stuff he's talking about I I play the games I want the people that are afraid to ask I want the people that um but they have the potential to do that because sometimes they have like I see from my students they have like important and fresh angles that I wouldn't come up with it these OBS that will be available to people and this is extremely important for for fresh blood fresh blood because yay Omar you know what I'm saying we were Flesh Blood as well yeah but someone has reached to us like they offer the end and we took it yeah so we need to offer the end as well let's keep it up yeah yeah yeah yeah keep grinding thank you so much thank you so much for wrapping up and um thanks for coming

thank you thank you for having me